The Boy Next Door (41 page)

The three of us, displaced, like so many others here. And like others, a family: A Work in Continual Progress.

No worries.

I look up at Ian who can’t believe he’s ended up living with Frenchies. But he’s making a go of it.

You wouldn’t believe, he’s always telling me, some new thing he’s found out about these Frenchies and their easy life.

I wouldn’t believe how much he knows.

Who’d have thought he would be fluent in French in months.

That he would cut such a dashing, incongruent figure, heads turning in his wake.

That he would become quite the skier, David and him whizzing effortlessly down the Jura.

*    *    *

I think of Danielle, my sister, whom we’ll pick up at the airport tomorrow, what she’ll make of it all, this strange land
with its large white birds that glide in the water and the jet of water that rises day and night from the lake; her hands
lifting the personal CD player David picked out for her, which lies wrapped in festive red on the dining-room table, Marilyn
Manson the first CD in David’s selection.

“Tell her to bring a packet of biltong,” Ian mouthed to me while I was on the phone making the final arrangements with Rosanna.
“Jeez, I could kill for that stuff.”

We have our mementos.

The cover of
Time
with one of David’s pictures on it. The picture that has won him two major awards.

An enlarged Zim dollar with Bob sporting horns, and Ian finally confessing to me that yes, he did have some hand in it, together
with some mysterious others who are in Bob’s inner circle.

The book of photographs that Ian’s putting together in between all the freelance work he does, a tribute to Ilo Peretti.

I have found work here too, with UNICEF, and in a week’s time, I will be going to Kosovo to help collect information on the
state of the children there.

I raise my hand and look at the ring on my finger,

A single Zimbabwean emerald full of promise and light.

Dug out from the soil by black hands like mine.

He slipped it on my finger this morning, and before he could ask, I said yes.

*    *    *

I turn the dial of the stereo louder, let Johnny Clegg, the White Zulu, and Savuka flood this room so far away. “…
And we are scatterlings of Africa. Both you and I…
”

David looks up from his Game Boy and slaps his forehead in mock despair at the gaucheness, the utter rural sentimentality
of his parents, and I think how tall, how tall he’s grown, how handsome….

And Ian leaps up, starts doing his African township jive, “tshaya ndoda, tshisa mama,” heels clicking, in this room, and he
sweeps me in his strong African arms, this boy, the boy next door, mine.

Many thanks to John G. H. Oakes whose kindness and grace led me to Paul Bresnick, my wonderfully astute agent who found exactly
the right editor, Judy Clain who with great charm and intellect nurtured both the story and the storyteller
.

To everyone at Little, Brown for making this debut a thrilling journey, in the best possible way.

To my sisters: what can I say except, yes, your prayers were finally answered!

Ian’s work as a photojournalist in South Africa during the early nineties was inspired by the feats of a group of photojournalists
who came to be known as the Bang Bang Club. Their story can be found in
The Bang-Bang Club: Snapshots from a Hidden War
by Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva (2000).

And to Fabio, my first reader, thank you.

Irene Sabatini
spent her childhood in the laid-back city of Bulawayo in Zimbabwe, gobbling up books from the public library. After university
in Harare, she ventured across continents to Colombia, excited by the chance to live in, learn from, and be inspired by a
new culture. One early morning she found herself in the lush countryside outside Bogotá, sitting on the veranda of a former
Dominican monastery: in the quiet, she opened a red notebook and started writing. She has yet to stop.