Grace paused outside the maw of the Central Police Station. She’d passed this station five days a week going to and from work, but had never been inside. From the bus, Grace had admired its colonial architecture: the arched entrance, the imposing columns, and the white, sweeping stairway that gleamed in the early morning sun. Now, surveying the building from up close, she could see that this once-grand building had gone to seed. Termites had cracked the facade and left dirty brown trails across the walls, weeds poked out of cracks and crevices in the stairs, and a determined ivy had crept halfway up one of the columns.
The decrepit building did nothing to dampen Grace’s excitement. She had spent four years studying law, and the last five months at the firm of DB & Associates proofing legal documents. Now, finally, she had been given a case. It was a pro-bono criminal case that no one else wanted but still… Grace suppressed a smile and stepped from the sunlight into the building’s gloomy entrance.
A policeman sat in the foyer behind a mukwa wood desk, almost hidden behind manila folders in messy piles.
“I’m here to see my client, Willbess Mulenga,” Grace said to the officer. He lifted up his head, took off his glasses, and pointed his lenses at Grace as if she were a bug to be magnified. Knowing that her habit of looking people in the eye was considered bad manners, she looked down into her bag and pretended to dig for something, careful not to squash her banana. When she looked up again, the policeman was still staring at her. His glasses were perched back on his broad nose, and his magnified eyes gave him a comical look, but his lips were thin and unsmiling. He pulled out a manila folder from one of the piles and opened it over the newspaper on his desk, covering the full-page color pictorial of President Kaunda in his Chairman Mao suit waving a white handkerchief to crowds. It looked like yesterday’s paper, but the newspapers were always full of fetching pictures of the President so Grace couldn’t be sure. She cleared her throat a few times, but the policeman continued to ignore her.
“I’m a lawyer from DB & Associates,” she said, surprised at how tinny her voice sounded. The policeman stretched and yawned, exposing the dark patches under his arms, before extracting a form from his desk drawer and handing it to Grace. The form had been photocopied to the faintness of a spider web, and it took Grace several minutes to figure out the questions and fill it in. She gave it back to the policeman, who reviewed her answers, his lips moving as he read.
“Grace Zulu,” the officer whispered, reading her name off the bottom of the form. “Zulu,” he repeated loudly. “My sister, you’re from Eastern Province?” He was suddenly all smiles. “Which village?”
How did he know that I’m from the village? Grace wondered in dismay. Maybe it was her second-hand skirt suit. Or maybe it was the cicatrices on her cheeks. Grace ran her fingers over the ndembo left by the nganga’s razorblade and the black potion he had rubbed into the fresh cuts—protection from evil spirits, her father had told her.
“Chief Nyamphande’s village.”
The man switched from English to Nsenga. “I’m Officer Lungu from Chief Mumbi’s village, less than forty kilometers from Nyamphande. You must know it.”
“Ndithu,” she nodded. Clans from the two villages had intermarried for generations. She had even been there with her father, but it was so long ago she couldn’t remember why. She recalled walking through fields of maize, millet and sorghum, across a stick bridge over the Nyakawise river, up and along a series of waterfalls in the Chibulubulu hills, and then finally down a winding dirt path, only to arrive at a village that looked exactly like Nyamphande—mud huts with neatly thatched roofs, surrounded by fields of maize, millet, and sorghum.
Grace switched back to English. She was here for work, not fraternizing. “Officer, I’m in a hurry to see my client.”
“Iai. You must wait for approval.”
“Approval? I have a legal right to see my client.”
“Ndithu, but there are still procedures to follow.”
Grace thought about her boss, Avaristo. She couldn’t go back to the office without getting this interview done. Avaristo always expressed his opinions at high volume. She imagined his reaction if she offered Officer Lungu as an excuse. What moron can’t execute a basic client interview? Get out and don’t come back until you’ve done your job!
“I need to see my client today,” Grace insisted.
The policeman shook his head and said “As you can see, there are many in line before you,” pointing to the piles on his desk. “But since you are in a big hurry, sisi, pay the expediting fee and I’ll see what I can do.”
All Grace had in her bag was ten kwacha—her bus fare for the rest of the week—and a banana. Even if she did have the money, she wasn’t about to pay a bribe. “I’ve never heard of any such fee.”
Officer Lungu shrugged. “DB & Associates has lots of money, sisi, tell your bosses not to be so stingy.”
Grace wished he would stop calling her his sister. She opened her mouth, but then shut it again before saying a word. She knew reason wouldn’t work on a corrupt cop; she would wait for his shift to end and start again with the next policeman, and would file a complaint against Officer Lungu—one rotten egg made the whole police force look bad. As she turned to walk away, Officer Lungu stood up and called her back: “Sisi! Bwela, bwela, bwela!” Standing, Officer Lungu was surprisingly short, his uniform ill-fitting and a size too small, but he wasn’t as corpulent as his big head had suggested. “I’ll help you today, but next time you must bring me a token of appreciation. You understand?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Follow me.”
Grace hesitated; she didn’t want to owe Officer Lungu anything, but then thought about Avaristo and raced after him, her kitten heels clicking against the concrete floor. She followed him down a long corridor to the left, past several women sitting on a bench who looked up hopefully, but the policeman ignored them. Grace felt guilty walking in Officer Lungu’s wake past these dejected-looking women in their bright blouses and chitenge, the colorful cloths tied at the waist and covering them down to their ankles. She didn’t need to be told that they were waiting to see their husbands and sons, and wondered if the police required “appreciation” from them before letting them in.
Around the next corner, Officer Lungu paused and held up his fist for her to stop, peered up a narrow stairway, then skipped across it. “Hurry now,” he whispered, moving even faster around yet another corner and into an unlit corridor. A fluorescent light above them suddenly buzzed on and startled Grace, but Officer Lungu didn’t seem to notice. “You’re tall like a giraffe, and just as beautiful,” he said to Grace over his shoulder. She ignored him. She knew she was too tall, too dark, and too thin to be beautiful. At over six feet, she particularly hated being compared to a giraffe.
“Are you married?”
“I’m not interested.”
“In marriage or in me?” Officer Lungu stopped at a door at the end of this last long corridor.
“Neither.”
He laughed. “Ah, but you girls of nowadays, mukonda kumeka.”
How dare he think I’m playing hard to get! Grace thought, but said nothing, fearing that any word she uttered would reveal how much she already despised this little, toad-like policeman. Officer Lungu opened the door and said “Wait in here.”
Excerpted from The Lion’s Den by Iris Mwanza. Copyright © 2024 by Iris Mwanza. Published by Graydon House Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.
A missing boy. A corrupt system. A case that could change everything…
When young queer dancer Wilbess “Bessy” Mulenga is arrested by corrupt police, fresh-from-the-village rookie lawyer Grace Zulu takes up his cause in her first pro bono case. Presented with a freshly beaten client, Grace protests to the police and gets barred from accessing Bessy, who then disappears from the system—and the world—without a trace. As she fights for justice for Bessy, Grace must navigate a dangerous world of corrupt politicians, traditional beliefs, and deep-seated homophobia.
With the help of a former freedom fighter and the head of her law firm, who’s rallying for one last fight as AIDS takes its toll on him, Grace brings together a coalition of unions, students, and political opposition to take on the corrupt administration of President Kaunda. But will justice prevail in the face of such overwhelming odds?
The Lions' Den is a gripping and enduring novel that will keep you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end. With unforgettable characters and a thrilling plot, Iris Mwanza has announced herself as a major new talent in fiction.
LGBTQ | Fiction Family Life [Graydon House, On Sale: June 25, 2024, Mass Market Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781525819544 / eISBN: 9780369735843]
Iris Mwanza is a Zambian-American author and gender equality advocate. Born and raised in Zambia, early exposure to inequality has been a driving force in her life - from becoming a lawyer, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on women and children’s rights, a career fighting for gender equality, and now a thriller with gender equality as its heart.
Iris has spent an inordinate amount of time studying and has law degrees from Cornell University and the University of Zambia, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in International Relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Her day job is Deputy Director of the Women in Leadership team in the Gender Equality Division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and her night job is to write. Her debut novel The Lions’ Den took 9 years of nights and weekends to finish.
Iris tries to do her part for all creatures great and small and is a proud member of the WWF US Board of Directors.
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