Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

Introduction

• West Africa •

• Francophone Africa •

• North Africa •

• East Africa •

• Former Portuguese Colonies •

• Southern Africa •

Biographical Notes

ROB SPILLMAN is the editor and cofounder of Tin House, a ten-year-old bicoastal literary magazine based in Brooklyn, New York, and Portland, Oregon. Tin House has been honored in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Essays, The Best American Poetry, The O’Henry Prize Stories, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology. He is also the executive editor of Tin House Books and cofounder of the Tin House Summer Writer’s Workshop, now in its seventh year. His articles, book reviews, and essays have appeared in BookForum, GQ, The New York Times Book Review, Rolling Stone, Spin, Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as in many other magazines, newspapers, and anthologies. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the many people who offered suggestions and advice, including Pete Ayrton, Elise Cannon, George Makana Clark, Isobel Dixon, Chris Dreyer, Ntone Edjabe, Dedi Felman, Amanda Gersh, D. W. Gibson, Cullen Goldblatt, Neil Gordon, Uzodinma Iweala, Laila Lalami, Johnny Temple, Andy Tepper, Hannah Tinti, Michael Vazquez, Binyavanga Wainaina, and James Woodhouse. I’d also like to thank the invaluable transcription wizardry of Katie Arnold-Ratliff. My wonderfully supportive agent, Betsy Lerner, kept me sane, and Beena Kamlani is the best editor anyone could ever wish for; her boundless enthusiasm, curiosity, and attention to every detail have made this daunting project a pleasure. Lastly, I’d like to thank my wife, Elissa Schappell, and my children, Miles and Isadora, for their continual support.

Introduction

African writing is ready for the international spotlight. Much like the literary scene of India in the late 1980s and early ’90s, which spawned the writers Salman Rushdie and Anita Desai, the cultural climate of Africa, with its rapid urbanization coupled with its expanding educational and economic opportunities, has created a hotbed of creativity, heralding the emergence of a vibrant new generation of exciting and innovative writers.

Over the ten years I have been editing the literary journal Tin House, I have seen an ever-increasing volume of strong work from African writers, but it wasn’t until a few years ago, when I was working on an international issue of Tin House magazine, that I threw myself into reading emerging fiction from around the world. During the six months of intense reading leading up to making final selections, I was particularly struck by the work coming out of Africa. There was a palpable sense of urgency in much of the writing. These were stories that had to be written.

More recently, I was a guest editor at a literary festival in Nairobi, a gathering that attracted writers and editors from across Africa. Throughout the week there was a visceral feeling of energy and excitement, like nothing I had experienced before. There was urgency, yes, but also an overall feeling of possibility. The younger writers were mixing forms and languages, appropriating multicultural urban street patois into their stories. From the cradle of civilization, where the world’s first stories originated, I was witnessing an African literary renaissance.

Now the rest of the world is tuning in. Young Nigerian Chimamanda Adichie recently won a MacArthur “genius” grant, along with Britain’s prestigious Orange Prize and PEN’s Beyond Margins Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for her novel Half of a Yellow Sun, while Chinua Achebe, fifty years after the publication of his groundbreaking novel Things Fall Apart, received the Man Booker International Prize for his legendary career. African writers are showing up with regularity in the pages of The New Yorker and in American and European literary magazines.

These are the headline grabbers, a mere bucket of sand in the Sahara. From Cairo to Cape Town, new, powerful voices are emerging, and more important, they are finding outlets for their work.

This volume includes a sampling of thirty different authors with a range of publishing experience, from Nobel Prize winners to unknown writers who have yet to publish their first book. The sections are organized geographically, each section opening with a nonfiction selection to provide context. The sections and accompanying maps are included for reference, not to suggest that the selected authors are the only writers to come from any particular region. One could easily create sub-anthologies featuring hundreds of writers. This anthology is intended as a snapshot of recent writing as seen through the lens of one editor, after consulting with many, many other editors, writers, scholars, critics, and everyday passionate readers.

Some of the themes covered reflect the recent history of the continent: anti-colonialism and the struggle with Western influences, the strongman rule, the rise of women’s voices in traditionally patriarchal societies, the personal and national influence of domestic and imported religions—and now, increasingly, what it means to be an independent-minded African in a globalized world.

The nineteenth century saw European nations make huge inroads into the African interior for land, lumber, minerals, and slaves. The old tribal borders gave way to an artificial partitioning of the entire continent by the Europeans in 1885. Belgium had taken over the Congo; France, West Africa, Gabon, and Madagascar; Germany, southwest, east, and central Africa; Britain, with the lion’s share, Nigeria, Ghana, and entire swaths of the south, east, and north; Italy, Libya and Somalia; Portugal, Angola and Mozambique; and Spain, an outpost in the western Sahara. African nations only gained independence from their colonizers beginning in the late 1950s, most in the mid-1960s, and inherited the artificial boundaries and groupings left behind by the colonizing powers. An all-too-familiar post-colonial pattern for many countries has been a brief honeymoon followed by dictatorship, either military or strongman rule. Corruption became rampant, and periods of political instability, marked by wars and natural disasters, deepened the plight of the ordinary citizen. Prime examples include ruthless Ugandan strongman Idi Amin; Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the Congo with an iron fist for more than thirty years; and Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president since 1980, who is desperately trying to hold on to power despite being voted out in 2008, his country now plunged into economic ruin.

Today, many nations are still struggling to come to grips with postcolonial rule, often teetering between rapid transitions from military to democratic governance, but representative governments are beginning to take hold, however precariously, as witnessed by the surprising violence surrounding the 2007 presidential elections in Kenya, a country generally thought to be the most stable of African countries.

A few key dates to keep in mind:

We open with West Africa, represented here by Ghana, the first black African country to gain independence, and Nigeria, the most populous African country, with 80 million people and, not surprisingly, the richest output of literary work. Nigeria has been plagued by a series of corrupt governments that have exploited the oil-rich nation. Writers have had moments of freedom of expression but also harrowing periods of repression—in 1995, despite an international outcry, the Nigerian military executed the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa-Ogoni for exposing the overly cozy ties and unseemly goings-on between Shell Oil and the military junta.

It has been fifty years since Nigerian Chinua Achebe published his novel Things Fall Apart, a classic work of anti-colonialism that became a worldwide literary sensation, its commercial and critical success opening the door for many other black Africans. It seems fitting to reproduce here Achebe’s seminal 1965 essay “The African Writer and the English Language,” in which he explains why he chooses to write in English versus his native Ibo. Other prominent African writers, most notably Kenyan Ngūgī wa Thiong’o, have argued that colonial languages limit African thoughts and ideas, and that Africans should express themselves in their native tongues versus the languages that were imposed upon them. Achebe, on the other hand, makes the case that his African stories and ideas will find a larger audience if written in a more universal language, even within Africa itself, a continent of 800 million people, fifty-four nations, and over two thousand languages.

Art and politics have always been powerful allies in Nigerian fiction. In Helon Habila’s masterful story “Lomba,” an imprisoned writer is forced to write love poems for the prison superintendent. In Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, the legacy of the devastating Biafra-Nigerian civil war is felt on a deeply personal level. Chris Abani and Mohammed Naseehu Ali focus on the changing role of women in traditionally male-dominated societies, Abani portraying the life of a poor prostitute, Ali an empowered Islamic woman whose husband is forced to publicly prove his ability to sexually please his wife.

The next section comprises work from the sub-Saharan former French colonies, commonly referred to as Francophone literature. Francophone culture has been heavily influenced by the concept of Negritude, a movement founded in Paris in the 1930s, which put forth the independence and validity of black culture. This anti-assimilationist philosophy has been closely identified with L. S. Senghor, a Senegalese poet who became the first president of independent Senegal. This black nationalist movement was fueled by the Harlem Renaissance and Haitian artists and championed by French intellectuals like Jean Paul Sartre, who called Negritude “anti-racist racism,” and was later embraced by African Americans in the 1960s. Here Cameroonian Patrice Nganang, one of today’s most prominent Francophone writers, examines the legacy of Senghor’s Negritude and its relevance today.

In an excerpt from her novel The Belly of the Atlantic, Fatou Diome shows the long reach of France, via soccer, all the way to a small island off the coast of Senegal, where a boy watches the same game on TV as his sister in France. Alain Mabanckou, with biting humor, renders powerful Congolese thugs hapless through their struggle to master the right phrase of doublespeak, while Boubacar Boris Diop imagines voices for those who were silenced during the brutality of the Rwandan genocide.

While North African writing has similar concerns as that of sub-Saharan Africa, namely, the legacy of colonialism, North African culture has a much longer history of interaction with Europe and the Middle East. In her opening to the North African section, novelist Laila Lalami writes of growing up in a bookish Moroccan household in the 1970s, where, despite the 1956 independence, French children’s literature—Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne—was the main reading in Rabat, and her middle school revelation of discovering native Berber and Arabic authors who were writing of her shared world. When Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi’s seminal novel Woman at Point Zero appeared in 1974, it stirred controversy for its empathetic portrayal of a high-end prostitute who turns the tables on an abuser. More than thirty years later it still remains a lightning rod for debate about the lives of Arabic women. Mohamed Magani arms himself with humor (and coffee) in an attempt to beat back the repressive French occupation forces in Algeria, while in an excerpt from The Star of Algiers, Aziz Chouaki follows the fate of a would-be rocker as he clashes with a fundamentalist movement sweeping his once-tolerant country. In Leila Aboulela’s “Souvenirs,” a Sudanese man returns to his country after living in Scotland and searches for just the right piece of his homeland to take back to his adopted country.

As we move to East Africa, Binyavanga Wainaina explores the contradictions—modern and ancient, united and fractured—of Kenya, and by extension the rest of Africa. Wainaina, deeply aware of the cliché-ridden lenses through which Westerners perceive his home continent, writes engagingly about stereotypes in his now-legendary tongue-in-cheek essay “How to Write About Africa” for Granta in 2005. “Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. . . . Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls.”

Fellow Kenyan Ngūgī wa Thiong’o, in an excerpt from his epic novel Wizard of the Crow, wields satire like a scalpel to expose the absurd genuflections of a strongman’s sycophants. Abdourahman A. Waberi of Djibouti implodes reality and stereotypes in his surrealistic and comic novel The United States of Africa, in which Africa has taken the place of the West as the new beacon of hope and opportunity for the world’s immigrants. It is now Africans who look down their noses and prejudge the poor, tired, and huddled masses flocking in from Europe, Asia, and the United States.

In a more realistic vein, the heroine of Somali Nuruddin Farah’s novel Knots, after a disastrous marriage in Canada, brazenly returns to war-torn Mogadishu to reclaim her familial home from a warlord, while in Ugandan Doreen Baingana’s story, a Muslim man converts to Christianity, jettisoning three wives but not his alcoholism or troubles.

Portugal was the last major colonizer to relinquish power in Africa, and only after the fall of the dictator Salazar in 1974. Brutal civil wars in Mozambique and Angola followed, the countries becoming proxy battlegrounds in the Cold War. With recent stability, there has been a greater artistic output from these countries. While popular in Brazil and Portugal, many writers from the former Portuguese colonies are not as frequently translated into English as their French and Arabic-speaking African counterparts. An essay by Mia Couto, the great novelist from Mozambique, eloquently describes how the homogenization of global languages imperils mystery and storytelling. In Angolan Ondjaki’s story “Dragonfly,” the ineffable beauty of music and everyday objects permeate the conversation between a doctor and a mysterious stranger. In an excerpt from José Eduardo Agualusa’s novel The Book of Chameleons, Borges is reborn in the form of a chameleon who broodingly passes his days in the library of his master, an albino who invents elaborate family histories for the recently moneyed Angolans, a new class of citizens created in the void left by thirty years of civil war.

The final section of the book is dominated by South Africa. Fifteen years after the end of repressive white minority rule, the entire region is still coping with the aftershocks of apartheid. Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee has been praised and vilified for his portrayal of conflicted white South Africans, most critics calling his work complex and compelling, while others have accused him of racism. Coetzee himself has said that he considers his sensibilities more aligned with Europe than South Africa, and has recently renounced his citizenship for that of Australia. Here he examines the memoirs of South African poet Breyten Breytenbach, also exiled, then imprisoned for seven years for his anti-apartheid efforts.

The other South African writer to win the Nobel Prize, Nadine Gordimer, is also no stranger to controversy, having recently fallen out with her authorized biographer over the claims of embellishment in some of Gordimer’s autobiographical writing. In her story “A Beneficiary,” Gordimer, who for over fifty years has chronicled apartheid’s effects on all aspects of society, follows a woman going through her mother’s apartment after her accidental death, where she peels back the layers on the past and present life of liberal upper-middle-class South Africans.

With the waning of the apartheid era, the new tragedy gripping much of Southern Africa is AIDS. Sadly, many artists and writers have succumbed to the disease, including Zimbabwean writer Yvonne Vera, who died of AIDS in 2005. Vera’s short story “Dead Swimmers” captures the fierce bonds between a traditional Shona elder and her modern granddaughter. Grief, in the form of a “professional mourner,” takes center stage in the excerpt from Zakes Mda’s novel Ways of Dying, a comic portrait of the travails of a man hired by rural families to grieve at funerals. Foremost Afrikaans writer Marlene van Niekerk’s novel Agaat delves into the complex relationship between an aging Afrikaans woman and her black caretaker. Ivan Vladislavic’, who is of Croatian descent, overturns the detritus of apartheid in his story “The WHITES ONLY Bench,” where curators at an apartheid museum go to great lengths to procure an “authentic” bus bench from the apartheid era. Many younger writers are less concerned with the legacy of apartheid than with the here and now of survival in the new, complex, multicultural reality of South Africa. Niq Mhlongo’s unvarnished tales of the new, urban, polyglot life have led some to call him the “voice of the kwaito generation” (kwaito being the name of the music that emerged from Johannesburg in the early 1990s, a mix of house and traditional chants). In an excerpt from Mhlongo’s novel Dog Eat Dog, a black university student tries to outwit a pair of corrupt cops who have caught him drinking in public.

Chinua Achebe, both in Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, highlighted the growing tensions between traditional African societies and Western values and norms, which not only challenged but were often opposed to African mores and customs. That dynamic continues still, as revealed in these stories, a dynamic further complicated by the different realities of country and city, of tribal laws and secular governance, of religion and tribe, of the legacy of the past and the promise of the future. This future faces the additional modern problems of AIDS, multinational wars, and, with rapidly spreading Internet access across the continent, greater challenges to tradition and culture.

Nelson Mandela once said that “Africa always brings something new.” Now, more than ever, this is true. My hope is that this handful of wonderful writing will open the doorway to a greater exploration of African writing and culture. For links and information about further reading of African literature, you can log on to GodsandSoldiers.com.

—ROB SPILLMAN, February 2009

• Africa •

• West Africa •

CHINUA ACHEBE

• Nigeria •

THE AFRICAN WRITER

AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

IN JUNE 1952, there was a writers’ gathering at Makerere, impressively styled: “A Conference of African Writers of English Expression.” Despite this sonorous and rather solemn title it turned out to be a very lively affair and a very exciting and useful experience for many of us. But there was something which we tried to do and failed—that was to define “African Literature” satisfactorily.

Was it literature produced in Africa or about Africa? Could African literature be on any subject, or must it have an African theme? Should it embrace the whole continent or South of the Sahara, or just Black Africa? And then the question of language. Should it be in indigenous African languages or should it include Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Afrikaans, etc.?

In the end we gave up trying to find an answer partly—I should admit—on my own instigation. Perhaps we should not have given up so easily. It seems to me from some of the things I have since heard and read that we may have given the impression of not knowing what we were doing, or worse, not daring to look too closely at it.

A Nigerian critic, Obi Wali, writing in Transition, volume 10, said: “Perhaps the most important achievement of the conference . . . is that African literature as now defined and understood leads nowhere.”

I am sure that Obi Wali must have felt triumphantly vindicated when he saw the report of a different kind of conference held later at Fourah Bay to discuss African literature and the University curriculum. This conference produced a tentative definition of African literature as follows: “Creative writing in which an African setting is authentically handled or to which experiences originating in Africa are integral.” We are told specifically that Conrad’s Heart of Darkness qualifies as African literature while Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter fails because it could have been set anywhere outside Africa.

A number of interesting speculations issue from this definition, which admittedly is only an interim formulation designed to produce an indisputably desirable end, namely, to introduce African students to literature set in their environment. But I could not help being amused by the curious circumstance in which Conrad, a Pole writing in English, could produce African literature while Peter Abrahams would be ineligible should he write a novel based on his experiences in the West Indies.

What all this suggests to me is that you cannot cram African literature into a small, neat definition. I do not see African literature as one unit but as a group of associated units—in fact the sum total of all the national and ethnic literatures of Africa.

A national literature is one that takes the whole nation for its province and has a realized or potential audience throughout its territory. In other words, a literature that is written in the national language. As ethnic literature is one which is available only to one ethnic group within the nation. If you take Nigeria as an example, the national literature, as I see it, is the literature written in English; and the ethnic literatures are in Hausa, Ibo, Yoruba, Efik, Edo, Ijaw, etc., etc.

Any attempt to define African literature in terms which overlook the complexities of the African scene at the material time is doomed to failure. After the elimination of white rule shall have been completed, the single most important fact in Africa in the second half of the twentieth century will appear to be the rise of the individual nation states. I believe that African literature will follow the same pattern.

What we tend to do today is to think of African literature as a new-born infant. But in fact what we have is a whole generation of new-born infants. Of course, if you only look cursorily one infant is pretty much like another; but in reality each is already set on its own separate journey. Of course, you may group them together on the basis of the language they will speak or the religion of their fathers. Those would all be valid distinctions; but they could not begin to account fully for each individual person carrying, as it were, his own little, unique lodestar of genes.

Those who in talking about African literature want to exclude North Africa because it belongs to a different tradition surely do not suggest that Black Africa is anything like homogenous. What does Shabaan Robert have in common with Christopher Okigbo or Awooner-Williams? Or Mongo Beti of Cameroon and Paris with Nzekwu of Nigeria? What does the champagne-drinking upper-class Creole society described by Easmon of Sierra Leone have in common with the rural folk and fishermen of J. P. Clark’s plays? Of course, some of these differences could be accounted for on individual rather than national grounds, but a good deal of it is also environmental.

I have indicated somewhat off-handedly that the national literature of Nigeria and of many other countries of Africa is, or will be, written in English. This may sound like a controversial statement, but it isn’t. All I have done has been to look at the reality of present-day Africa. This “reality” may change as a result of deliberate, e.g., political, action. If it does an entirely new situation will arise, and there will be plenty of time to examine it. At present it may be more profitable to look at the scene as it is.

What are the factors which have conspired to place English in the position of national language in many parts of Africa? Quite simply the reason is that these nations were created in the first place by the intervention of the British, which, I hasten to add, is not saying that the peoples comprising these nations were invented by the British.

The country which we know as Nigeria today began not so very long ago as the arbitrary creation of the British. It is true, as William Fagg says in his excellent new book Nigerian Images, that this arbitrary action has proved lucky in terms of African art history as an enterprise of the fortunate Princes of Serendip. And I believe that in political and economic terms too this arbitrary creation called Nigeria holds out great prospects. Yet the fact remains that Nigeria was created by the British—for their own ends. Let us give the devil his due: colonialism in Africa disrupted many things, but it did create big political units where there were small, scattered ones before. Nigeria had hundreds of autonomous communities ranging in size from the vast Fulani Empire founded by Usman Dan Dodio in the North to the tiny entities in the East. Today it is one country.

Of course there are areas of Africa where colonialism divided up a single ethnic group among two or even three powers. But on the whole it did bring together many peoples that had hitherto gone their several ways. And it gave them a language with which to talk to one another. If it failed to give them a song, it at least gave them a tongue, for sighing. There are not many countries in Africa today where you could abolish the language of the erstwhile colonial powers and still retain the facility for mutual communication. Therefore those African writers who have chosen to write in English or French are not unpatriotic smart alecs with an eye on the main chance—outside their own countries. They are by-products of the same process that made the new nation-states of Africa.

You can take this argument a stage further to include other countries of Africa. The only reason why we can even talk about African unity is that when we get together we can have a manageable number of languages to talk in—English, French, Arabic.

The other day I had a visit from Joseph Kariuki of Kenya. Although I had read some of his poems and he had read my novels, we had not met before. It didn’t seem to matter. In fact, I had met him through his poems, especially through his love poem “Come Away My Love,” in which he captures in so few words the trials and tensions of an African in love with a white girl in Britain.

Come away my love, from streets

Where unkind eyes divide

And shop windows reflect our difference.

By contrast, when in 1960 I was traveling in East Africa and went to the home of the late Shabaan Robert, the Swahili poet of Tanganyika, things had been different. We spent some time talking about writing, but there was no real contact. I knew from all accounts that I was talking to an important writer, but of the nature of his work I had no idea. He gave me two books of his poems which I treasure but cannot read—until I have learnt Swahili.

And there are scores of languages I would want to learn if it were possible. Where am I to find the time to learn the half-a-dozen or so Nigerian languages each of which can sustain a literature? I am afraid it cannot be done. These languages will just have to develop as tributaries to feed one central language enjoying nation-wide currency. Today, for good or ill, that language is English. Tomorrow it may be something else, although I very much doubt it.

Those of us who have inherited the English language may not be in a position to appreciate the value of the inheritance. Or we may go on resenting it because it came as part of a package deal which included many other items of doubtful value and the positive atrocity of racial arrogance and prejudice which may yet set the world on fire. But let us not in rejecting the evil throw out the good with it.

Some time last year I was traveling in Brazil, meeting Brazilian writers and artists. A number of the writers I spoke to were concerned about the restriction imposed on them by their use of the Portuguese language. I remember a woman poet saying she had given serious thought to writing in French! And yet their problem is not half as difficult as ours. Portuguese may not have the universal currency of English or French, but at least it is the national language of Brazil with her eighty million or so people, to say nothing of the people of Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, etc.

Of Brazilian authors I have only read, in translation, one novel by Jorge Amado, who is not only Brazil’s leading novelist but one of the most important writers in the world. From that one novel, Gabriella, I was able to glimpse something of the exciting Afro-Latin culture which is the pride of Brazil and is quite unlike any other culture. Jorge Amado is only one of the many writers Brazil has produced. At their national writers’ festival there were literally hundreds of them. But the work of the vast majority will be closed to the rest of the world for ever, including no doubt the work of some excellent writers. There is certainly a great advantage to writing in a world language.

I think I have said enough to give an indication of my thinking on the importance of the world language which history has forced down our throat. Now let us look at some of the most serious handicaps. And let me say straight away that one of the most serious handicaps is not the one people talk about most often, namely, that it is impossible for anyone ever to use a second language as effectively as his first. This assertion is compounded of half truth and half bogus mystique. Of course, it is true that the vast majority of people are happier with their first language than with any other. But then the majority of people are not writers. We do have enough examples of writers who have performed the feat of writing effectively in a second language. And I am not thinking of the obvious like Conrad. It would be more germane to our subject to choose African examples.

The first name that comes to my mind is Olaudah Equiano, better known as Gustavus Vass, the African. Equiano was an Ibo, I believe from the village of Iseke in the Orlu division of Eastern Nigeria. He was sold as a slave at a very early age and transported to America. Later he bought his freedom and lived in England. In 1789 he published his life story, a beautifully written document which, among other things, set down for the Europe of his time something of the life and habit of his people in Africa in an attempt to counteract the lies and slander invented by some Europeans to justify the slave trade.

Coming nearer to our times we may recall the attempts in the first quarter of this century by West African nationalists to come together and press for a greater say in the management of their own affairs. One of the most eloquent of that band was the Hon. Casely Hayford of the Gold Coast. His Presidential Address to the National Congress of British West Africa in 1925 was memorable not only for its sound common sense but as a fine example of elegant prose. The governor of Nigeria at the time was compelled to take notice and he did so in characteristic style: he called Hayford’s Congress “a self-appointed congregation of educated African gentlemen.” We may derive some amusement from the fact that British colonial administrators learnt very little in the following quarter of a century. But at the very least they did learn in the end—which is more than one can say for some others.

It is when we come to what is commonly called creative literature that most doubt seems to arise. Obi Wali, whose article “Dead End of African Literature” I referred to, has this to say:

... until these writers and their Western midwives accept the fact that any true African literature must be written in African languages, they would be merely pursuing a dead end, which can only lead to sterility, uncreativity and frustration.

But far from leading to sterility the work of many new African writers is full of the most exciting possibilities.

Take this from Christopher Okigbo’s “Limits”:

Suddenly becoming talkative

like weaverbird

Summoned at offside of

dream remembered

Between sleep and waking.

I hand up my egg-shells

To you of palm grove,

Upon whose bamboo towers hang

Dripping with yesterupwine

A tiger mask and nude spear. . . .

Queen of the damp half light,

I have had my cleansing.

Emigrant with air-bourne nose,

The he-goat-on-heat.

Or take the poem “Night Rain,” in which J. P. Clark captures so well the fear and wonder felt by a child as rain clamours on the thatch-roof at night and his mother, walking about in the dark, moves her simple belongings

Out of the run of water

That like ants filing out of the wood

Will scatter and gain possession

Of the floor . . .

I think that the picture of water spreading on the floor “like ants filing out of the wood” is beautiful. Of course if you have never made fire with faggots you may miss it. But Clark’s inspiration derives from the same source which gave birth to the saying that a man who brings home ant-ridden faggots must be ready for the visit of the lizards.

I do not see any signs of sterility anywhere here. What I do see is a new voice coming out of Africa, speaking of African experience in a world-wide language. So my answer to the question: Can an African ever learn English well enough to be able to use it effectively in creative writing? is certainly yes. If on the other hand you ask: Can he ever learn to use it like a native speaker? I should say, I hope not. It is neither necessary nor desirable for him to be able to do so. The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience. I have in mind here the writer who has something new, something different to say. The nondescript writer has little to tell us, anyway, so he might as well tell it in conventional language and get it over with. If I may use an extravagant simile, he is like a man offering a small, nondescript routine sacrifice for which a chick or less will do. A serious writer must look for an animal whose blood can match the power of his offering.

In this respect Amos Tutuola is a natural. A good instinct has turned his apparent limitation in language into a weapon of great strength—a half-strange dialect that serves him perfectly in the evocation of his bizarre world. His last book, and to my mind, his finest, is proof enough that one can make even an imperfect learnt second language do amazing things. In his book The Feather Woman of the Jungle Tutuola’s superb story-telling is at last cast in the episodic form which he handles best instead of being painfully stretched on the rack of the novel.

From a natural to a conscious artist: myself, in fact. Allow me to quote a small example, from Arrow of God, which may give some idea of how I approach the use of English. The Chief Priest in the story is telling one of his sons why it is necessary to send him to church:

I want one of my sons to join these people and be my eyes there. If there is nothing in it you will come back. But if there is something there you will bring home my share. The world is like a Mask, dancing. If you want to see it well you do not stand in one place. My spirit tells me that those who do not befriend the white man today will be saying had we known tomorrow.

Now supposing I had put it another way. Like this, for instance:

I am sending you as my representative among these people—just to be on the safe side in case the new religion develops. One has to move with the times or else one is left behind. I have a hunch that those who fail to come to terms with the white may well regret their lack of foresight.

The material is the same. But the form of the one is in character and the other is not. It is largely a matter of instinct, but judgment comes into it too.

You read quite often nowadays of the problems of the African writer having first to think in his mother tongue and then to translate what he has thought into English. If it were such a simple, mechanical process I would agree that it was pointless—the kind of eccentric pursuit you might expect to see in a modern Academy of Lagado: and such a process could not possibly produce some of the exciting poetry and prose which is already appearing.

One final point remains for me to make. The real question is not whether Africans could write in English but whether they ought to. Is it right that a man should abandon his mother tongue for someone else’s. It looks like a dreadful betrayal and produces a guilty feeling.

But for me there is no other choice. I have been given this language and I intend to use it. I hope, though, that there always will be men, like the late Chief Fafunwa, who will choose to write in their native tongue and ensure that our ethnic literature will flourish side-by-side with the national ones. For those of us who opt for English there is much work ahead and much excitement.

Writing in the London Observer recently, James Baldwin said:

My quarrel with English language has been that the language reflected none of my experience. But now I began to see the matter another way . . . Perhaps the language was not my own because I had never attempted to use it, had only learned to imitate it. If this were so, then it might be made to bear the burden of my experience if I could find the stamina to challenge it, and me, to such a test.

I recognize, of course, that Baldwin’s problem is not exactly mine, but I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings.

HELON HABILA

• Nigeria •

LOMBA

IN THE MIDDLE of his second year in prison, Lomba got access to pencil and paper and he started a diary. It was not easy. He had to write in secret, mostly in the early mornings when the night warders, tired of peeping through the door bars, waited impatiently for the morning shift. Most of the entries he simply headed with the days of the week; the exact dates, when he used them, were often incorrect. The first entry was in July 1997, a Friday.

Friday, July 1997

Today I begin a diary, to say all the things I want to say, to myself, because here in prison there is no one to listen. I express myself. It stops me from standing in the centre of this narrow cell and screaming at the top of my voice. It stops me from jumping up suddenly and bashing my head repeatedly against the wall. Prison chains not so much your hands and feet as it does your voice.

I express myself. I let my mind soar above these walls to bring back distant, exotic bricks with which I seek to build a more endurable cell within this cell. Prison. Misprison. Dis. Un. Prisoner. See? I write of my state in words of derision, aiming thereby to reduce the weight of these walls on my shoulders, to rediscover my nullified individuality. Here in prison loss of self is often expressed as anger. Anger is the baffled prisoner’s attempt to re-crystallize his slowly dissolving self. The anger creeps up on you, like twilight edging out the day. It builds in you silently until one day it explodes in violence, surprising you. I saw it happen in my first month in prison. A prisoner, without provocation, had attacked an unwary warder at the toilets. The prisoner had come out of a bath-stall and there was the warder before him, monitoring the morning ablutions. Suddenly the prisoner leaped upon him, pulling him by the neck to the ground, grinding him into the black, slimy water that ran in the gutter from the toilets. He pummeled the surprised face repeatedly until other warders came and dragged him away. They beat him to a pulp before throwing him into solitary.

Sometimes the anger leaves you as suddenly as it appeared; then you enter a state of tranquil acceptance. You realize the absolute puerility of your anger: it was nothing but acid, cancer, eating away your bowels in the dark. You accept the inescapability of your fate; and with that, you learn the craft of cunning. You learn ways of surviving—surviving the mindless banality of the walls around you, the incessant harassment from the warders; you learn to hide money in your anus, to hold a cigarette inside your mouth without wetting it. And each day survived is a victory against the jailer, a blow struck for freedom.

My anger lasted a whole year. I remember the exact day it left me. It was a Saturday, the day after a failed escape attempt by two convicted murderers. The warders were more than usually brutal that day; the inmates were on tenterhooks, not knowing from where the next blow would come. We were lined up in rows in our cell, waiting for hours to be addressed by the prison superintendent. When he came his scowl was hard as rock, his eyes were red and singeing, like fire. He paced up and down before us, systematically flagellating us with his harsh, staccato sentences. We listened, our heads bowed, our hearts quaking.

When he left, an inmate, just back from a week in solitary, broke down and began to weep. His hands shook, as if with a life of their own. “What’s going to happen next?” he wailed, going from person to person, looking into each face, not waiting for an answer. “We’ll be punished. If I go back there I’ll die. I can’t. I can’t.” Now he was standing before me, a skinny mass of eczema inflammations, and ringworm, and snot. He couldn’t be more than twenty, I thought; what did he do to end up in this dungeon? Then, without thinking, I reached out and patted his shoulder. I even smiled. With a confidence I did not feel I said kindly, “No one will take you back.” He collapsed into my arms, soaking my shirt with snot and tears and saliva. “Everything will be all right,” I repeated over and over. That was the day the anger left me.

In the over two months that he wrote before he was discovered and his diary seized, Lomba managed to put in quite a large number of entries. Most of them were poems, and letters to various persons from his by now hazy, pre-prison life—letters he can’t have meant to send. There were also long soliloquies and desultory interior monologues. The poems were mostly love poems; fugitive lines from poets he had read in school: Donne, Shakespeare, Graves, Eliot, etc. Some were his original compositions rewritten from memory; but a lot were fresh creations—tortured sentimental effusions to women he had known and admired, and perhaps loved. Of course they might have been imaginary beings, fabricated in the smithy of his prison-fevered mind. One of the poems reads like a prayer to a much doubted, but fervently hoped for God:

Lord, I’ve had days black as pitch

And nights crimson as blood,

But they have passed over me, like water.

Let this one also pass over me, lightly,

Like a smooth rock rolling down the hill,

Down my back, my skin, like soothing water.

That, he wrote, was the prayer on his lips the day the cell door opened without warning and the superintendent, flanked by two baton-carrying warders, entered.

Monday, September

I had waited for this; perversely anticipated it with each day that passed, with each surreptitious sentence that I wrote. I knew it was me he came for when he stood there, looking bigger than life, bigger than the low, narrow cell. The two dogs with him licked their chops and growled. Their eyes roved hungrily over the petrified inmates caught sitting, or standing, or crouching; laughing, frowning, scratching—like figures in a movie still.

“Lomba, step forward!” his voice rang out suddenly. In the frozen silence it sounded like glass breaking on concrete, but harsher, without the tinkling. I was on my mattress on the floor, my back propped against the damp wall. I stood up. I stepped forward.

He turned the scowl on me. “So, Lomba. You are.”

“Yes. I am Lomba,” I said. My voice did not fail me. Then he nodded, almost imperceptibly, to the two warders. They bounded forward eagerly, like game hounds scenting a rabbit. One went to a tiny crevice low in the wall, almost hidden by my mattress. He threw aside the mattress and poked two fingers into the triangular crack. He came out with a thick roll of papers. He looked triumphant as he handed it to the superintendent. Their informer had been exact. The other hound reached unerringly into a tiny hole in the sagging, rain-patterned ceiling and brought out another tube of papers.

“Search. More!” the superintendent barked. He unrolled the tubes. He appeared surprised at the number of sheets in his hands. I was. I didn’t know I had written so much. When they were through with the holes and crevices, the dogs turned their noses to my personal effects. They picked up my mattress and shook and sniffed and poked. They ripped off the tattered cloth on its back. There were no papers there. They took the pillow-cum-rucksack (a jeans trouser-leg cut off at mid-thigh and knotted at the ankle) and poured out the contents on to the floor. Two threadbare shirts, one pair of trousers, one plastic comb, one toothbrush, one half-used bar of soap, and a pencil. They swooped on the pencil before it had finished rolling on the floor, almost knocking heads in their haste.

“A pencil!” the superintendent said, shaking his head, exaggerating his amazement. The prisoners were standing in a tight, silent arc. He walked the length of the arc, displaying the papers and pencil, clucking his tongue. “Papers. And pencil. In prison. Can you believe that? In my prison!”

I was sandwiched between the two hounds, watching the drama in silence. I felt removed from it all. Now the superintendent finally turned to me. He bent a little at the waist, pushing his face into mine. I smelt his grating smell; I picked out the white roots beneath his carefully dyed moustache.

“I will ask. Once. Who gave you. Papers?” He spoke like that, in jerky, truncated sentences.

I shook my head. I did my best to meet his red-hot glare. “I don’t know.”

Some of the inmates gasped, shocked; they mistook my answer for reckless intrepidity. They thought I was foolishly trying to protect my source. But in a few other eyes I saw sympathy. They understood that I had really forgotten where the papers came from.

“Hmm,” the superintendent growled. His eyes were on the papers in his hands; he kept folding and unfolding them. I was surprised he had not pounced on me yet. Maybe he was giving me a spell to reconsider my hopeless decision to protect whoever it was I was protecting. The papers. They might have blown in through the door bars on the sentinel wind that sometimes patrolled the prison yard in the evenings. Maybe a sympathetic warder, seeing my yearning for self-expression emblazoned neon-like on my face, had secretly thrust the roll of papers into my hands as he passed me in the yard. Maybe—and this seems more probable—I bought them from another inmate (anything can be bought here in prison, from marijuana to a gun). But I had forgotten. In prison, memory short-circuit is an ally to be cultivated at all costs.

“I repeat. My question. Who gave you the papers?” he thundered into my face, spraying me with spit.

I shook my head. “I have forgotten.”

I did not see it, but he must have nodded to one of the hounds. All I felt was the crushing blow on the back of my neck. I pitched forward, stunned by pain and the unexpectedness of it. My face struck the door bars and I fell before the superintendent’s boots. I saw blood where my face had touched the floor. I waited. I stared, mesmerized, at the reflection of my eyes in the high gloss of the boots’ toecaps. One boot rose and landed on my neck, grinding my face into the floor.

“So. You won’t. Talk. You think you are. Tough,” he shouted. “You are. Wrong. Twenty years! That is how long I have been dealing with miserable bastards like you. Let this be an example to all of you. Don’t. Think you can deceive me. We have our sources of information. You can’t. This insect will be taken to solitary and he will be properly dealt with. Until. He is willing to. Talk.”

I imagined his eyes rolling balefully round the tight, narrow cell, branding each of the sixty inmates separately. The boot pressed down harder on my neck; I felt a tooth bend at the root.

“Don’t think because you are political. Detainees you are untouchable. Wrong. You are all rats. Saboteurs. Anti-government rats. That is all. Rats.”

But the superintendent was too well versed in the ways of torture to throw me into solitary that very day. I waited two days before they came and blindfolded me and took me away to the solitary section. In the night. Forty-eight hours. In the first twenty-four hours I waited with my eyes fixed on the door, bracing myself whenever it opened; but it was only the cooks bringing the meal, or the number-check warders come to count the inmates for the night, or the slop-disposal team. In the second twenty-four hours I bowed my head into my chest and refused to look up. I was tired. I refused to eat or speak or move. I was rehearsing for solitary.

They came, at around ten at night. The two hounds. Banging their batons on the door bars, shouting my name, cursing and kicking at anyone in their path. I hastened to my feet before they reached me, my trouser-leg rucksack clutched like a shield in my hands. The light of their torch on my face was like a blow.

“Lomba!”

“Come here! Move!”

“Oya, out. Now!”

I moved, stepping high over the stirring bodies on the floor. The light fell on my rucksack.

“What’s that in your hand, eh? Where you think say you dey carry am go? Bring am. Come here! Move!”

Outside. The cell door clanked shut behind us. All the compounds were in darkness. Only security lights from poles shone at the sentry posts. In the distance, the prison wall loomed huge and merciless, like a mountain. Broken bottles. Barbed wire. Then they threw the blindfold over my head. My hands instinctively started to rise, but they were held and forced behind me and cuffed.

“Follow me.”

One was before me, the other was behind, prodding me with his baton. I followed the footsteps, stumbling. At first it was easy to say where we were. There were eight compounds within the prison yard; ours was the only one reserved for political detainees. There were four other Awaiting Trial men’s compounds surrounding ours. Of the three compounds for convicted criminals, one was for lifers and one, situated far away from the other compounds, was for condemned criminals. Now we had passed the central lawn where the warders conducted their morning parade. We turned left towards the convicted prisoners’ compounds, then right towards . . . we turned right again, then straight . . . I followed the boots, now totally disoriented. I realized that the forced march had no purpose to it, or rather its purpose was not to reach anywhere immediately. It was part of the torture. I walked. On and on. I bumped into the front warder whenever he stopped abruptly.

“What? You no de see? Idiot!”

Sometimes I heard their voices exchanging pleasantries and amused chuckles with other warders. We marched for over thirty minutes; my slippered feet were chipped and bloody from hitting into stones. My arms locked behind me robbed me of balance and often I fell down, then I’d be prodded and kicked. At some places—near the light poles—I was able to see brief shimmers of light. At other places the darkness was thick as walls, and eerie. I recalled the shuffling, chain-clanging steps we heard late at nights through our cell window. Reluctant, sad steps. Hanging victims going to the hanging room; or their ghosts returning. We’d lie in the dark, stricken by immobility as the shuffling grew distant and finally faded away.

Now we were on concrete, like a corridor. The steps in front halted. I waited. I heard metal knock against metal, then the creaking of hinges. A hand took my wrist, cold metal touched me as the handcuffs were unlocked. My hands felt light with relief. I must have been standing right before the cell door because when a hand on my back pushed me forward I stumbled inside. I was still blindfolded, but I felt the consistency of the darkness change: it grew thicker, I had to wade through it to feel the walls. That was all: walls so close together that I felt like a man in a hole. I reached down and touched a bunk. I sat down. I heard the door close. I heard footsteps retreating. When I removed the blindfold the darkness remained the same, only now a little air touched my face. I closed my eyes. I don’t know how long I remained like that, hunched forward on the bunk, my sore, throbbing feet on the floor, my elbows on my knees, my eyes closed.

As if realizing how close I was to tears, the smells got up from their corners, shook the dust off their buttocks and lined up to make my acquaintance—to distract me from my sad thoughts. I shook their hands one by one. Loneliness Smell, Anger Smell, Waiting Smell, Masturbation Smell, Fear Smell. The most noticeable was Fear Smell; it filled the tiny room from floor to ceiling, edging out the others. I did not cry. I opened my lips and slowly, like a Buddhist chanting his mantra, I prayed:

Let this one also pass over me, lightly,

Like a smooth rock rolling down the hill,

Down my back, my skin, like soothing water.

He was in solitary for three days. This is how he described the cell in his diary: The floor was about six feet by ten, and the ceiling was about seven feet from the floor. There were two pieces of furniture: the iron bunk with its tattered, lice-ridden mat, and the slop bucket in the corner.

His only contact with the outside was when his mess of beans, once daily at six p.m., was pushed into the cell through a tiny flap at the bottom of the wrought-iron door, and at precisely eight p.m. when the cell door was opened for him to take out the slop bucket and replace it with a fresh one. He wrote that the only way he distinguished night from day was by the movement of his bowels—in hunger or in purgation.

Then on the third day, late in the evening, things began to happen. Like Nichodemus, the superintendent came to him, covertly, seeking knowledge.

Third Day, Solitary Cell

When I heard metal touch the lock on the door I sat down from my blind pacing. I composed my countenance. The door opened, bringing in unaccustomed rays of light. I blinked. “Oh, sweet light, may your face meeting mine bring me good fortune.” When my eyes had adjusted to the light, the superintendent was standing on the threshold—the cell entrance was a tight, brightly lit frame around his looming form. He advanced into the cell and stood in the centre, before me in my disadvantaged position on the bunk. His legs were planted apart, like an A. He looked like a cartoon figure: his jodhpur-like uniform trousers emphasized the skinniness of his calves, where they disappeared into the glass-glossy boots. His stomach bulged and hung like a belted sack. He cleared his voice. When I looked at his face I saw his blubber lips twitching with the effort of an attempted smile. But he couldn’t quite carry it off. He started to speak, then stopped abruptly and began to pace the tiny space before the bunk. When he returned to his original position he stopped. Now I noticed the sheaf of papers in his hands. He gestured in my face with it.

“These. Are the. Your papers.” His English was more disfigured than usual. He was soaking wet with the effort of saying whatever it was he wanted to say. “I read. All. I read your file again. Also. You are journalist. This is your second year. Here. Awaiting trial. For organizing violence. Demonstration against. Anti-government demonstration against the military legal government.” He did not thunder as usual.

“It is not true.”

“Eh?” The surprise on his face was comical. “You deny?”

“I did not organize a demonstration. I went there as a reporter.”

“Well . . .” He shrugged. “That is not my business. The truth. Will come out at your. Trial.”

“But when will that be? I have been forgotten. I am not allowed a lawyer, or visitors. I have been awaiting trial for two years now . . .”

“Do you complain? Look. Twenty years I’ve worked in prisons all over this country. Nigeria. North. South. East. West. Twenty years. Don’t be stupid. Sometimes it is better this way. Can you win a case against government? Wait. Hope.”

Now he lowered his voice, like a conspirator. “Maybe there’ll be another coup, eh? Maybe the leader will collapse and die. He is mortal, after all. Maybe a civilian government will come. Then. There will be amnesty for all political prisoners. Amnesty. Don’t worry. Enjoy yourself.”

I looked at him, planted before me like a tree, his hands clasped behind him, the papier-mâché smile on his lips. Enjoy yourself. I turned the phrase over and over in my mind. When I lay to sleep rats kept me awake, and mosquitoes, and lice, and hunger, and loneliness. The rats bit at my toes and scuttled around in the low ceiling, sometimes falling on to my face from the holes in the ceiling. Enjoy yourself.

“Your papers,” he said, thrusting them at me once more. I was not sure if he was offering them to me. “I read them. All. Poems. Letters. Poems, no problem. The letters, illegal. I burned them. Prisoners sometimes smuggle out letters to the press to make us look foolish. Embarrass the government. But the poems are harmless. Love poems. And diaries. You wrote the poems for your girl, isn’t it?”

He bent forward, and clapped a hand on my shoulder. I realized with wonder that the man, in his awkward, flatfooted way, was making overtures of friendship to me. My eyes fell on the boot that had stepped on my neck just five days ago. What did he want?

“Perhaps because I work in prison. I wear uniform. You think I don’t know poetry, eh? Soyinka, Okigbo, Shakespeare.”

It was apparent that he wanted to talk about poems, but he was finding it hard to begin.

“What do you want?” I asked.

He drew back to his full height. “I write poems too. Sometimes,” he added quickly when the wonder grew and grew on my face. He dipped his hand into his jacket pocket and came out with a foolscap sheet of paper. He unfolded it and handed it to me. “Read.”

It was a poem; handwritten. The title was written in capital letters: “MY LOVE FOR YOU.”

Like a man in a dream, I ran my eyes over the bold squiggles. After the first stanza I saw that it was a thinly veiled imitation of one of my poems. I sensed his waiting. He was hardly breathing. I let him wait. Lord, I can’t remember another time when I had felt so good. So powerful. I was Samuel Johnson and he was an aspiring poet waiting anxiously for my verdict, asking tremulously, “Sir, is it poetry, is it Pindar?”

I wanted to say, with as much sarcasm as I could put into my voice, “Sir, your poem is both original and interesting, but the part that is interesting is not original, and the part that is original is not interesting.” But all I said was, “Not bad, you need to work on it some more.”

The eagerness went out of his face and for a fleeting moment the scowl returned. “I promised my lady a poem. She is educated, you know. A teacher. You will write a poem for me. For my lady.”

“You want me to write a poem for you?” I tried to mask the surprise, the confusion and, yes, the eagerness in my voice. He was offering me a chance to write.

“I am glad you understand. Her name is Janice. She has been to the university. She has class. Not like other girls. She teaches in my son’s school. That is how we met.”

Even jailers fall in love, I thought inanely.

“At first she didn’t take me seriously. She thought I only wanted to use her and dump her. And. Also. We are of different religion. She is Christian, I am Muslim. But no problem. I love her. But she still doubted. I did not know what to do. Then I saw one of your poems . . . yes, this one.” He handed me the poem. “It said everything I wanted to tell her.”

It was one of my early poems, rewritten from memory.

“ ‘Three Words.’ I gave it to her yesterday when I took her out.”

“You gave her my poem?”

“Yes.”

“You . . . you told her you wrote it?”

“Yes, yes, of course. I wrote it again in my own hand,” he said, unabashed. He had been speaking in a rush; now he drew himself together and, as though to reassert his authority, began to pace the room, speaking in a subdued, measured tone. “I can make life easy for you here. I am the prison superintendent. There is nothing I cannot do, if I want. So write. The poem. For me.”

There is nothing I cannot do. You can get me cigarettes, I am sure, and food. You can remove me from solitary. But can you stand me outside these walls, free under the stars? Can you connect the tips of my up-raised arms to the stars so that the surge of liberty passes down my body to the soft downy grass beneath my feet?

I asked for paper and pencil. And a book to read.

He was removed from the solitary section that day. The pencil and paper came, the book too. But not the one he had asked for. He wanted Wole Soyinka’s prison notes, The Man Died; but when it came it was A Brief History of West Africa. While writing the poems in the cell, Lomba would sometimes let his mind wander; he’d picture the superintendent and his lady out on a date, how he’d bring out the poem and unfold it and hand it to her and say boldly, “I wrote it for you. Myself.”

They sit outside on the verandah at her suggestion. The light from the hanging, wind-swayed Chinese lanterns falls softly on them. The breeze blowing from the lagoon below smells fresh to her nostrils; she loves its dampness on her bare arms and face. She looks at him across the circular table, with its vase holding a single rose. He appears nervous. A thin film of sweat covers his forehead. He removes his cap and dabs at his forehead with a white handkerchief.

“Do you like it, a Chinese restaurant?” he asks, like a father anxious to please his favourite child. It is their first outing together. He pestered her until she gave in. Sometimes she is at a loss what to make of his attentions. She sighs. She turns her plump face to the deep, blue lagoon. A white boat with dark stripes on its sides speeds past; a figure is crouched inside, almost invisible. Her light, flower-patterned gown shivers in the light breeze. She watches him covertly. He handles his chopsticks awkwardly, but determinedly.

“Waiter!” he barks, his mouth full of fish, startling her. “Bring another bottle of wine.”

“No. I am all right, really,” she says firmly, putting down her chopsticks.

After the meal, which has been quite delicious, he lifts the tiny, wine-filled porcelain cup before him and says: “To you. And me.”

She sips her drink, avoiding his eyes.

“I love you, Janice. Very much. I know you think I am not serious. That I only want to suck. The juice and throw away the peel. No.” He suddenly dips his hand into the pocket of his well-ironed white kaftan and brings out a yellow paper.

“Read and see.” He pushes the paper across the table to her. “I wrote it. For you. A poem.”

She opens the paper. It smells faintly of sandalwood. She looks at the title: “Three Words.” She reaches past the vase and its single, white rose, past the wine bottle, the wine glasses, and covers his hairy hand with hers briefly. “Thank you.”

She reads the poem, shifting in her seat towards the swaying light of the lantern:

Three words

When I hear the waterfall clarity of your laughter

When I see the twilight softness of your eyes

I feel like draping you all over myself, like a cloak,

To be warmed by your warmth.

Your flower-petal innocence, your perennial

Sapling resilience—your endless charms

All these set my mind on wild flights of fancy:

I add word unto word,

I compare adjectives and coin exotic phrases

But they all seem jaded, corny, unworthy

Of saying all I want to say to you.

So I take refuge in these simple words,

Trusting my tone, my hand in yours, when I

Whisper them, to add depth and new

Twists of meaning to them. Three words:

I love you.

With his third or fourth poem for the superintendent, Lomba began to send Janice cryptic messages. She seemed to possess an insatiable appetite for love poems. Every day a warder came to the cell, in the evening, with the same request from the superintendent: “The poem.” When he finally ran out of original poems, Lomba began to plagiarize the masters from memory. Here are the opening lines of one:

Janice, your beauty is to me

Like those treasures of gold . . .

Another one starts:

I wonder, my heart, what you and I

Did till we loved . . .

But it was Lomba’s bowdlerization of Sappho’s “Ode” that brought the superintendent to the cell door:

A peer of goddesses she seems to me

The lady who sits over against me

Face to face,

Listening to the sweet tones of my voice,

And the loveliness of my laughing.

It is this that sets my heart fluttering

In my chest,

For if I gaze on you but for a little while

I am no longer master of my voice,

And my tongue lies useless

And a delicate flame runs over my skin

No more do I see with my eyes;

The sweat pours down me

I am all seized with trembling

And I grow paler than the grass

My strength fails me

And I seem little short of dying.

He came to the cell door less than twenty minutes after the poem had reached him, waving the paper in the air, a real smile splitting his granite face.

“Lomba, come out!” he hollered through the iron bars. Lomba was lying on his wafer-thin mattress, on his back, trying to imagine figures out of the rain designs on the ceiling. The door officer hastily threw open the door.

The superintendent threw a friendly arm over Lomba’s shoulders. He was unable to stand still. He walked Lomba up and down the grassy courtyard.

“This poem. Excellent. With this poem. After. I’ll ask her for marriage.” He was incoherent in his excitement. He raised the paper and read aloud the first line, straining his eyes in the dying light: “ ‘A peer of goddesses she seems to me.’ Yes. Excellent. She will be happy. Do you think I should ask her for. Marriage. Today?”

He stood before Lomba, bent forward expectantly, his legs planted in their characteristic A formation.

“Why not?” Lomba answered. A passing warder stared at the superintendent and the prisoner curiously. Twilight fell dully on the broken bottles studded in the concrete of the prison wall.

“Yes. Why not. Good.” The superintendent walked up and down, his hands clasped behind him, his head bowed in thought. Finally, he stopped before Lomba and declared gravely: “Tonight. I’ll ask her.”

Lomba smiled at him, sadly. The superintendent saw the smile; he did not see the sadness.

“Good. You are happy. I am happy too. I’ll send you a packet of cigarettes. Two packets. Today. Enjoy. Now go back inside.”

He turned abruptly on his heels and marched away.

September

Janice came to see me two days after I wrote her the Sappho. I thought, she has discovered my secret messages, my scriptive Morse tucked innocently in the lines of the poems I’ve written her.

Two o’clock is compulsory siesta time. The opening of the cell door brought me awake. My limbs felt heavy and lifeless. I feared I might have an infection. The warder came directly to me.

“Oya, get up. The superintendent wan see you.” His skin was coarse, coal black. He was fat and his speech came out in laboured gasps. “Oya, get up. Get up,” he repeated impatiently.

I was in that lethargic, somnambulistic state condemned people surely fall into when, in total inanition and despair, they await their fate—without fear or hope, because nothing can be changed. No dew-wet finger of light would come poking into the parched gloom of the abyss they tenant. I did not want to write any more poems for the superintendent’s lover. I did not want any more of his cigarettes. I was tired of being pointed at behind my back, of being whispered about by the other inmates as the superintendent’s informer, his fetch-water. I wanted to recover my lost dignity. Now I realized that I really had no “self” to express; that self had flown away from me the day the chains touched my hands. What is left here is nothing but a mass of protruding bones, unkempt hair and tearful eyes; an asshole for shitting and farting, and a penis that in the mornings grows turgid in vain. This leftover self, this sea-bleached wreck panting on the iron-filing sands of the shores of this penal island is nothing but hot air, and hair, and ears cocked, hopeful . . .

So I said to the warder, “I don’t want to see him today. Tell him I’m sick.”

The fat face contorted. He raised his baton in Pavlovian response. “What!” But our eyes met. He was smart enough to decipher the bold “No Trespassing” sign written in mine. Smart enough to obey. He moved back, shrugging. “Na you go suffer!” he blustered, and left.

I was aware of the curious eyes staring at me. I closed mine. I willed my mind over the prison walls to other places. Free. I dreamt of standing under the stars, my hands raised, their tips touching the blinking, pulsating electricity of the stars. The rain would be falling. There’d be nothing else: just me and rain and stars and my feet on the wet, downy grass earthing the electricity of freedom.

He returned almost immediately. There was a smirk on his fat face as he handed me a note. I recognized the superintendent’s clumsy scrawl. It was brief, a one-liner: Janice is here. Come. Now. Truncated, even in writing. I got up and pulled on my sweat-grimed shirt. I slipped my feet into my old, worn-out slippers. I followed the warder. We passed the parade ground, and the convicted men’s compound. An iron gate, far to our right, locked permanently, led to the women’s wing of the prison. We passed the old laundry, which now served as a barber’s shop on Saturdays—the prison’s sanitation day. A gun-carrying warder opened a tiny door in the huge gate that led into a foreyard where the prison officials had their offices. I had been here before, once, on my first day in prison. There were cars parked before the offices; cadets in their well-starched uniforms came and went, their young faces looking comically stern. Female secretaries with time on their hands stood in the corridors gossiping. The superintendent’s office was not far from the gate; a flight of three concrete steps led up to a thick wooden door, which bore the single word: SUPERINTENDENT.

My guide knocked on it timidly before turning the handle.

“The superintendent wan see am,” he informed the secretary. She barely looked up from her typewriter; she nodded. Her eyes were bored, uncurious.

“Enter,” the warder said to me, pointing to a curtained doorway beside the secretary’s table. I entered. A lady sat in one of the two visitor’s armchairs. Back to the door, her elbows rested on the huge Formica-topped table before her. Janice. She was alone. When she turned, I noted that my mental image of her was almost accurate. She was plump. Her face was warm and homely. She came halfway out of her chair, turning it slightly so that it faced the other chair. There was a tentative smile on her face as she asked, “Mr. Lomba?”

I almost said no, surprised by the “Mr.” I nodded.

She pointed at the empty chair. “Please sit down.” She extended a soft, pudgy hand to me. I took it and marveled at its softness. She was a teacher; the hardness would be in the fingers: the tips of the thumb and middle finger, and the side of the index finger.

“Muftau—the superintendent—will be here soon. He just stepped out,” she said. Her voice was clear, a little high-pitched. Her English was correct, each word carefully pronounced and projected. Like in a classroom. I was struck by how clean she looked, squeaky clean; her skin glowed like a child’s after a bath. She had obviously taken a lot of trouble with her appearance: her blue evening dress looked almost new, but a slash of red lipstick extended to the left cheek after missing the curve of the lip. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, tapping the left foot on the floor. She was nervous. That was when I realized I had not said a word since I entered.

“Welcome to the prison,” I said, unable to think of anything else.

She nodded. “Thank you. I told Muftau I wanted to see you. The poems, I just knew it wasn’t him writing them. I went along with it for a while, but later I told him.”

She opened the tiny handbag in her lap and took out some papers. The poems. She put them on the table and unfolded them, smoothing out the creases, uncurling the edges. “After the Sappho I decided I must see you. It was my favourite poem in school, and I like your version of it.”

“Thank you,” I said. I liked her directness, her sense of humour.

“So I told him—look, I know who the writer is, he is one of the prisoners, isn’t he? That surprised him. He couldn’t figure out how I knew. But I was glad he didn’t deny it. I told him that. And if we are getting married, there shouldn’t be secrets between us, should there?”

Ah, I thought, so my Sappho has worked the magic. Aloud I said, “Congratulations.”

She nodded. “Thanks. Muftau is a nice person, really, when you get to know him. His son, Farouk, was in my class—he’s finished now—really, you should see them together. So touching. I know he has his awkward side, and that he was once married—but I don’t care. After all, I have a little past too. Who doesn’t?” she added the last quickly, as if scared she was revealing too much to a stranger. Her left hand went up and down as she spoke, like a hypnotist, like a conductor. After a brief pause, she continued, “After all the pain he’s been through with his other wife, he deserves some happiness. She was in the hospital a whole year before she died.”

Muftau. The superintendent had a name, and a history, maybe even a soul. I looked at his portrait hanging on the wall. He looked young in it, serious-faced and smart, like the cadet warders outside. I turned to her and said suddenly and sincerely, “I am glad you came. Thanks.”

Her face broke into a wide, dimpled smile. She was actually pretty. A little past her prime, past her sell-by date, but still nice, still viable. “Oh, no. I am the one that should be glad. I love meeting poets. I love your poems. Really I do.”

“Not all of them are mine.”

“I know—but you give them a different feel, a different tone. And also, I discovered your S.O.S. I had to come . . .” She picked the poems off the table and handed them to me. There were thirteen of them. Seven were my originals, six were purloined. She had carefully underlined in red ink certain lines of them—the same line, actually, recurring.

There was a waiting-to-be-congratulated smile on her face as she awaited my comment.

“You noticed,” I said.

“Of course I did. S.O.S. It wasn’t apparent at first. I began to notice the repetition with the fifth poem. ‘Save my soul, a prisoner.’ ”

“Save my soul, a prisoner” . . . The first time I put down the words, in the third poem, it had been non-deliberate, I was just making alliteration. Then I began to repeat it in the subsequent poems. But how could I tell her that the message wasn’t really for her, or for anyone else? It was for myself, perhaps, written by me to my own soul, to every other soul, the collective soul of the universe.

I told her, the first time I wrote it an inmate had died. His name was Thomas. He wasn’t sick. He just started vomiting after the afternoon meal, and before the warders came to take him to the clinic, he died. Just like that. He died. Watching his stiffening face, with the mouth open and the eyes staring, as the inmates took him out of the cell, an irrational fear had gripped me. I saw myself being taken out like that, my lifeless arms dangling, brushing the ground. The fear made me sit down, shaking uncontrollably amidst the flurry of movements and voices excited by the tragedy. I was scared. I felt certain I was going to end up like that. Have you ever felt like that, certain that you are going to die? No? I did. I was going to die. My body would end up in some anonymous mortuary, and later in an unmarked grave, and no one would know. No one would care. It happens every day here. I am a political detainee; if I die I am just one antagonist less. That was when I wrote the S.O.S. It was just a message in a bottle, thrown without much hope into the sea . . . I stopped speaking when my hands started to shake. I wanted to put them in my pocket to hide them from her. But she had seen it. She left her seat and came to me. She took both my hands in hers.

“You’ll not die. You’ll get out alive. One day it will be all over,” she said. Her perfume, mixed with her female smell, rose into my nostrils: flowery, musky. I had forgotten the last time a woman had stood so close to me. Sometimes, in our cell, when the wind blows from the female prison, we’ll catch distant sounds of female screams and shouts and even laughter. That is the closest we ever come to women. Only when the wind blows, at the right time, in the right direction. Her hands on mine, her smell, her presence, acted like fire on some huge, prehistoric glacier locked deep in my chest. And when her hand touched my head and the back of my neck, I wept.

When the superintendent returned, my sobbing face was buried in Janice’s ample bosom. Her hands were on my head, patting, consoling, like a mother, all the while cooing softly, “One day it will finish.”

I pulled away from her. She gave me her handkerchief.

“What is going on? Why is he crying?”

He was standing just within the door—his voice was curious, with a hint of jealousy. I wiped my eyes; I subdued my body’s spasms. He advanced slowly into the room and went round to his seat. He remained standing, his hairy hands resting on the table.

“Why is he crying?” he repeated to Janice.

“Because he is a prisoner,” Janice replied simply. She was still standing beside me, facing the superintendent.

“Well. So? Is he realizing that just now?”

“Don’t be so unkind, Muftau.”

I returned the handkerchief to her.

“Muftau, you must help him.”

“Help. How?”

“You are the prison superintendent. There’s a lot you can do.”

“But I can’t help him. He is a political detainee. He has not even been tried.”

“And you know that he is never going to be tried. He will be kept here for ever, forgotten.” Her voice became sharp and indignant. The superintendent drew back his seat and sat down. His eyes were lowered. When he looked up, he said earnestly, “Janice. There’s nothing anyone can do for him. I’ll be implicating myself. Besides, his lot is far easier than that of the other inmates. I give him things. Cigarettes. Soap. Books. And I let him. Write.”

“How can you be so unfeeling! Put yourself in his shoes—two years away from friends, from family, without the power to do anything you wish to do. Two years in CHAINS! How can you talk of cigarettes and soap, as if that were substitute enough for all that he has lost?” She was like a teacher confronting an erring student. Her left hand tapped the table for emphasis as she spoke.

“Well.” He looked cowed. His scowl alternated rapidly with a smile. He stared at his portrait on the wall behind her. He spoke in a rush. “Well. I could have done something. Two weeks ago. The Amnesty International. People came. You know, white men. They wanted names of. Political detainees held. Without trial. To pressure the government to release them.”

“Well?”

“Well.” He still avoided her stare. His eyes touched mine and hastily passed. He picked up a pen and twirled it between his fingers. The pen slipped out of his fingers and fell to the floor.

“I didn’t. Couldn’t. You know . . . I thought he was comfortable. And, he was writing the poems, for you . . .” His voice was almost pleading. Surprisingly, I felt no anger towards him. He was just Man. Man in his basic, rudimentary state, easily moved by powerful emotions like love, lust, anger, greed and fear, but totally dumb to the finer, acquired emotions like pity, mercy, humour and justice.

Janice slowly picked up her bag from the table. There was enormous dignity to her movements. She clasped the bag under her left arm. Her words were slow, almost sad. “I see now that I’ve made a mistake. You are not really the man I thought you were . . .”

“Janice.” He stood up and started coming round to her, but a gesture stopped him.

“No. Let me finish. I want you to contact these people. Give them his name. If you can’t do that, then forget you ever knew me.”

Her hand brushed my arm as she passed me. He started after her, then stopped halfway across the room. We stared in silence at the curtained doorway, listening to the sound of her heels on the bare floor till it finally died away. He returned slowly to his seat and slumped into it. The wood creaked audibly in the quiet office.

“Go,” he said, not looking at me.

The above is the last entry in Lomba’s diary. There’s no record of how far the superintendent went to help him regain his freedom, but as he told Janice, there was very little to be done for a political detainee—especially since, about a week after that meeting, a coup was attempted against the military leader, General Sani Abacha, by some officers close to him. There was an immediate crackdown on all pro-democracy activists, and the prisons all over the country swelled with political detainees. A lot of those already in detention were transferred randomly to other prisons around the country, for security reasons. Lomba was among them. He was transferred to Agodi Prison in Ibadan. From there he was moved to the far north, to a small desert town called Gashuwa. There is no record of him after that.

A lot of these political prisoners died in detention, although the prominent ones made the headlines—people like Moshood Abiola and General Yar Adua.

But somehow it is hard to imagine that Lomba died. A lot seems to point to the contrary. His diary, his economical expressions show a very sedulous character at work. A survivor. The years in prison must have taught him not to hope too much, not to despair too much—that for the prisoner, nothing kills as surely as too much hope or too much despair. He had learned to survive in tiny atoms, piecemeal, a day at a time. It is probable that in 1998, when the military dictator Abacha died, and his successor, General Abdulsalam Abubakar, dared to open the gates to democracy, and to liberty for the political detainees, Lomba was in the ranks of those released.

This might have been how it happened: Lomba was seated in a dingy cell in Gashuwa, his eyes closed, his mind soaring above the glass-studded prison walls, mingling with the stars and the rain in elemental union of freedom; then the door clanked open, and when he opened his eyes Liberty was standing over him, smiling kindly, extending an arm.

And Liberty said softly, “Come. It is time to go.”

And they left, arm in arm.

MOHAMMED NASEEHU ALI

• Ghana •

THE MANHOOD TEST

ON THE DAY of Mr. Rafique’s manhood test, he woke up at half past three in the morning. He had barely slept, haunted in a dream by images of a market scene, where a group of old women hawked phalluses of every size, shape, and color. He remained lying on the hard-foamed couch in the sitting room, where he had slept for the past week. He pressed his limp penis gently—the way doctors press blood pressure bulbs—hoping it would become fully erect, something he had not seen for three whole weeks.

Mr. Rafique came alert on hearing the loud crows of roosters in the courtyard, and was suddenly overpowered by the crippling fear that had tormented him since the day, about a week ago, when his wife accused him of unmanliness at the chief’s palace on Zongo Street. To verify the wife’s allegations, the chief’s alkali, or judge, had ordered Mr. Rafique to take the manhood test, a process that required Mr. Rafique to sleep with his wife before an appointed invigilator.

The test was scheduled for half past four this afternoon, and the mere thought of being naked with his wife and in the presence of a third person made Mr. Rafique’s body numb. He brushed the fingers of his left hand around the edge of his penis. “Why are you treating me so?” he whispered to himself. “Eh, tell me! Why are you treating me so?” He lifted his head from the pillow to look at his crotch, as though he had expected the penis to answer. “What am I going to do, yá Allah!” he said, his voice now just above a whisper. “What am I going to do if I fail?”

Mr. Rafique lifted his arms and silently began to pray in the most distant region of his heart, where no one—not even the two angels said to be guarding each mortal day and night—could hear him. He prayed for a miracle to transform his limp phallus into a bouncing, fully erect one; he begged Allah to steer his destiny clear of the imminent humiliation that threatened to put him and his family to shame.

Mr. Rafique had been married for a little over eight months to a young but worldly woman named Zulaikha. Zulai, as she was called affectionately, was the last of four daughters of Baba Mina, a rich transportation business owner who used to live on Zongo Street. Like other once-very-poor-and-suddenly-turned-rich types, Baba Mina had moved to Nhyiaso, an expensive suburb of Kumasi, as soon as he became wealthy enough. He and his family visited their Zongo Street clan-house only on weekends or whenever there was an important social function.

Zulaikha had been raised a spoiled child. Her parents—her mother especially—never denied her things she desired. She wore expensive blouses and skirts instead of the traditional wrapper and danchiki worn by girls her age. And while some of her schoolmates drank water to quench both hunger and thirst during lunch break, Zulai ate boiled eggs and drank Fanta instead. At twelve, she had stood as the tallest girl among her age mates. She was slender, with a curvaceous figure that sent the eyes of men darting wherever she walked. Her thighs were muscular, supported by her long, athletic calves. Zulai also had deep, sensuous lips and eyes that were as clear as the moon at its brightest. Her cheeks were lean and dimpled, her eyebrows dark and silky. Her hair was always “permed,” or straightened, its length touching her broad shoulders. By the time she was fourteen, Zulaikha’s blouses could no longer contain her large breasts.

Her beauty, coupled with her family’s riches, turned her into the most popular and desired teenager among the young men on Zongo Street. Before long, all the rich Muslim men in the city were knocking at her family’s door, seeking the young girl’s hand in marriage. Her father had planned to marry her off by the time she was sixteen, the usual marriage age for girls; but to the father’s shock and disappointment, Zulai one by one rejected the dozen or so suitors he and his clan chose for her. She refused to even see the men when they called, and she even went so far as to threaten killing herself if forced to marry a man she didn’t choose herself. Her family then asked her to bring home her own suitor, but she told them point blank that she was not ready to marry until she had finished middle school. Such a thing was unheard of from a girl on Zongo Street.

As all of this unraveled, the street’s young men were on a quest to see who would be the first to sleep with Zulaikha. And it wasn’t long before one of them succeeded. His name was Muntari, a twenty-one-year-old disco-goer and school dropout who three years later found himself in the middle of a scandal when Zulaikha married his uncle, Mr. Rafique, who lived in the same compound with the young man.

Not long after her first sexual experience, Zulaikha quickly turned into a “sex monster,” as some called her. Wild stories about her encounters with men abounded on the street. One was about how she slept with six men, who mounted her one after the other, but she was still left unsatisfied. Another story related how she had sex with a young man until he fainted and fell sick afterwards. Soon Zulaikha’s loose sexual behaviour began to drag her clan’s name in the mud. Her father then insisted she bring home a suitor, or he would marry her off to the man of his choice. By now most of the men who had earlier sought Zulaikha’s hand had left off their pursuit of her, afraid the girl’s bad name might tarnish their reputations. A few of them persisted, though, and Mr. Rafique was one of them.

Zulaikha knew from the start that most of the men who sought her hand were rich men with two or three wives already, a practice sanctioned by Islam, the street’s predominant religion. The idea of competing for a man’s attention with two or three other women, along with its concomitant sexual starvation, seemed repugnant and stifling to Zulai. So, even though Mr. Rafique was only a temporary clerk at a local shea-nut butter co-operative union, he was the one she preferred. She was confident that her father would give him capital to start his own business, or at least offer him a position in his transport company. The truth was, Zulai had a genuine fascination for Mr. Rafique—and because of that not even the knowledge of Mr. Rafique’s illegitimate child, Najim, a seven-year-old-boy who lived with his mother on Roman Hill, was enough to change her mind about him. Friends and a few family members tipped Zulai that Najim’s mother was a jilted lover, who was still in love with Mr. Rafique and may cause her problems down the line in her marriage. But Zulai merely brushed this aside. Zulai was also captivated by the fact that, unlike all the other suitors, Mr. Rafique was somewhat educated. He had attended school only up to Form Four (the equivalent of twelfth grade), but on a street like Zongo, where most of the folks never stepped foot in an English school classroom, Mr. Rafique and a few others were like one-eyed kings in the kingdom of the blind. But most importantly, Zulai was attracted to Mr. Rafique’s handsome appearance. She liked the blazers and suits he wore, even on extremely hot days. In short, he conformed to her ideal of the handsome man: not too tall and not too short either, and definitely without a pot belly, which she abhorred.

Not long after Zulai mentioned Mr. Rafique to her family, rumor reached their ears that he was a drunkard. The family didn’t worry too much about the rumor, hoping that, “even if it were true, he will change his ways once he is married and saddled with the responsibility of looking after a family of his own,” as Baba Mina said.

At the time of the wedding, Zulaikha was nineteen, three years older than the age at which most girls were married. She was only two years shy of finishing middle school, and some among Baba Mina’s clan pleaded that he allow her to finish, but the father said to them, “Of what use would schooling be to a woman? She is going to end up in the kitchen, after all!” With those words, the father sealed off the mouths of those who pleaded with him. Customary rituals were hastily carried out after that, paving the way for the marriage ceremony, which turned out to be one of the grandest functions the city of Kumasi had ever seen. Not that anyone expected less from the bride’s wealthy father.

The marriage was on shaky ground from the very beginning. Certain things Zulaikha had not given any thought to before suddenly developed into uncomfortable situations that were rife with the potential of creating serious problems for the marriage. The first involved having to live in the same compound as Muntari, the young man who had deflowered her. Although Muntari’s room was located outside the main compound, he went inside at least twice each day to fetch hot bath-water in the mornings and to pick up his supper in the evenings. And as much as Zulai attempted to ignore Muntari’s presence in the compound, the two still ran into each other. Now a married woman, Zulai was quite embarrassed about this situation and lived with the constant fear of her pre-marital affair with Muntari being leaked out to her husband.

Zulai’s other problem concerned something quite different. Like most buildings on Zongo Street, their house did not have a toilet, which meant that she had to be escorted for about three hundred meters to the public latrine. For Zulaikha, who grew up using a glass toilet in the privacy of her parents’ house, to empty one’s bowels in the presence of five strangers, all squatting in a row, was not only barbaric and shameful, but depressing. She took care of that problem partly by going to the latrine only at night when the latrine was often empty. She stuck to that schedule, no matter how desperate she was with the need to relieve herself during the day.

However, Zulai’s third and last problem was more serious, one that made the first two seem trivial. And here is what created it:

Though Mr. Rafique’s womanizing lifestyle prior to his marriage had reached legendary status on Zongo Street, he had somehow failed to keep his erection on the couple’s first night together. What occurred was peculiar and shocking to both husband and wife, who had expected nothing short of fireworks on their maiden encounter.

What exactly went wrong that night Mr. Rafique could not understand. When his penis became limp in the middle of intercourse, his first thought was to get up and send a child for a cup of strong coffee from Mallam Sile’s tea shop, hoping the hot beverage would re-charge his battery. But Zulaikha, who had heard so much about Mr. Rafique’s many affairs with women, was set upon giving him a splendid first night. As he lay pondering she crawled all over him, caressing and kissing his chest and ribs. She grabbed and rubbed Mr. Rafique’s penis with her fingers, something he detested when his penis was not erect. He made some gestures to thwart her moves, all the time thinking of the right moment to get up and send for that revivifying cup of coffee. But Zulaikha, who was as aroused as someone on a Malian aphrodisiac, wouldn’t let go of him. She became frustrated when she realized her efforts weren’t doing any good, and finally blamed it all on herself, that she was too inexperienced for him. But Mr. Rafique was busy entertaining fantasies of the women he had slept with before, hoping he would be aroused by them. This didn’t work. Then in a rather annoyed voice he told Zulaikha: “Just lie down and stop moving your hands on me like a snake, you hear?” After that the couple lay awake in awkward silence for the rest of the night. They stared at the ceiling and listened to the sound of their breathing until the rooster’s first crow at dawn.

Strangely enough the next morning, Mr. Rafique’s penis became as erect as a lamp post on his way to the bath-house. It remained hard for the rest of the day while he was at work. In fact he had to use several creative methods in order to hide the bulge in his trousers. That relieved and reassured him that his inability was caused by anxiety, which he thought he could overcome easily. “I just have to dominate her completely,” he said to himself.

On the second night, Mr. Rafique jumped into their bed with a full erection. He was all ready to redeem himself, and to prove to Zulai that he was not an adaakwa, a pansy. “I’ll show her that I am the man of the two of us,” he thought as he pulled the bed-side string to switch off the light. He cautioned himself not to let “her have any control, the way I foolishly allowed her to last night.” But no sooner had Mr. Rafique entered his wife when he lost his stiffness again. Suddenly his manhood began to shrink like a popped balloon. Zulai used every trick she knew, but her efforts were futile. Soon, Mr. Rafique’s penis became the shadow of a penis, a mere token of his manhood. The same thing happened on the next night and the one that followed.

After the third night’s fiasco, Mr. Rafique drank some Alafia Bitters, and Zulaikha too acquired some herbal scents and erotic lavenders, which she hoped would boost their lust and desire for each other; but that too didn’t do them any good. What was most upsetting to Mr. Rafique was the fact that, as soon as he prepared to leave home for work in the morning, his penis became erect. He tried to keep his anger and frustration to himself, not quite sure how to share a story like that with anyone. He therefore decided that the only thing that would help him was prayer. And so he prayed.

A month and a half later, the couple’s situation remained the same. Mr. Rafique contemplated turning to other women—old girlfriends or the fancy, expensive prostitutes at Hotel de Kingsway, one of the finest in all of Ghana, which he frequented before his marriage—to at least clarify whether his inability occurred only with Zulaikha. But he couldn’t bring himself to betray his wife, with whom he was already falling in love, despite their problems.

Eventually Mr. Rafique consoled himself that “Allah is the cause of all things,” and that “He alone knows why this is happening.” He thought he was either being punished for the promiscuous life he had led during his bachelor days, or Allah was just testing him and waiting for the right time to bless and bring happiness to his marriage, as His Prophet Muhammad promises in the Hadiths, or Book of Traditions.

Though Mr. Rafique and his wife were greatly saddened by the turn of events, they recoiled from making it known or seeking help—he because of his male pride and Zulaikha out of fear that more fingers would be pointed at her if news of their problem became known. And so, the couple continued to live in their erotic disenchantment for the next two months, during which a severe tension began to grow between the two. They fought and bickered regularly, often over the most trivial things. For his part, Mr. Rafique had—not without profound sadness—already given up hope that he would be able to lie with his wife. He spent most of his time away from the house, either at work during the day or in front of Rex Cinema in the evening, where he played da-me, a complicated version of checkers, with friends until well after midnight. Mr. Rafique’s sorrows grew even worse: Zulai acquired the habit of waiting for his arrival each night so she could pick fights with him—fights in which she did nothing but assail his inability.

As time went by, Mr. Rafique assumed the un-Islamic and ungodly act of blaming the “old witches” on the street for his problems. He thought of having a talk with his wife, to tell her “face to face” that her aggressive sex manner was the main cause of his inability. But in the end he feared coming across as a wimp with such an open admission of unmanliness. So he remained silent.

Night after night Mr. Rafique lay awake on his bed, next to his wife, staring into the darkness and contemplating the doom that awaited him the moment Zulaikha opened her mouth to her folks about his inability. He knew that was bound to happen sooner or later, unless a dramatic change occurred, which he couldn’t fathom.

After three months of bridal incarceration—the period when young brides were prohibited from leaving the house without an escort, usually a girl or a woman from the man’s family—Zulaikha’s veil-lifting ceremony took place one Thursday morning. It marked the partial lifting of the ban on her movement, as she was limited to visiting her parents, attend naming ceremonies or funerals, and most importantly, walk to the public latrine without her usual escorts of young girls. In another three months, Zulaikha would be permitted to go wherever she wished to go, as she was naturally expected to be carrying Mr. Rafique’s child by then. This custom—traditional rather than religious, which demanded brides to be virgins—enforced a young bride’s loyalty to her husband during the first six months of marriage.

So far, no one except Mr. Rafique and Zulaikha knew anything about his inability. She considered revealing the secret to someone in her clan, but decided against it, afraid that it might be taken as a ploy for divorce, as used by some women. But Zulai knew she must do something, not only about her husband’s inability but her involuntary celibacy. She began to have fantasies of Muntari, and even thought of seducing him into her bed. The young man obviously didn’t want to get caught in the middle of a marriage scandal; as if he had gotten wind of Zulaikha’s designs, he departed for Agégé, joining the exodus that swept away Ghana’s young men and women to the Nigerian city, in search of a better life. The couple’s problems grew even bigger. They took to quarreling every night, cursing one another in front of everyone in the compound.

One evening, Mr. Rafique said good-bye to his wife and left the house for the cinema-front, to play da-me with friends. He realized on reaching the game place that he had left behind his pack of cigarettes. He immediately returned home. But when Mr. Rafique arrived Zulaikha was not in the house. Zulai, who had gone to the latrine and didn’t expect her husband back until much later, had stayed talking to friends she had met on her way home. Mr. Rafique picked up the pack, but decided to wait for his wife’s return—he had been suspicious of her comings and goings lately. He paced around the living room, his mind brimming with anger. He glanced at the wall clock at two-minute intervals, growing angrier each time.

Half an hour passed and Zulaikha had not returned. The longer Mr. Rafique waited, the more distrustful and suspicious he became. He stormed out of the room in a great fury and walked across the courtyard to the compound’s main entrance. He stood there like a sentry, and lighted one cigarette after the other while he cursed the housefolks, including his mother, Hindu, who had not been able to leave her room for nine years, crippled by a mysterious disease. Mr. Rafique shouted obscenities at the top of his voice, calling the housefolks “hypocrites and traitors.”

“If it isn’t hypocrisy what is it then, when your own people can’t even keep an eye on your woman, eh? Tell me!” he yelled, looking at the children who surrounded him, as if he expected them to console him. “All of them, they are back-biters; I know they are waiting to see my downfall. But, she will see when she returns tonight! I’ll show her the thing that prevents women from growing beards!” He was screaming and waving his fists at no one in particular.

The housefolks knew better than to say a word to Mr. Rafique. When he was angry he stopped speaking Hausa altogether and shouted at them in English—of which nobody understood even a word—and threatened to bring in his military friends to “discipline everyone.” Though Mr. Rafique had never acted on his boast, people were still scared, as the military friends, whose sight alone could send one panicking, visited him dressed in full combat gear, with guns hanging from their shoulders and dynamite dangling from their waistbands. Now, the housefolks didn’t say a word when Mr. Rafique ranted and raved about his wife’s absence. They merely sat and watched from their verandahs.

About an hour after Mr. Rafique returned home, Zulaikha came trotting into the compound. Mr. Rafique immediately pounced on her, seizing her dress and demanding to know where she had been.

“Let go of me, O! What is all this for,” she said, “making a fool out of yourself again, eh?”

“Who are you talking to like that, you bastard-woman! Where’ve you been? I say, tell me where you have been all this time!”

“Where do you think I went to other than the back-house?” she replied, and gently slapped his hands to free her dress from his grip.

“Look, don’t vex me more than you have already!” he shouted, the veins sticking out of his neck. “Was it only the latrine that took you more than one hour? I say, tell me where you have been, before I take action on you!”

“What action are you capable of taking, look at him! I beg, don’t scream at me like that! Am I not allowed to talk to my friends on the road when I meet . . .” He didn’t let her finish.

“You liar! You pathetic liar! A horrible liar you are! Daughter of liars!” he screamed, waving his index finger in her face.

Much later that night, before the elders, Zulaikha had claimed that it was by mistake, but whether her claim was true or not, she slapped Mr. Rafique’s hand as he waved it in her face. He in turn hit her in the face. But, hardly had his hand dropped before she, too, responded with a blow that was three times stronger than his. Mr. Rafique staggered and fell to the ground. The housefolks screamed in shock. What would have ensued would have been disastrous, but one of Mr. Rafique’s military friends lived in the next compound; and it was he who overheard the fight and walked over and separated the two. But the couple resumed fighting as soon as they returned to their living room. That night they kept the entire household awake, throwing their furniture around and screaming at each other. They fought until two o’clock in the morning, when the chief’s wazeer, or delegate, came and separated them. Zulaikha spent what little remained of the night with her in-law, Mr. Rafique’s lame mother, while he remained in his room and ranted until the asubá worship.

Early the next day, the chief’s alkali ordered Zulaikha to return to her family for a three-day yáji, or mediation period. One might have expected Zulai to reveal her husband’s inability to her family during the yáji, but she did not. However, her folks quickly noticed her flat belly, and without asking her a single question concluded that her barrenness was the reason Zulai and her husband fought so frequently. The family immediately visited a spiritual mallam, or medicine man, who proclaimed that Zulai was visited by men of night, bad spirits who copulated with married women in their sleep and destroyed their pregnancies.

While Zulaikha was with her family, Mr. Rafique decided it was high time that he, too, see a mallam, for his problem. The medicine man told Mr. Rafique that his inability was a curse, one thrown at him by a rival who had wanted to marry Zulaikha. The mallam never informed him who the mysterious rival was, but he gave Mr. Rafique a talisman and asked him to place it under his mattress before sleeping with his wife the next time. “Wallahi, this is the end of your problem, my son . . . no more sleepy-sleepy manhood,” the mallam swore and gazed at the ceiling in supplication to Allah, as he handed Mr. Rafique the tiny red amulet.

On the night Zulaikha returned, Mr. Rafique was confident that the mallam’s proclamation would manifest true. But Mr. Rafique once again lost his erection while in action. This particular failure became the straw that broke the “camel’s hunched back,” as Hamda-Wán, Zongo Street’s infamous latrine cleaner, would say when things went awry. The next morning, Mr. Rafique felt he had been conned by the mallam and the spiritual bodies he had invoked for his “miracles.” What was worse, Mr. Rafique felt slighted by Allah, to whom he prayed daily to save his marriage. At this point he gave up all hope, and waited for the day when Allah, in His infinite mercy, would make good His promise to help those who cry out to Him in their times of need.

As time went by, Zulai came to accept that nothing could be done to improve her husband’s inability. And after a bitter, inner struggle, she decided the only thing that would prevent her name from being dragged into the mud was to disclose his problems to the elders. “The sooner I do this, the better for me,” she thought one night. “I must let his people and the streetfolks know that I am not the ‘bottomless pit’ they think I am . . . my belly can carry a seed, but only if he plants it!”

The following day she went to the chief’s palace and lodged a formal complaint with the alkali, charging her husband with unmanliness. According to Islamic shari’a law, a wife can seek divorce from her husband on three conditions: (1) If he doesn’t provide chi da sha, or food and drink for her, (2) If she deems there is no love between her and the husband, and (3) If he is sick, or impotent. A husband, on the other hand, is not bound by any strict stipulation and may divorce his wife at will.

Zulai’s complaint quickly became news on Zongo Street. Not many believed the wife’s accusations, as Najim was clear testimony to Mr. Rafique’s manliness. At a hearing in the palace of the Muslim chief on Zongo Street, Mr. Rafique insisted that his manhood was in perfect condition and that his wife’s accusation was false, “a mere excuse . . . so that the conniving wench can seek a divorce from me,” he said. Zulaikha challenged her husband: “He is not a man, and he knows this himself ! Believe me! By Allah, he is not a man!” she swore. The couple began to fight in front of the most revered elders; they screamed and raised fingers in one another’s face. The fight was separated, but by the end of the hearing it became impossible even for the wise jurors to decide who was telling the truth. So the alkali decided to give the couple six weeks to either solve their problem or report back to him if they failed to do so.

The weeks that followed were quite brutal for Mr. Rafique. He tried to seal his ears to the countless rumors being spread about him and his marriage. At home, the fights between him and Zulai became regular entertainment for the housefolks, who sat and laughed watching the tragicomedy unfold. Then after an ugly fight that lasted all night, Zulaikha resolved that she would be better off without a husband. The next morning she paid her second visit to the alkali and demanded a divorce from Mr. Rafique on the grounds that he still wasn’t a man.

Now, on Zongo Street, divorces of that kind were granted only after the accused husband was proven “unmanly” by a neutral person, usually an old woman appointed by the alkali. The lafiree, the name given to the old woman, sat in the same room and observed closely as the husband made love to his wife. She would later report her observations to the alkali, who made the final decision in such cases.

Mr. Rafique’s test date was scheduled a week from the day of Zulaikha’s divorce petition. It was on a Wednesday, a day generally perceived as ill-omened by the streetfolks—though no one knew exactly why. And since “Days never fail to make their weekly appearance,” the test date approached rather too fast for Mr. Rafique, though it seemed to have arrived too slowly for the streetfolks, who were more eager than ever to just see something happen to someone. Long before it was four-thirty on the appointed day, the palace-front was filled with news and rumormongers, who seemed just as apprehensive as the poor husband and wife who now found themselves in a public drama from which they could not escape participating.

About an hour after he woke up on the morning of the test Mr. Rafique was still lying on the couch, his half-erect penis cupped in his left hand. His eyes were dry and itchy from lack of sleep; his mind fatigued by the phalluses he had seen in his nightmares; his body tired from a week of sleeping on the couch. He heard the muezzin’s incantations, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar,” God is Great! God is Great!, calling the faithful to worship, the first of their five daily worships to the Creator. He gently rubbed his penis as he listened: “Assalát hairi minal-naum! Assalát hairi minal-naum!” Worship is better than sleep! Worship is better than sleep!

The mellifluous, melancholy, yet commanding voice of the crier soothed Mr. Rafique’s heart momentarily, ridding him of the thoughts of the impending test. But this didn’t last too long, his mind gradually drifting back to his manhood fixation. He sat upright and began to pray: “Let my enemies be disappointed and ashamed of their enmity today, yá Allah!” He lifted his arms in the air, with a face full of self-pity. “And to those who doubt my manliness, yá Allah,” he continued, “prove to them that all power comes from You. Equip me with the strength to perform this test, to which I am maliciously being subjected!”

He closed the prayer by reciting Áyatul-Kursiyyu, a verse deemed by most clerics as the second most powerful in the Koran, one that is supposed to work wonders in solving all kinds of problems. Finally, Mr. Rafique raised his arms in the air, spat on his open palms, and rubbed them gently on his face. He murmured, “Ámin,” lay back on the couch, and resumed caressing his penis. Before long, Mr. Rafique was once again lost in his activity. But the muezzin’s voice, distant and echoing, again reminded Mr. Rafique that it was almost time for worship.

Ash-hadu al-láiláha illallá!, I bear witness there is no God besides Allah!

As if spurred on by the muezzin’s cries, Mr. Rafique’s penis suddenly began to harden. A minute later, it was as erect and solid as an unripe green plantain—crooked and curved toward his right thigh. Never before in his thirty-eight years had his penis been this hard; it was bewildering. He moved his butt sideways and spread his legs apart, so as to make room for his bulging crotch. Filled with an inner joy, a sudden desire almost drove him to walk into the bedroom and thrust his way into his wife. But a second thought advised him against it. He decided to wait until the test, “before the eyes of that old lafiree and the entire street. Then I will prove to my wife and all my enemies that I am a full-grown man.”

Then it dawned on Mr. Rafique that the morning worship was about to begin. In one movement he sprang from the couch and got into his prayer-robe, which concealed the bulge in his loose slacks. He slipped his feet into rubber slippers and sprinted out of the room and into the breezy, dew-scented dawn. Outside, a handful of lazy-boned roosters—that had just awaked—crowed. Mr. Rafique ran all the way to the mosque, reciting dhikr under his breath.

Zulaikha was already at the chief’s palace when Mr. Rafique arrived at four. She was accompanied by two middle-aged women from her clan, and they sat in the large, high-ceilinged lounge of the palace and waited for Zulai, who was being briefed by the alkali at the time of Mr. Rafique’s arrival. Mr. Rafique ignored the women. “Hypocrites,” he whispered, stealing a mean glance at the women. “That’s what they are, all of them! They act as if they like you, when all they are after is your downfall!” He found an unoccupied bench in the corner and sat to wait for his turn to be briefed by the chief’s judge.

The meeting with the alkali lasted no more than five minutes, and as Mr. Rafique walked through the foyer to the test room, he saw at least three dozen faces staring at him through the lounge’s many windows. He felt as if the entire city of Kumasi was watching him, eagerly awaiting his downfall. Ever so determined to redeem himself “in the eyes of my enemies,” and to “put them all to shame, by Allah,” Mr. Rafique ignored the stares and walked confidently into the long, wide corridor that led into the palace’s courtyard. He began to think that the presence of the lafiree would actually be to his advantage, because Zulaikha—who would not want to be perceived as a whore by the old woman—would lie still as she received him, in the exact manner expected of a married woman. The test suddenly appeared exciting to Mr. Rafique, who felt blood surging through his half-erect penis as he walked closer to the test room.

After leaving the alkali’s office, the old lady and Zulaikha had walked directly to the test room, located at the northern end of the palace compounds. The palace building was composed of three large rectangular houses, each with its own compound and courtyard and rooms numbering up to twenty-four. The test room had only one window that faced the almost-vacant courtyard. The interior of the room was brightly lit by a three-foot fluorescent tube. A double-sized kapok bed was tucked in the left corner of the room and a small table sat beside the bed. The invigilator’s chair was placed facing the bed, and in a way that the lafiree would be able to have a clear glimpse of what went on.

Mr. Rafique paused on reaching the door. “Assalaamu-Alaikum!” he said and waited for a response. The door was opened by the old woman, who peeked outside. Despite the freckles all over her wrinkled face, the lafiree looked healthy for her age. She was sixty-eight. Her gracious smile, which exposed two gaps in her front teeth, seemed fake to Mr. Rafique, who simply saw her as another of his enemies. Responding to her warm, inviting smile, he grinned maliciously.

“Come inside,” the lafiree said, though she was quite aware of Mr. Rafique’s animosity. “Call me when you are ready to begin. I will be waiting outside.” She smiled as she walked past him.

Mr. Rafique went into the test room.

Meanwhile, a large crowd had gathered outside the chief’s palace, to be part of this historical event—for such cases were brought only once in a blue moon to the chief. The older folks on the street claimed that of the few cases that had been brought before to the chief’s court, Mr. Rafique’s was the only one in which the couple had actually decided to go all the way and perform the test. In earlier cases, many husbands were said to have given their wives a divorce instead of having sex with them in front of a stranger. They stood in small groups, trading rumors about the impending test. A number of women—peanut, yam, and ginger-beer vendors—congregated near the palace gates, and a garrulous woman who claimed to be the best friend of Zulaikha’s mother captured their full attention with her story. “The girl’s mother did confide in me that the spiritualist they visited told them that the man’s thing had long been cooked and eaten by witches, at one of their weekly feasts,” the woman told her rapt audience. “And would you believe it if I told you that it was no one but his mother who took the thing to the feast? Which goes to show that she herself is a witch.” The woman lowered her voice. “No wonder she has been lying in a grass bed for nine years! But you didn’t hear this from me, O! Okay?” But the rumormonger then went on to describe to the vendors (in full, graphic details) how Mr. Rafique’s penis was cut, prepared, and eaten by the witches. The garrulous woman’s listeners gasped at every sentence and wondered how she came about the information. But none of them questioned her, afraid they may upset her.

Gathered near the vendors was a group of young men from about the age of sixteen to twenty-three. They, too, speculated about the test. One of them swore that he saw Mr. Rafique as he walked into the palace, and that “his prick looked as if it would tear itself right through his trousers. I tell you, man, that was how hard he was!” the young man said. Then he challenged his listeners to a bet of a hundred cedis each if they doubted his word that Mr. Rafique would pass the test. None of his listeners showed interest in betting, though they all rooted for Mr. Rafique, just as most of the women and girls on the street rooted for Zulaikha.

Zulai’s eyes met her husband’s as he entered the room. She had not seen him since that morning, when he left for work. She lowered her head and shifted uneasily toward the end of the bed. Mr. Rafique just stood there, not saying a word. Zulai lifted her face, and their eyes met again. He shrugged his shoulders and moved his eyebrows up and down, gesturing—or rather signaling—for them to begin what they had come to do. Zulaikha felt like a whore, a very cheap one for that matter, given that the entire city of Kumasi knew what was about to happen between her and her husband, and the fact that there were people outside the palace waiting for the results made her feel even cheaper. Hatred surged through her, not for Mr. Rafique, but for the streetfolks.

Then things took a rather unexpected, mysterious turn. Zulai bowed her head and suddenly felt a tenderness toward her husband and even blamed herself for all of their marital misfortune. “Our marriage has brought nothing but ruin to him; the disgrace that awaits him once the test is over. I wish I knew what to do to make him do well,” she said to herself. “Maybe I should tell the old woman that I was lying about his manhood.” But she also knew it was too late for her to alter what everyone on the street already knew—the horses are already lined up before the open field, and the derby cannot be canceled.

For Mr. Rafique’s part, looking at his estranged wife suddenly turned him soft, not between his legs, as one might have expected, but in his chest—in his heart. Why the hurt and the vendetta? Why not forgive everyone, so that you can move on with your life? Mr. Rafique couldn’t believe the thoughts he was having, and was perplexed as well as relieved by these questions.

Zulai, whose head was still bowed, wondered what was going on. She lifted her head to steal a glance at her husband, whose eyes were directed at Zulai. The two were suddenly face to face, eye to eye. And Mr. Rafique saw in his wife’s face all the qualities that had drawn him to her some eight months ago: her confidence, charm, and warm personality. As he looked at her large, seductive eyes, he felt an intense passion for her—it was a joyous, yet aching sensation, as he still couldn’t rid his mind of the pain of the past months. Mr. Rafique saw himself at an emotional crossroad, not knowing whether to “perform the test or to renounce everything—the test, sex in general, Zulai, the people of Zongo Street, and anything that had been in the way of my happiness.” Mr. Rafique, resolved to renounce it all, prepared himself to break the news to his wife and the old woman; he was renouncing the test, and thereby granting Zulai the divorce she had sought.

“By separating myself from the spell sex and love cast on people, I can continue to love her, spiritually, wholly, for the rest of our lives,” thought Mr. Rafique. He was just about to speak to Zulai when he heard the lafiree’s voice. “Are you two ready?”

“Yes,” Mr. Rafique answered calmly.

Zulaikha, utterly confused as to what would happen next, looked away from the door. The lafiree—who had expected to see a lot more than what she saw—seemed disappointed.

“I have changed my mind,” said Mr. Rafique, avoiding Zulaikha’s eyes.

“What are you talking about?” the old woman cried, grabbing his forearm.

“I don’t really know, to tell you the truth, but I won’t do it even if you leave the room.” He paused, glanced at his wife, and continued. “And I hereby grant her the divorce, one, two, three times!”

“Wait, Rafíku,” the old woman said. “Why do you want to do this to yourself? You know what the Zongo people will say, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do! But, for all I care, they can say whatever they want to say! My heart tells me I am doing a good thing. That’s what matters to me, not what the Zongolese think.” The lafiree shuddered at Mr. Rafique’s pronouncement. And Zulaikha, who one might have expected to rejoice, sat with eyes half-closed and brows tightly knit, as if she had just received tragic news. Mr. Rafique took a step toward Zulaikha. He lowered his head, and with his left palm on his chest extended his right arm to her, in a gesture of love and respect. “Ma-assalám,” he said politely and turned and began to walk out of the room. The women stared at each other and then at his back, still unable to make head or tail of what had taken place.

No sooner had Mr. Rafique walked through the palace gates than rumors started floating around that he had failed the manhood test. By the next day, there were half a dozen new stories, each one a slight variation, salted and spiced as it went from one mouth to the other. Some rumors claimed that Mr. Rafique had actually passed the test, but had soon afterwards pronounced the divorce, as a means of revenge on his wife. One swore that Mr. Rafique’s “pen had run out of ink” in the middle of the test. Another maintained that he had failed miserably, that he “wasn’t even able to get his thing up,” to begin with; and that he had never been a man, and that Najim was someone else’s son after all, a child forced on him by “his harlot-mother” because the real culprit had denied responsibility for the pregnancy.

The lafiree, who had apparently noticed the bulge in Mr. Rafique’s trousers when he entered the test room, defended him. She swore by her many years and the strength of her dead husband that “the young man Rafíku is a real man! I saw his trouser-front with my two eyes, and believe me I can tell a real man when I see one!”

So much for the old woman’s attempt to tell the truth of what she saw. The street’s rascals nicknamed her “Madam-real-manhood.” And to the chagrin of the poor lady, that nickname followed her to her grave.

Life went on as usual on Zongo Street after the dust of this drama settled. Zulaikha’s life didn’t change much after this event. A rumor soon circulated that she was the one who indeed killed Mr. Rafique’s penis, as he was virile and had a child before he met her. But Zulai wasn’t bothered by these assertions, and continued to live her life in the foolhardy manner she had always lived. She threw away the head scarf worn by married Muslim women and divorcées, exposing her permed hair to the world, and refused to be classified as a bazawara, a term that had taken on a derogatory meaning to describe a divorced woman—often seen either as someone with emotional baggage or as damaged goods that men should try to avoid at any cost. She didn’t marry again until six years later when she was twenty-five, and it was to a rich man in the capital city, Accra, over two hundred miles away.

Mr. Rafique’s life went on too, though in a rather different manner. After he left the palace he had headed straight to Apala Goma, the beer parlour down on Bompata Road. He felt as relieved as a donkey that has returned from a long journey and finally has the load it carried taken off its back. Mr. Rafique felt even more relieved and freer than the donkey, because “the animal never has the choice of carrying or not carrying a load in the first place . . . if it does, it will not carry the load at all. Who likes to suffer? But an ass is an ass, always at the mercy of its master, whereas I am my own master!” As Mr. Rafique contemplated in this manner, he stepped into the doorway of the drinking parlour. “Henceforth, I am going to live my life the way I see fit,” he thought while he waited for a double shot of straight gin, the first of many subsequent drinks that night. By the time Mr. Rafique left the bar, around a quarter past midnight, he was as drunk as a pagan celebrating the death of his grandfather. Fortunately for him, the rascals who had the habit of thrashing drunks at night had vacated the street. It surprised Mr. Rafique that as drunk as he was, his thoughts were still clear. He vividly recalled the incidents of the whole day, and grinned to himself.

On reaching the house, Mr. Rafique found the main gate locked from the inside. To avoid trouble between him and Mamman Salisu—Mr. Rafique’s self-righteous half brother who denounced his drinking with religious vehemence—Mr. Rafique proceeded further down the compound, to the small concretized prayer lot where the boys and young men in the neighbourhood slept on very hot nights. There was a common saying of the streetfolks: “Men who want to command respect should not sleep in the company of kids.” Mr. Rafique laughed and walked to the back of the lot, where straw mats were kept in an old oil drum. He selected a mat and spread it in an empty space between two young men who were both his nephews. After removing his shoes, he curled up on his right side. He closed his eyes and placed his hands between his legs. Mr. Rafique had never before experienced the inner peacefulness he felt at that moment. “They will not get me again! They can drown themselves if they don’t like the way I live!” he said to himself at that moment when sleep and consciousness cross paths in their tireless effort to bring Light and Darkness to humanity, to unite Joy with Suffering, to bring Inner Peace to the pulsing heart of Man.

CHRIS ABANI

• Nigeria •

from BECOMING ABIGAIL

AND THIS.

Even this. This memory like all the others was a lie. Like the sound of someone ascending wooden stairs, which she couldn’t know because she had never heard it. Still it was as real as this one. A coffin sinking reluctantly into the open mouth of a grave, earth in clods collected around it in a pile like froth from the mouth of a mad dog. And women. Gathered in a cluster of black, like angry crows. Weeping. The sound was something she had heard only in her dreams and in these moments of memory—a keening, loud and sharp, but not brittle like the screeching of glass or the imagined sound of women crying. This was something entirely different. A deep lowing, a presence, dark and palpable, like a shadow emanating from the women, becoming a thing that circled the grave and the mourners in a predatory manner before rising up to the brightness of the sky and the sun, to be replaced by another momentarily.

Always in this memory she stood next to her father, a tall whip of blackness like an undecided but upright cobra. And he held her hand in his, another lie. He was silent, but tears ran down his face. It wasn’t the tears that bothered her. It was the way his body shuddered every few moments. Not a sob, it was more like his body was struggling to remember how to breathe, fighting the knowledge that most of him was riding in that coffin sinking into the soft dark loam.

But how could she be sure she remembered this correctly?

He was her father and the coffin held all that was left of her mother, Abigail. This much she was sure of. However, judging by the way everyone spoke of Abigail, there was nothing of her in that dark iroko casket. But how do you remember an event you were not there for? Abigail had died in childbirth and she, Abigail, this Abigail, the daughter not the dead one, the mother, was a baby sleeping in the crook of some aunt’s arm completely unaware of the world. She looked up. Her father stood in the doorway to the kitchen and the expression she saw on his face wasn’t a lie.

“Dad,” she said.

He stood in the doorframe. Light, from the outside security lights and wet from the rain, blew in. He swallowed and collected himself. She was doing the dishes buried up to her elbows in suds.

“Uh, carry on,” he said. Turning abruptly, he left.

The first time she saw that expression she’d been eight. He had been drinking, which he did sometimes when he was sad. Although that word, sad, seemed inadequate. And this sadness was the memory of Abigail overwhelming him. When he felt it rise, he would drink and play jazz.

It was late and she should have been in bed. Asleep. But the loud music woke her and drew her out into the living room. It was bright, the light sterile almost, the same fluorescent lighting used in hospitals. The furnishing was sparse. One armchair with wide wooden arms and leather seats and backrest, the leather fading and worn bald in some spots. A couple of beanbags scattered around a fraying rug, and a room divider sloping on one side, broken. Beyond the divider was the dining room. But here, in the living room, under the window that looked out onto a hill and the savanna sloping down it, stood the record player and the stack of records. Her father was in the middle of the room swaying along to “The Girl from Ipanema,” clutching a photograph of Abigail to his chest. She walked in and took the photograph from his hands.

“Abigail,” he said. Over and over.

“It’s all right, Dad, it’s just the beer.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“Then it’s the jazz. You know it’s not good for you.”

But she knew this thing wasn’t the jazz, at least not the way he had told her about it on other countless drunken nights. That jazz, she imagined, was something you find down a dark alley taken as a shortcut, and brushing rain from your hair in the dimness of the club found there, you hear the singer crying just for you, while behind her a horn collects all the things she forgot to say, the brushes sweeping it all up against the skin of the drum. This thing with her father, however, was something else, Abigail suspected, something dead and rotting.

“Shhh, go to bed, Dad,” she said.

He turned and looked at her and she saw it and recognized what it was. She looked so much like her mother that when he saw her suddenly, she knew he wanted her to be Abigail. Now she realized that there was also something else: a patience, a longing. The way she imagined a devoted bonsai grower stood over a tree.

E. C. OSONDU

• Nigeria •

VOICE OF AMERICA

1.

WE WERE SITTING in front of Ambo’s provision store drinking the local gin ogogoro and Coke and listening to a program called Music Time in Africa on the Voice of America. We were mostly young men who were spending our long summer holidays in the village. Some of us whose parents were too poor to pay our school fees spent the period of the long vacation doing odd jobs in the village to enable us to save money to pay our school fees. Someone remarked on how clear the broadcast was, compared to our local radio broadcasts, which were filled with static. The presenter announced that there was a special request from an American girl whose name was Laura Williams for an African song and that she was also interested in pen pals from every part of Africa, especially Nigeria. Onwordi, who had been pensive all this while, rushed to Ambo the shopkeeper, collected a pen and began to take down her address. This immediately led to a scramble among us to get the address, too. We all took it down and folded the piece of paper and put it in our pockets and promised we were going to write as soon as we got home that night.

A debate soon ensued among us concerning the girl who wanted pen pals from Africa.

“Before our letter gets to her, she would have received thousands from the big boys who live in the city of Lagos and would throw our letters into the trash can,” Dennis said.

“Yes, you may be right,” remarked Sunday, “and besides even if she writes you, both of you may not have anything in common to share. But the boys who live in the city go to night clubs and know the lyrics of the latest songs by Michael Jackson and Dynasty. They are the ones who see the latest movies, not the dead Chinese kung-fu and Sonny Chiba films that Fantasia Cinema screens for us in the village once every month.”

“But you can never tell with these Americans, she could be interested in being friends with a real village boy because she lives in the big city herself and is probably tired of city boys.” Lucky, who said this, was the oldest among us and had spent three years repeating form four.

“I once met an American lady in Onitsha where I went to buy goods for my shop,” Ambo the shopkeeper said. He hardly spoke to us, only listening and smiling and looking at the figures in his Daily Reckoner notebook.

We all turned to Ambo in surprise. We knew that he traveled to the famous Onitsha market, which was the biggest market in West Africa, to buy goods every week; we could hardly believe that he had met an American lady. Again, Onitsha market was said to be so big that half of those who came there to buy and sell were not humans but spirits. It was said that a simple way of seeing the spirits when in the market was to bend down and look through your legs at the feet of people walking through. If you looked well and closely enough, you would notice that some of them had feet whose soles did not touch the ground when they walked. These were the spirits. If they got a good bargain from a trader he would discover that the money in his money box miraculously grew every day, but any trader who cheats them would find his money disappearing from his money box without any rational explanation.

“She was wearing an ordinary Ankara skirt and blouse made from local fabrics and had come to buy a leather purse and hat from the Hausa traders, she even exchanged a few words in Hausa with the traders. The way she said ina kwu ana nkwu was so sweet and melodious it was like listening to a canary singing.”

“She was probably a volunteer schoolteacher in one of the girls’ secondary schools around Onitsha and has lived here for so long she does not count as an American. We are talking of a real American girl living on American soil.” Jekwu, who said this, was Ambo’s adversary as a result of a dispute over an old debt and was permanently on the opposite side of any argument with Ambo.

“Well, what I was trying to say was that she may be interested in a village boy. Like the one I saw in Onitsha who was wearing a local dress and spoke Hausa, I am sure she will be interested in a village boy,” Ambo said and buried his head in his Daily Reckoner.

Someone ordered another round of ogogoro and Coke and we all began to drink and became silent as we thought our own thoughts. The moon dipped and everywhere suddenly became dark. One by one we rose and left for our homes.

2.

We were sitting in Ambo’s shop one evening when Onwordi swaggered in holding a white envelope with a small American stamp which had an eagle painted on it on its side. He waved it in our faces and was smiling. He called for drinks and we all rushed to him trying to snatch the envelope from his hands.

“She has replied,” he said, looking very proud like a man who had unexpectedly caught a big fish with a hook in the small village river. The truth was that we had all forgotten about the announcement on the radio program and I had actually washed the shorts in whose back pocket I had put the paper where I jotted down the address.

Onwordi began to read from the letter to us. The girl’s name was Laura Williams. She had recently moved with her parents to a farm in Iowa from a much larger city. She had one more year before finishing high school. She was going to take a class on Africa, Its People and Culture in the fall and was curious to know more about African culture. She wanted to know whether Onwordi lived in the city or in a village. She also wanted to know if he lived close to lots of wild animals like giraffes, lions and chimpanzees. And what kind of food did he generally eat, were they spicy? and how were they prepared? She also wanted to know if he came from a large family. She ended the letter with the phrase “Yours Laura.”

“Oh my God,” Lucky said, “this is a love letter. The American lady is searching for an African husband.”

“Eehen, why do you say that?” Onwordi said, clearly very excited about such a prospect. Though he had read the letter over a hundred times and was hoping for such a stroke of good fortune, he had not seen any hint of such in the letter.

“See the way she ended the letter, she was practically telling you that she was yours from now on.”

“I think that is the American way of ending letters,” Dennis said. He was the most well read amongst us, having read the entire oeuvre of James Hadley Chase and Nick Carter. He used big words and would occasionally refer to some girl in the village as a doll and some other as a dead beat floozy.

“But that is not even the main issue; she can become your girlfriend in due course if you know how to play your game very well. You could tell her that you have a giraffe farm and that you ride on the back of a tiger to your farm,” he continued.

“But she is soon going to ask for your photograph and you know we have no giraffes here and the last we heard of a lion was when one was said to have been sighted by a hunter well over ten years ago,” Jekwu said. “You should ask her to send you a ten dollar bill, tell her you want to see what it looks like and when she sends it we can change it in the ‘black market’ at Onitsha for one thousand naira and use the money for ogogoro.” Jekwu took a drink and wiped his eyes, which were misting over from the drink.

“If you ask her for money, you are going to scare her away. White women are interested in love and romance. Write her a love letter professing your love for her and asking for her hand in marriage, tell her that you would love to come and join her in America and see what she has to say to that,” Dennis said.

“Promise her you’ll send her some records by Rex Jim Lawson if she can send you Dynasty’s ‘Do Me Right,’ ” Lucky added.

“A guy in my school once had a female pen pal from India, she would ask him to place her letters under his pillow when he slept. At night she would appear in his dreams and make love to him. He said he always woke up in the mornings exhausted and worn out after the marathon lovemaking sessions in the dreams. We do not know how it happened, but he later found out the girl had died years back.”

We were all shocked into silence by Dennis’s story. Ambo turned up the volume of the radio and we began to listen to the news in special English. The war in Palestine was progressing apace, Blacks in South Africa were still rioting in Soweto and children were dying of hunger in Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Onwordi said nothing. He smiled at our comments, holding the letter close to his chest like somehow hugging a lover. He thanked us for our suggestions and was the first to leave Ambo’s shop that night.

3.

Two weeks later, Onwordi walked into the shop again smiling and holding an envelope with an American flag stamp close to his chest once more. We circled him and began to ask him questions. She had written once again. She thanked him for his mail. She was glad to know he lived in a village. She was interested in knowing what life was like in a typical African village. What kind of house did he live in, how did he get his drinking water? What kind of school did he attend and how did he learn to write in English? She said she would love to see his photograph, though she did not have any of hers that she could share with him at the present time. Postal regulations would not permit her to send money by mail but she could take a picture of a ten dollar bill and send it to him if all he really wanted was to see what it looked like. She also said she was interested in knowing about African Talking Drums, did they really talk? She said she looked forward to hearing from him again. We were silent as we listened to him and then we all began to speak at once.

“I was right about her being interested in you; otherwise why would she request for your picture without sending you hers?”

“This shows that women all over the world are coy. She was only being cunning. She really wants to know what you look like before she gets involved with you.”

“You should go and borrow a suit from the schoolteacher and go to Sim Paul’s Photo Studio in the morning when he is not yet drunk and let him take a nice shot of you so you can send it to her.”

“How about you borrow the schoolteacher’s suit and Ambo’s shirt and Dennis’s black school tie and Lucky’s silk flower patterned shirt and Sim Paul’s shoes and tell the schoolteacher’s wife to lend you her stretching comb to straighten your hair if you can’t afford Wellastrech cream; then you’ll be like the most handsome suitor in the folktale.”

“Who is the most handsome suitor?” Onwordi asked. “I have never heard that folktale.” Jekwu cleared his throat and took a sip from his ogogoro and Coke and began his story.

“Once in the land of Idu there lived a girl who was the prettiest girl in the entire kingdom. Her beauty shone like the sun and her teeth glittered like pearls whenever she smiled. All the young men in the kingdom asked for her hand in marriage but she turned them down. She turned down the men either because they were too tall or too short or too hairy or not hairy enough. She said since she was the most beautiful girl in the kingdom she could only marry the most handsome man. Her fame soon got to the land of the spirits and the most wicked spirit of them all, Tongo, heard about her and said he was going to marry her. Not only was Tongo the most wicked, he was also the most ugly, possessing only a cracked skull for a head. He was all bones and when he walked his bones rattled. Before setting out to ask for the hand of the maiden in marriage, Tongo went round the land of the spirits to borrow body parts. From the spirit with the straightest pair of legs, he borrowed a straight pair of legs and from the one with the best skin he borrowed a smooth and glowing skin. He went round borrowing body parts until he was transformed into the most handsome man there was. As soon as he walked into Idu on the market day and the maiden set eyes on him, she began following him around until he turned, smiled at her and asked for her hand in marriage. She took him to her parents and hurriedly packed her things, waved them goodbye and followed the handsome suitor.

“On their way to his home, which was across seven rivers and seven hills, she was so busy admiring his handsomeness that she did not grow tired and was not bothered by the fact that they were leaving all the human habitations behind. It was only when they crossed into the land of the spirits and he walked into the first house and came out crooked because he had returned the straight legs to their owner that she began to sense that something was wrong. And so she continued to watch as he returned the skin, the arms, the hair and the other borrowed body parts so that by the time they got to his house, it was only his skull that was left. She wept when she realized she had married an ugly spirit but she knew it was too late to return to the land of the living so she bided her time. When Tongo approached her for lovemaking, she told him to go and borrow all the body parts he had on when he married her. Because Tongo loved her headstrong nature, he agreed. Each time they made love he went round borrowing body parts and when they had a child, the child was a very handsome child and grew into the most handsome man.”

We all laughed at the story and advised Onwordi to work at transforming himself into the most handsome man. Ambo advised him to dress in traditional African clothes, that, from what he knew about white people, this was likely to appeal to her more.

“So what are you going to do?” we asked Onwordi, but he only smiled and held his letter tightly as he drank.

The next time Music Time in Africa was on the air, we had our pens ready to take down the names of pen pals, but the few that were announced were listeners from other parts of Africa and we all felt disappointed.

We waited for Onwordi to walk in with a letter but he did not for quite some time. We wondered what had happened. When he finally walked in after some days, he looked dejected and would not say a word to any of us.

“Hope you have not upset her with your last mail?” Lucky said. “You know white people are very sensitive and you may have hurt her feelings without knowing it.”

“This is why we told you to always let us see the letter before you send it to her; when we put our heads together and craft a letter to her, she will pack her things and move into your house, leaking roof and all. As the elders say, ‘When you piss on one spot, it is more likely to froth.’ ”

“But exactly what did you write to her that has made her silent?” Lucky asked. Onwordi was silent but he smiled liked a dumb man that had accidentally glimpsed a young woman’s pointed breast and ordered more drinks. “Or have you started hiding her mail from us? Maybe the contents are too intimate for our eyes. Or now that you have become closer has she started kissing her letters with lipstick-painted lips and sealing the letters with kisses?” Ambo teased. But nothing we said would make Onwordi say a word.

Onwordi walked into Ambo’s shop after a period of three weeks holding the envelope that we had become used to by now and looking morose. We all turned to him and began to speak at once.

“What happened, has she confessed that she has a husband or why are you looking so sad?”

“Has she fallen in love with another man? I hear white women fall out of love as quickly as they fall in love.”

“If you have her telephone number I can take you to the Post and Telegrams Office in Onitsha if you have the money and help you make a call to her,” Ambo suggested.

Onwordi opened the envelope and brought out a photograph. We all crowded around him to take a closer look. It was the picture of the American girl Laura Williams. It was a portrait that showed only her face. She had an open friendly face with brown hair and slightly chubby cheeks. She was smiling brightly in the photograph. Our damp fingers were already leaving a smudge on the face.

“She is beautiful and looks really friendly but why did she not send you a photograph where her legs are showing? That way you do not end up marrying a cripple.”

Onwordi was not smiling.

“So what did she say in her letter or have the contents become too intimate for you to share with us?”

“She says that this was going to be her last letter to me. She says she’s done with her paper and she did very well and illustrated her paper with some of the things I had told her about African culture. But she says her parents are moving back to the city, that the farm had not worked out as planned. She also said she has become interested in Japanese haiku and was in search of new friends from Japan.”

“Is that why you are looking sad like a dog whose juicy morsel fell on the sand? You should thank God for saving you from a relationship where each time the lady clears her throat you have to jump. Sit down and drink with us, forget your sorrows and let the devil be ashamed,” Jekwu said.

We all laughed but Onwordi did not laugh with us, he walked away in a slight daze. From that time onwards we never saw him at Ambo’s shop again. Some people who went to check in on him said they found him lying on his bed with Laura Williams’s letters and picture on his chest as he stared up into the tin roof.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

• Nigeria •

HALF OF A YELLOW SUN

THE IGBO SAY that a mature eagle feather will always remain spotless.

It was the kind of day in the middle of the rainy season when the sun felt like an orange flame placed close to my skin, yet it was raining, and I remembered when I was a child, when I would run around on days like this and sing songs about the dueling sun and rain, urging the sun to win. The lukewarm raindrops mixed with my sweat and ran down my face as I walked back to my hostel after the rally. I was still holding the placard that read Remember the Massacres, still marveling at my new—at our new—identity. It was late May, Ojukwu had just announced the secession, and we were no longer Nigerians. We were Biafrans.

When we gathered at the Freedom Square for the rally, thousands of us students shouted Igbo songs and swayed, river-like; somebody said that in the market outside our campus, the women were dancing, giving away groundnuts and mangoes. Nnamdi and I stood next to each other and our shoulders touched as we waved green dogonyaro branches and cardboard placards. Nnamdi’s placard read Secession Now. Even though he was one of the student leaders, he chose to be with me in the crowd. The other leaders were in front carrying a coffin with NIGERIA written on it in white chalk. When they dug a shallow hole and buried the coffin, a cheer rose and snaked around the crowd, uniting us, elevating us, until it was one cheer, until we all became one.

I cheered loudly, although the coffin reminded me of Aunty Ifeka, Mama’s half-sister, the woman whose breast I sucked because Mama’s dried up after I was born. Aunty Ifeka was killed during the massacres in the North. So was Arize, her pregnant daughter. They must have cut open Arize’s stomach and beheaded the baby first—it was what they did to the pregnant women. I didn’t tell Nnamdi that I was thinking of Aunty Ifeka and Arize again. Not because I had lost only two relatives while he had lost three uncles and six cousins. But because he would caress my face and say, “I’ve told you, don’t dwell on the massacres. Isn’t it why we seceded? Biafra is born! Dwell on that instead. We will turn our pain into a mighty nation. We will turn our pain into the pride of Africa.”

Nnamdi was like that; sometimes I looked at him and saw what he would have been two hundred years before: an Igbo warrior leading his hamlet in battle (but only a fair battle), shouting and charging with his fire-warmed machete, returning with the most heads lolling on sticks.

I was in front of my hostel when the rain stopped; the sun had won the fight. Inside the lounge, crowds of girls were singing. Girls I had seen struggle at the water pump and hit each other with plastic buckets, girls who had cut holes in each other’s bras as they hung out to dry, now held hands and sang. Instead of “Nigeria we hail thee,” they sang, “Biafra we hail thee.” I joined them, singing, clapping, talking. We did not mention the massacres, the way Igbos had been hunted house to house, pulled from where they crouched on trees, by bright-eyed people screaming Jihad, screaming nyamiri, nyamiri. Instead, we talked about Ojukwu, how his speeches brought tears to our eyes and goose bumps to our skin, how easily his charisma would stand out among other leaders—Nkrumah would look like a plastic doll next to him. “Imakwa, Biafra has more doctors and lawyers than all of Black Africa!” somebody said. “Ah, Biafra will save Africa!” another said. We laughed, deliriously proud of people we would never even know, people who a month ago did not have the “ours” label as now.

We laughed more in the following weeks—we laughed when our expatriate lecturers went back to Britain and India and America, because even if war came, it would take us only one week to crush Nigeria. We laughed at the Nigerian navy ships blocking our ports, because the blockade could not possibly last. We laughed as we gathered under the gmelina trees to discuss Biafra’s future foreign policy, as we took down the “University of Nigeria, Nsukka” sign and replaced it with “University of Biafra, Nsukka.” Nnamdi hammered in the first nail. He was first, too, to join the Biafran Army, before the rest of his friends followed. I went with him to the army enlistment office, which still smelled of fresh paint, to collect his uniform. He looked so broad-shouldered in it, so capable, and later, I did not let him take it all off, I held on to the grainy khaki shirt as he moved inside me.

My life—our lives—had taken on a sheen. A sheen like patent leather. We all felt as though it was liquid steel, instead of blood, that flowed through our veins, as though we could stand barefoot over red-hot embers.

The Igbo say—who knows how water entered the stalk of a pumpkin?

I heard the guns from my hostel room. They sounded close, as though thunder was being funneled up from the lounge. Somebody was shouting outside with a loudspeaker. Evacuate now! Evacuate now! There was the sound of feet, frenzied feet, in the hallway. I threw things in a suitcase, nearly forgot my underwear in the drawer. As I left the hostel, I saw a girl’s stylish sandal left lying on the stairs.

The air in Enugu smelled of rain and fresh grass and hope and new anthills. I watched as market traders and grandmothers and little boys hugged Nnamdi, caressed his army uniform. Justifiable heroism, Obi called it. Obi was thirteen, my bespectacled brother who read a book a day and went to the Advanced School for Gifted Children and was researching the African origin of Greek civilization. He didn’t just touch Nnamdi’s uniform, he wanted to try it on, wanted to know exactly what the guns sounded like. Mama invited Nnamdi over and made him a mango pie. “Your uniform is so debonair, darling,” she said, and hung around him as though he was her son, as though she had not muttered that I was too young, that his family was not quite suitable, when we got engaged a year ago.

Papa suggested Nnamdi and I get married right away, so that Nnamdi could wear his uniform at the wedding and our first son could be named Biafrus. Papa was joking, of course, but perhaps because something had weighed on my chest since Nnamdi entered the army, I imagined having a child now. A child with skin the color of a polished mahogany desk, like Nnamdi’s. When I told Nnamdi about this, about the distant longing somewhere inside me, he pricked his thumb, pricked mine, although he was not usually superstitious, and we smeared our blood together. Then we laughed because we were not even sure what the hell that meant exactly.

The Igbo say that the maker of the lion does not let the lion eat grass.

I watched Nnamdi go, watched until the red dust had covered his boot prints, and felt the moistness of pride on my skin, in my eyes. Pride at his smart olive uniform with the image of the sun rising halfway on the sleeve. It was the same symbol, half of a yellow sun, that was tacked onto the garish cotton tie Papa now wore to his new job at the War Research Directorate every day. Papa ignored all his other ties, the silk ones, the symbol-free ones. And Mama, elegant Mama with the manicured nails, sold some of her London-bought dresses and organized a women’s group at St. Paul’s that sewed for the soldiers. I joined the group; we sewed singlets and sang Igbo songs. Afterwards, Mama and I walked home (we didn’t drive to save petrol) and when Papa came home in the evenings, during those slow months, we would sit in the verandah and eat fresh anara with groundnut paste and listen to Radio Biafra, the kerosene lamp casting amber shadows all around. Radio Biafra brought stories of victories, of Nigerian corpses lining the roads. And from the War Research Directorate, Papa brought stories of our people’s genius: we made brake fluid from coconut oil, we created car engines from scrap metal, we refined crude oil in cooking pots, we had perfected a homegrown mine. The blockade would not deter us. Often, we ended those evenings by telling each other, “We have a just cause,” as though we did not already know. Necessary Affirmation, Obi called it.

It was on one of those evenings that a friend dropped by to say that Nnamdi’s battalion had conquered Benin, that Nnamdi was fine. We toasted Nnamdi with palm wine. “To our Future Son-in-Law,” Papa said, raising his mug towards me. Papa let Obi drink as much as he wanted. Papa was a Cognac man himself, but he couldn’t find Rémy Martin even on the black market, because of the blockade. After a few mugs, Papa said, with his upper lip coated in white foam, that he preferred palm wine now, at least he didn’t have to drink it in snifters. And we all laughed too loudly.

The Igbo say—the walking ground squirrel sometimes breaks into a trot, in case the need to run arises.

Enugu fell on the kind of day in the middle of the harmattan when the wind blew hard, carrying dust and bits of paper and dried leaves, covering hair and clothes with a fine brown film. Mama and I were cooking pepper soup—I cut up the tripe while Mama ground the peppers—when we heard the guns. At first I thought it was thunder, the rumbling thunder that preceded harmattan storms. It couldn’t be the Federal guns because Radio Biafra said the Federals were far away, being driven back. But Papa dashed into the kitchen moments later, his cotton tie skewed. “Get in the car now!” he said. “Now! Our directorate is evacuating.”

We didn’t know what to take. Mama took her manicure kit, her small radio, clothes, the pot of half-cooked pepper soup wrapped in a dishtowel. I snatched a packet of crackers. Obi grabbed the books on the dining table. As we drove away in Papa’s Peugeot, Mama said we would be back soon anyway, our troops would recover Enugu. So it didn’t matter that all her lovely china was left behind, our radiogram, her new wig imported from Paris in the case that was such an unusual lavender color. “My leather-bound books,” Obi added. I was grateful that nobody brought up the Biafran soldiers we saw dashing past, on the retreat. I didn’t want to imagine Nnamdi like that, running like a chicken drenched by heavy rain.

Papa stopped the car often to wipe the dust off the windscreen, and he drove at a crawl, because of the crowds. Women with babies tied to their backs, pulling at toddlers, carrying pots on their heads. Men pulling goats and bicycles, carrying wood boxes and yams. Children, so many children. The dust swirled all around, like a see-through brown blanket. An exodus clothed in dusty hope. It took a while before it struck me that, like these people, we were now refugees.

The Igbo say that the place from where one wakes up is his home.

Papa’s old friend, Akubueze, was a man with a sad smile whose greeting was “God Bless Biafra.” He had lost all his children in the massacres. As he showed us the smoke-blackened kitchen and pit latrine and room with the stained walls, I wanted to cry. Not because of the room we would rent from Akubueze, but because of Akubueze. Because of the apology in his eyes. I placed our raffia sleeping mats at the corners of the room, next to our bags and food. But the radio stayed at the center of the room and we walked around it every day, listened to it, cleaned it. We sang along when the soldiers’ Marching Songs were broadcast. We are Biafrans, fighting for survival, in the name of Jesus, we shall conquer, hip hop, one two. Sometimes the people in the yard joined us, our new neighbors. Singing meant that we did not have to wonder aloud about our house with the marble staircase and airy verandahs. Singing meant we did not have to acknowledge aloud that Enugu remained fallen and that the War Directorate was no longer paying salaries and what Papa got now was an allowance. Papa gave every note, even the white slip with his name and ID number printed in smudgy ink, to Mama. I would look at the money and think how much prettier than Nigerian pounds Biafran pounds were, the elegant writing, the bolder faces. But they could buy so little at the market, those Biafran pounds.

The market was a cluster of dusty, sparse tables. There were more flies than food, the flies buzzing thickly over the graying pieces of meat, the black-spotted bananas. The flies looked healthier, fresher, than the meat and fruits. I looked over everything, I insisted, as if it was the peacetime market and I still had the leisure that came with choice. In the end, I bought cassava, always, because it was the most filling and economical. Sickly tubers, the ones with grisly pink skin. We had never eaten those before. I told Mama, half-teasing, that they could be poisonous. And Mama laughed and said, “People are eating the peels now, honey. It used to be goat food.”

The months crawled past and I noted them when my periods came, scant, more mud-colored than red now. I worried about Nnamdi, that he would not find us, that something would happen to him and nobody would know where to find me. I followed the news on Radio Biafra carefully, although Radio Nigeria intercepted so often now. Deliberate jamming, Obi said it was called. Radio Biafra described the thousands of Federal bodies floating on the Niger. Radio Nigeria listed the thousands of dead and defecting Biafran soldiers. I listened to both with equal attention, and afterwards, I created my own truths and inhabited them, believed them.

The Igbo say that unless a snake shows its venom, little children will use it for tying firewood.

Nnamdi appeared at our door on a dry-aired morning, with a scar above his eye and the skin of his face stretched too thin and his worn trousers barely staying on his waist. Mama dashed out to the market and bought three chicken necks and two wings, and fried them in a little palm oil. “Especially for Nnamdi,” she said gaily. Mama, who used to make Coq au Vin without a cookbook.

I took Nnamdi to the nearby farm that had been harvested too early. All the farms looked that way now, raided at night, raided of corn so tender they had not yet formed kernels and yams so young they were barely the size of my fist. Harvest of desperation, Obi called it.

Nnamdi pulled me down to the ground, under an ukpaka tree. I could feel his bones through his skin. He scratched my back, bit my sweaty neck, held me down so hard I felt the sand pierce my skin. And he stayed inside me so long, so tightly, that I felt our hearts were pumping blood at the same rhythm. I wished in a twisted way that the war would never end so that it would always have this quality, this quality of nutmeg, tart and lasting. Afterwards, Nnamdi started to cry. I had never even considered that he could cry. He said the British were giving more arms to Nigeria, Nigeria had Russian planes and Egyptian pilots, the Americans didn’t want to help us, we were still blockaded, his battalion was down to two men using one gun, some battalions had resorted to machetes and cutlasses. “Didn’t they kill babies for being born Igbo, eh?” he asked.

I pressed my face to his, but he wouldn’t stop crying. “Is there a God?” he asked me. “Is there a God?” So I held him close and listened to him cry, and listened to the shrilling of the crickets. He said goodbye two days later, holding me too long. Mama gave him a small bag of boiled rice.

I hoarded that memory, and every other memory of Nnamdi, used each sparingly. I used them most during the air raids, when the screeching ka-ka-ka of the anti-aircraft guns disrupted a hot afternoon and everybody in the yard dashed to the bunker—the room-sized hole in the ground covered with logs—and slid into the moist earth underneath. Exhilarating, Obi called it, even though he got scratches and cuts. I would smell the organic scent, like a freshly tilled farm, and watch the children crawl around looking for crickets and earthworms, until the bombing stopped. I would rub the soil between my fingers and savor thoughts of Nnamdi’s teeth, tongue, voice.

The Igbo say—let us salute the deaf, for if the heavens don’t hear, then the earth will hear.

So many things became transient, and more valuable. It was not that these things had value, it was that the ephemeral quality hanging over me, over life, gave value to them. And so I savored a plate of cornmeal, which tasted like cloth, because I might have to leave it and run into the bunker, because when I came out a neighbor may have eaten it, or given it to one of the children.

Obi suggested that we teach classes for those children, so many of them running around the yard chasing lizards. “They think bombings are normal,” Obi said, shaking his head. He picked a cool spot under the kolanut tree for our classroom. I placed planks across cement blocks for chairs, a wooden sheet against the tree for a blackboard. I taught English, Obi taught Mathematics and History and the children did not whisper and giggle in his class as they did in mine. He seemed to hold them somehow, as he talked and gestured and scrawled on the board with charcoal (later he ran his hands over his sweaty face and left black patterns like a design). Perhaps it was that he mixed learning and playing—once he asked the children to role-play the Berlin conference; they became Europeans partitioning Africa, giving hills and rivers to each other although they didn’t know where the hills and rivers were. Obi played Bismarck. “My contribution to the young Biafrans, our leaders of tomorrow,” he said, glowing with mischief.

I laughed, because he seemed to forget that he, too, was a future Biafran leader. Sometimes even I forgot how young he was. “Do you remember when I used to half-chew your beef and then put it in your mouth so it would be easier for you to chew?” I teased. And Obi made a face and said he did not remember.

The classes were in the morning, before the afternoon sun turned fierce. After the classes, Obi and I joined the local militia—a mix of young people and married women and injured men—and went “combing,” to root out Federal soldiers or Biafran saboteurs hiding in the bush although all we found were dried fruits and groundnuts. We talked about dead Nigerians, we talked about the braveness of the French and Tanzanians in supporting Biafra, the evil of the British. We did not talk about dead Biafrans. We talked about anti-kwash, too, how it really worked, how many children in the early stages of kwashiorkor had been cured. I knew that anti-kwash was absolute nonsense, those leaves were from a tree nobody used to eat, they filled the children’s bellies but gave no nourishment, definitely no proteins. But we needed to believe stories like that. When you were stripped down to sickly cassava, you used everything else fiercely and selfishly—especially the ability to choose what to believe and what not to believe.

I enjoyed those stories we told, the lull of our voices. Until one day, we were at an abandoned farm wading through tall grass when we stumbled upon something. A body. I smelled it before I saw it, a smell that gagged me, suffocated me, a smell so bad it made me light-headed. “Hei! He’s a Nigerian!” a woman said. The flies rose from the bloated body of the Nigerian soldier as we gathered round. His skin was ashy, his eyes were open, his tribal marks were thick eerie lines running across his swollen face. “I wish we had seen him alive,” a young boy said. “Nkakwu, ugly rat,” somebody else said. A young girl spit at the body. Vultures landed a few feet away. A woman vomited. Nobody suggested burying him. I stood there, dizzy from the smell and the buzzing flies and the heat, and wondered how he had died, what his life had been like. I wondered about his family. A wife, who would be looking outside, her eyes on the road, for news of her husband. Little children who would be told, “Papa will be home soon.” A mother who had cried when he left. Brothers and sisters and cousins. I imagined the things he left behind—clothes, a prayer mat, a wooden cup used to drink kunu.

I started to cry.

Obi held me and looked at me with a calm disgust. “It was people like him who killed Aunty Ifeka,” Obi said. “It was people like him who beheaded unborn babies.”

I brushed Obi away and kept crying.

The Igbo say that a fish that does not swallow other fish does not grow fat.

There was no news of Nnamdi. When a neighbor heard from their son or husband in the front, I hung around their room for days willing their good fortune to myself. Nnamdi is fine, Obi said in a tone so normal I wanted to believe him. He said it often during those months of boiled cassava, months of moldy yams, months when we shared our dreams of vegetable oil and fish and salt.

I hid what little food we had because of the neighbors, wrapped in a mat and stuck behind the door. The neighbors hid their own food too. In the evenings, we all unwrapped our food and clustered in the kitchen, cooking and talking about salt. There was salt in Nigeria, salt was the reason our people were crossing the border to the other side, salt was the reason a woman down the road was said to have run out of her kitchen and tore her clothes off and rolled in the dirt, wailing. I sat on the kitchen floor and listened to the chatter and tried to remember what salt tasted like. It seemed surreal now, that we had a crystal saltshaker back home. That I had even wasted salt, rinsing away the clumpy bottom before re-filling the shaker. Fresh salt. I interspersed thoughts of Nnamdi with thoughts of salty food.

And when Akubueze told us that our old pastor, Father Damian, was working in a refugee camp in Amandugba, two towns away, I thought about salt. Akubueze was not sure, stories drifted around about so many people being at so many places. Still, I suggested to Mama that we go and see Father Damian. Mama said yes, we would go to see if he was well, it had been two long years since we saw him. I humored her and said it had been long—as though we still paid social calls. We did not say anything about the food that Caritas Internationalis sent to priests by secret night flights, the food that the priests gave away, the corned beef and glucose and dried milk. And salt.

Father Damian was thinner, with hollows and shadows on his face. But he looked healthy next to the children in the refugee camp. Stick-thin children whose bones stuck out, so unnaturally, so sharply. Children with rust-colored hair and stomachs like balloons. Children whose eyes were swallowed deep in their faces. Father Damian introduced Mama and me to the other priests, Irish missionaries of the Holy Ghost, white men with sun-reddened skin and smiles so brave I wanted to tug at their faces and see if they were real. Father Damian talked a lot about his work, about the dying children, but Mama kept changing the subject. It was so unlike her, something she would call unmannered if somebody else did it. Father Damian finally stopped talking about the children, about kwashiorkor, and he looked almost disappointed as he watched us leave, Mama holding the bag of salt and corned beef and fish powder he gave us.

Why was Father Damian telling us about those children? Mama shouted as we walked home. What can we do for them? I calmed her down, told her he probably just needed to talk to someone about his work and did she remember how he used to sing those silly, off-tune songs at church bazaars to make the children laugh?

But Mama kept shouting. And I too began shouting, the words tumbling out of my mouth. Why the hell did Father Damian tell us about those dying children, anyway? Did we need to know? Didn’t we have enough to deal with?

Shouting. A man walked up the street, beating a metal gong, asking us to pray for the good white people who were flying food in for the relief center, the new one they set up in St. Johns. Not all white people were killers, gong, gong, gong, not all were arming the Nigerians, gong, gong, gong.

At the relief center, I fought hard, kicking through the crowds, risking the flogging militia. I lied, cajoled, begged. I spoke British-accented English, to show how educated I was, to distinguish me from the common villagers, and afterwards I felt tears building up, as though I only had to blink and they would flow down. But I didn’t blink as I walked home, I kept my eyes roundly open, my hands tightly wrapped around whatever food I got. When I got food. Dried egg yolk. Dried milk. Dried Fish. Cornmeal.

The shell-shocked soldiers in filthy shirts roamed around the relief center, muttering gibberish, children running away from them. They followed me, first begging, then trying to snatch my food. I shoved at them and cursed them and spit in their direction. Once I shoved so hard one of the men fell down, and I didn’t turn to see if he got up all right. I didn’t want to imagine, either, that they had once been proud Biafran soldiers like Nnamdi.

Perhaps it was the food from the relief center that made Obi sick, or all the other things we ate, the things we brushed blue mold from, or picked ants out of. He threw up, and when he was emptied, he still retched and clutched at his belly. Mama brought in an old bucket for him, helped him use it, took it out afterwards. I’m a chamber pot man, Obi joked. He still taught his classes but he talked less about Biafra and more about the past, like did I remember how Mama used to give herself facials with a paste of honey and milk? And did I remember the soursop tree in our backyard, how the yellow bees formed columns on it?

Mama went to Albatross hospital and dropped the names of all the famous doctors she had known in Enugu, so that the doctor would see her before the hundreds of women thronging the corridors. It worked, and he gave her diarrhea tablets. He could spare only five and told her to break each in two so they would last long enough to control Obi’s diarrhea. Mama said she doubted that the “doctor” had even reached his fourth year in medical school, but this was Biafra two years into the war and medical students had to play doctor because the real doctors were cutting off arms and legs to keep people alive. Then Mama said that part of the roof of Albatross hospital had been blown off during an air raid. I didn’t know what was funny about that but Obi laughed, and Mama joined in, and finally I did, too.

Obi was still sick, still in bed, when Ihuoma came running into our room, a woman whose daughter was lying in the yard inhaling a foul concoction of spices and urine that somebody said cured asthma. “The soldiers are coming,” Ihuoma said. She was a simple woman, a market trader, the kind of woman who would have nothing in common with Mama before Biafra. But now, she and Mama plaited each other’s hair every week. “Hurry,” she said. “Bring Obi to the outer room, he can hide in the ceiling!” It took me a moment to understand, although Mama was already helping Obi up, rushing him out of the room. We had heard that the Biafran soldiers were conscripting young men, children really, and taking them to the front, that it had happened in the yard down our street a week ago, although Obi said he doubted they had really taken a twelve-year-old. We heard too that the mother of the boy was from Abakaliki, where people cut their hair when their children died, and after she watched them take her son, she took a razor and shaved all her hair off.

The soldiers came shortly after Obi and two other boys climbed into a hole in the ceiling, a hole that appeared when the wood gave way after a bombing. Four soldiers with bony bodies and tired eyes. I asked if they knew Nnamdi, if they’d heard of him, even though I knew they hadn’t. The soldiers looked inside the latrine, asked Mama if she was sure she was not hiding anybody, because that would make her a saboteur and saboteurs were worse than Nigerians. Mama smiled at them, then used her old voice, the voice of when she hosted three-course dinners for Papa’s friends, and offered them some water before they left.

Afterwards, Obi said he would enlist when he felt better. He owed it to Biafra and besides, fifteen-year-olds had fought in the Persian war. Before Mama left the room, she walked up to Obi and slapped his face so hard that I saw the immediate slender welts on his cheek.

The Igbo say that the chicken frowns at the cooking pot, and yet ignores the knife.

Mama and I were close to the bunker when we heard the anti-aircraft guns. “Good timing,” Mama joked, and although I tried, I could not smile. My lips were too sore, the harmattan winds had dried them to a bloody crisp during our walk to the relief center and besides, we had not been lucky, we got no food.

Inside the bunker, people were shouting Lord, Jesus, God Almighty, Jehovah. A woman was crumpled next to me, holding her toddler in her arms. The bunker was dim, but I could see the crusty ringworm marks all over the toddler’s body. Mama was looking around. “Where is Obi?” she asked, clutching my arm. “What is wrong with that boy, didn’t he hear the guns?” Mama got up, saying she had to find Obi, saying the bombing was far away. But it wasn’t, it was really close, loud, and I tried to hold Mama, to keep her still, but I was weak from the walk and hunger and Mama pushed past me and climbed out.

The explosion that followed shook something inside my ear loose, and I felt that if I bent my head sideways, something hard-soft like cartilage would fall out. I heard things breaking and falling above, cement walls and glass louvers and trees. I closed my eyes and thought of Nnamdi’s voice, just his voice, until the bombing stopped and I scrambled out of the bunker. The bodies strewn across the street, some painfully close to the bunker entrance, were still quivering, writhing. They reminded me of the chickens our steward used to kill in Enugu, how they flapped around in the dust after their throats had been slit, over and over, before finally laying quiet. Dignity dance, Obi called it.

I was bawling as I stared at the bodies, all people I knew, trying to identify Mama and Obi. But they were not there. They were in the yard, Mama helping wash the wounded, Obi writing in the dust with his finger. Mama did not scold Obi for being so careless, and I did not rebuke Mama for dashing out like that either. I went into the kitchen to soak some dried cassava for dinner.

Obi died that night. Or maybe he died in the morning. I don’t know. I simply know that when Papa tugged at him in the morning and then when Mama threw herself on him, he did not stir. I went over and shook him, shook him, shook him. He was cold.

“Nwa m anwugo,” Papa said, as though he had to say it aloud to believe it. Mama brought out her manicure kit and started to clip Obi’s nails. “What are you doing?” Papa asked. He was crying. Not the kind of manly crying that is silence accompanied by tears. He was wailing, sobbing. I watched him, he seemed to swell before my eyes, the room was unsteady. Something was on my chest, something heavy like a jerry can full of water. I started to roll on the floor, to ease the weight. Outside, I heard shouting. Or was it inside? Was it Papa? Was it Papa saying nwa m anwugo, nwa m anwugo. Obi was dead. I grasped around, frantic, trying to remember Obi, to remember the concrete things about him. And I could not. My baby brother who made wisecracks and yet I could not remember any of them. I could not even remember anything he said the night before. I had felt that I had Obi for a long, long time and that I did not need to notice him, really notice him. He was there, I felt, he would always be there. I never had the fear that I had about Nnamdi, with Obi, the fear that I may mourn someday. And so I did not know how to mourn Obi, if I could mourn Obi. My hair was itching and I started to tear at it, felt the warm blood on my scalp, I tore some more and then more. With my hair littered on our floor, I wrapped my arms around myself and watched as Mama calmly filed Obi’s nails.

There was something feverish about the days after Obi’s death, something malarial, something so numbingly fast that it left me free to not feel. Even Obi’s burial in the backyard was fast, although Papa spent hours fashioning a cross from old wood. After the neighbors and Father Damian and the crying children dispersed, Mama called the cross shabby and kicked it, broke it, flung the wood away.

Papa stopped going to the War Research Directorate and dropped his patriotic tie into the pit latrine, and day after day, week after week, we sat in front of our room—Papa, Mama and me—staring at the yard. The morning a woman from down the street dashed into our yard, I did not look up, until I heard her shouting. She was waving a green branch. Such a brilliant, wet-looking green. I wondered where she got that, the plants and trees around were scorched by January’s harmattan sun, blown bare by the dusty winds. The earth was sallow.

The war is lost, Papa said. He didn’t need to say it though, we already knew. We knew when Obi died. The neighbors were packing in a hurry, to go into the smaller villages because we had heard the Federal soldiers were coming with truckloads of whips. We got up to pack. It struck me how little we had, as we packed, and how we had stopped noticing how little we had.

The Igbo say that when a man falls, it is his god who has pushed him down.

Nnamdi clutched my hand too tight at our wedding. He did everything with extra effort now, as if he was compensating for his amputated left arm, as if he was shielding his shame. Papa took photos, telling me to smile wider, telling Nnamdi not to slouch. But Papa slouched, himself, he had slouched since the war ended, since the bank gave him fifty Nigerian pounds for all the money he had in Biafra. And he had lost his house—our house with the marble staircase—because it was declared abandoned property and now a civil servant lived there, a woman who had threatened Mama with a fierce dog when Mama defied Papa and went to see her beloved house. All she wanted was our china and our radiogram, she told the woman. But the woman whistled for the dog.

“Wait,” Mama said to Papa, and came over to fix my hat. She had made my wedding dress and sewn sequins onto a secondhand hat. After the wedding, we had pastries in a café and as we ate, Papa told me about the wedding cake he used to dream about for me, a pink multi-layered cake, so tall it would shield my face and Nnamdi’s face and the cake-cutting photo would capture only the groomsman’s face, only Obi’s face.

I envied Papa, that he could talk about Obi like that. It was the year Obi would have turned seventeen, the year Nigeria changed from driving on the left hand side of the road to the right. We were Nigerians again.

• Francophone Africa •

PATRICE NGANANG

•Cameroon •

THE SENGHOR COMPLEX

Translated by Cullen Goldblatt

Negro and Its Limits

I AM NOT a negro and I was never one. Whether it is written with or without a capital. The first time I heard the word used in relation to myself, I was twenty years old, and it was by then too late to become one. At the time I was in Germany. I was crossing the street, rushing a little, and bumped into a young man who threw out, “Neger.” This was in Saarbrücken. I remember, rather than being dumbfounded, I was merely surprised. I didn’t know the word had been addressed to me. I recount the episode here because Senghor, as we know from Jahn, translated Negritude into German as Negersein—the fact of being negro. Black, I was not that either until too late, and it too involved Germany, even though it was finally and especially the United States that taught me what black signifies. One could say that Senghor followed in his own way the path that I have just traced: the encounter with Germany, then the staggering discovery of African American texts, in particular the anthology The New Negro (1925), the impact of which on Senghor’s own Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre (1948) has not yet been adequately told. One method of verification: when I look in the mirror, I don’t see a black. Cameroonian, yes, that I am and will remain. I have defined myself as that since childhood, and even today, adult, and having lived on three continents, I always return to what is for me a simple fact—as well as a passport—despite it not being a commitment. There is a bit of a habit of giving all Africans the same history, whether they be Congolese, Nigerian, Senegalese, or Ghanaian, and regardless of their ages. The tendency is perhaps the reason why these defining preliminaries are important. That it be clear then: I never learned at school that my ancestors were Gaulois, but in fact quite the opposite; from very early on, I was made to feel the history of Cameroon in my body: my ancestors were Bamileké[1]—and that I was therefore “Bamileké,” a “bams,” “bami,” “gros bami,” “ngrafi,” “cochon,” “maquisard,” “bosniaque,” that I was one of “those people,” as one still says today in Cameroon. I did not read Mamadou et Bineta at school, even if, from my father, who taught me to write, I had a CMII workbook for practicing French. A workbook I never used because the reading passages were “too hard,” and did not help me resolve my own simple grammar problems. In short, the books I read at school, those that have stayed in my memory, had titles more along the lines of Afrique mon Afrique and J’aime mon pays, le Cameroun. It is simply that I was born in 1970, that symbolic year. And, according to my country’s, Cameroon’s, current statistics, more than half the population was born after 1970, that is to say, ten years after independence, and shares therefore, more or less, my past, and will perhaps understand the issues that I would like to articulate here.

It is that, for me, Senghor was always very complex. Perhaps because I never read him at school, but instead listened to him declaim his poems on the radio, especially his famous “Prière aux masques” and “Femme noire,” in that sandy voice that still gives me goose flesh. During the same period, I listened to Rabemananjara, the last word of whose poem “Madagascar” is engraved in my memory, a horse’s trot still reverberating in my ears: “Ma-da-gas-car.” The slow fall of a ping-pong ball. The reason is simple: radio broadcasting in Cameroon having few sound-tracks, the station would broadcast the few poems in its archives, then broadcast them, and broadcast them again. At five o’clock each evening, the national station. Even if his orchestral voice haunts me for a long time to come, Senghor will still appear complex to me. Perhaps because his collection of poems, Poèmes, published by Éditions du Seuil, is the first book that I bought with my own money, my economy of several weeks, augmented by my father so that I could reach the necessary sum of 1470 francs CFA. I bought Senghor of my own free will at the bookstore of Éditions Clé in Yaoundé in 1987—I know the date because I had by then bought a series of books, including Frantz Fanon’s Les Damnés de la terre and Peau noire, masques blancs; and my then-teacher and mentor who later became my reader, Dassi Fosso, had advised me to write the date of purchase on the book’s first page. Instead of writing the date, I drew the head of the Senegalese poet. Unlike my encounters with Césaire, whom we had read over and over in Lycée—Une Tempête in second year, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal in first, and La Tragédie du roi Christophe in terminale—Senghor was for me a private discovery. I discovered him because of his radio-broadcast voice, and between 1986 and 1988, I read my poems on the radio. So I sought out Senghor. Today, still, opening Poèmes, I realize that at that time, I always emphasized his postscript to Éthiopiques—“As the manatees drink at the source,” especially the last two paragraphs, which I underlined a lot in pencil. The underlining does not surprise me, because these two paragraphs begin with this, “We have thus arrived at the last question: the diction of the poem.” I underlined especially the sentences “This poem is a jazz score in which the performance is as important as the text,” “Thus poems can be recited—I don’t say declaimed—chanted or sang,” and “The poem is not finished until it is made to chant, to be speech and music at once.”[2] Rather practical reading, I would say, for a budding poet who, in a classic, looked for phrases like those of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet; useful reading for a young writer to whom the poetry of the spoken word had been revealed by the radio, but to whom no one had ever given a practical handbook. During those formative years, did I ever read Senghor in any way other than poetic? I don’t believe so.

Regarding writers of my generation, I usually say that Senghor is everyone’s grandfather; certainly this signifies that he is not my father, be-causeafter all it is I who “sought out” him, to emphasize Ralph Ellison’s term,[3] but above all, it means I always sought in Senghor’s work “the architecture of the poem,” the workmanship of poetic speech. And it is precisely here that Senghor’s writing is rich, very few African writers having reflected so continuously, alongside their writing, upon the instruments of their writing. Faced with the masterly tomes of his reflections, Liberté I, II, III, etc., criticism establishes distinctions of importance, rickety stairs which set the poet against the president, the essayist against the poet, the theoretician of “African Socialism” against that of the “francophonie”; however, most of the time, happily, criticism does not divide his poetry into phases, the poet having begun to publish only quite late in life, after thirty. For me, however, all these aspects come together in a kind of edifice—thus in a complex—that intrigues and fascinates me, but does not evoke in me the repulsion that propelled Mongo Beti to write in all seriousness in “Conseils à un jeune écrivain francophone” (Advice for a Young Francophone Writer): “I swear, without the least confusion, that I do not read the works of this ex-president-poet; whatever I say about him, is what friends have told me.”[4] I am a reader of Senghor, an observer of his complex, and when as an adult writer I passed from the diction of his writing to its meaning, from its meter to the labyrinth of his words, it became clear to me that the architecture of his poetry falls along four easily marked axes, all of which are obliterated before the simple fact that I am Cameroonian, that I am Bamileké, as I mentioned at the beginning. The axes are these: first of all, identity as an analytical category; self-definition within a binary relationship which places the subject in opposition to the object; an evasion of the political paradox; and, finally, a relationship of too great an intimacy with Gaullism—I mean Gaullism and not France. I will analyze these four axes—that of logic, that of épistèmè (in the Foucaultian sense), that of ethics, and that of politics—step by step, gaze always fixed on our own violent times—before I draw conclusions, primarily through my relations, of which I have already named two—those relations whom I did not seek out, but who were givens on my path. Next, I will speak from the tradition in which these axes have situated Cameroon, the place from which I choose both to write about this country and to read Senghor.

Cameroonian Readings: Logic and Épistèmè

This is a fact: Senghor’s poetry is made not only of form; it is also made of ideas, of concepts. It is similar to a structure of sand, cement, and water. Let us take identity. Is the fact that Senghor began to write during the triumphal period of racism—that of Nazism combined with colonialism—responsible for the clear grounding of his thought in the concepts of identity and belonging? He too was a son of his times, no doubt, and certainly it is still difficult to represent oneself other than in panegyrics: what it must have meant to be the first black agrégé[5]! Perhaps if one were to take into account what it meant to have been the only Black in the classroom, the only Black in the school, and perhaps even in the whole university, one could get some indication of what separates us from Senghor, we who were born in and grew up in Africa, and in a country where, without wanting it, we were in the majority. One would understand perhaps why a phrase like this one is closer to us in reality than are all the acts of Senghorian intellectual gymnastics: “a drive through the real Africa, among the real populace of the African world would have revealed that these millions had never at any time had cause to question the existence of their—Negritude.”[6] Of course the question would be this: what is the “real Africa,” but let us ask another first, for reference: who writes these lines? Soyinka, the mytho-poet of the road, who distinguishes Senghor’s theoretical gesture—the product “by and for a tiny elite”[7]—from the creative activity of a pulsating Africa whose genius Soyinka himself attempts to grasp through history and myth. And I remember too his smile when I asked him last year in Hanover, in what terms exactly had he put his phrase about the tiger, about how it does not proclaim its tigritude; I remember what he told me—after repeating his phrase and throwing in another reference to the eagle that does not proclaim its eagletude—that such preoccupations are known only to Francophone Africans. Is there a more polite way of saying that it is a non-issue? Notice, however, Soyinka’s own reference to the “real Africa”—does this term not raise the same question as Senghor’s Negritude? Truth in poetry is illusion, we know; however, is this issue not inscribed in the very logic of Negritude, in the fundamental essentialism of its quest? Too, Senghor speaks of Wesen, a concept he borrows from elsewhere, from German metaphysics and especially from ethnology, via his rather close reading of Leo Frobenius.

Negritude understood then as the Wesen of “the real Africa”? It is true that Senghor tries to escape into theory by creating, in contre-coup, the concept of the “Civilisation de l’universel,” perhaps most of all in order to counter Sartre’s dialectics, set down in Orphée noir, that define Negritude as “anti-racist racism,” and annihilates the concept with that same blow. Yet, does Senghor’s “universal” abstraction quell the trembling that our era feels faced with any and all essentialisms? The representation of Africa as essentially black—here then is a mind game, the staggering limits of which our era can judge each day and night. And we know that Senghor’s fertile mind had them to spare: “francité,” “africanité,” “arabité,” “germanité,” “latinité”—what says it better? By the same logic, we have watched the birth of “créolité,” “antillanité,” at the hands of Glissant, Chamoiseau, and their comrades. Blind in one eye, we are still applauding their creations. Have we not seen the same essentialism manufactured in Zaire, as well as in Togo, an “authenticité” that plunges these countries into diktat? Did we not see it, fraught with neologisms, among Ivorian intellectuals and writers, as Niangoran Porquet forged the “griotique” and then soon after “ivorité,” which put the country into flames and blood?[8] As for “congolité,” it has only just begun its macabre dance. We can laugh today at Senghor’s famous “negrité,” but we should cry before the numerous offspring of his logic. In reality, we no longer need to criticize his Negritude, as Soyinka does, by opposing it with a so-called “real Africa” (which itself owes much to the logic of Negritude; which is elsewhere now called “neo-negritudiniste,” according to another neologism, this time from Biodun Jeyifo). African history since the independences, our history, that is to say, is a better critic than any of us. Because, fundamentally, was Mugabe not armed with this vision of “negrité” when he took away the right of belonging to Africa from the whites of his country? Is Nadine Gordimer not an African writer? And, what of Coetzee then? We would ask Senghor. Moreover, since it is belonging we are speaking of, is it not for such a concept that the million Tutsis were massacred in Rwanda in 1994, subjected to the insane words “Go back to Egypt!” (the ancestry that Anta Diop had established between them, Ancient Egypt, and ourselves, having been turned against them). “Real Africa”? “Negrité”? A dangerous quest that has nonetheless damaged African intelligence in its essentialist pursuit of Negritude; a labyrinth where the masks of our by-the-kilo dead are dancing; a corridor of vampires in which even our most insightful writers are reeling drunkenly, beside our most cynical politicians! One day we will recognize this simple truth: Rwanda is the grave of Negritude. Until that day, we, children of violence and silence, are already living in this fact.

And from this evidence at the end of a long tunnel of night, Negritude appears to be rooted in an épistèmè that defines the African as other, fixing him or her in a binary relation (of conflict or of marriage, what does it matter?), of same and other, of subject and object. That this order of things is a heritage of Western thought, hundreds of contributions have already established; in their readings of Senghor’s complex, they have not desisted from suggesting the intellectual falseness of his famous “kingdom of childhood.” For us today, however, following Mudimbe’s analysis, the subject/object relationship appears to be directly inherited from the colonial order that created an infinite number of dichotomies, of which Negritude itself as “a discourse of alterity,” as Mudimbe’s phrase goes, is one of the most vulgar manifestations. It becomes clear that this relationship, inscribed as it is in all its glory by Sartre in his famous preface, Orphée noir, remains canonical. It is not only canonical in its logic (the figure of Narcissus is sufficient for that), but in its structure. It defines an idea’s house and thus opens or closes various passageways and their possibilities. “I is an other,” Rimbaud tells us; his phrase captures the paradoxical situation in which Negritude has placed us: I look at myself in the analytical mirror, the weapons Negritude has provided in my hands—and I see myself as the West’s other! At the same time as I recognize the distortion of my face, I discover the chains on my ankles that bind me to that familiar dichotomy—same and other. In short, following the lead of colonial discourse, Negritude has Africanized Africa. How does one escape the violence that for Mudimbe is a “panacea” and for me, who was born in Cameroon, is the revelation of a conceptual prison? The lack of movement that has followed this frightening discovery, as much as it stuns me, shows that Negritude, in its épistèmè, has left us in a profound transcendental fall before the zigzags of our history, by erecting ethnology’s assumptions inside of us; and leaving us unable, for example, to conceptualize the violence of which we are capable. It is incumbent upon us to create other paths, to see Negritude only as the prelude to a new order of intelligence, and to thus go beyond ethnology’s othering dualism; we must open our minds to the “patience of philosophy,” to begin to pay attention, to devote ourselves to the disassembling of our own reflection.

A question yet remains: why Senghor’s complex, why the épistèmè of Negritude, remains so pervasive for writers today? No one would dare ask Victor Hugo to pay tribute to the classical era which he had rejected! Mudimbe, all the while drawing our attention to Ethiopian sources of knowledge, Das Buch der weisen Philosophen nach dem Aethiopischen Untersucht (1950), Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalum (1904), Das Leben und die Sentenzen des Philosophen Secundus des Schweigsamen (1887), opens a way for thought and imagination that, from Apuleius’s Metamorphoses to Saint Augustine’s Confessions, traces the possibilities of a kind of knowledge that is fixed on African terrain, far from the paradigm of race—but this possibility is not yet taken seriously today, erased as it is under the discursive hegemony of the ethnographic épistèmè. Let us not waste our time analyzing why this path was not taken: the history of ideas is always linked to that of power. Today the face of power in Africa is difficult to imagine without the hand of the West. It is strange, though, that embraced by the dialectic of subject/object, we would have been blind for so long in the face of the teleology of violence which has, since the independences, duped our countries—in Congo, in Bamileké country, and culminating first in Biafra, well before Rwanda, and today in Darfur; fixed in the épistèmè inherited from Negritude, African thought has been absent and asleep for too long, ignoring the explosive root, which, like a dangerous snake, runs through its land, and sporadically distorts its surface with seas of blood and millions of the dead. Conceived in a discursive system which places the African subject opposite the West and which elsewhere makes it into an object (and we would like to say, exonerates itself of any responsibility), African thought would not have suspected that such violence would make an African peasant cut his brother’s neck with a machete, or stuff a banana tree branch in the vagina of his African sister, because “to kill is less work than to farm,” as the genocidal peasants said in Hatzfeld’s revelatory book; it would not have suspected the profound dehumanization that means the African calls his brother or sister, “cockroach”—or “frog,” “bosnian,” as happens in Cameroon. The Rwandan genocide is more than a warning to the hoax-makers of the “kingdom of childhood.” We have already said it, but let us repeat it: Rwanda is the grave of Negritude.

Cameroonian Readings: Ethics and Politics

Today one can no longer think as if the genocide in Rwanda had not occurred. Genocide is, in essence, a State turned against its citizens, whom it annihilates. For us, then, if “Africa does not exist,” as the Togolese Kossi Efoui said so well, it is because we were born in independent states, and our definition of citizen, and therefore of writer, is always situated in relation to this order of things. Our perspective on Senghor is, from this point of view, perhaps similar to the one from which Ludwig Borne viewed Goethe and which prompted him to write: “Goethe was always a servant of despots; his satire only deals skillfully with the small ones, while he wooed the big ones.”[9] Harsh words which share the spirit of those Mongo Beti reserves for the poet-president. Their perspective, however, is our own, that of a citizen. It is from this point of view—citizen—that we are able to find Senghor’s impossible paradox surprising. Let us clarify that we understand paradox in the purely etymological sense that prompts us to discover the neighbor—doxa, order. Here it is appropriate to remember Njabulo Ndebele’s surprise, formulated into a question he posed at a symposium in Lagos in 1987, and which Alain Ricard relays to us: “Why are they so right-wing, these Francophones?[10] The answer, which Ricard searches for everywhere but in the evidence, is meanwhile inscribed in the terms of the question itself, in the word “Francophone,” which is, as one remembers, a piece of the Senghorian inheritance. But perhaps we should again read Mongo Beti, who was absent from the symposium in question, an event where the Francophone presence was dominated by the dual faces of Ahmadou Kourouma and Sony Labou Tansi: “M. Senghor did not fear, since then, supporting books which presented militants or men of politics. It is true that these works expressed, always more or less hypocritically, approval of the African powers which were themselves favorable to the Western power dear to M. Senghor.”[11] Ndebele, whose thinking was rooted in that of Beti, was surprised at the old relationship between art and politics, and the claim to an apolitical place for the artist which Senghor (who, one forgets too easily, never escaped the realm of politics from the time of his arrival in Paris in 1928) was suspected of having made in his defense of L’Enfant noir. In their shared concerns, however, Ndebele and Beti question less the apolitical place of art, because such a place does not exist (and certainly not in the backyard of the poet-president), than they question the ethics of the writer in the political: the writer’s choice, and therefore, the morality of her art.

The State or the citizen? We would say that, as President, Senghor the poet was de facto the first citizen of his country; but perhaps we would have enough shame to recognize a sophism in this response, because the place of writing, as we saw, even if that writing was black, would always be anchored firmly in the pocket of the State. A verse reveals a vision of the world as much as a grammar, and that of Senghor shows us a symbiotic relationship between the writer and his State. And so the geographies of lost civilizations align themselves appropriately (read: La Civilisation Nègre); and dot our field of vision with their infinite repetitions—“Kingdoms” of “Ancestral Africa” (read: Kingdom of Sine)—and the heroes of a mythical Africa multiply, among which the personage of “Prince” (read: Chaka) illuminates our tragedy, as if he had not committed genocide, this dear Chaka, exonerated by his singular blackness; and now add the face of power, of force: the energy is expressed by the “warrior” and the “athlete,” and the “griot” (read: “Djali”) provides the more enigmatic face. Wrote Senghor: “I say it clearly: I am Djali.”[12] The gesture of his celebratory poetry is regal: it does not know self-doubt; it is not attacked by this line which ceaselessly gnaws at the heart of our spirit and makes the stinking garbage cans of our lives crumble before us. On the contrary, we see the Senghorian poem elaborating upon a philosophical tradition that, via ethnophilosophy, like that of Alexis Kagame, searches for the “philosophical Bantu,” but leaves us with no guard against the genocides which torpedo our countries; we see the emergence of a historiography which, in the words of Hampaté Bâ (“when an old man dies, a library burns”), has clearly chosen its camp (that is, between that of the citizen and that of the State), and, in turning towards the Africa of the elders on a continent which is again selling its youth, we see the unfolding of an Africa that, through “Djali,” has chosen to rewrite the continent’s history to satisfy the “virile” powerful, this in an Africa that belongs to our mothers, wives, and sisters as well; we see a vision of writing which allows no place for the thousand gangrenes that gnaw the continent’s very heart—today in the form of AIDS, which ravages its young people, and condemns its future to malaria. Standing before the expanse of a continent that he wants blackened, faced with the sporadic multiplying of cadavers, and the raging of the virus, the uncontrollable soaring of famine, and the culture of genocidal impunity, “Djali” says “Greatness” and, of necessity, invents it to the satisfaction of his king. The evasion of our history’s paradox is a refusal to see an Africa which is obstinately killing itself; and this suicide lies as much a condemnation of the majorities of the population (women, young people, the poor . . .) to powerlessness as it lies in the plunging of the continent’s intelligentsia into the “ancestral past,” when the real stakes of the continent—its young people, we say it daily—is its future. The patron of “Djali” is the king, the “Prince”; now his power feeds on violence. “Universities today, particularly in Africa, have become the modern patrons for the artist,”[13] Ngūgī wa Thiong’o reminds us. Why, more than the Senghorian doxa, is it the citizen-place of writing that emerges from these words, that nudges our intelligence? Perhaps, because, in the meantime, we learned to see the path to our safety in our empowerment—empowerment which yields all knowledge—and thus, to situate the promise of our recovered dignity less in celebration than in skepticism.

The choice of skepticism over celebration is already a politics of writing. The most rectilinear Senghorian verse, in its choice of celebration and of “Djali” as the symbol of poet, is also itself political. We mean political in the sense of articulating the foundational language of a community. For Senghor, the mortar of community is fundamentally friendship. Few poets have cultivated friendship to the extent Senghor did, his relationship with Césaire being one of the most mythic. Senghor’s poem is thus often epistolary, addressed to a friend; who, though, would have us read the letters of his actual exchanges with all these people? What editor would have the good fortune to publish the Correspondances complètes of Senghor? We are still waiting with his poems in our hands, poems that are little islands expressing form as much as idea, idea that is a labyrinth of human relationships. The central trait of this subterranean friendship in his poem, even judged only by its effect, is the intel-ligentmarriage between private and public. Some names leap to mind here—among them Pompidou, De Gaulle, and Eboué in particular—and convey a certain orientation, a manner of organizing the political, and express in their way a fidelity to a tradition, at the same time as they reveal a Senghor who was Gaullist from the very beginning, even in those times when Senegal, and the AOF (French West Africa), was not. It would take too many words to sum up a political adventure lasting close to forty years, with all its contradictions, its resumptions, its erasures, its successes, its promises and elegies, among which the Senegalese democracy, the oldest of the continent, is certainly the most celebrated. Indeed, one would need too many words to capture a friendship that was formed as much on the benches of Lycée Louis-le-Grand and in the prison camps of Germany, as in the corridors of the French National Assembly, before revealing itself in the total subjugation of a country, Senegal, to French interests. For us, meanwhile, understood from the red earth of Bamileké country—which, in 1940, added its sons to the forty thousand men which a resisting France received from the AEF (American Expeditionary Force) in order to constitute the army it needed to free itself from under the German boot, and which harvested the flowers of rage between 1956 and 1970—understood from this rebellious land that in 1958 aligned itself with the tradition of Sékou Touré’s “No,” deciding, logically, to go “into the bush” under the leadership of Um Nyobé, Ernest Ouandie, Félix Moumié, the vengeful shadow of Gaullism covers Senghorian friendships with a mantle of blood. Considering the war of liberation that then shook Cameroon, the voices of which are already rising, fortunately, to tell of the genocide and to accuse France[14] directly, the existence of the “amitié francafricaine” (what France called the “Union Française,” the “Francophonie” as Senghor would soon have it, or “Françafrique” as François-Xavier termed it) is truly remarkable.

One would ask oneself at times why French-speaking Africans have this relationship of “fraternelle amitié” with their former colonizer, a relationship which indeed surprises observers, France being, with its fourteen thousand soldiers stationed in Africa—of which twelve hundred are in Senegal—the Western country which has by far the largest number of military bases on the continent today, and which, long after the time of the French Colonial Army, still refuses to “decolonize itself,”[15] as Mbembe says. Always, Senghor will be at the center of this surprise, less as an enigma than as the epitome of a way of doing politics; the legacy of a poet of the “amitié francafricaine.” Perhaps it is necessary, in the tradition of W.E.B. Du Bois, of whom Senghor was a fervent reader, and who in his famous The Souls of Black Folk asks, “Would America be America without her Negro people”; perhaps it is necessary to begin to ask ourselves what France would be without Africa; and especially what France would be without its African front, and thus, without the “amitié africaine” of these straw men, Francophonie having become today the ultimate bastion of tyranny in Africa. Certainly Senghor can do nothing about the way of doing politics, although he himself began the tradition. Let us look for a moment on the faces of infamy: Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea with his twenty-seven years; Paul Biya, President of Cameroon, who last November could count twenty-four years in power and promised his country twenty years more; President of the Republic of Congo, Sassou Nguesso, is now in his twenty-fourth year in power; Ben Ali of Tunisia, who counts twenty-one years; Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso with nineteen years; but also the President of Chad, Idriss Déby, who with sixteen years in power has just won in elections which he did not even need to rig, it being a given that he also ran the campaign against himself. Let us stop at sixteen years, because it is the limit of a generation, African young people making up more than half of its population, the very ones that French soldiers killed in front of the Hôtel Ivoire in Abidjan on November 9, 2004. But we must add to this shameful list the names of those budding potentates, the sons who captured power upon the death of their father: Kabila Jr. of the RDC, then Faure Gnassingbé, who proved last year that a Constitution is not worth the paper it is written upon, and took the presidential seat, which his father had occupied for thirty-nine years, at gunpoint. How to express further the hideous face of “l’amitié francafricaine,” if not by adding that, in supporting Habyarimana—President of Rwanda before 1994, “ami de la France” in power for twenty-one years—Paris would find itself implicated in a genocide?

Beyond Senghor: The Lesson of the Falls of Metche

Oh, it was not the first time. For us, Rwanda was a metaphor that articulated the limits of the politics of our time: a revelation of the teleology of violence that turned our path into a volcano of blood. I remember, during a reading tour in March 2005 in Bamileké country, on the road to Bafoussam in western Cameroon, meeting a procession of men and women going towards the Falls of Metche. The place was covered with kola nuts, with palm oil and pieces of broken calabash, the components of all Bamileké sacrifices. Intrigued by their dignified gestures, which, if I was a son of Senghor, I would connect to evidence of “Ancestral Africa,” I asked them what was happening. “We’ve just made offerings to our relatives killed by the French in ’60.” They were my age, these people, and thus, like me, had not lived through those years, but their actions displayed the depth of their conviction. “Why?” I asked. Their response: “So that they rest in peace.” My compatriots thus rewrote our history, in its deepest paradox, because the ones whom they wished would rest in peace were shot down by people such as a certain Colonel Lamberton, who was not afraid to say that Bamilekés “are an irritating pebble” in the foot of Cameroon. The shrieking and clattering of bullets covered by the sound of waterfalls, the bodies thrown into the Metche river, all had been forgotten. They were thus “unburied dead” in a country which believes if a corpse is not returned to the earth, its soul will eternally haunt the sky of the living. The fact that since 2005 an Association of Cameroonian Veterans (ASVECAM) has formed, reuniting more than two hundred “former maquisards” from the leaden years of 1956-1970, is more than just laudable. It bears the accusation of French genocide in Cameroon, and it bears the demand for reparations and for recognition of the historic importance[16] of their combat, so potent in the silence of our families. Fortunately, Mbembe’s research on the maquis[17] of the Sanaga-Maritime,[18] and, before him, the anger of Mongo Beti in Main basse sur le Cameroon (in our time banned in France), exposed the criminal dimensions of the French presence in Cameroon’s lower country and in the region of my origins, in Bamileké country. The importance of this history, of this mute violence, is not only that it is the root of Cameroon’s present, those killed being those who first demanded the independence of and reunification of Cameroon—a fact that still defines our country—the importance of this history also derives from it being the expression of the Cameroonian people’s critical intelligence; it is at the foundation of what I called a “Cameroonian reading” of Senghor.

It is this Cameroonian reading that guided the four axes of my analysis of the “Senghor complex,” and which, even if it is at the source of Cameroonian literary, philosophical, and historiographical inspiration, is not yet acknowledged in school curriculum, is in fact entirely absent from the official history and pedagogy of Cameroon. Because, if this critical intelligence teaches us the truth, then my country’s official history, since 1914 at least, is a cloth woven of appalling lies. Such a critical intelligence reminds us that Cameroon, after 1916 with the German defeat, was “la colonie de personne,”[19] let alone that of France, but was a country placed by the League of Nations under “a joint mandate,” and by its successor the United Nations under the “double tutelage” of England and France. Such critical intelligence also informs us that, along with Algeria, Cameroon under French tutelage obtained its independence through bloodshed, and that Cameroon under English tutelage was included in Nigeria and independent in 1961; so the “Cameroon” we know obtained its independence twice—from France and from England. This intelligence reminds us that those who obtained Cameroon’s independence under French tutelage, Ahidjo and his clique, were not beaten for it, worse, they were formally opposed to independence, and thus were rewarded for a battle that they had not fought, because of the simple fact of their “fraternelle amitié” with France. This intelligence also tells us that Cameroon today is not entirely “francophone,” but instead is “bilingual.” These rewritings of the country’s history—and we must understand these to include the work of Mongo Beti as well as that of Bernard Fonlon, Marcien Towa, Jean-Marc Ela, Eboussi Boulaga, and of course that of Achille Mbembe—have in the meantime hollowed a deep intelligence from which today it is easy to write, when one is a Cameroonian author.

To think with this critical intelligence means to be anti-Senghorian; the logic of the Cameroonian reading which stems from it is necessarily opposed to Senghor’s essentialist logic, to his “servitude,” as Marcien Towa names it so precisely, because the character of this reading is full of eruptive passion and reverence for the unburied dead at the Falls of Metche, and for all the dead “Maquis.” The épistèmè of this reading disrupts Senghor’s ethnographic dualism using a radical critique of ethnophilosophy and Eboussi Boulaga’s work on the “bantou problematique.” And the ethics of such a reading distances it from the language of “Djali” when, in the company of Jean-Marc Ela, “the Priest in the Bou-Bou,” we look for knowledge in what is whispered, for wisdom in the fragile space of “political beginners” and for “empowerment” in the ways that “little people” do things; when in these ways we search for truths, for the logics of history “from the bottom.” Its politics, finally, clearly describes “l’amitié francafricaine” as the straitjacket of all Cameroonians who are, and want to think of themselves as, “bilingual,” in the tradition of Bernard Fonlon, if there is not to be another undertow of the “postcolony,” as Achille Mbembe names it. Yet these Cameroonian disruptions of Senghor’s complex would be meaningless if we did not listen to them in the interstices of this time of violence, which since 1956 (the year which began the insurrection of the UPC (Union of the Peoples of Cameroon) and continued until 1970 (the year when Ouandie was stopped) has opposed the intellectual tradition that Cameroon claims as its critical intelligence with the official statements of a puppet regime, no, rather a regime imposed by France and its henchmen; if these disruptions are not read with the knowledge of the genocidal root at the heart of Cameroon, genocide which, they will one day say, is our Saint Bartholomew; if they are not read in close relation to the thousands of unburied dead whose absent tombstone is still today the constitutive stone of Cameroon. Many times we have said that Rwanda is the grave of Negritude. With genocide in our land, in the country of my origins, Bamileké country, it is difficult to pull words from us, words that for Senghor amounted only to applause, because we know that villages—my father’s among them, Bazou—were razed. We know houses were treated with napalm, that thousands of people were killed, and that still today, corpses turn over inside our parents’ silence, all as in the numerous enmities that strangely compose the matrix of Cameroonian peace. How to write the place of the “Civilisations Ancestrales” when we have the violence and silence of forty years to manage, and what is our country’s State that it has orchestrated this violence and this silence? When we hold in our hands the falsification of a million lives erased by the logic of the Cameroonian State, which does not only usurp our history, but also imposes itself as the historian of our lives, which denies the dead who still swim in our rivers, and which has forbidden us for forty years to speak their names in public? When we discover that the maquisards—who were dead at the time of our birth, but who inspire us because they died for our red land—when we discover that when they were buried it was inside reinforced concrete? For me, the difficulty with Senghor will always be that, in the thousand pages of his writings, despite the length of his life and the reach of his voice, he did not demand justice for the dead who haunt our lives, for those who endure, believing themselves hidden, but sat down too quickly beside their assassins. More than his surfeit of writing, it is his silence that for me remains complex.

ALAIN MABANCKOU

• Congo •

from BROKEN GLASS

LET’S SAY THE boss of the bar Credit Gone Away gave me this notebook to fill, he’s convinced that I—Broken Glass—can turn out a book, because one day, for a laugh, I told him about this famous writer who drank like a fish, and had to be picked up off the street when he got drunk, which shows you should never joke with the boss, he takes everything literally, when he gave me this notebook he said from the start it was only for him, no one else would read it, and when I asked why he was so set on this notebook, he said he didn’t want Credit Gone Away just to vanish one day, and added that people in this country have no sense of the importance of memory, that the days when grandmothers reminisced from their death beds were gone now, this is the age of the written word, that’s all that’s left, the spoken word’s just black smoke, wild cat’s piss, the boss of Credit Gone Away doesn’t like ready made phrases like “in Africa, when an old person dies, a library burns,” every time he hears that worn out cliché he gets mad, he’ll say “depends which old person, don’t talk crap, I only trust what’s written down,” so I thought I’d jot a few things down here from time to time, just to make him happy, though I’m not sure what I’m saying, I admit I’ve begun to quite enjoy it, I won’t tell him that, though, he’ll get ideas and start to push me to do more and more, and I want to be free to write when I want, when I can, there’s nothing worse than forced labour, I’m not his slave, I’m writing this for myself as well, that’s why I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes when he reads these pages, I don’t intend to spare him or anyone else, by the time he reads this, though, I’ll no longer be a client of his bar, I’ll be dragging my bag of bones about some other place, just slip him the document quietly before I go, saying “mission accomplished.”

I’ll start by describing the row that broke out when the bar first opened, explain a bit about the sufferings of the boss, some people wanted to see him taking his final breath, drawing up his Judas testament, it began with the Church people, who, seeing their Sunday congregations had dwindled, launched a holy war, flinging their Jerusalem bibles at the door of Credit Gone Away, saying if things went on like this it would be the end of Sunday mass in our quartier, there’d be no more trances during the singing, no more Holy Spirit descending on the Trois-Cents, no more crispy black wafers, no more sweet wine, the blood of Christ, no more choir boys, no more pious sisters, no more candles, no more alms, no more first communion, no more second communion, no more catechism, no more baptism, no more anything, and everyone would go straight to hell, and after that the Weekend-and-bank-holiday-cuckolds Club waded in, claiming it was largely due to Credit Gone Away that their wives no longer cooked for them properly, or respected them as wives did in the old days, they said respect was important, that no one respects a husband like a wife does, that’s always been the way of things, ever since Adam and Eve, and as good family men they saw no reason to change, let their wives continue to grovel and cringe, to follow men’s orders, all this they said, but it had no effect, and then we had threats from some old club of ex-alcoholics, who’d gone over to water, Fanta, Pulp’Orange, syrup, Senegalese jungle juice, grapefruit juice and contraband Cola-lite traded for hashish in Nigeria, a righteous band of brothers who set siege to the bar for forty days and forty nights, but again all in vain, and then there was some mystical action from the guardians of traditional moral values, the tribal leaders with their gris-gris, which they flung at the door of the bar, casting curses at the boss of Credit Gone Away, summoning up the voices of the dead, bringing forth prophecies, saying the barkeeper would die a slow and painful death, they would nudge him gently towards his own scaffold, but that didn’t work either, and finally there was direct action from a group of thugs who were paid by some old codgers from the quartier, nostalgic for the days of the Case de Gaulle, for the life of a houseboy, the life of the faithful Negro with his service medal, for the days of the Colonial Exhibition and the Negro Balls, with Josephine Baker leaping about in a skirt made out of bananas, and these paragons of respectability set snares without end for the boss, with their thugs in hoods who came at the dead of night, at the darkest hour, armed with iron bars from Zanzibar, with clubs and cudgels from mediaeval Christendom, poisoned spears from the time of Chaka Zulu, sickles and hammers from the Communist bloc, catapults from the Hundred Years War, Gallic bill hooks, pygmy hoes, Molotov cocktails from May ’68, machetes left over from a killing spree in Rwanda, slings from the famous fight between David and Goliath, with all this heavy arsenal they came, but again, in vain, though they managed to destroy one part of the bar, and it was the talk of the town, and all over the papers, La Rue Qui Meurt, La Semaine Africaine, Mwinda, Mouyondzi Tribune, tourists even came from neighbouring countries to get a close look, like pilgrims at the Wailing Wall, taking masses of photos, like tourists, I don’t know what for, but even so, they took photos, and some of them even came from our own town, people who’d never set foot in the Trois-Cents before, and were amazed to discover it, and wondered how on earth people could live quite happily surrounded by rubbish, pools of stagnant water, the carcasses of domestic animals, burned out vehicles, slime, dung, gaping holes in the roads, houses on the point of collapse, and our barman gave interviews all over the place, our barman became a martyr overnight, and our barman sprang up on every tv channel overnight, and spoke in the lingala of the north, in the munukutuba of the people of the Mayombe forest, in the bembé of the inhabitants of the bridge of Mouloukoulu, who settle all their disputes with a knife, and now everybody knew him, suddenly he was famous, people felt sorry for him, they wanted to help him, and even sent letters of support and petitions on behalf of the good guy they started to call “The Stubborn Snail,” but the ones who really backed him were the drunks, who always stay loyal till the last bottle runs dry, and they decided to strike back and rolled up their sleeves to put right the damage caused by the people nostalgic for the days of the Colonial Exhibition, the Case de Gaulle, Josephine Baker’s Negro Balls, and for some this trivial matter became a national issue, they called it “the Credit Gone Away Affair,” the government discussed it in cabinet, and certain leading politicians called for its immediate and permanent closure, while others opposed such a move, for scarcely more convincing reasons, and the country suddenly found itself divided over this petty spat until, with the authority and wisdom for which he became renowned, the Minister for Agriculture, Commerce and Small and Large Businesses, Albert Zou Loukia, raised his voice in a memorable contribution to the debate, a contribution now regarded in these parts as one of the finest political speeches ever made, Minister Zou Loukia spoke, saying several times, “I accuse, I accuse,” a remark so stupifyingly brilliant that at the slightest excuse—a minor dispute, or some slight injustice—people in the street started saying “I accuse,” and even the head of government told his spokesman that the Minister for Agriculture was a fine speaker, and that his popular catch-phrase, “I accuse,” would go down in history, and the Prime Minister promised that in the next reshuffle the Minister for Agriculture would be given the portfolio for Culture, all you had to do was cross out the first four letters of “agriculture,” and to this very day it is widely agreed that the minister’s speech was quite brilliant, quoting entire pages from books by the kind of great writers people like to quote at the dinner table, sweating as he always did when he was proud of having seduced an audience with his erudition, and that is how he came to defend Credit Gone Away, first praising the initiative of The Stubborn Snail, who he knew very well as they’d been at primary school together, and then summing up by saying—I quote from memory: “Ladies and Gentlemen of Cabinet, I accuse, I wish to distance myself from our current moribund social climate, I refuse to condone this witch hunt by my presence in the government, I accuse the shabby treatment meted out to a man who has done no more than draw up a route map for his own existence, I accuse the cowardly and retrograde machinations we have witnessed in recent times, I accuse the uncivil nature of these barbarous acts, orchestrated by men of bad faith, I accuse the indecency and insubordination which have become common currency in this country, I accuse the sly complicity of all those who arm the thugs, I accuse man’s contempt for his fellow man, the want of tolerance, the abandon of our values, the rising tide of hatred, the inertia of the individual conscience, the slimy toads in our midst and all around us, yes, Ladies and Gentlemen of Cabinet, just look at how the Trois-Cents has become a sleepless fortress, with a face of stone, while the man we now call Stubborn Snail, quite apart from the fact that he’s an old school friend of mine, and a very intelligent man, this man who today is being hounded is the victim of a cabal, Ladies and Gentlemen of Cabinet, let us concentrate instead on the pursuit of real criminals, whereby I accuse those who with impunity paralyse the proper function of our institutions, those who openly break the chain of solidarity which we have inherited from our ancestors, the Bantu, I tell you the only crime of the Stubborn Snail is to have shown his fellow countrymen that each one of us, in his own way, can contribute to the transformation of human nature, just as the great Saint-Exupéry has shown us in his work ‘Wind, Sand and Stars’ and that is why I accuse, and will go on accusing forever.”

The day after Minister Zou Loukia’s speech, the President of the Republic himself, Adrien Lokouta Eleki Mingi, flew into a rage, stamping his favourite daily dessert of grapes beneath his feet, and we were informed by Radio-Curbside FM that President Adrien Lokouta Eleki Mingi, who also happened to be general of the armies, was jealous of the Minister for Agriculture’s phrase—“I accuse,” indeed, he wished he had said it himself, and couldn’t understand why his own advisers hadn’t come up with a similarly short but snappy catch-phrase, instead of feeding him turgid set pieces along the lines of “All things, like the Sun, rise on the distant horizon and set each evening over the majestic Congo river,” so President Adrien Lokouta Eleki Mingi, in his vexation, mortification, degradation, humiliation and frustration, called a meeting of the supposedly devoted bunch of Negroes in his cabinet and bid them slave as they’d never slaved before, he was through with turgid set pieces dressed up in so-called lyrical language, and the Negroes in his cabinet leaped to attention and lined up, from the smallest to the tallest, like the Daltons in Lucky Luke, when he’s tracking them through the cactus plains of the Wild West, and the Negroes all said as one man “yes sir, Commandant sir,” when in fact President Adrien Lokouta Eleki Mingi was a general of the armies, and was longing for civil war to break out between north and south so he could write his war memoirs and give them the modest title “Memoirs of Hadrien,” and the President and General of the armies called on them to find him a phrase that would be remembered by posterity as Minister Zou Loukia’s “I accuse” would be, and the Negroes in the presidential cabinet worked all night long, behind closed doors, opening up and looking through—for the first time ever—encyclopaedias which stood gathering dust on the presidential bookshelves, they looked in large books with tiny writing, they worked their way back to the dawn of time, back through the age of some guy called Gutenberg, and back through the age of Egyptian hieroglyphics as far back as the writings of some Chinaman who it seems had a lot to say about the art of war and was supposed to have been alive in the days before anyone knew that Christ was going to be born by the power of the Holy Spirit and lay down his life for us sinners, but Adrien’s Negroes could find nothing as good as Minister Zou Loukia’s “I accuse,” so the President and General of the armies threatened to sack the entire cabinet, unless they found him a phrase for posterity, and said: “Why should I go on paying a bunch of idiots who can’t find me a decent enduring and memorable slogan, I’m warning you now, if I don’t have my slogan by the time the cock crows tomorrow at dawn, heads will roll like rotten mangoes, that’s all you are, the lot of you, rotten mangoes, let me tell you, you can start packing now, go into exile in some Catholic country, take your pick, exile or death, d’you hear me, starting now, no one leaves this palace as of this moment, I’m going to sit in my office and I don’t want to pick up even the slightest whiff of coffee, not to mention cigars, Cohibas or Montecristos, there’ll be no water, no sandwiches, nothing, zilch, niente, it’ll be healthy eating all round, till I get my personal slogan, and anyway how did this little nobody of a minister Zou Loukia come up with his ‘I accuse’ that everyone’s talking about, eh, the Presidential Security Services tell me there are even babies being called ‘I accuse,’ and what about those young girls on heat getting it tattooed onto their backsides and the clients who, in an ironic twist, demand that the prostitutes have it, you’ll appreciate, I think, what a colossal fuck-up this represents, it’s not even as if it was rocket science to think up in the first place, a phrase like that, are the Minister for Agriculture’s Negroes better than you, eh, do you realise, I wonder, that his Negroes don’t even have an official car each, they get the ministry bus, they live off pitiful salaries, while you loll about here in the palace, swimming in my pool, drinking my champagne, sitting about watching foreign tv on cable, listening to their lies about me, eating my petit-fours, eating my salmon and my caviar, strolling about in my garden, taking your mistresses skiing on my artificial snow slopes, I’m surprised you don’t sleep with my twenty wives, I start to wonder why I even have a cabinet, is that what I pay you for, to sit around here all day doing nothing, eh, why don’t I just hire my own stupid dog as head of cabinet, tell me that, you bunch of good-for-nothings,” and President Adrien Lokouta Eleki Mingi walked out slamming the door of the cabinet behind him, still shouting “you bunch of Negroes, things are going to change in this palace, I’ve had it with fattening up slavering slugs like you, let’s start judging by results, to think some of you went to ENA and the écoles polytechniques, ENA my arse!”

the Negroes of the cabinet set about their arduous task with a Chaka Zulu spear and a sword of Damocles dangling over their heads while the palace walls still echoed with the president’s final words, and around midnight, since they still hadn’t thought of anything—there’s plenty of petrol in this country, but not many ideas—it naturally occurred to them to phone a well known member of the Académie Française who was apparently the only black person in the history of this august assembly, and everyone applauded this last minute idea, and everyone said the academician in question would consider it a further honour, so they wrote him a long letter full of smoothly phrased imperfect subjunctives, and even some particularly moving passages composed in classical alexandrines with identical rhymes, they checked it carefully for punctuation, they didn’t want to be sneered at by the academicians, who would take any opportunity to prove their use to the world, besides handing out the Top Prize for novels, and the president’s Negroes almost came to blows over it, because some of them said there should be a semi-colon in place of a comma and others didn’t agree and wanted to keep the comma to move the phrase up into fifth gear, and those in the latter camp stuck to their point even though it was contradicted by a certain Adolphe Thomas in the Dictionary of Difficulties in the French Language, whose view supported that of the first camp, and the second camp refused to yield and the point of all this was to get on the right side of the black academician who, as they were humbly aware, was one of the first ever Doctors of French Grammar from the African continent, and everything might have passed off smoothly if Adrien’s Negroes hadn’t then said that the academician would be slow to reply, the spear of Chaka Zulu and the sword of Damocles would come down on them before they received word from the Coupole, which is the name given to the onion dome beneath which these immortal sages sit listening to the distant babble of the French language and decree absolutely that such and such a text is the degree zero of all writing, but there was another reason why the Negroes beat a retreat, one member of the cabinet, who’d come top in his year at the ENA and owned the complete works of the black academician in question, pointed out that he had already produced a phrase for posterity, “reason is Greek, emotion is black,” as an ENA graduate himself he explained to his colleagues that actually the academician couldn’t come up with a second slogan because posterity isn’t like the court of King Petaud where nobody’s boss and anarchy rules, you only get one chance to coin a phrase, otherwise it’s all just hollow chatter, much ado about nothing, that’s why phrases that go down in History are short, sharp and to the point, and since such phrases survive through legends, centuries and millennia, people unfortunately forget who the true authors were, and fail to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s

undaunted, the Negroes of the President and General of the armies came up with something else at the last minute, they decided to put all their ideas and everything they had found into a hat, they said it was called brainstorming in the smart colleges some of them had been to in the USA, and each of them wrote down on a piece of paper several phrases that had gone down in the history of this shitty world, and started to go through them, like they do in countries where you have the right to vote, reading each one out in a monotonous voice under the authority of the chief negro, beginning with Louis XIV, who said “I am the State,” and the leader of the Negroes of the President and General of the armies said “no, that quote’s no good, we’re not having that one, it’s too self-regarding, it makes us sound like dictators, next!,” Lenin said “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country,” and the chief black said “no, that’s no good, it’s disrespectful to the people, especially in a country where they can’t even pay their electricity bill, next!,” Danton said “Boldness, and again Boldness, and always Boldness!,” and the chief black said “no, no good, too repetitive, besides, people will think we’re not bold enough, next!,” Georges Clemenceau said “War is too serious to be left to the generals,” and the chief black said “no, no good, the military won’t like that, we’ll have a Coup d’État every five minutes with that one, the President himself is a general of the armies, don’t forget, we need to watch our step, next!,” Mac-Mahon said “I am here. I shall remain here,” and the chief black said “no, no good, sounds like a man unsure of his charisma clinging to power, next!,” Bonaparte said, during the Egyptian campaign, “Soldiers, from the height of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on you,” and the chief black said “no, no good, it makes the soldiers sound uncultured, as though they’ve never read the works of the great historian Jean Tulard, it’s our job to show people soldiers aren’t idiots, next!,” Talleyrand said “This is the beginning of the end,” and the chief black said, “no, no good, they’ll think we mean the end of our regime, and we’re meant to be in power for life, next!” Martin Luther King said “I have a dream,” which irritated the chief black, he hates any mention of MLK over Malcolm X, his idol, so he said “no, no good, we’re fed up with utopias, everyone’s always waiting for their own to come true, and I can tell you they’ll be waiting a good few hundred years yet for that to happen, next!,” Shakespeare said “To be or not to be, that is the question,” and the chief black said “no, no good, we’ve got past wondering whether we are or whether we aren’t, we’ve already settled that one, we’ve been in power here for twenty three years, next!” and the President of Cameroon, Paul Biya, said “Cameroon is Cameroon,” and the chief black said “no, no good, everyone knows Cameroon will always be Cameroon, it’s not as though any other country’s going to even try to steal its identity or its Lions, who are, in any case, unbeatable, next!” the former Congolese President, Yombi Opangault, said “A tough life today for a sweet life tomorrow,” and the chief black said “no, no good, don’t take the people of this country for fools, why not a sweet life today and to hell with tomorrow, hmm, besides the guy who said that lived in the most disgraceful luxury of all time, come on, next!” Karl Marx said “Religion is the opium of the people,” and the chief black said “no, absolutely not, we spend our whole time trying to persuade the people that our President and General of the armies is God’s elect, and everyone will get steamed up about religion again, don’t you know every single church in this country is subsidized by the president himself, come on then, next!” and President François Mitterrand said “Time will take care of time,” but the chief black got cross at this, you mustn’t mention Mitterrand to him, and he said “no, no good, that guy took all the time in the world for himself, he spends his whole life riding roughshod over his friends and his enemies, then bows out to take up his seat at the right hand of God the father, no way, next!” Frédéric Dard alias San-Antonio said “Fight your brother when he’s shorn,” and the chief black said “no, no good, too many bald people in this country, especially in the government, we mustn’t rub them up the wrong way, I’m bald myself, next!,” Cato the Elder said “delenda Carthago,” and the chief black said “no, no good, people in the south will think it’s some phrase in northern patois and the people in the north will think it’s a phrase in southern patois, best to avoid misunderstandings, on we go, next!” Pontius Pilate said “Ecce homo,” and the chief black said “no, no good, same applies as to Cato the Elder’s flights of fancy, next!” as Jesus was dying on the cross he said “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” and the chief black said “no, no good, too pessimistic, too whiney, really, for a guy like Jesus, he could have really fucked things up here below with all the power he had, next!” Blaise Pascal said “If Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter it would have changed the face of the world,” and the chief black said “no, no good, we’re talking politics here, not plastic surgery, move on, next!” and so the president’s Negroes looked through thousands of quotations and all sorts of other historic sayings and found nothing suitable for the country’s most important citizen, because each time the chief black said “no, no good, move on, next!” and then at five in the morning, before the first cock crowed, one of the advisers who’d been flicking through some black and white documentaries at last hit upon a historic phrase

at exactly midday, just as the entire population sat down to a delicious meal of chicken-bicycle, the President and General of the armies took over the radio programmes and the only tv channel in the country, it was a solemn occasion, the president stretched taut as the skin of a bamileke drum, it was hard to choose exactly the right moment for leaving a phrase to posterity, and on that memorable Monday he was dressed in his Sunday best, wearing his heavy gold medals, looking from then on like a patriarch in the autumn of his reign, in fact he was so much dressed in his Sunday best, on that memorable Monday, you’d have thought it was the day of the Feast of the Goat, which we celebrate in memory of his grandmother, clearing his throat to overcome his nerves, he began by criticising the countries of Europe, who dazzled us with the sun of independence, when in fact we’re still dependent on them, since we still have avenues named after General de Gaulle and General Leclerc and President Coti and President Pompidou, but in Europe there are no avenues named after Sese Soto, or Idi-Amin-Dada, or Jean-Bédel-Bokassa or any of the other fine men known personally to him, and valued for their loyalty, humanity and respect of the rights of man, in that sense we are still dependent—they take our oil but withhold their ideas, they cut down our forests to keep themselves warm in winter, they educate our leaders at ENA and the Polytechnique and turn them into little white Negroes, the Banania Negroes are back again, we thought they’d disappeared into the bush, but here they are, ready for action, thus spoke our president, his breath short, his fist punching the air, and this speech on the ills of colonialism led him on to a denunciation of the cruelty and challenges of capitalism, he said all that was utopia, and worst of all were the homegrown lackeys of the colonialists, the guys living in our country, who eat with us, dance in our bars, sit next to us on public transport, work in our fields, our offices, our markets, these double edged knives who do things with our wives which the memory of my mother who died in the river Tchinouka prohibits me mentioning, these men are actually moles of the imperial forces, and let’s just say the President and General of the armies’ anger shot up by ten notches at this point, because he hates those lackeys of imperialism and colonialism, as one might hate chigoes, bugs, fleas or worms, and the President and General of the armies said they must be tracked down, these criminals, these puppets, these hypocrites—“Tartuffes,” he called them, “Malades Imaginaires,” “Misanthropists,” and “Paysans Parvenus,” he said the proletariat revolution will triumph, the enemy will be crushed, driven back, wherever he may appear, he said God was with us, that our country was eternal, as he was himself, he called for national unity, the end of tribal warfare, he told us we were all descended from a single ancestor, and finally he came to “The Credit Gone Away Affair,” which was dividing the country, he praised the Stubborn Snail’s initiative, and promised to award him the Legion of Honour, and finished his speech with the words he was determined to leave to posterity—and we knew these were the words because he said them several times over, arms stretched wide as though clasping a sequoia, he said “I have understood you” and his phrase too became famous throughout the land, which is why, for a joke, we common folk often say that “the minister accuses, the president understands.”

FATOU DIOME

• Senegal •

from THE BELLY OF THE ATLANTIC

1

HE RUNS, TACKLES, dribbles, strikes, falls, gets up again, carries on running. Faster! But the wind’s changed: now the ball’s heading straight for the crotch of Toldo, the Italian goalie. Oh God, do something! I’m not shouting, I’m begging you: if you’re the Almighty, do something! Ah, back comes Maldini, his legs knitting up the turf.

In front of the TV, I leap off the sofa and give a violent kick. Ouch, the table! I wanted to run with the ball, help Maldini get it back, shadow him halfway down the pitch so he could bury it in the back of the opponent’s net. But all my kick did was spill my cold tea onto the carpet. At this exact moment I imagine the Italians tensing up, stiff as the human fossils of Pompeii. I still don’t know why they clench their buttocks when the ball nears the goal.

“Maldini! Oh yes, great defending from Maldini, who passes to his keeper! And Toldo kicks it away. What a talent, this Maldini! A truly great player. Still staying loyal to AC Milan. Over a hundred caps for Italy! Amazing. Cesare, his father, was a fine player too; the family definitely has talent!”

The commentator would have liked to make up a poem in praise of Maldini, but in the heat of the moment he could only utter a string of exclamations.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I adore football? Not that much. Why, then? Because I’m in love with Maldini? No way! I’m not that crazy. I’m not starstruck. I don’t crane my neck gazing up at the sky. My grandma taught me early on how to pick up stars: all you have to do is place a basin of water in the middle of the yard at night and they’ll be at your feet. Try it yourself, you only need a small dish in the corner of the garden to see twenty-two stars, Maldini among them, chasing round in circles on the grass like rats in a maze. So, since I’m not writing Maldini a love letter, why am I telling you all this? Simply because not all viruses land you in a hospital. Some just work inside us like they do in a computer program and cause breakdown.

It’s 29 June 2000 and I’m watching the European Cup. It’s Italy v. Holland in the semi-final. My eyes are staring at the TV, but my heart’s contemplating other horizons.

Over there, people have been clinging to a scrap of land, the island of Niodior, for centuries. Stuck to the gum of the Atlantic like bits of leftover food, they wait resignedly for the next big wave that will either carry them off or leave them their lives. This thought hits me every time I retrace my path and my memory glimpses the minaret of the mosque, rigid in its certainties, and the coconut palms, shaking their hair in a nonchalant pagan dance whose origin is forgotten. Is it one of those ancient funeral dances that sanctifies the reunion of our dead with our ancestors? Or the oft-repeated one that celebrates marriages at the end of the harvest, after the rainy season? Or even that third kind of dance sparked by storms, during which, they say, the coconut palms imitate the shudder of young girls given in marriage to men they don’t love? The fourth is the most mysterious, the dream tango, and everyone has their own version that follows the rhythm of their breathing.

It’s nearly ten years since I left the shade of the coconut palms. Pounding the asphalt, my imprisoned feet recall their former liberty, the caress of warm sand, being nipped by crabs and the little thorn pricks that remind you there’s life even in the body’s forgotten extremities. I tread European ground, my feet sculpted and marked by African earth. One step after another, it’s the same movement all humans make, all over the planet. Yet I know my western walk has nothing in common with the one that took me through the alleys, over the beaches, paths and fields of my native land. People walk everywhere, but never towards the same horizon. In Africa, I followed in destiny’s wake, between chance and infinite hopefulness. In Europe, I walk down the long tunnel of efficiency that leads to well-defined goals. Here, chance plays no part; every step leads to an anticipated result and hope is measured by appetite for the fight. In the Technicolor world, you walk differently, towards an internalized destiny you set yourself regardless, without ever realising, for you’re pressed into the modern mob, caught up in the social steamroller ready to crush all those who dare pull over onto the hard shoulder. So, under the grey European sky, or in unexpected sunlight, I walk on, counting my steps, each one bringing me closer to my dream. But how many kilometres, how many work-filled days and sleepless nights still separate me from that so-called success that my people, on the other hand, took for granted from the moment I told them I was leaving for France? I walk on, my steps weighed down by their dreams, my head filled with my own. I walk on and have no idea where I’ll end up. I don’t know which mast the flag of victory is hoisted on, nor which waters could wash away the stain of failure. Hey, you, don’t nod off; my head’s boiling over! Pass me the wood! This fire needs stoking. Writing’s my witch’s cauldron; at night I brew up dreams too tough to cook.

The noise of the television shakes me from my reverie. Every time the commentators shout Maldini’s name, a face fills the screen. Thousands of kilometres from my sitting room, on the other side of the earth, in Senegal, on that island barely big enough to accommodate a stadium, I picture a young man glued to a battered old TV set, watching the same match as me. I feel him next to me. Our eyes meet on the same images. Hearts thudding, gasps, outbursts of joy or despair, all our emotions are synchronised while the match plays, because we’re right behind the same man: Paolo Maldini.

So, over there, at the ends of the earth, I see a young man on a mat or an old bench stamping his feet in front of an ancient TV, which, despite its sputtering, commands as big an audience as a cinema screen. The owner of the only TV in the area generously sets it up in his yard and all the neighbours flock unannounced. The place is open to everyone; the sex, age and number of spectators vary according to the programme. This afternoon, 29 June 2000, the weather’s good, the sky’s a perfect blue and the TV isn’t crackling, even if the owner had to bang it with his fist to get it going. The eyes trained on it have all the freshness of innocence. Boys in the flower of youth, their bodies formed by long years of running after balls made of rags, then unhoped-for footballs, jostle and press together, liquid energy streaming down their smooth foreheads. Alert to every move, they yell out their predictions.

One of the young men is silent, concentrated on the images. He leans towards the screen; his gaze weaves among the heads. Jaw clenched, only the odd jerky movement betrays the passion inside him. At Maldini’s first tackle, his foot spontaneously strikes the bum of the boy squatting in front of him, hoofing him into the air. The victim turns round in a fury but, seeing the guilty party’s face utterly engrossed, doesn’t count on an apology and finds a place a little further off. You don’t step on a blind man’s balls twice, the saying goes: once is enough for him to pick up his merchandise as soon as he hears the sound of footsteps. The boy should shift his arse anyway, because the match was only just beginning and there’d be many more exciting moments. Already it’s enough to make you commit hara-kiri: a red card for Zambrota, the Italian number 17. That’s too much for the young man. As frustrated as Dino Zoff, the Italian coach, he straightens up and mutters something the ref wouldn’t have liked. You get it: he supports the Italians and from now on you’re not allowed to support any other team, out of respect. Fate really is against them: a yellow card for Francesco Toldo, the Italian keeper, who just grabbed hold of the Dutch number 9. The young man stands up, clutching his head in his hands, waiting for the inevitable punishment which soon follows: penalty against Italy.

Do something, God! Should I stop shouting? No, but you’ve no idea! It’s not important? Of course it’s important! Yes, I know, it’s not Hiroshima. If that was all, I couldn’t care less, but don’t you see they might score a goal that will break Madické’s heart! Who’s Madické? Who’s Madické? You think I’ve got time to tell you that? A penalty’s not a coffee break; it rips out as fast as a footballer’s fart! So are you going to do something or what? What about all my prayers, what about Ramadan? You think I do all that for nothing?

Toldo, the Italian goalie, saves it. Madické gives a violent kick, but this time no one’s in the way. Phew! We’ve avoided the worst. His chest heaves with a long sigh, he relaxes, and his face lights up with a smile I know won’t last. The match goes on.

Every time the Italians make a mistake, he puts his hands together in prayer. Just before half-time, Maldini argues with the ref’s decision and is rewarded with a yellow card. Madické’s smile’s wiped off his face; he knows a second yellow card is the same as a red and his idol will be sent off. He squeezes his head in his hands with worry: he doesn’t want to see his hero relegated to the sidelines. He’d like to talk to him, tell him the tactics he’s devising, right there on his bench. Short of playing alongside him, he’d like to lend Maldini his legs, so he’d have a spare pair. But there, on that bench, his feet burrowing in the white, burning sand, how many dream kilometres separate him from the traces of mud Maldini will leave in the dressing rooms at half-time?

Transforming his despair into dialogue, he screams words that catch in the tops of the Niodior palms, never to reach Maldini’s ears. I’m his devoted messenger: Madické and I have the same mother. People who only love by halves will tell you he’s my half-brother, but to me he’s my little brother and that’s that.

So tell Maldini his yellow or red cards are too much to bear, they’re crushing my heart. Tell him to save his skin, stay in one piece, not land a ball in the face, not let the opposition mow him down. Tell him I groan every time he cops it. Tell him his hot breath is searing my lungs. Tell him I feel his injuries and bear the scars. Tell him above all that I saw him, in Niodior, chasing the bubble of a dream over the warm sand. Because one day, on waste ground, my brother turned into Maldini. So tell Maldini about his wrestler’s body, his dark eyes, his frizzy hair, his gorgeous smile and white teeth. That Maldini is my little brother, swallowed up in his dream.

The ref blows the half-time whistle, the young spectators make for the tree opposite the house, partly to stretch their legs but also to argue more loudly without disturbing their host. Only Madické stays by the house. He wouldn’t miss the second half for the world. Nothing but ads on the TV now. Even in these regions, where drinking water’s still a luxury, Coca-Cola brazenly comes to swell its sales figures. Have no fear, Coca-Cola will make the Sahel wheat grow! The TV attracts a group of scrawny seven- to ten-year-olds, their only playthings the sticks of wood and tins they’ve picked up in the street, who burst out laughing at the ad’s suggestive scene: a boy approaches a group of girls who seem to be ignoring him. He offers a Coke to the prettiest one and beckons to her; the girl, after a refreshing gulp, generously offers him her waist. He puts his arm around her and they leave together, smiling. The boys guffaw. One asks another: “What’s he going to do to her?”

The others snigger. The apparent leader of the gang answers, digging him with his elbow: “You stupid or what? He’s going to screw her.”

Encouraged by the leader, another boy goes on: “They’re having a dance at the back of my house. I saw my big brother and his friends bring cases of Coca-Cola. Wahey! The girls are going to get what’s coming to them!”

The laughter breaks out louder than ever. Now it’s Miko’s turn to whet their appetites. An enormous ice-cream cone, colours glistening, fills the screen, then a chubby little boy appears, greedily licking a huge ice cream. Envious purrs replace the inanity of a moment ago: a chorus of “Mmm! Oooh! That’s good! Mmm!” These kids know ice cream only through images. For them it’s a virtual food, eaten only over there, on the other side of the Atlantic, in the paradise where that plump kid had the good sense to be born. But they’re crazy for that ice cream; for its sake they’ve memorised the advertising schedule. They chant the word “Miko,” repeat it the way believers intone their holy book. They look forward to this ice cream as Muslims look forward to the paradise of Muhammad, and come here to await it like Christians awaiting the return of Christ. They’ve found icons for this Miko cone; they’ve made rough sculptures out of bits of wood, painted them with red and yellow crayons to represent mouthwatering ice creams. And it’s these sticks of wood they sniff now as they savour the ad. I dream of a Miko swimming pool, built in the name of pleasure, not turnover. They dream of devouring this ice cream as Madické dreams of shaking Maldini’s hand.

The ads draw to an end. The older boys, who were arguing about the match under the tree, gather in front of the television again and shoo away the younger boys, who are too noisy. Elders are respected around here. An old fisherman, still strong, dressed in rags, makes himself comfortable right in front of Madické, who identifies him by the smell of fish penetrating his nostrils. Greetings are polite but brief. That smell is fetid but respect shuts you up. Madické keeps quiet. He knows that in these parts the decades you’ve accumulated are aces that trump everything. He’ll have to put up with this putrefying fossil for the whole of the second half. So he concentrates and imagines he’s over there, where the match is being played, far from the old fisherman.

The stadium reappears. The players aren’t out of the dressing rooms yet, but the commentators are warming up, and Maldini’s name keeps being mentioned. What are they saying about him? Madické wonders. He strains to hear; it’s not easy with his neighbours commentating the match like seasoned experts. He leans in nearer to the flickering screen, cups his ear in his hand as if better to isolate himself from the group, and listens again. The commentators’ voices are slightly more audible, but the language they use flies past his ears without really going in. It’s so annoying! And that smell, too, getting stronger and stronger . . . Only Maldini’s name reaches him clearly at odd intervals. But what the hell are they saying about him?

And yet he’s often heard, even seen, that language. Yes, he’s seen it, here in his country: that language wears trousers, suits, ties, shoes with laces; or skirts, suits, sunglasses and high heels. He does recognise the language that flows in Senegalese offices, but he doesn’t understand it and that irritates him. The second half begins.

The first free kick goes to the Italians. Madické’s delighted. They’ve pulled themselves together, he thinks, and that reassures him. But his optimism’s soon frustrated. The Dutch value their honour. They defend their goal like a nun defends her fanny. The Italians have to deal with it. This sublimated war on the turf demands nerves of steel, and it’s not easy holding out for ninety minutes. Especially in these last moments of the match when every move counts. Madické sweats; it’s hot, and, besides, that stink of fish is beginning to turn his stomach.

The ref whistles an end to the ninety minutes; the adversaries will have to wait for extra time to fight on. Although their thirst for glory keeps them on their feet, their ravaged faces beg for rest. Like a protective mother, a sister moved to tears or a devoted wife, I’d like to offer them a drink, sponge their faces, bandage their cuts and give them a hug. I’d like to tell them their frustrating match is like life: the best goals are always yet to come; it’s just that waiting for them is painful.

Covered in mud and streaming with sweat, the players huddle together, their shoulders slumped, crushed by so much fruitless effort.

Rest before extra time. The group of young spectators who’ve stayed in front of the television becomes animated. The match is upsetting their forecasts. The nervous ones are keen to assert their point of view, waving their hands about. The advertising jingles ring out. The kids from before rush over. The old fisherman picks a quarrel to kill time; with a teasing smile, he taps Madické on the shoulder and, stroking his beard, says: “What’s happening? Maldini, eh? Eh? Not up to it today, huh? Your opponents are looking pretty solid.”

Madické looks up at the man before fixing his eyes on the dusk-filled horizon. There’s something disarming in silence, in knowledge, too. The old man’s feeling inspired and won’t back down. Coming over all learned, he keeps preening his beard and utters a deep thought that’s just occurred to him: “You know, Maldini, the greater the obstacle you overcome, the more dazzling your success. The quality of the victory depends on the merit of the opposition. Beating a coward doesn’t make a man a hero.”

This rambling is hardly a consolation to Madické. He’s heard this Neanderthal philosophy before—this exotic verbiage, falsified a thousand times, dumped on us by westerners, the better to sideline us. Enough already with all these convenient proverbs. Didn’t the old fisherman know, conversely, that losing to a brave adversary doesn’t make a man a hero either?

The sun seemed to flee human questioning and threatened to plunge into the Atlantic. The sky, fired up with passion, looked lower than usual, leaving a hanging trail of reddish light over the tops of the coconut palms. The sea breeze, in its mercy, brushed the skin almost imperceptibly. Only a few women on their way back from the well, late with their domestic chores, noticed the dusk’s light wind, which swept under their cotton pagnes to caress them where the sun never sees. It was devoted women such as these, too, who dared disturb the village’s incipient calm with the last pounding of their pestles. Thump! Thump! Thump! These pestles, distant and repetitive, reverberated in the depths of Madické’s heart. Because he’d heard them all his life, he recognised them, could even decode them: they always precede the call of the muezzin and the owl’s song. For all the islanders they’ve become the music that heralds the night. But in this superstitious universe, they also mark the hour of the evil spirits and the moment ancestral fears slip into the shadows.

When, as a kid, he’d hear the pounding of the pestles, Madické would leave the improvised playgrounds, following his friends, and run back to our mother. He knew exactly where to find her: she was always in her kitchen at this hour, at the far end of the back yard, busy cooking supper or grinding a fistful of millet to make the milk curd porridge for the next day. If by some unhappy chance she wasn’t there, he’d take his little bench and settle down in the kitchen in front of the fire, to avoid his dread of the creeping shadows outside. Impatiently, he’d stave off his boredom by feeding wood to the fire, marveling at the dancing flames until a voice, feigning severity, reached his ears.

“Hey, stop that, Madické! What a blaze you’re making! You’ll burn my supper!”

Time had passed. The uneasy atmosphere of dusk still drove him to seek the reassurance of skirts, but no longer his mother’s. In any case, on this 29 June 2000 the most beguiling of nymphs couldn’t have held his gaze.

The magical curtain of ads is torn. The younger boys scatter, echoing the last notes of their favourite song: Miko! Miko! Sunk in black, the yard looks like a marine graveyard. Only the bluish glow from the old television weakly illuminates the spectators’ faces. The silence is proper for contemplation. The muezzin yells himself hoarse for nothing. He’ll just have to have some mint tea afterwards; it’ll do him good! The stadium reappears, the faithful cheer their gods. The old fisherman noisily clears his throat, shakes his neighbour’s arm and announces, as if confiding in him: “Maldini, my son, the moment of truth is upon us.”

Madické gives the requisite faint smile before taking his arm back, irritated by a foul by Jaap Stam, a Dutch player.

“Red card!” he yells.

But the ref’s satisfied with a yellow.

“Shit, he should’ve got a red card! That ref’s a right b—”

The sentence is left unfinished; no one knows where anger will end. The Dutch are undeterred. They’re more and more audacious. Aron Winter makes his point forcefully and wins a corner. Eighty-four caps earns you a lot of experience, especially in cheating. Seedorf fancies himself to take the corner. Delvecchio rushes forward, proving to his mum that her milk wasn’t wasted: she definitely suckled a hero, capable of restoring hope to the entire Italian nation. But the Dutch mothers have done the same, and their sons, eager to make them proud, go back on the attack. Cannavaro blocks and gets it away; Maldini sprints off. Madické peels off his bench, imagining he’s right behind him: “Come on! Go for it! You can do it! Go!” he shouts, practically rupturing his vocal cords.

Everything you want, you’ve got it!

A cousin who’d been deported from the USA never stopped listening to that song and translated it for anyone who wanted to hear: where there’s a will there’s a way. Madické’s beginning to have his doubts, and justifiably so.

The two periods of extra time remain goalless. Now a penalty shoot-out’s inevitable. Madické knows this, and his heart’s beating wildly in his breast. He presses his hand to it but that doesn’t help; the palpitations increase.

The mistress of the house calls everyone for supper. The meal here isn’t reserved for those who live in the house; everyone who’s around when it’s served is welcome and automatically invited to share it. A young girl brings a small calabash filled with water for everyone in turn to wash their hands, while her mother places a series of steaming bowls in the middle of the yard. The fisherman briefly rinses his paws and makes a beeline for the head of the family. Discussing how bad the catch has been lately, he positions himself cross-legged on a mat and begins to pay tribute to the woman’s efforts. Mmm! You can smell the spices in the talalé, a dish fit for a king! Our women are the only ones who can make such delicious fish couscous, and that’s a fact!

As for Madické, his stomach’s in knots. A late lunch is his excuse to decline the invitation politely. Besides, unlike the older generation, he doesn’t like sharing other people’s meals whenever circumstances dictate. If this match hadn’t gone on, he’d have extricated himself before supper-time. While some wolf down mouthfuls of couscous and compliment the cook to justify their greed, he savours the calm created in front of the TV.

“Great,” he says to himself, “I can watch the penalties in peace.”

But the weather decided otherwise. He’d hardly had this thought when a series of lightning flashes ripped through the sky. A violent tornado whipped the coconut palm branches. The white sand, the islanders’ pride, became their worst enemy, a whirlwind flagellating their skin and carrying off everything in its path. The people eating quickly deserted their mats, which were either flung against the fence or swirled above their heads. Then big raindrops began to fall: one of the first June rains, often short-lived but always unpredictable, that let Sahelians know it’s the start of the winter season and time to work in the fields.

Madické hadn’t waited for the first drops of water to seize the old set and carry it into the living room, but in vain. At the first flash of lightning, the TV had blinked and then, letting out a last beep, had abruptly died. He didn’t want to think the worst: that beep wasn’t a last sigh; the TV couldn’t have given up the ghost. He told himself it was an electrical whim, just a shock, a kind of heart attack brought on by the virulence of the lightning flashes. In the living room he attempted a long, solitary resuscitation, with no success. He needed to hear the owner’s verdict to convince him to leave the patient’s bedside: “I think it’s dead. There’s nothing you can do; it doesn’t like the rainy season. Last year, too, it died on me at the first clap of thunder. Luckily I managed to get it going again. This time, I think it’s finished.”

With his hand resting on the television, the man smiled as he talked on. Glancing at the living room clock, Madické realised bitterly that the penalty shoot-out was finished, too. He politely stammered some excuses and left.

BOUBACAR BORIS DIOP

• Senegal •

from MURAMBI, THE BOOK OF BONES

Translated by Fiona McLaughlin

Jessica

“THEY LOVE EACH other like crazy, those two. And now events are forcing them to postpone the date of their marriage again!”

“Ah! Lucienne and her boyfriend Valence Ndimbati . . . It’s so sad,” I say distractedly.

You get used to anything very fast. In her hometown of Nyamata, where my friend Mukandori is looking for a refuge, we find a way to chatter on like two old women. She asks me suddenly, stopping:

“Do you really think they’re going to do it?”

I’ve learned a lie.

“It’s impossible, Theresa. They’re looking mainly to scare people. It’ll calm down in a few days.”

The idea that from now on she could be killed at any moment by anybody seemed very odd to her.

As for me, I lead a double life. There are things that I can’t talk about to anyone. Not even to Theresa.

For example, this message dated April 8, 1994, that I’ve just received from Bisesero. Stéphanie Nkubito, our comrade in that district, wrote it a few hours before being discovered and slaughtered. It seems to me that they didn’t take the time to question him. They suspected that he was a member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, operating in Bisesero. The letter from our comrade shows just how organized and determined the killers are. They’re really ready to go all out this time around.

Stéphanie tells me that on Thursday, April 7, 1994, Abel Mujawamarya, a businessman from Kigali, arrived in Gisovu with the two yellow trucks full of machetes. He had them unloaded at the home of Olivier Bishirandora. The latter, who has a forge in his workshop, immediately started sharpening the machetes. Olivier, a member of Parmehutu/DRM, was also the mayor of Gisovu in the seventies, during the time of President Kayibanda.

Abel Mujawamarya then organized a meeting, during which he gave out machetes and grenades to the Hutus. The Interahamwe then started to terrorize the Tutsis, accusing them of having murdered their beloved president, Juvénal Habyarimana. They set to, looting and setting fire to the Tutsis’ houses, and then killed some of them. The Tutsis started fleeing their houses to take refuge in the parish churches of Mubaga and Kibingo, as well as in the Mugonero hospital. Others preferred to head for the mountains.

Stéphanie Nkubito asks me to make a note and spread the word that the inhabitants of Bisesero, those tough warriors, intend to put up a fight. Since 1959, every time there are massacres, they get organized and at least succeed in driving back their attackers. At times they’ve even been able to get back their stolen animals through bold punitive expeditions. That’s why, adds Stéphanie, their reputation for being invincible is circulating around Rwanda. Refugees are flocking in from all over the place. But between the lines of his letter, Stéphanie’s fears were clear: according to his sources, the government is intending to put an end to the myth of invincibility of the Abasero, as the Tutsis of Bisesero are called. The army will do the bulk of the work, and Interahamwe militia reinforcements will be dispatched from Gisenyi and other towns where, because of the relatively small number of Tutsis among their populations, the massacres will be over earlier than elsewhere.

I read and reread Stéphanie’s message. At the bottom of the page there’s a little drawing with the following caption: “Jessica Kamanzi making the victory sign.”

Jessica Kamanzi, that’s me. I smile as I look at my two fingers raised triumphantly toward the sky. Oh yes, victory is certain. I’ve never doubted it, not even for a moment. But it will be so bitter . . .

I’d love to keep the drawing as a memento of Stéphanie Nkubito. I finally decide to give it up: my comrade thinks he’s being watched. I tear the message into pieces.

Theresa touches my arm:

“This is it,” she says in a low voice.

We’re in the neighborhood of the parish church of Nyamata, right near the lodgings of the Salesian Fathers, who people say are originally from Brazil. Behind the thick curtain of eucalyptus and acacia, we can see people hurrying by the hundreds into the church.

“I’m going,” says Theresa. “You’d better come with me, Jessica.”

I think the exact opposite. The fighters I came with into Kigali found out that future victims were being encouraged to take refuge in churches so that they could be exterminated there. But I have nothing else to propose to Theresa.

“Good luck,” I say, averting my eyes from hers.

We were supposed to go to Lucienne’s wedding the following Saturday, and she had thick and magnificent braids on her head.

“Jessie, they’ll never be able to do anything, knowing that God can see them.”

I hug her to me without replying.

On the way back everything is all right.

The weather is mild in Kigali. The streets are deserted and suddenly look wider. I realize that without noticing—and probably like every one of us—I had certain reference points in the city. A little shop at the street corner. Motorcycle repairers in the vicinity of a Perowanda gas station. Little things like that. Since the news of the assassination broke, all these tableaux have disappeared from the scene. The occasional people who dare leave their house are foreigners or, of course, Hutus. Or those IDs say they are. That’s my case. The others are all hiding wherever they can.

In the city there’s an excitement that’s both joyful and solemn. Groups of Interahamwe militia in white outfits covered with banana leaves walk around singing. Standing in their tanks, the military and the police are keeping an eye on everything. Everyone has a transistor radio glued to his ear. The radio says: “My friends, they have dared to kill our good president Habyarimana. The hour of truth is at hand!” Then there’re some music and games. The host of the program, in brilliant form, quizzes his listeners: “How do you recognize an Inyenzi?” The listeners call in. Some of the answers are really funny, so we have a good laugh. Everyone gives a description. The host becomes serious again, almost severe: “Have fun, my friends, but don’t forget the work that’s waiting for you!”

At Camp Kigali ten Belgian UN soldiers have been killed. Belgium is pulling out. They don’t want to know anything else. Even their civilians are feeling threatened and they try to pass for French at the barricades. Somewhere in Paris some sinister civil servants are rubbing their hands together: the situation is under control in Kigali, the RPF won’t get in. Their straw men got the army generals and commanders together. They uttered the terrible words: Muhere iruhande. Literally, “Begin with one side.” Neighborhood by neighborhood. House by house. Don’t spread your forces out in disorderly killings. All of them must die. Lists had been drawn up. The prime minister. Agathe Uwilingiyimana, and hundreds of other moderate Hutu politicians have already fallen to the bullets of the presidential guard. To tell what they did to Agathe Uwilingiyimana is beyond me. A woman’s body profaned. After so-called Ibyitso, the collaborators, it’ll be the Tutsis’ turn. What they’re guilty of is just being themselves: they’re barred from innocence for all eternity.

If only by the way people are walking, you can see that tension is mounting by the minute. I can feel it almost physically. Everyone is running or at least hurrying about. I meet more and more passersby who seem to be walking around in circles. There seems to be another light in their eyes. I think of the fathers who have to face the anguished eyes of their children and who can’t tell them anything. For them, the country has become an immense trap in the space of a few hours. Death is on the prowl. They can’t even dream of defending themselves. Everything has been meticulously prepared for a long time: the administration, the army, the Interahamwe are going to combine forces to kill, if possible, every last one of them.

I’ve chosen to be here. The resistance leaders at Mulindi placed their trust in me and I accepted. They explained to us that the Arusha peace treaty could produce either the best or the worst of results and that the RFP needed people in all the big cities and towns.

On the eve of our departure I thought a lot about my father. In my brothers and sisters’ opinion I was his favorite. Even he didn’t attempt to hide it. When we were in Bujumbura sometimes he would say, “Of all my children, Jessica is the one who is most like me.” A funny character, Jonas Sibomana. He would show us his torso, furrowed with scars, and would promise to leave all his goods to the one of us who could reproduce the same scars on his own body. My brother Georges, who didn’t take anything seriously, answered him, “You’re so broke, old Jonas, that it’s not even worth it to try.” Then both of them would pretend to fight and we had so much fun watching them run all over the house. My father had been a member of Pierre Mulele’s resistance movement in Kwilu. Oh, he wasn’t one of the important people in the group. He was just one of those peasants they give weapons to, explaining to them quickly who the enemies are. They could lose their lives in all that, but they wouldn’t make a name for themselves. Jonas told me that he saw Che Guevara when the Cuban came to organize the resistance in the Congo. He also knew Kabila, and didn’t have a good word to say about him. When he felt very ill, in Bujumbura, he called for me: “Go to the house where we used to live in the neighborhood of Buyenzi, and tell the owner that it’s your father, Jonas Sibomana, who sent you. He’ll understand.” The owner and I found a big package in a hole next to a spigot. I opened it. It contained three old guns, already half rusted. When I went back to see him we had a good laugh at his joke.

I suppose that’s what made me decide to interrupt my studies when I was eighteen to join the guerrillas in Mulindi.

I remember everything as if it were yesterday. There were fifteen of us young people making the road trip by night from Bujumbura to the Mushiha refugee camp. Departure the next day already, at dusk—because we always had to move about in the dark—for Mwanza in Tanzania where we had to wait for the boat—the Victoria—for a week. After that, it was Bukoba. There we were supposed to locate a red truck parked at the port. The leader of our group, Patrick Nagera—he was to fall later in the front line of our October 1990 offensive—started looking all around him, his nose in the air. A large man in a hat, with a scarf around his neck, passed close to him and said very quickly without stopping, “Is it you?” Later on it was in Mutukura and Kampala where we stopped seeing each other. I was staying with a family in the Natete neighborhood. In the evening, when I took a stroll in the street to stretch my legs a bit, I was puzzled to see cars driving on the left-hand side of the road. It’s strange, but that’s my strongest memory of Natete, cars driving on the wrong side. All I had to do was to wait for the signal for my departure. I had understood that I was not to ask questions of my hosts.

If we were recounting all this today, one might think that I was bragging. That’s not the case. Ever since 1959, every young Rwandan, at one moment or another in his life, has to answer the same question: Should we just sit back and wait for the killers, or try to do something so that our country can go back to being normal? Between our futures and ourselves, unknown people had planted a sort of giant machete. Try as you might, you couldn’t ignore it. The tragedy would always end up catching you. Because people came to your house one night and massacred all your family. Because in the country where you live in exile, you always end up feeling in the way. Besides, what could I, Jessica Kamanzi, possibly brag about? Others have given their lives for the success of our struggle. I have never held a gun nor participated in the military actions of the guerrillas. I stayed almost the whole time at Mulindi to take care of the cultural activities of the resistance. Sure, I was at Arusha during the negotiations. I typed or photocopied documents and sometimes I was called on to give summaries to our delegates. But those were only humble tasks. It’s true that my presence in Kigali today is not without danger. It’s maybe the first time that I’ve risked my life. In this country, where all the citizens are watched night and day, my false ID card probably won’t protect me for very long. I have to move all the time. But sooner or later there’ll be someone who’ll ask me some very precise questions that I’ll have a hard time answering.

While I’m walking I think back on our night watches. We used to sing, “If three fall in combat, the two who are left will free Rwanda.” Very simple words. We didn’t have time for poetic tricks. These words come back to me like an echo and give me strength. The moment of liberation is at hand. Since this morning our units have been moving on Kigali. But will they arrive everywhere in time? Unfortunately, no. In certain places, the butchery has already started.

Near Kyovu I see hundreds of corpses a few yards from the barricade. While his colleagues are slitting the throats of their victims or hacking them to bits with machetes close to the barricade, an Interahamwe militiaman is checking ID cards. The visor of his helmet is turned backwards, a cigarette dangles from his mouth, and he is sweating profusely. He asks to see my papers. As I take them out of my bag he doesn’t take his eyes off me. The slightest sign of panic, and I’m done for. I manage to keep my composure. All around me there are screams coming from everywhere. In these first hours of massacre the Interahamwe surprise me with the assiduity and even a certain discipline. They are really set on giving the best of themselves, if it is possible to speak this way of the bloody brutes. A woman they’ve wounded but are waiting to finish off a bit later comes toward me, the right part of her jaw and chest covered with blood. She swears that she’s not a Tutsi and begs me to explain to the man in charge of the barrier. I move away from her very quickly. She insists. I tell her dryly to leave me alone. Seeing this, the Interahamwe militiaman is convinced that I’m on his side. He blurts out in a joyful peal of laughter:

“Ah! You’re hard-hearted, my sister, so you are! Come on, you should take pity on her!”

Then he brutally pushes the woman back toward the throat slitters before checking the ID cards again.

• North Africa •

LAILA LALAMI

• Morocco •

THE POLITICS OF READING

I GREW UP in a house full of books. One of my earliest and fondest memories is of my parents curled up on opposite corners of the divan, with a novel or a memoir in their hands. I suppose it was only natural that I became a voracious reader myself. Yet I didn’t begin to read the literature of my own country until later in life—not because of lack of taste or laziness, but because of the vagaries of history.

When the French colonized Morocco in 1912, they did not simply engage in the systematic plunder of its natural and human resources, they also renamed towns and villages, replaced the symbol on the national flag, and imposed French as the language of business and administration. A small number of Moroccans were trained in French schools, and groomed to become clerks, people who could help run the empire without threatening it. After independence in 1956, the Moroccan government embarked on a large-scale effort to open up education to everyone, but it failed to smoothly, or completely, replace French with Arabic and Berber. By the mid-1970s, nearly all the children’s books available in my hometown of Rabat were still in French. So it was that, while an American child might start her reading life with E. B. White and Beverly Cleary, and a British child might be given the stories of Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton, I, though a Moroccan, was weaned on Hergé and Jules Verne, Théophile Gautier and Alexandre Dumas.

Over time, the school curriculum began to include novels, stories, and poems from North Africa. Starting in the sixth grade, we were assigned works such as Le Fils du Pauvre (The Poor Man’s Son) by the Algerian Mouloud Feraoun, Iradat Al-Hayat (The Will to Live) by the Tunisian Aboul-Qacem Echchebi, Al-Ayyam (The Days) by the Egyptian Taha Hussein, and many of Naguib Mahfouz’s novels, including Bayn Al-Qasrayn (Palace Walk). These books hit me with a strange, revelatory power, so deeply did I identify with the characters. Their names, their languages, their customs were recognizable to me; their families’ concerns were similar to mine; their society’s troubles were those of mine. As a small child, literature had been exclusively the realm of the foreign and the unusual, but in my adolescence I discovered that it also included the close and the mundane. There were many people, many lives, many stories in books—things were delightfully more complicated.

With a few exceptions, the school curriculum stayed away from contemporary Moroccan authors. This might have had something to do with the fact that some of our writers were directly or indirectly critical of the government, and had occasionally been censored. Driss Chraïbi’s Le Passé Simple (The Simple Past) was banned for a few years, presumably because the tale of an angry, French-educated young man constantly at odds with his traditionalist Moroccan father (who is referred to only as “Le Seigneur” or “The Lord” in the book) was deemed transgressive in a country still reeling from the struggle and sacrifices that led to independence from France. Mohamed Choukri’s powerful and autobiographical Al-Khubz Al-Hafi (For Bread Alone) was also censored for many years, while the English-language translation, by Paul Bowles, sold more than 100,000 copies in America. Abdellatif Laabi, the poet who founded the seminal literary magazine Anfas/Souffles, spent time in a Kenitra prison for his political activities. Tahar Ben Jelloun’s frank treatment of sexual identity in novels such as L’Enfant de Sable (The Sand Child ) and its sequel, La Nuit Sacrée (The Sacred Night), ensured he would never be assigned at the junior or high school level.

But, through recommendations from teachers, parents, or older siblings, my friends and I read all these writers. I remember how we passed around copies of Choukri’s book to each other (the authorities were, thankfully, never very good at enforcing their own bans, and Al-Khubz Al-Hafi could still be found at used-book stores, or in French translation). I remember reading Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Harrouda with as much trepidation as I had felt when I first laid my hands on a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I remember falling in love with the mother in La Civilisation, Ma Mère, because I had at last met a Muslim heroine who was more than a sad, helpless victim. So I managed.

Later, when I went to college to study English, I was fortunate enough to take an African literature class that introduced me to African novelists who write in English, among whom were Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Ngūgī wa Thiong’o. I remember reading A Man of the People and thinking that Chief the Honorable M.A. Nanga, M.P., would have fit right into our Parliament in Rabat, and that Odili could have been one of our teachers. I was struck by the fact that, even though these characters lived in a culture that was as different in terms of language and religion as any European culture, we shared a common experience.

I had not come across Achebe’s work before, because of the terrible lack of translations into Arabic on the one hand, and the paucity of French translations of English-language African authors on the other. One legacy of colonialism is an artificial division of Africa between Francophone, Lusophone, and Anglophone regions, which is unfortunately carried through in publishing, distribution, and translation. Too often, readers have access only to writers from their own region, which is very limiting. Too often, Western critics who have read in one linguistic tradition make claims about all of Africa. I remember reading in more than one American newspaper that the magnificent Things Fall Apart was the first African novel—an absurd claim. We need more reading across regions.

If my experience is any indication, colonialism—and its love child, dictatorship—have had quite a bit to do with the way in which North African literature was read and taught from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s. Of course, things have changed somewhat since then, and nowadays these writers’ works, as well as children’s books in Arabic and Berber, are more widely available in bookstores. But now we are experiencing another great upheaval that is likely to affect our literature—globalization.

Large numbers of immigrants from Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and the Sudan now live abroad. Fleeing civil wars or dictatorship, or seeking greater economic opportunity, they have settled in Western Europe, America and even as far as Australia. The writers among them have begun to produce work written in the language of their host countries. Ahdaf Soueif, Hisham Matar, and Leila Aboulela write in English; Fouad Laroui and Edmond Amran el Maleh write in French; Abdelkader Benali and Hafid Bouazza write in Dutch; Amara Lakhouss writes in Italian; and the list goes on. Meanwhile, writers like Leila Abouzeid, Alaa Al-Aswany, Bahaa Taher, and Mohammed Berrada continue to live in their native countries and write in Arabic.

By and large, writers who live in North Africa have to be mindful of state censors, while those in the diaspora need not fear being thrown in jail for their work. But diaspora writers face another cost: being viewed suspiciously by the representation mafia. At a reading in Kenitra last year, a Moroccan reader of my first book asked me whether it had been published in America because it depicted the corruption of Moroccan society. During the back and forth of the discussion, the argument was soon turned into its opposite: that I had depicted corruption in order to be published. Although I am frustrated by such comments, I also understand that they are rooted in a certain reality. It is infinitely easier for a North African novel to be published in Europe or America if it trades in clichés rather than in complex fictional realities.

In addition, diaspora writers, particularly those who work in English, have greater access to translations and to large audiences, while those who live in North Africa have a hard time finding a wider readership. There are also great differences in setting, style, and literary influences. I sometimes feel I can hear echoes of George Eliot and Jane Austen in Ahdaf Soueif’s work. Abdelkader Benali seems to me to owe a greater debt to Gabriel García Márquez than to his countryman Mohamed Choukri. Some of the younger writers, like Hafid Bouazza, might even resent being labeled as North African writers, rather than Dutch writers, or writers tout court.

Because of this huge diversity, I think it is quite difficult to speak of one North African literature. It is even harder to speak of one African literature. Africa is made up of 40 nations, whose people speak a multitude of languages and belong to many different religious traditions and ethnic groups. The continent is larger than China, Europe and the United States put together. Just as world maps often shrink the size of Africa to that of South America for representational purposes, speaking of one African literature risks giving the impression that it is a monolithic literature. It risks pointing to a unique literary tradition. It risks equating Africanness with blackness. I think, therefore, that it is more proper to speak of North African and African literatures.

It is, of course, possible to organize these literatures along certain lines, whether genre, temporal, stylistic, or thematic. For instance, because nearly all of the continent was under colonial rule in the 19th and 20th centuries, many novels originating in Africa share certain themes: the struggle for freedom, the pain of exile, the plight of immigrants and asylum-seekers. I can see many similarities between the French-educated Driss Ferdi in Driss Chraïbi’s The Simple Past, and the British-educated Mustafa Sa’eed in Tayib Salih’s Season of Migration to the North. In Muslim African literature, whether from Morocco, Egypt or Senegal, the foibles of a religious society have provided inspiration to many writers. Leila Abouzeid’s Year of the Elephant, Alifa Rifaat’s Distant View of a Minaret and Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter could easily be read together.

“All novels belong to a family,” the late Edward Said once wrote, “and any reader of novels is a reader of this complex family to which they all belong.” Whereas I was initially exposed to only a few members of this family when I was a child, my hope is that today’s children will get to meet as many relatives as possible.

NAWAL EL SAADAWI

• Egypt •

from WOMAN AT POINT ZERO

“HOW CAN YOU be one of the masters? A woman on her own cannot be a master, let alone a woman who’s a prostitute. Can’t you see you’re asking for the impossible?”

“The word impossible does not exist for me,” I said.

I tried to slip through the door, but he pushed me back and shut it. I looked him in the eye and said, “I intend to leave.”

He stared back at me. I heard him mutter, “You will never leave.”

I continued to look straight at him without blinking. I knew I hated him as only a woman can hate a man, as only a slave can hate his master. I saw from the expression in his eyes that he feared me as only a master can fear his slave, as only a man can fear a woman. But it lasted for only a second. Then the arrogant expression of the master, the aggressive look of the male who fears nothing, returned. I caught hold of the latch of the door to open it, but he lifted his arm up in the air and slapped me. I raised my hand even higher than he had done, and brought it down violently on his face. The whites of his eyes went red. His hand started to reach for the knife he carried in his pocket, but my hand was quicker than his. I raised the knife and buried it deep in his neck, pulled it out of his neck and then thrust it deep into his chest, pulled it out of his chest and plunged it deep into his belly. I stuck the knife into almost every part of his body. I was astonished to find how easily my hand moved as I thrust the knife into his flesh, and pulled it out almost without effort. My surprise was all the greater since I had never done what I was doing before. A question flashed through my mind. Why was it that I had never stabbed a man before? I realized that I had been afraid, and that the fear had been within me all the time, until the fleeting moment when I read fear in his eyes.

I opened the door and walked down the stairs into the street. My body was as light as a feather, as though its weight had been nothing more than the accumulation of fear over the years. The night was silent, the darkness filled me with wonder, as though light had only been one illusion after another dropping like veils over my eyes. The Nile had something almost magical about it. The air was fresh, invigorating. I walked down the street, my head held high to the heavens, with the pride of having destroyed all masks to reveal what is hidden behind. My footsteps broke the silence with their steady rhythmic beat on the pavement. They were neither fast as though I was hurrying away from something in fear, nor were they slow. They were the footsteps of a woman who believed in herself, knew where she was going, and could see her goal. They were the footsteps of a woman wearing expensive leather shoes, with strong high heels, her feet arched in a feminine curve, rising up to full rounded legs, with a smooth, taut skin and not a single hair.

No one would have easily recognized me. I looked no different from respectable, upper-class women. My hair had been done by a stylist who catered only to the rich. My lips were painted in the natural tone preferred by respectable women because it neither completely hides nor completely exposes their lust. My eyes were penciled in perfect lines drawn to suggest a seductive appeal, or a provocative withdrawal. I looked no different from the wife of an upper-class government official occupying a high position of authority. But my firm, confident steps resounding on the pavement proved that I was nobody’s wife.

I crossed by a number of men working in the police force, but none of them realized who I was. Perhaps they thought I was a princess, or a queen, or a goddess. For who else would hold her head so high as she walked? And who else’s footsteps could resound in this way as they struck the ground? They watched me as I passed by, and I kept my head high like a challenge to their lascivious eyes. I moved along as calm as ice, my steps beating down with a steady unfaltering sound. For I knew that they stood there waiting for a woman like me to stumble, so that they could throw themselves on her like birds of prey.

At the corner of the street I spotted a luxurious car, with the head of a man protruding from the window, its tongue almost hanging out. He opened the door of the car and said,

“Come with me.”

I held back and said, “No.”

“I will pay whatever you ask for.”

“No,” I repeated.

“Believe me, I will pay you anything you want.”

“You cannot pay my price, it’s very high.”

“I can pay any price. I’m an Arab prince.”

“And I am a princess.”

“I’ll pay a thousand.”

“No.”

“Two thousand, then.”

I looked deep into his eyes. I could tell he was a prince or from the ruling family, for there was a lurking fear in their depths. “Three thousand,” I said. “I accept.”

In the soft luxurious bed, I closed my eyes, and let my body slip away from me. It was still young and vigorous, strong enough to retreat, powerful enough to resist. I felt his body bearing down on my breast, heavy with long untold years of his life, swollen with stagnant sweat. A body full of flesh from years of eating beyond his needs, beyond his greed. With every movement he kept repeating the same stupid question:

“Do you feel pleasure?”

And I would close my eyes and say, “Yes.”

Each time he rejoiced like a happy fool, and repeated his question with a gasping breath and each time I gave the same answer: “Yes.”

With the passing moments his foolishness grew, and with it his assurance that my repeated affirmations of pleasure were true. Every time I said “yes” he beamed at me like an idiot, and an instant later I could feel the weight of his body bear down on me, more heavily than before. I could stand no more, and just when he was on the point of repeating the same stupid question again, I snapped out angrily,

“No!”

When he held out his hand with the money, I was still wildly angry with him. I snatched the notes from his hand and tore them up into little pieces with a pent-up fury.

The feel of the notes under my fingers was the same as that of the first piastre ever held between them. The movement of my hands as I tore the money to pieces, tore off the veil, the last, remaining veil from before my eyes, to reveal the whole enigma which had puzzled me throughout, the true enigma of my life. I rediscovered the truth I had already discovered many years before when my father held out his hand to me with the first piastre he had ever given me. I returned to the money in my hand and with a redoubled fury tore the remaining bank notes into shreds. It was as though I was destroying all the money I had ever held, my father’s piastre, my uncle’s piastre, all the piastres I had ever known, and at the same time destroying all the men I had ever known, one after the other in a row: my uncle, my husband, my father, Marzouk and Bayoumi, Di’aa, Ibrahim, and tearing them all to pieces one after the other, ridding myself of them once and for all, removing every trace their piastres had left on my fingers, tearing away the very flesh of my fingers to leave nothing but bone, ensuring that not a single vestige of these men would remain at all.

His eyes opened wide in amazement as he watched me tear up the whole sheaf of bank notes. I heard him say:

“You are verily a princess. How did I not believe you right from the start?”

“I’m not a princess,” I said angrily.

“At first I thought you were a prostitute.”

“I am not a prostitute. But right from my early days my father, my uncle, my husband, all of them, taught me to grow up as a prostitute.”

The prince laughed as he eyed me again and then said, “You are not telling the truth. From your face, I can see you are the daughter of a king.”

“My father was no different from a king except for one thing.”

“And what is that?”

“He never taught me to kill. He left me to learn it alone as I went through life.”

“Did life teach you to kill?”

“Of course it did.”

“And have you killed anybody yet?”

“Yes, I have.”

He stared at me for a brief moment, laughed, and then said, “I can’t believe that someone like you can kill.”

“Why not?”

“Because you are too gentle.”

“And who said that to kill does not require gentleness?”

He looked into my eyes again, laughed, and said, “I cannot believe that you are capable of killing anything, even a mosquito.”

“I might not kill a mosquito, but I can kill a man.”

He stared at me once more, but this time only very quickly, then said, “I do not believe it.”

“How can I convince you that what I say is true?”

“I do not really know how you can do that.”

So I lifted my hand high up above my head and landed it violently on his face.

“Now you can believe that I have slapped you. Burying a knife in your neck is just as easy and requires exactly the same movement.”

This time, when he looked at me, his eyes were full of fear.

I said, “Perhaps now you will believe that I am perfectly capable of killing you, for you are no better than an insect, and all you do is to spend the thousands you take from your starving people on prostitutes.”

Before I had time to raise my hand high up in the air once more, he screamed in panic like a woman in trouble. He did not stop screaming until the police arrived on the scene.

He said to the police, “Don’t let her go. She’s a criminal, a killer.”

And they asked me, “Is what he says true?”

“I am a killer, but I’ve committed no crime. Like you, I kill only criminals.”

“But he is a prince, and a hero. He’s not a criminal.”

“For me the feats of kings and princes are no more than crimes, for I do not see things the way you do.”

“You are a criminal,” they said, “and your mother is a criminal.”

“My mother was not a criminal. No woman can be a criminal. To be a criminal one must be a man.”

“Now look here, what is this that you are saying?”

“I am saying that you are criminals, all of you: the fathers, the uncles, the husbands, the pimps, the lawyers, the doctors, the journalists, and all men of all professions.”

They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.”

“I am speaking the truth. And truth is savage and dangerous.”

MOHAMED MAGANI

• Algiers •

from THE BUTCHER’S AESTHETICS

Translated from the French by Lulu Norman

THE TWO FRIENDS’ meetings resembled a ritual that went back to the years of holy struggle when they would drink more cups of coffee than they could count to give them energy, a small vice Laid Touhami had picked up in the mountains and the mayor at a young age, since his father considered coffee an aphrodisiac and permanently wore a necklace of coffee beans round his neck.

In fact, coffee had been behind Zineddine Ayachi’s flight into the Ouarsenis and his joining the ranks of the Front. One day an enemy unit invaded his house on the false tip-off that he’d been helping the rebels, supplied by a local collaborator who was operating on a large scale for lack of specific names. His information targeted blocks of houses demarcated by roads and alleyways and numbered in sections. The soldiers surrounded Zineddine Ayachi’s house; some of them climbed onto the roof while others kicked in the door with their boots. Four men suddenly landed in front of him as he sat in the yard. He stared in terror at the black jaws of the submachine guns. A finger pointed to the coffeepot beside him and a voice screamed: “Who’s been here? Where are the others?” The soldier seized the single cup and the coffeepot, which he overturned. The black sand of coffee grounds fell on Zineddine Ayachi’s foot, and drips of coffee stained his white shirt in damp zigzags.

“It was me! It was me!” he said.

“This coffeepot is empty,” said the soldier.

“I drank it all, it was me,” said Zineddine Ayachi.

“It must hold at least ten cups. You weren’t alone! Where are the others?”

“There’s only my family. I drink a lot of coffee. I can’t help it.”

“You Arab donkey! You’re going to show us what you can do.”

Zineddine Ayachi’s wife put the coffeepot on the fire, half full of water. The soldier giving the orders filled it to the brim, then poured a packet of coffee into the boiling water. “A man that fond of coffee must like it strong,” he said to Zineddine Ayachi’s wife, who sensed her husband’s imminent ordeal. All the soldiers gathered in the yard. None of them wanted to miss the spectacle of the man undergoing the torture of the strong coffee dose. They cleared out all there was to eat in the tiny kitchen. Zineddine Ayachi started on the first cup and answered questions about his amazing capacity to absorb an entire coffeepot with no damage to his physical and mental health. He was supposed to sip the thick black liquid slowly; disobeying orders cost him a rifle butt across the shoulders. His wife and children were shut, sobbing, in a room. He tried downing the third cup in two gulps. The soldiers were in no hurry, they were just sorry they hadn’t found any wine in the house—one of them said he thought grape juice flowed from the taps in a hot country, this paradise where vines were the only crop. The gulps of coffee fell heavily on Zineddine Ayachi’s stomach, like tar soup. On the fifth cup a nauseating saliva filled his mouth, a gurgle rose from his guts, he tried to speed up the forced tasting, then a blow from the rifle butt across his back caused a retching that momentarily relieved his stomach.

“Swallow it,” said one of the soldiers, “you can’t waste all that coffee.”

Zineddine Ayachi seized the coffeepot, lifted it into the air like a goatskin and let the contents pour into his wide-open mouth. A coffee hemorrhage immediately spurted from his nose, prompted by the heavy punch of a gun right in the stomach. Then the soldiers took him to the Lattifia barracks, where the torture continued: they made him drink saucepan after saucepan of coffee prepared with soapy water, this time with the aid of a funnel. His denials did little to alter Zineddine Ayachi’s fate; the soldiers set about ridding him of his taste for coffee so long as he would not deliver the names of the men who had shared it with him in his home. A possible way out of his ordeal crept into his mind in the brief moments of prayer afforded him by his executioners, for he sensed the end was near. The faces of those he loved, his friends and family, passed before his eyes; invoked silently, he asked each of them for forgiveness, forgiveness for his mistakes and his faults, his aberrations on this earth. In the end, Zineddine Ayachi arrived at the last name, his dead father’s. Helped by the combination of circumstances or the irony of fate, his thoughts returned by a curious path to the cause of his misfortune, and he remembered the coffee bean necklace his father used to wear round his neck.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” he said. “My coffee isn’t really coffee at all. It’s a mixture of burnt chickpeas, black pepper, paprika and coffee. My father loved this drink, it was his secret recipe. It’s an excellent aphrodisiac. A man becomes a bull with that coffee! The more cups, the more thrusts.”

Every time they met in the mountains, Laid Touhami would laugh at his friend’s story. Neither he nor the other resistance fighters had any need of the magic potion Zineddine Ayachi had invented in a torture chamber; without women it would be a disaster. The enemy soldiers sent Zineddine Ayachi back to his house. He was to prepare five liters of his special coffee, which would multiply their orgasms with the fatmas. The future mayor of Lattifia owed his salvation to a psychological trick: he instinctively knew that these foreigners, the masters of his country, would follow their orders but also their lust. A very short time sufficed to say good-bye to his family; the torturers’ credulity would not last long. Zineddine Ayachi had no illusions about the effect of his concoction, yet he was tempted to add a few fluid ounces of piss from his belly, swollen with the soapy coffee ingurgitated through the funnel. On the Ouarsenis paths, he urinated symbolically on the enemy he’d be fighting for years to come.

AZIZ CHOUAKI

• Algiers •

from THE STAR OF ALGIERS

Four

A WEEK LATER, 12 June, the municipal elections. The first free elections since Independence. Dozens of parties are contending, the walls of Algiers are dripping with posters. It’s a bitter, anarchic struggle between all the parties except the FFS, which has called for a boycott.

Moussa, of course, didn’t vote, convinced it would be rigged as always, 99.99 percent for the FLN, the famous “Continuity within Change.”

At 8 p.m. the entire family gathers in front of the TV for the results of the polls. Visibly ill at ease, the female news anchor announces that the FIS has won a landslide victory taking three-quarters of Algeria’s municipal councils. Even in the affluent districts, the well-heeled having spent the day at the beach.

Then a breakdown of the results by constituency. It’s one long death knell, the FIS emerges triumphant almost everywhere, even in Kabylia.

The hydra’s been legitimised.

At first Moussa laughs nervously, his knees tremble. No, it’s not true . . . They’re bound to say it’s a joke.

Is this Iran?

Nacéra and Kahina start to cry, that’s it, we’re done for, they’re going to force us to wear the hijab. Pa bawls at them to be quiet. Slimane’s inwardly jubilant, Ma groans, her diabetes. Sahnoun’s with his thriller.

Through the window, a mighty clamour echoes from every corner of the city. Moussa goes out onto the balcony and sees a dense moving throng, a vast black ocean. Hordes of bearded young men in kamis, thousands of them, in the grip of hysteria. Koran in hand, they chant verses and slogans: “Sharia now! There is no God but Allah.”

Behind them, kids parading behind a barefoot, snotty-nosed self-appointed leader waving a makeshift flag, a torn plastic milk sachet on the end of a long reed.

All around, cars honking, ululations, traffic jams. The FIS stewards zealously direct the cars. Moussa recognises familiar faces: Spartacus, Baiza, Mustapha, Fatiha’s brother. Look, even Slimane’s down there, for God’s sake. Going to have to sort him out, give him an earful, he deserves it.

Moussa doesn’t want to see or hear any more. He goes back to his room to calm down and breaks out in a sweat. This isn’t really happening?

What to do?

A chill runs down his spine. His mind’s frozen, his limbs numb, his blood pressure plummets, he paces up and down. It can’t be true? Better off sticking with the FLN in that case . . .

His mouth’s dry, he goes to the kitchen and pours himself a glass of water. His grandma, wearing a yellow and bright pink Kabyle dress, asks him what’s going on.

“This is it, the FIS has won, we’re dead.”

“Dead? The FIS, who’s the FIS?”

Moussa goes back to his room and stares at the Michael Jackson poster and his own, side by side. Calm down, dammit. Yeah the FIS’ll be buggered. Carry on, work, work, work, hang in there. Music . . .

The following Thursday, there’s a wedding at Frais-Vallon. Late afternoon, usual briefing with the band. Sort out the set.

Djelloul’s taking care of the transport. Pick-up truck for the gear and the musicians.

Moussa rides in front, of course.

Djelloul’s the band’s official driver. He charges 100 dinars for each musician and has a good night out. Djelloul’s never had a car of his own, he always drives the ones he’s repairing.

Rashid should be coming. When Rashid comes, it’s important, it’s not the same.

Forgotten anything? No, set of strings for the mandola, found them at the last minute, black market. Stage outfit chosen with care, and the posters. Rashid’s given him three, first proofs. He told him to put one on a display stand, clearly visible. Visibility is crucial.

Djelloul reverses into a parking space, puts on the hand brake, and turns off the engine. Everyone gets out, loads of people, cars parked haphazardly, kids. They’re shown into a kind of dressing room—big cushions on the floor, smell of perfume, cakes.

On a side table is some Muslim whisky—in a teapot, in other words. They roll joints, take slugs of whisky, buff their shoes to a shine, tune their instruments.

Rashid chats to Moussa as he dresses in front of a huge mirror. He tells him about a video he saw on MTV and suggests ideas for Moussa’s look. Moussa feels good when Rashid’s there. Rashid knows his shit, fuck yeah, solid.

Dazzling in his green-spangled suit and leather tie, and fragrant with perfume, Moussa gives the band last-minute instructions, the order of the songs. Final adjustment to his bow tie, everyone looks immaculate.

Sound check, then launch into the first number. Vibe tense at first, audience on edge, the elections, shadow of the FIS?

Pouring all his rage into his mandola, Moussa goes straight for the gut, no pissing about. Let’s do it!

From the first song, the audience goes wild, men and women. They invade the dance floor. Moussa’s on a high, he tries out different styles of song, different moves.

By the fourth number, he’s Hendrix: he plays the mandola behind his head, on his knees, the crowd’s ecstatic.

Then it’s the break, Moussa’s in front of the mirror, checking his kohl, his teeth, his tie, his make-up. Everyone’s congratulating him, that was amazing, thank you.

The bridegroom, wearing a tuxedo and white burnous, comes over in person to thank him. Moussa wishes him joy and lots of children.

In the mirror, Moussa looks himself in the eye. He can see into the far distance, a faint green glimmer at the back of the cave. The smell of certain, early fame. Yesss, he’s away.

Where’s that joint got to, anyway? The bassist.

Moussa:

“Hey, don’t bogart that joint.”

Bassist, doesn’t quite catch what he says:

“Huh, what?”

Moussa, cool velvet:

“Bogart, Humphrey Bogart, you heard of him?”

Bassist, “Er . . .”

Moussa:

“You know, the ’50s, Bogart, always had a cigarette in his mouth, he never passed the joint, get it? Don’t bogart the joint.”

Bassist, no reaction . . . Rashid chuckles quietly.

He got that one from Rashid, apparently it’s an American thing, “don’t bogart the joint,” pass it on. Good old Rashid.

At last the bass player passes him the joint, Moussa takes two drags, passes it to Rashid, and signals to the band. They’re on again. Come on, boys!

He begins with a very gentle ballad, an old lullaby about mothers separated from their babies. Muted bass, light cymbals, bit of synth in the background, that’s it. Moussa pitches his voice quite low, very ethereal, just on the verge of tears.

The emotion’s overwhelming. All the mothers are dabbing at their eyes, wailing rises from the balconies. It gives Moussa goose bumps.

At the end, old women come on the stage to kiss him, to wish him long life, health, and happiness.

Now for the real deal . . . two, three, four, he gives the signal. “Ayadho,” beautiful melody, lively, haunting chorus. It’s going well, Moussa watches the bassist, the off-beat rhythm, gets the audience to clap their hands.

The second half’s going better, the PA system’s pretty much OK. Moussa has the audience eating out of his hand, he’s ruling the stage, he makes love to the mike, plays all his trump cards. The party goes on till the sun’s already high, the first heat of the day. Moussa’s tired but happy. He feels free, it does a guy good.

Two weeks later, all the posters are printed, Rashid drove over to pick them up himself. Moussa on tenterhooks, meet up at Rashid’s at 5 p.m. He’s promised him some spliff to celebrate.

No problem, Moussa goes downstairs in his flip-flops and, from the entrance to his building, hails the first kid he sees, literally the first, and asks him to bring back 200 dinars’ worth of gear.

Spartacus, leaning against the wall, beard and kamis, overhears. He walks up to Moussa:

“Brother, you looking for spliff ? Listen, Dahmane got busted by the police, but they didn’t find the stuff, his wife had hidden it. Now she’s selling it to pay for a lawyer for him. If you want to do a good deed, in the name of God, she’s got three kids, she’s on her own . . .”

Feeling charitable, Moussa takes pity. OK then, he’ll take 400 dinars’ worth. Braiding his goatee, Spartacus runs off to get him the gear.

On reaching Rashid’s place, Moussa already feels plural: five hundred posters, just think!

Rashid’s spread them all over the living room. MOUSSA MASSY, MOUSSA MASSY, MOUSSA MASSY everywhere.

“Take fifty or so for yourself, your friends, events, parties. We’ll keep the rest for the day you release a cassette, and we’ll add a sticker to promote it. By the way, have you thought about the title for the album?”

Moussa, excited:

“I thought of ‘Zombretto.’ You know, the kids are all out of their skulls on zombretto. It’s mother’s milk to them. It’s a title that reflects their world, their deprivation.”

“Perfect, yeah, ‘Zombretto.’ That’s pretty cool. OK, let’s go for it. ‘Zombretto, an album by Moussa Massy!’ Yeah, and it sounds quite salsa, too. Great!”

After two joints, a beer, they’ve got a plan of action. Rashid takes notes, turns on his computer, yeah, technology. Program, file, that’s it, Moussa’s knocked out by the computer, the mouse, it’s a different planet. Rashid does projections, simulations, clicks on the mouse. Moussa watches his name come up on the screen, it’s like NASA or something.

Shit, really got to make this work . . .

The plan’s put together at last, Rashid’s thought of everything, distribution, flyposting . . .

Moussa gave Spartacus three posters to put up around the neighbourhood. At Bouhar the baker’s, in front of the bus stop, on the wall of his apartment building.

Djelloul wanted one for his garage, Kahina for her supermarket, and Saliha, yeah, even Saliha, for her high school.

Moussa’s put up four in his bedroom, plus another stuck on cardboard backing. Now he’s a pro, he can start talking career a little, just a little.

And he’ll have to up the rate for weddings.

At last, it’s all beginning to come together. Little by little, not quite how he’d like it, but it’s coming.

Moussa knows deep down he’s not there yet, he’s well aware it’ll take more, a lot more. TV, mega concerts at La Coupole or Ryadh El Feth, on the esplanade, yeah, 50,000 people with at least a 60,000-watt PA. That means you’ve really taken off.

And then, the ultimate, of course: recording in a studio, releasing a cassette like everyone else. Don’t settle for less, aim for the sky, beyond the horizon.

LEILA ABOULELA

•Sudan •

SOUVENIRS

THEY SET OUT early, before sunset. Not the right time for visiting, but it was going to be a long drive and his sister Manaal said she would not be able to recognize the painter’s house in the dark. The car slipped from the shaded car-port into the white sunlight of the afternoon, the streets were empty, their silence reminiscent of dawn.

Since he had come on the plane from Scotland two weeks ago, Yassir had not gone out at this time of day. Instead he had rested after lunch wearing his old jellabia. He would lie on one of the beds that were against the walls of the sitting room, playing with a toothpick in his mouth and talking to Manaal without looking at her. On the bed perpendicular to his, she would lie with her feet near his head so that had they been children she might have reached out and pulled his hair with her toes. And the child Yassir would have let his heels graze the white wall leaving brown stains for which he would be punished later. Now they talked slowly, probing for common interests and so remembering things past, gossiping lightly about others, while all the time the air cooler blew the edges of the bedsheets just a little, intermittently, and the smells of lunch receded. Then the air cooler’s sound would take over, dominate the room, blowing their thoughts away, and they would sleep until the time came when all the garden was in shade.

In this respect, Yassir had slotted easily into the life of Khartoum, after five years on the North Sea oil-rigs, noisy helicopter flights to and from Dyce airport, a grey sea with waves as crazy as the sky. Five years of two weeks off-shore, two weeks on with Emma in Aberdeen. No naps after lunch there and yet he could here lie and know that the rhythms the air cooler whispered into his heart were familiar, well known. When he had first arrived he had put fresh straw into the air cooler’s box. Standing outdoors on an upturned Pepsi crate, he had wedged open the grimy perforated frame with a screwdriver, unleashed cobwebs and plenty of dust: fresh powdery dust and solid fluffs that had lost all resemblance to sand. The old bale of straw had shrunk over the years, gone dark and rigid from the constant exposure to water. He oiled the water pump and put in the new bale of straw. Its smell filled the house for days, the air that blew out was cooler. For this his mother had thanked him and like other times before, prayed that he would only find good people in his path. It was true, he was always fortunate in the connections he made, in the people who held the ability to further his interests. In the past teachers, now his boss, his colleagues, Emma.

But “Your wife—what’s her name?” was how his mother referred to Emma. She would not say Emma’s name. She would not “remember” it. It would have been the same if Emma had been Jane, Alison or Susan, any woman from “outside.” Outside that large pool of names his mother knew and could relate to. That was his punishment, nothing more, nothing less. He accepted it as the nomad bears the times of drought which come to starve his cattle, biding time, waiting for the tightness to run its course and the rain that must eventually fall. Manaal would smile in an embarrassed way when their mother said that. And as if time had dissolved the age gap between them, she would attempt a faint defence. “Leave him alone, Mama,” she would say, in a whisper, avoiding their eyes, wary, lest her words, instead of calming, provoked the much feared outburst. Manaal had met Emma two years ago in Aberdeen. What she had told his mother about Emma, what she had said to try to drive away the rejection that gripped her, he didn’t know.

For Yassir, Emma was Aberdeen. Unbroken land after the sea. Real life after the straight lines of the oil-rig. A kind of freedom. Before Emma his leave on-shore had floated, never living up to his expectations. And it was essential for those who worked on the rigs that those on-shore days were fulfilling enough to justify the hardship of the rigs. A certain formula was needed, a certain balance which evaded him. Until one day he visited the dentist for two fillings and, with lips frozen with procaine, read out loud the name, Emma, written in Arabic, on a golden necklace that hung around the receptionist’s throat.

“Your wife—what’s her name?” his mother says as if clumsily smudging out a fact, hurting it. A fact, a history: three years ago he drove Emma to the maternity ward in Foresterhill, in the middle of a summer’s night that looked like twilight, to deliver a daughter who did not make her appearance until the afternoon of the following day. Samia changed in the two weeks that he did not see her. Her growth marked time like nothing else did. Two weeks off-shore, two weeks with Emma and Samia, two weeks off-shore again, Emma driving him to the heliport, the child in her own seat at the back. A fact, a history. Yet here, when Manaal’s friends visited, some with toddlers, some with good jobs, careers, there was a “see what you’ve missed” atmosphere around the house. An atmosphere that was neither jocular nor of regret. So that he had come to realise, with the sick bleakness that accompanies truth, that his mother imagined that he could just leave Emma and leave the child, come home, and those five years would have been just an aberration, time forgotten. He could marry one of Manaal’s friends, one who would not mind that he had been married before, that he had left behind a child somewhere in Europe. A bride who would regard all that as a man’s experience. When talking to her friends she would say the word “experienced” in a certain way, smiling secretly.

Because the streets were silent, Yassir and Manaal were silent too, as if by talking they would disturb those who were resting indoors. Yassir drove slowly, pebbles spat out from under the wheels, he was careful to avoid the potholes. The windows wide open let in dust but closing them would be suffocating. From their house in Safia they crossed the bridge into Khartoum and it was busier there, more cars, more people walking in the streets. That part of the journey, the entry into Khartoum, reminded him of the Blue Nile Cinema, which was a little way under the bridge. He remembered as a student walking back from the cinema, late at night to the Barracks, as his hostel was called, because it was once army barracks. He used to walk with his friends in a kind of swollen high, full of the film he had just seen. Films like A Man for All Seasons, Educating Rita, Chariots of Fire.

There was still a long way for them to go, past the Extension, beyond the airport, past Riyadh to the newly built areas of Taif and El-Ma’moura. Not a very practical idea, a drain of the week’s ration of petrol, and there was the possibility that the painter would not be in and the whole journey would have been wasted. Manaal was optimistic though. “They’ll be in,” she said, “Insha Allah. Especially if we get there early enough before they go out anywhere.” There were no telephones in El-Ma’moura, it was a newly built area with no street numbers, no addresses.

That morning, he had mentioned buying a painting or two to take back to Aberdeen and Manaal had suggested Ronan K. He was English; his wife gave private English lessons (Manaal was once her student). Now in the car when he asked more about him she said, “For years he sat doing nothing, he had no job, maybe he was painting. I didn’t know about that until the Hilton commissioned him to do some paintings for the cafeteria. No one knows why this couple live here. They are either crazy or they are spies. Everyone thinks they are spies.”

“You all like to think these sensational things,” he said. “What is there to spy on anyway?”

“They’re nice though,” she said. “I hope they are not spies.” Yassir shook his head, thinking it was hopeless to talk sense to her.

The paintings were not his idea, they were Emma’s. Emma was good with ideas, new suggestions, it was one of the things he admired about her. Yassir didn’t know much about painting. If he walked into a room he would not notice the paintings on the wall and he secretly thought they were an extravagance. But then he felt like that about many of the things Emma bought. What he considered luxuries, she considered necessities. Like the Bambi wallpaper in Samia’s room must be bought to match the curtains, which match the bedspread, which match Thumper on the pillowcase. And there was a Bambi video, a Ladybird book, a pop-up book. He would grumble but she would persuade him. She would say that as a child she had cried in the cinema when Bambi’s mother was shot. Popcorn could not stop the tears, the nasal flood. Of pop-up books and Halloween costumes, she would say, as a child I had these things. He would think, “I didn’t.”

This time Emma had asked, “What can you get from Khartoum for the house?” They were eating muesli and watching Mr. Motivator on GMTV. Mr. M. had a litre and a half of bottled mineral water in each hand. He was using them as weights while he squatted down and up, down and up, Knees over your toes. The labels on the bottles had been slyly removed.

“Nothing. There’s nothing there,” Yassir said.

“What do tourists get when they go there?”

“Tourists don’t go there,” he said. “It’s not a touristy place. The only foreigners there are working.” Once when Yassir was in University he had met a British journalist. The journalist was wearing shorts which looked comical because no one else wore shorts unless they were playing sports. He had chatted to Yassir and some of his friends.

“There must be something you can get,” Emma said. “Things carved in wood, baskets . . .”

“There’s a shop which sell ivory things. Elephants made of ivory and things like that.”

“No. Not ivory.”

“I could get you a handbag made of crocodile skin?”

“No, yuck.”

“Snake skin?”

“Stop it, I’m serious.”

“Ostrich feathers?”

“NO DEAD ANIMALS. Think of something else.”

“There’s a bead market. Someone once told me about that. I don’t know where it is though. I’ll have to find out.”

“If you get me beads I can have them made here into a necklace.” Emma liked necklaces but not bracelets or earrings. The golden necklace with her name in Arabic was from an ex-boyfriend, a mud-logger who had been working rotational from the oil-rigs in Oman.

“Change your mind and come with me. You can take the Malaria pills, Samia can take the syrup and it’s just a few vaccines . . .”

“A few jabs! Typhoid, yellow fever, cholera, TB! And Samia might get bitten by this sandfly Manaal told us about when she came here. She is only three. It’s not worth it—maybe when she’s older . . .”

“You’re not curious to see where I grew up?”

“I am interested a bit but—I don’t know—I’ve never heard anything good about that place.”

“This is just a two-week holiday, that’s all. My mother will get to see you and Samia, you’ll have a look around . . .” he said switching Mr. Motivator off.

“Paintings,” she said, “that’s what you should get. You can bring back paintings of all those things you think I should be curious about. Or just take lots of photographs and bring the beads.”

He bought the beads but did not take any photographs. He had shied away from that, as if unable to click a camera at his house, his old school, the cinemas that brought the sparkle of life abroad. So when Manaal said she knew this English painter, he was enthusiastic about the idea even though it was his last evening in Khartoum. Tomorrow his flight would leave for home. He hoped he would have with him some paintings for Emma. She would care about where each one went, on this wall or that. She cared about things more than he did. She even cared about Samia more than he did. Emma was in tune with the child’s every burp and whimper. In comparison to Emma, Yassir’s feelings for Samia were jammed up, unable to flow. Sometimes with the two of them he felt himself dispensable, he thought they could manage without him. They did just that when he was off-shore. They had a life together: playgroup, kindergym, Duthie Park. When Manaal came to Aberdeen she said many times, “Emma is so good with the child. She talks to her as if she is an adult.”

Yassir now wondered, as they drove down Airport Road, if Manaal had said such positive things to his mother. Or if she had only told of the first day of her visit to Aberdeen. The day she reached out to hold the sleeping child and Emma said, “No, I’d rather you didn’t. She’ll be frightened if she wakes up and finds a stranger holding her.” The expression on Manaal’s face had lingered throughout the whole visit as she cringed in Emma’s jumpers that were too loose, too big for her. Then, as if lost in the cold, his sister hibernated, slept and slept through the nights and large parts of the days. So that Emma began to say, she must be ill, there must be something wrong with her, some disease, why does she sleep so much, Yassir, why?

Possessive of Manaal, he had shrugged, Aberdeen’s fresh air, and not explained that his sister had always been like that, easily tired, that she reacted to life’s confusions by digging herself into sleep.

When they left the airport behind them and began to pass Riyadh, Manaal suddenly said that to make sure they get to the right house, she had better drop in on her friend Zahra. Zahra’s mother, a Bulgarian, was a good friend of Mrs. K. and they would know where the house was.

“I thought you knew where it is?”

“I do—but it’s better to be sure. It’s on our way anyway.”

“Isn’t it too early to go banging on people’s doors?”

“No, it’s nearly five. Anyway her parents are away—they’ve gone to Hajj.”

“Who? The Bulgarian woman? You’re joking.”

“No, wallahi.” Manaal seemed amused by his surprise. “Zahra’s mother prays and fasts Ramadan. We were teasing her the last time I went there, telling her that when she comes back from Hajj, she’ll start covering her hair and wearing long sleeves. And she said, ‘No never, your country is too hot; it’s an oven.’ ” Manaal did an impersonation of grammatically incorrect Arabic with a Bulgarian accent which made Yassir laugh. He thought of Zahra’s father, a man who was able to draw his foreign wife to Islam, and Yassir attributed to him qualities of strength and confidence.

The house, in front of which Manaal told him to stop, had a high wall around it. The tops of the trees, that grew inside, fell over the wall shading the pavement. Manaal banged on the metal door—there was no bell. She banged with her palms, and peered through the chink in the door to see if anyone was coming.

Yassir opened the car door to let in some air but there was hardly any breeze. There were tears in the plastic of Manaal’s seat from which bits of yellow foam protruded. There was a crack in the window, fine and long, like a map of the Nile, and one of the doors in the back was stuck and could never be opened. This car, he thought, would not pass its MOT in Aberdeen; it would not be deemed Road Worthy. What keeps it going here is baraka.

The car had seen finer days in his father’s lifetime. Then it was solid and tinged with prestige. Now more than anything else, its decay was proof of the passing away of time, the years of Yassir’s absence. He had suggested to his mother and Manaal that he should buy them a new one. Indeed this had been one of the topics of his stay—A new car—The house needs fixing—Parts of the garden wall are crumbling away—Why don’t you get out of this dump and move to a new house? But his mother and sister tended to put up with things. Like with Manaal recently losing her job. She had worked since graduation with a Danish aid agency, writing reports in their main office in Souk Two. When they had reduced their operations in the South, staff cuts followed. “Start looking for a new job,” he told her, “or have you got certain plans that I don’t know of yet?” She laughed and said, “When you leave I’ll start looking for a job and no, there are no certain plans. There is no one on the horizon yet.”

It was a joke between them. There is no one on the horizon yet. She wrote this at the bottom of letters, letters in Arabic that Emma could not read. Year after year. She was twenty-six now and could feel the words touched by the frizzle of anxiety. “Every university graduate is abroad, making money so that he can come back and marry a pretty girl like you,” he had said recently to her. “Really?” she replied with a sarcasm that was not characteristic of her.

From the door of Zahra’s house, Manaal looked at Yassir in the car and shrugged, then banged again with both hands. But she must have heard someone coming for she raised her hand to him and nodded.

The girl who opened the door had a towel wrapped around her hair like a turban. She kissed Manaal and he could hear, amidst their greetings, the words “shower” and “sorry.” They walked towards him, something he was not expecting and before he could get out of the car the girl leaned, and through the open window of the seat next to his, extended her hand. The car filled up with the smell of soap and shampoo; he thought his hand would later smell of her soap. She had the same colouring as his daughter Samia, the froth of cappuccino, dark-grey eyes, thick eyebrows. Her face was dotted with pink spots, round and raised like little sweets. He imagined those grey eyes soft with sadness when she examined her acne in the bathroom mirror, running her fingertips over the bumps.

With a twig and some pebbles, Zahra drew them a map of the painter’s house in the dust of the pavement. She sat on her heels rather primly, careful not to get dust on her jellabia. She marked the main road and where they should turn left. When you see a house with no garden walls, no fence, she said, that’s where you should turn left.

She stood up, dusted off her hands and, when Manaal got into the car, she waved to them until they turned and were out of sight. Yassir drove back on to the main road, from the dust to the asphalt. The asphalt road was raised and because it had no pavements, its sides were continually being eroded, eaten away. They looked jagged, crumbly. The afternoon was beginning to mellow; sunset was drawing near.

“I imagine that when Samia grows up she will look like your friend,” he said.

“Maybe, yes. I haven’t thought of it before,” Manaal said. “Did you like the earrings for Samia?”

He nodded. His mother had given him a pair of earrings for Samia. He had thanked her and not said that his daughter’s ears were not pierced.

“She’s beginning to accept the situation.” His voice had a tingle of bravado about it. He was talking about his mother and Manaal knew. She was looking out of the window. She turned to him and said, “She likes the photographs that you send. She shows them to everyone.”

Yassir had been sending photographs from Aberdeen. Photographs of Emma and Samia. Some were in the snow, some taken in the Winter Gardens at Duthie Park, some at home.

“So why doesn’t she tell me that? Instead of ‘What’s her name?’ or whatever she keeps saying?”

“You should have given her some idea very early on, you should have . . . consulted her.” Manaal spoke slowly, with caution, like she was afraid or just tired.

“And what would she have said if I had asked her? Tell me, what do you think she would have said?”

“I don’t know.”

“You do know.”

“How can I?”

“She would have said no and then what?”

“I don’t know. I just know that it was wrong to suddenly write a letter and say ‘I got married’—in the past tense. Nobody does that.”

He didn’t answer her. He did not like the hurt in her voice, like it was her own hurt not their mother’s.

As if his silence disturbed her and she wanted the conversation to continue she said, “It wasn’t kind.”

“It was honest.”

“But it was hard. She was like someone ill when she read your letter. Defeated and ill . . .”

“She’ll come to accept it.”

“Of course she’ll come to accept it. That’s the whole point. It’s inevitable but you could have made it easier for her, that’s all.” Then in a lighter tone she said, “Do something theatrical. Get down on your knees and beg for forgiveness.”

They laughed at this together, somewhat deliberately to ease the tension. What he wanted to do was explain, speak about Emma and say, She welcomed me, I was on the periphery and she let me in. Do people get tortured to death in that dentist’s chair or was I going to be the first? he had asked Emma that day, and made her smile, when he stumbled out of pain and spoke to her with lips numb with procaine.

“It would have been good if Emma and Samia had come with you,” Manaal was saying.

“I wanted that too.”

“Why didn’t they?” She had asked that question before as had others. He gave different reasons to different people. Now in the car he felt that Manaal was asking deliberately, wanting him to tell her the truth. Could he say that from this part of the world Emma wanted malleable pieces, not the random whole? She desired frankincense from the Body Shop, tahina safe in a supermarket container.

“She has fears,” he said.

“What fears?”

“I don’t know. The sandfly, malaria . . . Some rubbish like that.” He felt embarrassed and disloyal.

They heard the sunset azan when they began to look for the house without a garden wall which Zahra had told them about. But there were many houses like that; people built their homes and ran out of money by the time it came to build the garden wall. So they turned left off the asphalt road anyway when they reached El-Ma’moura, hoping that Manaal would be able to recognise the street or the house.

“Nothing looks familiar to you?” he asked.

“But everything looks different than the last time I was here,” she said. “All those new houses, it’s confusing.”

There were no roads, just tracks made by previous cars, hardly any pavements. They drove through dust and stones. The houses in various stages of construction stood in straight lines. In some parts the houses formed a square around a large empty area, as if marking a place which would always be empty, where houses would not be allowed to be built.

“Maybe it’s this house,” Manaal said. He parked, they rang the bell, but it was the wrong house.

Back in the car they drove through the different tracks and decided to ask around. How many foreigners were living in this area anyway? People were bound to know them.

Yassir asked a man sitting in front of his house, one knee against his chest, picking his toenails. Near him an elderly man was praying, using a newspaper as a mat. The man didn’t seem to know but he gave Yassir several elaborate suggestions.

Yassir asked some people who were walking past but again they didn’t know. This was taking a long time as everyone he asked seemed willing to engage him in conversation.

“It’s your turn,” he said to Manaal when they saw a woman coming out of her house.

She went towards the woman and stood talking to her. Sunset was nearly over by then, the western sky, the houses, the dusty roads were all one colour, like the flare that burns off the rig, he thought. Manaal stood, a dark silhouette against red and brick. One hand reached out to hold her hair from blowing and her thin elbows made an angle with her head and neck from which the light came through. This is what I would paint, Yassir thought, if I knew how, I would paint Manaal like this, with her elbows sticking out against the setting sun.

When she came back she seemed pleased. “We’re nearly there,” she said, “that woman knew them. First right, and it’s the second house.”

As soon as they turned right, Manaal recognised the one-storey house with the blue gate. She got out before him and rang the bell.

Ronan K. was older than Yassir had imagined. He looked like a football coach, overweight yet light in his movements. The light from the lamp near the gate made him look slightly bald. He recognised Manaal, and as they stepped into a large bare courtyard while he closed the gate behind them, she launched into a long explanation of why they had come and how they had nearly got lost on the way.

The house inside had no tiles on the floors, its surface was of uneven textured stone, giving it the appearance that it was unfinished, still in the process of being built. Yet the furniture was arranged in an orderly way, and there were carpets on the floor. Birds rustled in a cage near the kitchen door. On one of the walls there was a painting of the back of a woman in a tobe, balancing a basket on her head.

“One of yours?” Yassir asked but Ronan said no, he did not like to hang his own paintings in the house.

“All of my work is on the roof,” he said and from the kitchen he got a tray with a plastic jug full of kerkadeh and ice and three glasses. Some of the ice splashed into the glasses as he began to pour, and a pool of redness gathered in the tray, sliding slowly around in large patterns.

“You have a room on the roof ?” Yassir asked.

“That’s where I paint,” Ronan said. “I lock it though, we’ve had many haramiah in the area. Not that they would steal my paintings but it’s better to be careful. I’m in there most nights though, the kahrabah permitting.”

Hearing the Arabic words for thieves and electricity made Yassir smile. He remembered Manaal copying the way Zahra’s mother spoke. He wondered how well Ronan K. knew Arabic.

“My wife has the key. But she is right next door. The neighbour’s daughter had a baby last week. There’s a party of some kind there,” and he looked at Manaal as if for an explanation.

“A simayah,” she said.

“That’s right,” said Ronan, “a simayah. Maybe you could go over and get the key from her? It’s right next door.”

“Is it Amna and her people?” Manaal asked him. “I’ve seen them here before.”

“Yes, that’s them.”

“Last time I was here, Amna walked in with chickens to put in your freezer. There wasn’t enough room in theirs.”

“Chickens with their heads still on them and all the insides,” said Ronan. “Terrible ... This morning she brought over a leg of lamb,” and he gestured vaguely towards the kitchen.

“So who had the baby?” Manaal asked.

“Let’s see if I can get this one right,” he said. “The sister of Amna’s husband, who happens to be—just to get things complicated—married to the cousin of Amna’s mother.”

They laughed because Ronan gave an exaggerated sigh as if he had done a lot of hard work.

“I thought you said it was the neighbours’ daughter,” said Yassir.

“Well this Amna character,” he said and Manaal laughed and nodded at the word “character,” “she is living with her in-laws, so it is really the in-laws’ house.”

Manaal got up to go and Ronan said, “I’ll tell you what. Just throw the keys up to us on the roof. We’ll wait for you in there. It will save time.”

The roof was dark and cool, its floor more uneven than that of the house had been. The ledge all around it was low, only knee-high. El-Ma’moura lay spread out before them, the half-built houses surrounded by scaffolding, the piles of sand and discarded bricks. Shadows of stray dogs made their way through the rubble. Domes of cardboard marked the places where the caretakers of the houses and their families lived. Their job was to guard the bags of cement, the toilets, the tiles that came for the new houses. Once the houses were built they would linger, drawing water from the pipes that splashed on the embryonic streets, until they were eventually sent away.

From the house next door came the sounds of children playing football, scuffling, names called out loud. A woman’s voice shrieked from indoors. Yassir and Ronan sat on the ledge. He offered Yassir a cigarette and Yassir accepted though he hadn’t smoked for several years. Ronan put his box of matches between them. It had a picture of a crocodile on it, mouth wide open, tail arched up in the air. Yassir had forgotten how good it felt to strike a match, flick grey ash away. It was one of the things he and Emma had done together—given up smoking.

“A long way from Aberdeen, or rather Aberdeen is a long way from here,” Ronan said.

“Have you been there before?”

“I know it well, my mother originally came from Elgin. They can be a bit parochial up there, don’t you think?”

At the back of Yassir’s mind questions formed themselves, rose out of a sense of habit, but dropped languidly as if there was no fuel to vocalise them. What was this man doing here, in a place where even the nights were hot and alcohol was forbidden? Where there was little comfort and little material gain? The painter sat on his roof and like the raised spots on the girl’s face did not arouse in Yassir derision, only passive wonder.

“If you look this way,” Ronan said, “you can see the airport where the red and blue lights are. Sometimes I see the aeroplanes circling and landing. They pass right over me when they take off. I see the fat bellies of planes full of people going away.

“Last August we had so much rain. This whole area was flooded—we couldn’t drive to the main road. The Nile rose and I could see it with my telescope—even though it is far from here.”

“How long have you been here?” Yassir asked.

“Fifteen years.”

“That’s a long time.”

Giant wisps of white brushed the sky as if the smoke from their cigarettes had risen high, expanded and stood still. Stars were pushing their way into view, gathering around them the darkest dregs of night. On the roof, speaking Emma’s language for the first time in two weeks, Yassir missed her, not with the light eagerness he had known on the rigs but with something else, something plain and unwanted: the grim awareness of distance. He knew why he had wanted her to come with him, not to “see,” but so that Africa would move her, startle her, touch her in some irreversible way.

Manaal threw up the keys, Ronan opened the locked room and put the light on. It was a single bulb which dangled from the ceiling, speckled with the still bodies of black insects. The room smelt of paint, a large fan stood in the corner. Conscious of his ignorance, Yassir was silent as Ronan, cigarette drooping from his mouth, showed him one painting after the other. “I like them,” he said and it was true. They were clear and uncluttered, the colours light, giving an impression of sunlight. Most were of village scenes, mud houses, one of children playing with a goat, one of a tree that had fallen into the river.

“Paper is my biggest problem,” said Ronan. “The brushes and paints last for quite some time. But if I know someone who is going abroad I always ask them for paper.”

“Is it special paper that you need?”

“Yes, thicker for water colours.”

“I like the one of the donkey in front of the mud house,” said Yassir.

“The Hilton don’t seem to want mud houses.”

“Did they tell you that?”

“No, I just got this feeling.”

“That means I could get them at a discount?”

“Maybe . . . How many were you thinking of taking?”

Yassir chose three, one of them the children with the goat because he thought Samia might like that. He paid after some haggling. Downstairs the birds were asleep in their cage, there was no longer any ice in the jug of kerkadeh. Manaal was waiting for him by the gate. She had a handful of dates from next door which she offered to Ronan and Yassir. The dates were dry and cracked uncomfortably under Yassir’s teeth before softening into sweetness. It was now time to leave. He shook hands with Ronan; the visit was a success; he had achieved what he came for.

Manaal slept in the car on the way home. Yassir drove through streets busier than the ones he had found in the afternoon. This was his last day in Khartoum. Tomorrow night a plane would take him to Paris, another plane to Glasgow, then the train to Aberdeen. Perhaps Ronan K. would be on his roof tomorrow night, watching Air France rise up over the new houses of El-Ma’moura.

The city was acknowledging his departure, recognising his need for a farewell. Headlamps of cars jerked in the badly lit streets, thin people in white floated like clouds. Voices, rumbling lorries, trucks leaning to one side snorting fumes. On a junction with a busier road, a small bus went past carrying a wedding party. It was lit inside, an orange light that caught the singing faces, the clapping hands. Ululations, the sound of a drum, lines from a song. Yassir drove on and gathered around him what he would take back with him, the things he could not deliver. Not the beads, not the paintings, but other things. Things devoid of the sense of their own worth. Manaal’s silhouette against the rig’s flare, against a sky dyed with kerkadeh. The scent of soap and shampoo in his car, a man picking his toenails, a page from a newspaper spread out as a mat. A voice that said, I see the planes circling at night, I see their lights . . . all the people going away. Manaal saying, you could have made it easier for her, you could have been more kind.

• East Africa •

BINYAVANGA WAINAINA

• Kenya •

from DISCOVERING HOME

I AM VISITING home, from South Africa. I take the dawn Nissan matatu from Nairobi to Nakuru, a two hour drive. It is 1995 and it has been three years since I saw my parents, my brother Jim, and my sister Chiqy. I have been working as a journalist in South Africa for the last three years.

The Kikuyu-grass by the side of the road is crying silver tears the colour of remembered light; Nairobi is a smoggy haze in the distance. Soon, the innocence that dresses itself in mist will be shoved aside by a confident sun, and the chase for money will reach its crescendo.

A man wearing a Yale University sweatshirt and tattered trousers staggers behind his enormous mkokoteni, stacked high with bags of potatoes moving so slowly it seems he will never get to his destination. He is transporting. No vehicle gives him room to move. The barrow is so full that it seems that some bags will fall off onto the road. Already, he is sweating. He smiles and waves at a friend on the side of the road, they chat briefly, laughing as if they had no care in the world. Then the mkokoteni man proceeds to move the impossible.

Why, when all odds are against our thriving, do we move with so much resolution? Kenya’s economy is on the brink of collapse, but we march on like safari ants, waving our pincers as if we will win.

Years ago, a guy, outside a theatre in Nairobi, told me he found Kenya strange. He was from the Caribbean.

“It is as if it is a country that has not thought itself into being.”

Maybe motion is necessary even when it produces nothing.

I sit next to the driver, who wears a Stetson hat, and has been playing an upcountry matatu classic on the cassette player: Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler. There are two women behind me talking. I can’t hear what they are saying, but it seems very animated. I catch snatches, when exclamations send their voices higher than they would like.

“Eh! Apana! I don’t believe!”

“Haki!”

“I swear!”

“Me I heard ati . . .”

Aha. Members of the Me-I-Heard-Ati society.

I construct their conversation in my mind:

“Eee-heeee! Even me I’ve heard that one! Ati you know, they are mining oil in Lake Victoria, together with Biwott.”

“Really!”

“Yah!”

“And they are exporting the ka-plant to Australia. They use it to feed sheep.”

“Nooo! Really? What plant?”

“You knooow, that plant—Water-hyak haycy . . . haia. Argh! That ka-plant that is covering the lake!”

“Hyacinth?”

“Yah! That hya-thing was planted by Moi and Biwott and them in Lake Victoria. They want to finish the Luos!”

And the Illuminati, the Free Masons—where Biwott, a short man who is said to run everything, is supposed to be the hooded Masonic overlord, higher there even, we hear, than the president.

The Nissan drones on, we are in a narrow tunnel made of star-stitched black felt, all fifteen of us lost in our own thoughts. Outside, in the valley below, all I can see is thousands of sepia paraffin lamps, flickering dots, each carrying wriggling dreams—hidden behind stoic faces, and sturdy mud and wood homes, muffled behind the shrieking silence of night.

I know in these red fertile hills, where my own ancestors come from, and where pyrethrum and potatoes are grown, strange cults thrive, hundreds of charismatic churches, tens of apocalyptic churches, and in the dark, tongues flutter and throb, eyes roll; and in the morning, faces are stoic.

At seven, the taxi goes somber as the music is turned off, and the news comes on, and we discover that today President Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi lifted an eyebrow, shut one eye, examined a pimple, drank tea.

There are funeral announcements on the radio, then a song comes on that takes me straight back to a childhood memory. Charonye ni Wasi.

It must have been a Sunday, and I was standing outside KukuDen restaurant in Nakuru, as my mother chatted away with an old friend. It was quite hot, and my Sunday clothes itched, the clean lines of colonial Nakuru met the raw and seemingly inarticulate noise of something else.

Then this song came on . . . Congo music, with voices as thick as hot honey, and wayward in a way Christian school tunes and English nursery melodies hadn’t prepared me for. The music was familiar enough, there is no way to avoid rhumba in Kenya, but I heard the music for the first time today. Guitar and trumpet, parched like before the rains, dived into the honey and out again. The voices pleaded in a strange language, men sending their voices higher than men should, and letting go of control, letting their voices flow, slow and phlegmy, like the honey. There was a lorry outside, and the men unloading the maize were singing to the music, pleading with the honey. The song burst out with the odd Swahili phrase, then forgot itself and started on its gibberish again. Maroon Commandos.

It disturbed me, demanding too much of my attention, derailing my daydreams. I lean back, and close my eyes. Those were good days.

I am maybe seven.

A flamingo woman, her stick-like legs in cloggy high heels, handbag in her beak. Flying away. We are sitting on a patch of some tough nylony grass next to the verandah. I used to love that flamingo book, it came with a carton of books my mum got from some American missionary neighbours who were going back home. Sun is hot. I close my eyes and let the sun shine on my eyelids. Red tongues and beasts flutter, aureoles of red and burning blue. The colours of dizzy.

Mum is shelling peas and humming; Ciru is running around, with a yo-yo, from the same American carton of goodies. When Ciru laughs, everybody laughs, and when she is running and laughing, everybody is warm and smiling.

Yellow dahlias hang their heads, like they are sad. Jimmy is making a kite. Take a newspaper. Baba will beat you if you use the Sunday paper. Cut one page off its twin. Use a knife to split a stick of old bamboo from the fence. Tape sticks, diagonally, with cellotape. Three holes in a triangle, in the right place. Make a long long newspaper tail. Run. Run. Run.

There are two old kites stuck on the electricity wire.

I don’t laugh a lot, my laugh is far away inside, like the morning car not starting when the key turns. It is Ciru number one in school, blue and red and yellow stars on every page. When I laugh it is when Ciru laughs and I find myself inside her laugh, and we fall down holding each other. She is seventeen months younger than me. It is Ciru in a white dress giving flowers to Mr. Ben Methu in school. If I am in the bath alone, I will sink inside and see the thick colours of things outside from inside the water, until my eyes are numb. If I am washing with Ciru, we are splashing and laughing and fighting and soon we are in a fever of tears or giggles.

From here we can see my whole home town, stretched springs of smoke, the silos, one a clump of four tall, glued together concrete cylinders, UNGA (Flour) LTD., and two separate metallic blue tubes where Baba works, at Pyrethrum Board of Kenya. PieBoard. Behind, Menengai Crater; to the left, Lena Moi Primary School, sitting under Nakuru Golf Club. Everywhere, there are purple, puffed up cabbages of jacaranda. Past the silos, green maize and paler wheat stretch out. All around, in the distance, are mountains, we are at the bottom of the Rift Valley.

Brown is near. Green far. Blue farthest.

From here you can see Nairobi road, and often there are long long lines of tanks and trucks and tanks and trucks and lorries going to the Lanet barracks.

President Kenyatta is going to beat Idi Amin.

President Kenyatta is a bull.

I look at pink and blue Lake Nakuru below me, watch the flamingoes rise up like leaves in the wind, our dog Juma grinning, mouth open and panting, and I have this feeling.

It is a pink and blue feeling, as sharp as clear sky; a slight breeze, and the edges of Lake Nakuru would rise like the ruffle at the edge of a skirt; and I am pockmarked with whole-body pinpricks of potentiality. A stretch of my body would surely stretch as far as the sky. The whole universe poised, and I am the agent of any movement.

These are the maps; you dig your hand deep into the bag and extract them for use later, when your body is sluggish and awkward, and it seems you are wading through thick mud in the dark.

Nakuru. I am at home. The past eight hours are already receding into the forgotten; I was in Cape Town yesterday morning, I am in Nakuru, Kenya, now.

Blink.

Mum looks tired and her eyes are sleepier than usual. She has never seemed frail, but does so now. I decide that it is I who am growing, changing, and my attempts at maturity make her seem more human.

We sit, in the dining room, and talk from breakfast to lunch, congealing eggs around us. Every so often she will grab my hand and check my nails; a hand will reach into her mouth to lick a spot off my forehead.

We wander and chat, and things gather to some invisible assessment inside her, and she turns, sharp and certain, and says, “You smoke.”

I nod, eyes tap-dancing awkwardly, waiting for it to come: the full blow of power. It does not come: there is restraint.

They are worried about me, and for the first time in my life, worried enough not to bring it up.

I make my way around the house. My mother’s voice, talking to my dad, echoes in the corridor. None of us has her voice: if crystal was water solidified, her voice would be the last splash of water before it sets.

Light from the kitchen brings the Nandi woman to life. A painting.

I was terrified of her when I was a kid. Her eyes seemed so alive and the red bits growled at me. Her broad face announced an immobility that really scared me; I was stuck there, fenced into a tribal reserve by her features: rings on her ankles and bells on her nose, she will make music wherever she goes.

Two sorts of people: those on one side of the line will wear third-hand clothing till it rots. They will eat dirt, but school fees will be paid.

On the other side of the line live people some see in coffee-table books, we see in weekend trips to the village to visit family, on market days in small towns, and on television, translated back to us by a foreign man with a deep voice that has come to represent timeless days and bygone ways and an Africa ten metres away from us in the living room, and a million light-years from any reality we can process: this Africa is the same as Disney World, and Woody Woodpecker and Groovy Ghoulies and the Boomtown Rats. We are maybe less ironical about it because it comes from too far away from us for us to see into its motives, we can only try to seem familiar with a television language that is the Way the World Works.

So, in Nature Televisionese, these people are like an old and lush jungle that continues to flourish its leaves and unfurl extravagant blooms, refusing to realise that somebody cut off the water.

Often, somebody from the other side of the line.

We, the modern ones, are fascinated by the completeness of the old ones. To us, it seems that everything is mapped out and defined for them, and everybody is fluent in those definitions. In televisionspeak, they are a different species: they are spoken of in hushed reverential tones, like when the naturalist is showing us the birthing albino dragonfly. We are interested only in their general bygones.

The old ones are not much impressed with our society, or manners—what catches their attention is our tools: the cars and medicines and telephones and wind-up dolls and guns and anthropologists and Funding and International Indigenous Peoples’ networks.

In my teens, set alight by the poems of Senghor and Okot p’Bitek, the Nandi woman became my Tigritude. I pronounced her beautiful, marvelled at her cheekbones and mourned the lost wisdom in her eyes, but I still would have preferred to sleep with Pam Ewing or Iman.

It was a source of terrible fear for me that I could never love her. I covered that betrayal with a complicated imagery that had no connection to my gut: O Nubian Princess, and other bad poetry. She moved to my bedroom for a while, next to the faux-Kente wall hanging, but my mother took her back to her pulpit.

Over the years, I learned to look at her amiably. She filled me with a fake nostalgia that was exactly what I felt I should be feeling because a lot of poetry-loving black people seemed to be spontaneously feeling this. I never again attempted to look beyond her costume.

She is younger than me now; I can see that she has girlishness about her. Her eyes are the artist’s only real success: they suggest mischief, serenity, vulnerability and a weary wisdom.

I find myself desiring her. And I am willing to admit that this could be too because she has started to look like it is funky to look somewhere in this new Zap Mama, Erykah Badu, Alek Wek, polenta and sushi world.

I look up at the picture again.

Then I see it.

Ha!

Everything: the slight smile, the angle of her head and shoulders, the mild flirtation with the artist. I know you want me, I know something you don’t.

Mona Lisa: nothing says otherwise. The truth is that I never saw the smile. Her thick lips were such a war between my intellect and emotion. I never noticed the smile. The artist was painting “An African Mona Lisa.”

The woman’s expression is odd. In Kenya, you will only see such an expression in girls who went to private schools, or were brought up in the richer suburbs of the larger towns.

That look, that slight toying smile, could not have happened with an actual Nandi woman. The lips too. The mouth strives too hard for symmetry, to apologise for its thickness. That mouth is meant to break open like the flesh of a clapping Sunday.

The eyes are enormous: Oxfam eyes, urging the viewer to care.

Later I wander behind the garage, which smells of old oil and rat nest and childhood, and light a cigarette, pocket-radio rhumba in the sound of an afternoon breeze, as clothes flutter on a childhood clothesline I once perched on, batlike, and entered a bestial world of naked gums, flailing laughter, and snarling toenails on orange Bata flip-flops, this world-stopping surge of fear always brought back to sanity by my radar, my big brother Jimmy, as certain as my bed, as sure as a ceiling.

There is a line of old cedars to my left, nappy and grey-furred, they refused to look like television Christmas trees, stooping and bowed, never arranging to rise sharply to a peak, where a star would sit, the twinkling graph points of television life, like washed pine forests in Canada. One of our cedars once had a woodpecker, and its hole, long abandoned, was a place to hide meaningful nothings, the woodpecker mattered most because it helped us map out a world of similarity with a thing from television: Woody Woodpecker.

My young uncle Kadogo lived with us once, during the Amin years—when my mother’s family was starting to scatter in Uganda, they would eventually spread to Kenya, Rwanda, Lesotho, South Africa, New York and Europe. I was maybe five the year that Kadogo killed one cedar by loping its head off for a Christmas tree, cheered on by us, happy to find a possible and symmetric tree. It still stands, creaking and threatening, brown and naked.

When I was seven, in 1978, Kenyatta died, and school was closed for months it seemed, and all there was on television was Kenyatta, Kenyatta, songs, dirges and the stench of fear everywhere you lifted your mental nostrils—powerful instruments when you are seven. Idi Amin was a subject of horror in our household, so much of my mother’s family remained in Uganda, and we were always primed to expect the worst. One of my father’s best friends traveled there on a business trip and disappeared. His remains were found buried in a mass grave, years later, after Amin’s government fell. After Kenyatta died, Amin loomed in my mind for years, a man of squirming intestine laughter.

But that long long holiday, with its whispers and frissons, was the sweet and tart and memorable. Parents were distracted; and the fear made us seek fun with some aggression.

There were some sparkling days: my mother was at work, and we would sneak through the hedge to play with the neighbours, Georgie and Antonina, whose parents worked for Kenya Co-operative Creameries, and who had a Kiwashili sex manual in their bedroom drawer, which we often browsed.

A whole quarter acre of ripe maize filled the back of their garden. One day, we ran, leaves crackling and breaking, and played, sun hot and sure, soft feathers and grass in an abandoned bird’s nest, smelling rotting and feathery; rats’ nests and mongrel puppies; yellow and brown bumble bees which we tied with string and let fly. Hot syrup sweat dripped into eyes and stung, and I was lost in this wheat coloured world of flapping leaves and bare feet digging into hot soil, familiar things now had some momentum.

We forgot to sneak back in time, and as we came out of the fence, there was mum, a belt in hand, face stony and silent. When she gets angry she does not talk.

At the corner of this fence, there was a dead log, an old eucalyptus tree, and an abandoned car we had mutilated. We had turned it into a clubhouse of sorts. A friend of my father’s had left it in his care—a year or so later, my father would nearly kill us, when he saw the condition we had left it, our names scrawled all over the paintwork.

As we followed mum, pleading, I stopped for a moment to perform the ritual of this place—every time we knocked on the old log, ants would come streaming out—the idea of this, this sprawl of chaotic black squiggles, immeasurable, and as reliable as a clock, is still a marker for me, of nature’s invisible precisions. Every time, we pounded on them, to kill as many as possible, and lo and behold, they would stream out the next time we came. Here it was: the hidden order of the floppy head of an incorrect cedar Christmas tree, shaking a drooping and bearded head, in a wind that resonated with pungent choices discarded, for the glitter of a shallow and powerful thing.

I wake up early the next morning, and walk out of the gate, and up the hill to catch a view of the lake and town.

We live in a house on the slopes of Menengai Crater.

Ten miles above us, on this hill is Africa’s second largest caldera, after Ngorongoro. There is a road to the summit, and from there you can see the massive saucer-shaped crater—twelve by eight kilometres wide, five hundred metres deep, on its sheer cliffs. It was formed eight thousand years ago—after its last major eruption.

Over a hundred and twenty years ago, one of the decisive battles of a great war is said to have taken place here. For centuries the Maa military complex—a cattle keeping civilization—had dominated much of Kenya’s hinterland. As the cattle were the currency of trade for many Kenyan societies, including my own, the Gikuyu, the Masai’s great herds made them the wealthiest society in the Rift Valley. They were our bank of protein. Because of this, most of Kenya’s towns are named by the Masai. Nakuru means Dusty Place. Menengai is said to mean Place of Corpses.

In the nineteenth century, there was a series of civil wars among the Masai; a great Rinderpest plague; and the famine of 1870—this significantly weakened the Masai, and they have never recovered their power: especially after their Laibon, Lenana, was tricked by the British, and they gave up much of their lands. It is said one of the decisive Masai battles was fought at Menengai Crater. Ilaikipiak Morans (warriors) were thrown in the calderas. Most people in this area refuse to go down the crater.

There are stories about the rising jets of steam; that they are the ghosts of old Masai warriors trying to make their way up to heaven while being pulled back by the gravity of hell. For years there were stories about a giant fog-coloured umbrella that rises above the floor when it rains, and covers the crater, so the ground below remains dry. There are also stories, lots of them, about people who disappeared down the crater for days, and were found later, disoriented; they could not remember what happened. When I was a child, there was much talk of a humming sound—like a distant diesel engine, some say, that throbs and disappears after a few minutes. I have heard it many times—a muffled rotor blade—as if some underground helicopter is stirring the bowels of the earth. Many Christians come to the caves just below the cliffs, to pray and fast.

Every decade or so, when drought hits, Masai elders call out to their youth, some in school, some even in college, and they send them out to the towns to look for pasture. For some of these young men, this is the first and maybe the only time they will get to walk through the old grazing routes; through the barbed wire fences and industrial areas, and small farms and leafy suburbs that were once a part of their vast lands.

This year, towns all over Kenya are flooded with Masai cattle—this area was once Masai lands. Everybody is talking about it—there are some battles. The Morans always lose—the pattern has reversed: power was in the hands of the cattle-keepers two hundred years ago—now it is in the hands of former peasants. They adapted to the changing world faster. A hundred years ago, any surplus of grain would buy cattle: the Gikuyu would buy cattle from the Masai. By 1920, surpluses were converted into cash, and the economy of the Masai foundered.

Our new home, five hundred metres from the house I was brought up in, is on the last line before the blue gum forest that extends all the way to the rim of Menengai Crater.

I heard them come in last night, the Morans with their cattle. The strong smell of urine and dung flooded our house; and old throaty songs, and the cow bells. They sang the whole night, and for a while I could pretend that time had rolled back, and I sat among them, as a biblical nomad, or much as my great-grandparents would have.

The two ideas are mixed up in my head.

Throughout my childhood: this view, of flamingos, lake and town in front of us, of the loom and shadow of Menengai and rain clouds gathering and rumbling behind us, the bible, a smoky memory of a time before that.

Some Masai proverbs:

Hold respect like a club. A thing flawed within is unmaintainable.

Quiet, young man! You are not like firewood, which can be burnt. The tongue is not straight, it will say anything. The tongue has no joint. A monkey does not see itself. Impetuosity cannot jump a hedge. Tomorrow praises itself.

Never take two paths, the pelvis will collapse. Don’t kneel down when water is far away.

Remember that a worm can destroy a whole plain. Home is to be alive, it is not a place. Never let wanderers lead you to bottle-necked places. The ear penetrates darkness. Zig-zag is the way to success. The well-fed belly does not know the unfed belly. Never tempt warriors with cattle.

After breakfast, I set off to walk all the way down to town. I will take, instead of coins for change, a bunch of tropical mints.

I know this road very well. At the Provincial Commissioner’s houses, where there is a triangular roundabout, is the boundary of rain. If it is raining in town, down below, this rain stops right here. We get our rain from the Subukia hills, beyond the crater behind my back. From this roundabout you can see Hyrax Hill to the left—a Prehistoric Site. The jacaranda lined road begins—old colonial homes from the 1930s in large one acre plots line the street all the way to St. Christopher’s church. Rain from town will stop right here.

You swoop downhill, past Waterworks, stop at the small kiosk for a cold Coke, in a tray in front of the kiosk, there are three rows of round red tomatoes and several bunches of kale, as there have been for years. There is a small gathering of Maragoli speakers on the bench drinking tea and chatting.

I turn into the vacant plot, for the short cut that is not really shorter, to your left an open stream—rainwater drains. And rocky paths. Some aloe and sisal plants. Grass. Goats.

There is a small faded house here, right at the corner, with a large rocky garden that stretches downhill to border State House. It has a swimming pool, now grey and green and empty.

It is one of several houses that were given to the children of Old Man Bomett—whose sister was married to the President.

A short gnarled old tree, that has twisted around and back on itself like a dog leaning to nibble an itch in its back; it has a rich brown bark, few leaves and orange flowers that look like anemones. It must have been common in this area before memories of Surrey and Anglo-Bangalore changed the landscape in the 1930s: jacaranda and eucalyptus and straight stems, in straight lines. You can find this tree all over the wild parts of the crater forest. Its pretty red seeds are used to make jewellery. I don’t know its name.

Here are the elements of power and influence: here, small memories of old old people, the Sirikwa live at Hyrax Hill, they built irrigation canals at the escarpment I can see from here.

Then there is the rumble of the Masai—more recent, all feared, and who dominated all the landscape I can see—and whose power now mostly rests in names—most of the towns and rivers and lakes were named by the Masai.

Then, this century, squat and awkward comes the stone and railway lines, the jacarandas and rockeries, the single-room dorm houses for cheap African labour; the red-faced discomforts of large colonial homes with small windows and geometrical gardens—all fading now, but still dominant. The solid matter of this town, beaten and stretched. Rusting and rearranged and built upon.

And now, streaming down the wires the British built their roads, and satellites; and the ones we built in the last forty years, somewhat shoddily, but based on their model.

In the 1970s, America arrives, gum chewing America—a colour, a tone, an attitude, slouching and grinning.

And brewing inside this space are sixty languages and as many micro-nations, angling into this young Nation, twisting and turning and asking to be Kenyan—a thing still unclear, picking here, choosing there; stealing here, and there—disembowelling that which came before, remaking it. Being Kenyan is not yet a commitment, not enough forces have gathered within us to remake the space we occupy.

In January, dry wind would blow into town, a fan shaped blow-torch; and grass would singe; and life claw backwards and backwards and summersault into the horizon, in the escarpment in the distance we could see springs of dust rise.

Reading all those distant English books as a child, the idea of spring made its way into my picture of this place. We have no real spring—we are on the equator. But for me, spring was every morning, dew and soft mists, and the lake still and blue in the distance, sometimes all pink with flamingoes rippling with a breeze, and rising like leaves to whirl against the sky. Summer is midday, the sun above your head, and you have no shadow. Autumn is September, when the jacaranda trees shed all their purple flowers and the short rains began—and the idea of an autumn, of a spring was resident in the imagination of the English Settlers who planned this suburb, and thought of blooms and bees and White highlands made into a new English countryside.

So, in a way, spring has come to be a real thing in Milimani. You read about it in English books, and you experience it with your senses here. But—here is the curse of the Post Colonial: it means nothing here, you can do nothing meaningful with it. All it does is allow you to have false ambitions, to place yourself in a fake middle-class future.

Sometimes you catch a glimpse of what this all was before. On the slopes of this giant caldera, the soil is a flat brown, no red at all in it; and this place was full of light rocks. You can still see them in gardens, piled up into rockeries and stashed away in little forgotten patches. A curse lingers in what was rock and wheat coloured grass and sharp thorny bushes, all now lawn and spring and hedge and red brick homes in two acre plots.

You can see it all laid bare in dry January.

I walk. Small maize, beans and kale plots; and to your left, you stare down at the bowels of State House, Nakuru: sleeping plainclothes policemen—red socks and grey shoes for all to see; scurrying servants, and Mercedes-Benzes—of every kind and length and colour.

When the path levels, there are all manner of ferns and small wild flowers—you step across the stream and cut through the fallen kei apple hedge, and into the grand mossy and old buildings of the Medical Training Centre at the War Memorial Hospital—where all the Wainaina children were born.

The hospital has white picket fences, thick lawns and a thick silence that makes me think of silent screams.

I was circumcised here, at thirteen. Became a man.

My father hemmed-hawed at the parking lot at 2 p.m. on a Monday afternoon. Talking about—uh—sexual intercourse—and the, uh—responsibilities of . . . uh . . . man. A bored nurse laughed when I told her that I would not take off my clothes in front of her. The doctor, an Iranian, kept fussing and telling me I should have done the operation when I was a baby. I watched, my cock swelling like a balloon, then fascinated as he cut and I felt nothing.

I bounced out of the room in half an hour ready to tell the world I was pain-free and manly. My mother found me, an hour later, leaning against a jacaranda tree and moaning in pain, after fainting.

At the main building, I turn back into the main road, a dead straight road that starts at the gates of State House, Nakuru, goes past the hospital and meets the newspaper sellers, the bougainvillea range of mountains, the tarmacked walkway, through the bougainvillea, to the cemetery, some churches, the louder and more chaotic Provincial General Hospital. The path branches, at some point, into town—all this area is a boundary between the leafier sections of town—broken cleanly by the railway; and the old African and Indian sections of the town—now a widely spread and messy city of nearly a million.

I walk down the straight road. When I was in high school, I once saw President Moi driving out on this road on his own in a VW combi. He had a jaunty hat on—and nobody by his side. It did not seem possible.

I cross the road, an old house at the corner, on stilts, the sellers of young plants for gardens, the giant bougainvillea that lines the entrance to town, that borders the railway, which cuts the town in half—leafy suburbs and jacarandas, the Colonial old Nakuru on one side, and on the other the town centre—a mix of many things: old Masailand; pioneer Gikuyuland; Gujarat; Punjaab; the Kalenjin Highlands—now Kenya’s power centre; food processing; Norfolk, England; the Provincial Headquarters; zebra-patterned curio shops; paleontologists in town from the hills to buy goods; tourvans and flamingoes; a refuge for orphans from ethnic clashes; hundreds of churches; schools; games; NGO people in huge SUVs; our New Kenya; corrugated iron; farmers coming to buy groceries, feed and seed; traffic from the Port of Mombasa, to Kisumu, Uganda, Rwanda and even Congo.

Fuel for growth, and tinder for conflict. Depends on how you look at it.

NGŪGĪ WA THIONG’O

• Kenya •

from WIZARD OF THE CROW

Bearded Daemons

NOW EVERYBODY IN the country knew something or other about the Ruler’s Birthday because, before it was firmly set in the national calendar, the date of his birth and the manner of its celebration had been the subject of a heated debate in Parliament that went on for seven months, seven days, seven hours, and seven minutes, and even then the honorable members could not arrive at a consensus mainly because nobody knew for sure the actual date of the Ruler’s birth and when they failed to break the impasse, the honorable members sent a formal delegation to the very seat of power to seek wise guidance, after which they passed a motion of gratitude to the Ruler for helping the chamber find a solution to a problem that had completely defeated their combined knowledge and experience. The birthday celebrations would always start at the seventh hour of the seventh day of the seventh month, seven being the Ruler’s sacred number, and precisely because in Aburīria the Ruler controlled how the months followed each other—January for instance trading places with July—he therefore had the power to declare any month in the year the seventh month, and any day within that seventh month the seventh day and therefore the Ruler’s Birthday. The same applied to time, and any hour, depending on the wishes of the Ruler, could be the seventh hour.

The attendance at these annual assemblies always varied, but that particular year the stadium was almost full because the curiosity of the citizens had been aroused by a special announcement, repeated over and over in the media, that there would be a special birthday cake, which the entire country had made for the Ruler and which he might make multiply and feed the multitude the way Jesus Christ once did with just five loaves and two fishes. The prospect of cakes for the multitude may explain the more than usual presence of victims of kwashiorkor.

The celebration started at noon, and late in the afternoon it was still going strong. The sun dried people’s throats. The Ruler, his ministers, and the leaders of the Ruler’s Party, all under a shade, kept cooling their tongues with cold water. The citizens without shade or water distracted themselves from the hot darts of the sun by observing and commenting on what was happening on the platform: the clothes the dignitaries wore, the way they walked, or even where each sat relative to the seat of might.

Immediately behind the Ruler was a man who held a pen the width of an inch water pipe in his right hand and a huge leather-bound book in his left, and since he was always writing people assumed that he was a member of the press, although there were some who wondered why he was not at the press gallery. Beside him sat the four sons of the Ruler—Kucera, Moya, Soi, and Runyenje—studiously drinking from bottles labeled Diet.

Near the sons sat Dr. Wilfred Kaboca, the Ruler’s personal physician, and next to him, the only woman on the platform, who was also conspicuous in her silence. Some assumed that she was one of the Ruler’s daughters, but then, they wondered, why was she not speaking to her brothers? Others thought that she was Dr. Kaboca’s wife, but then why this silence between them?

To the Ruler’s right sat the Minister of Foreign Affairs in a dark striped suit and a red tie with a picture of the Ruler, the emblem of the Ruler’s Party.

The story goes that Markus used to be an ordinary member of Parliament. Then one day he flew to England, where under the glare of publicity he entered a major London hospital not because he was ill but because he wanted to have his eyes enlarged, to make them ferociously sharp, or as he put it in Kiswahili, Yawe Macho Kali, so that they would be able to spot the enemies of the Ruler no matter how far their hiding places. Enlarged to the size of electric bulbs, his eyes were now the most prominent feature of his face, dwarfing his nose, cheeks, and forehead. The Ruler was so touched by his devotion and public expression of loyalty that even before the MP returned home from England the Ruler had given him the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an important Cabinet post, so that Machokali would be his representative eye wherever, in whatever corner of the globe lay the Ruler’s interests. And so Machokali he became, and later he even forgot the name given at his birth.

To the left of the Ruler sat another Cabinet minister, the Minister of State in the Ruler’s office, dressed in a white silk suit, a red handkerchief in his breast pocket, and of course the Party tie. He too had started as a not particularly distinguished member of Parliament, and he probably would have remained thus, except that when he heard of the good fortune that had befallen Machokali he decided to follow suit. He did not have much money, so he secretly sold his father’s plot and borrowed the rest to buy himself a flight to France and a hospital bed in Paris, where he had his ears enlarged so that, as he also put it in a press statement, he would be able to hear better and therefore be privy to the most private of conversations between husband and wife, children and their parents, students and teachers, priests and their flock, psychiatrists and their patients—all in the service of the Ruler. His ears were larger than a rabbit’s and always primed to detect danger at any time and from any direction. His devotion did not go unnoticed, and he was made Minister of State in charge of spying on the citizenry. The secret police machine known as M5 was now under his direction. And so Silver Sikiokuu he became, jettisoning his earlier names.

The success of the two erstwhile members of Parliament was, ironically, the beginning of their rivalry: one considered himself the Ruler’s Eye and the other his Ear. People at the stadium kept comparing their different expressions, particularly the movements of their eyes and ears, for it had long been known that the two were always in a mortal struggle to establish which organ was more powerful: the Eye or the Ear of the Ruler. Machokali always swore by his eyes: May these turn against me if I am not telling the truth. Sikiokuu invoked his ears: May these be my witness that what I am saying is true—and in mentioning them, he would tug at the earlobes. The gesture, rehearsed and perfected over time, gave him a slight edge in their rivalry for attention, because Machokali could never match it by tugging at his eyelids and he was reduced to doing the second best thing, pointing at his eyes for emphasis.

Other members of Parliament would have followed suit and had their bodies altered depending on what services they wanted to render the Ruler except for what befell Benjamin Mambo. As a young man Mambo had failed to get into the army because he was small, but the fire for a military life never died, and now, with the new avenues of power opened by Machokali and Sikiokuu, he thought this his best chance to realize his dream, and he agonized over the best bodily change to land him the Defense Minister portfolio. He chose to have his tongue elongated so that in echoing the Ruler’s command his words would reach every soldier in the country and his threats to his enemies before they could reach the Aburīrian borders. He first emulated Sikiokuu and went to Paris, but there was some misunderstanding about the required size, and the tongue, like a dog’s, now hung out way beyond his lips, rendering speech impossible. Machokali came to his aid by arranging for him to go to a clinic in Berlin, where the lips were pulled and elongated to cover the tongue, but even then not completely and the tongue protruded now just a little. But the Ruler misread the signified and gave him the Ministry of Information. This was not bad, and Mambo marked his elevation to a Cabinet post by changing his forenames and called himself Big Ben, inspired by the clock at the British Houses of Parliament. His full name was now Big Ben Mambo. He did not forget the help that Machokali had rendered him, and in the political struggle between Markus and Silver, he often took Machokali’s side.

The idea of a special national gift had come from Machokali—though of course he had gotten strong hints from high above—and it was with the pride of the inventor that he signaled the military, the police, and the prison brass bands to get themselves ready to strike the birthday tune. The moment had come.

There was great curiosity among the crowd as Machokali, aided by members of the Birthday Committee and some police officers, dramatically unfolded and held aloft a huge cloth! Shoving one another aside, people tried to position themselves to see, and they were puzzled when they saw, on the cloth, a huge drawing of something that looked like a building. A drawing on a white cloth for the Ruler’s birthday gift?

Taking full advantage of the curiosity and raised expectations, Machokali first appealed to the people to calm themselves because not only was he going to describe everything that was on that cloth, but he was going to make sure that copies of what the English call an artist’s impression would be distributed to the entire country. He would in fact take that opportunity to thank the teacher who had volunteered his services to do the impression, but regretted that he could not reveal the teacher’s name because the artist had forbidden him.

Teaching was a noble profession and its practitioners were modest, driven not by self-glory but selfless service, an ideal for all citizens.

At the far end of the congregation a man raised his hand and waved it frantically while shouting a contradiction, It’s okay, you can mention my name, and even when told to shut up by those around him, he continued, I am here—you can reveal my identity. He was too far back to be heard on the platform but he was near some policemen, and one of them asked him, What is your name? Kaniūrū, John Kaniūrū, the man said, and I am the teacher the speaker is referring to. Turn your pockets inside out, the police officer ordered him. After he had made sure that Kaniūrū was not carrying a weapon, the police officer, pointing at his own gun, asked him, Do you see this? If you continue disrupting the meeting, as sure as my name is Askari Arigaigai Gathere and my boss Inspector Wonderful Tumbo, I will relieve you of that nose. The man Kaniūrū sat back. Not many people noticed this little commotion because all their eyes and ears were riveted on the bigger drama on the platform.

The whole country, the Minister for Foreign Affairs was saying, the entire Aburīrian populace, had decided unanimously to erect a building such as had never been attempted in history except once by the children of Israel, and even they had failed miserably to complete the House of Babel. Aburīria would now do what the Israelites could not do: raise a building to the very gates of Heaven so that the Ruler could call on God daily to say good morning or good evening or simply how was your day today, God? The Ruler would be the daily recipient of God’s advice, resulting in a rapid growth of Aburīria to heights never before dreamt by humans. The entire project, Heavenscrape or simply Marching to Heaven, would be run by a National Building Committee, the chair of which would be announced in good time.

As these wonderful ideas had come from the Birthday Gift Committee, Machokali went on to say, he would like to acknowledge their good work by introducing each of them to the Ruler. The committee members were mostly parliamentarians but there were two or three private citizens, one of whom, Titus Tajirika, almost fell to the ground as he jumped up when his name was called out. Tajirika had never shaken hands with the Ruler, and the thought that this was actually happening in front of thousands was so overwhelming that his whole body trembled in sheer wonderment at his good fortune. Even when he returned to his seat, Tajirika kept on looking at his hands in disbelief, wondering what he could do to avoid using his right hand to shake hands with others or to avoid washing it for some time. He detested gloves but now he wished he had some in his pockets. He would certainly rectify this, but in the meantime he would wrap the lucky hand with his handkerchief so that when he shook hands with his left, people would assume that it was because of an injury to the other. Tajirika was so absorbed in bandaging his right hand that he missed some of the story of Marching to Heaven, but now he tried to catch up with Machokali’s narrative.

Minister Machokali was waxing ecstatic about how the benefits of the project could trickle down to all citizens. Once the project was completed, no historian would ever again talk about any other wonders in the world, for the fame of this Modern House of Babel would dwarf the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Egyptian pyramids, the Aztecan Tenochtitlán, or the Great Wall of China. And who would ever talk of the Taj Mahal? Our project will be the first and only superwonder in the history of the world. In short, Machokali declared, Marching to Heaven was the special birthday cake the citizens had decided to bake for their one and only leader, the eternal Ruler of the Free Republic of Aburīria.

Here Machokali paused dramatically to allow time for an ovation.

Except for members of Parliament, Cabinet ministers, officials of the Ruler’s Party, and representatives of the armed forces, nobody clapped, but nevertheless Machokali thanked the entire assembly for their overwhelming support and he invited any citizen eager to say a word in praise of Marching to Heaven to step forward. People stared at one another and at the platform in stony silence. The only hands raised were those of the ministers, members of Parliament, and officials of the Ruler’s Party, but the minister ignored them and appealed to the citizenry. Are you so overwhelmed by happiness that you are lost for words? Is there no one able to express his joy in words?

A man raised his hand and Machokali quickly beckoned him to come over to the microphone. The man, clearly advanced in years, leaned on a walking stick as he pushed through the crowd. Two police officers ran to him and helped him toward the microphone near the platform. Age was still revered in Aburīria, and the multitude waited for his words as if from an oracle. But when the old man began to speak it was clear that he had difficulty in pronouncing Swahili words for the Ruler, Mtukufu Rais, calling out instead, Mtukutu Rahisi. Horrified at the Ruler’s being called a Cheap Excellency, one of the policemen quickly whispered in the old man’s ear that the phrase was Mtukufu Rais or Rais Mtukufu, which confused him even more. Coughing and clearing his throat to still himself, he called out into the microphone, Rahisi Mkundu. Oh, no, it is not Cheap Arsehole, the other policeman whispered in the other ear, no, no, it is His Holy Mightiness, Mtukufu Mtakatifu, which did not help matters because the old man now said, with what the old man thought was confidence, Mkundu Takatifu. At the mention of “His Holy Arsehole,” the multitude broke out in hilarious laughter, which made the old man forget what he had wanted to say, and he stuck religiously to the phrase Rahisi Mkundu, which made Machokali quickly signal that he be removed from the microphone. The old man did not understand why he was not being allowed to speak, and, as he was led back into the crowd, he let out a stream of Rahisi Mkundu, Mtukutu Takatifu Mkundu, Mtukutu, any combination of cheap and holy arseholes he thought might work, gesturing toward the Ruler as if begging for his divine intervention.

In order to distract people from the embarrassing scene, Machokali took the microphone and thanked the old man for saying that the entire enterprise was easy and cheap if only the people put their minds and pockets to it. But no matter what spin he put on it, the words cheap and holy arsehole remained in the air, an embarrassment that clearly left the minister lost in a quandary of inarticulateness.

Minister Sikiokuu seized the moment to deepen the confusion. Claiming that he was actually speaking on behalf of all the others who had raised their hands but had been ignored in favor of the old man, who Machokali was still showering with praise, Sikiokuu asked, Did “brother” Machokali and his committee not realize that the Ruler would get very tired climbing up the staircase to Heaven’s gate on foot or riding in a modern elevator, no matter how swift?

He suggested that another committee under his chairmanship be set up to explore possibilities for the construction of a space luxury liner called the Ruler’s Angel, and with it a land vehicle, something slightly bigger than the one the Americans had once launched to Mars, to be called Star Rover or simply Rock Rover in Heaven. Armed with the personal spaceship, the only leader in the world to possess one, the Ruler would make pleasure trips wherever and whenever he fancied, hopping from planet to planet, and once on the surface of each star he would simply use the Rock Rover in Heaven to move and pick up gold and diamonds in the sky. As Sikiokuu concluded, he dramatically tugged at his two earlobes as witness and sat down, shouting: A space luxury liner!

Having reclaimed the microphone, Machokali, after thanking his fellow minister for his support of the chosen gift and for his brilliant idea about the Ruler’s travel needs in Heaven, quickly pointed out that if the minister had bothered to look at the drawing on the cloth he would have seen that the existing committee had already thought through the problem of heavenly travel. At the very top of Marching to Heaven was a spaceport where such a vehicle could land and take off on journeys to other stars. Machokali now swore a couple of times, pointing at his own eyes as a confirmation of his claim that the committee had been very farsighted.

But it was also obvious from the smile that hovered around the edges of his mouth as he countered Sikiokuu’s challenge that he had something else up his sleeve, and when Machokali announced it, it took even the other ministers by surprise. The Global Bank would soon send a mission to the country to discuss Marching to Heaven and see if the bank could loan Aburīria the money for its completion.

After a dramatic pause to let the news sink in properly, Machokali now called upon the Ruler to accept Marching to Heaven as the gift of a grateful nation to its Ruler.

The brass bands struck up the tune:

Happy Birthday to You

Happy Birthday to You

Happy Birthday, Dear Ruler

Happy Birthday to You

The Ruler, a staff and a fly whisk in his left hand, stood up. His dark suit was almost identical to that worn by Machokali, but on careful examination one could see that the stripes were made of tiny letters that read MIGHT IS RIGHT. Rumor had it that all his clothes were made to measure in Europe, that his London, Paris, and Rome tailors did nothing else but make his clothes. What distinguished his clothes from all imitations by all political fawns were the patches on the shoulders and elbows of his jackets, because they were made from skins of the big cats, mainly leopards, tigers, and lions. In short, no politician was allowed to wear clothes with patches made from the skin of His Mighty Cats. This special feature had inspired the children to sing how their Lord:

Walks the earth like a leopard

Lights the path with the eyes of a tiger

And roars with a lion’s fury

With his height and his custom suits, the Ruler cut quite an imposing figure, and that is why the holders of the fifth theory keep going back to how he looked that day. He had been the very picture of good health as he cleared his throat and declaimed, “I am deeply moved by the tremendous love that you have shown me today . . .” adding that before speaking further, he would like to show his appreciation of their love with an act of mercy by announcing the release of hundreds of political prisoners, among them a few authors and journalists all held without trial including one historian who had been in prison for ten years for crimes that included writing a book called People Make History, Then a Ruler Makes It His Story. The alleged literary sins of the historian still consumed the Ruler, because even now he came back to the case of the historian. Professor Materu, he called him, sarcastically referring to the fact that on his arrival in prison the professor’s long beard had been the first thing to go under a blunt knife. This terrorist of the intellect has spent ten years in jail, said the Ruler, but because of this historic occasion, I have let him out early. But Professor Materu would not be allowed to grow his beard a length more than half an inch, and if he transgressed, he would be reimprisoned. He was to report once a month to a police station to have the length of his beard measured. All the other dissidents had to swear that never again would they collect and pass on rumors as history, literature, or journalism. If they mended their ways, they would know him as Lord Generosity who rewarded the truly repentant, he said, before turning to the sole woman on the platform.

“Dr. Yunice Immaculate Mgenzi,” he called out.

Slowly and deliberately, the silent woman stood up; she was truly striking in poise and general appearance.

“Do you see this woman?” he continued. “In the days of the cold war this one you now see was a revolutionary. Very radical. Her name said it all. Dr. Yunity Mgeuzi-Bila-Shaka. You see? A revolutionary without a doubt. Maoist. Alikuwa mtu ya Beijing. But in the final days of the cold war, she gave up this revolutionary foolishness, repented, and pledged faithful service to me. Did I jail her? No. I even asked Big Ben Mambo to give her a job as an information officer, and now I am happy to announce that I have appointed Dr. Yunice Immaculate Mgenzi as the next deputy to my ambassador in Washington. The first woman in the history of Aburīria to hold such a post.”

Dr. Mgenzi acknowledged the thunderous applause from the crowd with a bow and a wave of the hand, and then sat down.

“And now,” continued the Ruler when the applause subsided, “I want to talk about another radical who used to breathe fire and brimstone at imperialism, capitalism, colonialism, neocolonialism, the whole lot. He used to go by the name of Dr. Luminous Karamu-Mbuya-Ituīka. You see, calling on luminous pens to scrawl revolution? An agitator. A Moscow man. Educated in East Germany’s Institute of Marxist Revolutionary Journalism. There was even a time when some of our neighbors, drunk with the foolishness of African socialism, had hired his services to write radical articles calling for class struggle in Africa. As soon as it was clear that communism was a spent force, he too wisely repented and hastened to remove the word revolution from his name. What did I do? Jail him? No. I forgave him. And he has proven himself worthy of my forgiveness with his work. In the Eternal Patriot, the underground leaflet he used to edit, he used to denounce me as a creator of a nation of sheep. Now in the Daily Parrot he helps me shepherd the sheep with his literary lashes.”

To protect the country against malicious rumormongers, so-called historians, and novelists, and to counter their lies and distortions, the Ruler appointed him to be his official biographer, and as everyone knows his biography was really the story of the country, and the true history. “My Devoted and Trusted Historian,” roared the Ruler, “I want you to stand up that they may behold you and learn.”

The biographer obliged, and it was then that everybody realized that the man with the leather-bound notebook and a pen the size of a water pipe was the Ruler’s official biographer. My beloved children, the Ruler now called out, turning to the multitude, I want to say, may you all be blessed for your superwonder gift to me. Not least of what made it so endearing, he said, was that it came as a complete surprise: not in his wildest dreams had he thought that Aburīria would show its gratitude by attempting something that had never been done in the history of the world. He had never expected any rewards; doing what he had done had been its own reward, and he would continue to do so out of a fatherly love. He stopped, for suddenly near the center of the multitude issued a bloodcurdling scream. A snake! A snake! came the cry taken up by others. Soon there was pandemonium. People shoved and shouted in every direction to escape a snake unseen by many. It was enough that others had; the cry was now not about one but several snakes. Unable to believe what was happening and with none wanting to be first to show fear, the Cabinet ministers cast surreptitious glances at one another, waiting for someone to make the first move.

Part of the crowd started pushing its way toward the platform, shouting, Snake! Snake! Some police officers and soldiers were about to run away but when they saw the Ruler’s guard ready their guns to shoot into the crowd, they stood their ground. The chaos continued unabated.

To calm things down, the police chief shot his gun into the air, but this only made matters worse and the melee turned into a riot of self-preservation as people took to their heels in every direction; after a few minutes, only the Ruler and his entourage of ministers, soldiers, and policemen were left in the park. The head of the secret police woke up from a stupor and whispered to the Ruler, This might be the beginning of a coup d’état, and within seconds the Ruler was on his way to the State House.

DOREEN BAINGANA

• Uganda •

CHRISTIANITY KILLED THE CAT

MY FATHER WAS fierce sometimes, a coward otherwise, and that is why he married my mother. One day, he was the worst sinner ever, three wives, overdrinking, you name it, and the next, he switched to his father’s religion, Christianity, but exaggerated it to the point of obsession, that is, he became born-again. When he saw the light he chased away all the family except my mother and me, and married her in his new church that week. Why her? Because it was her kiosk and garden we lived on, and because she threatened him all the way to the altar. Why him? I can’t answer that. He was already married to booze, and perhaps she was stimulated by competition. His excuse for his love for the bottle was that his father was a gifted and true medicine man from a long family of basezi, but he had not passed on his secret and powerful knowledge because the whites came and confused him into Christianity. And so my poor father, with nothing to inherit but a borrowed religion, drowned his sorrows. No son too, was his other excuse, pointing at whomever of us girls were nearby, as if it was our fault. I was as frightened and confused as my sisters were by the babble of tongues of all the church people who came to the house to help him clear out the evil of polygamy. I was jealous too, because I thought my sisters were packing for a long trip, until I discovered I would have my father all to myself.

The conversion stopped his sorrowful drowning for about a month, and then he took to wading into it now and then. After school, it was I who went and secretly bought crude Waragi for him from Obama’s bar. We understood that a saint should not be seen in bars, especially a brand new one. Obama knew whose it was, but you couldn’t expect him to refuse money. I got there early enough, five o’clock, before the regular drinkers came, and he filled my plastic bottle of Orangina with the clear firewater. We would sit outside, my father and I, leaning on the far wall of the house, away from both the main road and the kitchen, me on my little bamboo stool now the shape of my small bum, he on a worn smooth wooden one. I scratched the dust with a stick while he sipped in silence, or murmured to himself, mostly about good and evil. “The demon’s got me.” “Ah, just a little won’t hurt.” “All gods may be one.” As the evening wore on, there was less murmur and more silence, and he relaxed into himself, the ropes of religion loosening off him.

From the other side of the house, I could see and smell wisps of smoke from the sigiri rising into the air, mixing with my mother’s complaining conversation with our neighbor Lidiya. Maama went on about my father being at home the whole day, doing nothing but praying and reading his Bible, just sitting there and calling it The Work of the Lord. Lidiya would take over with wails about her man who she never saw the whole day; work, work, work, he said, but who knew what he was doing? They sighed heavily, sinking comfortably into their womanly burdens, while my father and I sighed with more important weight.

One evening, the air heavy with smoke from many houses’ suppers, my father interrupted his silence by shuffling into the house, and I heard him move their metal bed, and pull and shift around something heavy. I guessed he was rummaging in those old baskets he kept under the bed. Maama had threatened to throw them all out, but my father growled, “I’ll throw you out first,” but of course he had not. Instead, he stopped talking to her, and to me too, which I thought was unfair. He retreated into himself, and not just physically. Hunched over and brooding, he became a cold ghost at the table, one that moved from room to room in our three-room house, filling it with a bitter smell. But after a week, he suddenly smiled at her when she silently put food on the table. “For all your faults, you are a good cook,” he said, as he shaped a small white lump of posho in his thin fingers, rolling and rolling it before dipping it in the bean sauce. Our mouths formed wide white smiles, and we wouldn’t have stopped even if we had been slapped. I would have fought my mother over those smelly bags.

Taata came back out with a tattered, gray, long hairy sack. It was a cow’s leg, the dark hoof weighing it down at the bottom, the long sack of dry old skin had most of its hair missing. He sat down and put his arm deep inside, searched around in it, and came out with crumbs that looked like soil and lint. From his coat pocket, he pulled out a pipe that seemed just as old, and sprinkled the particles into the pipe, hardly filling it. “Nothing,” he murmured. “Nothing, that’s all.” He lit the pipe as I stared; I knew he wanted me to watch. He must have smoked the skin itself. The smoke curled up and disappeared into the thin air with a faint but somehow familiar scent.

“I’m not giving you any,” he said, not looking at me, but out at the blue-black shadows that had been trees and houses a moment ago. The dark made the known shapes mysterious. When I looked back at him, tears glinted faintly on his face, perhaps from the smoke.

“Okay—I’ll teach you to kill, at least.”

I was jerked out of an almost trance-like silence. “What?”

“Don’t eat anything tomorrow. At least I was taught that.”

“Kill what?”

“For your size, a bird. But you have to be hungry for it.”

I kept quiet. My father didn’t make much sense on these evenings of ours, but this was worse. I sometimes wished he wouldn’t talk at all.

My mother came round the corner of the house. “Have you Christians drank enough? Come and eat,” she called, cheerfully.

We could not bask in silence forever. My father got up wearily, and I got up like him, pretending weary. “Women,” we both muttered under our breath, but followed her, her huge swaying buttocks an affront to our spirit.

The next day, Saturday, was a good day not to eat because there was no school. Mother was the fussy one. “What? Not eating? It’s fish for lunch.”

“No. Taata said so.” He was always my way out. But today of all days, when fish was so rare, obeying him was painful.

“What is your fool of a father up to now?”

“He is teaching me things.” I didn’t want to get into it. “Haven’t you heard of fasting?”

She stared at me for a long moment, her large eyes like two drills, then let it go. Perhaps she believed in my father a little bit. She brushed her hand over my head. “You still have to open your hair and wash it, wash your school uniform. Don’t think I’m doing that for you.”

The morning was easy, but by afternoon, there was nothing I wanted to do but just sit still. I went over to the shade of the mango tree near Maama’s garden, its thick green leaves a solid shade. It was not too far from the rubbish heap that was high, huge; Taata was supposed to have burnt it up last week. I couldn’t ignore the mountain of yellow and white milk cartons, gray torn packets for posho flour, dark green and black curling wet banana peels, yellow and black ones too, some slimy orangey liquidy stuff, grayish fruit, torn bits of paper fluttering pink, blue and white, dust, old mattress stuffing of mildewed cotton, red sweet potato peels, hard brown cassava ones, mango leaves scattered all over like garnish, and on top of it all, fish bones that smelt as sweet as, as, what? As sharp as pineapple cutting your tongue pleasurably. I could only stare, smell and suffer.

This thin stray cat that was a dirty white all over, that always hung around our neighborhood, crept up and over the rubbish heap. It jerked to a stop and turned to me, its red eyes sharp and unblinking. I had held this cat before when it was a scrawny slip of a kitten. It used to wander into our kitchen to steal scraps, and I had the job of chasing it away. But it would claw into the weaving of my mother’s faded blue and green sisal mat and cling fast. I tugged at it by its thin neck, feeling sinewy muscle and fur only, no bone, as it squealed and squirmed in my hands. Finally, its tiny claws tore out of the mat, and it hung limp in my hand. I would rush out and fling it away as forcefully and fiercely and as far away as I could, out into the garden, where it landed so gracefully, like water flung and forming a pattern in the air before landing. The kitten would shake itself and skip away, leaving me jealous. And it would always return.

Now grown, the cat dismissed me quickly, and continued its slow crawl over the refuse, bones under the thin patchy fur moving gracefully, menacingly. It found the fish bones, picked and played with them with small teeth, dropping precious bits of whitish-gray skin and flesh. My fish. The wish to grab that small skeleton from the cat’s claws was as sharp as the need to pee. Like when you have diarrhea and you are running to the toilet, holding it, holding it. The smell of near rot intensified, wafts of it killing me, like moonflowers whose scent whispered at you at dusk, then disappeared with faint promises. The cat took its time cracking the soft bones. My stomach lurched loudly. Did it hear it? The cat shot its small head up and glared at me, its red eyes flaring for one long moment, tiny pieces of flesh hanging from its mouth. I could easily have shouted it away, thrown a stone at it, anything, if I had not seen a person in its eyes. I mean a demon. I swear. It snarled a laugh, tempting me, just like Jesus was tempted. Then it gobbled up the rest of the carcass, sending only more smells my way, before it crawled over and away from the heap, satisfied. But it didn’t go away. I kept my eyes on it as it sat a little distance from me and licked itself clean, its long pink tongue working out and in quickly, like a pale darting flame. It yawned, showing me its tiny yellow fangs, pink eyes still leering, and there we sat, staring at each other, it, languid; I, mad and afraid.

Hunger crawled through my whole body, stomach, arms and legs, like how that cat had swarmed over the heap of refuse. But hunger made my mind stark and clear, emptied it of all but one idea: I would kill this cat, not shoot some silly bird. It was a demon that sensed the saint in me. My father’s drunken murmurs of good and evil begun to make sense.

I told him so later that evening as we sat by our wall. His eyes widened and he looked at me strangely. Was he scared, or pleased? I couldn’t tell.

“You? A cat?”

“Yes. It ate my fish.”

My father just kept on staring at me.

“It isn’t afraid of me. It thinks I am weak.” Then I whispered, half-hoping he wouldn’t hear. “That cat is a demon.”

My father turned away from me, as if to hide a grin that had sprung out of his severe, squarish face. The smile turned into chuckles that came out in short painful spurts, and he held his chest as if to stop them, but couldn’t. I had pleased him, I think. Now he was coughing, so I got up and rubbed his back over his frayed brown coat as he bent over, weak, but warm. He said I could eat that night.

My father said we used to get poison from snakes, but there are hardly any snakes left; they had all been killed or are hiding in the forest. So the next day we went up the main road to Auntie Sukuma’s store. Everyone called her Auntie; who wouldn’t want to be related to someone whose store had everything under the sun, including black sticky sweets that tasted of shoe polish mixed with bananas. They were from China. If I had a chance to move there, I would eat only sweets. Taata did not waste time with long greetings, like most people, but Auntie was used to this.

“Rat poison?”

“How are you, Namuli?” She looked only at me.

“I am fine, thank you, Auntie. Do you have any rat poison? We are suffering with too many rats.” I was used to talking for my father.

She scanned her eyes over shelves upon shelves of blue soap, cartons of matchboxes, petroleum jelly, instant coffee, hot sauce, plastic cups, plates and jugs, and on and on. It would have taken a whole day to list all the things packed together on the shelves.

“I had it here somewhere, hmmm . . . but why don’t you get a cat?”

“Do you want money or not?”

I cringed. Taata should have had a drink first before coming here. She turned and gave him a stern look. She was not scared of him. If I had a store like hers, I wouldn’t have been either.

“Ah yes, I put it far up there to keep it from the wrong hands.” She glanced back at my father, then got a stool, moved to a dark corner stuffed with tins and boxes and swollen blue plastic bags, climbed up, pulling her bulky frame up with effort, and got a jar from a row of colorful squashed packages. She clambered down, dusted it off with a rag, and peered at the label.

“Be careful with this, eh? This poison is strong, eh, it’s not a joke.”

“Who’s laughing? We can read the instructions just as well as you. How much?”

“I was talking to Namuli. My dear, give it to your mother to use, okay? Don’t touch it. Five thousand only.”

I took the jar wrapped in a thin black plastic bag as my father searched his pockets. For some reason Maama gave him money. She was like me; we did what he wanted, eventually.

As we turned away, Auntie said, “Kale, Namuli, greet your mother, okay? Such a nice woman.” She shook her head at my father, but he was already gone. I rushed to follow, pulling my skirt down over my knees.

Back home, my father got busy. We moved to our side of the compound, and using a stick, he mixed the thick poison paste with a little water on the cracked half of an old plate.

“Go get some of yesterday’s supper.”

My mother was not in the kitchen, thank God. I found some groundnut sauce and posho, which was now as hard as a brick. Taata broke it up into powdery pieces, and mixed it with the pink sauce and grayish poison. Wasn’t I relieved; I had thought I had to kill the cat with my bare hands. This was going to be easy.

“Okay, don’t touch it, you hear?”

I nodded, and he went indoors and began rummaging around in his old bags again. He came out of the house brandishing a decrepit looking bow and arrows. The bow’s string was frayed and sagging, the bow worn smooth with age. The arrows were as long as my arm, with rusty metal pointed tips. Me, use those?

“Isn’t the poison enough?” I tried.

“E-eh, Namuli, that’s not killing, that’s cheating. We’re using it just to make it easier for you. Maybe later, a gun, why not?” His eyes glinted, and he chuckled as if the demon had entered him too.

All I had to do was tell my mother so that I could get out of this. It was getting to be too much.

“Ah-ha, you want to run back to the skirts, I can tell. Go then.” Of course I couldn’t. I knelt in the dust next to him as he fidgeted with the small skin sack he had brought out the other day. His fingers trembled as he struggled to undo the strings tied around the top of the sack. I knew what he needed, and went off to get him his bottle. He took a swig, head leaning back, then sputtered and coughed. It didn’t help right away; I still had to help him open the bag, pulling at the tight knots first with my fingers then with my teeth. “There you go,” he muttered. “Use whatever you can.” Again, he scraped the bottom of the sack and came out with whitish dust. “Now I remember,” he said. “A rooster’s crown, dried and crushed,” and sprinkled it on the mash we had prepared for the cat. He continued, “This is not easy, not simple, but necessary, you understand? Can you be—you must be dedicated, slow, methodical, mechanical. Don’t think too much. Act.” I would. I would.

My mother knew how to choose the worst times to appear. “Taata, are you—what are you two playing at now?”

“Cat and kid.” My father giggled, and took a sip of his drink.

“What?”

“Why ask when you won’t understand?” He was busy tightening the bowstring.

“He—we are going to, um, practice hunting,” I said.

“Katonda wange, Chalisi, when will you grow up?”

“Ee-h, you hear her. You think killing is a child’s game? I am trying to show her what is real: death after life.”

Her eyes turned a boiling red. “Rubbish. If you want to play, play with fire. What about that heap of rubbish you were supposed to burn? That’s why dirty cats are here all the time—”

“And I am trying to get rid of them. Fire? You want fire, yes, okay, we’ll burn it. Don’t worry. Just go. Go see Lidiya.”

I hid a small grin behind my hand as Maama chewed her teeth and turned away. She knew by now that you could not reason with Taata. She stalked off, her big hips saying back off as they rolled away like a cement-mixing machine. Her backside could say come hug, or I’m sick of you, or I could be your pillow. My father smiled, his lips curling over his scattered moustache.

We moved to the garden, not too far from the huge mango tree. Taata stood poised, one leg in front of the other, steady. He took aim, one eye almost closed, and in a blink, the arrow whizzed through the air and got stuck in the trunk. It sounded like a big fat bee racing past.

“Now you.”

He stood beside me, slightly bent, and held the bow in my hands, his fingers over my own. He stretched the string taut with me, aimed for me. My beating heart was soothed by his warm hands. “Steady, steady, pull, now . . . let go!”

Out of my hands it flew, fast and sure, but then curved away and hit the ground beside the tree. “Not bad. Try again, pull harder, use more force.”

I did so again and again, wiping the sweat off my palms onto my dress, wiping my forehead with my hands. This was my favorite tree. I struck it on the fifth attempt, screamed and jumped high. Taata laughed. “See!?” The direct hit, aiming for something and getting it, my mind controlling my eyes, hands, the air, the bow and the arrow, that was power. A quick shot of pleasure swarmed through my arms and legs, I found myself trembling. I had to do it again.

I picked up the scattered arrows and handed them to my father. We could not stop grinning. As I squatted beside him and watched, excited, he dipped the arrow tips into a thick mix of rat poison and a few drops of water, adding some muttered words into the mix. I swear I heard some Latin from the priest at church. The other words I didn’t know, but yes, we needed God to help us with the demon.

To be frank, the exhilaration of could-I-hit-or-not was sharper now than the evil that had gleamed out of the cat, despite a dream I had the night before. The cat had come up to me, eyes glowing like hell, and rubbed its dirty gray damp fur against my legs, its fish smell trying to suffocate me. I pulled and pulled at it, but it clung to my legs tighter, whining, not snarling, as if it needed me, like a baby starved of milk, while I struggled against it. The crying thing would not let go, its body stretching long like thick slippery elastic. As it wailed, I begun moaning with it until finally, thankfully, my whimpers woke me up. Relief gushed through and out of me like sweat. I sat up in bed and vowed not to sleep again that night, but of course I did.

But now, now the dream was mere shadow, as the bow and arrows became a potent extension of my arms. More than fear, I wanted to see if I could aim accurately again, and hit and hit and hit.

The cat had kept away while we were practicing, but now all was quiet. It slunk back to the rubbish heap, which was still nice and high and colorful with fresh refuse, the cracked plate of food and poison balanced on the top where I placed it. A few flies that landed on it failed to fly off. My father had told me not to eat again to help me focus. “Sit in the sun and wait,” he said, and I did, closer to the heap, its smell stinging my nostrils. My father sat a little way off under the shade of the mango tree, sipping as usual, watching and waiting with me. My mother was not even a thought in my mind.

As the sun struck my forehead, and my father drank more spirit, he began his mutterings again. “Sacrifice. For my father’s father’s gods, a chicken was enough. A goat, maybe, a cow even. But what better sacrifice than a man? The Son of God, who is God also. What my father could have done, but many many times over. For the past, the present and the future, even for those not yet born. Yes, that is the essential thing: sacrifice.”

Taata’s monotone became an incessant hum in my ears as the sun bore down. I watched the cat sniff at the plate then gobble up the food quickly. It licked its lips and face with that agile pink darting tongue, then sniffed around for more. I kept my eyes on it as it moved down the heap, heading towards me. It stopped abruptly and started coughing, its little white head jerking up and down. I had to act before it got away. A part of me coughed with it, a strange echo of the wails in my dream. Another part of me was also the cat, rising up slowly, body taut with resolve, all arms and shoulder and muscle and aim and stretching; all with the cat’s sure grace. Tight, tight, I pulled and stretched the bowstring, hungry for the cat’s narrow body, hungry not to miss.

With all my will I let the poisoned arrow go, and its swift zing was joined in the very same second by a devilish screech, and I felt it, I did, the sharp metal point plunging through soft fur and skin, the second of resistance, then the impossibility of it. My mind shot back to when my mother had passed a needle through fire then stabbed my ear lobes, one after the other, while I, all fright, felt my flesh from the inside, deeply. Now, as sweat fell into my eyes, I saw red bursting bright like a flower out of the grayish-white. A bubbling flower that I had made.

The cat scrambled and slipped, desperately trying to crawl away, but I scrambled too, quickly, my mind sharp and clear. I aimed and shot again, and again felt that sweet sharp invasion of hard cold metal meeting, tearing and entering soft hot skin and flesh. I grabbed yet another poisoned arrow, but from somewhere far away, heard my father shouting, “Stop!” I staggered back, and like the writhing cat, could not escape. I was its body; the poison gained life as it took it, seeking veins and sneaking through, racing quickly throughout the dirty little hot body. Now the flesh itself became thirsty for it, begged for it, like how after my fast, I had drunk water so frantically I almost choked, and felt it flush cold down my throat and spread, tingling, even to the tips of my fingers and toes.

The cat had to stop writhing, and it did, slumping down dead. Still, blood moved out and over it, covering the once white fur with blotches of crimson. Its red eyes remained open. I had chased out its sleek and tawny grace and was left with a limp nothing. I would have to throw it on the rubbish heap, and I wanted to throw myself there too.

Instead, I turned away and ran to my father who, with his arms raised, filled the air with shouts of praise. He stopped long enough to give me a small precious sip of his almost empty bottle, for the very first time, then he went on hollering to the sun. What could I do but try to shout like him, even adding a dance on trembling legs, until I could dance and shout for real. I waved the bow and arrows over my head and screamed, “I did it! I did it!” My father was full of loud hallelujahs, so I danced for him, and he laughed. But he had not seen the cat’s red eyes. Though they had stopped glowing, they were not defeated.

I swiveled round and round, my skirt flying, then threw the bow and arrows down as if in victory, not disgust. I can end a life, I Namuli. The dancing finally, finally took hold, and I jumped and screamed higher.

My mother, hearing all the commotion, rushed out of the house. “Have you gone mad?” She shrieked like the dying cat, like me, only louder.

“I killed a cat! I killed—”

She came right up, and with all the weight of her wonderful body, shook me by the shoulders until my cheeks wobbled and I shut up. When she let go, I fell down still. Finally, like the cat, I let go. Something warm oozed out of me, streamed down my leg. Blood? Pee. Warm, tangy pee. What had I done? Then came the tears, and I let them.

Mother continued to scream, her cries filling the air like a swarm of crickets as she tried to put the up-side-down world straight again, tried to make us sane, but it was too late. My father tugged at me. “Come on, you’re too old for this now.” But I couldn’t stop. “You won,” he pleaded, and I turned away from him. The soil making me dirty seemed right. He shrugged, let his arms fall to his sides, turned and strode off, mumbling and grumbling, he couldn’t stay and listen to women crying and cursing. This time, I wanted him to go, go get his own drink.

My mother got quiet, now that Taata was no longer there to scream at. “Typical! The fool causes trouble, then runs away.”

She turned to me. “Namuli?” Although I now felt stupid, lying there wet and dirty on the ground, I didn’t want what she would do: pull me up gently, wipe my face with her wrapper, dust my dress, try and fold me back into her. Couldn’t she see I now had claws like a cat?

“Leave me alone. Just leave me, okay?” I got myself up and moved away. I would wash myself, and go sit on my stool by our wall for a while. I wanted to sit alone.

NURUDDIN FARAH

• Somalia •

from KNOTS

CAMBARA TEARS DOWN the stairway, as though on a warpath, and strides over to the toolshed in the backyard, which has been converted to the qaat-chewers’ retreat. There, the driver and several youths are busy munching away, their cheeks bulging with the stuff, slurping very sweet tea and sipping Coca-Cola. From where she is eavesdropping on their conversation, barely a few meters from the door to the shed, she can hear them chatting lazily about cutthroat civil war politics and also debating about which warlord controls which of the most lucrative thoroughfares in the city and how much money he collects daily from his tax-levying ventures. Speculating, they move on to another related topic, mentioning the name of an upstart clansman of the same warlord, formerly a deputy to him, most likely to unseat said warlord with a view to laying his hands on the thriving business.

Having heard enough about warlords and their presumptive, empty jabbering, she decides it is time she barged in without announcing either her presence or motive. First, she takes her position in the doorway, blocking it—arms akimbo, her feet spread wide apart—and fuming at their conjectural politics and their slovenly behavior. Some of the men look appalled; others appear amused; yet others shake their heads in surprise, as they all unfailingly turn their heads in her direction and then toward each other. To a man, they stop whatever they have been doing, maybe because they were unprepared for her entry.

They are baffled, because it is unclear to them under whose authority she is acting, and because they have no idea where Zaak is on this or what part he is playing. One of them whispers to his mate that she is like a headmistress at a convent school who is disciplining her charges. His mate, in riposte, compares her to a parent waking his truant teenagers from a late lie-in, shaking them awake. When a couple of the others resume talking in their normal voices and some go back to their chewing or tea sipping, Cambara embarks on a more startling undertaking: She confiscates their qaat. The whisperer now says, “How incredibly fearless!” His mate remarks that it is not enough for her to barge in on them as if she owned the place; she must show us she is the boss. Another wonders where it will all end.

As if to prove the whisperer’s mate right, she gathers the bundles of qaat that they have not so far consumed from in front of them—they are too gobsmacked to challenge her—and she dumps the sheaves in a waste bin crawling with noxious vermin. Turning and seeing the shock on their faces, she does not ease off. She shouts, “This is a sight worse than I’ve ever imagined. How can you stand living so close to the fetid odor coming from the waste bin, which none of you has bothered to empty for a very long time?” And before the driver or any of the youths has recovered from her relentless barrage, she tells them, “It is time to be up.”

No one speaks. They are all eyes, fixed on her. After a brief pause, however, the driver gathers his things and joins her; several others do likewise. One might wonder why the driver or the youths act out of character and remain biddably unassertive when it is very common among the class of men to which the armed vigilantes and the driver belong to take recourse to the use of guns at the slightest provocation. Cambara puts their compliant mood down to the fact that her behavior has taken them by surprise and that many of the armed militiamen hardly know how to respond to the instructions of women.

She orders the driver to supervise the two youths who earlier had bullied SilkHair, whom she tells to wash the inside and outside of the truck, vacuum, and make sure they rid it of the execrable odor. When the driver retorts that he does not have a Hoover or any of the other sanitizers about which she is speaking, she suggests that they use a house disinfectant. Still, when each of them, except for the driver, picks up his gun—for they seem naked without one, now that they are upright, their hands uselessly hanging down—and they argue that they do not know where they can find any deodorizers, Cambara eyes them unkindly. Then she takes one of them by the hand, dragging him into the kitchen; she provides him with an assortment of these cleaning items from a stack of household goods, mostly for cleaning, which presumably Zaak bought and locked away in one of the cupboards. She returns with the youth bearing the stuff and breathing unevenly. She gets them down to work, on occasion swearing at them under her breath. On top of being amused, she watches them for a few minutes with keen interest. Good heavens, how clumsy they appear now that they are missing their weapons, which over the years have become extensions of themselves; they appear wretched without them. With their bodily movements uncoordinated, they are as ungainly as left-handers employing their right hands to lift something off the ground. For their part, the guns have an abandoned look about them, to all intents and purposes, just pieces of metal worked into pieces of wood and no more menacing than a child’s toy.

When the driver and the other youths have washed the outside and the inside of the truck, she sets them to work in the living room: sweeping, dusting, and cleaning it. Watching them as they shift the settees and other furniture, she wonders if they have ever lifted anything heavier than their AK-47s. To while away the time pleasantly as they work, she puts on the CD player, and out comes blaring some Somali music, actually a song of her own composition, the CD cut privately in a back-alley studio in Toronto. The words and the voice-over are both hers, set to music by a Jamaican friend of Maimouna’s. Maybe they recognize the voice, because they all stop working and stare at her in doe-eyed fascination. She becomes self-conscious, realizing that this is the first time she is listening to her own words and voice on a CD. In the context, she thinks that maybe she needs to do more work on it, tightening it here and there, strengthening the weaker parts, in short re-recording everything before releasing it. Thinking, “Not too bad, though,” she lets them hear it several times.

In the song, a boy—the voice is that of Dalmar—says, “When is a man a man?”

A woman’s voice, Cambara’s, replies, “A man is a man when he can work like a man, hardy, dedicated, mindful that he uses his strength to serve the good of the community.”

Eerily, her heart almost misses a beat, as she assumes that she has had a distinct glimpse of a boy wearing familiar clothes, a boy who reminds her of her son, and who is now standing in the entrance to the living room, dressed in his trousers and shirt. For an instant, Cambara feels dislocated from her surroundings, and then she remembers that she is the one who has presented SilkHair with the clothes, which fit him perfectly. When it dawns on her that she does not like the song anymore, she turns the CD off, then walks over to where SilkHair is and, beaming with delight, says to him, “Well done.” Then things begin to take a bad turn.

Call it what you like: jealousy, because one of their number, the youngest, whom they could bully with impunity until earlier today, has been luckier than they, having charmed The Woman; call it in character or reverting to type, because you could not expect the youths to act as normally as others might. Whatever the case, one of the youths, bearing the nickname LongEars, who earlier bullied SilkHair, has found his tongue. He speaks loud enough for everyone to hear, now that the music is off, and everyone is invidiously focusing on Cambara hugging and welcoming SilkHair.

“We are not servants,” LongEars announces. “We are Security.” LongEars mispronounces the word, replacing the c in “Security” with a g. He continues, “We don’t carry settees, we don’t mop floors; we are Segurity. Not only that, we are men, and cleaning is a woman’s job, and we won’t do it.”

In the uneasy silence that follows, Cambara and SilkHair stand apart, watching, warily waiting. She looks around, not knowing what to do and wondering whether to say something that will put things in perspective. She feels there is time yet for someone to calm things down. She also senses that if any of the other youths come forward and talk in support of LongEars, then you can be sure the mutineers will win the day. She prays that someone older and with more authority—she can mean only the driver, and she looks hopefully in his direction—might gamble on shoring up her plans, propping them with his own words of endorsement. But the driver remains not only silent but also noncommittal in his body language. She is about ready to take a walk away from it all when the driver clears his throat to attract attention and then enters the fray.

He addresses his words to LongEars, his voice level, calm, unafraid. The driver says, “I am older, and I remember the years when everybody had a job. I was a driver; someone was a cleaner; another was a clerk; another was a head of department; whether he qualified for the job or not, there was a president of the country; and we had a government. Most important, we had peace. You have no memories of any of this; I do. You are not Security; you know it, and I know it. We are members of a nation of losers, of clans warring, of youths without schooling, of women continuously harangued. We are a people living in abnormal times.”

In the silence, Cambara, her heart warmed, can now see the sun boldly shining through. SilkHair and almost all the other youths stand motionless, listening attentively to the driver’s words with more attentiveness than they have ever imagined possible. LongEars seems alone, as lifeless as the tongue of a mute.

“If you think of it the way I do, this lady is a godsend,” the driver goes on. “She has been with us for a couple of hours, and look at what she has achieved. In less than a day. Look at Agoon,” he says, and they all turn to SilkHair, several of the youths nodding in agreement with the driver. “If she can bring about such positive change in the short time she has had with us, imagine what it will be like when she has been with us for much longer. My brothers, let’s all resume working, for there is time yet for us to save ourselves. There is hope yet for us to regain peace.”

A youth known to be an ally of LongEars has something to say. The driver encourages him to get it off his chest. “But this has always been a woman’s job, cleaning, not a man’s job.”

The driver has an answer. “Because women are doing men’s jobs. That is why. They are raising the young family and keeping the house and keeping it united, protected from hunger and death. And since women are doing our jobs, it follows that we must do theirs, doesn’t it?”

She hears someone clapping and then sees the heads of several of the youths turning toward her, then away to the driver. LongEars storms out in anger. Cambara wonders if he may have gone to join forces with Zaak. Pray, what is Zaak up to?

To set an example, the driver is the first to get back on his knees, mopping, washing, and assisting another youth. She works together with SilkHair to remove the accumulated grit from a corner where two walls meet and where someone spilled a drink with high sugar content. It’s just as well, she observes to herself, that they’ve dislodged a clan of ants that have set up their base of operation for several months. They all join in the general banter, teasing each other amicably. She takes the opportunity to remind them that even though they are half her age, they cannot haul the furniture back and forth without fuss or complaint. She challenges the remaining two bullies who were nasty to SilkHair to help her pick up the two two-seater settees. She discovers that neither has any idea how to lift his side of a settee off the floor without doing his back in. Then she tells them, “Forget it,” and does it with SilkHair after explaining to him how to position his body.

All eyes swarm to her, as if she were a bee soon after the season’s flowers have blossomed into pollen of welcome seeds. Thanks to the driver, she has stung every one of them, and they are besotted not so much with her as they are with the idea of her or the idea of what she can do for them. She hopes that the driver has helped them relax into what they are doing and into relishing the sweetness of their labor. Her skin bristling, her body serves her as a radar trap in which she catches their admiring eyes as they stray away from the work they are engaged in and zoom in on her. She is relieved that the driver has spoken, saving her from caving in under the pressure of making difficult choices. Now she has two allies, SilkHair and the driver: the one because she has stuck her neck out for him and then presented him with clothes; the other because he has gone out on a limb for her and set a precedent.

She believes that the youths have gotten to know her far better than they have Zaak, with whom they chew qaat and whom they see as a boss, because he never dirties his hands, never bothers about house cleaning or cooking. She reasons that since all her involvements with men have been on a one-to-one basis and since this has proven to be unsuccessful, it is her wish to build a bridge of some kind of rapport with so many men all at the same time, something that she hopes she is going to be good at, as an artist. There is no pleasure like the pleasure of watching audiences lapping up the heartfelt intimacies of an actor at her best, when the audience might confuse who she is in real life and what makes her tick, move, love, and hate with the character she is just portraying.

She thinks that SilkHair looks more grown-up than when he went into the bathroom. No longer in tatters, smelly, or dirty, he has become the envy of every youth who is there. Cambara assumes that in their eyes she deserves their high praise, especially after the driver has added his word to support her action. She hopes she will have become a person to befriend, not the new boss on the block. This nervy awareness puts a proud spring in her stride and a grin blemishing the corner of her mouth.

Someone asks, “Where is Zaak?”

Cambara couldn’t care less where he is and does not want to talk about him. Instead, she wraps her arms around SilkHair, and together they walk to where the driver is giving the final touches to a spot he has just cleaned.

She asks, “What about lunch?”

“Chicken,” SilkHair announces.

He strikes her as a poseur, and she is amused.

“A good idea,” the driver comments.

A door in Cambara’s head opens. She puts her hand in her slacks pockets, bringing out five U.S. dollars in singles, which she hands over to the driver, whom she asks to take two or three youths, including SilkHair, to the open-air market and to buy chicken and vegetables sufficient to feed everybody. SilkHair’s eyes anchor their new cast in the bay of self-confidence.

The driver picks up the trace of worry entering Cambara’s eyes when she notices that the kitchen is not clean enough to cook in. The driver takes three of the youths, whom she presumes to be closer to him, aside, and they speak in low voices. They volunteer to finish the job, mop the floor, clean out the cupboards and the surfaces, as Cambara goes up to have a shower.

Then the driver says, “Let’s go get the food.”

After yet another cold shower, for which she is better prepared, Cambara comes down to ready the kitchen in time for the youths’ imminent return from the errand to the open-air market. In her effort to do so, she opens the lower and upper cupboards, the storeroom, the pantry, and every drawer with functioning runners and, to her great dismay, finds the shelves not dusted as well as she might like. Moreover, she can see that although the youths have washed the cooking implements, they have not rinsed them in hot water, or properly. Not a single utensil or piece of crockery is of top quality. The wood of the cupboards is cracked, damaged, or warped; the soap too dry to be of use, or moldy. The more she gets to know of the state of disrepair of the kitchen and of the foul condition that it is in, despite the attempt on the part of the youths to clean it, the more she thinks of herself as a frontierswoman come to reclaim these men from their primitive condition. But she decides to keep her vow to the youths and cook for them in appreciation of their collaboration, certain that it will make a good impression on their thinking. She wants to leave the scene of their encounter in a more improved fettle than the one in which she has found it. Maybe then she may win over their hearts and minds—even if only briefly—to her triad of society: work, honest living, and peace. She is aware that in the views of someone like Zaak, she is being naive. So be it.

Like a rodent nosing an edible bit of food out of a spot difficult to access, she prises open the cupboards, the drawers, and the sideboards in order to ascertain what is in them. There is, overall, a basic lack: of cooking oil, of sharp knives or knife sharpeners, cutting boards, of butter that has not gone rancid, of sieves and swabs, of detergents, disinfectants, and serviceable sponges; of mops with enough pieces of string or cloth attached to the handle. Nor are there washing-up facilities, clean dishcloths, usable hand or paper towels, or wooden spoons and other implements necessary to provide a decent meal for a dozen persons. The pots are of the wrong shape or are of midget size, too small for her purposes. What there is in the way of cutlery points to the house’s multiple occupancy through the years: comparable to the cutlery of variously married households, the plates not matching, the forks and the spoons likewise.

She tries to make do with what there is. She mixes soap powder with water, lathering it up, and eventually decides to use the facecloths as dishcloths. It takes her a long time to wash and then wipe the drain board, on which she plans to dry the pots and dishes.

Scarcely has she done that when she hears a sound, which, at first, she mistakes for a door with creaky hinges being forcibly opened. She is waiting for evidence of Zaak’s presence nearby when she identifies the noise as being that of a chicken clucking. She cranes her head to have a glimpse of the scene before her and sees SilkHair carrying three live chickens, their heads down, their necks stretched and struggling, wings opening outward and wrestling, their legs tied together with string. Trailing behind him are a couple of the other youths, nerves strained. They are bearing baskets on their heads, their steps hesitant, slow, and exhausted.

She thinks disaster, remembering that she has never killed a chicken in all her years. Neither before she left the country, when there were servants who performed those chores, nor in Toronto, where she bought them ready to go into the oven. She wonders what she must do if the men are too untutored in the art of slaughtering chickens. After all, it does require some training or at least a type of guts to kill to eat. It will be no problem to boil their feathers off and then cook them, if someone hands them over, dead. Her mind is running fast through these and her other inadequacies when SilkHair joins her in the kitchen. He puts down the chickens in a corner on the floor and instructs the others to deposit their basket loads likewise. Just as the other youths make themselves scarce—returning, most likely, to their qaat-chewing—SilkHair crowns his sense of achievement by consulting a piece of paper, his tongue running off the price of potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, carrots, live chickens, washing-up liquid, metal brush, et cetera, first in Somali shillings, then in their dollar equivalent. Then he gives her wads of change in the local currency.

“Well done,” she says. “I am impressed.” Moved, she ruffles his silky hair, almost taking the liberty to hug him and then kiss him.

Expansive joy shines in his eyes. As he gazes into hers, her pupils are set ablaze with memories of her son. She turns her head away as though in obedience to a secret command that tells her not to weep but to rejoice.

Then something happens for which no one is ready. One of the birds kicks one leg free, and when SilkHair rushes to hold her, she kicks harder and harder until she releases her second leg and jumps out of his grasp, clucking, screeching, and crying, as chickens that know that their time has come, do. Cambara watches, determined not to intervene or help him in any way, because she wants to know what stuff he is made of, how patient and resourceful he is, and whether he will tire easily and give up, throwing his hands up in the air.

He makes a wise move. He stands in the doorway, blocking the exit, then bends down, almost crouching, clucking over the bird’s attempts to flee, admonishing her for embarrassing him, now snapping his fingers to go to him, now keeping his hands ahead of him, in readiness to accept her into his grasp, if not to pounce on her and take a good hold of her. He is silent; everything still, everything serious. Cambara watches as SilkHair waits, the sound he is making putting her in mind of the noise that some of the men who ply water in plastic jerry cans on the backs of donkeys utter in part to encourage their beasts of burden to move at a faster speed. No sooner has he turned round, seeking Cambara’s approval, than the hen slips past his outstretched hands, out of the kitchen, and through his splayed legs.

Whereupon he chases the chicken into the living room and out, then past the kitchen, the bird half flying, half trotting, body atilt because of half-folded wings. Suddenly the chicken stops to look over a shoulder, eyes alert, and he pursues her into a corner to trap her. The chicken lifts her scrawny body up in time to fly above his head, mischievously clucking but only after securing safe escape.

The footloose chicken and the clamor in the kitchen in addition to the hubbub created by the youths who join SilkHair in the chase draw the driver out of the toolshed and bring Zaak out of his sulk, or is it sleep—Cambara cannot tell when she sees him.

“Have you gone mad?” Zaak asks her.

She runs past Zaak without bothering to answer his question. She tells herself that the youths stalking their lunch is, to her mind, more of a welcome relief than the thought of them running after their human victims to shoot or kill them. Excited by the chase, SilkHair is shouting loudly as he continues to pursue the chicken. Once the din reaches the back garden, LongEars comes out of the shed, cheeks swollen with his chewing and gun at the ready. Cambara has the calm to notice what LongEars wants to do, and she shouts to him, “Don’t shoot.”

The words have barely traveled the distance separating her from SilkHair and the chicken he is going after with fervor and is about to catch, having already bent down to do so, when she hears the gunshot, two bullets on the trot, the second one hitting its target and wounding it, feathers flying zigzag toward the ground. A hoarse cry emerges from the depth of SilkHair’s viscera. Cambara has a tenuous comprehension of what it means to be powerless in the face of brute force. She stands stock still, feeling like someone opening her eyes to the engulfing darkness and coming to see an indescribable betrayal in the action of those around her. She goes over to where SilkHair is crouched, furiously weeping, as though mourning the death of a beloved pet. She lets him leave the chicken where it has fallen and walks past Zaak and the youths, who are all staring, into the kitchen—to prepare the other chickens.

Alone with SilkHair, she suggests that he swing each of the remaining birds as disc throwers do, making several full circles. Just when the first one has become disoriented and he is about to put it on the draining board in the kitchen, LongEars presents himself and offers to slaughter both birds, which he does with the efficiency of an assistant chef whose primary job it is to do so. One sudden swat, and the chicken is as good as dead and Cambara is ready to pour boiling water over it to help remove its feathers. She uses her Swiss penknife to quiet the thrashing of the second chicken, which is struggling animatedly. The rest proves to be as easy as one, two, three.

When she has prepared the meal and Zaak deigns to eat with them, Cambara requests that as soon as they have finished eating they ask the driver to take them in the truck so that Zaak can show her the family’s expropriated property. To her great relief, he agrees to her demand.

ABDOURAHMAN A. WABERI

• Djibouti •

from THE UNITED STATES OF AFRICA

I. A Voyage to Asmara, the Federal Capital.

1

In which the author gives a brief account of the origins of our prosperity and the reasons why the Caucasians were thrown onto the paths of exile.

HE’S THERE, EXHAUSTED. Silent. The wavering glow of a candle barely lights the carpenter’s bedroom in this shelter for immigrant workers. This ethnically Swiss Caucasian speaks a Germanic dialect, and in this age of the jet and the Internet, claims he has fled violence and famine. Yet he still has all of the aura that fascinated our nurses and aid workers.

Let’s call him Yacuba, first to protect his identity and second because he has an impossible family name. He was born outside Zurich in an unhealthy favela, where infant mortality and the rate of infection by the AIDS virus remain the highest in the world today. The figures are drawn from studies of the World Health Organization (WHO) based in our country in the fine peaceful city of Banjul, as everyone knows. AIDS first appeared some two decades ago in the shady underworld of prostitution, drugs and promiscuity in Greece and is now endemic worldwide, according to the high priests of world science at the Mascate meeting in the noble kingdom of Oman.

The cream of international diplomacy also meets in Banjul; they are supposedly settling the fate of millions of Caucasian refugees of various ethnic groups (Austrian, Canadian, American, Norwegian, Belgian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, British, Icelandic, Swedish, Portuguese . . .) not to mention the skeletal boat people from the northern Mediterranean, at the end of their rope from dodging all the mortar-shells and missiles that darken the unfortunate lands of Euramerica.

Some of them cut and run, wander around, get exhausted and then brusquely give up, until they are sucked into the void. Prostitutes of every sex, Monte Carlians or Vaticanians but others too, wash up on the Djerba beaches and the cobalt blue bay of Algiers. These poor devils are looking for the bread, rice or flour distributed by Afghan, Haitian, Laotian or Sahelian aid organizations. Ever since our world has been what it is, little French, Spanish, Batavian or Luxembourgian schoolchildren, hit hard by kwashiorkor, leprosy, glaucoma and poliomyelitis, only survive with food surpluses from Vietnamese, North Korean or Ethiopian farmers.

These warlike tribes with their barbaric customs and deceitful, uncontrollable moves keep raiding the scorched lands of the Auvergne, Tuscany or Flanders, when they’re not shedding the blood of their atavistic enemies—Teutons, Gascons or backward Iberians—for the slightest little thing, for rifles or trifles, because they recognize a prisoner or because they don’t. They’re all waiting for a peace that has yet to come.

But let us return to the shack of our flea-ridden Germanic or Alemannic carpenter. Take a furtive look into the darkness of his dwelling. A mud floor scantily strewn with wood shavings, no furniture or utensils. No electricity or running water, of course. This individual, poor as Job on his dung heap, has never seen a trace of soap, cannot imagine the flavor of yogurt, has no conception of the sweetness of a fruit salad. He is a thousand miles from our most basic Sahelian conveniences. Which is further from us, the moon, polished by Malian and Liberian astronauts, or this creature?

Let us cross what we might call the threshold: swarms of flies block your view and a sour smell immediately grabs you by the throat. You try to move forward nonetheless, but you can’t. You stand there, dumb-struck.

Your eyes are beginning to get used to the darkness. You can make out the contours of what seems to be a painting with crude patterns. One of those daubs called primitive: clueless tourists are crazy about them. Two crossed zebu horns and a Protestant sword decorate the other side of the wall, a sign of the religious zeal that pervades this shelter for foreign workers in our rich, dynamic Eritrean state.

Let us say in passing that our values of solidarity, conviviality and morality are now threatened by rapid social transformations and the violent unleashing of the unbridled free market, as the Afrigeltcard has replaced our ancestral traditions of mutual aid. The ancient country of Eritrea, governed for centuries by a long line of Muslim puritans, deeply influenced by the rigorism of the Senegalese Mourides, was able to prosper by combining good business sense with the virtues of parliamentary democracy. From its business center in Massawa or its online stock market on Lumumba Street, not to mention the very high-tech Keren Valley Project[20] and the military-industrial complexes in Assab, everything here works together for success and prosperity. This is what attracts the hundreds of thousands of wretched Euramericans subjected to a host of calamities and a deprivation of hope.

Our carpenter is muttering in his beard. What can he possibly be saying with his tongue rolled up at the back of his throat? God alone could decipher his white pidgin dialect. He is racked by the desire to leave the cotton fields of his slavery—quite understandable, but let’s get back to the subject.

Still more dizzying is the flow of capital between Eritrea and its dynamic neighbors, who are all members of the federation of the United States of Africa, as is the former Hamitic kingdom of Chad, rich in oil; and also the ex-Sultanate of Djibouti that handles millions of guineas and surfs on its gas boom; or the Madagascar archipelago, birthplace of the conquest of space and tourism for the enfants terribles of the new high finance. The golden boys of Tananarive are light-years away from the black wretchedness of the white Helvetian carpenter.

You’re still standing? Ah, okay! Now you recognize a familiar sound. You try a risky maneuver, taking one, then two steps into the darkness. You walk through the tiny door. You can make out the first measures of some mumbo-jumbo full of shouts and strangled sounds. An antediluvian black and white TV, made in Albania, dominates the living room of this shelter for destitute Caucasians, with their straight hair and infected lungs. After an insipid soap opera, a professor from the Kenyatta School of European and American Studies,[21] an eminent specialist in Africanization—the latest fad in our universities, now setting the tone for the whole planet—claims that the United States of Africa can no longer accommodate all the world’s poor. You might be taken in by his unctuous voice as you listen to him, but in fact his polished statements, all cheap lace and silk rhetoric, fool nobody—certainly not the immigrants from outside Africa. His idea can be summed up in one sentence: the federal authorities must face up to their responsibilities firmly but humanely by escorting all foreign nationals back to the border, by force if necessary—first the illegal immigrants, then the semi-legal, then the paralegal, and so on.

Alternative voices have arisen, all or almost all from liberal circles which hardly needed the TV talks of Professor Emeritus Garba Huntingwabe to react against “the irrational fear of the Other, of ‘undesirable aliens,’ that continues to be the greatest threat to African unity” (www.foreign-policy.afr, editorial, last March). Assembled under the aegis of the World Academy of Gorean Cultures, which includes all the enlightened minds in the world from Rangoon to Lomé and from Madras to Lusaka, these voices remind us that the millions of starving Japanese kept alive on the food surpluses from central Africa could be adequately taken care of with what that region spends on defense in just three days. You may recall that the face of this network—reviled by all the ulemas, nabobs, Neguses, Rais and Mwamis—is none other than Arafat Peace Prize winner Ms. Dunya Daher of Langston Hughes University in Harar. In September, the young ecologist put 15,800,000 guineas granted her by the austere Society of Sciences of Botswana into the kitty of many humanitarian aid organizations. The learned society’s announcement stated that this prestigious prize was unanimously awarded to her for “her struggle against the corrupt dictatorship of New Zealand, her fight against AIDS [whereas] the ecclesiastical authorities of Uganda are still preaching abstinence, and her promotion of Nebraska bananas by vaunting their native merits in the supermarkets of Abidjan . . . [and finally] Ms. Daher made the world aware of the tangible facts that Dean Mamadou Diouf of the University of Gao had set forth long ago in a satirical tract that has remained famous to this day.” (Invisible Borders: The Challenge of Alaskan Immigration, Rwanda University Press/Free Press, Kigali, 1994. 820 pp. 35 guineas.)

Dean Diouf, Ms. Daher, Ahmed Baba XV, Sophia Marley, Thomas Sankara Jr., the rappers King Cain and Queen Sheba, Hakim Bey, Siwela Nkosi and company were never in favor with the big turbans of the world. Ms. Daher deplored the silence of the political leaders of the first continent about questions crucial to the future of our planet. His Excellency El Hadj Saidou Touré, United States of Africa Press Secretary, had accustomed us to a different chant. He stated that our first priority remains keeping peace in Western Europe; and then he was relatively optimistic about signing a cease-fire in the American Midwest and Quebec, where French-speaking warlords have reiterated their firm intention of going to war with the uncontrollable English-speaking militias in the Hull region near Ottawa, the former capital, now under a curfew enforced by UN peacekeeping forces from Nigeria, Cyprus, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Bangladesh. The federal councilor (highest political authority of what remains of Canada)—the proud aborigine William Neville Attawag—has remained extremely vague on the question of a time frame for relaxing the emergency laws now in place. Sir Attawag has violently rejected the term “apartheid” used by newspapers completely ignorant of the conditions of life for Whites in the Canada of his ancestors. And yet Human Rights Watch and El Hombre, with their long experience in this North American quagmire, relentlessly keep sounding the alarm.

Yacuba has just left his shelter. He dashed into Ray Charles Avenue, caught his breath at the corner of Habib Bourguiba Street and is now walking towards Abebe-Bikila Square. He is wearing a shirt the same color as his chronic cold; an indigo boubou floats around his body. People turn around as he walks by, more intrigued than an ethnologist taken in by a primitive tribe in the remotest parts of Bavaria. Have no fear, our long-distance cameras are recording his every move. In less than fifteen minutes, he’ll be back in his den. Which won’t prevent him from getting into trouble again.

Surely you are aware that our media have been digging up their most scornful, odious stereotypes again, which go back at least as far as Methusuleiman! Like, the new migrants propagate their soaring birth-rate, their centuries-old soot, their lack of ambition, their ancestral machismo, their reactionary religions like Protestantism, Judaism or Catholicism, their endemic diseases. In short, they are introducing the Third World right up the anus of the United States of Africa. The least scrupulous of our newspapers have abandoned all restraint for decades and fan the flames of fear of what has been called—hastily, to be sure—the “White Peril.” Isn’t form, after all, the very flesh of thought, to paraphrase the great Sahelian writer Naguib Wolegorzee? Thus, a popular daily in N’Djamena, Bilad el Sudan, periodically goes back to its favorite headline: “Back Across the Mediterranean, Clodhoppers!” From Tripoli, El Ard, owned by the magnate Hannibal Cabral, shouts “Go Johnny, Go!” Which the Lagos Herald echoes with an ultimatum: “White Trash, Back Home!” More laconic is the Messager des Seychelles, in two English words: “Apocalypse Now!”

• Former Portuguese Colonies •

MIA COUTO

• Mozambique •

LANGUAGES WE DON’T KNOW WE KNOW

IN AN AS yet unpublished short story of mine, the action is as follows: a terminally ill woman asks her husband to tell her a story so as to alleviate her unbearable pains. No sooner does he begin his tale than she stops him:

• No, not like that. I want you to speak to me in an unknown language.

• Unknown? he asks.

• A language that doesn’t exist. For I have such a need not to understand anything at all.

The husband asks himself: how can you speak a language that doesn’t exist? He starts off by mumbling some strange words and feels like a fool, as if he were establishing his inability to be human. But gradually, he begins to feel more at ease with this language that is devoid of rules. And he no longer knows whether he’s speaking, singing, or praying. When he pauses, he notices his wife has fallen asleep, with the most peaceful smile on her face. Later, she confesses to him: those sounds had brought back memories of a time before she even had a memory! And they had given her the solace of that same sleep which provides the link between us and what was here before we were alive.

When we were children, all of us experienced that first language, the language of chaos, all of us enjoyed that divine moment when our life was capable of being all lives, and the world still awaited a destiny. James Joyce called this relationship with an unformed, chaotic world “chaosmology.” This relationship, my friends, is what breathes life into writing, whatever the continent, whatever the nation, whatever the language or the literary genre.

I believe that all of us, whether poets or fiction writers, never stop seeking this seminal chaos. All of us aspire to return to that state in which we were so removed from a particular language that all languages were ours. To put it another way, we are all the impossible translators of dreams. In truth, dreams speak within us what no word is capable of saying.

Our purpose, as producers of dreams, is to gain access to that other language no one can speak, that hidden language in which all things can have all names. What the sick woman was asking was what we all wish for: to annul time and send death to sleep.

Maybe you expected me, coming as I do from Africa, to use this platform to lament, to accuse others, while absolving my immediate fellows from guilt. But I prefer to talk about something of which we are all victims and guilty at the same time, about how the process that has impoverished my continent is in fact devitalizing our common, universal position as creators of stories.

In a congress that celebrates the value of words, the theme of my intervention is the way dominant criteria are devaluing good literature in the name of easy and immediate profitability. I am talking about a commercial rationale that is closed to other cultures, other languages, other ways of thinking. The words of today are increasingly those that are shorn of any poetic dimension, that do not convey to us any utopian vision of a different world.

What has ensured human survival is not just our intelligence but our capacity to produce diversity. This diversity is nowadays being denied us by a system that makes its choice solely on the grounds of profit and easy success. Africans have become the “others” once again, those who have little to sell, and who can buy even less. African authors (and especially those who write in Portuguese) live on the periphery of the periphery, there where words have to struggle in order not to be silence.

My dear friends

Languages serve to communicate. But they don’t just “serve.” They transcend that practical dimension. Languages cause us to be. And sometimes, just as in the story I mentioned, they cause us to stop being. We are born and we die inside speech, we are beholden to language even after we lose our body. Even those who were never born, even they exist within us as the desire for a word and as a yearning for a silence.

Our lives are dominated by a reductive and utilitarian perception that converts languages into the business of linguists and their technical skills. Yet the languages we know—and even those we are not aware that we knew—are multiple and not always possible to grasp by the rationalist logic that governs our conscious mind. Something exists that escapes norms and codes. This elusive dimension is what fascinates me as a writer. What motivates me is the divine vocation of the word, which not only names but also invents and produces enchantment.

We are all bound by the collective codes with which we communicate in our everyday lives. But the writer seeks to convey things that are beyond everyday life. Never before has our world had at its disposal so many means of communication. Yet our solitude has never been so extreme. Never before have we had so many highways. And yet never before have we visited each other so little.

I am a biologist and I travel a lot through my country’s savanna. In these regions, I meet people who don’t know how to read books. But they know how to read their world. In such a universe where other wisdoms prevail, I am the one who is illiterate. I don’t know how to read the signs in the soil, the trees, the animals. I can’t read clouds and the likelihood of rain. I don’t know how to talk to the dead, I’ve lost all contact with ancestors who give us our sense of the eternal. In these visits to the savanna, I learn sensitivities that help me to come out of myself and remove me from my certainties. In this type of territory, I don’t just have dreams. I am dreamable.

Mozambique is a huge country, as huge as it is new. More than twenty-five languages are spoken within it. Ever since independence, which was achieved in 1975, Portuguese has been the official language. Thirty years ago, only a tiny minority spoke this language, ironically borrowed from the colonizer in order to disaffirm the country’s colonial past. Thirty years ago, almost no Mozambicans had Portuguese as their mother tongue. Now, more than 12 percent of Mozambicans have Portuguese as their first language. And the great majority understands and speaks Portuguese, stamping standard Portuguese with the imprimatur of African cultures.

This tendency towards change places worlds that are not only distinguished by language in confrontation with each other. Languages exist as part of culturally much vaster universes. There are those who fight to keep alive languages that are at risk of extinction. Such a fight is an utterly worthy one and recalls our own struggle as biologists to save animals and plants from disappearance. But languages can only be saved if the culture that harbours them can remain dynamic. In the same way, biological species can only be saved if their habitats and natural life patterns can be preserved.

Cultures survive for as long as they remain productive, as long as they are subject to change and can dialogue and mingle with other cultures. Languages and cultures do what living organisms do: they exchange genes and invent symbioses in response to the challenges of time and environment.

In Mozambique, we are living in an age when encounters and disencounters are occurring within a melting-pot full of exuberance and paradox. Words do not always serve as a bridge between these diverse worlds. For example, concepts that seem to us to be universal, such as Nature, Culture, and Society, are sometimes difficult to reconcile. There are often no words in local languages to express these ideas. Sometimes, the opposite is true: European languages do not possess expressions that may translate the values and concepts contained in Mozambican cultures.

I remember something that really happened to me. In 1989, I was doing research on the island of Inhaca when a team of United Nations technicians arrived there. They had come to carry out what is generally known as “environmental education.” I don’t want to comment here on how this concept of environmental education often conceals a type of messianic arrogance. The truth of the matter is that these scientists, brimming with good faith, had brought with them cases containing slide projectors and films. In a word, they had brought with them educational kits, in the naïve expectation that technology would prove the solution to problems of understanding and communication.

During the first meeting with the local population, some curious misunderstandings emerged that illustrate the difficulty of translating not so much words but thoughts. On the podium were the scientists who spoke in English, myself, who translated this into Portuguese, and a fisherman who translated the Portuguese into Chidindinhe, the local language. It all began when the visitors introduced themselves (I should mention here that most of them happened to be Swedish). We are “scientists,” they said. But the word “scientist” doesn’t exist in the local language. The term chosen by the translator was “inguetlha,” which means “witchdoctor.” In those folks’ eyes therefore, the visitors were white witchdoctors. The Swedish leader of the delegation (unaware of the status conferred upon him) then announced: “we have come here to work on the environment.” Now, in that culture, the idea of the environment has no autonomous meaning and there is no word that exactly describes such a concept. The translator hesitated and eventually chose the word “ntumbuluku,” which has various meanings, but refers above all to a sort of Big Bang, the moment when humanity was created. As you can imagine, these island folk were fascinated: their little island had been chosen to study a matter of the highest, most noble metaphysical importance.

During the course of the dialogue, the same Swedish member of the delegation asked his audience to identify the environmental problems that were of greatest concern to the islanders. The crowd looked at each other, perplexed: “environmental problems”? After consulting among themselves, the people chose their greatest problem: the invasion of their plantations by the “tinguluve,” or bush pigs. Interestingly, the term “tinguluve” also describes the spirits of the dead who fell ill after they had stopped living. Whether they were spirits or pigs, the foreign expert didn’t understand very well what these “tinguluve” were. He had never seen such an animal. His audience explained: the pigs had appeared mysteriously on the island and had begun to multiply in the forest. Now, they were destroying the plantations.

• They’re destroying the plantations? Well, that’s easy: we can shoot them!

The crowd’s reaction was one of fearful silence. Shoot spirits? No one wanted to talk or listen anymore, no matter what the subject. And the meeting came to an abrupt end, damaged by a tacit loss of trust.

That night, a group of elders knocked on my door. They asked me to summon the foreigners so that they could better explain the problem of the pigs. The experts appeared, astonished by this interruption to their sleep.

• It’s because of the wild pigs.

• What about the pigs?

• It’s because they’re not quite pigs . . .

• So what are they, then? they asked, certain that a creature couldn’t exist and at the same time not exist.

• They are almost pigs. But they’re not complete pigs.

Their explanation was going from bad to worse. The pigs were defined in ever more vague terms: “convertible creatures,” “temporary animals” or “visitors who had been sent by someone.” Eventually, the zoologist, who was by now getting tired, took out his manual and showed them the photograph of a wild pig. The locals looked and exclaimed: “Yes, that’s the one.” The scientists smiled, satisfied, but their victory was short lived, for one of the elders added: Yes, this is the animal, but only at night time. I have few doubts that by this time, the experts doubted my ability as a translator. In this way, they didn’t need to question what they were saying or query how they had arrived in an unknown locality.

Whatever the correct translation might be, the truth is that the relationship between the experts and the local community was never good and no manner of modern PowerPoint presentation could make up for the initial misunderstanding.

On another occasion, I was accompanying a presidential delegation on a visit to a province in the North of Mozambique. The President of the Republic was introducing his ministers. When it came to the Minister of Culture, the translator, after a brief pause, then announced: “This is the Minister of Tomfoolery.”

In some languages in Mozambique, there isn’t a word for “poor.” A poor person is designated by the term “chisiwana,” which means “orphan.” In these cultures, a poor person isn’t just someone who doesn’t possess assets, but above all it is someone who has lost the network of family relationships, which, in rural society, are a support mechanism for survival. The individual is considered poor when he or she doesn’t have relatives. Poverty is loneliness, family rupture. It is possible that international experts, specialists in writing reports on destitution, don’t take sufficient account of the dramatic impact of destroyed family links and social mutual help networks. Whole nations are becoming “orphans” and begging seems to be the only route to torturous survival.

By recounting these episodes, I wish to reinforce what we already know: the systems of thought in rural Africa are not easily reducible to European processes of logic. Some who seek to understand Africa plunge into analyses of political, social and cultural phenomena. To understand the diversity of Africa, however, we need to get to know systems of thought and religious universes that often don’t even have a name. Such systems are curious because they are often rooted in actually negating the gods they invoke. For most of the peasantry in my country, the issues surrounding the origin of the world just don’t exist: the universe quite simply has always existed. What is the role of God in a world that never had a beginning? This is why, in some religions in Mozambique, the gods are always referred to in the plural, and have the same names as living people. The problem with God, according to a Makwa proverb, is the same as the one with the egg: if we don’t hold it properly we drop it; if we hold it too hard, we break it.

In the same way, the idea of the “environment” presupposes that we humans are at the centre and things dwell in orbit to us. In reality, things don’t revolve around us, but along with them we form one same world, people and things dwell within one indivisible body. This diversity of thought suggests that it may be necessary to storm one last bastion of racism, which is the arrogance of assuming that there is only one system of knowledge, and of being unable to accept philosophies originating in impoverished nations.

I have been talking about the various cosmovisions found in rural areas of Mozambique. But I wouldn’t want you to look at them as if they were essentialities, resistant to time and the dynamics of exchange. Today, when I revisit the island of Inhaca, I see that campaigns have been mounted to kill the wild pigs that invade plantations. And local chiefs prepare for the visits of foreign scientists, using their mobile phones. Throughout the country, millions of Mozambicans have appropriated the words “culture” and “nature” and have absorbed them into their cultural universes. These new words are working on top of the original cultures, in the same way that certain trees invent the ground out of which they appear to be growing.

In short, cultural phenomena aren’t stopped in time, waiting for an anthropologist to turn up and record them as some proof of an exotic world, outside modernity. Africa has been subject to successive processes of essentialization and folklorization, and much of what is proclaimed as being authentically African is the result of inventions made outside the continent. For decades, African writers had to undergo the so-called test of authenticity: their texts were required to translate that which was understood to be their true ethnicity. Nowadays, young African writers are freeing themselves from “Africanness.” They are what they are without any need for proclamation. African writers seek to be as universal as any other writer in the world.

It is true that many writers in Africa face specific problems, but I prefer not to subscribe to the idea that Africa is a unique, singular and homogeneous place. There are as many Africas as there are writers and all of them are reinventing continents that lie inside their very selves. It is true that a high proportion of African writers face challenges in order to adjust their work to different languages and cultures. But this is not a problem that is exclusively ours, those of us who are African. There isn’t a writer in the world who doesn’t have to seek out his or her own identity among multiple and elusive identities. In every continent, each person is a nation made up of different nations. One of these nations lives submerged and made secondary by the universe of writing. This hidden nation is called orality. Then again, orality is not a typically African phenomenon, nor is it a characteristic that is exclusive to those who are erroneously called “native peoples.” Orality is a universal territory, a treasure rich in thoughts and sensibilities that is reclaimed by poetry.

The idea persists that only African writers suffer what is called the drama of language. It is true that colonization induced traumas over identity and alienation. But the truth, my friends, is that no writer has at his disposal a consummated language. We all have to find our own language in order to demonstrate our uniqueness and unrepeatability.

The Indian sociologist André Breteille wrote: “Knowing a language makes us human; fluency in more than one language makes us civilized.” If this is true, Africans—assumed down the ages to be uncivilized—may be better suited to modernity than even they themselves think. A high proportion of Africans know more than one African language and, apart from these, speak a European language. That which is generally seen as problematic may after all represent considerable potential for the future. For this ability to be polyglot may provide us Africans with a passport to something that has become perilously rare nowadays: the ability to travel between different identities and to visit the intimacy of others.

Whatever the case, a civilized future implies sweeping and radical changes in this world that could be ever more our world. It implies the eradication of hunger, war and poverty. But it also implies a predisposition to deal with the material of dreams. And this has everything to do with the language that lulled the sick woman to sleep at the beginning of my talk. The man of the future should surely be a type of bilingual nation. Speaking a finished language, capable of dealing with visible, everyday matters. But fluent too in another language to express that which belongs to the invisible, dreamlike order of existence.

What I am advocating is a plural man, equipped with a plural language. Alongside a language that makes us part of the world, there should be another that makes us leave it. On the one hand, a language that creates roots and a sense of place. On the other, a language that is a wing upon which to travel.

Alongside a language that gives us our sense of humanity, there should be another that can elevate us to the divine.

Thank you very much.

ONDJAKI

• Angola •

DRAGONFLY

for Dr. Carvalho

if from these stones one announced what creates silence: here, close by, [ . . . ] this would open, like a wound you would have to plunge into

—Paul Celan, “The Power of Light”

A FLUID SOUND ran through the house, brushed against the dust on the garden vines, swayed the mangoes and the papayas as they ripened, terrified a drunken dragonfly that was dozing there, made the sun diminish, and settled still strong, still distinct, at the woman’s ear. Followed by a smile.

From the stereo the sound flowed continuously, without interruption. The doctor was locked into this Sunday habit of sitting outdoors on his veranda listening for long periods to the Brazilian singer Adriana Calcanhoto. Now he slept, now he read, now he wrote, now he simply lay back with teary eyes contemplating the fat clouds fleeing the sky. For him nothing more anointed a Sunday than his own peace. “Sunday” was, for the doctor, a deeply personal word, a wellspring.

Knowing this—that the doctor appeared deep in his Sunday routine—the woman hesitated. She lay her head against the iron gate and wanted to believe the impossible: that she was not thirsty. Her head throbbed; her eyes truly wanted to close, to forget the world, to stop rendering their visual services. The cold gate brought pleasure to the fingers and the heart. The music invaded her pores. Right then she and the doctor shared a common sensation. At the same moment he thought: This voice, yes, it can be shared. The voice of Adriana, purring into the afternoon: “People will be crazy, or sane . . . when they want everything to become music.”

When the voice fell quiet, the dragonfly decided to wake up, moving in an open zigzag and landing near the doctor’s notes. Scratchings, denied memories, fragments of more sensitive times that he did not need to accept as his own. “I forget the ground, I don’t find the words,” the voice sang on. It had been years since he settled accounts with the animals and settled into a balanced relationship with them. He maintained a still-conflicted relationship with the cockroaches and the lizards, but he was no killer. Instead, he used to smile. In the morning he often yearned to see Angolan antelope running like he used to see as a child in the southwestern province of Namibe; sometimes at the beach he found sweaty horses and was held back by eyes that wanted to shut, savoring the strong scent of lathering horse flesh. He was happy only on the eve of a trip, when he dreamt of white or delicately yellow butterflies, and never got an interpretation of the dream. It had been years since he made peace with the animals, including the Dengue cat that he had dealt a mortal wound. The cats, mainly cats, brought the insects back to mind.

It was after the dragonfly that he noticed the woman resting at his gate with closed eyes, listening, it seemed to him, to the music of Adriana: “On principle I never close doors, but . . . keep them open at all times . . .”

He uncrossed his legs and slowly released them from the other chair: he slipped into his sandals. Walking, he was looking at the tranquil dragonfly strolling over his letters, over the smell of his Violet #971 ink. The ink was so sticky that he had to write at a furious pace, since it dried quickly once it met the air. But the dragonfly, not particularly curious, couldn’t reach the bottle and couldn’t drink. One step, two. He was near the gate and the woman, despite his wishes, didn’t open her eyes. But she did speak.

• Forgive the interruption . . .

It was neither a shock nor anything really describable. The doctor simply hadn’t counted on that feeling of closeness.

• I recognize the smell of the ink . . . Sir, do you write with a quill?

• No . . . It’s . . . Well, OK, it’s a kind of quill.

The gate was unlocked. He mentioned opening it; she opened her eyes, taking her eyes off the grillwork.

• Forgive the interruption, but I’m so thirsty—maybe hoping that the doctor would reveal whether or not he forgave the disturbance, she shifted tone.

The gate was opened by the doctor’s precise hand, while his other offered a friendly gesture. He was not easily ruffled. “Right there I forgot that destiny always wanted me alone,” sang Adriana.

• Water or soft drink?—the doctor.

• Water, please.

The woman noticed the still dragonfly. Its heart was too alive for it to be dead or embalmed, but it was totally immune to the wind that ruffled the sheets of paper. The woman approached the table but didn’t sit down. Out of curiosity she looked at the inky letters against the whiteness without intending to read the message, but more in appreciation of the beauty of the masculine handwriting. It was, she later saw, a “type of quill,” as the doctor told her, that had produced those enchanting scratches. It offered no resistance and came to her nearby hand; it seemed crystalline.

• It’s glass. Yes, glass. Isn’t it lovely?—the doctor.

• Very . . . It’s a very special quill—the woman.

He brought the water, in a normal glass, to her hands. The doctor still kept the pitcher on a long side of the table, without disturbing the dragonfly. He invited the woman to sit down.

• Thank you. You must be surprised, hmm?

• Surprised?

• Asking for water. No one has rung the bells to ask for water, right?

• That’s right. You’re not from here, no?

• No.

The woman served herself again. She drank slowly, as suited her.

• I remember one of my grandmothers in Silva Porto who once had a man come into her house dying of thirst and asking her for water. My grandmother returned to the room with a jug of very cold water and he chugged three glasses without stopping.

• He did?

• He did. The man only had time to return the jug to her before he dropped the glass to the floor. He died right there, you know? Ever since, my grandmother lived to tell this story, and my grandfather swore that it was true—the doctor concluded.

• That doesn’t scare me.

• Sorry, it wasn’t meant to scare you.

• And what was it that your grandfather said?

• Mind you, my grandfather was a man of refined temperament and sensibility. When I was little he confirmed the whole story and at the end he said: That man never thanked your grandmother for the water.

The woman held the glass and inhaled deeply.

• Do you know why I asked for water here in your house?

• No.

• Because of the music . . . This sweet voice.

• Adriana.

• Huh?

• Adriana Calcanhoto, a Brazilian singer.

• Is she a poet too?

• Yes.

• No . . . Sir . . . Sir, are you a poet?

• Ah, me! No, I’m a doctor. And you?

• I’m here on vacation.

The dragonfly made its way to the ground. At last it moved, walking.

In the expression of both of them one could see the fear of two children who, with grave open-mouthed attention, watched the sudden graceful movement of a stone. The dragonfly walked toward the object. In a short shake of its wings it jumped and became quiet—a warrior marking its conquered territory. “And the grievance of the stars is for me alone” wafted toward the porch in the afternoon.

The object was a thick glass dome, certainly expensive, that covered a small ordinary gray stone. The most that could be said of it was that it was a tiny stone, neither charming, nor unusual, nor exotic or attractive. It was a crudely common stone. The glass enclosure, however, raised its value.

• I think that the value of this stone can’t be measured by its looks. Do you agree?

• Yes.

• But this dome is beautifully made . . .

The doctor, in a confident gesture, shook the dragonfly—a surprise for both the woman and the dragonfly. The insect returned to rest on the letters. The stone and its glass dome were hurled to the floor. The woman didn’t have time to be scared. The object noisily hit the floor twice and, after rolling a while, ended its journey. The doctor caught the object and returned to put it on the table at the foot of the letters, the papers, the dragonfly. The insect, in a short sprinkling of wings, returned to its post.

• All glass is fragile, my grandfather said. This glass dome is very good at protecting valuable objects.

The woman started to feel thirsty but she didn’t want to inconvenience him.

• A gift?

• Yes, a very special gift, very sincere.

• Do doctors receive many gifts?

• Some; it’s a way for people to express thanks and affection. And he fell silent.

The woman didn’t want to leave, but she thought she was forcing the moment. The doctor stayed quiet for more than five minutes. The woman thought it was time to leave. The music seemed to stop and the voice, the voice was difficult to record in memory’s ear.

• Adriana, you say?

• Adriana Calcanhoto. She’s Brazilian.

• Thank you very much for the water.

• You’re welcome. You know, always drink slowly.

• And thanks before I die!

The doctor sort of smiled. His lips contorted; only an attempt at a smile. Maybe.

The gate was open. The woman, grabbing the iron grates purposefully, recognized the sensation of that coldness of skin.

• You know, it was on Sunday—the doctor started.—I was called to the battlefront and no one wanted to operate on the man: he had some kind of explosive lodged in his leg. It was a very delicate operation; I still think about it today. I had to do everything very slowly so that he wouldn’t be in any pain, and both of us had to be patient. Near the end, the soldier said to me: Let me die; I’m already so tired. I answered: I’ll let you die, but first let me save you.

• So he died?

• No. The operation went well. In the end, he wanted to offer me a gift. As if nothing had happened, he took off the boot and said: Now I know why the stone kept bothering me for two days. Take it, doctor, just so we don’t forget our conversation today. You keep the stone, I’ll keep the scar.

The gate closed. The thirst had passed. The woman, walking slowly down the sidewalk, understood that it was the stone that gave value to the enclosure. She heard footsteps. The music started again: “My music wants to transcend taste, it doesn’t want to have a face, it doesn’t want to be culture.”

Between two sepia pages—in a window of dust—the woman watched the dragonfly stop, undulating. It was a dance. At its feet lay the crudely common stone. Between the memory of the man and the unbreakable dome of glass.

JOSÉ EDUARDO AGUALUSA

• Angola •

from THE BOOK OF CHAMELEONS

FÉLIX VENTURA STUDIES the newspapers as he has his dinner, leafing through them carefully, and if an article catches his eye he marks it with his pen, in lilac-colored ink. Once he’s done eating he cuts it out and stores it carefully away in a file. On one of the shelves in the library he has dozens of these files. Another is where his hundreds of videocassettes lie. Félix likes to record news bulletins, important political happenings, anything that might one day be useful to him. The tapes are lined up in alphabetical order, by the name of the person or the event they’re about. His dinner consists of a bowl of vegetable broth, a specialty of Old Esperança’s, a cup of mint tea, and a thick slice of papaya, dressed with lemon and a dash of port wine. In his room, before going to bed, he puts on his pajamas with such an air of formality that I’m always half-expecting him to tie a somber-looking tie around his neck. But on this particular night, the shrill ring of the doorbell interrupted him as he ate his soup. This irritated him. He folded up his paper, got up with some effort and went to open the door. I saw a tall man come in, distinguished looking, a hooked nose, prominent cheekbones, and a generous moustache, curved and gleaming, the kind people haven’t had these past hundred years. His eyes were small and bright, and seemed to take possession of everything they saw. He was wearing a blue suit, in an old-fashioned cut but which suited him, and in his left hand he was holding a document case. The room darkened. It was as though night— or something even more grief-stricken than night—had come in with him. He took out a calling card, and read aloud:

“Félix Ventura. Guarantee your children a better past.” And he laughed. A sad laugh, but not unpleasant. “That would be you, I presume? A friend of mine gave me your card.”

I couldn’t place his accent. He spoke softly, with a mix of different pronunciations, a faint Slavic roughness, tempered by the honeyed softness of the Portuguese from Brazil. Félix Ventura took a step back:

“And who are you?”

The foreigner closed the door. He walked around the room, his hands clasped behind his back, pausing for a long moment in front of the beautiful oil portrait of Frederick Douglass. Then he sat down, at last, in one of the armchairs, and with an elegant gesture invited the albino to do the same. It was as though he were the owner of the house. Certain common friends, he said—his voice becoming even gentler—had given him this address. They’d told him of a man who dealt in memories, a man who sold the past, clandestinely, the way other people deal in cocaine. Félix looked at him with mistrust. Everything about this strange man annoyed him—his manners that were both gentle and authoritative, his ironic way of speaking, the antiquated moustache. He sat himself down in a grand wickerwork chair, at the opposite end of the room, as though afraid the other man’s delicacy might be contagious.

“And might I know who you are?”

Again his question received no reply. The foreigner asked permission to smoke. He took a silver cigarette case from the pocket of his jacket, opened it, and rolled a cigarette. His eyes skipped one way and another, his attention distracted, like a chicken pecking around in the dust. And then he smiled with unexpected brilliance:

“But do tell me, my dear man—who are your clients?”

Félix Ventura gave in. There was a whole class, he explained, a whole new bourgeoisie, who sought him out. They were businessmen, ministers, landowners, diamond smugglers, generals—people, in other words, whose futures are secure. But what these people lack is a good past, a distinguished ancestry, diplomas. In sum, a name that resonates with nobility and culture. He sells them a brand new past. He draws up their family tree. He provides them with photographs of their grandparents and great-grandparents, gentlemen of elegant bearing and old-fashioned ladies. The businessmen, the ministers, would like to have women like that as their aunts, he went on, pointing to the portraits on the walls—old ladies swathed in fabrics, authentic bourgeois bessanganas—they’d like to have a grandfather with the distinguished bearing of a Machado de Assis, of a Cruz e Souza, of an Alexandre Dumas. And he sells them this simple dream.

“Perfect, perfect.” The foreigner smoothed his moustache. “That’s what they told me. I require your services. But I’m afraid it may be rather a lot of work . . .”

“Work makes you free . . . ,” Félix muttered. It may be that he was just saying this to try and get a rise out of him, to test out the intruder’s identity, but if that was his intention it failed—the foreigner merely nodded. The albino got up and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. A moment later he returned with a bottle of good Portuguese wine that he held with both hands. He showed it to the foreigner, and offered him a glass. And he asked:

“And might I know your name?”

The foreigner examined the wine by the light of the lamp. He lowered his eyelids and drank slowly, attentively, happily, like someone following the flight of a Bach fugue. He put the glass down on a small table right in front of him, a piece of mahogany furniture with a glass cover; then finally straightened himself up and replied:

“I’ve had many names, but I mean to forget them all. I’d rather you were the one to baptize me.”

Félix insisted. He had to know—at the very least—what his clients’ professions were. The foreigner raised his right hand—a broad hand, with long, bony fingers—in a vague gesture of refusal. But then he lowered it again, and sighed:

“You’re right. I’m a photojournalist. I collect images of wars, of hunger and its ghosts, of natural disasters and terrible misfortunes. You can think of me as a witness.”

He explained that he was planning to settle in the country. He wanted more than just a decent past, a large family, uncles, aunts and cousins, nephews and nieces, grandfathers and grandmothers, including two or three bessanganas, now dead, of course (or perhaps living in exile somewhere?); he wanted more than just portraits and anecdotes. He needed a new name, authentic official documents that bore out this identity. The albino listened, horrified:

“No!” he managed to blurt out. “I don’t do things like that. I invent dreams for people, I’m not a forger . . . And besides, if you’ll pardon my bluntness, wouldn’t it be a bit difficult to invent a completely African genealogy for you?”

“Indeed! And why is that?! . . .”

“Well—sir—. . . you’re white.”

“And what of it? You’re whiter than I am . . .”

“White? Me?!” The albino choked. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. “No, no! I’m black. Pure black. I’m a native. Can’t you tell that I’m black? . . .”

From my usual post at the window I couldn’t help giving a little chuckle at this point. The foreigner looked upward as though he were sniffing the air. Tense—alert:

“Did you hear that? Who laughed just then?”

“Nobody,” the albino replied, and pointed at me. “It was the gecko.”

The man stood up. He came up closer and I could feel his eyes on me. It was as though he were looking directly into my soul—my old soul. He shook his head slowly, in a baffled silence.

“Do you know what this is?”

“What?!”

“It’s a gecko, yes, but a very rare species. See these stripes? It’s a tiger gecko—a shy creature, we still know very little about them. They were first discovered half a dozen years ago in Namibia. We think they can live for twenty years—even longer, perhaps. They have this amazing laugh—doesn’t it sound like a human laugh?”

Félix agreed. Yes, to begin with he’d also been disturbed by it. But then having consulted a few books about reptiles—he had them right there in the house, he had books about everything, thousands of them, inherited from his adopted father, a secondhand book dealer who’d exchanged Luanda for Lisbon a few months after independence—he’d discovered that there were certain species of gecko that produce sounds that are strikingly like laughter. They spent some time discussing me, which I found annoying—talking as if I weren’t there!—and yet at the same time it felt as though they were talking not about me but about some alien being, some vague and distant biological anomaly. Men know almost nothing of the little creatures that share their homes. Mice, bats, ants, ticks, fleas, flies, mosquitoes, spiders, worms, silverfish, termites, weevils, snails, beetles. I decided that I might as well simply get on with my life. At that sort of time the albino’s bedroom used to fill up with mosquitoes, and I was beginning to feel hungry. The foreigner stood up again, went over to the chair where he’d put the briefcase, opened it, and took out a thick envelope. He handed it to Félix, said his good-byes, and went to the door. He opened it himself. He nodded, and was gone.

“A Ship Filled with Voices”

Five thousand dollars in large-denomination bills.

Félix Ventura tore open the envelope quickly, nervously, and the notes burst out like green butterflies—fluttered for a moment in the night air, then spread themselves all over the floor, the books, the chairs and sofas. The albino was getting anxious. He even went to open the door, meaning to chase after the foreigner, but out in the vast still night there was no sign of anyone.

“Have you seen this?!” He was talking to me. “So now what am I supposed to do?”

He gathered the notes up one by one, counted them and put them back in the envelope—it was only then that he noticed that inside the envelope there was also a note; he read aloud:

“Dear Sir, I will be giving you another five thousand when I receive the material. I’m leaving you a few passport-style photos of myself for you to use on the documents. I’ll come by again in three weeks.”

Félix lay down and tried to read a book—it was Nicholas Shakespeare’s biography of Bruce Chatwin, in the Portuguese Quetzal edition. After ten minutes he put it down on the bedside table and got up again. He wandered round and round the house, muttering incoherent phrases, until dawn broke. His little widow’s hands, tender and tiny, fluttered randomly about, independently, as he spoke. The tightly curled hair, trimmed down now, glowed around him with a miraculous aura. If someone had seen him from out on the road, seen him through the window, they would have thought they were looking at a ghost.

“No, what rubbish! I won’t do it . . .”

[...]

“The passport wouldn’t be hard to get, it wouldn’t even be that risky, and it would only take a few days—cheap, too. I could do that—why not? I’ll have to do it one day—it’s the inevitable extension of what I’m doing anyway . . .”

[...]

“Take care, my friend, take care with the paths you choose to follow. You’re no forger. Be patient. Invent some sort of excuse, return the money, and tell him it’s not going to happen.”

[...]

“But you don’t just turn down ten thousand dollars. I could spend two or three months in New York. I could visit the secondhand book dealers in Lisbon. I’ll go to Rio, watch the samba dancers, go to the dance halls, to the secondhand bookshops, or I’ll go to Paris to buy records and books. How long has it been since I last went to Paris?”

[...]

Félix Ventura’s anxiety disturbed my cynegetic activity. I’m a creature that hunts by night. Once I’ve tracked down my prey I chase them, forcing them up toward the ceiling. Once they’re up there mosquitoes never come back down. I run around them, in ever decreasing circles, corral them into a corner and devour them. The dawn was already beginning to break when the albino—now sprawled on one of the living room sofas—began to tell me his life story.

“I used to think of this house as being a bit like a ship. An old steamship heaving itself through the heavy river mud. A vast forest, and night all around.” Félix spoke quietly, and pointed vaguely at the outlines of his books. “It’s full of voices, this ship of mine.”

Out there I could hear the night slipping by. Something barking. Claws scratching at the glass. Looking through the window I could easily make out the river, the stars spinning across its back, skittish birds disappearing into the foliage. The mulatto Fausto Bendito Ventura, secondhand book collector, son and grandson of secondhand book collectors, awoke one Sunday morning to find a box outside his front door. Inside, stretched out on several copies of Eça de Queiroz’s The Relic, was a little naked creature, skinny and shameless, with a glowing fuzz of hair, and a limpid smile of triumph. A widower with no children, the book collector brought the child into his home, raised him and schooled him, absolutely certain that there was some superior purpose that was plotting out this unlikely story. He kept the box, and the books that were in it too. The albino told me of it with pride.

“Eça,” he said, “was my first crib.”

Fausto Bendito Ventura became a secondhand book collector quite without meaning to. He took pride in never having worked in his life. He’d go out early in the morning to walk downtown, malembemalembe —slowly-slowly—all elegant in his linen suit, straw hat, bow tie and cane, greeting friends and acquaintances with a light touch of his index finger on the brim of his hat. If by chance he came across a woman of his generation he’d dazzle her with a gallant smile. He’d whisper: Good day to you, poetry . . . He’d throw spicy compliments to the girls who worked in the bars. It’s said (Félix told me) that one day some jealous man provoked him:

“So what exactly is it that you do on working days?”

Fausto Bendito’s reply—all my days, my dear sir, are days off, I amble through them at my leisure—still provokes applause and laughter among the slim circle of old colonial functionaries who in the lifeless evenings of the wonderful Biker Beer-House still manage to cheat death, playing cards and exchanging stories. Fausto would lunch at home, have a siesta, and then sit on the veranda to enjoy the cool evening breeze. In those days, before independence, there wasn’t yet the high wall separating the garden from the pavement, and the gate was always open. His clients needed only to climb a flight of stairs to have free access to his books, piles and piles of them, laid out at random on the strong living room floor.

Félix Ventura and I share a love (in my case a hopeless love) for old words. Félix Ventura was originally schooled in this by his father, Fausto Bendito, and then by an old teacher, for the first years of high school, a man subject to melancholic ways, and so slender that he seemed always to be walking in profile, like an old Egyptian engraving. Gaspar—that was the teacher’s name—was moved by the helplessness of certain words. He saw them as down on their luck, abandoned in some desolate place in the language, and he sought to recover them. He used them ostentatiously, and persistently, which annoyed some people and unsettled others. I think he succeeded. His students started using these words too, to begin with merely in jest, but later like a private dialect, a tribal marking, which set them apart from their peers. Nowadays, Félix Ventura assured me, his students are still quite capable of recognizing one another, even if they’ve never met before, on hearing just a few words . . .

“I still shudder each time I hear someone say ‘duvet,’ a repulsive Gallicism, rather than ‘eiderdown,’ which to me (and I’m sure you’ll agree with me on this) seems to be a very lovely, rather novel word. But I’ve resigned myself to ‘brassiere.’ ‘Strophium’ has a sort of historical dignity about it, but it still sounds a little odd—don’t you think?”

• Southern Africa •

J . M. COETZEE

• SouthAfrica •

THE MEMOIRS OF BREYTEN BREYTENBACH

I

BREYTEN BREYTENBACH FIRST came to public attention when, from Paris, where he worked as a painter and poet, he sought permission from the South African authorities to bring his Vietnamese-born wife home on a visit, and was informed that as a couple they would not be welcome. The embarrassment of this cause célèbre persuaded the authorities, in 1973, to relent and issue limited visas. In Cape Town Breytenbach addressed a packed audience at a literary symposium. “We [Afrikaners],” he said, “are a bastard people with a bastard language. Our nature is one of bastardy. It is good and beautiful thus . . . [But] like all bastards—uncertain of their identity—we began to adhere to the concept of purity. That is apartheid. Apartheid is the law of the bastard.”[22]

A record of that visit appeared, first in the Netherlands, then in the English-speaking world, in A Season in Paradise, a memoir interspersed with poems, reminiscences and reflections on the South African situation; it included the text of the address.

In 1975 Breytenbach was back, but in a new role: on a clandestine mission to recruit saboteurs on behalf of the African National Congress. He was soon picked up by the security police, and spent seven years in jail. Returning to France, he publicly cut ties with his people: “I do not consider myself to be an Afrikaner.”[23] Nevertheless, during the 1980s he paid for further private visits, under police supervision. A 1991 visit gave rise to Return to Paradise, the narrative of a journey through the “reformed” South Africa of F. W. de Klerk. As he explained, the book was meant to be read together with A Season in Paradise and his prison memoir The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist as an autobiographical triptych.

The titles of the Paradise books cast an ironical glance at Rimbaud’s Une Saison en enfer. “This region of damnation,” he calls South Africa in Return to Paradise. “I am looking at the future and it chills me to the bone.” The revolution has been betrayed; cliques of middle-aged men are bargaining for their slice of the cake while on the ground their followers fight on mindlessly. The new order on the point of emerging—“more broadly based hegemony but [the] same mechanisms and same sadness”—is not what he fought for. If his own “whimpers for an impossible revolution” are utopian, it remains the right of the poet to imagine a future beyond the dreams of politicians, to have his prophetic say in the future. He even has the right to bite the hand that has fed him.[24]

At a more down-to-earth level, the story of the 1991 visit includes poetry readings in noisy halls where the audience does not understand the language and comes only to inspect the oddity named Breytenbach; perplexed reactions from old comrades-in-arms (“But aren’t you ever happy? Now that we’ve won, can’t you rejoice?”); incomprehension and hostility when he asserts that his role in the future will be, as in the past, “to be against the norm, orthodoxy, the canon, hegemony, politics, the State, power.” These are sentiments which do not go down well in a country that has, as he observes dryly, slid straight from pre-humanity to post-humanity.[25]

He uses the book to lash out, in anguish and bitterness, in all directions: against white liberals, against the South African Communist Party and “more-doctrinaire-than-thou” bourgeois leftists, against former associates like Wole Soyinka and Jesse Jackson, and particularly, for their treatment of him when he was in jail, against the ANC itself:

Not only did the ANC withhold assistance from my dependants, not only did they disavow me, but the London clique of bitter exiles intervened to stop any manifestation of international or local support for my cause. They blackballed and maligned me, abetted by well-meaning “old friends” inside the country. Even Amnesty International was prevailed upon not to “adopt” me as a prisoner of conscience.[26]

The plague that Breytenbach pronounces upon all parties—a condemnation in which, despite the pungency of the language, there is something wild and out of control—makes up the less interesting half of the book. Its best pages address a more intimate and more fundamental concern: what it means to him to be rooted in a landscape, to be African-born. For though he has spent almost all his adult life in Europe, Breytenbach does not feel himself to be a European:

To be an African is not a choice, it is a condition . . . To be [an African] is not through lack of being integrated in Europe . . . neither is it from regret of the crimes perpetrated by “my people” . . . No, it is simply the only opening I have for making use of all my senses and capabilities . . . The [African] earth was the first to speak. I have been pronounced once and for all.[27]

What he means by saying that Africa allows him to use his senses and his capabilities fully is revealed in page after magical page as he responds to the sights and sounds of “the primordial continent.” As a writer, Breytenbach has the gift of being able to descend effortlessly into the Africa of the poetic unconscious and return with the rhythm and the words, the words in the rhythm, that give life. He is aware of the gift. It is not an individual matter, he insists, but is inherited from his ancestors, “forefathers with the deep eyes of injured baboons,” whose lives were spent in intimate relation with their native landscape, so that when he speaks that landscape he is speaking in their voice as much as his own.[28]

It is this very traditional, very African realization—that his deepest creative being is not his own but belongs to an ancestral consciousness—that gives rise to some of the pain and confusion recorded in Return to Paradise. For though Breytenbach may recognize how marginal he has become in what is nowadays on all sides, with varying degrees of irony, called “the new South Africa,” and may even enjoy dramatizing himself as the one without a self, the bastard, the “nomadic nobody,” or, in his favorite postmodern figure, the face in the mirror, a textual shadow without substance, he knows that ultimately he owes his strength to his native earth and his ancestors.[29] Thus the most moving passages in the book tell of visiting his father’s deathbed, renewing friendships, making peace with his brothers, taking his wife to the old places of Africa.

II

Dog Heart, Breytenbach’s 1999 memoir, confines itself to a tiny area of South Africa, a region of the Western Cape province dubbed by him “Heartland,” and within it to the town of Montagu, not far from his birthplace, where, as he records, he and his wife buy and restore a house for their own use. The economy of this area is based on viticulture and fruit farming; but in recent years Montagu itself (pop. 23,000), a town of some charm, blessed with hot springs and a spectacular setting, has become a haven for retired people, artists, and craft-workers. Demo-graphically it is unrepresentative of the country as a whole. Whereas two thirds of the national population is black (we will brave the mine-field of racial terminology in a moment), the people of Breytenbach’s Montagu are overwhelmingly brown or white; though nationwide Afrikaans is the mother tongue of only one person in seven, in Montagu it predominates; and, in a country whose population is skewed towards youth (nearly half of it is under the age of twenty-one), Montagu is a town of aging people: the young have migrated to the cities in search of work.

Crude though they may be, these statistics should alert us against taking Dog Heart for what it is not and does not pretend to be: a report on the state of the South African nation in the 1990s. Breytenbach’s Heartland is not a microcosm of South Africa; Dog Heart has little to say about politics or black-white relations on a national scale. What it does report on, with intimate attention, is power relations between white and brown in the countryside.

Who are Breytenbach’s so-called brown people? The seeming innocence of the appellation conceals problems not only of anthropology (culture, genetics) and history (who holds the power to call whom what, and how was that power won?), but of a conceptual nature too: what does it mean to be neither black nor white, to be defined in negative terms, as, in effect, a person without qualities?

For that is how brown (or coloured or Coloured—with a C the term still carries apartheid echoes; with a c it is more or less neutral) people were defined under apartheid legislation. The category Coloured was meant to pick out the descendants of unions between people (usually men) of European (so-called Caucasian) descent and people (usually women) of indigenous African (usually Khoi—the term “Hottentot” is no longer polite) or Asian (usually Indonesian slave) birth. But in practice it captured many others besides, of genetically diverse origins: people of “pure” Khoi—or indeed of “pure” “African” descent—whom circumstance had led to adopt a European or European-derived name and language and lifestyle; people who through endogamy had retained a “purely” Asian, Islamic identity; “Europeans” who for one reason or another had dropped through the net of “whiteness” and were leading “mixed” lives.

Though apartheid legislation assumed a system of classification watertight enough to allocate each individual South African to one of four categories (white, Coloured, African, Indian), the basis of the system was ultimately tautological: a white was defined as a person of white appearance whom the white community accepted as white, and so forth.

The most conceptually sophisticated resistance to classification came from “coloured” quarters: if there was no “Coloured” community prepared to concede that it had pre-existed its creation by apartheid, then, logically, there could be no community criterion of “Coloured-ness.” Throughout the apartheid years the status “Coloured” was, across almost the entire range of people whom it implicated, accepted, so to speak, under protest, as an identity forced upon them. Insofar as there is or was a “Coloured” community, it was a community created by the common fate of being forced to behave, in the face of authority, as “Coloured.”

It is this history of contestation that Breytenbach calls up when he writes of “brown” people: a history of two or three million South Africans of highly diverse ethnic and social origins first compelled to conceive of themselves as a community, even (in one of the loftier predictions of apartheid historiography) as “a nation in the making”; then, in 1994, entering into a dispensation in which, while the old race laws were abolished, racial distinctions had nevertheless to be kept alive to make possible the social-engineering measures known in English as “affirmative action” and in Afrikaans, more bluntly, as “putting-right.” “First not white enough, then not black enough,” they complained, not without reason.

The issue of whether there is or ought to be a category between black and white is not unique to South Africa. The rights of ethnic or cultural minorities in the multi-ethnic nation-state constitute a critical issue worldwide; debate is rife in Latin America and other corners of the postcolonial world on the politics of mestizo identity. In South Africa this ferment has prompted people excluded from the “natural” identities of black and white to explore cultural identities for themselves entirely divorced from the set of options offered by apartheid—identities that link them to a precolonial past and even to a history older than that of “black” South Africans. Archaeological researches push the date of the migration of “black” Africans, speakers of Bantu languages, into the territory of the present South Africa further and further back in time, but no one proposes they have been there as long as the primeval huntergatherers of the dry southwest, the mythical heartland of Breytenbach’s “brown” people.

III

Being called, in 1973, “a bastard people with a bastard language” jolted even those Afrikaners sympathetic to Breytenbach. But in the years that have passed since then, bastardy—or, more politely, hybridity—has become a fashionable term in cultural history and cultural politics. Revisionist historians are busy rewriting the story of the Southern African colonial frontier as a zone of barter and exchange where old cultural baggage was shed and new baggage taken aboard, and where new identities—even new racial identities—were tried on like clothing. For adventurously-minded Afrikaners, laying claim to a dark ancestor now holds considerable cachet (Breytenbach himself is not immune to such self-fashioning).

Thus, half a century after the National Party came to power vowing to preserve at whatever cost the Christian Aryan identity of the Afrikaner, the wheel has come full circle: the intellectual vanguard of the Afrikaans-speaking sector, nervous of the name “Afrikaner” so long as it carries its old historical freight of racial exclusivity, yet unable to offer a better one, claim that they represent instead an embryonic, genetically hybrid, culturally syncretic, religiously diverse, non-exclusive, as yet unnamed group (“people” remains too loaded a term) defined (loosely) by attachment to a language—Afrikaans—of mixed provenance (Dutch, Khoi, Malay) but rooted in the African continent.

Breytenbach makes a large historical claim for his Heartland region: that during the time when it was part of the colonial frontier it bred a restless, nomadic, mongrel type of Afrikaner, without the social pretensions of farmers from the neighboring, more settled Boland region, where the economy had been built on slave labor—a being, in fact, not unlike the alternative Afrikaner just described.

It is a claim that will probably not stand up to scholarly scrutiny, but it does enable Breytenbach to advance his revisionist version of the Afrikaner pioneer. Whereas in the establishment version these pioneers were white-skinned farmers who, Bible in one hand and gun in the other, trekked into the interior of Africa to found republics where they would govern themselves free of British interference, in Breytenbach’s version they become people of inextricably mixed genetic origin who followed their herds and flocks into the interior because they had learned a wandering lifestyle from the Khoi pastoralists. And (Breytenbach’s argument goes), the sooner the modern Afrikaner discards the illusion of himself as the bearer of light in the African darkness, and accepts himself as merely one of Africa’s nomads—that is to say, as a rootless and unsettled being, with no claim of proprietorship over the earth—the better his chance of survival.

But bastardy, Breytenbach warns, is not an easy fate. It entails a continual making and unmaking of the self; it is necessarily dogged by a sense of loss. “[Yet] it is good to travel to become poor.”[30] Thus Breytenbach links the two themes of his ethical philosophy: bastardy and nomadism. Just as the bastard sheds his self and enters into an unpredictable mixture with the other, so the nomad uproots himself from the old, comfortable dwelling place to follow the animals, or the smells of the wind, or the figures of his imagination, into an uncertain future.

It is against such a background that one must read the gruesome reports in Dog Heart of attacks on whites in the countryside of the new South Africa. These stories make disturbing reading not only because of the psychopathic violence of the attacks themselves, but because they are being repeated at all. For the circulation of horror stories is the very mechanism that drives white paranoia about being chased off the land and ultimately into the sea. Why does Breytenbach lend himself to the process?

His response is that rural violence is by no means a new phenomenon. From the old days he resurrects stories of men like Koos Sas and Gert April and Dirk Ligter, “Hottentots” or “Bushmen” who flitted like ghosts from farm to farm sowing death and destruction before at last being tracked down and killed. In the folk memory of brown people, he suggests, these men are not criminal bandits but “resistance fighters.”[31] In other words, farm murders, and crimes in general against whites—even the crime directed against the Breytenbachs when their home in Montagu is broken into and vandalized—are indeed part of a larger historical plot which has everything to do with the arrogation of the land by whites in colonial times.

The land, says Breytenbach, belongs to no one, and the correct relation to the land is the nomad’s: live on it, live off it, move on; find ways of loving it without becoming bound to it. This is the lesson he teaches his French-born daughter, a child clearly drawn to the wildness and freedom of the country, as he takes her around the sacred sites of memory. Do not become too attached, he warns. “We are painted in the colours of disappearance here . . . We are only visiting . . . It must die away.”[32]

The elegiac tone that suffuses much of Dog Heart and distinguishes it from the previous memoirs comes in part from Breytenbach’s sense of growing old and needing to begin to make farewells, in part from a Buddhist outlook in which worldly attachments retard the progress of the soul (this is the religious side of his ethics of nomadism), but also in part from a sense that the world into which he was born cannot survive. Dog Heart is the first of his prose works in which Breytenbach allows himself to articulate what emerges with intense feeling in the more private world of his poetry: that he comes out of a rural way of life which, despite being based on a colonial dispensation with all its manifold injustices, had become autochthonously African to a remarkable extent; and that in the same moment that the head condemns this way of life and judges it must perish, the heart must mourn its passing. (In this respect Breytenbach is suddenly and strikingly reminiscent of William Faulkner.)

In the tentative and ambivalent reconciliation that has taken place between Breytenbach and Afrikaners of the old breed, it is the Afrikaners who have had to make the greater shift. In losing political power, including control over the public media, the people from whom Breytenbach dissociated himself in 1983 have lost their power to dictate what an Afrikaner has to be, namely, a “white” of North-European descent, an ethnic nationalist, a Calvinist, a patriarchalist. Dog Heart speaks for a countercurrent in which fragments of groups in disarray begin to define themselves, and perhaps even to assert themselves, in a new way, cohering this time not around a political philosophy but around a shared language larger and wiser than the sum of its speakers, and a shared history, bitter and divided though that history may be.

IV

Sharing a language, a feel for the land, a history, perhaps even blood, with “my people,”[33] the people of his Heartland, Breytenbach exchanges words with men and women of all states and conditions. Some of these exchanges disconcert him. The (brown) men who renovate his house treat him (the most celebrated poet in their language!) as a foreigner. Accompanying his brother—who stands as an independent candidate in the 1994 elections—on his canvassing rounds, he hears at first hand the level of brown prejudice against blacks. (His informants may of course be playing games with him: they are as much—or as little—Afrikaner as he, and of the Afrikaner, “stupid but sly,” he himself writes, “my morning prattle and my night tattle are cut from the cloth which suits my interlocutor.”[34]

At the dark heart of the memoir lies an event that Breytenbach alludes to several times but never explains. It would appear that at the age of seven he had a choking fit and stopped breathing, that in a sense he died and was reborn as a second Breyten (his very name, he points out, is like an echo; one of his poetic identities is Lazarus). “When I look into the mirror I know that the child born here is dead. It has been devoured by the dog.”[35] So returning to the land of the dog is in a sense a search for the grave of the dead child, the child dead within him.

In the town museum—where the bust of D. F. Malan, Prime Minister of South Africa from 1948 to 1954, has been discreetly relegated to a storeroom—Breytenbach comes upon a photograph of his great-grandmother Rachel Susanna Keet (d. 1915). From the archives he learns that as a midwife she brought most of the children of Montagu, brown and white, into the world; that she lived unconventionally, adopting and raising a brown child who was not her own. He and his wife search for Rachel Susanna’s grave but cannot find it. So they take over one of the old unmarked graves in the graveyard, adopting it, so to speak, in her name. The book ends on this emblematic note, with Breytenbach marking out, in the name of his dead ancestor rather than of his living child, the most humble of family stakes in Africa.

V

Citizen of France, most untranslatable of Afrikaans poets, Breytenbach has published this account of his re-exploration of his African roots in English, a language of which his mastery is by now almost complete. In this respect he follows his countryman André Brink and a host of other writers (including black African writers) from small language communities.

The reason for his step is, one would guess, practical: the market for books in Afrikaans is small and dwindling. Breytenbach certainly does not resort to English as a gesture of fellowship with English-speaking South African whites, for whom he has never had much time. Nevertheless, it is odd to be faced with a book in English that is so much a celebration of the folksy earthiness of Afrikaans nomenclature, that follows with such attention the nuances of Afrikaans social dialect, and that entertains without reserve the notion that there is a sensibility attuned to the South African natural world which is uniquely fostered by the Afrikaans language.

There is a wider body of what I would call sentimental orthodoxy that Breytenbach seems to accept without much reserve. Much of this orthodoxy relates to what present-day cultural politics calls “first peoples” and South African folk idiom “the old people”: the San and the Khoi. In two widely-read and influential books, The Lost World of the Kalahari (1958) and The Heart of the Hunter (1961), Laurens van der Post presented the San (“Bushmen”) as the original Africans, bearers of archaic wisdom, on the brink of extinction in a world for which their gentle culture rendered them tragically unfit. Breytenbach records moving twilight utterances of nineteenth-century San, while sometimes lapsing into van der Post-like romanticizing as well (“small sinewy men [with] an inbred knowledge of the drift of clouds and the lay of mountains”). [36] But his main aim is to suggest that the old San and Khoi myths live on today in unconscious re-enactments: a woman who bites off her rapist’s penis, for instance, is repeating the trick of the Khoi mantis-god. Passages of Dog Heart carry a whiff of hand-me-down Latin American magic realism. The case for an unarticulated psychic continuity between old and new brown people is similarly unpersuasive, while the recounting of the myths has an obligatory air about it, as if they are being copied over from other books.

Breytenbach’s current political beliefs are spelled out in the essays collected in The Memory of Birds in Times of Revolution (1996). Insofar as he is still a political animal, his program can be summed up as “fighting for revolution against politics.”[37] In Dog Heart, however, his politics is implied rather than explained. Quarrels and antipathies emerge in the form of casual side-swipes: at white liberals, at the Communist Party colony within the ANC, at the Coloured middle class that has found a home for itself in the old National Party (rebaptized the New National Party, and still, after the 1999 elections, holding on to power in places like Montagu), at the “dogs of God” (Desmond Tutu and Alex Boraine) of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at the new artistic and academic establishment with its stifling political correctness. A brief brush with Nelson Mandela is recounted, from which Mandela emerges in none too favorable a light. Thus Breytenbach keeps the promise he made in Return to Paradise: to be a maverick, “against the norm.”

Like Breytenbach’s other memoirs, Dog Heart is loose, almost miscellaneous, in its structure. Part journal, part essay on autobiography, part book of the dead, part what one might call speculative history, it also contains searching meditations on the elusiveness of memory and passages of virtuoso writing—a description of a thunderstorm, for instance—breathtaking in the immediacy of their evocation of Africa.

YVONNE VERA

• Zimbabwe •

DEAD SWIMMERS

SHE LOOKS UP. Smiles. I reach for her.

The jacket my grandmother wears is no longer as red as when my mother first bought it. Then, in those days, when my mother was the age I am at now, we used to stare at my mother as though she was possessed. She would wear it and listen to Bob Marley singing “No Woman No Cry.” Now she says this song is “no longer relevant.” My mother is a school teacher. She uses words like “pedantic.” She can look at Grandmother in the eye and say “pedantic.” At this Gogo just curls her legs further under her and waits for my mother to be sensible. We call my grandmother Gogo. She speaks only one language. Shona. Sometimes, like today, she says “Good morning.” Then she throws her head back and you can see her give you all the luck in the world.

My mother does not mind listening to a remake of “Furuwa.” This is a song we both liked in 1979. It is the story of two lovers sitting on the crest of a wave. The music of the waves is their music, and they are swallowed by crystal showers and the clearest sand where water meets land. Then a deep foam surrounds them. They disappear, beneath it, in the music of their love. They die a happy death. They die like stars falling from the sky. They have been accepted by the great water spirit which blows upon the shimmering fabric of the sea and makes the water ripple in a violent whiteness, then wave follows wave. Neither my mother nor I have ever been to the sea. However, we have no doubt that “Furuwa” is a good song.

When we bought “Furuwa” in 1979 there were many copies of it at Anand Brothers along 6th Avenue and Fort Street in Bulawayo. Now there is nothing like it. We think this is due to independence, which arrived in 1980. Instead, the record seller looks at us blankly and offers us the new music called Di Gong. In a fit of maternal love my mother had placed the only copy of the record in an envelope and sent it to me when I was in boarding school. By the time it arrived it was broken in two. I threw it quickly in the bin and wrote to my mother. My mother says “if something hurts you then move quickly from it. It is like the sun. It is foolish to stare at the sun all day with the eyes wide open.” I threw the record away without looking at it a second time. I wrote to her “Thank you for the waves. The waves have been broken.” I could hear my mother’s cry as I wrote that. Her sound was louder than that of the waves. I thought perhaps if I have a child I will call her Furuwa.

When she wants to pay the greatest tribute to Gogo my mother often says “your grandmother taught me to hate lightning.” My mother will not even answer a telephone when there is rain outside. She goes to her bed at the first sign of lightning and covers her body with a thick blanket. If you talk to her she will not raise her head from the pillow but answer in a muffled voice which tells you not to disturb her peace. We all wait for the lightning to go away.

Today Gogo has a green clothes peg pinned to her red jacket. She tries to get up when I arrive but fails. She staggers back to the floor, beside the blue door where she has been sitting. I rush through the gate, past the lemons, the pawpaw trees, the guava tree. The guava tree which has never given birth to anything but green leaves. I rush through the tears which are always welling at the bottom of Gogo’s eyes. Gogo calls me a small wind which you can only feel on the tip of your ear. She says I started walking before I could crawl.

“A woman who cannot forgive her husband’s infidelity can climb the highest tree in her village and drop her infant to the ground,” I hear Gogo say in her old red coat which used to belong to my mother. When it starts raining Gogo removes the coat quickly and hides it in a large black trunk. She pushes the trunk under her bed. “Red must be placed in darkness when it rains. Otherwise the lightning will burn all of us.” So when I see her sitting at her doorway, leaning forward, listening to her past, I know that there is no lightning and her heart is free.

“How is your mother?” Gogo says. “Now that I have finished wiping all the mucus from your nose your mother says you are her child? Is that so?” I do not answer this invitation for a quarrel with my mother, who is not even here with me. Gogo prefers to quarrel with someone who is absent. When Gogo and my mother are together, they agree on everything. They offer each other innumerable embraces. “Your mother left you with me when you were a week old, then she went to train to be a school teacher. Now you are a woman who wears high heels and she says you belong to her.” My foot hits the cracked cement block that is her stoep. I collapse beside her like a wave.

The door is wide open. I can see the darkness inside. Gogo has photographs all over her walls. Directly ahead there is a certificate given to my grandfather after he had spent twenty-five years at Lever Brothers, where he worked as a clerk. On it are all my grandfather’s names—Enos Mtambeni Mugadzaweta. He was also given a silver watch. It represents time. Grandfather died in 1986. This was the first certificate ever to be received in my family.

I like the picture of Gogo and me in front of the Victoria Falls in 1995. We have our back to a large cataract with cascading waters. When we arrived at the Victoria Falls after a bus ride which lasted half a day, Gogo said this was not land she could inhabit. She turned away from the falling river. There was too much flowing water. Where would one build a shelter, she asked accusingly. I tried to explain that she was on “holiday.” I had tried to remove her from the sight of a bed-ridden son whom she had watched dying slowly for over a year. Her voice struggles against the sound of crushing water. There was no place to grow a crop on this river. We turned away from the falls, and, as per our family tradition, left quickly the thing which could hurt us. It is the shortest time I have ever spent at the Victoria Falls.

On the left, just near the light switch which I could not reach till I was seven, there is a happy picture of us hugging tightly. Behind us are two small wooden elephants. Gogo is laughing and spreading luck to everybody, especially Zanele. On that day, my sister Zanele got married. We were all very happy except Zanele. Her mother-in-law had spent the morning pushing an egg between her thighs to see if she had already slept with a man. Zanele emerged looking furious, her new mother triumphant. Throughout the wedding Gogo is busy trying to give Zanele luck.

My mother is hugging Zanele, calling her Furuwa and spreading rose petals in her hair. When the official pictures are being taken outside in the small garden with only a single struggling Petrea bush in it Zanele hisses to me that she will never eat an egg again in her life. Her husband Zenzo asks me what Zanele is saying and I say that she says I should move to the end of the row. So I move away even though I would have liked to remain with Zanele. Her new mother stands next to her and holds her by the elbow. Mother apologizes, saying that her garden is drought-stricken. She holds an umbrella over Zanele’s head. The soil beneath us is cracking.

One girl is enough, my father said, and walked out of the door. I was the first girl and was named the most beautiful one—Ntombehhle. Then Zanele was born and my father cursed again and said two girls are enough. He left and never returned. Since our mother now had no husband it was best to spend time with Gogo, who had a grandfather. By independence my mother had enough money to buy a house in an area where black people had not been allowed to live before. Our country was renamed Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. All of us were Zimbabwe-Rhodesians. She immediately planted a petrea bush which refused to release its petals. She kept saying that the flowers on it could turn out to be purple or white. Now we are Zimbabweans. The petrea bush is still bare.

“I have come to collect you, Gogo,” I say softly over her shoulder. Gogo never wants to leave her stoep unless there is a death in the family, or a wedding. “You know that Zanele had the twins last week.” Gogo shifts her weight to one arm. “Of course I know Zanele had twins last week. Where did she get the twins? There are no twins from our side of the family,” she says thoughtfully. She is searching through the past she knows so well. “The children are beautiful, Gogo, but Zanele does not want them. She is refusing to look at them. She has not fed them since they were born and the clinic has had to ask other nursing mothers to feed them.”

Silence. I wonder if she had heard me. She rises, without hesitation or staggering. She walks firmly into the house. She has heard me. I feel two years old to see her walking solidly like that. The past thirty years of my life vanish. I wait outside where she has left me. She closes the blue door. Another door opens and closes. Another closes. Then a silence in which I can see foam mounting where land meets water. I hear a sound more quiet than waves. I know that Gogo has turned away from the thing which will hurt her, the thing which I have brought to her carried in my mouth.

Zanele has said she will not touch or see the children. Her husband says that if she continues in this manner he will take his children from her and place Zanele on 23rd Avenue. He says he will leave her “on 23rd” as though he will dump her in the middle of the road. The hospital for mental patients is on 23rd Avenue. It is as old as the country. Africans were sent there in Rhodesia for inciting revolutionary behavior.

Zanele’s new mother calls her a lunatic who will murder her children like a crocodile which can even chew its young and swallow them. She likens Zanele to a confused hen which can be seen dripping with the yellow yolk from its own eggs as though it has been offered a feast. The mention of eggs makes Zanele resent the children even more. Zanele’s nipples crack with wounds. The milk is trying to escape from her body.

A door opens. Gogo returns. She has tied a blue scarf over her head, the one I bought for her when I finished my journalism course in Harare and she had asked me what kind of work I was going to do. When I said I was going to write important things down she said, “The things which are not written down are also true.” Gogo walks with me through the gate, past the lemons, the dangling pawpaws, towards the place where land meets water. We walk. We walk on the crest of a wave. We see the beauty of the sea.

Gogo is going to talk to Zanele at the clinic, she says. I must take her there quickly.

While her husband Zenzo is leaning over the two cots with the two identical faces in them, Zanele bends towards me and forgets about the plate of porridge in her arms now tipping, now spilling over the metal bed-frame, now she whispers to me that she, Gogo, she our very own Gogo, drowned her day-old infant in a bucket of water. Gogo, our very own Gogo. The memory weighs like a mountain.

“You are too young to carry a mountain on your head,” Gogo says to Zanele.

NIQ MHLONGO

• South Africa •

from DOG EAT DOG

THE SWEET KWAITO music blaring from a white CITI Golf passing along De Korte Street helped to bring me back from my reminiscence. I looked at the time. It was ten minutes to six in the evening. The gliding amber of the sun was sloping down to usher in the evening.

I searched the pockets of my jeans and took out the packet of Peter Stuyvesant that I had just bought at the supermarket and unsealed it. I lit a cigarette and inhaled the stress-relieving smoke.

When I had finished I threw the butt into the road and took out my Walkman. I pressed the play button and began to listen to Bayete. The name of the song was Mbombela. I lifted my bottle of beer; it was almost half-empty.

When I raised my eyes from the beer bottle, the police car had already stopped in front of me. I hadn’t heard them arrive because of the fat beats coming from my Walkman. I pulled the earphones off and let them dangle around my neck.

At first I thought that they wanted some smokes, but then I realised that the police officers had caught me with an open beer. In two ticks both front car doors were flung open and I shrank like a child caught masturbating by its single mother as they moved hastily to accost me.

“Evening, sir.”

“Evening.”

“How are you, sir?”

“I’m alright.”

“Enjoying yourself, hey?”

“Yep.”

“Do you realise that what you’re doing is against the law?”

“Excuse me? You mean relaxing under this tree?”

“No. I’m talking about public drinking.”

“I’m not drinking anything.”

“The evidence is in your hand.”

I looked at the bottle that I was still holding. I never expected policemen to be patrolling that quiet street. I thought that they would be attending to more serious crimes elsewhere. But there they were, spoiling the party that I was beginning to enjoy with my other self. Why can’t these people just leave a person to do his own thing? I asked myself. I moved my eyes away from the bottle and looked at the pimple-faced Indian police officer.

“I’m just holding an open beer bottle that I was drinking when I was in the bar, sir. But I’m not drinking it now. And if that’s a crime I didn’t know.”

“We stopped the car because we saw you drinking, my friend. Do you think we’re stupid?”

Silence fell while I looked at his tall, white, moustached colleague, who was mercilessly chewing some gum. He staggered forward and I could tell from his bulging bloodshot eyes that he was already drunk. His face was also bright red, as if he had lain in the sun for too long, and the golden hair on his skull stood up like a scrubbing-brush.

“Are you denying that we saw you drinking?” asked the red-faced officer.

“It is just a misunderstanding, sir; I wasn’t drinking this beer.”

“Ohh! You think you’re clever, né?” the red-faced officer asked contemptuously. He leaned forward and shook his large head slowly as if he was feeling sorry for me.

“What is your name?”

“Dingz.”

“Are you a student?”

“Yep.”

“Where?”

“Wits.”

He studied my face for a while. When he started to talk again, his words were accompanied by the heavy smell of liquor and cigarettes.

“OK. Listen, Dingz. We have been asked to patrol this area because lately there have been complaints about students who abuse alcohol. They drink and throw the empty bottles into the street and that’s not good for the environment. Look there!” he said pointing at some empty Coca-Cola cans on the other side of the road. “Is that not disgusting?”

“So what does that have to do with me?”

“You say you’re a student?”

I nodded.

“And you’re holding a beer?”

“But I’m not one of those students you are looking for. If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I have to go.”

I thought I had succeeded in talking myself out of trouble, but before I could even raise myself from the ground the red-faced officer asked me yet another question.

“What are you doing at Wits?” he asked, sprinkling my face with saliva.

“Law,” I lied. “Why?”

I thought that maybe then they would leave me alone, but the white officer continued looking at me; he was sizing me up. Then the Indian officer started to lecture me in a patronising tone of voice.

“I wonder if you’re aware that a student was arrested last week on a charge like this one. Fortunately he was not doing law.” He paused and gave me a sympathetic look. “I understand you guys studying law are not allowed to take a legal job if you have been convicted of a criminal offence. It would be bad for you if we take you in now.”

I was realising the seriousness of my situation. I started to reflect on my future; all my efforts to get a place at varsity would prove futile if I was arrested now. Oh shit! Me and my drinking!

The white officer was nodding along to everything his friend was saying. I remained silent, but they could see that they had managed to scare me. The white officer leaned closer to me.

“Listen! Here is a deal, pal.” He lowered his tone to a confidential whisper. “Either you come with us now to spend three months in a prison cell, or face a one thousand rand fine . . .” He paused and looked at my reaction. I kept my cool. “Or we can sort this thing out right now, out of court, by reaching a gentlemen’s agreement.” A pause again. “Which means you can stop our mouths with only seventy rand, my friend.”

The Indian officer was nodding to support what his colleague was saying as I debated with my other self about the best step to take. I had never been in jail before. I had only heard scanty rumours about the Big Fives, the Twenty-Sixes, Apollos and other prison gangs that sodomise and kill other inmates. But at that moment I was more worried about my family at home. What will they say if they learn that I was arrested for public drinking?

There was a moment of silence between the two corrupt officers and myself. Then the red-faced officer bent over and grabbed my beer bottle and two of my grocery bags. He was mumbling something in Afrikaans. The other officer grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and picked up my other plastic bag with the sealed beers inside.

“It seems my friend it is that time again, when you have the right to remain stupid and silent because everything that you say can be used against you in court.”

“Whaa! I can’t believe how some people can be stupid. We gave you a chance my friend and you blew it. Boom!” said the Indian officer.

They opened the rear door of the police car and pushed me inside with my grocery bags. The walkie-talkie inside the car started belching and cutting. The red-faced officer retrieved it and muttered something in Afrikaans as they got inside and started the engine.

By then I realised that I had messed up my chances of buying myself out. I still had about one hundred and fifty rand that I had taken out at the ATM that afternoon. I knew that the officers would try everything to incriminate me. They are used to the system. They are also the ones who corrupt it. They know how it works and how to exploit it in their favour. Even if it means that I sleep in a cell just for one night for my disrespect, it would please them.

The earphones that were lying on my shoulders were still blasting music. I groped inside my pocket in an attempt to find the stop button on my Walkman. I was familiar with the buttons because I had owned my Walkman for the past four years, but suddenly I changed my mind about switching the music off. I opted just to rewind the tape. I found the button I was looking for and rewound the tape.

The car hadn’t moved even five metres when I began to plead with them to stop. “I’m terribly sorry, officers. I don’t want to go to jail. I think I have eighty rand for you.”

The red-faced officer smiled and stopped the car.

“Now you talking sense.”

Pleasant smiles broke quietly on their lips as I searched my pockets for my wallet. I unzipped it and handed them four twenty-rand banknotes, money that my mother sacrificed from her pension every month to help me through my cashless varsity life.

The two officers looked at each other and took the cash. I groped inside my pocket again to reach the play and record buttons on my Walkman. Simultaneously, I pressed the two buttons down. Then very politely, in a friendly tone as if I was admitting my guilt, I asked them, “Are you sure that you’ll be fine with only eighty rand? I have a feeling that this is a very serious offence?”

“You’re right. You can add more if you have it. But do not make the same mistake again next time. OK, my friend?” said the white officer.

“I won’t.”

I looked at the nametags on the pockets of their blue police shirts. “Sergeant Naicker and Sergeant Vilijoen, I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience that I’ve caused you. Because of my behaviour I will add twenty rand just to apologise.”

I offered them another twenty-rand note. Sergeant Naicker took it. He smiled at me and said, “Ja. If it wasn’t for Sergeant Vilijoen we would have taken you in today.”

“You’re a really lucky bastard, my friend. Do you know that? This is what we call being clever. Ask Sergeant Naicker here. We normally fine people two hundred rand for a case like this. We just thought that you are a poor student and decided to fine you less, my friend.”

“Hmm! Are you sure a hundred is fine because I can add another twenty.”

“Just give us another ten and disappear. One hundred and ten from a student who cares about his future is fine. The next time you’re in trouble you must call us or come straight to our police station along this road. You know the station, mos? Ask to speak to either Sergeant Vilijoen or Sergeant Naicker here and you’ll be safe.”

“Thanks a lot.”

The engine was running and the right indicator light was flickering. I opened my rear door to leave.

“Sorry we can’t drive you to our place. We are in a hurry for an emergency in Hillbrow. I’m sure you can manage.”

I took my grocery bags out of the car and closed the door behind me. The car moved slowly to join the flow of traffic heading for the CBD. I stood on the pavement and began to wave goodbye. Then suddenly I signaled at them to stop the car, as if I had forgotten something inside. I put my grocery bags down and approached the driver’s side door, while they both looked at the back seat to see if there was something I had left there. I took my Walkman out of my pocket; the record and play buttons on it were still pressed down, and the red record light was flickering. I showed it to Sergeant Vilijoen.

“What now?” he asked, perplexed.

“Are you stupid? Can’t you see that our conversation is recorded on this cassette?”

“Shit! You fucking bastard! You will pay for this.”

“Hey! Mind your language, Sergeant Vilijoen! This thing is still recording.”

“F-fuck!” swore Sergeant Naicker from the other side.

“He’s only trying to scare us. There’s nothing there,” said Vilijoen to console his colleague.

“Suit yourselves, I’ll see you in court then.”

I turned my back and pretended I was leaving, but before I could go very far they called me back. “Hey you! Come here, you.”

Within the blink of an eye the two officers were out of the car. I thought they were going to negotiate a deal with me, but that was not the case. Suddenly Naicker’s big hand was around my balls and I was standing on my toes with pain. Vilijoen grabbed the Walkman from my pocket. I tried to resist, but Vilijoen’s fist struck me across my mouth. I tasted blood. Naicker let go of my balls and I staggered and fell down. I lay still on the pavement pretending I had lost consciousness, but Vilijoen’s boot struck me in the ribs. A few minutes later I was handcuffed and bundled inside the car.

“Never fuck with the police again, my boy,” warned Vilijoen as the car turned past Hillbrow Hospital.

I didn’t have the nerve to utter even a single word. I looked at my grocery bags on the floor of the car next to my legs. The brick of butter that I had bought had melted and was almost flat. One of us must have stepped on it. The bottle of mayonnaise had been broken and there was the smell of it inside the car.

At Esselen Street the car turned to the right in the direction of Berea. Ahead of us were about half a dozen police vans with flickering lights parked next to a tall block of flats. The handcuffs were very tight and I felt like the blood wasn’t circulating properly in my hands. I looked at the time on the dashboard. It was already twenty minutes past seven in the evening. I had missed my dinner at the Y.

“These things are too tight, please loosen them,” I pleaded.

“That serves you right, boy,” said Naicker as the car came to a standstill next to the other police vans.

There were lots of people standing around. All eyes were on the block of flats. Policemen were all over the place with sniffer dogs. Naicker and Vilijoen got out of the car without saying a word to me, locked the doors and walked towards the entrance.

After about an hour some policemen came down through the door with some guys who were handcuffed. Deep in my heart I was hoping that Naicker and Vilijoen were amongst them, but they weren’t. I sat there wondering what the guys might have done. They had probably been arrested for a much more serious offence than mine. I looked at my plastic bag again and spotted the Black Label. No more drinking, I told myself.

At about ten minutes to ten, I spotted Vilijoen coming towards the car. He opened the driver’s door and sat inside. “Where do you stay?” he asked.

“YMCA,” I answered.

Without asking my permission he opened one of my Black Label dumpies. He drank about half of it without taking a break and gave a loud disgusting belch. “Do you want some?” he asked, as if he was going to give me the one that he was holding in his hand.

I nodded, but all that I really wanted was for him to set my hands free. In a while I saw Naicker coming towards the car as well; he stopped in the middle of the road and lit a cigarette. Vilijoen put the bottle on the dashboard and searched his pockets. He took out some keys and unlocked my handcuffs. Naicker opened the front door and within seconds we were on our way back in the direction of Braamfontein. Vilijoen tossed a cold beer to me and twisted the bottle open. Naicker offered me a cigarette, but I found it too difficult to smoke with my swollen lips.

At half past ten they dropped me at the entrance of the Y with my plastic bags. My ribs were still very painful. My front teeth were loose and my left eye was nearly shut. I had lost my Walkman, my beers and my money.

NADINE GORDIMER

• South Africa •

A BENEFICIARY

CACHES OF OLD papers are like graves; you shouldn’t open them.

Her mother had been cremated. There was no marble stone incised “Laila de Morne, born, died, actress.”

She had always lied about her age; her name, too—the name she used wasn’t her natal name, too ethnically limiting to suggest her uniqueness in a cast list. It wasn’t her married name, either. She had baptized herself, professionally. She was long divorced, although only in her late fifties, when a taxi hit her car and (as she would have delivered her last line) brought down the curtain on her career.

Her daughter, Charlotte, had her father’s surname and was as close to him as a child can be, when subject to an ex-husband’s conditions of access. As Charlotte grew up, she felt more compatible with him than with her mother, fond as she was of her mother’s—somehow—childishness. Perhaps acting was really a continuation of the make-believe games of childhood—fascinating, in a way. But. But what? Not a way Charlotte had wanted to follow—despite the fact that she was named after the character with which her mother had had an early success (Charlotte Corday, in Peter Weiss’s “Marat/Sade”), and despite the encouragement of drama and dance classes. Not a way she could follow, because of lack of talent: her mother’s unspoken interpretation, expressed in disappointment, if not reproach. Laila de Morne had not committed herself to any lover, had not gone so far as to marry again. There was no stepfather to confuse relations, loyalties; Charlie (as her father called her) could remark to him, “Why should she expect me to take after her?”

Her father was a neurologist. They laughed together at any predestinatory prerogative of her mother’s, or the alternative paternal one—to be expected to become a doctor! Poking around in people’s brains? They nudged each other with more laughter at the daughter’s distaste.

Her father helped arrange the memorial gathering, in place of a funeral service, sensitive as always to any need of his daughter’s. She certainly didn’t expect or want him to come along to his ex-wife’s apartment and sort the clothes, personal possessions to be kept or given away. A friend from the firm where she worked as an actuary agreed to help for a weekend. Unexpectedly, the young civil-rights lawyer with whom there had been a sensed mutual attraction, taken no further than dinner and a cinema date, also offered himself—perhaps a move toward the love affair that was coming anyway. The girls emptied the cupboards of clothes, the friend exclaiming over the elaborate range of styles women of that generation wore, how many personalities they could project—as if they had been able to choose, when now you belonged to the outfit of jeans and T-shirt. Oh, of course! Charlotte’s mother was a famous actress!

Charlotte did not correct this, out of respect for her mother’s ambitions. But when she went to the next room, where the lawyer was arranging chronologically the press cuttings and programs and photographs of Laila in the roles for which the wardrobe had provided, she turned over a few programs and remarked, more to be overheard by him than to him, “Never really had the leads she believed she should have had, after the glowing notices of her promise, very young. When she murdered Marat. In his bathtub, wasn’t it? I’ve never seen the play.” Confiding the truth of her mother’s career, betraying Laila’s idea of herself—perhaps also a move toward a love affair.

The three young people broke out of the trappings of the past for coffee and their concerns of the present. What sort of court cases does a civil-rights lawyer take on? What did he mean by “not the usual litigation”? No robberies or hijackings? Did the two young women feel that they were discriminated against? Did the plum jobs go to males? Or was it the other way around—did bad conscience over gender discrimination mean that women were now elevated to positions they weren’t really up to? Women of any color, and black men—same thing? What would have been a sad and strange task for Charlotte alone became a lively evening, an animated exchange of opinions and experiences. Laila surely would not have disapproved; she had stimulated her audience.

There was a Sunday evening at a jazz club, sharing enthusiasm and a boredom with hip-hop, Kwaito. After another evening, dinner and dancing together—that first bodily contact to confirm attraction—he offered to help again with her task, and on a weekend afternoon they kissed and touched among the stacks of clothes and boxes of theatre souvenirs, his hand brimming with her breast, but did not proceed, as would have been natural, to the beautiful and inviting bed, with its signature of draped shawls and cushions. Some atavistic taboo, a notion of respect for the dead—as if her mother still lay there in possession.

The love affair found a bed elsewhere and continued uncertainly, pleasurably enough but without much expectation of commitment. A one-act piece begun among the props of a supporting-part career.

Charlotte brushed aside any offers, from him or from her office friend, to continue with the sorting of Laila’s—what? The clothes were packed up. Some seemed wearable only in the context of a theatrical wardrobe and were given to an experimental-theatre group; others went to the Salvation Army, for distribution to the homeless. Her father arranged with an estate agent to advertise the apartment for sale; unless you want to move in, he suggested. But it was too big; Charlie couldn’t afford to, didn’t want to, live in a style not her own, even rent-free. They laughed again in their understanding, not in criticism of her mother. Laila was Laila. He agreed, but as if thinking of some other aspect of her. Yes, Laila.

The movers came to take the furniture to be sold. She half thought of inheriting the bed; it would have been luxurious to flop diagonally across its generosity, but she wouldn’t have been able to get it past the bedroom door in her small flat. When the men departed with their loads, there were pale shapes on the floor where everything had stood. She opened windows to let out the dust and, turning back suddenly, saw that something had been left behind. A couple of empty boxes, the cardboard ones used for supermarket delivery. Irritated, she went to gather them. One wasn’t empty; it seemed to be filled with letters. What makes you keep some letters and not others? In her own comparatively short life, she’d thrown away giggly schoolgirl stuff, sexy propositions scribbled on the backs of menus, once naïvely found flattering, a polite letter of rejection in response to an application for a job beyond her qualifications—a salutary lesson on what her set called the real world. This box apparently contained memorabilia that was different from the stuff already dealt with. The envelopes had the look of personal letters: hand-addressed, without the printed logos of businesses, banks. Had Laila had a personal life that wasn’t related to her family-the-theatre? One child, the product of divorced parents, hardly counts as “family.”

Charlotte—that was the identity she had in any context relating to her mother—sifted through the envelopes. If her mother had had a personal life, it was not a material possession to be disposed of like garments taken on and off; a personal life can’t be “left to” a daughter, like a beneficiary in a will. Whatever letters Laila had chosen to keep were still hers; best to quietly burn them, as Laila herself had been consumed, sending them to join her. They say (she had read somewhere) that no one ever disappears, up in the atmosphere, stratosphere, whatever you call space—atoms infinitely minute, beyond conception of existence, are up there forever, from the whole world, from all time. As she shook this one box which was not empty, so that the contents would settle and not spill when it was lifted, she noticed some loose sheets of writing paper lying face down. Not held in the privacy of an envelope. She picked them out, turned them face up. Her father’s handwriting, more deliberately formed than Charlie knew it. What was the date at the top of the page, under the address of the house she remembered as home when she was a small girl? A date twenty-four years back. Of course, his handwriting had changed a bit; it does with different stages in one’s life. His Charlie was twenty-eight now, so she would have been four years old when he wrote that date. It must have been just before the divorce and her move to a new home with Laila.

The letter was formally addressed, on the upper left-hand side of the paper, to a firm of lawyers, Kaplan McLeod & Partners, and directed to one of them in particular: “Dear Hamish.” Why on earth would Laila want to keep from a dead marriage the sort of business letter that a neurologist might have to write to a legal firm—on some question of a car accident maybe, or the nonpayment of some patient’s consultation fee or surgery charges. (As if her father’s medical and human ethics would ever have led him to the latter. . . .) The pages must have got mixed up with the other, truly personal material at some time. Laila and Charlotte had changed apartments frequently during Charlotte’s childhood and adolescence.

The letter was marked “Copy”:

“My wife, Laila de Morne, is an actress and, in the course of pursuing her career, has moved in a circle independent of one shared by a couple in marriage. I have always encouraged her to take the opportunities, through contacts she might make, to further her talent. She is a very attractive woman, and it was obvious to me that I should have to accept that there would be men, certainly among her fellow-actors, who would want to be more than admirers. But while she enjoyed the attention, and sometimes responded with a general kind of social flirtation, I had no reason to see this as a more than natural pleasure in her own looks and talents. She would make fun of these admirers, privately, with sharp remarks on their appearance, their pretensions, and, if they were actors, directors, or playwrights, on the quality of their work. I knew that I had not married a woman who would want to stay home and nurse babies, but from time to time she would bring up the subject. We ought to have a son, she said, for me. Then she would get a new part in a play and the idea was understandably postponed. After a successful start, her career was, however, not advancing to her expectations. She did not succeed in getting several roles that she had confidently anticipated. She came home elated one night and told me that she had been accepted for a small part in a play overseas, in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She had been selected because the leading actor himself, Rendall Harris, had told the casting director that she was the most talented of the young women in the theatre group. I was happy for her, and we gave a farewell party at our house the night before the cast left for the United Kingdom. After Edinburgh, she spent some time in London, calling to say how wonderful and necessary it was for her to experience what was happening in theatre there and, I gathered, trying her luck in auditions. Apparently unsuccessfully.

“Perhaps she intended not to come back. But she did. A few weeks later, she told me that she had just been to a gynecologist and confirmed that she was pregnant. I was moved. I took the unlikely luck of conception—I’d assumed, when we made love on the night of the party, that she’d taken the usual precautions; we weren’t drunk, even if she was triumphant—as a symbol of what would be a change in our perhaps unsuitable marriage. I am a medical specialist, a neurological surgeon.

“When the child was born, it looked like any other red-faced infant, but after several months everyone remarked how the little girl was the image of Laila, her mother. It was one Saturday afternoon, when she was kicking and flinging her arms athletically—we were admiring our baby’s progress, her beauty, and I joked, ‘Lucky she doesn’t look like me’—that my wife picked her up, away from me, and told me, ‘She’s not your child.’ She’d met someone in Edinburgh. I interrupted with angry questions. No, she prevaricated, all right, London, the affair began in London. The leading actor who had insisted on her playing the small part had introduced her to someone there. A few days later, she admitted that it was not ‘someone,’ it was the leading actor. He was the father of our girl. She told this to other people, our friends, when through the press we heard the news that the actor, Rendall Harris, was making a name for himself in plays by Tom Stoppard and Tennessee Williams.

“I couldn’t decide what to believe. I even consulted a colleague in the medical profession about the possible variations in the period of gestation in relation to birth. Apparently, it was possible that the conception had taken place with me, or with the other man a few days before or after the intercourse with me. Laila never expressed any intention of taking the child and making her life with the man. She was too proud to let anyone know that he most likely wouldn’t want her or the supposed progeny of their affair.

“Laila has devoted herself to her acting career and, as a result, I have of necessity had a closer relation than is customary for the father with the care of the small girl, now four years old. I am devoted to her and can produce witnesses to support the conviction that she would be happiest in my custody.

“I hope this is adequate. Let me know if anything more is needed, or if there is too much detail here. I’m accustomed to writing reports in medical jargon and thought that this should be different. I don’t suppose I’ve a hope in hell of getting Charlie; Laila will put all her dramatic skills into swearing that she isn’t mine!”

That Saturday: it landed in the apartment looted by the present and filled it with blasting amazement, the presence of the past. That Saturday, coming to her just as it had come to him. Charlotte/Charlie (which was she?) received exactly as he had what Laila (yes, her mother—giving birth is proof ) had told.

How do you recognize something that is not in the known vocabulary of your emotions? Shock is like a ringing in the ears; to stop it, you snatch back to the first page, read the letter again. It says what it said. This sinking collapse from within, from your flared, breathless nostrils down to your breasts, stomach, legs, and hands, hands that not only feel passively but go out to grasp what can’t be. Dismay, that feeble-sounding word, has this ghastly meaning. What do you do with something you’ve been told? Something that now is there in the gut of your existence. Run to him? Thrust his letter at him, at her—but she’s out of it now, she has escaped in smoke from the crematorium. And she is the one who really knows—knew.

Of course, he didn’t get custody. He was awarded the divorce, but the mother was given the four-year-old child. It is natural, particularly in the case of a small girl, for a child to live with the mother. Despite this “deposition” of his, in which he was denied paternity, he paid maintenance for the child. The expensive boarding school, the drama and dance classes, even those holidays in the Seychelles, three times in Spain, once in France, once in Greece, with the mother. Must have paid generously. He was a neurologist, more successful in his profession than the mother was on the stage. But this couldn’t have been the reason for the generosity.

Charlotte/Charlie couldn’t think about that, either. She folded the two sheets, fumbled absently for the envelope they should have been in, weren’t, and with them in her hand left the boxes, the letters, Laila’s apartment locked, behind the door.

He could only be asked: why he had been a father, loving.

The return of this Saturday—it woke her at three, four in the morning, when she had kept it at bay through the activities of the day, work, navigating alone in her car through the city’s crush, leisure time occupied in the company of friends who hadn’t been told. She and her father had one of their regular early dinners at his favorite restaurant, went to a foreign movie by a director whose work she admires, and the news of that Saturday couldn’t be spoken, was unreal.

In the dark, when the late-night traffic was over and the dawn traffic hadn’t begun: silence.

The reason.

He believed in the chance of conception, that one night of the party. Laila’s farewell. Even though his friend, the expert in biological medicine, had implied that if you didn’t know the stage of the woman’s fertility cycle you couldn’t be sure—the conception might have been achieved a few days before or after that unique night.

I am Charlie, his.

The reason.

Another night thought, an angry mood: Who do they think they are, deciding who I am to suit themselves? To suit her vanity—she could, at least, bear the child of an actor with a career in the theatre that she hadn’t attained for herself. To suit his wounded macho pride—refusing to accept another male’s potency; his seed had to have been the winner.

And in the morning, before the distractions of the day took over, shame, ashamed of herself, Charlie, for thinking so spitefully, cheaply about him.

The next reason that offered itself was hardly less unjust—confusedly hurtful to her. He had paid one kind of maintenance, and he had paid another kind of maintenance, loving her in order to uphold the conventions before what he saw as the world—the respectable doctors in white coats who had wives to accompany them to medical-council dinners. If he had married again, it would have been to a woman like these. Laila was Laila. Never risk another.

The letter that belonged to no one’s daughter was moved from place to place, to a drawer under sweaters, to an Indian box where she kept earrings and bracelets, behind books of plays—Euripides and Racine, Shaw and Brecht, Dario Fo, Miller, Artaud, Beckett, and, of course, an annotated “Marat/Sade.” Charlotte’s inheritance, never read.

When you are of many minds, the contention makes someone who has been not exactly what one wanted, who doesn’t yet count, the only person to be told. In bed, yet another night, after lovemaking, when the guards were down, along with the physical tensions. Mark, the civil-rights lawyer, who acted in the mess of divorce litigation only when it infringed constitutional rights, said, in response, of the letter, “Tear it up.” When she appealed (it was not just a piece of paper): “Have a DNA test.” How to do that without taking the whole cache that was the past to the father? “Get a snip of his hair.” All that would be needed to go along with a sample of her blood. Like whoever it was in the Bible cutting off Samson’s hair. But how was she supposed to do that? Steal up on her father in his sleep somewhere?

Tear it up. Easy advice from someone who had understood nothing. She did not.

But a circumstance came about, as if somehow summoned. . . . Of course, it was fortuitous. . . . A distinguished actor-director had been invited by a local theatre to direct a season of classical and avant-garde plays, taking several lead roles himself. It was his first return to the country, to the city where he was born and which he had left to pursue his career—he said in newspaper interviews and on radio, television—how long ago? Oh, twenty-five years. Rendall Harris. Newspaper photographs: an actor’s expression, assumed for many cameras, handsomely enough late-middle-aged, a defiant slight twist to the mouth to emphasize character, the eyebrows raised together amusedly, a touch of white in the short sideburns. Eyes difficult to make out in newsprint. On television, alive; something of the upper body, gestures, coming into view, the close-up of his changing expressions, the deep-set long eyes, gray darkening with some deliberate intensity, almost flashing black, meeting yours, the viewer’s. What had she expected? A recognition? Hers of him? His, out of the lit-up box, of her? An actor’s performance face.

She couldn’t ignore the stir at the idea that the man named by her mother was in the city. Laila was Laila. Yes. If she had not gone up in smoke, would he have met her again, remembered her? Had he ever seen the baby, who was at least two when he went off for twenty-five years? What does a two-year-old remember? Had she ever seen this man as a younger self, been taken in by those strikingly interrogative eyes, received?

She was accustomed to going to the theatre with friends or with the lawyer-lover, though he preferred films, one of his limited tastes that she could at least share. Every day—every night—she thought about the theatre. Not with Mark. Not beside any of her friends. No. In a wild recurrent impulse, there was the temptation to be there with her father, who did not know that she knew, had been told, as he was that Saturday. Laila was Laila. For him and for her.

She went alone when Rendall Harris was to play one of the lead roles. There had been ecstatic notices. He was Laurence Olivier reincarnated for a new—the twenty-first—century, a deconstructed style of performance. She was far back in the box-office queue when a board went up: “House Full.” She booked online for another night, an aisle seat three rows from the proscenium. At the theatre, she found herself, for some reason, hostile. Ridiculous. She wanted to disagree with the critics. That’s what it was about.

Rendall Harris—how do you describe a performance that manages to create for the audience the wholeness, the life of a man, not just “in character” for the duration of the play but what he might have been before the events chosen by the playwright and how he might be, alive, continuing after? Rendall Harris was an extraordinary actor, man. Her palms were up among the hands applauding like the flight of birds rising. When he came out to take the calls, summoning the rest of the cast around him, she wasn’t in his direct sight line, as she would have been if she’d asked for a seat in the middle of the row.

She went to every performance in which he was billed in the cast. A seat in the middle of the second row; the first would have been too obvious.

Though she was something other than a groupie, she was among the knot of autograph-seekers one night, who hung about the foyer hoping that he might leave the theatre that way. He did appear, making for the bar with the theatre’s director, and for a moment, under the arrest of programs thrust at him, happened to encounter her eyes as she stood back from his fans—he had a smile of self-deprecating amusement, meant for anyone in his line of vision, but that one was her.

The lift of his face, his walk, his repertoire of gestures, the oddities of his lapses in expression onstage that she secretly recognized as himself appearing, became almost familiar to her. As if she somehow knew him, and these intimacies knew her. Signals. If invented, they were very like conviction. At the box office, there was the routine question, “D’you have a season ticket?” She supposed that was to have been bought when the Rendall Harris engagement was first announced.

She thought of a letter. Owed it to him for the impression that his performances had made on her. His command of the drama of living, the excitement of being there with him. After the fourth or fifth version in her mind, the next was written. Mailed to the theatre, it was most likely glanced through in his dressing room or at his hotel, among the other “tributes,” and would either be forgotten or taken back to London for the collection of memorabilia it seemed actors needed. But, with him, there was that wry sideways tilt to the photographed mouth.

Of course, she neither expected nor received any acknowledgment.

After a performance one night, she bumped into some old friends of Laila’s, actors who had come to the memorial, and who insisted on her joining them in the bar. When Rendall Harris’s unmistakable head appeared through the late crowd, they created a swift current past backs to embrace him, to draw him with their buddy, the theatre director, to a space made at the table, where she had been left among the bottles and glasses. The friends, in the excitement of having Rendall Harris among them, forgot to introduce her as Laila’s daughter, Laila who’d played Corday in that early production where he’d been Marat; perhaps they had forgotten Laila—best thing with the dead if you want to get on with your life and ignore the hazards, like that killer taxi, around you. Charlotte’s letter was no more present than the other one, behind the volumes of plays. A fresh acquaintance, just the meeting of a nobody with the famous. But not entirely, even from the famous actor’s side. As the talk lobbed back and forth, the man, sitting almost opposite her, thought it friendly, from his special level of presence, to toss something to the young woman whom no one was including, and easily found what came to mind: “Aren’t you the one who’s been sitting bang in the middle of the second row, several times lately?” And then they joined in laughter, a double confession—hers of absorbed concentration on him; his of being aware of it or at least becoming so at the sight, here, of someone out there whose attention had caught him. He asked, across the voices of the others, which plays in the repertoire she’d enjoyed most, what criticisms she had of those she didn’t think much of. He named a number that she hadn’t seen. Her response was another confession: she had seen only those in which he had played a part.

When the party broke up and all were meandering their way, with stops and starts in backchat and laughter, to the foyer, a shift in progress brought Rendall Harris’s back right in front of her. He turned swiftly, as lithely as a young man, and—it must have been impulse in one accustomed to being natural, charming, in spite of his professional guard—spoke as if he had been thinking of it: “You’ve missed a lot, you know, so flattering for me, avoiding the other plays. Come some night, or there’s a Sunday-afternoon performance of a Wole Soyinka you ought to see. We’ll have a bite in the restaurant before I take you to your favorite seat. I’m particularly interested in audience reaction to the chances I’ve taken directing this play.”

Rendall Harris sat beside her through the performance, now and then whispering some comment, drawing her attention to this and that. She had told him, over lasagna at lunch, that she was an actuary, a creature of calculation, that she couldn’t be less qualified to judge the art of actors’ interpretation or that of a director. “You know that’s not true.” Said with serious inattention. Tempting to believe that he sensed something in her blood, sensibility. From her mother. It was or was not the moment to tell him that she was Laila’s daughter, although she carried Laila’s husband’s name, a name that Laila was not known by.

Now, what sort of a conundrum was that supposed to be? She was produced by—what was that long term?—parthenogenesis. She just growed, like Topsy? You know that’s not true.

He arranged for her a seat as his guest for the rest of the repertoire in which he played the lead. It was taken for granted that she would come backstage afterward. Sometimes he included her in other cast gatherings, with “people your own age,” obliquely acknowledging his own, old enough to be her father. Cool. He apparently had no children, adult or otherwise, didn’t mention any. Was he gay? Now? Can a man change sexual preference, or literally embrace both? The way he embraced so startlingly, electric with the voltage of life, the beings created only in words by Shakespeare, Strindberg, Brecht, Beckett—oh, you name them, from the volumes holding down the letter telling of that Saturday. “You seem to understand that I—we—actors absolutely risk, kill ourselves, trying to reach the ultimate identity in what’s known as a character, beating ourselves down to let the creation take over. Haven’t you ever wanted to have a go yourself? Thought about acting?”

She said, “I know an actuary is the absolute antithesis of all that. I don’t have the talent.”

He didn’t make some comforting effort. Didn’t encourage magnanimously—Why not have a go? “Maybe you’re right. Nothing like the failure of an actor. It isn’t like other kinds of failure. It doesn’t just happen inside you; it happens before an audience. Better to be yourself. You’re a very interesting young woman, depths there. I don’t know if you know it, but I think you do.”

Like every sexually attractive young woman, she was experienced with the mostly pathetic drive that aging men have toward young women. Some of the men are themselves attractive, either because they have somehow kept the promise of vigor—mouths filled with their own teeth, tight muscular buttocks in their jeans, no jowls, fine eyes that have seen much to impart—or because they’re well known, distinguished, yes, even rich. This actor, whose enduring male beauty was an attribute of his talent—he was probably more desirable now than he had been as a novice Marat in Peter Weiss’s play; all the roles he had taken—he had emerged from the risk with a strongly endowed identity. Although there was no apparent reason that he should not make the usual play for this young woman, there was no sign that he was doing so. She knew the moves; they were not being made.

The attention was something else. Between them. Was this a question or a fact? They wouldn’t know, would they? He simply welcomed her like a breeze that blew in with this season abroad, in his old home town, and seemed to refresh him. Famous people have protégés, a customary part of the multiply responsive public reception. He told her, sure to be indulged, that he wanted to go back to an adventure, a part of the country he’d been thrilled by as a child, wanted to climb there, where there were great spiky plants with red candelabras. She told him that it was the wrong season—those plants wouldn’t be in bloom in this, his kind of season—but she’d drive him there; he took up the shy offer at once, and left the cast without him for two days, when the plays performed were not those in which he had the lead. They slipped and scrambled up the peaks he remembered, and, at the lodge in the evening, he was recognized, took this as inevitable, autographed bits of paper, and quipped privately with her that he had been mistaken in the past for a pop star he hadn’t heard of but ought to have. His unconscious vitality invigorated people around him wherever he was. No wonder he was such an innovative director; the critics wrote that in his hands the classic plays, even the standbys of Greek drama, were reimagined, as if this were the way they were meant to be and never had been before. It wasn’t in his shadow that she stood but in his light. As if she had been reimagined by herself. He was wittily critical at other people’s expense, and so with him she was free to think—say—what she found ponderous in those she worked with: the predictability among her set of friends, which she usually tolerated without stirring them up. Not that she saw much of her friends at present. She was part of the cast of the backstage scene now, a recruit to the family of actors in the coffee shop at lunch, privy to their gossip, their bantering with the actor-director who drew so much from them, rousing their eager talent.

The regular Charlie dinners with her father, often postponed, were subdued; he caught this from her. There wasn’t much for them to talk about. Unless she wanted to show off her new associations.

The old impulse came, unwelcome, to go with her father to the theatre. Suppressed. But returned. To sit with him and together see the man commanding on the stage. What for? What would this resolve? Was she Charlotte or Charlie?

Charlie said, “Let’s see the play that’s had such rave reviews. I’ll get tickets.” He didn’t demur, had perhaps forgotten who Rendall Harris was, might be.

He led her to the bar afterward, talking of the play with considering interest. He had not seen Beckett in ages; the play wore well, was not outdated. She didn’t want to be there. It was late, she said. No, no, she didn’t want a drink, the bar was too crowded. But he persuaded gently, “We won’t stay. I’m thirsty, need a beer.”

The leading actor was caught in a spatter of applause as he moved among the admiring drinkers. He talked through clusters of others and then arrived.

“Rendall, my father.”

“Congratulations. Wonderful performance—the critics don’t exaggerate.”

The actor dismissed the praise as if he’d had enough of that from people who didn’t understand what such an interpretation of Vladimir or Estragon involved, the—what was that word he always used?—risk. “I didn’t feel right tonight. I was missing a beat. Charlotte, you’ve seen me do better, hey, m’darling.”

Her father picked up his glass but didn’t drink. “Last time I saw you was in the play set in an asylum. Laila de Morne was Charlotte Corday.”

Her father told.

“Of course, you always get chalked up in the critics’ hierarchy by how you play the classics, but I’m more fascinated by the new stuff—movement theatre, parts I can take from zero. I’ve sat in that bathtub too many times, knifed by Charlotte Cordays. . . .” The projection of that disarmingly self-deprecating laugh.

She spoke what she had not told, had not yet found the right time and situation to say to him: “Laila de Morne is my mother.” No more to be discarded in the past tense than the performance of the de Sade asylum where she had been Charlotte Corday to his Marat. “That’s how I was named.”

“Well, you’re sure not a Charlotte to carry a knife, spoil your beautiful aura with that, frighten off the men around you.” Peaked eyebrows, as if he were, ruefully, one of them—a trick from the actors’ repertoire contradicted by a momentary, hardly perceptible contact of those eyes with her own, diamonds, black with the intensity that it was his talent to summon, a stage prop taken up and at once released, at will.

Laila was Laila.

When they were silent in the pause at a traffic light, her father touched the open shield of his palm to the back of her head, the unobtrusive caress he had offered when driving her to boarding school. If she was, for her own reasons, now differently disturbed, that was not to be pried at. She was meant to drop him at his apartment, but when she drew up at the entrance she opened the car door at her side, as he did his, and went to him in the street. He turned—what’s the matter? She moved her head—nothing. She went to him and he saw, without understanding, that he should take her in his arms. She held him. He kissed her cheek, and she pressed it against his. Nothing to do with DNA.

MARLENE VAN NIEKERK

• South Africa •

from AGAAT

IT’S A WIND-STILL evening. Agaat has opened the swing doors so that I can hear the yard-noise of milk cans and the returning tractors and the closing of shed doors.

Now it has gone quiet. Now I hear only the sprinklers and the pump down by the old dam, that Dawid will go to switch off at ten o’clock. Closer by is the twilight song of thrushes and Cape robins, a light rustling every now and again in the bougainvillea on the stoep, a few slight sleeping sounds of the small birds, sparrows, white-eyes, that settle there for the night in the centre of the bush.

On the mirror an abstract painting is limned, midnight-blue like the inside of an iris, with the last dusk-pale planes and dark stains from which one can surmise that the garden is deep and wide, full of concealed nooks, full of the silence of ponds, full of small stipples of reflected stars on the wet leaves, full of the deep incisions of furrows.

Green, wet fragrances of the night pour into the room, from water on lawns and on hot-baked soil and dusty greenery.

I smell it, Agaat. Everything that you have prepared before me.

She removes the spray of roses in the little crystal vase from the tray and places it next to my bed on the night-table with the candle.

Had enough? Was it good? Are you feeling better now? No way you could have gone to sleep on such a hungry stomach.

She clears away the tray, switches off the main lights.

Now how about warm milk, with sugar and a drop of vanilla?

That’s good, later, I gesture.

On her way out she takes her embroidery out of the basket. She looks in the little blue book lying on the chair. She reads the last page and sighs. She searches through the pile, pulls out another. She puts it down on the embroidery. I can always tell when she wants to give up the reading, when she becomes disheartened with it. But these are her two projects. She doesn’t leave a thing half-done. Especially when she doesn’t yet know how it is to end.

The candle casts a glow on the wall next to my bed. In it stirs the shadow of the crepuscule in the glass vase. Longer and shorter stretch and shrink the buds. Stirred by the air that freshened from the window.

It billows the gauze lining at the open doors outwards and inwards. The flame stirs, casts a silhouette of stems on the wall, crystal and water and tiny air bubbles trouble the light. Doubly magnified in the shadow on the wall where he perches in the rose twigs, front feet clasped together, I see the praying mantis.

She wouldn’t bring a thing like that in here without intention. The most exemplary motionless creature she could think of. Little hands folded in prayer. The green membranous wings like coat-tails draped over the abdomen, the triangular head with the bulbous eyes.

I look at the mirror. I see the candle flame and its yellow glow, the shadows, the coruscation of the water, the vase, the rose, the spriggy limbs of the praying mantis. These then are the things reflecting in the three panels where the garden has now darkened. When the flame stirs, the shadows dance, the reflections of the shadows dance, the supplicant raises its front legs in the rose.

Does a mirror sometimes preserve everything that has been reflected in it? Is there a record of light, thin membranes compressed layer upon layer that one has to ease apart with the finger-tips so that the colours don’t dissipate, so that the moments don’t blot and the hours don’t run together into inconsequential splotches? So that a song of preserved years lies in your palm, a miniature of your life and times, with every detail meticulous in clear, chanting angel-fine enamel, as on the old manuscripts, at which you can peer through a magnifying glass and marvel at so much effort? So many tears for nothing? For light? For bygone moments?

A floating feeling takes possession of me, to and fro I look between the shadow picture on the wall and the reflection in the mirror. A story in a mirror, second-hand. About what was and what is to be. About what I have to come to in these last days and nights. About how I must get there over the fragments I am trying to shore. I step on them, step, as on stones in a stream. Agaat and I and Jak and Jakkie. Four stepping-stones, every time four and their combinations of two, of three, their powers to infinity and their square roots. Their sequences in time, their causes and effects. How to join and to fit, how to step and to say: That is how I crossed the river, there I walked, that was the way to here. How to remember, without speech, without writing, without map, an exile within myself. Motionless. Solid. In my bed. In my body. Shrunken away from the world that I created. With images that surface and flow away, flakes of light that float away from me so that I cannot remember what I have already remembered and what I have yet to remember. Am I the stream or am I the stone and who steps on me, who wades through me, to whom do I drift down like pollen, like nectar, like a fragrance, always there are more contents to be ordered into coherence.

Through the open doors I smell the night ever more intensely. It permeates my nose like a complex snuff. Can one smell sounds? I hear the dikkops, from a northerly direction. Christmas, christmas, christmas, they cry in descending tones, christmas comes. The yard plovers cry as they fly up, a disturbance at the nest? The frogs strike up, white bibs bulging in the reeds. Under the stoep a cricket starts filing away at its leg-irons. Here next to my head something prays in the void. That I may be permitted to make the journey one more time, on stippled tracks for my eyes, pursuing place names that are dictated to me, the last circuit, a secret, a treasure that neither moth nor rust can destroy, a relation, a sentence hidden amongst words.

Suddenly I see Agaat. In the dark door-cavity with the tray in her hands. She’s watching me from the shadows, I can’t make out her face, just the cap, a small white tomb in the air.

Would she sometimes simply be curious, an onlooker at a fainting incident in the street, a visitor to a cage in which a snake is shedding its skin? How would I ever know? How could I hold it against her? How would I want her to look at me here where I am lying?

I close my eyes. I thought she’d already left for the kitchen. I wouldn’t, after all that, have dared look around again. Not if I had known she was still there. I hear her walk down the passage, turn round, walk back slowly. She’s in the spare room. She stands still.

I count to twelve before she moves again. I hear her put down the tray in the kitchen but then none of the usual, the sounds of clearing the tray on the work surface, of scraping leftovers into the bin, filling the washbasin with water, washing and drying and packing away dishes, taking her own plate out of the warming oven, the sound of the kettle being filled for her tea, pulling out and pulling up the kitchen chair and then, as always, the silence as she eats her evening meal. None of this I hear.

She walks around the house, every now and again she stops, a few paces to this side, a few paces to that, and then stops again. In the dining room, in the living room, in the sitting room, in the entrance hall I hear the floorboards creak and then again down the passage on her rubber soles she walks, tchi-tchi-tchi past my door, a glance at my bed, further along to Jakkie’s room, to the spare room, a hesitation before the walk to the back room, and back again down the passage and back and stop and carry on. I can hear her thinking. I can feel her looking for empty spaces. The already-cleared house that echoes lightly. Out at the back door now. Keys. It’s the big bunch. First the storage rooms in the back, then round the front.

What is she whistling for me to hear there where she is in the dark?

Oh ye’ll tak’ the high road and I’ll tak’ the low road . . .

What is that rattling under my bed? The cellar door? Here right beneath me in the right wing? What would she be looking for there?

Muffled from below the floorboards, under the concrete floor layer, the whistling sounds just loud enough so that I can make out the tune.

An’ I’ll be in Scotland before ye’ . . .

The extra mile, Leroux said, that woman walks the extra mile for you.

ZAKES MDA

• SouthAfrica •

from WAYS OF DYING

I

“THERE ARE MANY ways of dying!” the Nurse shouts at us. Pain is etched in his voice, and rage has mapped his face. We listen in silence. “This our brother’s way is a way that has left us without words in our mouths. This little brother was our own child, and his death is more painful because it is of our own creation. It is not the first time that we bury little children. We bury them every day. But they are killed by the enemy . . . those we are fighting against. This our little brother was killed by those who are fighting to free us!”

We mumble. It is not for the Nurse to make such statements. His duty is to tell how this child saw his death, not to give ammunition to the enemy. Is he perhaps trying to push his own political agenda? But others feel that there is no way the Nurse can explain to the funeral crowd how we killed the little brother without parading our shame to the world. That the enemy will seize hold of this, and use it against us, is certainly not the Nurse’s fault. Like all good Nurses, he is going to be faithful to the facts.

Toloki belongs to the section of the crowd that believes strongly in the freedom of the Nurse to say it as he sees it. He has been to many funerals, and has developed admiration for those who are designated the Nurse at these rituals. They are the fortunate ones, those who were the last to see the deceased alive. Usually they are a fountain of fascinating information about ways of dying.

He moves forward a bit, for he wants to hear every word. The muttering about the Nurse’s indiscretion has become so loud that it is beginning to swallow his words of anger. Toloki thought he would need to elbow his way through the crowd, but people willingly move away from him. Why do people give way? he wonders. Is it perhaps out of respect for his black costume and top hat, which he wears at every funeral as a hallmark of his profession? But then why do they cover their noses and mouths with their hands as they retreat in blind panic, pushing those behind them? Maybe it is the beans he ate for breakfast. They say it helps if you put some sugar in them, and he had no sugar. Or maybe it is the fact that he has not bathed for a whole week, and the December sun has not been gentle. He has been too busy attending funerals to go to the beach to use the open showers that the swimmers use to rinse salt water from their bodies.

“Merrie kressie, ou toppie,” whispers a drunk, the only one who is not intimidated by whatever it is that people seem to fear from his presence. Merry Christmas, old man. Old man? He is only thirty-eight years old. He might even be younger than the drunk. “It is the perfume, ou toppie. It is too strong.” He hears a woman snigger. Why would anyone hate his sacred fragrance? It is the perfume that he splashes all over his body as part of the ritual of his profession before he goes to a funeral. On this fiery Christmas day, its strong smell is exacerbated by the stench of sweat, not only from his body, but from those in the crowd as well.

Toloki is now very close to the makeshift podium where the Nurse defiantly stands, but he still cannot hear a word he is trying to say. Some of us are heckling the Nurse. Some are heckling the hecklers. So, we do not hear one another. Toloki never thought he would live to see the day when a Nurse would be heckled. This is a sacrilege that has never been heard of before. And at the funeral of an innocent little boy, on a Christmas Day too.

Then he sees her, the mother of the boy. She is a convulsion of sobs, and is surrounded by women who try to comfort her. She lifts her eyes appealingly to the feuding crowd, and Toloki thinks he has seen those eyes before. But how can it be? He must approach and speak with her. Only then can he be sure. But people close around her and stop him.

“I just want to speak with her.”

“We know who you are. You are Toloki the Professional Mourner. We do not need your services here. We have enough of our own mourners.”

“It is not on a professional basis that I want to see her. Please let me speak with her.”

“Ha! You think you are going to convince her behind our backs to engage your services? I can tell you we have no fees to pay a Professional Mourner. We can mourn just as well.”

Who are these people, anyway, who won’t let him see the woman he strongly suspects is from his home village? He learns that they are members of her street committee. They are determined to protect her from all those who want to harass her with questions about the death of her son. Newspaper reporters have been particularly keen to get close to her, to ask her silly questions such as what her views are on the sorry fact that her son was killed by his own people. They are keen to trap her into saying something damaging, so that they can have blazing headlines the next day. The street committee is always vigilant.

The Nurse cannot go on to tell us the story of the death of the deceased, this our little brother. The din is too loud. The church minister says a quick prayer. Spades and shovels eat into the mound of earth next to the grave, and soon the hole that will be the resting place of this our little brother forever more amen is filled up. Those nearest the grave sing a hymn, while a man with a shovel delicately shapes the smaller mound that has risen where the hole used to be. Wreaths are laid. Someone wants to know if the messages on the wreaths will not be read for the public as is customary, and in any case where are the relatives of this bereaved mother? She has no relatives, someone else shouts back. The street committee are her relatives. Then a procession led by the van that had brought the coffin to the graveyard is formed, in preparation for the solemn march back to the home of the mother of the deceased in the squatter camp, where we will wash our hands and feast on the food that has been prepared by the street committee.

Toloki decides that he will rush to the home of the deceased, wash his hands and disappear from the scene. He will have nothing to do with people who have treated him with so much disrespect. Hungry as he is, he will not partake of their food either. If he did not have so much reverence for funeral rituals, he would go home right away, without even washing his hands. People give way as he works his way to the head of the procession, which is already outside the gates of the cemetery. By the time he gets to the street, the procession has come to a standstill, and people are impatiently complaining about the heat. Others attempt to sing hymns, but their voices have gone hoarse from the graveyard feud. Those who can still come up with a feeble note or two are overwhelmed by blaring hooters in the street.

These come from a wedding procession of many cars and buses, all embellished with colourful ribbons and balloons. They are going in the opposite direction, and will not give way to the funeral procession. The funeral procession will not give way either, since out of respect for the dead, it is customary for funeral processions to have the right of way. The wedding party is enjoying the stalemate, and they sing at the top of their voices. Their heads, and sometimes half their colour-fully clad bodies, appear from the windows of the cars and buses, and they beat the sides of these vehicles with their hands, creating a tumultuous rhythm. The driver of the convertible car in front, which carries the bride and the bridegroom, argues with the driver of the van which carries the mother of the dead child.

“You must give way!”

“But we are a funeral procession.”

“We are a procession of beautiful people, and many posh cars and buses, while yours is an old skorokoro of a van, and hundreds of ragged souls on foot.”

“It is not my fault that these people are poor.”

No one will budge. There might be a violent confrontation here, since the driver of the convertible, who is a huge fellow, is beginning to call certain parts of the van driver’s mother that the slight van driver never even knew she had. Toloki walks to the convertible. He greets the bridal couple, and is about to give them a stern lecture on funeral etiquette, when the ill-humoured driver of the convertible suddenly decides that he will give way after all. He signals to the other drivers in the wedding procession to park on the side of the road so that the funeral procession can pass peacefully. Toloki smiles. He has this effect on people sometimes. Perhaps it is his fragrance. And the black costume and top hat of his profession. It cannot be that the driver of the convertible is intimidated by his size. He is quite short, in fact. But what he lacks in height he makes up for in breadth. He is quite stockily built, and his shoulders are wide enough to comfortably bear all the woes of bereavement. His yellow face is broad and almost flat, his pointed nose hovers over and dwarfs his small child-like mouth. His eyes are small, and have a permanently sorrowful look that is most effective when he musters up his famous graveside manner. Above his eyes rest thick eyebrows, like the hairy thithiboya caterpillar.

The driver of the van approaches him. “The mother of the child we have just buried wants to thank you for what you have done.”

So he goes to the van, and his suspicion is confirmed. He has no doubt that this is Noria, the beautiful stuck-up bitch from his village. She has grown old now, and has become a little haggard. But she is still beautiful. And she too recognizes him.

“Toloki! You are Toloki from the village!”

“Yes, Noria, it is me. I wanted to see you at the graveyard, but they wouldn’t let me get near you.”

“You can’t blame them, Toloki. Ever since my son died, all sorts of people have been pestering us.”

Then she invites him to come and see her at the squatter camp when the sad business of the funeral is over. Toloki walks away with a happy bounce in his feet. He will wash his hands and leave quickly. He will see Noria tomorrow, or maybe the day after. My God! Noria! He has not seen her for almost twenty years! How old would she be now? She must be thirty-five. He remembers that he was three years older. A hard life has taken its toll since she left the village. But her beauty still remains.

It is not different, really, here in the city. Just like back in the village, we live our lives together as one. We know everything about everybody. We even know things that happen when we are not there; things that happen behind people’s closed doors deep in the middle of the night. We are the all-seeing eye of the village gossip. When in our orature the storyteller begins the story, “They say it once happened . . . ,” we are the “they.” No individual owns any story. The community is the owner of the story, and it can tell it the way it deems it fit. We would not be needing to justify the communal voice that tells the story if you had not wondered how we became so omniscient in the affairs of Toloki and Noria.

Both Toloki and Noria left the village at different times, and were bent on losing themselves in the city. They had no desire to find one another, and as a result forgot about the existence of each other. But we never stopped following their disparate and meagre lives. We were happy when they were happy. And felt the pain when they were hurt. In the beginning, there were times when we tried to get them together, like homeboys and homegirls sometimes get together and talk about home, and celebrate events of common interest such as births, marriages, ancestral feasts, and deaths. But our efforts disappeared like sweat in the hair of a dog. Indeed, even in his capacity as Professional Mourner, Toloki avoided funerals that involved homeboys and homegirls. Since his bad experience with Nefolovhodwe, the furniture-maker who made it good in the city, and now pretends that he does not know the people from the village anymore, Toloki has never wanted to have anything to do with any of the people of his village who have settled in the city. He is not the type who forgives and forgets, even though his trouble with Nefolovhodwe happened many years ago, during his very early days in the city. Noria, on the other hand, has always lived in communion with her fellow-villagers, and with other people from all parts of the country who have settled in the squatter camp. So, we put the idea of getting Noria and Toloki together out of our minds until today, at the funeral of this our little brother.

The distant bells of the cathedral toll “Silent Night,” as Toloki prepares to sleep for the night. The strikes are slow and painful, not like the cheery carol that the angel-faced choirboys sang that very morning on the steps of the church. He was on his way to the funeral, and he stopped and listened. Christmas Day has no real significance for him. Nor has the church. But he enjoys carols, and always sings along whenever he hears them. He could not stop for long, since he did not know what time the funeral would be. He was not involved in this funeral in his professional capacity. In fact, until that morning he was not aware that there was going to be a funeral on this day. It is not usual to hold funerals on Christmas Day. He thought he was doomed to sit in utter boredom at his quayside resting place for the entire day, sewing his costume and putting his things in readiness for the busy coming days in the cemeteries. Then he heard two dockworkers talk of the strange things that were happening these days, of this woman whose child was killed, and who insisted that he must be buried on Christmas Day or not at all. Toloki there and then decided to seize the opportunity, and spend a fulfilling day at the graveside. He did not have an inkling that a home-girl was involved in this funeral, otherwise we know that he would not have gone. But after all, he was happy to see Noria.

At regular intervals of one hour the bell tolls “Silent Night.” At the window of the tower, perhaps in the belfry, Toloki can see a Christmas tree with twinkling lights of red, green, blue, yellow, and white. The cathedral is a few streets away from his headquarters, as he calls the quayside shelter and waiting-room where he spends his nights. But since it is on a hill, he can enjoy the beauty of the lights, and tonight the bells will lull him to a blissful sleep with carols. But first he must prepare some food for himself. From the shopping trolley where he keeps all his worldly possessions, he takes out a packet containing his favourite food, a delicacy of Swiss cake relished with green onions. He pushes the trolley into one corner, where he knows it is always safe. Though his headquarters are a public place, no one ever touches his things, even when he has gone to funerals and left them unattended for the whole day. Everyone knows that the trolley belongs to Toloki who sleeps at the quayside, come rain or shine. No one ever bothers him and his property. Not the cleaners, nor the police. Not even the rowdy sailors from cargo ships and the prostitutes who come to entertain them.

He takes a bite first of the cake, and then of the green onions. His eyes roll in a dance of pleasure. He chews slowly, taking his time to savour each mouthful. Quite a tingling taste, this delicacy has. It is as though the food is singing in his mouth. Quite unlike the beans that he ate this morning. Those who have seen him eat this food have commented that it is an unusual combination. All the more reason to like it. Although it is of his own composition, it gives him an aura of austerity that he associates with monks of eastern religions that he has heard sailors talk about.

Sometimes he transports himself through the pages of a pamphlet that he got from a pink-robed devotee who disembarked from a boat two summers ago, and walks the same ground that these holy men walk. He has a singularly searing fascination with the lives of these oriental monks. It is the thirst of a man for a concoction that he has never tasted, that he has only heard wise men describe. He sees himself in the dazzling light of the aghori sadhu, held in the same awesome veneration that the devout Hindus show the votaries. He spends his sparse existence on the cremation ground, cooks his food on the fires of a funeral pyre, and feeds on human waste and human corpses. He drinks his own urine to quench his thirst. The only detail missing is a mendicant’s bowl made from a human skull, for he shuns the collection of alms. Votary or no votary, he will not collect alms. It is one tradition of the sacred order that he will break, in spite of the recognition of the shamanistic elements of almstaking. When he comes back to a life that is far from the glamour of the aghori sadhu in those distant lands, he is glad that even in his dreams he is strong enough not to take a cent he has not worked for. In his profession, people are paid for an essential service that they render in the community. His service is to mourn for the dead.

He curls up on the bench and sleeps in the foetal position that is customary of his village. Although he has been in the city for all these years, he has not changed his sleeping position, unlike people like Nefolovhodwe who have taken so much to the ways of the city that they sleep in all sorts of city positions. In all fairness, he has not seen Nefolovhodwe in his sleep, but a man like him who pretends not to know people from his village anymore now that he is one of the wealthiest men in the land is bound to sleep with his legs straight or in some such absurd position. Unlike the village people, Toloki does not sleep naked, however, because his headquarters are a public place. He sleeps fully-dressed, either in his professional costume or in the only other set of clothes that he owns, which he calls home clothes. Since his mourning costume is getting old, and the chances of his getting another one like it are very slim indeed, he often changes into his home clothes in the public toilet as soon as he arrives back from the funerals. He would like to save his costume, so that it lasts for many more years of mourning. This is December, and the weather is very hot and clammy. So he does not cover himself with a blanket. For the winters, when the icy winds blow from the ocean, he is armed with a thick blanket that he keeps in his shopping trolley.

Sleep does not come easily, even with the hourly lullaby of the bells. He thinks of the events of today. Of course he is piqued. What self-respecting Professional Mourner wouldn’t be? Why did they treat him so at this boy’s funeral? He is well-known and well-liked all over the city cemeteries. Only yesterday he surpassed himself at the funeral of a man who died a mysterious death.

Normally when he is invited to mourn by the owners of a corpse, he sits very conspicuously on the mound that will ultimately fill the grave after prayers have been made and the Nurse has spoken, and weeps softly for the dead. Well, sometimes the Nurse and other funeral orators speak at the home of the corpse, or in church if the corpse was a Christian in its lifetime, before it is taken to the graveyard. But in any case, he sits on the mound and shares his sorrow with the world. The appreciative family of the deceased pays him any amount it can. One day he would like to have a fixed rate of fees for different levels of mourning, as in other professions. Doctors have different fees for different illnesses. Lawyers charge fees which vary according to the gravity of the case. And certainly these professionals don’t accept just any amount the client feels like giving them. But for the time being he will accept anything he is given, because the people are not yet used to the concept of a Professional Mourner. It is a fairly new concept, and he is still the only practitioner. He would be willing to train other people though, so that when he dies the tradition will continue. Then he will live in the books of history as the founder of a noble profession.

Yesterday saw the highlight of a career that has spanned quite a few years. As we have told you, the man in question died a mysterious death. The family of the deceased gave Toloki a huge retainer to grace the funeral with his presence. It was the biggest amount he had ever received for any one funeral. Not even at mass funerals had he earned such an amount. So, he made a point of giving of his very best. Throughout the funeral, orator after orator, he sat on the mound and made moaning sounds of agony that were so harrowing that they affected all those who were within earshot, filling their eyes with tears. When the Nurse spoke, he excelled himself by punctuating each painful segment of her speech that sent the relatives into a frenzy of wailing.

The Nurse explained that no one really knew how this brother died. What qualified her to be the Nurse was not that she was the last person to see him alive; she was the only person who went out of her way to seek the truth about his death, and to hunt his corpse down when everyone else had given up. People should therefore not expect of her what they normally expected of the Nurse: to hear the exact details of what ailed this brother, of how he had a premonition of his death, of how he died, and of what last words he uttered before his spirit left the body.

This our elder brother, we learnt from the Nurse, left home one day and said he was visiting his beloved sister, who now found herself standing before this grieving multitude in the person of the Nurse. But since the day he stepped out of the door of his house, no one had seen him alive again. For the first two days, his wife and four children did not worry unduly. “After all,” said the Nurse, “men are dogs, and are known to wander from time to time.”

Now, this part was not pleasant to the ears of the men. “How can a young girl who still smells her mother’s milk say such disrespectful slander about us? What kind of an upbringing is this?” they grumbled among themselves. But the Nurse brazenly continued on the scandalous behaviour of the male species. Then she went on to say that after two days, the wife phoned the sister, and all the other relatives, but none of them had seen him. He had never reached his sister’s house. As is the practice, they searched all the hospitals in the area, and all the police stations and prisons. None of them had any information about their brother. This was a process that took many days, since prisons and hospitals were teeming with people whose relatives didn’t even know that they were there, and the bureaucrats who worked at these places were like children of one person. They were all so rude, and were not keen to be of assistance to people—especially to those who looked poor. “And you know what?” the Nurse fumed. “These are our own people. When they get these big jobs in government offices they think they are better than us. They treat us like dirt!”

The family sat down together and decided that this brother was lost, and there was nothing that could be done. But his sister said, “How can a human being be lost when he is not a needle? I say someone somewhere knows where my brother is. We have not even completed the custom of searching. We have not gone to the mortuary.”

And so she went to the big government mortuary. There were many people there, also looking for relatives who were missing and might be dead. She joined the queue in the morning when the offices opened. At last her turn came at midday. The woman at the counter looked at her briefly, and then took a pen and doodled on a piece of paper. Then she shouted to a girl at the other end of the office, and boasted to her about the Christmas picnic she and her friends were going to hold. They discussed dresses, and the new patterns that were in vogue. They talked of the best dressmakers, who could sew dresses that were even more beautiful than those found in the most exclusive and expensive city boutiques specializing in Italian and Parisian fashions. The girl said she was going out to the corner café to buy fat cakes, and the woman at the counter said, “Bring me some as well.” Then she went back to her doodling. A kindly old man standing behind this our sister who was looking for her beloved brother whispered, “My daughter, maybe you should remind her royal highness that we are all waiting for her assistance.”

“Miss, I am looking for my brother.”

“Oh, is that so? I thought you were paying us a social visit, because I see you just standing there staring at me.”

She was led by a white-coated official to a corridor where there were a dozen corpses lying naked on the floor. None of these were her brother. She was led to another room, with more naked bodies on the floor. These, she was told, had just been delivered that morning. Altogether there were perhaps twenty bodies of old and young men and women, beautiful girls with stab wounds lying in grotesque positions, children who were barely in their teens, all victims of the raging war consuming our lives. “I tell you, mothers and fathers, there is death out there. Soon we shall experience the death of birth itself if we go on at this rate.” People were not thrilled at the Nurse’s constant editorializing. They wanted her to get to the marrow of the story: how she got the corpse of this our brother. But she felt that these things had to be said nevertheless.

The white-coated official led her to another room with corpses in trays almost like oversized filing cabinets. It was a very cold room. The official said, “Most of these are the bodies of unidentified persons. I can only open two trays at a time, and then we must run away quickly to get to the warmth of the sun outside. If we don’t we’ll freeze to death in here.” And so he opened two trays, and she looked at the bodies. She shook her head, and they rushed out to stand in the sun. After a few minutes, they went inside again and repeated the process. It was obvious that this procedure was going to take many days. The fact that new corpses were brought in all the time, while others were taken out for burial, complicated things. But she was prepared to go through all the distress, even though her stomach was turning, and she was salivating, ready to throw up. It was late in the afternoon, and she had gone through the procedure more than ten times when a saviour came in the form of another white-coated official who looked senior both in years and in rank. “You can identify your brother by the clothes he was wearing,” he said. He explained that all the clothes that the dead people were wearing were stacked in a room, with numbers on them corresponding to the numbers on the trays.

The sister did not know what clothes her brother was wearing. After phoning his wife, who described them to her, she went to the pile of clothes. She was relieved to find them there after just a few minutes of looking; relieved not because her brother was dead, but because at last the search was over. “These are the clothes my brother was wearing when he was last seen by his family,” she told the official. They went back to the cold room, and the official pulled out the tray. But the body was not there. The tray was empty!

The white-coated official was concerned. On investigating the matter, he found that the body that had been in that tray had been released that morning, obviously by mistake, to a family which lived in another town. It had been given to their undertaker. It was late in the evening, and the only thing the sister could do was to go home and sleep.

The next morning, accompanied by a few male relatives, she got onto a train that took them to the town where her brother’s body had been dispatched. To their horror, the body was already in the graveyard, and a funeral service was already in progress. A strange-looking man, the very man who could be seen sitting on the mound mourning with them today for their beloved brother, was sitting on a mound in that distant town, weeping softly. The body of their brother was about to be buried by strangers, when they got there and stopped the funeral service.

“What is wrong with these people? What is their trouble?”

“I tell you, people of God, it is a wrong body you are burying there. It is the body of my brother.”

“Who are these people who want to steal our corpse?”

A fight nearly ensued, with the undertaker insisting that it was the right body, and that the madwoman accompanied by her mad delegation must be arrested for disrupting a solemn occasion. But the sister stood her ground. “Kill me if you will,” she said. “I am not going away from here until you release the body of my brother.” She was determined that if they refused, they should bury her there with him. The strange-looking man saved the day. “Please,” he appealed to the indignant crowd, “let us not desecrate this place where the dead have their eternal sleep by fighting here. It is easy to solve this problem. Open the coffin to prove once and for all that this is the right body.” The undertaker, supported by some members of the family that supposedly owned the corpse, refused and told the minister to continue with the funeral service. But some members of the crowd advised that the coffin be opened so as to avoid the scandal of a fight in the graveyard. The coffin was opened, and indeed this our brother was in it.

Before the delegation took the body home, the sister spoke with the strange-looking man who had helped them by suggesting that the coffin be opened.

“Who are you, father, who have been so helpful?”

“I am Toloki the Professional Mourner.” Then he explained about his profession, and told them that, in fact, this was his very first job in this small town so far away from the city cemeteries where he regularly worked.

“You are a good man. We shall engage your services for the funeral of this our brother.”

“It will be my pleasure to mourn for him a second time.”

That was why they were seeing him there, mourning his heart out.

But this was not all that the Nurse wanted to say about this our brother. The sister had gone further in investigating who had brought her brother’s body to the mortuary. It was brought in by the police, she found. She went to the police station to inquire where the police had found her brother’s body. It was found, she was told, near a garage next to the hostels where migrant workers from distant villages lived. In the morning, the garage nightwatchman noticed something that was not there the previous night. He went closer and discovered a man’s body. The head had been hacked open, and the brain was hanging out. There were bullet wounds on the legs. He phoned the police, who came and took the body. They said more bodies with similar wounds had been found nearby. They were all packed into the police van and dumped in the mortuary.

“Yes, it must be the migrant workers from the hostels,” various people in the crowd shouted angrily. “They have killed a lot of our people, and all we do is sit here and keep on talking peace. Are we men or just scared rats?”

There was no one who did not know that the vicious migrants owed their allegiance to a tribal chief who ruled a distant village with an iron fist. They came to the city to work for their children, but the tribal chief armed them, and sent them out to harass the local residents. Sometimes they were even helped by the police, because it helped to suppress those who were fighting for freedom. Nobody seemed to know exactly why the tribal chief did these ugly things, or where his humanity had gone. But others in the crowd said that it was because he wanted to have power over all the land, instead of just his village. He wanted to rule everybody, not just his villagers, even though he did not have support from the people. Throughout the land people hated him and wished him dead. People knew who their real leaders were, the crowd said, and if the tribal chief wanted to play a rough game, then he would find himself facing his age-mates.

This politicking was interfering with Toloki’s inspired mourning. He calmed the crowd down, and told them to concentrate on the business of mourning. Although the issues that the people were angry about were important, they could always discuss them when they got back to the squatter camps and townships. They had grassroots leadership in the form of street committees, which had always been effective in calling meets to discuss matters of survival and self-defence. Everybody in the crowd agreed with him. He felt very proud of the fact that people had listened to his advice. Perhaps he was gaining more importance in the eyes of the community. Before these incidents where he found himself actually acting in an advisory capacity, his role had been to mourn, and only to mourn. He must keep his priorities straight, however. The work of the Professional Mourner was to mourn, and not to intervene in any of the proceedings of the funeral. It would lower the dignity of the profession to be involved in human quarrels.

That was yesterday. Today he was treated with the utmost disrespect, and now he is annoyed. He sleeps, and in his dreams he sees the sad eyes of Noria, looking appealingly at the bickering crowd.

IVAN VLADISLAVIC’

• SouthAfrica •

THE WHITES ONLY BENCH

YESTERDAY OUR VISITORS’ book, which Portia has covered in zebra-skin wrapping-paper and shiny plastic, recorded the name of another important person: Coretta King. When Mrs. King had finished her tour, with Strickland herself playing the guide, she was treated to tea and cakes in the cafeteria. The photographers, who had been trailing around after her trying to sniff out interesting angles and ironic juxtapositions against the exhibits, tucked in as well, I’m told, and made pigs of themselves.

After the snacks Mrs. King popped into the gift shop for a few mementoes, and bought generously—soapstone hippopotami with sly expressions, coffee-table catalogues, little wire bicycles and riot-control vehicles, garish place-mats and beaded fly-whisks, among other things. Her aide had to chip in to make up the cost of a set of mugs in the popular “Leaders Past and Present” range.

The honoured guests were making their way back to the bus when Mrs. King spotted the bench in the courtyard and suggested that she pose there for a few shots. I happened to be watching from the workshop window, and I had a feeling the photographs would be exceptional. A spring shower had just fallen, out of the blue, and the courtyard was a well of clear light. Tendrils of fragrant steam coiled up evocatively from a windfall of blossoms on the flagstones. The scene had been set by chance. Perhaps the photographers had something to prove, too, having failed to notice a photo opportunity so steeped in ironic significance.

The Star carried one of the pictures on its front page this morning. Charmaine picked up a copy on her way to work and she couldn’t wait to show it to me.

The interest of the composition derives—if I may make the obvious analysis—from a lively dispute of horizontals and verticals. The bench is a syllogism of horizontal lines, flatly contradicted by the vertical bars of the legs at either end (these legs are shaped like h’s, actually, but from the front they look like l’s). Three other verticals assert their position: on the left—our left, that is—the concrete stalk of the Black Sash drinking-fountain; in the middle, thrusting up behind the bench, the trunk of the controversial kaffirboom; and on the right, perched on the very end of her seat, our subject: Mrs. King.

Mrs. King has her left thigh crossed over her right, her left foot crooked around her right ankle, her left arm coiled to clutch one of our glossy brochures to her breast. The wooden slats are slickly varnished with sunlight, and she sits upon them gingerly, as if the last coat’s not quite dry. Yet her right arm reposes along the backrest with the careless grace of a stem. There’s an odd ambiguity in her body, and it’s reflected in her face too, in an expression which superimposes the past upon the present: she looks both timorous and audacious. The WHITES ONLY sign under her dangling thumb in the very middle of the picture might be taken up the wrong way as an irreverent reference to her eyes, which she opens wide in an expression of mock alarm—or is it outrage? The rest of her features are more prudently composed, the lips quilted with bitterness, but tucked in mockingly at one corner.

The photographer was wise to choose black and white. These stark contrasts, coupled with Mrs. King’s old-fashioned suit and hairdo, confound the period entirely. The photograph might have been taken thirty years ago, or yesterday.

Charmaine was tickled pink, she says her bench is finally avenged for being upstaged by that impostor from the Municipal Bus Drivers’ Association. I doubt that Strickland has even noticed.

There seems to be a tacit agreement around here that Mrs. King is an acceptable form, although it won’t do for anyone else. When I pointed this out, Charmaine said it’s a special case because Mr. King, rest his soul, is no more. I fail to see what difference that makes, and I said so. Then Reddy, whose ears were flapping, said that “Mrs. King” is tolerated precisely because it preserves the memory of the absent Mr. King, like it or not. He said it’s like a dead metaphor.

I can’t make up my mind. Aren’t we reading too much into it?

Charmaine has sliced the photograph out of the unread newspaper with a Stanley knife and pinned the cutting up on the notice-board in reception. She says her bench has been immortalized. “Immortality” is easy to bandy about, but for a while it was touch and go whether Charmaine’s bench would make it to the end of the week.

We were working late one evening, as usual, when the little drama began. The Museum was due to open in six weeks’ time but the whole place was still upside down. It wasn’t clear yet who was in charge, if anyone, and we were all in a state.

Charmaine was putting the finishing touches to her bench, I was knocking together a couple of rostra for the Congress of the People, when Strickland came in. She had been with us for less than a week and it was the first time she had set foot in the workshop. We weren’t sure at all then what to make of our new Director, and so we both greeted her politely and went on with our work.

She waved a right hand as limp as a kid glove to show that we shouldn’t mind her, and then clasped it behind her back. She began to wander around on tiptoe even though I was hammering in nails, swiveling her head from side to side, peering into boxes, scanning the photographs and diagrams pinned to chipboard display stands, taking stock of the contents of tables and desks. She never touched a thing, but there was something grossly intrusive about the inspection. Strickland wears large, rimless spectacles, double glazed and tinted pink, and they sometimes make her look like a pair of television monitors.

After a soundless, interrogative circuit of the room she stopped behind Charmaine and looked over her shoulder. Charmaine had just finished the “I,” and now she laid her brush across the top of the paint tin, peeled off the stencil and flourished it in the air to dry the excess paint.

I put down my hammer—the racket had become unbearable—and took up some sandpaper instead. The people here will tell you that I don’t miss a thing.

Strickland looked at the half-formed word. Then she unclasped her hands and slid them smoothly into the pockets of her linen suit. The cloth was fresh cream with a dab of butter in it, richly textured, the pockets cool as arum lilies.

“What are you doing?” Strickland asked, in a tone that bristled like a new broom.

Charmaine stood back with the stencil in her hand and Strickland had to step hastily aside to preserve a decent distance between her suit and the grubby overall. Unnoticed by anyone but myself, a drop of white paint fell from the end of the brush resting across the tin onto the shapely beige toe of Strickland’s shoe.

The answer to Strickland’s question was so plain to see that it hardly needed voicing, but she blinked her enlarged eyes expectantly, and so Charmaine said, “It’s the WHITES ONLY bench.” When Strickland showed no sign of recognition, Charmaine added, “You remember the benches. For whites only?”

Silence. What on earth did she want? My sandpaper was doing nothing to smooth the ragged edges of our nerves, and so I put it down. We all looked at the bench.

It was a beautiful bench—as a useful object, I mean, rather than a symbol of injustice. The wooden slats were tomato-sauce red. The arms and legs were made of iron, but cleverly moulded to resemble branches, and painted brown to enhance a rustic illusion. The bench looked well used, which is often a sign that a thing has been loved. But when you looked closer, as Strickland was doing now, you saw that all these signs of wear and tear were no more than skin-deep. Charmaine had applied all of them in the workshop. The bruised hollows on the seat, where the surface had been abraded by decades of white thighs and buttocks, were really patches of brown and purple paint. The flashes of raw metal on the armrests, where the paint had been worn away by countless white palms and elbows, turned out to be mere discs of silver paint themselves. Charmaine had even smeared the city’s grimy shadows into the grain.

Strickland pored over these special effects with an expression of amazed distaste, and then stared for a minute on end at the letters WHI on the uppermost slat of the backrest. The silence congealed around us, slowing us down, making us slur our movements, until the absence of sound was as tangible as a crinkly skin on the surface of the air. “Forgive me,” she said at last, with an awakening toss of her head. “You’re manufacturing a WHITES ONLY bench?”

“Ja. For Room 27.”

Strickland went to the floor plan taped to one of the walls and looked for Room 27: Petty Apartheid. Then she gazed at the calendar next to the plan, but whether she was mulling over the dates, or studying the photograph—children with stones in their hands, riot policemen with rifles, between the lines a misplaced reporter with a camera—or simply lost in thought, I couldn’t tell. Did she realize that the calendar was ten years old?

Charmaine and I exchanged glances behind her back.

“Surely we should have the real thing,” Strickland said, turning.

“Of course—if only we could find it.”

“You can’t find a genuine WHITES ONLY bench?”

“No.”

“That’s very hard to believe.”

“We’ve looked everywhere. It’s not as easy as you’d think. This kind of thing was frowned upon, you know, in the end. Discrimination I mean. The municipalities were given instructions to paint them over. There wasn’t much point in hunting for something that doesn’t exist, so we decided at our last meeting—this was before your time, I’m afraid—that it would be better if I recreated one.”

“Recreated one,” Strickland echoed.

“Faithfully. I researched it and everything. I’ve got the sources here somewhere.” Charmaine scratched together some photocopies splattered with paint and dusted with fingerprints and tread-marks from her running-shoes. “The bench itself is a genuine 1960s one, I’m glad to say, from the darkest decade of repression. Donated by Reddy’s father-in-law, who stole it from a bus-stop for use in the garden. It was a long time ago, mind you, the family is very respectable. From a black bus-stop—for Indians. Interestingly, the Indian benches didn’t have INDIANS ONLY on them—not in Natal anyway, according to Mr. Mookadam. Or even ASIATICS. Not that it matters.”

“It matters to me,” Strickland said curtly—Charmaine does go on sometimes—and pushed her glasses up on her nose so that her eyes were doubly magnified. “This is a museum, not some high-school operetta. It is our historical duty to be authentic.”

I must say that made me feel bad, when I thought about all the effort Charmaine and I had put into everything from the Sharpeville Massacre to the Soweto Uprising, trying to get the details right, every abandoned shoe, every spent cartridge, every bloodied stitch of clothing, only to have this jenny-come-lately (as Charmaine puts it) give us a lecture about authenticity. What about our professional duty? (Charmaine again.)

“Have we advertised?” Strickland asked, and I could tell by her voice that she meant to argue the issue out. But at that moment she glanced down and saw the blob of paint on the toe of her shoe.

I had the fantastic notion to venture an excuse on Charmaine’s behalf: to tell Strickland that she had dripped ice-cream on her shoe. Vanilla ice-cream! I actually saw her hand grasping the cone, her sharp tongue curling around the white cupola, the droplet plummeting. Fortunately I came to my senses before I opened my big mouth.

It was the first proper meeting of the Steering Committee with the new Director. We hadn’t had a meeting for a month. When Charlie Sibeko left in a huff after the fiasco with the wooden AK-47s, we all heaved a sigh of relief. We were sick to death of meetings: the man’s appetite for circular discussion was insatiable.

Strickland sat down at the head of the table, and having captured that coveted chair laid claim to another by declaring the meeting open. She seemed to assume that this was her prerogative as Director, and no one had the nerve to challenge her.

The report-backs were straightforward: we were all behind schedule and over budget. I might add that we were almost past caring. It seemed impossible that we’d be finished in time for the official opening. The builders were still knocking down walls left, right and center, and establishing piles of rubble in every room. Pincus joked that the only exhibit sure to be ready on time was the row of concrete bunks—they were part of the original compound in which the Museum is housed and we had decided to leave them exactly as we found them. He suggested that we think seriously about delaying the opening, which was Portia’s cue to produce the invitations, just back from the printers. Everyone groaned (excluding Strickland and me) and breathed in the chastening scent of fresh ink.

“As far as we’re concerned, this date is written in stone,” Strickland said, snapping one of the copperplate cards shut. “We will be ready on time. People will have to learn to take their deadlines seriously.” At that point Charmaine began to doodle on her agenda—a hand with a stiff index finger, emerging from a lacy cuff, pointing at Item 4: Bench.

Item 2: Posters, which followed the reports, was an interesting one. Pincus had had a letter from a man in Bethlehem, a former town clerk and electoral officer, who had collected copies of every election poster displayed in the town since it was founded. He was prepared to entrust the collection to us if it was kept intact. Barbara said she could probably use a couple in the Birth of Apartheid exhibit. We agreed that Pincus would write to the donor, care of the Bethlehem Old-Age Home, offering to house the entire collection and display selected items on a rotating basis.

Item 3: Poetry, was Portia’s. Ernest Dladla, she informed us, had declined our invitation to read a poem at the opening ceremony, on the perfectly reasonable grounds that he was not a poet. “I have poetic impulses,” he said in his charming note, “but I do not act upon them.” Should she go ahead, Portia wanted to know, and approach Alfred Qabula instead, as Ernie suggested?

Then Strickland asked in an acerbic tone whether an issue this trivial needed to be tabled at an important meeting. But Portia responded magnificently, pointing out that she knew nothing about poetry, not having had the benefit of a decent education, had embarrassed herself once in the performance of her duties and did not wish to do so again. All she wanted was an answer to a simple question: Is Alfred Qabula a poet? Yes or no?

No sooner was that settled than Strickland announced Item 4: Bench, and stood up. Perhaps this was a technique she had read about in the business pages somewhere, calculated to intimidate the opposition. “It has come to my attention,” she said, “that our workshop personnel are busily recreating beautiful replicas of apartheid memorabilia, when the ugly originals could be ours for the asking. I do not know what Mr. Sibeko’s policy on this question was, although the saga of the wooden AK-47s is full of suggestion, but as far as I’m concerned it’s an appalling waste of time and money. It’s also dishonest. This is a museum, not an amusement arcade.

“My immediate concern is the WHITES ONLY bench, which is taking up so much of Charmaine’s time and talent. I find it hard to believe that there is not a genuine example of a bench of this nature somewhere in the country.”

“Petty apartheid went out ages ago,” said Charmaine, “even in the Free State.”

“The first Indian townships in the Orange Free State were established way back in October 1986,” said Reddy, who had been unusually quiet so far, “in Harrismith, Virginia and Odendaalsrus. Not many people know that. I remember hearing the glad tidings from my father-in-law, Mr. Mookadam, who confessed that ever since he was a boy it had been a dream of his to visit that forbidden province.”

“I’ll wager that there are at least a dozen real WHITES ONLY benches in this city alone, in private collections,” Strickland insisted, erasing Reddy’s tangent with the back of her hand. “People are fascinated by the bizarre.”

“We asked everyone we know,” said Charmaine. “And we asked them to ask everyone they know, and so on. Like a chain-letter—except that we didn’t say they would have a terrible accident if they broke the chain. And we couldn’t find a single bench. Not one.”

“Have we advertised?”

“No commercials,” said Reddy, and there was a murmur of assenting voices.

“Why ever not?”

“It causes more headache.”

“Oh nonsense!”

Reddy held up his right hand, with the palm out, and batted the air with it, as if he was bouncing a ball off Strickland’s forehead. This gesture had a peculiarly mollifying effect on her, and she put her hand over her eyes and sat down. Reddy stood up in his ponderous way and padded out of the room.

Pincus, who has a very low tolerance for silence, said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if Charmaine’s bench turned out to be the whites’ only bench?”

No one laughed, so he said “whites’ only” again, and drew the apostrophe in the air with his forefinger.

Reddy came back, carrying a photograph, a Tupperware lunch-box and a paper-knife. He put the photograph in the middle of the table, facing Strickland. She had to lean forward in her chair to see what it was. I wondered whether she fully appreciated the havoc her outsize spectacles wreaked on her face, how they disjointed her features. She looked like a composite portrait in a magazine competition, in which some cartoon character’s eyes had been mismatched with the jaw of a real-life heroine.

Everyone at the table, with the exception of our Director, had seen this routine before. Some of us had sat through it half a dozen times, with a range of donors, do-gooders, interest groups. For some reason, it never failed to involve me. I also leant forward to view the eight-by-ten. No one else moved.

I looked first at the pinprick stigmata in the four corners.

Then I looked, as I always did, at the girl’s outflung hand. Her hand is a jagged speech-bubble filled with disbelief. It casts a shadow shaped like a howling mouth on her body, and that mouth takes up the cry of outrage. The palm Reddy had waved in Strickland’s face was a much more distant echo.

I looked next at the right hand of the boy who is carrying Hector Peterson. His fingers press into the flesh of a thigh that is still warm, willing it to live, prompting the muscle, animating it. Hector Peterson’s right hand, by contrast, lolling numbly on his belly, knows that it is dead, and it expresses that certainty in dark tones of shadow and blood.

These hands are still moving, they still speak to me.

Reddy jabbed the photograph with the point of his paper-knife. “This is a photograph of Hector Peterson, in the hour of his death,” he said. Strickland nodded her head impatiently. “The day was 16 June 1976.” She nodded again, urging him to skip the common knowledge and come to the point. “A Wednesday. As it happened, it was fine and mild. The sun rose that morning at 6:53 and set that evening at 5:25. The shot was taken at 10:15 on the dot. It was the third in a series of six. Hector Peterson was the first fatality of what we could come to call the Soweto Riots—the first in a series of seven hundred odd. The photographer was Sam Nzima, then in the employ of the World. The subject, according to the tombstone that now marks his grave, was Zolile Hector Pietersen, P-I-E-T-E-R-S-E-N, but the newspapers called him Hector Peterson and it stuck. We struck out the ‘I,’ we put it to rout in the alphabet of the oppressor. We bore the hero’s body from the uneven field of battle and anointed it with English. According to the tombstone he was thirteen years old, but as you can see he looked no more than half that age . . . Or is it just the angle? If only we had some other pictures of the subject to compare this one with, we might feel able to speak with more authority.”

This welter of detail, and the offhand tone of the delivery, produced in Strickland the usual baffled silence.

“Not many people know these things.” Reddy slid the point of the knife onto the girl. “This is Hector’s sister Margot, aka Tiny, now living in Soweto.” The knife slid again. “And this is Mbuyisa Makhubu, whereabouts your guess is as good as mine. Not many people know them either. We have come to the conclusion, here at the Museum, that the living are seldom as famous as the dead.”

The knife moved again. It creased Mbuyisa Makhubu’s lips, which are bent into a bow of pain like the grimace of a tragic mask, it rasped the brick wall of the matchbox house which we see over his shoulder, skipped along the top of a wire gate, and came to rest on the small figure of a woman in the background. “And who on earth do you suppose this is?”

Strickland gazed at the little figure as if it was someone famous she should be able to recognize in an instant, some household name. In fact, the features of this woman—she is wearing a skirt and doek—are no more than a grey smudge, continuous with the shadowed wall behind her.

I looked at Hector Peterson’s left arm, floating on air, and the shadow of his hand on Mbuyisa Makhubu’s knee, a shadow so hard-edged and muscular it could trip the bearer up.

The child is dead. With his rumpled sock around his ankle, his grazed knee, his jersey stuck with dry grass, you would think he had taken a tumble in the playground, if it were not for the gout of blood from his mouth. The jersey is a bit too big for him: it was meant to last another year at least. Or is it just that he was small for his age? Or is it the angle? In his hair is a stalk of grass shaped like a praying mantis.

“Nobody knows.”

Strickland sat back with a sigh, but Reddy went on relentlessly.

“Nevertheless, theories were advanced: some people said that this woman, this apparent bystander, was holding Hector Peterson in her arms when he died. She was a mother herself. She cradled him in her lap—you can see the bloodstains here—and when Makhubu took the body from her and carried it away, she found a bullet caught in the folds of her skirt. She is holding that fatal bullet in her right hand, here.

“Other people said that it didn’t happen like that at all. Lies and fantasies. When Nzima took this photograph, Hector Peterson was still alive! What you see here, according to one reliable caption, is a critically wounded youth. The police open fire, Hector falls at Mbuyisa’s feet. The boy picks him up and runs towards the nearest car, which happens to belong to Sam Nzima and Sophia Tema, a journalist on the World, Nzima’s partner that day. Sam takes his photographs. Then Mbuyisa and Tiny pile into the back of the Volkswagen—did I mention that it was a Volkswagen?—they pile into the back with Hector; Sam and Sophia pile into the front with their driver, Thomas Khoza. They rush to the Orlando Clinic, but Hector Peterson is certified dead on arrival. And that’s the real story. You can look it up for yourself.

“But the theories persisted. So we thought we would try to lay the ghost—we have a duty after all to tell the truth. This is a museum, not a paperback novel. We advertised. We called on this woman to come forward and tell her story. We said it would be nice—although it wasn’t essential—if she brought the bullet with her.”

“Anyone respond?”

“I’ll say.”

Reddy opened his lunch-box and pushed it over to Strickland with the edge of his palm, like a croupier. She looked at the contents: there were .38 Magnum slugs, 9mm and AK cartridges, shiny .22 bullets, a .357 hollow-point that had blossomed on impact into a perfect corolla. There were even a couple of doppies and a misshapen ball from an old voorlaaier. Strickland zoomed in for a close-up. She still didn’t get it.

“If you’ll allow me a poetic licence,” Reddy said, as if poetic licence was a certificate you could stick on a page in your Book of Life, “this is the bullet that killed Hector Peterson.”

So we didn’t advertise. But Strickland stuck to her guns about the WHITES ONLY bench: we would have the real thing or nothing at all. She made a few inquiries of her own, and wouldn’t you know it, before the week was out she turned up the genuine article.

The chosen bench belonged to the Municipal Bus Drivers’ Association, and in exchange for a small contribution to their coffers—the replacement costs plus 10 per cent—they were happy to part with it. The honour of fetching the trophy from their clubhouse in Marshall Street fell to Pincus. Unbeknown to us, the Treasurer of the MBDA had decided that there was a bit of publicity to be gained from his Association’s public-spirited gesture, and when our representative arrived he found a photographer ready to record the event for posterity. Pincus was never the most politic member of our Committee. With his enthusiastic cooperation the photographer was able to produce an entire essay, which subsequently appeared, without a by-line, in the Saturday Star. It showed the bench in its original quarters (weighed down by a squad of bus drivers of all races, pin-up girls—whites only—looking over the drivers’ shoulders, all of them, whether flesh and blood or paper, saying cheese); the bench on its way out of the door (Pincus steering, the Treasurer pushing); being loaded onto the back of our bakkie (Pincus and the Treasurer shaking hands and stretching the cheque between them like a Christmas cracker); and finally driven away (Pincus hanging out of the window to give us a thumbs-up, the Treasurer waving goodbye, the Treasurer waving back at himself from the rear-view mirror). These pictures caused exactly the kind of headache Reddy had tried so hard to avoid. Offers of benches poured in from far and wide. Pincus was made to write the polite letters of thanks but no thanks. For our purposes, one bench is quite enough, thank you.

You can see the WHITES ONLY bench now, if you like, in Room 27. Just follow the arrows. I may as well warn you that it says EUROPEAN ONLY, to be precise. There’s a second prohibition too, an entirely non-racial one, strung on a chain between the armrests: PLEASE DO NOT SIT ON THIS BENCH. That little sign is Charmaine’s work, and making her paint it was Strickland’s way of rubbing turpentine in her wounds.

When the genuine bench came to light, Charmaine received instructions to get rid of “the fake.” But she refused to part with it. I was persuaded to help her carry it into the storeroom, where it remained for a month or so. As the deadline for the opening neared, Charmaine would take refuge in there from time to time, whenever things got too much for her, and put the finishing touches to her creation. At first, she was furious about all the publicity given to the impostor. But once the offers began to roll in, and it became apparent that WHITES ONLY benches were not nearly as scarce as we’d thought, she saw an opportunity to bring her own bench out of the closet. The night before the grand opening, in the early hours, when the sky was already going grey behind the mine-dump on the far side of the parking lot, we carried her bench outside and put it in the arbour under the controversial kaffirboom.

“When Strickland asks about it,” said Charmaine, “you can tell her it was a foundling, left on our doorstep, and we just had to take it in.” Funny thing is, Strickland never made a peep.

I can see Charmaine’s WHITES ONLY bench now, from my window. The kaffirboom, relocated here fully grown from a Nelspruit nursery, has acclimatized wonderfully well. “Erythrina caffra, a sensible choice,” said Reddy, “deciduous, patulous, and umbrageous.” And he was quite right, it casts a welcome shade. Charmaine’s faithful copy reclines in the dapple below, and its ability to attract and repel our visitors never ceases to impress me.

Take Mrs. King. And talking about Mrs. King, Mr. King is a total misnomer, of course. I must point it out to Reddy. The Revd. King, yes, and Dr. King, yes, and possibly even the Revd. Dr. King. But Mr. King? No ways.

It seems unfair, but Charmaine’s bench has the edge on that old museum piece in Room 27. Occasionally I look up from my workbench, and see a white man sitting there, a history teacher say. While the schoolchildren he has brought here on an outing hunt in the grass for lucky beans, he sits down on our bench to rest his back. And after a while he pulls up his long socks, crosses one pink leg over the other, laces his fingers behind his head and closes his eyes.

Then again, I’ll look up to see a black woman shuffling resolutely past, casting a resentful eye on the bench and muttering a protest under her breath, while the flame-red blossoms of the kaffirboom detonate beneath her aching feet.

Biographical Notes

At age eighteen Chris Abani was arrested in Nigeria as the mastermind of an alleged coup based on the “evidence” of his first novel. He was imprisoned two more times, tortured, and escaped assassination. Abani has published four volumes of poetry and four novels, including Grace-land and Virgin in Flames. His numerous awards include the PEN USA Freedom to Write, PEN Hemingway, and PEN Beyond Margins awards. He currently teaches at the University of California-Riverside. More information on Abani can be found at Chrisabani.com.

Leila Aboulela was born in Cairo in 1964 and grew up in Khartoum, Sudan. After receiving a master’s degree from the London School of Economics (where she studied statistics), she moved to Aberdeen, Scotland, and currently resides in Abu Dhabi. She is the author of the novels Minaret and The Translator, as well as the short story collection Colored Lights. Her story “The Museum” won the 2000 Caine Prize for African Writing (often referred to as the African Booker).

In 1957, at the age of twenty-seven, Chinua Achebe sent the only copy of his handwritten manuscript of Things Fall Apart to a typing service in London, where it languished for months until it was retrieved by a colleague traveling on business. Luckily the British publisher Heinemann took a chance on Achebe, and today, after dozens of books of fiction, poetry, and essays, he is the most widely read African writer in the world. Achebe has been actively involved in Nigerian politics as well as engaged in taking on Western perceptions of Africans in writing. Since the early 1990s, he has been a professor of languages and literature at Bard College.

Perhaps the fastest rising star on the African literary scene, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been hailed as the heir to Chinua Achebe. Adichie not only grew up in the same university town (Nsukka) as Achebe but in the very house he once lived in. Her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, won the 2005 Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book, and her follow-up, Half of a Yellow Sun, won the Orange Prize. She was named a MacArthur fellow in 2008.

José Eduardo Agualusa was born in Huambo, Angola, and works as a writer and journalist in Angola, Portugal, and Brazil. Of his numerous books, three novels—Creole, The Book of Chameleons, and My Father’s Wives—have been translated into English.

Writer and musician Mohammed Naseehu Ali is the son of an emir in Ghana. Ali chose to be educated in the United States, studying at the Interlochen Arts Academy and Bennington College. He has published one story collection, The Prophet of Zongo Street, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Doreen Baingana is the author of Tropical Fish: Stories Out of Entebbe, which won the Associated Writers and Writing Programs Award in Short Fiction and the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book, Africa Region. She holds an MFA from the University of Maryland and a law degree from Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. After working for several years in Washington, D.C., for the Voice of America, Baingana moved to Kampala and teaches there.

Aziz Chouaki was born in Algiers in 1951. His mother bought him a guitar at the age of ten and he learned to play the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendrix—music that was forbidden by the repressive Algerian regime. Playing in nightclubs and studying literature soon became his focus. When Islamic terrorism appeared in Algeria in the 1990s, he began to receive death threats and moved to France. The Star of Algiers is the first of his three novels written in French to be translated into English. He currently lives in Paris.

Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee is the idiosyncratic and reclusive author of twelve works of fiction, five nonfiction collections, and two volumes of memoirs. The novels The Life and Times of Michael K and Disgrace each won the Booker Prize (the commonwealth’s most prestigious literary award), though Coetzee did not attend the award ceremonies. He did, however, attend the Nobel award ceremonies, where he gave an acceptance speech about the nature of duck calls. Coetzee received a PhD in linguistics from the University of Texas, but he was denied permanent residence in the United States because of his anti-Vietnam War protests. Although he is considered one of South Africa’s greatest living writers, since 2002 he has lived in Adelaide and in 2006 became a citizen of Australia.

Mia (António Emílio Leite) Couto, Mozambique’s foremost novelist, was active in his country’s mid-1970s revolution against colonial Portugal, and has gone on to become a literary hero of his liberated country. Couto’s most celebrated novel, Under the Frangipani, draws readers into the world of the dead to find spirits old and new wrestling over the soul of Mozambique. Formerly the director of the news agency AIM, Couto was also editor in chief of the newspapers Tiempo and Notícias de Maputo. In 1985 he resigned from these posts to study biology; he currently works as an environmental biologist at Limpopo Transfrontier Park.

Fatou Diome was born on the Senegalese island Niodior, where she was raised by her grandmother. She attended college in Dakar, supporting herself by working as a housekeeper. Diome moved to France in 1990 and has published two novels and a short story collection. She lives in Strasbourg, where she is completing a PhD.

Born in Dakar in 1951, Boubacar Boris Diop is a prolific author of novels, plays, screenplays, and political works. He founded the independent Senegalese newspaper Sol. After twelve works written in French, Diop wrote his latest novel in Wolof, the dominant language of Senegal.

Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah has said, “I have tried my best to keep my country alive by writing about it, and the reason is because nothing good comes out of a country until the artists of that country turn to writing about it in a truthful way.” Farah has lived in exile since 1976, when the Somalian government pronounced his second novel, The Naked Needle, treasonable. The author of more than a dozen works, including the novels Maps, Knots, and From a Crooked Rib, Farah currently resides in South Africa.

Nadine Gordimer was a founding member of the banned African National Congress and has been called “the conscience of South Africa.” For nearly half a century her epic novels and short stories have articulated the real-life ramifications of apartheid on the lives of ordinary men and women. She is the author of nineteen story collections, as well as numerous novels, essay collections, and memoirs, winning many awards, including the Booker Prize. Despite her international fame, the South African government still banned her novels Burger’s Daughter and July’s People. When Gordimer received the Nobel Prize in 1991, Nelson Mandela still did not have the right to vote.

Helon Habila credits E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel for spurring him back to school and writing. In 2001 Habila won the Caine Prize for African Writing for a selection from his first novel, Waiting for an Angel, as well as the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Due to a lack of publishing venues in Nigeria at the time, Habila, like many other authors, had to self-publish his novel. Since then he has achieved international success and published a second novel, Measuring Time. He currently teaches at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Laila Lalami was born and raised in Morocco. She earned her BA in English from Université Mohammed V in Rabat; her MA from University College, London; and her PhD in linguistics from the University of Southern California. Her highly acclaimed debut story collection, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, was published in 2005, and her first novel, Secret Son, was published in early 2009. She currently teaches at the University of California-Riverside.

Alain Mabanckou’s 2003 novel African Psycho, a comical and macabre take on a would-be Congolese serial killer, was the first of his seven novels to be translated into English (from his native French). Winner of the Prix Renaudot, France’s equal to the National Book Award, Mabanckou currently teaches Francophone literature at the University of California-Los Angeles.

Algerian Mohamed Magani is at the epicenter of the Maghrebian literary landscape, which is made up of North African nations and includes Morocco and Tunisia. In 1987 Magani won the prestigious Grand Prix Littéraire International de la Ville d’Alger for his novel La Faille du Ciel. While it is nearly impossible to get your hands on hard copies of his and other Maghreb authors, excellent translations can be accessed online, courtesy of the heroic efforts of Words Without Borders (www.wordswithoutborders.org).

Zakes Mda is the pen name of Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mdais. The author of numerous plays and five novels, including The Whale Caller and The Madonna of Excelsior, Mda has a PhD from the University of Cape Town and teaches at the University of Ohio.

Niq Mhlongo was born Murhandziwa Nicholas Mhlongo in Midway-Chiawelo Soweto, South Africa, in 1973, the eighth of ten children. His parents sent him to the Limpopo Province to escape violence and get an education. Despite the chaos and school closings surrounding Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, Mhlongo managed to graduate from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. After Tears is his follow-up novel to the cult classic Dog Eat Dog. Mhlongo now works as a writer and journalist in Soweto.

Patrice Nganang was born in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in 1970, and holds a PhD from Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. Poet, novelist, and scholar, he is regarded as one of the most promising young Francophone writers, and has won several French awards, including the Prix Marguerite Yourcenar and the Grand Prix Littéraire de l’Afrique Noire. His novel Dog Days has been translated into English. Nganang is a resident of Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at Stony Brook University.

Considered one of the leading contemporary Afrikaans writers, Marlene van Niekerk was born in 1954, on the farm Tygerhoek near Caledon in the Western Cape, South Africa. A poet, playwright, and fiction writer, she is best known for Triomf, her graphic and controversial novel about a poor Afrikaner family in post-apartheid Johannesburg. She is a professor at the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch, Stellenbosch University, in South Africa.

Ondjaki was born in Luanda, Angola, in 1977, and attended university in Lisbon. He has exhibited as a painter, has worked as an actor, and has published five novels, two story collections, and a volume of poetry. His novels The Whistler and Good Morning Comrades have recently been translated into English.

E. C. Osondu worked in advertising in Lagos before receiving his MFA in fiction from Syracuse University in 2007. He teaches at Providence College in Rhode Island and is completing a story collection and novel.

Nawal El Saadawi is an Egyptian writer and psychiatrist. The author of more than two dozen award-winning novels, plays, and memoirs, she has been at the forefront of Arabic women’s rights. Her work has been banned, and she was sent into exile (for five years), arrested by the Anwar Sadat government, and included on various assassination lists of terrorist organizations. She has also served as Secretary General of the Egyptian Medical Association, and ran for president in 2004. Saadawi lives in Cairo.

Never one to cast a blind eye at government corruption, the prolific Kenyan writer Ngūgī wa Thiong’o’s 1977 play I Will Marry When I Want earned him a prison cell, in which he penned an entire novel, Devil on the Cross, on toilet paper, and also stopped writing in English, switching to the Niger-Congo language Kikuyu, or Gīkūyū. As much a novelist and an intellectual as a social activist, Thiong’o is also a playwright, journalist, editor, and academic. The recipient of seven honorary doctorates, Thiong’o is currently the Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California-Irvine.

Zimbabwean Yvonne Vera was part of the vanguard of writers addressing the varied and complex roles of women in contemporary African society. From former Southern Rhodesia, she received a PhD from York University in Toronto before moving back to her hometown to become the director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo. The author of the short story collection Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals and five novels, including Butterfly Burning, Vera sadly succumbed to AIDS in 2005 at the age of forty. “I am against silence. The books I write try to undo the silent posture African women have endured over so many decades.”

The South African novelist and short story writer Ivan Vladislavic’’s most recent book is Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked, a series of 138 nonfiction portraits of his hometown, a widely praised portrait that won the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award for Nonfiction. Vladislavic’ works as an editor and writer in Johannesburg.

Abdourahman A. Waberi has written nine works of fiction, two of which—The Land Without Shadows and The United States of Africa—have been translated into English. From Djibouti, which gained its independence from France in 1977, Waberi came to France when he was twenty-one, and now teaches English in the French city of Caen.

Binyavanga Wainaina is the firebrand editor of Kwani, a young Nairobi-based literary magazine at the heart of the burgeoning Kenyan literary scene. He won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2002, and his memoir, Discovering Home, is due out from Graywolf Press in late 2009. Wainaina’s stingingly smart satire “How to Write About Africa,” originally published in Granta, has become a touchstone for young African writers.

1

It is important to note that the word “Bamileké” does not exist in any of the languages of the groups who are designated by it, and thus it is not a designation intrinsic to the groups thus identified.

2

L. S. Senghor, “Comme les lamantins vont boire à la source,” in Poèmes (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1974), pp. 165-66.

3

R. Ellison, The Collected Essays (New York: John Callahan, 1995), p. 185.

4

M. Beti, “Conseils à un jeune écrivain francophone ou les quarter premiers paradoxes de la francophonie ordinaire,” dans Africains, si vous parliez. Homnispheres, 2005, 0.112.

5

Trans. A rank of professor in the French university system.

6

W. Soyinka, Myth, Literature and the African World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 135.

7

Ibid.

8

On the relationship between “negritudé” and “ivoirité” see U. Amoa, “Libre opinion—Lettre ouverte aux ivoiriens: Vive le changement . . . attention aux changements!” in L’Inter, Abidjan, January 3, 2000.

9

L. Borne, cited in V. Zmegac, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Koenigstein: Athenaeum Vg., 1984), p. 283.

10

A. Ricard, La Formule Bardey. Voyages africains (Bordeaux: Confluences, 2005), p. 196.

11

M. Beti, “Conseils à un jeune écrivain francophone,” op cit., p. 112.

12

L. S. Senghor, “L’Absente,” in Poèmes, op cit., p. 108.

13

Ngūgī wa Thiong’o, Decolonizing the Mind (London: J. Currey; Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya, 1986), p. vii.

14

“La France accusée de genocide,” in Mutations, Yaoundé, June 6, 2006 [www.quotidienmutations.net/mutations/32.php?subaction=showfull&id=1149568971&archive=&start_from=&ucat+32&].

15

A. Mbembe, “La France et l’Afrique: décoloniser sans s’auto-décoloniser,” in Le Messager, September 27, 2005 [www.lemessager.net/details_articles.php?code=109&code_art=8290].

16

“Cameroun: Lutte d’indépendance: les vétérans camerounais exigent des réparations,” in Le Messager, Douala, June 2, 2006 [http://fr.allafrica.com/stories/200606020628.html].

17

Trans. “Resistance movement,” here specifically that of ’56-70.

18

A. Mbembe, La Naissance du maquis dans le Sud-Cameroun, 1920-1960 (Paris: Karthala, 1996), p. 438.

19

Trans. “Nobody’s colony.” Slogan of the UPC before 1960. Note that many Cameroonians continue to write the name of the country with “K,” as in the German “Kamerun,” to mark this moment of rupture.

20

In English in the original—Translator’s note.

21

In English in the original—Translator’s note.

22

A Season in Paradise, trans. Rike Vaughan (New York: Persea Books, 1980), p. 156.

23

The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985), p. 280.

24

Return to Paradise (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993), pp. 31, 201, 214, 215. The book appeared in Dutch before it appeared in English. The Dutch text is considerably longer. Passages cut include reminiscences of bohemian life in the Cape Town of the 1950s and of Breytenbach’s travels in Africa.

25

Ibid., pp. 158, 160, 196.

26

Ibid., p. 123.

27

Ibid., p. 75.

28

Ibid., pp. 4, 27.

29

Ibid., p. 74.

30

Dog Heart: A Memoir (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), p. 180.

31

Ibid., p. 136.

32

Ibid., p. 145.

33

Ibid., p.60.

34

Ibid., p. 175.

35

Ibid., p. 1.

36

Ibid., p. 84.

37

The Memory of Birds in Times of Revolution (London: Faber, 1996), p. 105.