Winter Garden

He’d looked up at her. All that prayin’ must have worked. God has sent me my own angel.

From then on, they’d been together all over the world. In the Sudan, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Congo, Rwanda, Nepal, Bosnia. They’d both become specialists on Africa, but wherever the big news was happening, they were likely to be there. Both had London apartments that did little more than collect junk mail, messages, and dust. Often their interests took them to separate hot spots—him to civil wars, her to humanitarian tragedies—and they spent months without seeing each other, which was just fine with Nina. It only made the sex better.

“I’m going to be forty next month,” he said quietly.

She loved his accent. The simplest sentence sounded edgy and sexy when he said it. Ah’m goin’ t’ be farhty next moonth.

“Don’t worry, twenty-five-year-olds still swoon when they see you. It’s the I-used-to-be-in-a-rock-band look of you. ”

“It was a punk rock band, love. ”

She snuggled closer to him, kissed his neck while her hand slid down his bare chest. His body responded as quickly as she expected, and within moments he had her undressed and they were doing what they’d always done best.

Afterward, Danny pulled her close. “How come we can talk about anything but us?”

“Who was talking about us?”

“I said I was almost forty. ”

“And I’m supposed to see that as a conversation starter? I’m thirty-seven. ”

“What if I miss you when you’re gone?”

“You know who I am, Danny. I told you at the very beginning. ”

“That was more than four years ago, for God’s sake. Everything in the world changes except you, I guess. ”

“Exactly. ” She rolled over, spooning her body against his. She’d always felt safe in his arms, even when gunfire was exploding all around them and the night was full of screaming. Tonight, though, there was only the sound of a fire crackling outside, and of bugs buzzing and chirping in the dark.

She moved the tiniest bit away from him, but his arms closed around her, held her in place.

“I didn’t ask for anything,” he whispered into her ear.

You did, she thought, closing her eyes. An unfamiliar anxiety settled in the pit of her stomach. You just don’t know it yet.

On a ridge high above the makeshift village, Nina squatted on the crumbling edge of a riverbed. Her thighs burned from the effort it took to remain motionless. It was six in the morning, and the sky was a gorgeous blend of aqua and orange; already the sun was gaining strength.

Below her, a Himba woman walked through the village with a heavy pot balanced on her head and a baby positioned in a colorful sling at her breast. Nina raised the camera to her eye and zoomed in the telephoto lens until she could see perfectly. Like all the women of this nomadic African tribe, the young woman was bare-breasted and wore a furry goatskin skirt. A large conch-shell necklace—handed down from mother to daughter through the generations, a valued possession—showed the world that she was married, as did the style of her hair. Covered from head to toe in red ochre dust and butterfat to protect her skin from the terrorizing sun, the young mother’s skin was the color of old bricks. Her ankles, considered her most private part, were hidden beneath a row of thin metal bands that made a tinkling sound when she walked.

Unaware of Nina, the woman paused at the riverbank and looked out over the scar on the land where water should run. Her expression sharpened, turned desperate as she reached down to touch the child in her arms. It was a look Nina had seen in women all over the world, especially in times of war and destruction. A bone-deep fear for her child’s future. There was nowhere to go to find water.

Nina caught it on film and kept shooting until the woman walked on, went back to her rounded mud hut and sat down in a circle of other women. Together, talking, the women began crushing red ochre on flat rocks, collecting the sandy residue in calabash bowls.

Nina covered the lens and stood up, stretching her aching joints. She’d taken hundreds of pictures this morning, but she didn’t need to look through them to know that The One was of the woman at the riverbank.

In her mind, she cropped, framed, printed, and hung the image among the great ones she’d collected. Someday her portraits would show the world how strong and powerful women could be, as well as the personal cost of that strength.

She unloaded the film, labeled the canister, tucked it away and reloaded, then walked through the village, smiling at people, handing out the candies and ribbons and bracelets she always carried. She took another great picture of four Himba women emerging from the smoke-and-herb sauna that was their method of keeping clean in a land devoid of water. In the picture, the women were holding hands and laughing. It was an image that captured a universal feminine connection.

She heard Danny come up beside her. “Hey, you. ”

She leaned against him, feeling good about her shots. “I just love how they are with their kids, even when the odds are impossible. The only time I cry is when I see their faces with their babies. Why is that, with all we’ve seen?”

“So it’s mothers you follow. I thought it was warriors. ”

Nina frowned. She’d never thought of it that way, and the observation was unsettling. “Not always mothers. Women fighting for something. Triumphing over impossible odds. ”

He smiled. “So you are a romantic after all. ”