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“I’ve soaked the cake in a little brandy, too,” says Mum, who is as saturated as the cake by now. She tips a few more glugs onto the cake, “just to be on the safe side,” and refills her own glass.

“Now we light it,” says Vanessa.

Mum struggles to light a match, so the guest from Zimbabwe offers his services. He stands up and strikes a match. We hold our breath. The cake, sagging a little from all the alcohol, is momentarily licked in a blue flame. A chorus of ahs goes up from the table. The flame, feeding on months of brandy, gathers strength. The cake explodes, splattering ceiling, floor, and walls. The guests clap and cheer. We rescue currants and raisins and seared cake flesh from the pyre and douse our scraps in brandy butter.

Zoron (a Muslim) raises his glass. “Not even in Oxford,” he pronounces in a thick Yugoslav drawl, “can they have such a proper, pukka Christmas, eh?”

Bo and Charlie

CHARLIE

I’ve been overseas, in Canada and Scotland, at university. The more I am away from the farm in Mkushi, the more I long for it. I fly home from university at least once a year, and when I step off the plane in Lusaka and that sweet, raw-onion, wood-smoke, acrid smell of Africa rushes into my face I want to weep for joy.

The airport officials wave their guns at me, casually hostile, as we climb off the stale-breath, flooding-toilet-smelling plane into Africa’s hot embrace, and I grin happily. I want to kiss the gun-swinging officials. I want to open my arms into the sweet familiarity of home. The incongruous, lawless, joyful, violent, upside-down, illogical certainty of Africa comes at me like a rolling rainstorm, until I am drenched with relief.

These are the signs I know:

The hot, blond grass on the edge of the runway, where it is not uncommon to see the occasional scuttling duiker, or long-legged, stalking secretary birds raking the area for grasshoppers.

The hanging gray sky of wood smoke that hovers over the city; the sky is open and wide, great with sun and dust and smoke.

The undisciplined soldiers, slouching and slit-eyed and bribable.

The high-wheeling vultures and the ground-hopping pied crows, the stinging-dry song of grasshoppers.

The immigration officer picks his nose elaborately and then thumbs his way through my passport, leaving greasy prints on the pages. He leans back and talks at length to the woman behind him about the soccer game last night, seemingly oblivious to the growing line of exhausted disembarked passengers in front of him. When, at length, he returns his attention to me, he asks, “What is the purpose of your visit?”

“Pleasure,” I say.

“The nature of your pleasure?”

“Holiday.”

“With whom will you be staying?”

“My parents.”

“They are here?” He sounds surprised.

“Just outside.” I nod toward the great mouth of the airport, where there are signs warning tourists not to take photographs of official buildings—the airport, bridges, military roadblocks, army barracks, and government offices included. On pain of imprisonment or death (which amount to the same thing, most of the time, in Zambia).

The officer frowns at my passport. “But you are not Zambian?”

“No.”

“Your parents are Zambian?”

“They have a work permit.”

Mum and Van

“Ah. Let me see your return ticket. I see, I see.” He flips through my ticket, thumbs my inoculation “yellow book” (which I have signed myself—as Dr. Someone-or-Other—and stamped with a rubber stamp bought at an office supply store to certify that I am inoculated against cholera, yellow fever, hepatitis). He stamps my passport and hands my documents back to me. “You have three months,” he tells me.

“Zikomo,” I say.

And his face breaks into a smile. “You speak ‘Nyanja.”

“Not really.”

“Yes, yes,” he insists, “of course, of course. You do. Welcome back to Zambia.”

“It’s good to be home.”

“You should marry a Zambian national; then you can stay here forever,” he tells me.

“I’ll try,” I say.

Vanessa gets married first, in London, to a Zimbabwean.

The little lump under the wedding dress, behind the bouquet of flowers, is