Chapter 01

Love at First Tale

Ore — December 1991, Mushubati, Rwanda

The afternoon sun beat down on the courtyard, fierce even for the dry season. Beneath the sprawling canopy of the mango tree, the boy sat cross-legged on a makeshift cushion of leaves and tall grass. Head tilted toward the sky, he basked as rays trickled through swaying branches onto his face. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves overhead and carried the murmur of voices from distant fields. From where he sat, the family home's ochre stucco wall glowed almost white with reflected sunlight. The sun's intensity was such that even the dirt yard between the tree and the house hurt to look at. Like a canoe floating on a milky ocean, the maroon-red gate looked scarlet. Closed but unlocked, the gate swayed with a slow eeeeek as the wind blew it this way and that.

Scrawny and small for his six years, Gabriel was all too aware of his cuteness—the large eyes and disarming smile that made his sisters dote on him and his brother cuff him at every chance. He knew how to weaponize it, but his brother was part of today’s negotiations, and any attempt at playing cute would only earn him some tough love. Without a parent around to set limits, things might lean more toward tough than love. Gabriel thus decided to exclude natural charms from today's negotiating strategy.

Beside him, a half-eaten green mango lay dusted with salt, its sour juice stinging the corners of his mouth. The fruit, still unripe, released a floral perfume, a teasing promise of the sweet delight it might have become. The subtle scent of arum lilies, hidden from view in his mother's flower garden, mingled with the mango's fruity notes.

The real treasure sat in Gabriel's lap, a squat golden half-loaf of bread with an oily crust, more fried than baked, wrapped in a crinkled transparent plastic bag. Its smell alone made his stomach growl with want. Bread was a rare delicacy reserved only for important guests. Muzehe—the affectionate honorific everyone called him by, from his wife and children to the bakozi—had decreed that any bread left over was Gabriel's and his alone. Another privilege bestowed upon the first boy born after a cascade of girls, the miracle child who'd slipped in just before his mother's body closed its doors for good. Needless to say, none dared question the patriarch's decree. Yet instead of tearing into his birthright, Gabriel took another bite of tart mango. He craved the bread, yes, but he understood its worth and so held it like a king guarding his war chest.

Opposite Gabriel sat Patrick and Chantal, whom family and friends called Nonori. Both stared at the prize in his hands. In countless past negotiations, Nonori had always offered fair terms. Patrick had not. Gabriel reminded himself the name should always be Patrick. Never Nunu unless his brother was out of earshot. Enough knuckle-knocks had taught him that lesson.

He fished all but two slices from the bag, ignoring the crumbs raining on his khaki shorts as he counted and stacked them with the practiced care of a seasoned merchant. "For tomorrow night," he said, handing half the stack to Nonori, "and the four nights after that. That's five nights paid." He gave the rest to Patrick and licked the crumbs stuck to his thumb.

Patrick's smirk came slow, deliberate, as his eyes narrowed to slits. He let the silence stretch. “Two slices for one telling,” he said. He pointed at his chest, then at Nonori. "Each."

Gabriel's stomach dropped. Even the wind seemed to still. This was not the deal. This was pure extortion.

"That's not fair," he whispered, his lip quivering. "Last time it was two nights for one slice."

Of all his siblings’ tellings, Gabriel loved Nonori's best. Vivid and full of quiet magic, they drew him into the story. Patrick's, a distant second, were loud and chaotic, like a classroom with no teacher, but they brimmed with fearless tangents and grisly twists that would’ve earned him the belt if Muzehe ever heard. Of course, Gabriel never told.

Gabriel bit down on his lip and closed his eyes to calm his breathing. He could bypass Patrick and strike a fairer deal with Nonori, but Patrick would find a way to make her share with him. And Gabriel would enjoy a knuckle salad for his efforts. Besides, he refused, on principle, to pay less to Nonori and more to Patrick for second-rate tellings. If Patrick was determined to swindle him, he might as well make sure Nonori got the same deal she'd never demand for herself.

Patrick dropped his voice to the low growl he used for the monster in his tellings. "No guarantee Muzehe gives you bread next week. You don't get any, we don't get any." He elbowed Nonori. She started, gave a wordless grunt, and shot Gabriel a guilty glance before looking away.

Gabriel tightened his arms around what remained of the bread, cradling it with the care reserved for gold or live grenades, the smell of fried crust his only comfort. For now. His mind raced, counting unseen portions, guessing how much bread Muzehe might award next week, subtracting slices already owed to siblings absent from the meeting. He met Patrick's gaze, frustration giving way to resolve.

"One slice each if I pay now. Two each if I pay from the next loaf."

Patrick stared in silence. Gabriel held his ground as well as his breath.

Finally, Patrick broke eye contact, a chuckle rising to his lips. "Fine." Then he snatched the two remaining slices anyway. "But when the hyena comes in the night, don't come crying to share my bed."

Gabriel simmered, eyeing his empty lap as Patrick plopped his haul back into the plastic bag. Seven slices for Patrick, five for Nonori, zero for Gabriel. He should've at least given one of the remaining two slices to Nonori. What had he expected? He considered protesting, maybe even crying, but where it might work on some of his other siblings, it would only amuse Nunu. In his mind, he screamed Nunu. Nunu. Nunu. Nunu.

"You can share mine," Nonori murmured.

Gabriel studied her, fidgeting hands, downcast eyes. No doubt she thought she’d failed him and let Patrick steal more than his due. And though she was not entirely wrong in her assessment, there was one thing she failed to grasp. As long as he had bread to spend, Gabriel would always come out on top.

The deal was struck. Pleased with himself, Gabriel leaned against the trunk, the bark cool against his back.

Emboldened, Gabriel pressed his luck. "I want a telling now," he said. "Once from each."

To Gabriel's surprise, not even Nunu tried to renegotiate. When a stronger gust of wind stirred the plastic bag in his brother's hand, Gabriel looked down. Not even the tiny butt end of the loaf remained. He was left with only the crumbs in his lap for company. Still, his lips twitched into a smirk. Within seconds, a grin had bloomed across his face. Story time.

When Gabriel looked up, he thought he detected some pity, even from Patrick's perpetual frown. He wiped the smile from his face and didn't have to search far for the very real disappointment nestled in his chest. Of course, he knew better than to leave it raw. He layered it with wide, wounded, watery eyes and the softest pout, a masterpiece of six-year-old innocence, calibrated for one purpose. He needed to milk the semblance of sympathy he'd caught in Patrick's gaze for enough guilt to keep his big brother's sights off next week's potential loaf.

Patrick began first, his telling brazen and ruthless, his voice booming, the girl in his tale trembling and tender, the monster loud and laughably cruel. Nonori followed, soft and sincere, as assured in her telling as she was timid under the tree.

Both times, as if each were the first, with the same bliss blooming in his gut, the same timeless anticipation. He closed his eyes and let the tales carry him far away, the words rising and falling with the wind as sunlight filtered through the leaves and painted the tale across his lids.

If I close my eyes, I’m back there. The wind rustles the mango leaves. Patrick’s baritone booms. Chantal’s cadence whispers. I can picture the small mango in my hand, hear the wet pop as my teeth pierce its unripe skin; I can taste the acrid, sappy wash, then the sour tang against the sweet, fruity aroma.

Oh, what an adorably insufferable little idiot I was. How clever I thought myself, far above the petty squabbles of mere mortals. Poor Nonori, tangled in guilt, and dense Patrick, drooling over crumbs. But not me. Oh no, sir. I knew what mattered. And it certainly wasn't that glorified fried dough. It didn't matter how rare or golden it was, or that half the kids in Mushubati had never even seen bread, let alone tasted a slice. No. What mattered was the story. Not any story, but the exact same one. The only one that, back then, mattered.

Only recently, an eternity after the fact, did I realize how badly I’d been played. My siblings probably enjoyed those nightly tales as much as I did. Sure, they may have changed things up with another story once or twice, but I suspect they’d have told them for free had I run out of bread. Even Patrick, the human thundercloud himself, might have relented.

What story was worth bribing my siblings with bread? Oh, don’t get your hopes up. It was yet another version of the old tale—you know the one, brother and sister abandoned or lost in the woods. Sound familiar? It should. We can thank our colonial overlords for that, I suppose. After all, Rwanda had been a German colony before the Belgians took over, so some cultural bleed was inevitable. By the time the tale reached my ears, it had assimilated into local folklore as an umugani—Rwanda's closest equivalent to a fairy tale. As a boy, I was hooked on imigani, the plural. Come on. Keep up. My fix? Nyashya na Baba, the one I bribed my siblings into telling over and over, the Rwandan version of Hansel and Gretel.

That is the power of umugani. Just as you're bound to find a dash of color in the darkest nightmare, there's a case to be made that Rwanda's colonial past, however ugly and violent—whatever, nobody's advocating for colonialism here—still left something behind. Somewhere along the way, something of theirs had become ours. Names, places, maybe even the monster's identity… all that changed. Yet underneath, the story remained familiar enough for a six-year-old boy beneath a mango tree to demand it again. And again. And again.

And beneath the lone mango tree came the faintest whisper of something I wouldn't understand for years, a call to become.

Years later, having fled halfway around the world, I descended the stone steps into a damp Belgian cellar lined with shaky shelves and more stories than I could ever consume. Or so I thought. There, a Belgo-Rwandan teen devouring French paperbacks, living heroic adventures in magical worlds, I heard the call again. At first, it was only an echo, soft and distant. Over time, the call grew louder, harder to ignore, then altogether impossible.

Later still, in a moldy apartment, back when winters had teeth, under the performative supervision of a mother perhaps more lost than I was, I watched the CRT monitor flare to life. For a third and final time, the call returned. This time, it came with a voice—oh, and what a voice. Sir Patrick Stewart's iconic line rumbled across the stellar void.

Space. The final frontier.

Thus began one of the most famous voice-overs in television history. As those four words echoed, Star Trek: The Next Generation slowly faded into view. Four words that still make my breath catch today.

Every. Single. Time.