When the Sun Goes Down and other stories from Africa and beyond.

Contents
Introduction
The Guilt by Rayda Jacobs( South Africa)
When the Sun Goes Down by Goro wa Kamau( Kenya)
Leaving by Moyez G. Vassanji ( Tanzania)
The War of the Ears by Moses Isegawa ( Uganda)
The Mirror by Haruki Murakami (Japan)
Diamond Dust by Anita Desai ( India)
Arrested Development by Sandisile Tshuma ( Zimbabwe)
Sandra Street by Michael Anthony ( Trinidad)
Twilight Trek by Sefi Atta ( Nigeria)
I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen ( USA)
The Retraction by Stanley Onjezani Kenani ( Malawi)
The Bamboo Hut by Grace Ogot ( Kenya)
Tuesday Siesta by Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( Colombia)
Two Stories of a House by Leila Abouzeid ( Marocco)
Law of the Grazing Fields by Cyprian Ekwensi ( Nigeria)
White Hands by Jane Katjavivi ( Namibia)
INTRODUCTION
THE STORIES IN THIS ANTHOLOGY
Thematic Concerns
This anthology exposes the reader to exciting stories that are relevant to our time
and our concerns. Some of the themes handled are more specific while others are a
more enduring nature. For example, there are stories on HIV and AIDS,
emigration, gender relations, human peculiarities and ambitions, the environment,
human rights abuse, and corruption. The story “When the Sun Goes Down,” for
instance, dramatizes some of the attitudes, behavior and possible futures of people
infected with HIV. “Twilight Trek” portrays such a common occurrence in Africa
today as the emigration of Africans to the West lured by prospects of a better life,
which often remain unrealized.
This anthology also explores male and female interactions at this time when
societies are concerned about gender roles. “Two Stories of a House” and “The
Bamboo Hut” show some of the effects of traditional male dominance in
homesteads. However, “When the Sun Goes Down” and some aspects of “The
Bamboo Hut” illustrate the possibilities of understanding between the sexes.
There is a varied selection of settings among the stories. The African rural and
traditional social setting of “The Bamboo Hut” and “Law of the Grazing Fields,”
demonstrate how setting can determine theme. They portray the way traditional
values often clash with the rapid change of values in modern times. Similarly, a
story like “Arrested Development,” which is set in modern, urban Africa, portrays
the reality of chaotic transportation, corruption and expedience arising out of
economic and social confusion. The story clearly articulates the extent to which
corruption undermines development and affirms the need for social order as well
as personal honesty and integrity.
The stories “Tuesday Siesta” and “Sandra Street” are examples of how descriptions
of settings, even of countries outside Africa, can draw us into the themes with
which those stories are linked. At the time when the world is reeling from global
warming and environmental degradation, “Tuesday Siesta” and “Sandra Street”
bring to focus the repercussions of neglecting one’s environment. It has been said
that nature can be extremely unforgiving and the sweltering heat and the need to
take a siesta as depicted in the stories attest to that statement. The need to give
environmental concerns more attention, therefore, cannot be underestimated.
“The War of the Ears” brings to focus the concerns about the emergence of militia
groups and illegal gangs and the recruitment of child soldiers, which has become
prevalent in many parts of Africa. Indeed this story uncovers the dehumanizing and
selfish acts of those perpetrating violence. It also exposes the fear that people face
when society is riddled with insecurity.
The Guilt by Rayda Jacobs ( South Africa)
Lilian Thurgood was busy picking guavas at the side of the house when she heard
the growling of the Alsatians on the stoep. Just a low growl telling her that
someone had stopped at the gate. Perhaps it was the postman, she thought,
dropping something into her box. She looked about her for a moment. They were
at the end of winter, the morning fresh with the footprints of rain. She marveled at
the brightly coloured new tips of trees, the pots of purple and pink geraniums with
cellophane drops glistening on the leaves, the cluster of basil and oregano
sprouting near the lemon tree. She liked the mornings, when God’s breath was hot
on the earth and steam rose from it in easy surrender. Then she heard the growling
again. Still low, but more intense. Someone had stopped at the gate and was not
going away. She put down the basket with the guavas, and reached for her cane.
She reached the front of the house and saw Tembi and Tor like sentinels at the
gate. Fierce and powerful dogs, they had been trained by her late husband to follow
specific commands. It was the man’s calmness that held them back.
“Can I help you?” Lilian asked.
“I am looking for work, madam.”
“I don’t have any work.”
He reached into a brown envelope and lifted out a plastic wrapped sheet of paper.
“I am from the Transkei, madam. I have here a letter.” Lilian Thurgood looked at
him. He was young, persistent, wore dark pants and a jacket that had seen darning
and letting out, but was clean. She had seen these letters before, but took it from
him anyway. As she suspected, a letter on a home- made letterhead- the paper
dirty, water- stained, dog-eared- saying William Sidlay was collecting donations
on behalf of some organization. The man was doubly prepared. If he could not find
work, he would ask for a handout. The letter made it easier to beg. She handed the
letter back through the grill of the gate. The gate was locked, the wall round the
property ten feet high.
“Wait here,” she said.
“Thank you, madam.”
Lilian left him at the gate and started to walk to the house, listening to the renewed
growls of the dogs.
In the house, she looked for change in her purse. She knew it was a mistake. She
should have been hardened by now. Every day people knocked on her door for
food, old clothes, money, and work. Most days she did not answer. They took
merciless advantage, especially since the new government. There was a boldness
not seen before.
She remembered the African woman who had knocked at her door one night at
nine. Lilian did not want to go out. It was raining, a long walk to the gate, but there
was the woman, with a child on her back and one at her side. Did the madam have
garbage bags, she called. An unusual request, especially at that time of night. And
Lilian could not see well in the dark. What if there was a second person waiting
behind the wall with a knife or a gun? The papers were full of stories of people
getting killed in their own gardens and houses, and she had heard of husband- and-
wife crime waves.
She went to the gate. There was no one but the woman and her children, but it
irked her that she should be afraid in her own home, that they thought it all right to
knock on your door any time of the day or night. Was it racist if you were afraid
and did not want to open your door to strangers? But, of course, she knew what it
was. It was making good on the guilt, the guilt they were accused of having. As
benefactors of the old regime, whites were shot through with guilt. And where
there was guilt there was opportunity. Like the woman who saw her sit on the
stoep the other day and begged Lilian to buy four geranium plants for two rand.
Her garden was overcrowded with flowers, but the woman insisted. If the madam
would buy eight plants for four rand, she would even plant them. Lilian had felt
sorry for the woman and opened the gate. The woman threw herself to the ground
with her grocery bags in which she kept the plants individually wrapped in wet
newspaper, and asked for water so she could wet the ground. Lilian went round the
side of the house for the hose and when she returned, there was the woman with
thirty plants in the soil. How she had managed to plant so many in a few minutes,
Lilian did not know. “Please madam,” the woman begged, “it’s almost five
o’clock. I karn go home with these last few plants. Madam won’t regret it, madam
will see. I’ll even give madam a special price, twelve rand.” Lilian gave the woman
the twelve rand.
Then was the man who had rung persistently at her gate, and when Lilian came
out, he asked for money for the bus as he did not know how he was going to get
home. When Lilian told him she had no money, he asked for clothes, and when she
said she had none, he asked for food. But not brown bread, he added. Could he
please have a tin of fish?
Lilian’s thoughts returned to the young man waiting at the gate, and she fished
around in her purse for loose change. There was only a five- rand coin and twenty-
three cents. Five rand was a lot of money for a pensioner to give away, but she
could not give him twenty- three cents. What could a grown man do with twenty-
three cents? He could not even buy a cigarette. She was suddenly angry. Angry
that she should be standing there examining her conscience. That she should feel
guilt for his circumstances, and shame for the forged letter in his hand, for having
to beg, for raising these emotions in her. She was a pensioner. What money did she
have? If her husband had been alive, he would have ordered the man off the
grounds. Lilian went outside and found him still at the gate trying to be friendly to
the dogs. She gave him the five- rand coin. He took the money, and then
vigorously nodded his head.
“I can’t take this five rand.”
“What do you mean?” Lilian asked, not understanding him.
“I can’t just take madam’s five rand. Let me do some work for it.
I see madam has many leaves from the trees on the grass. I can clean it up for
madam. I want to work for it.” “It’s all right. Take it. It’s a donation, isn’t it?”
“Yes, madam, but it’s five rand. I can clean madam’s garden.”
“It’s quite all right. Please.”
“No, madam, I insist. Look over there, look at all those leaves.”
Lilian looked at the carpet of leaves covering half of the garden. She did not have
the stamina to argue. “All right,” she said, knowing herself to be foolish to open
the gate. William stepped in, and the dogs moved forward, pink tongues idling in
readiness. Lilian made a signal and they relaxed.
“Your name is William?” she remembered the name on the letter.
“Yes, madam.”
“William, just those leaves over there.”
“Does madam think I’m a skelm? That I want money for nothing? Those leaves are
not even two rand.”
“Well, just do five rand’s worth, then. Really, you don’t have to do anything. I
gave you the money. Just those leaves over there. I’ve got to go out in a few
minutes.”
“Don’t worry, madam. I’ll be finished now, now.”
Lilian remained at the gate and watched him remove his coat as if he was going to
tackle the whole garden. She knew that he knew she was not going anywhere, that
opening the gate was more a show of trust than a display of fearlessness.
The rake was under the guava tree and she watched him fetch it and sweep up the
fruit, sorting the good ones from the pile. He would take them, he said, if she had
no use for them. She said it was all right and watched him collect curled fig leaves
and other debris, and stuff them into the bin.
“That’s enough, William. Thank you. I really appreciate it.”
“No, madam.”
“Really, it’s all right. You’ve done enough.”
The telephone rang and Lilian excused herself. The dogs followed her into the
house. She would not lock the door behind her, she told herself. She trusted him.
She would show him that she did. She would not make him feel like a criminal.
Black people knew that white people were afraid of them. She would show by her
actions that she was not one of them. But what if she was wrong? What if he came
in after her into the house? The old revolver was in a box at the back of the
wardrobe, she would not even know what to do with it. Lilian reached the phone,
but the caller had hung up. She became aware of the pulse. Racing. Frantic. She
stood for a minute to calm down. She turned. William was at the door.
“Madam?” he said nervously.
“Yes?”
“I’ve raked the leaves and cleaned up the guavas.”
“Thank you, William. I’ll unlock the gate for you now.”
“I’ve worked one hour, madam. That’s ten rand.”
The effrontery shocked her, but lasted only seconds. Lilian did something with her
hand, and the dogs rose. “I’ll ask my husband for the money,” she said.
“There’s no husband, madam,” he said in a calm voice. “Madam lives alone.
Why’s madam so afraid? I’m not a thief. Madam will give me the money?”
Lilian’s purse was on the mantelpiece and she reached for it. In front of him she
took out a ten- rand note. The tone of his voice had changed, and somewhere deep
inside her, she felt a terrible chill. She was painfully aware that the only thing
between her safety and his will, was the dogs.
“I only have this ten- rand note. You can give me back the five rand I gave you.”
“Madam wants change? I thought the five rand was a donation. Madam owes me
ten rand for the work I did.” Lilian looked at him. The smile on his face told her
that he thought her a stupid old woman. That she had no choice. Still, she could not
get herself to give him the money. “Leave my house, please,” she said.
“The ten rand, madam.”
“Now, or I’ll call the police.”
He came forward.
“Sa!” Lilian commanded the dogs.
The bitches leapt- Tembi at William’s wrist, Tor at his collar- and knocked him to
the floor. William screamed at the top of his lungs as the dogs ripped at his clothes
and nipped with their sharp teeth at his hands and arms.
Lilian looked at him squirming under the canines. The Alsatians had their snapping
mouths dangerously close to his face, slopping saliva all over him. They would
terrorize, but not draw blood, not until the other command. Lilian had never had to
try that out on them yet. She did not know what the dogs might do if she gave the
last signal.
“Please, madam, please!” William shouted. “I’ll leave!”
Lilian left him struggling under the dogs and went to her bedroom. In the
wardrobe, she found the little brown box behind Jock’s army paraphernalia, and
drew out the revolver wrapped in a piece of green felt. It was heavy , smooth, and
she stroked it with her fingers, strangely calmed, aware of the screams in the front
room. She could not remember whether Jock had said it was the revolver or a
pistol that had a safety catch, and could not remember how to check if the chamber
was loaded. There were no bullets in the box. Gripping her hand tightly about the
weapon, she limped out. There was a tremendous surge of something pumping
through her veins. She was not Lilian Thurgood. She was a woman possessed of
only one thought: to come out of the situation alive. In that moment she understood
that it took very little to pull a trigger, and that the distance between rational
thought and insanity was no distance at all.
“The law says I can shoot if you trespass on my property,” she pointed the gun
down at him.
William’s eyes danced around in his head like cherries in a slot machine. His
jacket was in shreds, the front of his shirt and face wet with snot and dog spit.”
“Please, Madam,” he begged, “don’t shoot!”
She tightened her finger on the trigger.
“It would be good for some old woman who’s afraid to sleep with her windows
open, to read what I’ve done.”
“No, Madam!!”
Lilian Thurgood loomed over him. She could not separate fear from insanity, her
trigger finger acting independently of her thoughts. For a few seconds she felt
trapped in a vacuum and could not move. The moment passed and she stared down
at the gun trembling in her hand. She snapped a command, and the dogs took their
paws off his chest.
“Get up, and put the five rand I gave you on the table,” she said
William struggled up on his feet. He felt his jacket, but there was no pocket left.
“It’s in your pants,” Lilian said.
He slipped his hand into his trousers and took out a handful of silver.
“Just what is mine. Put it on the table.”
William did as he was told.
“Now walk backwards out the door so I don’t have to shoot you in the back.”
With the dogs nipping at his knees, William reversed gingerly out the door,
tiptoeing backwards down the stone path to the gate. Lilian had the gun pointed at
him the whole time, her eyes never leaving his face.
“I’m going to report you to the police, William. I’m going to give them your
description and tell them about the scar under your left ear, about the letter you
walk around with, about your evil little scheme to get yourself on someone’s
premises. I’m going to report you not because I think they’re going to catch you,
but because I’m going to shoot you if you come here again.”
Lilian unlocked the gate and watched him edge nervously out. William was wide-
eyed, still expecting her to pull the trigger. Without a backward glance, he ran
down to the main road where he turned the corner and vanished from sight.
Lilian Thurgood stood very still. Her heart was racing, but the pain in her leg had
disappeared. She was stunned. She could not believe what had just happened. A
flash of madness. That was the only way she could describe it. She could not
believe that it had happened to her, an old woman minding her own business. In
sixty- six years, she and Jock had experienced nothing like this. Her hand shook
and she put her left hand over her right to still the trembling. She would not think
about it. She could not. It would finish her to dwell on what might have happened
without the dogs or the gun. What might have happened if she had been forced to
pull the trigger.
She took a deep breath, then went inside, forgetting all about the basket of guavas
sitting under the tree. She did not immediately put away the gun, and did not rush
to the medicine chest for one of her pills. She made a cup of okra tea and sat down
at the kitchen table listening to the laughter and shouting of the children in the
school yard across the road. The voices were reassuring. They told her that there
was life outside the ten- foot walls, that there was hope.
At three that afternoon, Margaret and Ruth and Ethel May came over to play
bridge and commented on the high colour in her cheeks. Lilian said she had been
raking up the leaves. That night in bed, the gun in its new place under the pillow
where Jock’s head used to be, she cried softly into her hands.
Understanding and appreciating the story
1. What is Lilian Thurgood doing when she hears the dogs growl?
2. What happens when Lilian goes to the gate?
3. How would you describe Lilian’s feelings as she takes and reads the letter
she is given?
4. What shows that the letter is not genuine?
5. “…especially since the new government…” What new government is the
narrator referring to and how has it changed the behavior of Africans?
6. Why is Lilian reluctant to give William her five-rand coin?
 7. How does her humane nature work against her?
8. “I am not a thief.” Do you agree with William’s assessment of himself?
Why?
9. What thoughts and feelings do you experience as you read about Lilian’s
encounter with William, and with the woman who sells her flowers?
10. Basing your judgement on Lilian’s thoughts and feelings as she deals with
Africans who come to her compound, what kind of a person do think she is?

Discussion questions
1. Describe an experience either in your life or the life of somebody you
know where someone took advantage of you or them.
2. What do you think the community should do to reduce instances of
deception?
3. Do you think the wide economic gap is to blame for the cases of
deception and hypocrisy found in our society today, or are there any
other reasons?
4. Discuss the relevance of the title to the story.

WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN BY GORO WA KAMAU( KENYA)

Steve was aware of the people's eyes on him as he passed. They
stood on the verandas of the little shops with peeling paint and
pretended to be engrossed in their chitchat but he could feel the
piercing gaze of their eyes like so many fires on his body. But he
did not care; by God he did not give a hoot. They could stare till
Thy Kingdom Come, the hypocrites! He kept his eyes on the
uneven path by the shoulder of the tarmac road on which he had
plied for years as a matatu driver. Matatus flew past in both
directions going to Murang'a or going to Kangema.
" Wakini, age—mate!"
The salute drew Steve's attention. "Oh, yes age-mate!" he said,
knowing that must be Kanja, his friend since boyhood.
"How are you, Son of my Mother?" Kanja asked.
As he always did these days, Steve scanned his friend's eyes for
any hint of mischief. Kanja's inquiry seemed genuine enough and
 Steve was glad he could count at least on one real friend. One real
friend — he marvelled at the thought. From a struggling open air
mechanic with hardly any friends to a successful entrepreneur
running a chain of matatus trying to jostle between the demands
of family, business and crowds of friends. He had come down to
this: one genuine friend.
How the world shrinks!
"I am OK — or so I tell myself," Steve said.

"And how is the One-We-Never-Call-By-Her-Name?

You remember the song, brother?"

Steve started to sing:

My mother I will never call her by name
I will never insult her
I will call her the
seer who saw for
me My second
God!
"She is as fine as can be, given the years," Steve enthused. The
two men fell in step. Above them the noon sun rode high, casting
their stunted shadows at their feet. The last block of shops stood
out. It was a one-storey building and newly painted. “You must
have heard I bought this building,” Steve said. "Yes, I've heard
many other things besides," Kanja replied. “I am sure of that,”
Steve said turning the key and throwing the door open. "In this
village, nothing passes unspoken. People just can't mind their own
business." There was a tinge of anger in his voice.
"Come in age-mate and tell me just what you've heard." They sat
behind the counter. "So what have you heard?" he demanded
almost immediately.
Kanja had actually expected to discuss the rumours that were
going around the village about his friend. After many days of soul
searching, he had decided to approach and coax Steve into telling
him with his own mouth what he was up to. That is what age-
mates were for but he had not expected his friend to be so
forthcoming. He was caught off— guard. Still, he quickly
 composed himself and said: "I hear you plan on marrying
Maureen.
"Marry?" Steve spats. After a while he went on: "Well, maybe someday.
In truth, Steve had asked Maureen to marry him. At first, she had
refused saying she was too old for him and she had baggage from
her first marriage. But after Steve had assured her he was ready
to love her and her children as if they were his own blood, she had
gradually begun to think it possible. Then she learnt she had the
virus that causes AIDS and said this could never be. Steve had
been deeply hurt. Still, he vowed he would never abandon her.

They would beat this thing together. But he could not explain all
this to Kanja. What did it matter, anyway?
"Then what is going on between the two of you?' "Ask the ones
who told you I am marrying.
"I want to hear from you," Kanja declared.
"Are you sure you want to hear?"
"1 would not have asked."
"Well," Steve stared at the ceiling for a while, "you know me
better than most. Ever since we came of age, life has just been one
long struggle. Family; business, friends. All drudgery and what
do you get in return? It is Maureen who lit the sun in my life and
made me realise that all this is vanity.
Like chasing after the wind . . . She's my friend," Steve 'asserted
almost defiantly.
"Just that? I also hear you are the father of her son," Kanja
persisted.
"Tragedy is when children are made by people who are
not friends," Steve asserted. "So it is true?"
"What?"
"You are the father?"
"Ask me another."
For a while, an awkward silence hung between the two men,
threatening to cloud the light of friendship.
"I don't blame you. Maureen is sure a smashing beauty," Kanja
smiled to break the clouds. "I don't know what you mean. I used
to think so too but what is beauty? Just a good figure? But I ask
again. What is beauty?" The silence fell again. Then Steve went
on: "I will tell you. Beauty is the promise of happiness. For so
long, I was unhappy. Then one morning at sunrise, I remember
the day all too well, I met Maureen. She was new in this village.
I was driving to Murang'a and she sat in front with me. We did
not talk much but something passed between us. That promise —
the promise of happiness. It was there in her generous smile, her
bellyful of open and cascading laughter. Later in Murang'a town
as I waited for my matatu to fill, we had a cup of tea and talked a
little. She had been married by a soldier who was always accusing
her of unfaithfulness, though she knew for sure he kept a mistress.
Sometimes when he came home, he would batter and leave her
for dead for smiling and laughing with men, he said. Still not
wanting to break her family, she held onto her marriage and
prayed that God would stop her husband's wayward ways. One
day, the man came home ill. The doctor said it was pneumonia.
The drugs didn't seem to work and the man was reluctant to seek
further treatment. Then he closed his eyes and willed himself
dead. When they tried to wake him up, he was dead. Just like that
— a very unsoldierly way to die if you ask me, It was a long and
touching story of a woman's love and commitment that seemed to
fill an emptiness that I had not even suspected existed in my soul.
I could have traded my matatus for just that one cup of tea with
that woman — I swear, age—mate!"
"I am afraid you've done so already," Kanja said cautiously.
"I said it is a long story. But it is also a simple story no matter
what riveting turns and you — I mean people here, try to give it.
But I maintain you do not yet live until you reserve the right to
make your own story. It is not family, money, or even friends who
will tell your story. Even if you died, your family and friends can
only tell the story you made for yourself and, age-mate, you don't
make a story worth telling unless you truly lived!" A wan smile
played on Steve's lips as if daring his friend to contradict his
assertions.
"I see," Kanja said meaninglessly.
"You've seen nothing yet. Cowards do not make stories and you,
my friend, are a great one," Steve charged. "Want to know why I
say that?" Kanja shook his head affirmatively.
"Be-because here you are," Steve's voice was laden with emotion,
"an old good friend going on about things you've heard, about me,
mind you, and not having the guts to speak the one main thing
that you've heard — because nobody knows you all suspect and
then create stories and pass them around. But nobody knows for
sure. Yet you do not have the courage to ask me: age-mate, is it
true that your friend Maureen, has AIDS? Instead, you sit here
and like all god —forsaken hypocrites go on about what a
smashing beauty Maureen leave is and you, like all the other
frauds in this village, have absolutely no idea what beauty is all
about. Tragedy is friendship that wears the rayed cloak of
hypocrisy! That's how they hanged Jesus, you know. I am no man
Christ though, but you can crucify me if you want. I do not give
a didn't hoot one way or the other." "I'm sorry brother, I actually
meant to ask," Kanja said to apologetically.

"OK, brother. Ask. I'm afraid I lost my cool," Steve

threw the gauntlet.
"So is it true?"
"Why are you afraid of speaking the word?" Steve smiled. "And
is it not a four- letter word anyway? So why are you afraid?"
"OK, age-mate. So is it true Maureen has AIDS?"
"That is good. You will be surprised that when we put names
give to our fears, they are not as threatening as they appeared at
first.
Besides, it is not like you've anything to fear yourself. The last
time I who knew, you were a hallelujah, drum-beating Christian
in the House of 1 only Miracle Tabernacle. AIDS is not for the
heaven-bound, you know." make The sarcasm hit Kanja like a
blow, making him grimace. . ..but here d on we go: yes it is true.
Maureen has AIDS," Steve affirmed.
Oh! Kanja thought almost audibly. He remembered the first day
he met Maureen and how enamoured he had been of her you,
easy-going manner. She had politely turned down his advances.
Hurt, Kanja had avoided her and hoped she would keep her mouth
shut. But now he saw the hand of God in what had happened. He
visualised himself carrying the virus in his body and people
talking behind his back and shuddered. Steve was right. He,
Kanja, was a me, coward. He would rather hang himself than have
the whole village that back-biting him. He looked at his friend.
Did Steve also have the then big disease with a small name? All
this time, Steve held Kanja's eyes in his gaze, a bemused
expression on his face. He thinks that God loves him more
because he is not ill. But how he even knows, the fool, Steve
thought. He smiled wanly and said, "So now you know, from the
horse's own mouth, as they say. Spread the gospel."
"Thank you for confiding in me. I appreciate," Kanja said.
"I'm not confiding. Please pass on the word. I am tired of all the
rumours and ignorant innuendos. Can I count on you seeing that
you are a good, old friend?"
Kanja hesitated, unsure of what to say. Suddenly, Steve rose up.
"Come with me," he said leading the way through the back door.
They went down a flight of stairs. Walking past rooms that
opened on a long veranda, Steve pushed open a door at the far end
of the compound. "After you, agemate," he said ushering his
friend into a suite of immaculately kept rooms. Kanja sat on the
sofa and savoured the ambience while Steve went into one of the
rooms. He came back accompanied by Maureen, her three-year-
old son in tow, tugging at her skirt. The smile was still there but
the woman looked somewhat weary. The little boy went and sat
on his father's lap. "Maureen, I wanted you to meet one of my old,
boyhood friends. Kanja and I ate the knife on the same day on the
banks of River Mukungai," Steve said sitting beside his friend.
"Oh, Mr. Kanja. I know him but I didn't know that bit about the
knife," Maureen beamed.
"You know him?" Steve asked.
"Of course.Kanja is among the first people I got to know when I
came to this market. In fact, we could have been friends.
Unfortunately, he wanted discretion. And I did not want to live in
the shadows."
"I didn't know that bit either!" Steve exclaimed and started
laughing. "In the shadows . . .," he said between bursts of mirth.
"In the shadows," he repeated, savouring the words as if they held
the key to the complexities of life. "So many of us are used to the
shadows that when you dare to stand in the light of day, people
behave as if you're the one in the wrong!" he said.
Maureen stole a glance at Kanja. The poor man was fidgeting
and sweating. She rose and opened the window. She served
several glasses of fruit juice and passed them round. Kanja held
the glass cautiously, his fingers shaking like an alcoholic's.
"Welcome Kanja. It is great to have you visit," she said.
"Kanja has no idea how good it was for him to come. When you
are suffering from AIDS, one good friend is all you need to make
life less suffocating. A person is only a person through other
persons, Steve observed.
"You too? Suffering from AIDS?" Kanja breathed the one
question he had been afraid to ask. He sounded perplexed.
Steve smiled vaguely. But before he could speak, Maureen
weighed in. The story, she seemed to suggest, was hers to tell. "I
remember I had gone for a routine prenatal check when the doctor
broke the news. When I was diagnosed with AIDS, I had only one
prayer. In that moment when the sun seemed to set on my life, I
prayed that my unborn child be free of the virus. I prayed that
somehow Steve would be free of the virus too. Oh, how intently I
prayed. When my son was born and he turned out negative, my
night suddenly went ablaze with a thousand stars. But there was
one problem. Steve would not take the test. When he finally
acquiesced, he was positive. I was devastated. My stars waned . .
.
Steve knew the signs all too well. The clouds were gathering and
soon there would be a storm, a deluge, he knew. He did not like
the way she spoke. Her earnestness sounded almost unnatural.
And why must she try to sanitise him?
"I have forbidden you to blame yourself for anything!" Steve
growled.
"Oh, you don't know how it feels seeing you suffer and knowing
that I brought this pestilence on you. But I swear I have been a
faithful woman. I was faithful to my husband. I was faithful to
you, Steve . . .," her voice broke and she burst into tears.
"Listen Maureen," Steve spoke with a tenderness that surprised
Kanja. A strange light played in his eyes. "Never cry
when the sun goes down for if you do, the tears
will not let you see the stars," he pleaded.
She heaved and gasped painfully, trying to get hold of her
emotions. Finally, she wiped her tears and looked at her son,
playing innocently on his father's lap. She had two daughters from
her first marriage but this boy, the fruit of the only true love she
had ever known in her thirty and five years under the sun, was the
crown of her life. Still, a fear tugged at her heart leaving her belly
feeling an airy hollowness. Would she live to see him grow up
into a man? And if she died, would Steve care for him or would
he let the boy to wander unloved, unwanted on the harsh streets
of life? Maureen had no doubt that Steve would live: he had the
will. She wished she too could summon up that kind of spirit. She
looked at Steve and their son again, the way a seer peers at the
contents of his diviner-gourd to read the secrets of life and she
smiled wearily These were her men. She could die but these two,
father and son, would always be together. Nothing could separate
them. She could see that in the way the boy sat and played so
snugly with his father, in the way Steve held him as if he would
never let go. It was such a perfect picture. Just as if the whole
world was just the two of them. Still, she wanted reassurance but
when she tried to speak, the-words would not form. Steve held
her eyes in his in that judicious manner of his and she knew he
knew what she wanted to ask. And the answer was in his eyes —
a more profound answer than any words could speak. In that
moment, Maureen felt strangely relaxed and her heart sang:
Ngûmbûkanyumethîî, Mageganiameekwothîî, matarîmekwo!
Yes, she would fly out of this world and wonders hitherto unseen
would be performed on earth ...
Maureen felt ready to fly.
Witnessing all this, Kanja felt like a fraud, like a sneak and an
eavesdropper — desecrating something sacred, He had not
touched his juice yet. The glass, nay the cup of suffering, was still
there on the table where he had put it. He kept glancing at it as if
the HIV virus was a genie he expected to any moment emerge
from the glass and strangle him to death. He wished for a miracle
that could remove the glass before him.
"I want more juice," the little boy said.
Steve took Kanja's glass, drank half the contents and then holding
the glass to the boy's lips let him drink the rest of the juice. The
boy smacked his lips contentedly.
"It is getting late," Kanja said, feeling very small. "I've got to get
going.
"I will see you off," Steve said.
The boy would not agree to be left behind. Steve held his hand
and together they walked Kanja out. Together as one, Maureen
thought watching father and son walk out. A perfect picture: let
the maddening crowds take it, frame it, and look at it from all
dimensions. Yes, let them bring one better, cleaner, holier picture
from the darkly shadows in which they lived! Long after Steve
and the boy had left, Maureen stood in the middle of the room
gazing at that picture in her mind. The beauty of it tugged
painfully at her heart and in spite of herself something gave way.
Warm tears flowed freely down her face. If only people were
more compassionate.
The sun was already dipping behind the Kianderi hills. "How time
flies!" Steve exclaimed when they came to the road. "Let's see
you again when the sun rises. "Yes, let's," Kanja said.
When he returned, Steve found Maureen coiled up in bed; a
picture of dejection. Her Bible, everpresent these days, open at
Psalms Twenty-Three. "What is it, Ma?" the little boy asked. He
tried to turn her over but Maureen buried her face in the pillows
and wept.
The boy started to cry. Maureen sat up and took him in her arms.
"You know why your friend did not drink the juice?" she asked
between her heart-wrenching cries.
"Yes, of course I know," Steve replied.
"Why are people so cruel?"
"No, Maureen. Normally, people do not mean to be cruel. Most
are just selfish and ignorant. It is normal, I think, to fear the
unknown.
"It hurts . . . when your age-mate comes to my house and refuses
to take what I serve him, it hurts," Maureen moaned.
"You must learn to ignore people like that. What they say, what
they do. What does it matter? Are they not the same people who
a while ago used to speak of how beautiful you are?
“They didn't mean it!" Maureen scowled like an angry cat.
"Of course, they didn't. Gûthekiotikwendwo, to be smiled at is not
to be loved. That's how the elders caution us. But do we listen?
No! The result? I will tell you. Dysfunctional, loveless families
that weigh like a millstone around our necks or we are condemned
to living shadowy, demeaning lives that turn the best among us
into mean and cruel monsters. I don't consider that living. And
verily, verily I say unto you: do not be deceived. Despite all the
pretences, not many people can say they have lived as happily as
we have lived these past three or so years. That is something. That
is everything. And we can still live if you always remember to
forget the things that make you sad, and remember to remember
the things that make you glad. Like our son, here. Let's always
count our blessings, dear.'
"You should have been a preacher," Maureen smiled.

Steve felt a strong craving for a cigarette. His lips and fingers
quivered. He looked longingly at the three cigarettes he had
stringed together and hung at the head of his bed the day the
doctor asked him to stop smoking. For a while, he struggled with
the temptation to reach out for one. "Actually, when I was young
I toyed with the idea of becoming a Catholic priest. My mother
discouraged me. I was her eldest child, you see, and when my
father passed on, I knew I had a duty to my ancestors to keep the
family name alive. That's why for me it is such a good thing that
Kimotho is free of the virus. When we are gone, he shall bring us
back you and me to earth through his own children. Do you realise
that in the next generation, we two shall be brother and sister?"
Maureen now laughed. This man, the things he spoke. "But you
don't know whether he shall have only sons or only daughters, or
even no children at all," she said.
"I am positive…”
"Of course, you are. The doctor said so," she interjected.
Steve laughed. He felt good. If she could joke about their status,
that was a good sign. There was hope. "It is not of that I speak.
That I accept. What I meant to say is that I am sure our son shall
have a son of his own, who as is customary, he shall name after
his father; and a daughter whom he shall name after his mother.
In our next life we shall be brother and sister! Don't you see
Maureen, today we may have no names in the street. For those
who know no better, the virus might be our first names but our
names, our remembrance shall never be erased from the face of
the earth!"
It was true, Maureen thought. The cycle of life of which Steve
spoke was so true. So comforting. Wasn't she herself the
reincarnation of her grandmother? Were these not the wonders to
be performed when she was gone? How had she forgotten such a
natural principle of life? The revelation was so uplifting. She
hugged Steve. "I will always love you — in this and the next life,"
she smiled and for a moment it was just like in the days when they
met. "Let me tell you something. One day, I will meet your mother
just to tell her what a wonderful man she managed to bring into
this world. You know, women don't bring forth boys like you
anymore."

In the corner, Steve put a record on the gramophone. In a while,

Kamarû's silky-smooth voice filled the house with wistful love
lyrics "Till Death Do Us Part." It was one of Steve's favourite
records. As he sang along, he marvelled at the power of love to
overcome:

My love
I love you like a ring on the finger
Or like my bedtime clothes
I love you like a mirror
directed towards the sun
Or like an orange in the
month of dryness...
The song held Steve in its spell. And it dawned on him how true
the words of the song were. The greatest is love. It was the only
sanctuary for those who suffered. Yet, what a short supply it was
in! He wished people would not horde love, the way businessmen
hid flour so that the price could go up. Always thinking about their
profits while across the country, hunger trailed the poor to their
beds. What selfishness! what cruelty! God, forgive them for they
know not what they do!
It was now dark. Steve stood at the window. A smattering of stars
was barely visible in the sky. He switched on the lights and
blinked against the sudden brightness that flooded the room.
Maureen was like the sun; the way the pendulum of her moods
swung these days, shining bright one moment and hiding behind
dark clouds in the next. Now she lay on the bed, the little boy
asleep in her arms, looking forlorn, woebegone.

Steve went to the kitchen and started preparing supper. As he fell

to work, he smiled to himself with a new remembrance.
According to the people, Steve's woman had bewitched him. See
how he goes shopping in the market, and I hear he even cooks for
her . . .. Now 6' what's that if not medicine? A man cooking for a
woman? That woman, she's ruined a fine man just so that she can
reach his money! Such talk used to enrage Steve. Now he just
savoured it indulgently, remembering many years ago when his
mother traded clay pots at the Murang'a market. He would help
her sometimes. But on many a day, he would be left at home to
take care of his sisters — washing for them, cooking for them. So
what was the big deal? Let those who must speak because they
have mouths to speak. Yes, let them talk.
The food was ready. Mweapishoriserved with kunde, lentils,
spinach and fried liver. The little boy gobbled up the food happily
but Maureen would not eat no matter how hard Steve tried to coax
her. It was a waste of good food, seeing that she was dying
anyway, she argued. "You can't hold your health if you don't eat,"
he pleaded.
"You just must eat and take your drugs every day.
"Oh Steve, you don't know how weary I am. I just wish to rest.
Steve tried to jostle with Maureen and managed to force some
food into her mouth. She gave in but after she had eaten just a few
spoonfuls, she started to gasp as if she would throw up. Nausea.
"l just wish to rest," she repeated.
Steve knew very well what she meant by rest. "l have told you
many times that you should banish thoughts of death from your
mind," he admonished.
"Knowing that every sun that sets brings me closer to the grave?"
"But it does that for everybody."
"Well, yes. Life is a fatal disease. But with AIDS coursing through
my veins, I am the living dead already," Maureen declared.
"That's the wrong way to look at it and you know it," Steve
retorted with a tinge of impatience. "Why is it when we agree that
we must fight this thing together, you keep on retracting? Why?"
"But I am just a woman you know. The mind agrees with you but
the spirit is weak," Maureen said.
"You insult yourself. You insult all womanhood. What on earth
do you mean, the mind is willing but the spirit is weak?" Steve
demanded. But maybe she was right, he mused, Maureen had
simply allowed the virus to kill her spirit to live. On second
thought, he concluded that this was not even true. This had
nothing to do with the fact that she was a woman. It had nothing
to do with the virus either. It had to do with her deep-seated sense
of guilt. The feeling that she was somehow responsible for his
illness. It was an idea that loose speaking mouths had so rooted in
her unconscious mind that it was always lying somewhere just
below the surface, ready to bubble up any moment at the least
excuse. Like a refrain in a dirge or a stuck gramophone record,
those idle words repeated themselves so regularly in her heart that
she too had come to believe them. That woman, she's ruined a fine
man just so that she can reach his money! No matter how much
you loved them, how did one uproot a thorny thicket that grew
inside another person's heart? Without Maureen, Steve knew that
there should be no sunshine in his world but for the first time ever,
he allowed himself to contemplate the terrible possibility of her
death.
"I was a faithful woman . . . faithful to my husband . . . faithful
to this other man, the only man who ever truly loved me and
treated mc like a woman should be treated. With love.Respect. I
was a faith-'
"Maureen, are you alright?" Steve asked, roused from his sleep by
her rumbling. He switched on the lights. Maureen coiled away to
the far end of the bed, her back against the wall and a dazed
expression on her face. She was trembling like somebody who
had just woken up from a nightmare.
A burst of panic sent spasms of fear cascading down Steve's spine.
Gently; he touched her brow. It was scalding hot. Was this the
moment he had dreaded?
Though I walk through the valley of death . . . thy rod and thy
staff ... comfort me!" Though she sounded coherent, Maureen's
eyes Steve had a glassy and empty look.
Steve jumped out of bed and started to dress. His mind was in a
turmoil.
"Thou prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies .
. .," Maureen mumbled on.
Steve shook her, trying to snap her out of her reverie. . my
cup overflows "Maureen! "1- I sha-lldwc-ll in the hous-e of
the Lo-r-d for ever!" She was losing coherence.
"No Maureen, please! Please don't leave me mama
Kimotho,” Steve cried. He held her in his arms and felt her go
limp as she lost consciousness. They say a man's tears flow into
his stomach — not to be seen. Steve felt his drip like rain drops.
He stormed out of the house to where he parked his pick-up truck
in the corner. It had been a long while since he used it but when
he turned the ignition, it started readily. He drove it up to his door.
He saw a neighbour peeping through the window and gestured to
him to come out. He was a young teacher at the local primary
school. "Tom, Maureen is very ill. I want to rush her to the
hospital. Please help me carry her into the truck."
"The truck cannot be comfortable if she is so
ill," Tom pointed out. "That's true but . . .."

"Mr Kabia's house is just behind the shops. I will see if he can
lend me his car," Tom explained and dashed off before Steve
could say anything. He came back almost immediately without
the car. Steve did not ask what had transpired. They carried
Maureen out and sat her in the front seat. She was limp and heavy
but her pulse was okay. The hospital was only twenty minutes
away and they arrived within no time. Steve explained what had
happened. "She is HIV-positive and of late she has refused to take
her drugs.'
"That's dangerous," the doctor said. He examined her for a while
and had her admitted right away. As the nurses wheeled her to the
ward, with Steve and Tom trotting beside them, Maureen regained
her consciousness.

"Steve dear . . . What's happening? Where are they taking me?"

Then realising that she was in hospital, she screamed. "Hospital!"
She spat out the word like a bitter pill. "I don't want to die in a
hospital, Steve.'

"You're not dying, Sister," one of the nurses said soothingly.

"I am dying . . . Why don't you just tell me I am dying!"
Even as she protested and pleaded with Steve not to leave her in
the hospital, the two nurses eased Maureen into a bed. When it
was obvious nobody was paying any heed to her protestations,
Maureen coiled up in bed in her familiar manner. "Steve, bring
your mother to see me. I've an important message for her. Please
do not fail." After that, she did not speak any other word — not
even to Steve.
The following morning, Steve was up early. After making
breakfast and feeding the boy he left him in Tom's house and went
to the hospital. He went to the ward. One of the nurses who had
attended to them the previous night was at the report desk. Was
she avoiding his eyes? With a sense of trepidation, Steve glanced
towards the bed in which Maureen had lain. It was empty.
'I'm so sorry, Steve," the nurse said. "Please come with me." He
followed her into a small office.
"She passed on at around four this morning," she informed him.
Steve was in a daze. Did pass on mean die? "How? Why?"
"Pneumonia," he heard the nurse speak from far, far away.
Opportunistic diseases, Steve thought. The doctor had warned that
those were the main threats to a person living with HIV and AIDS.
He felt as if his legs would give in under him. He sat down. A
bout of dizziness overwhelmed him. Around him everything went
dark.
They buried her within the week. A great many people turned up
that Saturday for the brief ceremony. Many stood in small groups
conversing in whispers. What will he do with the child now?
 Maybe Maureen's daughters will take care of him. You know, a
child once born is never thrown away.
Throughout the ceremony, Steve stood by the grave. He could feel
the hundreds of eyes drilling into him, but he did not mind. They
could stare till their eyes popped out. Soon the grave was a mound
with freshly planted flowers. The people retreated to the
perimeters of the farm, talking, whispering and staring.

Steve started looking around. Where was Kimotho? He saw the

boy leaning against a banana tree.
He walked towards him. "Boy!" he called when
he was within ear shot. "Time to go home,
Daddy." The boy came running.

Steve hoisted the boy up, like a flag, and sat him spread-eagled
across his shoulders. He could feel the tears dripping into his
stomach but he was determined that they should never flow down
his face. And in his sadness, the words he had always spoken to
Maureen in her moments of depression, now spoke to him with a
meaning so profound. When the sun goes down, do not cry
because the tears will not let you see the stars. Maureen might be
dead but she had left him with this boy, their son, to always
remind him of she who once lit up his life so brightly. As Steve
walked away, people cleared the way before him, and the boy
waved at them. Bye!

From When the Sun Goes Down by Gorowa Kamau from the
anthology When the Sun Goes Down and Other Stories from
Africa and Beyond. Edited by Emelia Ilieva and Waveney
Olembo. Nairobi:
Understanding and appreciating the story
1. Where is Steve when we meet him?
2. What change has occurred in Steve’s life?
3. In your own words, explain Steve’s understanding of beauty. How does it
differ from the common understanding of beauty?
4. What is Steve’s attitude towards those spreading rumours about his
condition?
5. Why does Steve consider Kanja a great coward?
6. Why do you think the author uses Maureen to explain how Steve contracted
HIV rather than let Steve himself do it?
7. Explain the difference between Maureen’s and Steve’s attitude towards their
HIV status.
8. Does Maureen die because she is infected with HIV? If not what do you
think kills her?
9. Contrast Steve’s attitude towards women with that of the society in general.
10. Why do you think Mr. Kabia refuse to lend his car to Steve?
11. In not form, discuss how we should treat those infected with, or affected by
HIV and AIDS.
12. Why do you think it is important to get tested for HIV?
13. Describe Tom’s characteristics. Why do you think Tom seems the only one
willing to assist Steve?
Discussion questions
1. “Love is a sanctuary for those suffering from HIV and AIDS and other
related illness.” In light of the events in the story and even from your
own experience, discuss this statement.
2. “A person is only a person through other persons.” What does this mean
in the context of the story?
3. One of the greatest challenges to HIV and AIDS is the issue of stigma.
How does this affect Maureen in the story and what can we do to
eliminate stigma in our society?

Leaving by Moyez G. Vassanji ( Tanzania)

Kichwele Street was now Uhuru Street. My two sisters had completed
school and got married and our mother missed them sometimes.
Mehroon, after a succession of wooers, had settled for a former opening
batsman of our school team and was in town. Ruzia was a wealthy
housewife in Tanga, the coastal town north of Dar. Firoz dropped out in
his last year at school, and everyone said that it was a wonder he had
reached that far. He was assistant bookkeeper at Oriental Emporium, and
brought home stationary sometimes.
Mother had placed her hopes on the youngest two of us, Aloo and me,
and she did not want us distracted by the chores that always needed doing
around the store. One evening she secured for the last time the half a
dozen assorted padlocks on the sturdy panelled doors and sold the store.
This was exactly one week after the wedding party had driven off with a
tearful Razia, leaving behind a distraught a mother in the stirred-up dust
of Uhuru Street.
We moved to the residential area of Upanda. After the bustle of Uhuru
Street our new neighbourhood seemed quiet. Instead of the racket of
buses, bicycles and cars on the road, we now heard the croaking of frogs
and the chirping of insects. Nights were haunting, lonely and desolate
and took some getting used to. Upanga Road emptied after seven in the
evening and the sidestreets became pitch dark, with no illumination.
Much of the area was as yet uninhabited and behind the housing
developments there were overgrown bushes, large, scary baobab trees,
and mango and coconut groves.
Sometimes in the evenings, when Mother felt sad, Aloo and I would play
two-three-five with her, a variation of whist for three people. I had
entered the university by then and came back at weekends. Aloo was in
his last year at school. He had turned out to be exceptionally bright in his
studies-more so than we realized. That year Mr Datoo, a former teacher
from our school who was also a former student, returned from America
for a visit. Mr Datoo had been a favourite with the boys. When he came
he received a tumultuous welcome? From the next few days he toured the
town like the Pied Piper followed by a horde of adulating students, one of
whom was Aloo. The exciting event inspired in Aloo the pope that not
only might he be admitted to an American university, but he could also
win a scholarship to go there. Throughout the rest of the year, therefore,
he wrote to numerous universities, culling their names from books at the
USIS, often simply at random or even only by the sounds of their names.
Mother’s response to all these efforts was to humour him. She would
smile. “Your uncles in America will pay thousands of shillings just to
send you to college," she would say. Evidently, she felt he was wasting
his time, but he would never be able to say that he did not have all the
support she could give him.
Responses to his enquiries started coming within weeks and a handful of
them were the better places, and which among them the truly famous.
Soon a few catalogues arrived, all looking impressive. It seemed that the
more involved he became with the application process, the more
tantalizing was the prospect of going to an American university. Even the
famous placed did not discourage him. He learnt of subjects he had never
heard of before: genetics, cosmology, artificial intelligence: a whole
universe was out there waiting for him if only he could reach it. He was
not sure if he could, if he was good enough. He suffered periods of
intense hope and hopeless despair. Of course, Aloo was entitled to a
place at the local university. At the end of the year, when the selections
were announced in the papers, his name was on the list. But some
bureaucratic hand, probably also corrupt, dealt out a future prospect for
him that came as a shock. He had applied to study medicine; he was
given a place in agriculture. An agriculture officer in a rural district
somewhere was not what he wanted to become however national parks
once on a school trip. When Aloo received a letter from the California
Institute of Technology offering him a place with a scholarship, he was
stupefied at first. He read and reread the letter, not believing what it
seemed to be saying, afraid that he might be reading something into it.
He asked me to read it for him. When he was convinced there was no
possibility of a mistake he became elated.
“The hell I’ll do agriculture!” he grinned. But first he had to
contend with Mother.
Mother was incredulous. “Go, go,” she said, “don’t you eat my
head, don’t tease me!”
“But it’s true!” he protested. “They’re giving me a
scholarship!”
We were at the table – the three of us – and had just poured tea from the
thermos. Mother sitting across me started at her saucer for a while then
she looked up.
“Is it true?” she asked me.
“Yes, it’s true,” I said. “All he needs is to take 400 dollars’ pocket
money with him.” “How many shillings would that make?” she
asked. “About three thousand”
“And how are we going to raise these three thousand shillings?
Have you bought a lottery? And what about the ticket? Are they going to
send you a ticket too?” As she said this Aloo’s prospects seemed to get
dimmer. She was right, it was not a little money that he needed.
“Can’t we raise a loan?” he asked. “I’ll work there. Yes, I’ll work as a
writer. A waiter! – I know you can do it; I’ll send the money back!”
“You may have uncles in America who would help you,” Mother told
him, “but no one here will.”
 Aloo’s shoulders sagged and he sat there toying with his cup, close to
tears. Mother sat drinking from her saucer and frowning. The evening
light came in from the window behind me and gave a glint to her
spectacles. Finally, she set her saucer down. She was angry.
“And why do you want to go away, so far from us? Is this what I raised
for you – so you could leave me to go away to a foreign place? Won’t
you miss us, where you want to go? Do we mean so little to you? If
something happens…”
Aloo was crying. A tear fell into his cup; his nose was running. “So
many kids go and return, and nothing happens to them… Why did you
mislead me, then? Why did you let me apply if you didn’t want to go…
Why did you raise my hopes if only to dash them? He had raised his
voice to her, the first time I saw him do it, and he was shaking.
He did not bring up the question again and he prepared himself for the
agricultural college, waiting for them to begin. At home he would slump
on the sofa putting away a novel a day.
If then unknown bureaucrat at the Ministry of Education had been less
arbitrary, Aloo would not have been so broken and Mother would not
have felt compelled to try and so something for him. A few days later, on
a Sunday morning, she looked up from her sewing machine and said to
the two of us: “Let’s go and show this letter to Mr Velji. He is
experienced in these matters.
Let’s take his advice.”
Mr Velji was a former administrator of our school. He had a large egg-
shaped head and a small compact with his large forehead and big black
spectacles he looked the caricature of archetypal wise man. He also had
the bearing of one. The three of us were settled in his sitting-room chairs
staring about us and waiting expectantly when he walked in stiffly, like a
toy soldier, to welcome us.
“How are you, sister?” he said. “What can I do for you?” “Aloo
and I stood up respectfully as he sat down.
“We have come to you for advice …,” Mother began.
“Speak, then,” he said jovially and sat back, joining his hands
behind his head.
She began by giving him her history. She told him which family she was
born in, which she had married into, how she had raised her kids when
our father died. Common relations were discovered between our families.
“Now this one here,” she pointed at me, “goes to university here, and that
one wants to go to America. Show him the documents,” she commanded
Aloo. As if with an effort, Aloo pushed himself out of the sofa and
slowly made his way to place the documents in Mr Velji’s hands. Before
he looked at them Mr Velji asked Aloo his result in the final exam.
At Aloo’s answer, his eyes widened. “Henh?” he said. “All A’s?”
“Yes,” replied Aloo, a little too meekly.
Mr Velji flipped the papers one by one, cursorily at first. Then he went
over them more carefully. He looked at the long visa form with the
carbon copies neatly bound behind the original; he read over the friendly
letter from the Foreign Student Adviser; he was charmed by the letters of
invitation from the fraternities. Finally, he looked up, a little humbled.
“The boy is right,” he said. “The university is good, and they are giving
him a bursary. I congratulate you.”
“But what should I do?” asked Mother anxiously. “What is your advice?
Tell us what we should do.”
“Well,” said Mr Velji, “it would be good for his education.” He raised his
hand to clear his throat. Then he said, a little slowly, “But if you send
him, you will lose your son. It’s a far place, America,” he concluded,
wiping his hands briskly at the finished business. “Now what will you
have – tea, orange squash?
His wife appeared magically to take orders.
“And the rich kids go every year and they are not lost,” muttered Aloo
bitterly as we walked back home. Mother was silent.
That night she was at the sewing machine and Aloo was on the cough,
reading. The radio was turned low and through the open front door a
gentle breeze blew in to cool the sitting room. I was standing at the door.
The banana tree and its offspring rustled outside, a car zoomed on the
road, throwing shadows on the neighbouring houses. A couple out for a
stroll, murmuring, came into sight over the uneven hedge, groups of boys
or girls chattered before dispersing for the night. The intermittent buzz of
an electric motor escaped from Mother’s sewing machine. It was a little
darker where she sat at the other end of the room from us.
Presently she looked up and said a little nonchalantly, “At least show me
what this university looks like – bring that book, will you?”
Mother had never seen the catalogue. She had always dismissed it, had
never shown the least bit of curiosity about the place Aloo wanted so
badly to visit. Now the three of us crowded around the glossy pages,
pausing at pictures of the neoclassic façades and domes, columns
towering over humans, students rushing about in a dither of activity,
classes held on lush lawns in ample shade. It all looked so awesome and
yet inviting.
“It’s something, isn’t it?” whispered Aloo, hardly able to hold back his
excitement. “They teach hundreds of courses there,” he said. “They send
rockets into space… to other worlds… to the moon –”
“If you go away to the moon, my son, what will become of me?” she
said humorously, her eyes gleaming as she looked up at us. Aloo went
back to his book and Mother to her sewing. A little later I looked up and
saw Mother deep in thought, brooding, and as she often did at such times
she was picking her chin absent- mindedly. It was, I think, the first time I
saw her as a person and not only as our mother. I thought of what she
must be going through in her mind, what she had gone through in
bringing us up. She had been thirty- three when Father died, and she had
refused several offers of marriage because they would all have entailed
one thing: sending us all to the ‘boarding’ – the orphanage. Pictures of
her before his death showed her smiling and in full bloom: plump but not
excessively fat, hair puffed fashionably, wearing high heels and make-up.
There was one picture, posed at a studio, which Father had had touched
up and enhanced, which now hung beside his. In it she stood against a
black background, holding a book stylishly, the nylon pachedi painted a
light green, the folds falling gracefully down, the borders decorated with
sequins. I had never seen her like that. All I had seen of her was the stern
face getting sterner with time as the lines set permanently and the hair
thinned, the body turned squat, the voice thickened. I recalled how Aloo
and I would take turns sleeping together on her big bed; how she would
squeeze me in her chubby arms, drawing me up closer to her breast until
I could hardly breathe – and I would control myself and hope she would
soon release me and let me breathe. She looked at me looking at her and
said, not to me, “Promise me… promise me that if I let you go, you will
not marry a white woman.”
“Oh Mother, you know I won’t!” said Aloo. “And promise me
that you will not smoke or drink.” “You know I promise!” He was close
to ears.
 Aloo’s first letter came a week after he left, from London where he had
stopped over to see a former classmate. It flowed over with excitement.
‘How can I describe it,’ he wrote, ‘the sight from the plane… mile upon
mile of carefully tilled fields, the earth divided into neat green squares…
even the mountains are clean and civilized. And London … Oh London!
It seemed that it would never end… blocks and blocks of houses, squares,
parks, monuments … could any city be larger? … How many of our Dar
es Salaams would fit here, in this one gorgeous city…?’ A bird flapping
its wings: Mr Velji nodding wisely in his chair, Mother staring into the
distance.

From the anthology When the Sun Goes Down and Other Stories from
Africa and Beyond. Edited by Emelia Ilieva and Waveney Olembo.

Understanding and appreciating the story

1. How many siblings does the narrator have? What do we learn about
each of them when the story begins?
2. Why does the narrator’s mother close the store?
3. What event triggers Aloo’s interest in foreign universities?
4. Describe the mother’s reactions to Aloo’s interest in the foreign
universities.
5. Describe Aloo’s feelings on receiving a scholarship offer from
California Institute of Technology.
6. Describe the character of the narrator’s mother and that of Aloo.
7. What is the significance of the last sentence, “A bird flapping its
wings?”
8. Imagine you are Aloo and you made a stop in London on your way to
California. Write a letter describing London.
9. “… but if you send him, you lose your son…” Explain the meaning of
this sentence.
Discussion questions
1. Discuss whether Mr Velji’s and Aloo’s mother’s fears are justified.
2. Are there any advantages of studying abroad?
3. Give reasons why some of those who leave for further studies abroad
are reluctant to come back. What do you think should be done to
encourage them to return home?
The War of the Ears by Moses Isegawa (Uganda)
Beeda stood on the school veranda and watched the last pupils
disappear down the road. He thought of this as the road swallowed the
pupils. The day’s climax, a question- and- answer session, came back
to him and he heard his voice rise to fill the classroom:
“What is twelve times five?”
“Sixty,” the pupils sang cheerfully.
“What is twelve times seven?”
“Eighty four.”
“What is twelve times twelve?”
“One hundred and forty four.”
He loved the interaction and the pupils’ rapt attention, which placed
him at the centre of their world, made him feel alive. The world
outside school was full of questions he could not answer and things he
could not control. But when he stood in front of his class, he knew
everything and there was nothing he could not do. Now his class was
gone and he was back on the periphery of their lives, and the school,
with its abandoned classrooms and silent playground, made him think
of an empty shell. When he tried to imagine what would happen if the
road did not regurgitate pupils tomorrow, a feeling of near panic crept
over him.
Night was falling. On the left side of the school, the trees in the forest
were slowly sinking into darkness. On the right side, the details on the
hills were disappearing, the profiles hardening. This was the loneliest
time of the day and Beeda hated it. He listened to the wind rustling the
leaves of the mango and the bright red flowers of the flamboyant trees
in the compound. It drew his attention to the sharp sound of the
typewriter coming from the headmistress’s office. He could see his
mother’s fingers flying over the keyboard, striking the letters with
great precision. He liked to watch her type, her eyes fixed to text, her
hands a seeming extension of the machine. It was the only surviving
typewriter in an area of dozens of square kilometres, and its sound
made him feel proud.
Ma Beeda had started Nandere Primary School as a small operation
under the mango tree in the middle of the compound twelve years ago.
It had become a large school with nine classrooms with creamy,
rough- cast walls and a red roof. She had invested her inheritance as
well as her heart and soul in the school. She had bought the materials
to build it and had chosen the colours to paint it, and she had planted
the seashore paspalum which covered the entire compound.
Measuring himself against her, Beeda often wondered what kind of
mark he would make on the world.
“Beeda, where are you? Come and help me,” he heard her calling
from her office. Her voice carried well; it was used to issuing
commands and addressing school parades. In church, rising in song, it
made the rafters quake.
“I am coming,” he murmured, but made no effort to move.
“Where are you? Do you think we are going to camp here all night?”
He did not reply. He looked at the hills and the darkening sky. He
heard the trumpeter hornbill crying waaa-aaa-aaa. It was his
favourite bird and he loved to watch it fly.
Beeda had detected a note of anxiety in his mother’s voice. It made
him both uncomfortable and reluctant to find out what had happened.
She was so good at camouflaging anxiety and absorbing pressure that
whenever it leaked out, he became fearful. And then he would hear
the plaintive baby cries of the hornbill.
Ma Beeda looked up and shook her head when he entered. The head-
shake was a bad sign; it always meant there was a crisis. It always
meant that the big world with its perplexing questions had intruded on
their predictable little world.

“We have a problem,” she said, lifting her fingers off the keyboard
and looking him in the eye, as if the answers were hidden there. “I got
another letter this morning.”
“What does it say?” Beeda whispered in a voice almost foreign to his
ears. He tried to regain his composure by staring at the oil lamp
burning on his mother’s table. But its sharp smell nullified any
calming effect of the yellow flame. Ma Beeda handed him a piece of
paper the writer had torn out of an exercise book. The handwriting
was compact and just legible in the mediocre light.
We have warned you many times to close your disgusting school and
to stop poisoning God’s children with your filthy ideas. But you have
refused. We know that you are a government agent and a tool of the
devil. Above all, we know that you are proud of standing in the way
of God’s work. Who will come to your aid when your hour comes?
Remember, nobody spits at our warnings with impunity. The Most
High, who gave us the Ten Commandments to guide us in all matters,
sent us to stamp corruption out of this country. He sent us to cleanse
the entire land with fire. God’s Victorious Brigades are watching you
day and night. Your punishment will be both heavy and harsh. The
War of the Ears has begun. And as the ancient saying goes, ears which
don’t listen to their master get chopped off. You are next.
For God and our Revolution.
Colonel Kalo, chief of Operations.
Colonel Kalo: the mastermind, so most people believed, of the local
branch of the rebels of God’s Victorious Brigades. A specimen of the
Colonel’s thumbprint made in blood marked the end of the letter. It
was the proof that the letter was authentic.
“He should know that we are going to continue with our work,” said
Ma Beeda. “We have nowhere else to go. Everything we own is in
this soil. We are teachers, and we are going to teach whoever wants to
learn.”
Her voice was too calm for Beeda’s liking. It meant that there was no
room for compromise, a position he did not find wise. Beeda hoped
that, as before, the threats would come to nothing. A war was going
on in the forest and in the hills, where rebels and government forces
occasionally clashed. In the period between engagements, the rebels
attacked civilians, furthering a campaign of terror, while the
government forces, in turn, looked for rebel collaborators.
“Did you speak to the teachers?”
“Yes. The majority want to say. Two or three want to run away.”
“Did you hear from the regional commander?”
“He assured me that everything will be all right,” Ma Beeda said, as if
the commander had lied to her.
“When is Uncle Modo coming?” Beeda’s voice was still hoarse with
fear. Modo was a former soldier and Beeda wanted him to come and
help them.
“I don’t know.”
“I thought he made a promise,” Beeda said, staring at the lamp as if
his uncle was hidden in its belly.
“I’m sure he will come, but I cannot say when,” his mother said
firmly. “Don’t worry. We will manage. There are always people
looking out for us. Do you think they will allow the only school in the
area to close?”
“No, they won’t,” Beeda said without conviction. There was a limit to
what unarmed people could do.
Ma Beeda went back to her typing, filling the room with the sound of
the keys. When the letter was finished, she pulled it from the machine,
read it over, signed and sealed it in an envelope, which she locked in a
drawer.
She put a waterproof cover over the typewriter, pulling the edges to
make it fit snugly. She cleared her table quickly, putting the files in a
big metal cabinet, which she locked, and dropped the key in her bag.
She turned down the wick and the lamp went out, the darkness
merging the office with the compound outside. She picked up her bag
and started humming Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya… She did that
every evening. It was the signal that the day had officially ended.
Beeda walked out of his mother’s office and stood on the carpet of
grass in the compound. Behind him, he heard his mother closing and
locking doors, her voice coming nearer. She insisted on closing the
school herself. She liked to hear the sound of the locks.
She stood on the veranda, holding the railing, and swept the
compound with her eyes. She felt grateful for the trees, the grass and
well-used day. She walked down the steps into the deepening
darkness, which had glued the trees together and turned the forest into
a solid mass.
Beeda and his mother took the small, stony road to their house, a half
a kilometer from the school. Beeda walked with his eyes half on the
ground, half on the sky. The area had no electricity because the rebels
had destroyed the transformer, leaving everybody at the mercy of the
moon and the stars. He was disappointed that there were so few stars
this evening. Here and there, lanterns in the houses along the road
punctured the darkness, but they only reinforced Beeda’s feeling that
he was swimming in a lake of black ink. He disliked his mother’s
humming at that time of the day, for he feared it might invite the
rebels to silence her. But she was incorrigible.
“I miss the full moon,” he said, looking straight ahead.
Ma Beeda said nothing. Beeda racked his brain for something to say
for the rest of the way, but came up with nothing. They did not meet
anybody, as most people went home early and were barricaded inside
their houses by nightfall.
“You are thinking about him,” Ma Beeda said suddenly, making
Beeda stub his foot on a stone. She had the ability to guess what he
was thinking and at times he disliked it intensely.
“Yes, I was thinking about my father,” he replied, stressing the last
two words with a touch of annoyance. “Was he brave?”
“Yes. He knew what to do, and when to do it,” she replied in a low
voice. “I miss him.” Beeda kept quiet and she started humming again.
Beeda knew very little about his father, who had died when he was
four. He thought about him at difficult moments, and prayed to him
for protection.
And whenever he heard the go-away-bird saying go-away, go-away,
go-away, he thought it was his father shooing troubles out of his path.
When they reached their houses, Ma Beeda stopped humming and
Beeda stepped aside to let her pass. He stood in the paspalum and
looked at the fruit trees, which seemed larger than during the day.
Behind the house, the banana trees resembled a high wall. He looked
forward to the first flash of the match, and the first flame.
Ma Beeda stopped in front of the main door and searched for the keys
in her bag. The huge lock opened with a snap, like a pistol shot. Ma
Beeda entered and her son heard her strike a match, and he smiled
when the darkness round the flame parted. He followed her inside and
locked the door.

It was a victory to arrive home. Ma Beeda always celebrated with a

strong cup of tea. While she went to light the stove, Beeda filled a
basin in the bathroom with water from a jerrycan, took a sponge,
rubbed it with soap and scrubbed his body. He scooped water in his
palms and rinsed himself. The feel of the water and the sound it made
on the floor relaxed him more than anything he knew. He let the water
glide off him until his skin was dry. He put on a pair of shorts and a T-
shirt, lay down on his bed and tried not to think about anything. As his
mind drifted, he saw the school, his pupils, the other teachers and his
uncle. Finally, he dozed off.
“Beeda, Beeda. Tea is ready,” he heard his mother calling him.
In the kitchen, the smell of ginger and lemon grass made his mouth
water. He drank a big cup of tea while his mother tended to the Irish
potatoes cooking on the stove. She was tired and did not want to talk
or hum Kumbaya and he was content to listen to the music of the
stove and to think about making plants for next day’s lessons.

Beeda was not a trained teacher; he was still in secondary school

himself. He was just filling in for a teacher who had run away several
weeks ago. But with his mother’s guidance, he did things like a
trained teacher. And the longer he stayed at the school, the more he
enjoyed his work.
At home, there was one rule regarding cooking. If it was your turn,
you did all the work. Today, it was Ma Beeda’s turn; tomorrow, it
would be his. They shared all the housework equally, which Beeda
liked because it made him self- sufficient: he could tend the garden,
cook, wash and iron clothes.
Beeda finished his tea, thanked his mother and put the cups in the
sink. A little later, Ma Beeda told him to lay the table, as the food was
ready. She served his favourite dish: Irish potatoes with fish cooked in
thick groundnut soup. Beeda bent his head over his steaming plate and
the aroma went deep into his nose. After a day at school, with only the
wistle of a bird intruding.
At the end of the metal, Beeda thanked his mother for cooking and left
the kitchen. She did the dishes and then went to her room. She had
school finances, teachers’ motivation, the security situation to think
about before going to bed.
Beeda made the next day’s lesson plans and at nine o’ clock he said
goodnight to his mother. Deep in the night, tucked under the sheets,
he woke with a start. A sound like that of a rock thrown on to the roof
had scared him awake. With a thumping heart, he lay still and waited
for his mother to call him and tell him what had happened.
But there was only a chorus of crickets outside. Eventually, it dawned
on him that an avocado had fallen from the tree behind the house. It is
an avocado… an avocado… an avocado, he whispered until he felt
calm enough to fall asleep again.
Two kilometres from Beeda’s house, three boys squatted in a banana
plantation and watched a fourth boy cut up a big jackfruit. The leader
was given a slab larger than the rest and he attacked it immediately. It
was after nightfall, but this was their first meal of the day and it felt
wonderful to be feasting on a jackfruit. They munched loudly and
threw the seeds at their feet. Irritated, the leader raised his sticky hand
and slapped one of the boys on the back.
“Lieutenant, you are a pig. The whole village can hear you chew!”
“I am sorry, Major,” the boy whispered. The others took heed and the
noise died down.
Major Azizima liked to be addressed by his rank. It made him feel
older than his fourteen years. His boss, Colonel Kalo, was only three
years older yet his face looked old leather. Major Azizima envied his
menacing look, for he disliked his own choirboy face, which had
endured despite the hardship in the bush.

Today, they had walked thirty kilometres from their base, hiding in
the forest and in tall grass. They were on a mission to spread God’s
glory and that of God’s Victorious Brigades. Major Azizima liked to
be sent on missions. He dreamed of becoming a general, which would
make him a member of the High Command. Fighters who volunteered
stood a better chance of advancement, and nobody volunteered as
much as he did.
Life at the base was an ordeal. Sex was forbidden, except for the four
middle-aged generals who made up the High Command. Colonel Kalo
made sure that anybody who broke this rule got one hundred strokes
of the hippo-hide whip. He punished rape with amputation of the left
hand, and desertion and theft with death. He planted spies
everywhere, against whose word there was no appeal. In the
mornings, he put the fighters through military drills; in the afternoons,
he made them recite the Ten Commandments and chant the
Generalissimo’s vitriol against the Ugandan government for hours on
end. Major Azizima usually came away from such exertions with a
headache.
The only time the fighters relaxed was when Colonel Kalo was away,
which was rare. The only time everybody was happy was on the
Generalissimo’s birthday and on Sudan’s National Day, when Colonel
Kalo allowed them to steal two bulls and hijack a truckload of Coca-
Cola for a great feast. All the rules and guidelines came from the
Generalissimo, who spoke with God and whose name it was forbidden
to pronounce.
Major Azizima’s mother had died six years ago, killed by other rebels
of God’s Victorious Brigades. Every day Major Azizima saw the face
of Blue Beast, the man who had killed her and forced him to cut off
her ears. She took advantage of the interminable waits between
attacks to slip into the cracks in his mind and call his name.
“Azizima, who are you? Who are you?” It was an eerie voice, rising
from the bowels of the earth, and it made him shudder.
Now that the War of the Ears had started, he feared his mother’s voice
even more. It would bother him until he lost his mind. He had started
to think about the most dangerous thing a rebel could do: escaping. If
caught by his comrades, he would be killed. If caught by government
soldiers, he would be tortured or killed or both. The uncertainty made
him think of his father, who had been arrested by government soldiers
shortly before his mother was killed. Major Azizima believed the
soldiers had wrongly accused his father of collaboration with the
rebels and killed him. He wanted to avenge his parents, and to find out
what had happened to his siblings, who had disappeared. For that
reason, he wanted to survive.
After the meal, Major Azizama and his boys left the safety of the
plantation and crept past the back of the house. They moved slowly,
careful not to alert anybody to their presence. They passed under a
window and heard of the people inside snoring. This would have been
the perfect time to storm the house and carry off both food and
money. But Colonel Kalo had not given them orders to do so. Instead,
Major Azizama had given them a signal to proceed to Nandere
Primary School. They walked on the outer edge of the road, where the
grass muffled their footsteps.
When they reached the compound, they spread out. Major Azizama
hid behind a tree and looked at the building. He imagined his father
standing in front of a class, teaching boys who looked like him. He
saw the children doing examinations. He saw his father marking them
and announcing that all of them had passed. He felt a yearning to
return to school, to study and get a certificate. But he hated having to
take orders from teachers. He wanted to be like his father, but it would
mean surrendering his power, something he knew he would not do
freely. He wanted to cry out. But just then he lost the image of his
father and the pupils, which made him angrier.
He walked around the school building. Trying to regain his
composure, he drove the butt of his rifle through a window. The sound
of the shattering glass soothed him, bringing closer the day Colonel
Kalo would order him to burn down the building.
He signaled his boys to leave the compound and head for the nearby
trading centre. They made their way silently along the empty road.
The bushes were filled with the cries of nocturnal creatures.
They found a spot near shops with Coca-Cola and Nile Beer
billboards. The place had the feel of a dead town, with no light
anywhere. Shielded by shrubs, they lay in the wet grass and waited.
Major Azizama tried to identify the animals shrieking in the forest.
After a while, his mother started calling him, her voice rising and
falling, fading and swelling. He saw her falling down, her bullet-
riddled body covered with widening patches of blood. He saw her
asking for mercy, beseeching heaven to intervene. He heard Blue
Beast barking at him to take the knife or else he would share her fate.
He felt intense pain, which spread from his chest to his stomach and
he bit back a crying fit.

It was approaching midnight. Major Azizama heard footsteps. A man

appeared from behind the shops, looked left and right, and walked
towards the roads. The boys waited till he was very near and cocked
their rifles. Hearing the sound, the man froze, his hands going up
above his head.
“I am a local resident,” he said. “Please don’t shoot!”
“Where are you going at this hour?” Major Azizima asked.
“My wife is very sick. I am getting her some medicine. Please let me
go.”
“Are you a government supporter?” Major Azizima asked in a chilly
voice.
“Please, let me go. My wife…”
“Are you a rebel sympathizer?”
“Please, have mercy. Every minute counts. Please…”
“Don’t think you can fool me, you lout,” Major Azizima said.
Here was the chance to do God’s will and enhance the reputation of
His Victorious Brigades. There was nothing like it, and he could never
get enough of it. “You are a disobedient and impertinent lout.
As the ancient proverbs says, Ears which don’t listen to their master-
“get chopped off,” one of the boys said in a high voice.
“Well said, Lieutenant,” Major Azizima said, emerging from the long
grass and approaching the man. Much to his pleasure, he saw the
man’s legs wobble. When he was barely two metres away from him,
he saw the man fall on his knees, his arms held high above his head,
the words coming out of his mouth incoherent.
“Don’t waste my time, lout,” Major Azizima said, moving nearer.
“You should be happy that you have become a part of God’s grand
plan.”
He stood over the man and took his knife out of his sheath. He pulled
the man’s left ear, shouted, “To God’s glory!” and severed it. The
man moaned and his bowels screamed as they emptied into his
clothes.
“My ear! My ear!”
“Shut up, you lout,” Major Azizima said as he put the ear in his trophy
pouch, wiped the dagger on the man’s shirt and ordered him to go.
The one-eared man put his palms on the ground and crawled for a
number of paces. He then struggled to his feet, swayed and ran off
behind the shops.
To be on the safe side, Major Azizima and his boys moved to another
spot, lay down in the shrubs and trained their rifles on the shops.
Nobody came outside to confront them.
Major Azizima looked at the stars and decided it was time to find a
place to sleep. He signaled his boys to enter the forest and head for the
derelict house they occasionally used on missions.

Beeda woke up at six, greeted his mother, washed his face and went
outside. Standing in the cold air, he thought that the only thing he
hated about teaching was waking up early; he wished he could sleep
till ten o’clock. He often spent part of the night awake, praying that
their house remained invisible to the rebels.
He raked the leaves which had fallen from different trees overnight,
collected them in heaps and threw them in a compost pit near the
banana plantation. He found a last night’s avocado, which had cracked
open, and threw it in the pit five metres away. He smiled at his perfect
aim.

He emptied yesterday’s garbage into the pit. He washed out the

garbage can and wiped the floor of the living room and the kitchen
with a wet cloth. This was the part he liked least, for he had to get
down on his knees, and he was glad when it was over. He fetched a
knife from the kitchen and cut some dry banana leaves. He took the
leaves to the latrine, put some at the mouth of the hole and struck a
match, producing tongues of orange flame and plumes of odoriferous
white smoke. He withdrew, the scent sharp in his nose, the smoke
making his eyes water. Using a long stick, he pushed more leaves into
the fire and smoke filled the entire place. He watched it pushing from
under the iron sheets, spreading and chasing away flying insects.
When the fire died down, he swept the latrine.
After a bath and a big mug of coffee, which he sipped very hot, he
stood on the veranda, arms akimbo, waiting for his mother to appear.
Farmers going to their plantations, with hoe in one hand and panga in
the other, greeted him. He replied in a cheerful voice, eager to get
started with the day’s business. The clear weather, the jabbering
monkeys and the singing birds all served to lift his spirits higher. He
was looking forward to the coming hours, during which he was going
to take centre stage in his pupils’ lives.

Ma Beeda locked the house, pocketed the key and they left for school.
She hummed Kumbaya, stopping only if she had to greet somebody.
She had slept badly, waking up several times with the feeling that a
messenger was at the door, waiting to break the news that her school
was no more. It was a daily ordeal, which reached its peak at his time
of the morning.
When they were one hundred metres from the compound, they saw
the roof peeping through the trees. Ma Beeda stopped humming and
made the sign of the cross. “Thank you Mother Mary, thank you
Jesus,” she murmured, her face breaking into a big smile. Beeda
watched her in silence, pleased with the transformation that came over
her, grateful that they had another day. Ma Beeda walked faster and
Beeda had to increase his stride to keep up.
She inspected the premises and saw the broken window. She
wondered if the rebels planned to dismantle the school piece by piece;
it was only the day before that Colonel Kalo had promised to make an
example out of her. She picked up the fragments, remembering what it
had cost her to build the school, and tossed the shards in the latrine.

She hurried to the main door and told Beeda to wait by the side of the
building. She inserted the key in the lock and held her breath for a
number of seconds, for she lived in fear that one day the rebels would
booby- trap the door. It was one reason she insisted on opening up
herself. If somebody was going to be killed at the entrance to her
school, she wanted it to be its founder. This time the door opened
safely.
“You can come in now,” she turned and beckoned Beeda. His face
was clouded by irritation with this little act, which he thought
unnecessary, if not downright degrading. “I can’t take any chances
with you,” Ma Beeda replied every time he complained. He no longer
bothered.
Beeda inspected the classrooms to make sure they were clean and
provided with enough chalk. He examined the charts on the walls to
make sure nobody had tampered with them. Finally, he checked the
desks and the chairs to make sure none were broken. Satisfied, he
went to his mother’s office to report and then returned to his class,
where he arranged the books he needed for the first lesson neatly on
the desk. Now all he needed were his pupils. He picked up a thin
bamboo stick and went outside. He stood in the compound, waving
the stick absent-mindedly, and waited for the first arrival.
Minutes later, a teacher emerged from the light mist on the side of the
hills. She was walking fast, her body rigid, her bag held tight in one
hand. Beeda knew something was wrong, for usually she took her
time, her movements graceful, her gestures calculated. She did not
stop to say hello; she just waved awkwardly and rushed into the
headmistress’s office before he could ask her what was wrong. He
followed her.
“Ma Beeda, Ma Beeda,” she called breathlessly.
“What is the matter, Miss Bengi?” Ma Beeda said lifting her eyes to
her.
“They cut off a man’s ear last night! We heard him crying as he fled.”
“I am very sorry to hear that,” Ma Beeda said in a soothing voice.
“Do we know the unfortunate fellow?”
“Yes. He is a parent of one of our pupils. He had gone to collect
medicine for his wife.”
“It marks the start of the War of the Ears in our area,” Ma Beeda
sighed, remembering Colonel Kalo’s letter.
“The government must do something.”
“They are going to hunt down those criminals and punish them.”
“They must or else we are lost.”
“The rebels have no chance of victory. They don’t have the people’s
support. It is the reason why they are doing things like that. Breaking
our windows won’t help them either,” Ma Beeda said.
“What windows are you talking about?”
“Beeda, show her,” Ma Beeda said in a voice which told him that she
wanted to get rid of Miss Bengi.
Beeda took Miss Bengi to the broken window. She did not say
anything, but he saw that she was frightened. He cautioned her not to
tell anybody as it was school policy to avoid alarming the teachers and
pupils. She nodded her head in agreement.

Beeda asked her to help him inspect the pupils, who had started
arriving. The school compound was filling with noise, which pushed
his worries further and further away as his favourite part of the day
had begun. They checked to see if the pupils’ school uniforms were
clean, and issued warnings to those who were untidy.
Other teachers arrived and organized their pupils to pick up leaves in
the grass and to get ready for the parade. At eight o’clock, the bell
rang and all the pupils stood in long, straight lines in front of the
school. Ma Beeda stood on the veranda behind the railing with the
teachers to her left and to her right.
She was wearing a dark blue dress with black shoes. She told the
pupils to be punctual, to be calm, and to do their work well. When she
dismissed them, they walked to their work well. When she dismissed
them, they walked to their classes in silence.
Beeda taught Mathematics and Science. He derived the greatest
pleasure from Mathematics, which he had begun by teaching the
multiplication table until every pupil knew it by heart. He made the
pupils sing it whenever they were sleepy or distracted. This morning
though, he taught division. He took his class outside to collect
mangoes and pebbles, which he used as teaching aids.

When the bell rang for the break, the pupils streamed out of the class
and he was left alone. He went to the window and looked outside,
hoping to see Uncle Modo entering the compound. A man walked
towards the school, and waited expectantly, the noise in the compound
seeming to rise higher and higher. But it was a stranger. He sucked his
teeth in frustration. It struck him that his uncle might be in trouble.
The bell for class rang.
When lunch break came Beeda saw Miss Bengi walk past his
classroom. “How are you feeling now? You seemed quite shaken by
last night’s events.” His throat felt parched and he swallowed hard. He
hoped that, unlike his mother, she could not read his thoughts.
“I am feeling much better, thank you.”
Miss Bengi had the most beautiful voice he had ever heard. He often
saw her in his sleep, leading him into the forest, and singing to him as
they ran among the trees.
“I am glad to hear that.”
“I cannot live like this any more. I am thinking about going to the
city.”
Beeda did not want her to go. It was such a joy to hear her voice when
she led the school choir. He now believed Miss Bengi was one of the
two teachers Ma Beeda had talked about. “Are you sure you want to
leave? Who will teach the children music? Nobody does it like you.”
“I don’t know,” said softly, as if her resolver had crumbled.
“Stay with us, please. The war will not last forever.”
“Whose propaganda are you listening to?”
Beeda thought the word ‘propaganda’ was very beautiful, fitting to
come out of the mouth of the woman whose voice he adored. He
vowed to think of her as Miss Propaganda.
“Your pupils have such respect for you. You can’t just leave them,”
he said, looking for more convincing reasons to win her over.
“I did not start this war. I won’t wait my turn to have my ears cut.”
At that moment Beeda’s mother sent a messenger to call him to her
office. Beeda suspected she had seen them talking and decided to
spoil the moment. ‘I am a man. I am no longer a kid,’ he said to
himself in protest.
“What were you saying?” Miss Bengi asked, looking at him closely.
“I have to go,” he said reluctantly. “But don’t forget that we need
you.”
“Did your mother send you to tell me that?”
“Of course not. I didn’t know you had told her.”
Beeda went to his mother’s office and found her listening to the man
she called her ‘eyes and ears’. Everybody else called him
Nightcrawler. He was giving Ma Beeda details of what several people
had heard and seen the night before, and she was noting everything
down in a black book with waterproof covers. Beeda was not allowed
to look in the book. He did not even know where she kept it. On one
occasion, however, he had taken a look when his mother was called
outside to attend to a playground emergency. It was a record of
killings and other atrocities suffered by the people at the hands of both
the rebels and government agents. Both the rebels and the government
hunted collaborators and spies and treated them roughly, but the
former routinely attacked civilians. Beeda pretended he had never
looked in the book.

At last, Ma Beeda stopped writing, closed the book and handed

Nightcrawler last evening’s letter, which Beeda saw was addressed to
the Regional Army Commander. Nightcrawler put the letter in his
inner jacket pocket.
“Have you already had lunch?” Ma Beeda asked when she saw that
Beeda was becoming restless.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I am not hungry.”
“It is still a long way to supper. I would eat something if I were you,”
she said and turned her attention back to Nightcrawler.
Feeling redundant, Beeda excused himself and left his mother’s
office. He went back to the window, but found Miss Bengi gone.
A short while later, he saw Nightcrawler leaving the premises and he
wondered what else his mother had confided in him. He felt afraid for
Nightcrawler’s sake, as he could not imagine what the rebels would
do to him if they intercepted that letter. It occurred to him that there
might be rebel spies at the school. He spent the day thinking about it
and trying to determine whether the spies were teachers or pupils.

On the way home, he wanted to talk about his feelings with his
mother, but he could not find the right words. He did not want Ma
Beeda to think he was a coward.
“What is bothering you? You have been moody all day,” she said.
Feeling ashamed of his thoughts, he tried to brush her off.
“Nothing really.”
“I hope it is not about Miss Bengi.”
“Not at all. She is too old for me,” he said, forcing a laugh.
“I am all you have. Feel free to tell me your problems.”
“Don’t forget Uncle Modo.”
“At the moment he is not here,” she said and, when he kept quiet, she
went back to her humming.
They arrived home safely and the door did not explode when Ma
Beeda opened it. It was his turn to cook and he immersed himself in
his duties. After a while, his mind began to wander and to turn again
towards the question of spies in the school. How to identify them?
How to trap them? It came as no surprise when the food burned. The
pungent odour filled the kitchen and spread throughout the house.
Afraid to let in mosquitoes, he did not open the windows, which made
the situation worse.

Ma Beeda rushed into the kitchen fanning her nose with a book and
found him dumping the food into the garbage can. Biting back the
urge to scold him, she asked if she could help. He turned her down.
As she turned to go back, he started peeling fresh green bananas. He
put them in a pan, added water and put the pan on the stove. He felt
ashamed.
When the food was ready, he called his mother. The smell of burning
food had given her stomachache, but she forced herself to eat a little.
There was one radio in the house, which Ma Beeda kept in her room.
She lent it to him for the night, hoping the music would soothe him
and ease him into sleep.
Beeda spent the next two hours listening to a mixture of current news
and music on both local and foreign stations. He luxuriated in this
ephemeral connection with other worlds and the resulting suspension
of fear. He would have liked to listen all night, but he had to wake up
early. At his usual bedtime, he switched off the radio and fell asleep.

Deep in the night, he was awakened by gunfire, though it was difficult

to tell where it was coming from. He lay still, the silent radio near his
heart, and waited. But nothing happened. He prayed to his father to
keep him safe and, after a while, he switched on the radio and pushed
the earphones deep in his ears.

Understanding and appreciating the story

1. Describe Beeda’s attitude towards the pupils.
2. What feeling do you get as the narrator describes the coming of
darkness? Why does Beeda hate this time?
3. Explain Beeda’s attitude towards his father.
4. What is the letter from Colonel Kalo about?
5. Make notes on the way rebels and government soldiers treat
civilians.
6. What evidence is there to show that Beeda and his mother live in
fear?
7. Azizima is unable to pursue his own dream. Why is this so?
8. Describe Ma Beeda’s character. Why does Ma Beeda keep
humming ‘Kumbaya…’
9. What reasons does Beeda give to Miss Bengi to persuade her to
stay at the school? Is this the whole truth?
10. Imagine you are working with a youth group meant to preach
peace and reconciliation among warring tribes and antagonized
youth groups and you have been asked to give a speech on
peaceful conflict resolution. Write the speech.
 Discussion questions
1. How can government overcome tribal hatred and conflicts
amongst their people?
2. Drawing examples from this story, explain some of the reasons
why young people join militia groups. What do you think the
government can do to help the youth stay away from such
associations?
3. Discuss the use of dialogue in this story. What does it achieve?

The Mirror by Haruki Murakami (Japan)

All the stories you have been telling tonight seem to fall into two categories. There
is the type where you have the world of the living on one side, the world of the dead
on the other, and some force that allows for crossing over from one side to the other.
This would include ghosts and the like. The second type involves paranormal
abilities, premonitions, and the ability to predict the future. All of your stories belong
to one of these two groups.

In fact, your experiences tend to fall almost totally under one of these categories or
the other. What I mean is, people who see ghosts just see ghosts and never have
premonitions. And those who have premonitions do not see ghosts. I do not know
why, but there would appear to be some individual predilection for one or the other.
At least that is the impression I get.

Of course some people do not fall into either category. Me, for instance. In my thirty-
old years I have never once seen a ghost, never once had a premonition or prophetic
dream. There was one time I was riding an elevator with a couple of friends and they
swore they saw a ghost riding with us, but I did not see a thing. They claimed there
was a woman in a grey suit standing right next to me, but there was no woman with
us, at least as far as I could make out. The three of us were the only ones in the
elevator. No kidding. And these two friends were not the type to deliberately play
tricks on me. The whole thing was really weird, but the fact remains that I have still
never seen a ghost.

But there was one time-just the one time-when I had an experience that scared me
out of my wits. This happened over ten years ago, and I have never told anybody
about it. I was afraid to even talk about it. I felt that if I did, it might happen all over
again, so I have never brought it up. But tonight each of you has related his own
scary experience, and as the host I cannot very well call it a night without
contributing something of my own. So I have decided to just come right out and tell
you the story.

I graduated from high school at the end of the 1960s, just when the student
movement was in full swing. I was part of the hippie generation, and refused to go
to college. Instead, I wandered all over Japan working at various manual labour jobs.
I was convinced that was the most righteous way to live. Young and impetuous, I
guess you would call me. Looking back on it now, though, I think I had a pretty fun
life back then. Whether that was the right choice or not, if I had to do it over again,
I am pretty sure I would.

In the fall of my second year of roaming all over the country, I got a job for a couple
of months as a night watchman at a junior high school. This was in a school in a tiny
town in Niigata Prefecture. I had got pretty worn out working over the summer and
wanted to take it easy for a while. Being a night watchman is not exactly rocket
science. During the day I slept in the janitor’s office, and at night all I had to do was
go twice around the whole school making sure everything was okay. The rest of the
time I listened to records in the music room, read books in the library, played
basketball by myself in the gymnasium. Being alone all night in a school is not so
bad, really. Was I afraid? No way. When you are eighteen or nineteen, nothing fazes
you.

I do not imagine any of you have ever worked as a night watchman, so maybe I
should explain the duties. You are supposed to make two rounds each night, at nine
p.m. and three a.m. That is the schedule. The school was a fairly new three-storey
concrete building, with eighteen to twenty classrooms. Not an especially large
school as these things go. In addition to the classrooms you had a music room, an
art studio, a staff office, and the principal’s office, plus a separate cafeteria,
swimming pool, gymnasium, and auditorium. My job was to make a quick check of
all of these.

As I made my rounds, I followed a twenty-point checklist. I had made a check mark

next to each one-staff office, check, science laboratory, check… I suppose I could
have just stayed in bed in the janitor’s room, where I slept, and checked these off
without going to the trouble of actually walking around. But I was not such a
haphazard sort of person. It did not take much time to make the rounds, and besides,
if someone broke in while I was sleeping, I would be the one who would get attacked.

Anyway, there I was each night at nine and three, making my rounds, a flashlight in
my left hand, a wooden kendo sword in my right. I had practiced kendo in high
school and felt pretty confident in my ability to fend off anyone. If an attacker was
an amateur, and even if he had a real sword with him, that would not have scared
me. I was young, remember. If it happened now, I would run like hell.

Anyhow, this took place on a windy night in the beginning of October. It was
actually kind of steamy for the time of year. A swarm of mosquitoes buzzed around
in the evening, and I remember burning a couple of mosquito-repellent coils to keep
them away. The wind was noisy. The gate to the swimming pool was broken and the
wind made the gate slap open and shut. I thought of fixing it, but it was too dark out,
so it kept banging all night.

My nine p.m. round went by fine, all twenty items on my list neatly checked off. All
the doors were locked, everything in its proper place. Nothing out of the ordinary. I
went back to the janitor’s room, set my alarm for three, and fell fast asleep.

When the alarm went off at three, though, I woke up feeling weird. I cannot explain
it, but I just felt different. I did not feel like getting up-it was like something was
suppressing my will to get out of bed. I am the type who usually leaps right out of
bed, so I could not understand it. I had to force myself to get out of bed and get ready
to make my rounds. The gate to the pool was still making its rhythmic banging, but
it sounded different from before. Something is definitely weird, I thought, reluctant
to get going. But I made up my mind I had to do my job, no matter what. If you skip
out on doing your duty once, you will skip out again and again, and I did not want
to fall into that. So I grabbed my flashlight and wooden sword and off I went.

It was an altogether odd night. The wind grew stronger as the night went on, the air
more humid. My skin started itching and I could not focus. I decided to go around
the gymnasium, auditorium, and pool first. Everything checked out OK. The gate to
the pool banged away in the wind like some crazy person who alternately shakes his
head and nods. There was no order to it. First a couple of nods-yes, yes-then no, no,
no…It is a weird thing to compare it to, I know, but that is what it felt like.

Inside the school building it was situation normal. I looked around and checked off
the points on my list. Nothing out of the usual had happened, despite the weird
feeling I had had. Relieved, I started back to the janitor’s room. The last place on
my checklist was the boiler room next to the cafeteria on the east side of the building,
the opposite side from the janitor’s room. This meant I had to walk down the long
hallway on the first floor on my way back. It was pitch black. On nights when the
moon was out, there was a little light in the hallway, but when there was none, you
could not see a thing. I had to shine my flashlight ahead of me to see where I was
going. This particular night, a typhoon was not too far off, so there was no moon at
all. Occasionally there would be a break in the clouds, but then it plunged into
darkness again.

I walked faster than usual down the hallway, the rubber soles of my basketball shoes
squeaking against the linoleum floor. It was a green linoleum floor, the colour of a
hazy bed of moss. I can picture it even now.

The entrance to the school was midway down the hallway, and as I passed it I
thought, what the? I thought I’d seen something in the dark. I broke out in a sweat.
Regripping the wooden sword, I turned towards what I saw. I shone my flashlight at
the wall next to the shelf for storing shoes.

And there I was. A mirror, in other words, it was just my reflection in a mirror. There
had been no mirror there the night before, so they must have put in one between then
and now. Man, was I startled. It was a long, full-length mirror. Relieved that it was
just me in a mirror, I felt a bit stupid for having been so surprised. So that is all it is,
I told myself. How dumb. I put my flashlight down, took a cigarette from my pocket,
and lit it. As I took a puff, I glanced at myself in the mirror. A faint streetlight from
outside shone in through the window, reaching the mirror. From behind me, the
swimming pool gate was banging in the wind.

After a couple of puffs, I suddenly noticed something odd. My reflection in the

mirror was not me. It looked exactly like me on the outside, but it definitely was not
me. No, that is not it. It was me, of course, but another me. Another me that never
should have been. I do not know how to put it. It is hard to explain what it felt like.
The one thing I did understand was that this other figure loathed me. Inside it was a
hatred like an iceberg floating in a dark sea. The kind of hatred that no one could
ever diminish.

I stood there for a while, dumbfounded. My cigarette slipped from between my

fingers and fell to the floor. The cigarette in the mirror fell to the floor, too. We stood
there, staring at each other. I felt like I was bound hand and foot, and could not move.

Finally, his hand moved, the fingertips of his right hand touching his chin, and then
slowly, like a bug, crept up his face. I suddenly realized I was doing the same thing.
Like I was the reflection of what was in the mirror and he was trying to take control
of me.

Wrenching out my last ounce of strength I roared out a growl, and the bonds that
held me rooted to the spot broke. I raised my kendo sword and smashed it down on
the mirror as hard as I could. I heard glass shattering but did not look back as I raced
back to my room. Once inside, I hurriedly locked the door and leapt under the covers.
I was worried about the cigarette I had dropped on the floor, but there was no way I
was going back. The wind was howling the whole time, and the gate to the pool
continued to make a racket until dawn. Yes, yes, no, yes, no, no, no…

I am sure you have already guessed the ending to my story. There never was any
mirror. When the sun came up, the typhoon had already passed. The wind had died
down and it was a sunny day. I went over to the entrance. The cigarette butt I had
tossed away was there, as was my wooden sword. But no mirror. There never had
been any mirror there.

What I saw was not a ghost. It was simply myself. I can never forget how terrified I
was that night, and whenever I remember it, this thought always springs to mind:
that the most frightening thing in the world is our own self. What do you think? You
may have noticed that I do not have a single mirror here in my house. Learning to
shave without one was no easy feat, believe me.

Kendo: a Japanese form of jerking with two-handed bamboo swords originally

developed as a safe form of sword training for Samurai.

Understanding and appreciating the story

1. What types of stories have been told before the narrator takes his turn?
2. How long is it since the narrator had the frightening experience?
Why has he never shared this experience with anyone?
Why does he choose to share it now?
3. Why did the narrator refuse to go to college?
4. What did the narrator do with his time after finishing school?
5. Write an account of what happened on the night the narrator had the
frightening experience.
6. In your opinion, why is the narrator unhappy with himself?
7. What does the sentence, “It was me, of course, but another me…” mean?
8. In your words, write a paragraph detailing the character’s routine as a night
watchman.

Discussion questions

1. “…The most frightening thing in the world is our own self.” Do you agree
or disagree with the narrator? Why?
2. Discuss the relevance of the first person narration. Is it effective in telling
this story?
3. Discuss a situation where you experienced a conflict between your internal
and external self. How did you deal with it?

Diamond Dust by Anita Desai (India)

“That dog will kill me, kill me one day!” Mrs. Das moaned, her hand
pressed to her large, soft, deep bosom when Diamond leapt at the shop
she had cooked and set on the table for Mr. Das, or when Diamond
dashed past her, bumping against her knees and making her collapse
against the door when she was going to receive a parcel from the
postman who stood there, shaking, as he fended off the black lightening
hurled at him. “Diamond! Why did you call him Diamond?
He is Satan, a shaitan, a devil. Call him a devil instead,” Mrs. Das cried
as she washed and bandaged the ankle of a grandchild who had only run
after a ball and had that shaitan snap his teeth over his small foot.

But to Mr. Dos he was Diamond and had been Diamond ever since he had
bought him, as a puppy of an indecipherable breed, blunt-faced, with his
wet noise gleaming and paws flailing for action. Mr. Das could not explain
how he had come upon that name. Feebly, he would laugh when questioned
by friends he met in the park at five o‘clock in the morning when he took
Diamond for a walk before leaving in the office, and say, “yes, yes, black
Diamond you see, black Diamond.” C.P Biswas, baring his terribly stained
yellow teeth in an unpleasant laugh, said, “Ah, coal-then call him, my dear
fellow, coal, Koyla- and we would all understand.”

Never. Never would Mr Das do such a thing to his Diamond. If his family
and friends only knew what names he thought up for the puppy, for the dog,
in secret, in private- he did not exactly blush but he did laugh to himself, a
little sheepishly. And yet his eyes shone when he saw how Diamond’s coat
gleamed as he streaked across the park after a chipmunk, or when he
greeted the dog on his return from work before greeting Mrs Das, his
grandchildren, or anyone at all, with the joyful cry, “Diamond, my friend!”

Mrs Das had had a premonition-had she not known Mr Das since she had
been a fourteen-year-old bride, he a nineteen-year-old bridegroom? –when
she saw him bring that puppy home, cuddling it in his old brown jumper,
lowering his voice to a whisper and his step to a tiptoe, as if afraid of
alarming the sleeping creature. “Get some warm milk-don’t heat it too
much-just warm it a little-and get some cotton wool.” She had started at
him. “Not even about our own children-not even your first-born son-or your
grandchildren, have you made so much of as of that dog,” she had told him
then. She repeated it, not once, or twice, or thrice, but at regular intervals
throughout that shining stretch of Mr Das’ life when Diamond evolved
from a round, glossy cocoon into a trembling, faltering fat puppy that bent
its weak legs and left puddles all over Mrs Das’ clean, fresh floors, and then
into an awkwardly-so lovably awkwardly- lumbering young dog that Mr
Das led around on a leash across the dusty maidan of Bharti Nagar,
delighting in the children who came up to admire the creature but politely
fearful of those who begged “Uncle, let me hold him! Let me take him for
a walk, Uncle!” Only in the Lodi Gardens did he dare slip Diamond off his
leash for the joy of seeing him race across that lawn after chipmunks that
scurried up into the trees, furiously chattering and whisking their tails in
indignation while Diamond sat at the foot of the tree, whining, his eyes
lustrous with desire. “Diamond, Diamond,” Mr Das would call, and
lumbering up to him, would fondle his head, his ears and murmur words of
love to entice him away from the scolding creatures in the leaves.

But there were times when Mr Das went beyond that, times that his friends
and colleagues whom he met daily on their morning walks, were astounded,
if not scandalized, to witness, so much so that they could hardly speak of it
to each other. Mr Das had so clearly taken leave of his senses, and it made
them worry: how could a reputable government servant, a colleague, fall so
low? They had caught him, as portly and stiff as any of them, romping
ridiculously in a rose garden enclosed by crumbling, half-ruined walls that
he had imagined hid him from view, chasing or letting himself be chased
around the rose beds by a wild-with-excitement dog whose barks rent the
peace of the morning park. They hardly knew how to tell him he was
making a fool of himself. Instead, settling down on a bench in the shade of
a neem tree and with a view of the Lodi tombs, watching parrots emerge
from the alcoves and shoot up into the brilliant summer air, they discussed
it between themselves gravely, and with distaste, as became their age and
station-the decent elderly, civil servants with a life of service and sobriety
behind them.

“There was that time Raman Kutty’s grandchild was visiting him from
Madras, and he would bring her to the park. He would even push the pram,
like an ayah. During that visit, he couldn’t speak of anything, or say
anything but “Look, she has a new tooth” or See her sucking her toe, so
sweet. And that child, with its crossed eyes-“

“Tch, tch,” another reproved him for his ill-mannered outburst.

But the outburst was really occasioned by Mr Das, and the sight they had
all had of him kicking up his heels like a frolicking goat in the rose garden,
oblivious of the gardeners who sat on their haunches in the shade, smoking
and keeping a vigilant eye on their rose beds. “Look, here he comes with
that wretched beast,” C.P. Biswas cried out. He was never in very good
humour in the mornings; they all knew it had to do with his digestive system
and its discomforts: they had often come upon him seated in the waiting
room of the homeopath’s clinic which was open to the marketplace and in
full view of those who shopped there for their eggs and vegetables. “I think
he should be told. What do you say, should we tell him?”

“Tell him what, C.P.? asked the mild-mannered A.P. Bose.

“That such behavior is not at all becoming!” exclaimed C.P. Biswas. “After
all, a civil servant-serving in the Department of Mines and Minerals-what
will people say?”

“Who?”

“Who? Look, there is the Under- Secretary walking over there with his
wife. What if he sees? Or the retired Joint Secretary who is doing his yoga
exercises over there by the tank. You think they don’t know him? He has
to be told-we are here to remind him.”

Unfortunately, Mr Das chose not to join them that morning. He walked

smartly past them, hanging onto Diamond’s leash and allowing Diamond
to drag him forward at a pace more suited to a youth of twenty, and an
athletic one at that. He merely waved at his friends, seeing them arranged
in a row on the bench, and clearly not intending grove of bamboos, that
twittered madly with mynah birds.

C.P. Biswas was beginning to rumble and threaten to explode but A.P. Bose
drew out the morning newspaper from his pocket, unclasped the pen from
his pocket, and tactfully asked for help in completing the day’s crossword
puzzle.

Of course their disapproval was nothing compared to that of Mrs Das who
did not merely observe Mr Das’ passion from a distance but was obliged to
live with it. It was she who had to mop up the puddles from her gleaming
floors thinning from the treatment to which they had been subjected. Her
groans and exclamations as she swept up (or, rather, had the little servant
girl sweep up) tufts of dog’s hair from her rugs-and sometimes even her
sofas and armchairs-were loud and rang with lament. Of course she refused
to go to the butcher’s shop for buffalo meat for the dog-she would not go
near that stinking hellhole on the outskirts of the marketplace, and Mr Das
had to brave its bloody, reeking, fly-coated territory himself, clutching a
striped plastic bag close to him with one hand and pressing thickly-folded
handkerchief to his nose with the other-but still, she had to sacrifice one of
her cooking pots to it, and tolerate the building and frothing of the meat
stew on the back burner of her stove. During the hour that it took, she would
retreat to the veranda and sit there in a wicker chair, fanning herself with
melodramatic flair.

“But do you want the dog to starve? Do you think a dog such as Diamond
can be brought up on bread and milk?” Mr Das pleaded.

“How would he grow? How would he live?”

“Why not? I have heard even of tigers being fed on milk. It is true.
Absolutely. Don’t give me those looks, D.P. There was a yogi in Jubbulpore
when I was a girl, he lived in a cave outside the city, with a pet tiger, and it
was he fed it only on milk. He brought it to town on festival days, I saw it
with my own eyes. It was healthy, that milk-fed tiger, and as harmless as a
kitten.”

“But I am not a yogi and Diamond is not a yogi’s pet. What about that cat
you had? Did it not kill sparrows and eat fish?” “My cat was the cleanest
creature this earth has ever known!” Mrs Das cried, holding the fan to her
breast for a moment, in tribute to the deceased pet. “Yes, she enjoyed a little
fish from my plate-but she ate so neatly, so cleanly-” “But fish, wasn’t it?
And sparrows? You see, an animal’s nature cannot be changed simply
because it is domesticated, Sheila. That tiger you speak of, it is quite
possible that one day it turned upon the yogi and made a meal of him-”

“What are you saying?” Mrs Das cried, and began to flutter her fan again.
“That yogi lived to be a hundred years old!” and Mr Das went off, muttering
disbelievingly, to dish out the meat stew for Diamond in an earthenware
bowl in the courtyard and then carefully shut the kitchen door behind him
so Diamond could not drag one of the bones into the house to chew on a
rug as he very much liked to do and would do if not prevented. The children
of the neighborhood were more appreciate, and properly admiring than his
wife, Mr Das felt as he walked Diamond past the small stucco villas set in
their gardens of mango trees and oleander hedges, attracting flocks of them
as he went. But he was not so besotted or blinded as to ignore the need
always to have Diamond firmly secured on his leash when children were
around. He was not unaware that once he had turned his back, or if they had
come upon Diamond when he was not around, they were quite capable of
arousing the dog to a frenzy by teasing him. “We were only playing,
Uncle!” they would cry reproachfully after Diamond had broken loose and
chased them until they fell sprawling in the dust, or even nipped at their
heels as they ran. “That is not how to play with a dog,” he re proved them
severely. “You must not wave a stick at him. You must not pick up a stone.
You must not run.” “If we don’t run, he’ll bite, Uncle! See, he bit Ranu on
her heel.” “Nonsense,” he retorted, “that’s only a scratch,” and Mr Das
walked quickly away, Diamond held closely, protectively at his side. That
was in the days of Diamond’s innocent youth. Diamond was only in
training then for what was to come- his career as a full- fledged badmash,
the terror of the neighborhood. There followed a period when Diamond
became the subject of scandal: the postman made a complaint. He had only
to appear and Diamond would rear up on his hind legs, bellowing for blood.
Nor was it just an empty threat, that bellowing: he had chased the poor man
right across the maidan, making him drop his bag filled with mail as he
raced for shelter from Diamond’s slavering jaws and snapping teeth. The
dog had actually torn a strip off his trouser leg, the trousers the postal
service had given him for a uniform. How was he to explain it? Who was
going to replace it? He demanded furiously, standing on the Das’s veranda
and displaying the tattered garment as proof.

Mr Das paid up. But even so, their mail was no longer inserted in the
mailbox nailed to the door but flung into their hedge from afar. “The dog is
locked up, what harm can he do you through the door?” Mr Das pleaded
after Mrs Das complained that she had found a letter from her daughter
lying in the road outside, and only by luck had her eye caught Chini’s
handwriting. It was a letter that informed them of their son-in-law’s recent
promotion and transfer, too; what if it had been lost?” That dog of yours,”
said the postman, “his voice heard through the door alone is enough to
finish off a man,” and continued to use the hedge as a mailbox. Who knew
how many more of Chini’s delightful and comforting letters to her mother
were lost and abandoned because of this? “Is he a man or a mouse?” Mr
Das fumed.

It was not only the postman Diamond detested and chased off his territory:
it was anyone at all in uniform-the Board of Electricity officials who would
come to check the meter, telephone lines repairmen who would come to
restore the line after a duststorm had disrupted it; even the garbage could
not be collected from the Das’ compound because it drove Diamond
absolutely insane with rage to see the men in their khaki uniforms leap
down from the truck and reach through the back gate for the garbage can to
carry its contents off to their truck; he behaved as if the men were bandits,
as if the family treasure was being looted. Charging at the gate, he would
hurl himself against it, then rear up on his hind legs so he could look over
it and bark at them with such hysteria that the noise rang through the entire
neighborhood. It was small comfort that “No thief dare approach our
house,” as Mr Das said proudly when anyone remarked on his dog’s
temper; they looked at him as if to say “Why talk of thieves, Das? Why not
of innocent people doing their jobs and who are being threatened by that
beast?” Of course, Mrs Das did say it. Later, disgracefully, Diamond’s
phobia went so far as to cause him to chase children in their neat grey shorts
and white gymnasium shoes as they made their way to school. That was the
worst of all for Mr Das- the parents who climbed the steps to the Das’
veranda, quivering with indignation, to report Diamond’s attacks on their
young and tender offspring, so traumatized now by the dog that they feared
to cross the maidan to the school bus stop without adult protection, and
even had to be fetched from there in the afternoon when they returned.

“One day, Das, you will find the police following up on our complaints if
you fail to pay attention to them. And then who can tell what they will do
to your pet?” That was the large and intemperate Mr Singh, who could not
tolerate even a mosquito to approach his curl-headed and darling baba.

Mr Das mopped his brow and sweated copiously in fear and shame. “That
will not happen,” he insisted. “I can promise you Diamond will do nothing
you can report to the police.” “If he tears my child limb from limb, you
think the police will not act, Das?” flared up the parent in a voice of doom.
The neighbours stopped short of actually making report. It was –had been-
a friendly, peaceful neighborhood, after all, built for government officials
of a certain cadre: all the men had their work in common, many were
colleagues in the same ministries, and it would not do to have any enmity
or public airings of personal quarrels. It was quite bad enough when their
wives quarreled or children or servants carried gossip from one household
to another, but such things could not be allowed to get out of control.
Propriety, decorum, standards of behavior: these had to be maintained. If
they failed, what would become of Bharti Nagar, of society?

Also, some of them were moved to a kind of pity. It was clear to them –as
to Mr Das’ friends in the Lodi Gardens-that he had taken leave of his senses
where Diamond was concerned. When Diamond, in chase of a bitch on heat
in the neighboring locality, disappeared for five days one dreadful summer,
and Mr Das was observed walking the dusty streets in the livid heat of June,
hatless, abject, crying “Diamond! Diamond! Diamond!” over garden walls
and down empty alleys, in the filthy outskirts of the marketplace, and even
along the reeking canal where disease lurked and no sensible person
strayed, they could only feel sorry for him. Even the children who had
earlier taken up against Diamond-for very good reason, it should be added
–came up to Mr Das as he stumbled along on his search mission, and
offered, “We’ll help you, Uncle. We’ll search for Diamond too, Uncle.”
Unfortunately, when this band of juvenile detectives caught up with
Diamond in the alley behind the Ambassador Hotel, they caught him in
flagrante delicto and witnessed to Mr Das’ strenuous exertions to separate
his pet from its partner, a poor, pale, pathetic creature who bore all the sorry
marks of a rape victim.
The children went home and reported it all to their families, in graphic
detail. The parent’s disapproval was so thick, and so stormy, it was weeks
before the air cleared over Bharti Nagar. But it was nothing compared to
the drama of Mrs Das’ reaction; sari corner held over her nose, and over
her mouth, she stood up holding a rolled newspaper in her hand as a weapon
and refused to let the beast into the house till Mr Das had taken him around
to the tap in the courtyard at the back, and washed, soaped, shampooed,
bathed, powdered, groomed and combed the creature into a semblance of a
domestic pet. Mr Das bought stronger chains and collars for Diamond took
greater care to tie him up in the courtyard and lock every door, but when
the season came- and only Diamond could niff it in the air, no one else
could predict it-there was no holding him back. His strength was as the
strength of a demon, and he broke free, ripping off his collar, wrenching
his chain, leaping over walls, and disappeared. In a way, the neighbors were
relieved-no longer was the night air rent by that hideous howling as of
wolves on the trail of their prey, and also there was the secret hope that this
time the brute would not be found and not return. They hardened their
hearts against the pitiful sight of Mr Das limping through the dust in search
of his Diamond, like some forlorn lover whose beloved has scorned him
and departed with another, but who has not abandoned his bitter, desperate
hope.

The Lodi Gardens clique, at the end of their brisk early morning walks
round the park, seated themselves in a row on the bench in the shade of the
big neem tree, and discussed Mr Das’ disintegration. “The other day I had
occasion to visit him at his office. I intended to invite him to a meeting of
the Bharti Nagar Durga Puja Association and found him talking on the
phone, and it was clear he was apologizing, whether for the lateness of some
work done, or for mistakes made, I could not make out, but it was a nasty
scene,” said C.P. Biswas. “His superior is that nasty fellow, Krishnaswamy,
and he is nasty to everyone in the department.”

“Maybe so, but when I questioned Das about it, he only held his head- and
did not even answer my questions. He kept saying ‘Diamond is missing, I
can’t find Diamond.’ Now I did not say it, but the words that came to my
mouth were: ‘Good riddance, Das, my congratulations.” The apologist for
Das clucked reprovingly, and commiseratingly, “Tch, tch.” But one day, at
dawn, Mr Das reappeared, holding a thinner, sorrier Diamond at the end of
a leash while his own face beamed as ruddily as the sun rising above the
dome of the Lodi tomb. He waved at his colleagues sitting in the shade.
Diamond slouched at his heels: his last escapade had clearly left him
exhausted, even jaded. “Ha! Remarked C.P. Biswas, crossing his arms over
his chest. “The prodigal has returned, I see. And is he repenting his
misbehavior?” “Oh, he is so sorry, so sorry- he is making up for it in his
own sweet way,” Mr Das beamed, bending to fondle the dog’s drooping
head. “He cannot help himself, you know, but afterwards he feels so sorry,
and then he is so good!”

“Yes, I see that,” C.P. Biswas said out of the corner of his mouth, “and how
long is that to last?” But Mr Das preferred not to hear, instead busying
himself by making the collar more comfortable around Diamond’s neck.
“Now I must take him back and give him his bath before I go to work.”
“Good idea,” said C.P. Biswas tucking his tightly over his yellow teeth.
Diamond, who had been badly bitten and probably thrashed or stoned in
the course of his latest affair, seemed to have quietened down a bit; at least
there was a fairly long spell of obedience, lethargy, comparative meekness.
Mr Das felt somewhat concerned about his health, but seeing him slip
vitamin pills down the dog’s throat, Mrs Das grimaced “Now what? He is
too quiet for you? You need to give him strength to go back to his
badmashi?” That, sadly, was what happened. By the time the cool
evenings and the early dark of November came around, Diamond was
clearly champing at the bit: his howls echoed through sleepy Bharti Nagar,
and neighbors pulled their quilts over their heads and huddled into their
pillows, trying to block out the abominable noise. Mrs Das complained of
the way he rattled his chain as he paced up and down the enclosed
courtyard, and once again the garbage collectors, the postmen, the electric
and telephone linesmen were menaced and threatened. Only Mr Das
worried, “He’s gone off his food. Look, he’s left his dinner uneaten again.”

Inevitably the day came when he returned from work and was faced by an
angrily triumphant Mrs Das bursting to tell him the news. “Didn’t I tell you
that dog was planning badmashi again? When the gate was opened to let
the gas man bring in the cylinder, your beloved pet knocked him down,
jumped over his head and vanished!” The nights were chilly. With a woolen
cap pulled down over his ears, and his tight short jacket buttoned up, Mr
Das did his rounds in the dark, calling hoarsely till his rasped. He felt he
was coming down with the flu, but he would not give up, he would not
leave Diamond to the dire fate Mrs Das daily prophesied for him. A kind
of mist enveloped the city streets- whether it was due to the dust, the
exhaust of tired, snarled traffic or the cold, one could not tell, but the trees
and hedges loomed like phantoms, the street-lamps were lazy, he imagined
he saw Diamond when there was no dog there, and he was filled with a
foreboding he would not confess to Mrs Das who waited for him at home
with cough mixture, hot water and another muffler. “Give him up,” she
counselled grimly. “Give him up before this search kills you.”

But when tragedy struck, it did so in broad daylight, in the bright sunshine
of a winter Sunday, and so there were many witnesses, many who saw the
horrific event clearly, so clearly it could not be brushed aside as a
nightmare. Mr Das was on the road back from Khan Market where he had
gone to buy vegetables for Mrs Das, when the dog catcher’s van passed
down the road with its howling, yelping catch of hounds peering out
through the barred window. Of course Mr Das’ head jerked back, his chin
trembled with alertness, with apprehension, his eyes snapped with rage
when he saw his pet enclosed there, wailing as he was being carried to his
doom. “Diamond! They will kill my Diamond!” passers-by heard him
shriek in a voice unrecognizably high and sharp, and they saw the small
man in his tight brown coat, his woolen cap and muffler, dash down his
market bag into the dust, and chase the van with a speed no one would have
thought possible. He sprang at its retreating back, hanging there from the
bars for a horrid moment, and, as the van first braked, then jerked forward
again, fell, fell backwards, onto his back, so that his head struck the stones
in the street, and he lay there, entirely still, making no sound or movement
at all. Behind the bars of the window receding into the distance, Diamond
glittered like a dead coal, or a black star, in daylight’s blaze.

Understanding and appreciating the story

1. ‘That dog will kill me one day?’ In what sense is this sentence by Mrs
Das foreboding?
2. What does Diamond do to elicit this reaction?
3. Is the portrayal of Mr Das’ relationship with Diamond believable? Why?
4. What kind of a person is Mr Das? Examine the way he reacts to his wife,
his neighbors, work mates and Diamond.
5. How does Diamond’s disappearance affect Mr Das?
6. Trace Diamond’s growth and show how each stage of his physical
growth comes with a change in behavior.
7. Identify any aspect of symbolism and discuss it.
8. What is the main issue in the story?
9. Did the tragic end of the story surprise you or did Anita Desai provide
clues to the ending of the story?

Discussion questions
1. Drawing examples from the story, discuss how obsession can impact
negatively on a person’s behavior.
2. “Mr Das had so clearly taken leave of his senses.” Discuss this
statement in light of the events in the story.
3. Identify the use of vivid description and discuss its role.

Arrested Development by Sandisile Tshuma (Zimbabwe)

I have been standing at Max‘s garage for almost three hours trying to
hitch a ride to Beit bridge. I am not the only one here though; there
must be at least fifty people, maybe even a hundred. Or more, I do not
know, whatever; it is hot and I am tired. The point is there is a sizeable
crowd of would- be travelers with things to do and places to be and we
are all waiting. Desperately! So much about life here and now entails
waiting.

If you are serious about life, if you are ago-getter and you want to make
things happen then you need to know how to wait seriously. You take a
deep breath, put your‘ game face‘ on, brace yourself and wait. I had to
wait two hours to get money from the bank to pay for my journey and
now here am waiting again. It is what we do we wait for transport for
electricity, for rain, for slow- speed internet connections at the dingy
cyber-cafés in town where we check our mail if a nifty little website has
found us a job in Dubai or a scholarship to on obscure foreign university,
anything really to get us out of here. And there is never anything, mind
you, but you know how hope is. It never dies. So we tell ourselves that
there isn‘t anything yet. We will find a way out; in the meal time let us
wait. If you are serious about your life, about surviving, about the future,
then you sow some seeds, invest in yourself and you wait. It is my
favourite oxymoron, arrested development.

I am not hard to spot in this crowd at the barely functioning filling

station. I am the sore thumb a twenty something years old women
wearing high-end sunglasses and trend jeans, carrying minimal luggage
and standing in a statuesque pose that is supposed to convince motorists
that I would be great company on a major road trip so they should stop
for me. I have been here for three hours so clearly something is not
working. Maybe they can tell that behind the cool-as-a-cucumber façade
of togetherness I am trying to portray is a quivering, fearful little girl
with just dying for someone to take her by the hand and help her cross a
busy road. People around me have started grumbling that it is not fair
that there are so many cars going to Esigodin but nothing going to
Beitbridge or even Gwanda. They are right. No one seems to be going
as far as beitbfridge and the longer I stand here the more asinine I feel
for thinking that I could do an entire research project on border jumper
in just one lousy weekend.

Today is Friday, this thing is due on Tuesday and I cannot get out to the
field! Why border jumpers anyway? Why did I have to pick a topic that
would lead me to the edge of the country? Why not something local like
the pipe dream that is the Matabeleland Zambezi Water Pipeline? Well,
I suppose that is not really local either; besides, it is too controversial.
But why do I always procrastinate until there is no time and so much
pressure? What is the matter with me? My internal conversation is
interrupted by the sudden realization that there is a car right in front of
me and a swarm of people around me, all jostling to get in. Beitbridge!
I hear someone yell before I am painfully elbowed to the side by a tiny
old woman with a rabid look in her eye. Okay this is it. There is no way
I am not getting this ride. The driver obviously stopped for me, having
been won over by my enigmatic side-of-the-road persona, so if these
people think they can rob me of my place then they had better think
again. It is a double cab and the only space left is right at the back. This
is where all those years of compulsory sports at school come in handy.

In one deft move I hoist myself into the back, sparing a fleeting thought
of gratitude to whoever invented stretch denim. Meanwhile, women in
chiffon blouses and pencil skirts struggle to clamber in with as much
dignity as can be achieved, while trying not to expose their nether
regions to the whole world. Eventually, the back is full and we all look
at each other with relieved but slightly sheepish smiles in
acknowledgement of the elbowing, pushing and shoving it took to get
in. There is a word for what we have just done, Vigoroni: getting ahead
of the crowd and on top of the pile. Vigo for short; that is what all the
cool people say. It is a brutish, dangerous, undignified must-have skill
if you are serious about life and you are a go-getter. You need to know
how to wait and when opportunity arrives you need to master the Vigo.
We are packed like sardines in the searing noon-day sun, but we are
happy sardines with things to do and places to be and we are off!

Two kilometres down the road the car stops and the driver gets out to
collect our fares: eight hundred thousand dollars to Beitbridge. Fares are
so crazy nowadays that I do not even know if that is reasonable or not. I
have a feeling it is not and the other passengers do not seem to be
comfortable with it either, but it is not in the nature of a Zimbabwean to
question or complain. Besides, this is a private car and the owner
probably had to get his fuel off the black market, so he will offer his
service at whatever price the market can bear. There is no public
transport, hence we are extremely desperate, so we wince and bear it.
The car does a U-turn and we assume he is going to get some petrol but
we find ourselves back at Max’s Garage, where the driver tells us that
he has changed his mind and will no longer be going to Beitbridge,
something to do with the money not covering his fuel costs blah, blah.
The others try to convince him to change his mind, but at this point I am
simply not interested. Just give me my money back, I hiss. He gives me
my refund of eight hundred thousand dollars in ten thousand dollar notes
and I am not impressed. Great, so here I am certified waiter and
champion of the Vigo, defeated. I am not even trying to look cool
anymore. Dear God, please let me get there today. This project is the
last hurdle I must clear before I get my qualification in disaster
management. Whatever that is. I am commiserating my misery when a
young man with a runny nose walks up to me and asks if I am going to
Beitbridge because there is space in the van across the road and it is
leaving now. Favour! This is why I am a believer. So I cross the road
and get into the front of the van next to a woman in her mid- thirties and
then we are well and truly off.

The woman and the driver are talkers, which works perfectly for me
because I am a listener, so all I have to do is insert sporadic questions
and appropriate exclamations here and they do all the work. About ten
kilometres down the road we are stopped at a roadblock and the driver
has to pay a fine. While he is talking to the traffic officer I get a text
message on my mobile phone. It is my friend Lihle who is in Harare.
She says that since life expectancy in Zim is reportedly quite low she
reckons she is entitled to a mid- life crisis round about now. She
obviously has no idea just how low it is. Since it is actually around
thirty-seven, it is technically too late for a mid-life crisis. Sori m8. In
mid-20s nw so u hav abt 10 mo yrs left 2 liv. Tbz r the sunset yrs. 218 4
crisis L. In another place and time, this phase would have been called
the quarter-life crisis, during which you are trying to find a balance
between fitting into the societal image of responsible adulthood and
discovering and doing the things you really want. Like getting a nine-
to-five, getting married and having two point four children called
Memory, Beauty and Blessing versus pursuing a career in theatre no
matter how poorly remunerated it is, because that is what makes you feel
alive and significant.
The driver is back; he claims he had to pay the police to give him a ticket
because he says that this way they will not be able to give him any more
tickets at subsequent roadblocks along the way. Okay, I am not even
going to try and understand the reasoning involved. So we are off again.
It turns out that these two have something in common. They carry
contraband between Zimbabwe and South Africa. He is a Malayitsha,
which means he carries groceries and property sent by Zimbabweans
working in South Africa to their families back home. Then on the return
leg he carries people: a couple of hundred rand if you have a passport, a
couple of thousand if you do not. Business is brisk and he is making a
decent living. He can afford to send his three children to good boarding
schools, has a great homestead in the communal areas and just bought a
property in Bulawayo. She is not to be outdone though. Her contraband
of choice is cigarettes: good quality, highly sought after Zimbabwe
cigarettes, and she is raking in fifty thousand rand a run. Fifty thousand
rand! The drink I was sipping goes down the wrong tube and I am
spluttering and coughing, trying very hard to regain my composure and
not look like the naïve good little citizen that I am.

My pulse is racing. Life is hard, she says, but for her life has never been
better. She has a townhouse in Johannesburg, one in Pumula and is
building in Mahatshula and Selborne Park. There is something about
Bulawayo, she says. While she is talking I rattle off the figures in my
mind. Fifty thousand rand a run! How many runs a month? How much
to pay off the cops? And the insider at customs? And who are her
buyers? What is the initial investment outlay? Girlfriend, what are you
still doing at school? There is money to be made in hard currency! Then
it occurs to me that she could be one of these nouveau riche types a
friend of mine was complaining about sometimes ago. They buy
grotesquely oversized mock Victorian style furniture that is obscenely
expensive and fill their homes with high tech gadgets they never use and
very expansive but distastefully generic art. I remember him agonizing
Like, hello! They don’t even know a Tamuka Mtengwa from an Eric
Gauss! I frown, unsure that I know the difference either. But I feel his
bitterness! She is going on about how she dropped out of high school
and does not regret it. It is official, I am bitter. Wow, I say, feigning
nonchalance; you must really shop up a storm at Fort 11 flea market.
She squeals delightedly, not sensing my sarcasm, yes! Then she
launches into a long tirade about how she never buys authentic designer
labels and she would much rather buy a thousand pairs of cheap shoes
made in Korea. Yup, she is indeed one of them I decide, before sinking
deeper into the car seat feeling like an inadequate nonachiever. I will
take my mid-life crisis now if you do not mind: shaken, not stirred.
Whatever. In Gwanda, we pick up someone to sit in the back of the van.

He speaks some type of hybrid Zulu with a heavy Shona accent. The
driver disappears for a good twenty minutes during which the newcomer
too has a story to tell. He works in Johannesburg and came home two
weeks ago for a relative’s funeral in Marondera. In Beitbridge the
transport situation was so bad that he had to wait eighteen hours for a
mini-bus to fill up with enough people to make the trip to Bulawayo
viable. He decided to change his rands to local currency with some
young men who offered him a good exchange rate. Not having been in
the country for a few years he was unfamiliar with the new currency.
They gave him a couple of thousand dollars in ₷ 100 and ₷ 500 notes in
exchange for eight hundred rand in hard earned cash. Unbelievable! I
am mortified on his behalf. Did he not count the money? That amount
should have earned him over twenty million dollars on the black market.
They said something about slashing zeros, he recalls with a rueful smile.
The woman, who has introduced herself as Gloria, seems to find the
story immensely amusing. Ha! They really got you, my friend! You know
that was the equivalent of twenty rand, which means you just gave them
seven hundred and eighty rand! Ha! Ha! They really got you. I’ll bet
they were Shona. Those are the only crooks in Beitbridge, unlike the
Ndebele who are too lazy and us Vendas who make an honest hustle.
Completely dumbstruck by her blatant tribalism, I look at the young man
who is very obviously Shona, to study his reaction to what I perceive to
be a total lack of empathy on Gloria’s part. Poor chap; he is taking it like
a trooper. Yes, my sister, they really got me. I had to sell my phone to
raise money to come back. Gloria throws her head back laughing. Never
trust a Shona! Never trust a woman either! Trust no one, not even your
relatives. We are all trying to survive here and if you are not alert it is
only the fool who won’t take advantage. I am furious with her for
attitude but at the same time she is hard to dislike. She has the type of
gritty raw honesty that does nothing for a person’s self esteem but makes
one see the truth in all its cruelty. And that is what makes one toughen
up. The driver returns and the conversation ends as the journey resumes.

I am gazing out of the window watching the world go by, or rather is it

the world that watches me pass by? Somewhere behind me the sun sets
over Zimbabwe. This day, like so many other things in my country, is
slipping into the arms of the past. As the kilometres go by I am struck
by a loneliness that I have noticed in everyone lately. It is a pervasive
and virus-like affliction that insinuates itself into every public social
gathering and intimate lovers’ embrace. It comes in waves that bear
transcendental glimpses of what once was: a life and future that existed
briefly in the collective consciousness of twelve million people and we
can feel it slipping through our fingers. All we can do is watch
helplessly. Or can we?

The driver and Gloria are in an animated discussion about the dangers
of their trades. They talk of payment defaulters being sold off to
Nigerians in Johannesburg, strip searches and muggings by bandits in
the farmlands of Limpopo Province, swimming across the Limpopo and
hoping that if there must be a crocodile attack let it be the person next
to you that is eaten because you really need this to work out. They talk
of paying off border officials, highway police, farmers, magistrates,
anyone and everyone. There is no palm that cannot be greased,
apparently. But surely there are some palms that you cannot bring
yourself to grease, either because they are already so dirty that you are
afraid some of it will come off on you, or because no one else has ever
dared to grease them. It is just getting dark when we arrive at the busy
border town. Gloria curses as she realizes that she forgot her passport
and she is supposed to be collecting some money at the South African
border town of Musina tomorrow. No worries though, she knows a
person who can organize a gate pass for her at a small fee. Another text
message from Lihle who reckons her bride price has at least quadrupled
since she came to Zimbabwe from the UK to get her study visa. I am
such a catch! I’m intelligent, educated and beautiful, I can fetch water,
light a fire and cook a decent meal and I can find anything in the dark.
It is good to see she has found something positive about these endless
power cuts. A few weeks ago she was upset because her expensive
imported hairpiece always smells like wood smoke…

Saying my goodbyes to my travel-mates, I step out of the car and inhale

deeply the warm, dusty air. I came here for statistics and figures on
irregular migrants but these figures have names and faces. They include
seasoned smooth operators of the system like Gloria and clueless teens
fresh out of high school in the rural areas that are carried by Malayitshas
and are easy fodder for unscrupulous people on either side of the border.
They are go- getters who are desperately serious about life and, as I walk
into the starry night, I hope I can do them justice.

Understanding and appreciating the story

1. Where is the narrator when the story begins? What is she doing and
for how long has she been there?
2. Why has the narrator and other people been waiting for so long?
3. Why would people be seeking education at an obscure foreign
university?
4. How much money does the driver ask for? What is his excuse? What
impression do you get of this country’s currency?
5. What has the narrator been studying? She say she does not quite
know what the course entails. What does this suggest about her and
the education system of the country?
6. In your own words, state what the driver and Gloria have in common.
7. Compare and contrast the activities in this city with similar activities
in our own city of Nairobi and especially with respect to the so called
“matatu madness.”
8. Examine the use of description in this story and comment on its
effectiveness.
9. The narrator uses non-standard English in her short text message.
Why do you think she uses such language? Rewrite the message in
standard English.
10. How effective is the first-person narration in this story?
11. What does the writer mean by this statement, “there isn’t a palm that
cannot be greased…”

Discussion questions
1. Identify instances of corruption in the story and discuss how this
impacts negatively on development in this country.
2. The story captures the struggle borne by many people globally as
they try to cope with the economic hardships. Drawing examples
from the story, show how the citizens of this country are trying to
cope.
3. Do you think the use of the short message service (SMS) is
impacting negatively on written English? Considering that the use
of short message services is becoming common, what should you
do to ensure that your writing remains acceptable and
professional?

Sandra Street by Michael Anthony (Trinidad)

Mr. Blades, the new teacher, was delighted with the composition
we wrote about Sandra Street. He read some aloud to the class.
He seemed particularly pleased when he read what was written by
one of the boys from the other side of the town.
“Sandra Street is dull and uninteresting,” the boy wrote. “For one
half of its length, there are a few houses and a private school
(which we go to) but the other half is nothing but a wilderness of
a big trees.” Mr. Blades smiled from the corners of his mouth and
looked at those of us who belonged to Sandra Street. “In fact,” the
boy wrote, “it is the only street in our town that has big trees, and
I do not think it is a part of our town at all because it is so far and
so different from our other streets.”
The boy went on to speak of the gay attractions on the other side
of the town, some of which, he said, Sandra Street could never
dream to have. In his street, for instance, there was the savannah
where they played football and cricket, but the boys of Sandra
Street had to play their cricket in the road. And to the amusement
of Mr. Blades, who also came from the other side of the town, he
described Sandra Street as a silly little girl who ran away to the
bushes to hide herself. Everyone laughed except the few of us
from Sandra Street, and I knew what was going to happen when
school was dismissed, although Mr. Blades said it was all a joke
and in fact Sandra Street was very fine. I did not know whether
he meant this or not, for he seemed very much amused and I felt
this was because he came from the other side of the town.
He read out a few more of the compositions. Some of them said
very nice things about Sandra Street but those were the ones
written by ourselves. Mr. Blades seemed delighted about these,
too, and I felt he was trying to appease us when he said that they
showed up a new character of the beauty of Sandra Street. There
were only a few of us who were appeased, though, and he noticed
this and said all right, next Tuesday we will write about the other
side of the town. This brought fiendish laughter from some of us
from Sandra Street, and judging from the looks on the faces of
those from the other side of the town, I knew what would happen
next Tuesday, too, when school was dismissed. And I felt that
whatever happened it was not going to make any difference to our
side or to the other side of the town.
Yet the boy’s composition was very truthful. Sandra Street was
so different from the other street beyond. Indeed, it came from the
very quiet fringes and ran straight up to the forests. As it left the
town there were a few houses and shops along it, and then the
school, and after that there were not many more houses, and the
big trees started from there till the road trailed off to the river that
bordered the forests. During the day all was very quiet except
perhaps for the voice of one neighbor calling to another, and if
some evenings brought excitement to the schoolyard, these did
very little to disturb the calmness of Sandra Street. Nor did the
steel-band gently humming from the other side of the town. I had
to remember the steel-band because although I liked to hear it, I
had to put into my composition that it was very bad. We had no
steel-bands in Sandra Street, and I thought I could say this was
because we were decent, cultured folk and did not like the horrible
noises of steel-bands.
I sat in class recalling the boy’s composition again. Outside the
window I could see the women coming out of the shops. They
hardly passed each other without stopping to talk and this made
me laugh. For that was exactly what the boy had written-that they
could not pass without stopping to talk, as if they had something
to talk about. I wondered what they talked about. I did not know.
What I did know was that they never seemed to leave Sandra
Street to go into town. Maybe they were independent of the town.
I chuckled, a triumphant little chuckle because this, too, would be
good to put into my composition next Tuesday.
Dreamingly I gazed out of the window. I noticed how Sandra
Street stood away from the profusion of houses. Indeed, it did not
seem to belong to the town at all. It stood off, not proudly, but
sadly, like one desiring peace and rest. I felt all filled-up inside.
Not because of the town in the distance, but of this strange little
road. It was funny, the things the boy had written. He had written
in anger what I thought of now in joy. He had spoken of the
pleasures and palaces on the other side of the town. He had said
why they were his home sweet home. As I looked at Sandra Street,
I , too, knew why it was my home sweet home. It was dull and
uninteresting to him but it meant so much to me. It was-
“Oh” I started, as the hand rested on my shoulder.
“It’s recess,” said Mr. Blades.
“O-yes, Sir” The class was surging out to the playground. I did
not seem to have heard a sound before.
Mr. Blades looked at me and smiled. “What are you thinking of?”
he said.
He seemed to be looking inside me. Inside my very mind. I
stammered out a few words which even if they were clear would
not have meant anything. I stopped. He was still smiling quietly
at me. “You are the boy from Sandra Street?” he said.
“Yes, Sir.”
“I thought so,” he said.
What happened the following Tuesday after school was a lot
worse than what had ever happened before, and it was a mystery
how the neighbors did not complain or Mr. Blades did not get to
hear of it. We turned out to school the next morning as if all had
been peaceful, and truly there was no sign of the battle save the
little bruises which were easy to explain away.
We kept getting compositions to write. Mr. Blades was always
anxious to judge what we wrote but none gave him as much
delight as those we had written on Sandra Street. He had said that
he knew the other side of the town very well and no one could
fool him about that, but if any boy wrote anything about Sandra
Street he would have to see. And when he had said that he had
looked at me and I was very embarrassed. I had turned my eyes
away, and he had said that when the mango season came he would
see the boy who did not speak the truth about Sandra Street.
Since that day I was very shy of Mr. Blades and whenever I saw
him walking towards me I turned in another direction. At such
times there would always be a faint smile at the corners of his
mouth. I stood looking out of the school window one day thinking
about this and about the compositions when again I felt a light
touch and jumped.
“Looking out?” Mr. Blades said.
“Yes, Sir.”
He stood there over me and I did not know if he was looking down
at me or looking outside, and presently he spoke.
“Hot, eh?”
“Yes,” I said.
He moved in beside me and we both stood there looking out of
the window. It was just about noon and the sun was blazing down
on Sandra Street. The houses stood there tall and almost somber
and there seemed to be no movement about save for the fowls
lying in the shadows of the houses. As I watched this, a certain
sadness came over me and I looked over the houses across to the
hills. Suddenly my heart leaped and I turned to Mr. Blades, but I
changed my mind and did not speak. He had hardly noticed that I
looked up at him. I saw his face looking sad as his eyes wandered
about the houses. I felt self- conscious as he looked at the houses
for they were no longer new and the paint had been washed off by
the rain and they had not been re- painted. Then, too, there were
no gates and no fences around them as there were in the town, and
sometimes with a great flurry a hen would scamper from under
one house to another leaving dust behind in the hot sun.
I looked at Mr. Blades. He was smiling faintly. He saw me
looking at him. “Fowls,” he said.
“There are no gates,” I apologized.
“No, there are no gates.” And he laughed softly to himself.
“Because…” I had to stop. I didn’t know why there were no gates.
“Because you did not notice that before.”
“I noticed that before,” I said.
Looking sharply at me he raised his brows and said slowly, “You
noticed that before. Did you put that in your composition? You
are the boy from Sandra Street, are you not?”
“There are more from Sandra Street…”
“Did you notice the cedar grove at the pot?” he went on, “You
spoke of the steel-band at the other side of the town; did you speak
of the river? Did you notice the hills?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?” His voice grew sterner and more arid. His eyes seemed
burning up from within.
“You noticed all this and you wrote about Sandra Street without
mentioning it, eh? How many marks did you make?” “Forty-
five.” He looked surprised. “I gave you forty-five for writing
about steel-band noises and the dirty trams of the town? Look!”
he pointed, “Do you see?”
“Mango blossoms,” I said, feeling to cry out. “I wanted to show
it to you.”
“Did you write about it?”
“No.” I just wanted to break out and run away from him. He bent
down to me. His face looked harder now, though kind, but I could
see there was a fury inside him.
“There is something like observation, Steve,” he said.
“Observation. You live in Sandra Street. Yet Kenneth writes a
composition on your own place better than you.”
“He said Sandra Street was soppy,” I cried.
“Of course he said it was soppy. It was to his purpose. He comes
from the other side of the town. What has he got to write on?
Gaudy houses with gates like prisons around them? High walls
cramping the imagination? The milling crowd with faces
impersonal as stone hurrying on buses, hurrying off trams. Could
he write about that? He said Sandra Street was soppy. Did you
prove it wasn’t so? Where is your school and his, for instance?”
I was a little alarmed. Funny how I did not think of that point
before. “Here,” I said. “In Sandra Street.”
“Did you mention that?”
Mercifully, as he was talking, the school bell sounded. The fowls,
startled, ran out into the hot sun across the road. The dust rose,
and above the dust, above the houses, the yellow of the mango
blossom caught my eye.
“The bell, Sir.”
“Yes, the bell’s gone. What is it, Geography?”
“Yes, Sir.” And as I turned away he was still standing looking out
into the rad.
It was long before any such thing happened again. Though often
when it was dry and hot, I stood at the window looking out. I
watched the freedom of the fowls between the tall houses, and
sometimes the women talked to each other through the windows
and smiled. I noticed, too, the hills which were now streaked with
the blossoms of the poui, and exultantly I wondered how many
people observed this and knew it was a sign of the rains. None of
the mango blossoms could be seen now, for they had already
turned into fruit, and I knew how profuse they were because I had
been to the hills.
I chuckled to myself. There is something like observation, Steve.
And how I wished Mr. Blades would come to the window again
so I could tell him what lay among the mango trees in the hills. I
knew that he was not angry with me. I realized that he was never
angry with any boy because of the district the boy came from. We
grew to like him, for he was very cheerful, though mostly he
seemed dreamy and thoughtful. That is, except at composition
time. He really came to life then. His eyes would gleam as he read
our compositions and whenever he came to a word he did not like
he would frown and say any boy was a sissy to use that word. And
if a composition pleased him he would praise the boy and be
especially cheerful with him, and the boy would be proud and the
rest of us would be jealous and hate him.
I was often jealous. Mr. Blades had a passion for compositions,
and I was anxious to please him to make up for that day at the
window. I was anxious to show him how much I observed and
often I noted new things and put them into my compositions. And
whenever I said something wonderful, I knew it because of the
way Mr. Blades would look at me, and sometimes I thought he
would talk to me aside. But many weeks ran out before we spoke
at the window again. I did not start this time because I was
expecting him. I had been watching him from the corners of my
eyes.
“The sun’s coming out again,” he said.
“It’s cloudy,” I said.
The rains had almost ceased but there were still great patches of
dark cloud in the sky. When the wind blew they moved slowly
and clumsily, but if the sun was free of one cloud there would be
another. The sun was shining brightly now, although there was
still a slight drizzle of rain, and I could smell the steam rising from
the hot pitch and from the galvanized roofs.
“Rain falling, sun shining,” Mr. Blades said. And I remembered
what they said about that and I smiled and when Mr. Blades
pressed me to tell him I laughed and would not say. Then
thoughtfully he said, “You think they’re all right?”
“What, Sir?”
“In the immortelle root.”
I was astonished. I put my hands to my mouth. How did he know?
He smiled down at me. “You won’t be able to jump over now!”
And the whole thing was revealed. I could not help laughing. I
had put into my composition how I went into the hills last Sunday
evening and how the mango trees were laden with small mangoes,
some full, and how there were banana trees among the
immortelles and poui. I had spoken too about the bunch of green
bananas I had hidden to ripen in the immortelle roots and how
afterwards I had jumped across the river to the other bank.
“They’re all right” I said, and pretended to be watching the steam
rising from the hot pitch. “I like bananas,” said Mr. Blades. I was
sure that he licked his lips as he looked towards the hills. I was
touched. I felt at one with him. I liked bananas too. It always made
me lick my lips. I thought now of the whole bunch which must be
yellow by now between the immortelle roots. “Sir…” I said to
him, and I hesitated. Then I took the wild chance. And when he
answered, a feeling of extreme happiness swept over me.
I remember that evening as turning out bright, almost blinding.
The winds had pushed away the heavy clouds and the only
evidence of the rains were the little puddles along Sandra Street.
I remember the hills as being strange in an enchanted sort of way,
and I felt the enchantment came mainly from Mr. Blades being
with me. We watched the leaves of the cocoa gleaming with the
moisture of the rains, and Mr. Blades confessed he never thought
there was so much cocoa in the hills. We watched the cyp, too,
profuse between the laden mango trees, and the redness of their
rain-picked flowers was the redness of blood.
We came to the immortelle tree where I had hidden the bananas.
I watched to see if Mr. Blades licked his lips but he did not. He
was not even watching.
“Sir,” I said in happy surprise, after removing the covering of
trash from the bunch. Mr. Blades was gazing across the trees. I
raised my eyes. Not far below, Sandra Street swept by, bathed in
light. “The bananas, Sir,” I said.
“Bananas?” he cried despairingly. “Bananas are all you see
around you, Steve!”
I was puzzled. I thought it was what we had come to the hills for.
“Good Heavens!” he said with bitterness, “To think you instead
of Kenneth should belong to Sandra Street.”

Understanding and appreciating the story

1. What impression do you get of Mr. Blades at the beginning of
the story?
2. What features of Sandra Street does the boy from the other
side of the town highlight in his composition?
3. What shows that Mr. Blades enjoys reading this composition?
4. In your opinion, does Mr. Blades respond to this composition
the way he does because he is from the other side of the town?
Explain.
5. How do those from Sandra Street react to this composition?
How do those from the other side react?
6. Does Mr. Blade’s efforts to appease those from Sandra Street
succeed? Explain.
7. Make notes on the narrator’s own observations about Sandra
Street. On what aspects does the narrator agree with what his
classmate had written about Sandra Street? On which details
do they differ?
8. From whose point of view is this story told? Is this effective
in the narration of the story?
9. Due to the setting of this story, you may come across phrases
or words that do not conform to the British English system.
For instance, “… I said, feeling to cry out.” Pick out other
similar instances and discuss why they are used that way.
10. Beginning with this sentence from the story “The sun was
shining brightly now, although there was a slight drizzle of
rain…,” write a composition.

Discussion questions
1. Does Mr. Blades succeed in teaching the narrator about the
power of observation?
 2. Examine the use of description in the story and comment
on its effectiveness.
3. How does this story dramatize the value of the natural
environment?

Twilight Trek by Sefi Atta (Nigeria)

Gao. An agent hands me a fake passport- my name is not Jean-Luc, I am

not from Mali and I am definitely no Francophone African. I am fluent
in English though, and luckily the agent can communicate in Pidgin. He
leads me through a haze of smoke to a mud hut where I will hide until
nightfall. The smoke is coming from the compound where a group of
old Malian women are cooking a mid-day meal. The women are
shrouded in robes. Being such good Moslems, you would think they
would invite a stranger to eat. Anyway, I am happy to go indoors, instead
of sweltering in the heat like them. I do not care to know the town of
Gao. The further north I am in Africa, the more one place begins to
resemble the other. Like me, other travelers in Gao have come from
somewhere south. We will cross the Sahara to get to Morocco, and from
there cross the Mediterranean to get into Spain. We are illegals. It is not
that we do not have enough money to fly overseas; it’s just that the
foreign embassies do not grant Africans like us visas.

Half my fare is hidden in my sneakers. To raise the full amount, I sold

marijuana. I was not making much of a cut, so I duped my boss. He
threatened to send a gang to slit my throat, after they had raped me. I
knew I had to leave town immediately. Death, I could live with, but I
could not afford to be tampered with like that, against my will. When I
was young, my mother used to smear lipstick all over my face. “Keep
still,” she would order as I struggled. “See how pretty you look.” She
oiled my hair with pomade and braided it into cornrows like a girl’s. In
the afternoons, after school, I would beg her to let me play football with
other boys in our neighborhood; she would make me sit on a stool and
watch her roasting groundnuts. She would be singing that awful nursery
rhyme:

The birds have come home

Tolongo

One black, one red

Tolongo

Their tails are touching the ground

Sho

Instead of clapping, I would be frowning at her huge crusty feet. Even

with those feet, my mother managed to walk the streets in high heels and
solicit all sorts of men: rich, married, handsome, fat-white sailors like
my father. One day she introduced me to a Lebanese man who was
known for liking light-skinned boys. “He ‘ll only touch,” she promised.
I ran away from home after that, lived on the streets, played football with
a group of louts and discovered just how professional I was at the sport.
In fact, for a while, before I warned them to stop understating my talent,
my football friends were calling me- what’s his name?- Pele?

In the hut there is a prayer mat. I fall asleep on it. In my dream, my

mother’s face appears as I remember it: two thick penciled-in lines for
brows, a chip in her front tooth, and pink rouge on her cheeks. Her feet
are the roots of a tree, with dry bark for skin. She cannot move, and yet
she is able to hunt me down and find me, wherever I am, even here in
Gao. She tells me that, all things considered, to trek overseas is
reasonable. A man she knew hid himself in the wheel well of an airplane
that flew overnight to London. It could have been the low temperature
or high altitude that finished him. Immigration officers discovered his
body two days later. By the end of the month, they had deported him
back to his family for burial.

She says the lesson to learn is that the world is round, which means that
if I run too fast I might end up chasing the very homeland I am running
from. She lectures me even in my dreams, my mother. She is the daughter
of a schoolteacher, lest anyone forget.

When it is dark enough, I come out of the hut. My stomach is so fed up

with grumbling for attention it is in a silent sulk. I buy myself bread and
sardines to eat, enough to last the journey. I buy drinking water, bottles
of it. I meet a pretty girl called Patience at the depot where the agent
instructed me to wait with other travelers for our transportation out of
Gao. Patience is skinny with a bit of a backside. Her trousers are too
tight. Her hair is curly and greased back. She wears a silver hoop in her
nostril. She claims to be from Mali, but she has been living in the capital
city, Bamako. She says this as if it is some sort of achievement, as if it
separates her from villagers who are happy to stay in Africa herding their
cattle, hoeing their land or whatever.

“You have a man in Bamako?” I ask her.

“Do you know how old I am?”

“Sweet sixteen at most?”

“You small boy! Don’t cheek me! How old are you yourself?”

She laughs and swings slaps at me. I am a year older than I was on the
day I left home, is all she needs to know. African women are proud of
their ages. I bet Patience is taken by my looks. I bet she has taken rubbish
from men not nearly as good-looking as me. I bet she is used to it. In my
old neighborhood, a pretty girl like her would have been beaten up
several times by her man.

Our trucks arrive while she is still busy trying to snub me. They are small
trucks with tarpaulin covers. We do not scramble for them. We all
believe we will get in one way or the other. Our guides are Tuaregs with
indigo cloths wrapped around their heads. They know the desert routes.
They will drive us through Mali, Algeria, and beyond. There is talk that
travelers are sometimes attacked by bearded Moslems and bandits; that
trucks often break down and there is no guarantee the gendarmes on
patrol will arrive on time to rescue us. This makes a few women turn
around at the last moment, especially those with children. I hop into the
same truck as Patience and sit by her.

“You again?” she says.

I wink. “I’m just here to protect you.”

There are seven of us under the tarpaulin. I check out the others while
cracking my knuckles: passenger one, tattered shoes; two, greasy
skullcap; three, lopsided headscarf; four, chapped lips; five, gold chain
and red eyes. Nothing new.
How long can I bear this god-forsaken place? We can only travel at night
when cold winds blow. During the day, the sand- you cannot
understand- is like needles in my eyes, ants in my nostrils, cobwebs in
my chest. It is everywhere. I eat bread and crunch on grains. I gulp down
water and grit gets stuck in my throat. I cough so hard my head could
detonate.

I am telling you, in the most crowded cities, I have ridden in taxis with
wobbly wheels and no doors, hitched rides on highways in lorries that
bounce from one pothole to the other. I have slept in villages where dogs
will not stop to take a piss, had bouts of diarrhea, fever, to get to Gao. I
cannot understand these Tuaregs. Only camels are meant to survive in
the Sahara.

At first, Patience would say, “Mr. Protector, how now?” and I would
mumble, “Cool.” Then I could not be bothered to answer because my
tongue started to swell. Then she stopped teasing me, perhaps because
she realized that joking around might eventually exhaust her. Now, she
is choking away like everyone else in our truck. We spit where we
crouch. We reek badly. Our legs are cramped. The man with the skullcap
says he is suffering from piles because of the constant jolts. His wheezy
wife complains that she cannot breathe. “Shut up!” I want to shout.

Day two. We stop for a rest, finally. I fall out of the truck and roll
underneath to avoid the afternoon sun. There is sand even in my
underpants.

Patience slides next to me. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”
“Sorry I teased you earlier.”

“Don’t worry.”

“It’s just that, to me, you ‘re young. Too young to be on your own,
crossing the desert.” Her breath smells of sardines.

“I’m not that young.”

She stretches. “You know, in Bamako, I heard that this is the same route
the Arabs used to traffic African slaves in the olden days,”

Who cares? I think.

“Do you have someone to meet you overseas? She asks.

“Nope.”

“What will you do when you get there?”

“Play football.”

“Yes?”

“Yeah, and I’ll be famous, then I’ll get a white woman. I hear they’ re
less trouble.”

She sucks her teeth. “You’re still very confident, aren’t you?”

“Sure.”

Sometimes I am too afraid to think, especially about my mother and that

Lebanese. Perhaps that is why I am this way: braggadocious. Perhaps
that is why it is impossible for me to worry about where I will end up.
Patience pulls a white Bible out of her pocket and begins to tell me about
Moses who led the Israelites. It is a good story. It puts me straight to
sleep.
Again, my mother finds me. This time, she wants to know if my little
girlfriend is aware that she is reading a testimony passed from
generation to generation. She says if only we Africans take time to
compile our stories in a holy book, we might just learn from our past.
How many of us have sought the Promised Land and ended up driving
taxi cabs, guarding buildings at night, washing dirty plates and toilet
seats, sleeping in cold ghettos and on streets?

She says she knows of African women overseas who are recruited as
domestic servants and service their masters in bed. She says she has
heard of African men who will marry any sort of woman for the sake of
being right with immigration. These men call their wives darlings, eat
their bland stews, father their children. Yet, they cannot open their
mouths to talk because their wives are liberated. Their children have
rights too, so if a father dares to raise his hands to discipline his son, he
might find himself sleeping in jail. She says she hopes I will not become
that kind of African man, a whitewashed African.

I wake up so fast Patience says my eyes look like they are about to pop.
That nasty Tuareg is making us pay him extra. I cannot believe the
lunatic. He beckons that he is about to drive off. He pats his palm, all
dried up like beef jerky. He wants more dollars or else he is leaving us
here, stranded in the scorching desert. He is yelling in bloody Berber or
whatever. The wheezy woman is pleading that she is suffocating; can he
not take pity on us? Her husband with the piles begins to weep. I could
punch him. Why do we Africans make spectacles instead of fighting for
ourselves?
Patience says, “Look here, Mama and Papa, I want to get Morocco. I
don’t want to die in the desert. Pay the man, you hear?” The Tuareg
calms down when we give him an extra ₷100 each to continue our
journey. How I wish I could curse him to his face, but his eyes never
seem to blink. As we set off, I see the sun setting through a tear in the
tarpaulin. It is orange and sliced in half by the horizon. We pass two
trucks almost buried under the sand, like giant carcasses. I shiver, not
because of the evening wind. For the first time, I think we might not
make it to Morocco after all. Two birds, I keep humming. One black.
One red. Their tails are touching the ground. Their tails are…

Tangier. Well, almost. The Tuareg drops us at the foot of a mountain. It

is the end of his own journey. He has driven us hundreds of miles and
none of us is thankful to him, the cheat. We have prayed, cursed, and
crossed the border with our fake passports. Our feet are numb, and now
we have to walk to a camp in a forest on the mountain where travelers
stop. Patience says it is unfair. Climbing up a mountain is not what she
bargained for. She is meant to be in a guesthouse somewhere in Tangier,
overlooking the Mediterranean. “I am not doing it,” she says, bursting
into tears. “I did not leave Bamako to sleep in a bush like a common
villager.” Three women surround her. The wheezy one rubs her back
whispering, “Sh, it’s okay, it’s okay.” Patience gasps as if she is
expelling something bitter. “All right,” she says, wiping her tears with
her thumbs. “I’m ready now.” Her trouser seams have burst; her hair is
so covered in sand she resembles an old woman. I am surprised she is
capable of crying. Every drop of water I have drunk is dried up after the
desert. My brain is like fried gizzards at this point. It is almost evening
and I think I might have forgotten how to fall asleep. My legs have taken
charge. If someone shows me the sea and says, “Here, walk over it,” I
will. Still, I want to give Patience some assurance, so I reach for her
hand.

“No, no,” she says and eases mine away.

She hobbles up the mountain like the rest of us.

Honestly, it is like finding an open sewer when we reach the camp.

People sure can stink whenever we are like this: in deep rot. I fit in well,
I am in a shirt that has not seen soap since before I got to Gao. The
people here are not like any villagers; they are like refugees on
television, squatting under plastic sheets: men, women and children,
mothers nursing their babies. They are coughing, scratching, and
slapping their arms and legs. “I can’t,” Patience whispers, and collapses
by the root of a tree. She begins to sob again. This time she says that
fleas are biting her all over. She gets on my nerves. While she sits there
with her head in her hands, I build a tent for the two of us. One good
thing: the others are willing to help. They give me a plastic sheet and
show me how to tie it to a tree. They tell me to be prepared for thieves,
the Moroccan security forces, and to look out for conmen that take my
money. Even the air we breathe may carry plagues.

All they want to do is work. They would work in their countries if they
can; they will work overseas. They have worked in Casablanca, in
Tangier. It is easier for me to venture to the port, they say, because I am-
you know – a mulatto. No one will suspect I am from pays- z’amis-you
know- black Africa. I lie under my new tent and catch what
conversations I can in English: who has reached Ceuta, who was caught
by the guardia civil and sent back before they could make it to Ceuta.
Before I can find out where Ceuta is, I fall asleep with my sneakers on,
just in case they get stolen.

This place is no stop, my mother says; it is the anteroom to Hell. It is

where spirits wait to pass to the other world. It is the only time left for
those who have stopped living and are yet to be pronounced dead; the
ground between madness and reason; the Mountain of Babel, where
Africans speak in foreign tongues and nothing they say makes sense, so
I need not listen. How is it possible, she asks, that I can be denied asylum
in Spain, when this place resembles the aftermath of a war zone?

Patience is under the tent with me when I open my eyes. Miraculously,

she has magicked a tin- pot and is cooking over burning sticks.

“What are you making?” I ask, stretching.

“Chicken,” she murmurs.

Four feet. They are boiling a sort of frothy broth. My stomach groans.

“That’s why I like my women African,” I say. “A white one will be of

no use here.”

“I’m almost old enough to have given birth to you,” she mutters.

So much for my kindness. She brings up my mother.

“I’m not that young,” I whine like a girl.

“Sorry I lost my nerve earlier,” she says after a while.

“It’s all right,” I say. “I suppose you’re used to the good life.”

She shakes her head. “In Bamako, I was a prostitute.” I do not know
what to say to that. I remove my sneakers to air my blisters. She stirs the
chicken feet.
There is a Nigerian here called Obazee. I think he fancies himself some
kind of a village chief. He has a university degree. He lays down the
laws of the forest, he and his cronies. Patience will not come to consult
him though. She says it is only God that can save us now. She is reading
her Bible again. Nigerians are an arrogant lot. This Obazee, all I do is
call his name without adding a Mr., and he comes so close to me, with
his chest hairs all matted like dead flies.

“Mr. Obazee to you,” he says. “Who’s asking?”

“Me, Jean-Luc.”

“Don’t you know how to respect your elders?”

“I’ve crossed a desert.”

He could give me that, at least. There are tribal marks on his cheeks and
sores have eaten up the corners of his lips.

“Parlez-vous Francais?” he asks, tilting his head.

“Wee?”

He laughs. “You’re no Jean-Luc, but whoever you are, just be careful

how you mention my name next time. None of this shouting Obazee,
Obazee, all over the place, or I’ll conk your little head.”

I have decided. I hate him.

“How long have you been here?” I ask.

“Six years.”

“Six,” I yell.

He frowns. “What? People have been around longer, for over ten years
even. Time is not the object.”
“Why don’t you just cross to Spain?”

“You think it’s as easy as that?”

“I have to cross.”

“You think you’re the only one?”

“Then why do you stay?”

“Come,” he says beckoning. “Come before the sun goes down, and see
for yourself, since you think we’re all fools here.” Again my legs carry
me, snapping on twigs and stamping them into the mud. Obazee walks
too fast. I follow him through the camp, past a group of people singing,
“When shall I see my home? When shall I see my native land? I will
never forget my home…”

“When I first came,” he says, “I used to stay in Tangier, in a guest house

near Petit Socco. It’s not easy like that anymore. The security forces, if
they find you, they will deal with you; then they’ll send you back to
Algeria. You’ll die before you ever see Gao. I moved here to avoid them.
I’m trying to sneak overland into Ceuta. It’s what all of us are waiting
for. They have a centre there. You’ll get meals. They will decide if you
deserve asylum. The trouble is, they have barbed wire around the place,
and the guardia civil patrol it. They keep catching me. The last time they
beat me up well, well.”

He stops and lifts his shirt. There are scars on his back.

“I swear,” he says. “I would have died if not for Medecins Sans

Frontieres.”

He takes me to a cliff. From there we can see Spain. The lights on the
coast are so bright; the houses in the port of Tangier are pure white.
“See?” he says. “It’s tempting, isn’t it? Twenty miles only. El Dorado.
You can cross anytime if you have enough to pay a samsara to take you.
The pateras carry more passengers. The dinghies are cheaper, but they
capsize. People have drowned.” I can barely hear my own voice. “Which
way is better, Ceuta or sea?”

“I’ve given you the options,” he says. “Take your pick.”

I relieve myself in the dark and wipe myself with a leaf. When I return
to our tent, Patience is still reading her Bible. I want to tell her all I have
found out from Obazee. I want to find out if she has enough to pay a
samsara.

“Bad news,” I announce. She shines her flashlight on a page and says,
“Listen. ‘I have heard the complains of the Israelites. Tell them that at
twilight they will have meat to eat, and in the morning they will have all
the bread they want…”

“I’m tired,” I say.

Fairy tales can’t save us.

So, my mother says, my girlfriend turns out to be just another woman of

the night. Why then is she reading her Bible and going on about the
Israelites of the past? Here are real stories from a modern African
exodus she says.

One man from Mali, he could not afford his fare. He crossed the Sahara
on foot. It took him several years. The Moroccan security forces got hold
of him when he reached Tangier. They repatriated him straight back to
the border of Algeria and told him to find his way to Gao. Yes, with the
same two legs that brought him to their country. Another man from
Rwanda came by truck with his family. This was long before the barbed
wire was erected around Ceuta. The family got into Ceuta all right; then
they were kept in detention for months, waiting for their lawyer to prove
that they really were from Rwanda. What about the Sierra Leonean who,
shortly after the barbed wire went up, tried to scale it several times, until
his skin was practically shredded? He decided to swim across the sea to
get to Spain. He had only one hand by the way. The salt water stung his
skin; he still made it to the shore. His missing hand was there to prove
that he was fleeing a civil war. What about the Nigerian who secretly
regretted that her own homeland was not war-torn, and hoped that the
baby in her belly would be considered worthy of asylum. The baby came
out two months too early, right here in the forest. Mother and child never
made it to the next day.

Then there was the Senegalese. She could not swim. She found a
samsara to carry her by dinghy, and it was not that the dinghy leaked or
capsized. It was the samsara: he said he could not get too close to the
shore; the guardia civil might catch him, so he ordered her to jump out
of his dinghy into the sea and find her way somehow. Perhaps Africans
should not compile these stories in any book, my mother says. Who
wants to save such stories for posterity? No, she says, these stories are
worse than any nightmares, so considering what may lie ahead, it is
better that I continue to sleep for the rest of my journey.

The night is so chilly we sleep curled up like a couple of crayfish. We

wake up to the sound of thuds, shouting, pots clanging, babies crying. It
is dawn and the sun has not yet dried up the dew. The commotion is over
Obazee and his Nigerian cronies. They have decided to move the camp
further into the bush, to hide from the security forces. Some people are
protesting that they do not want to move-actually protesting over their
little hovels. They follow Obazee as he marches ahead of them saying,
“I’ve given you the options. Take your pick.”

Patience and I watch those who are already untying their tents. I have
no doubt how we must leave the camp now.

“Do you have money left?” I ask.

“For food,” she slurs.

She is sluggish. She took painkillers. I run my tongue over my teeth and
spit. My mouth tastes bitter.

“It’s 500 dollars each to go by dinghy and 1000 dollars each to go by

pateras.” She slaps sand out of her hair. “Who said?”

“Obazee. You should have come. Yesterday. He showed me the shore.

He said we can go by sea or wait for months to sneak into Ceuta like
people around here.”

I tell her what I know. I know exactly what she is thinking. She has put
her trust in the Lord. “Do you at least have enough to get to Tangier?” I
ask.

She pushes out her bottom lip. “Mm-mm.”

“How did you intend to get to Spain without money?”

“I don’t know .” Perhaps she is waiting for a hand to come down from
heaven and part the sea for her.

“Where are you heading for after Spain?” I ask.

“Rome.”
“What will you do when you get to Rome?”

“Work.”

“What work?”

“Jean-Luc, not this morning.”

“Tell me.” She waves her arms. “I said not this morning! You see what’s
ahead of us, eh! We have to pack up and move. All my body is paining
me, eh!”

“I told you mine.” She sighs. “When will you learn that you and I are
not mates? They recruited me in Bamako. Hear? I’m supposed to be in
Tangier right now, working. Understand? When I get to Rome I’ll
continue to work. It’s bondage. Intercontinental. White men, African
women. See?”

Does she think my eyes are the colour of weak tea for some other
reason? What I see is myself playing football overseas, and Patience not
having to sleep her way to Europe. I think about what she told me about
the Israelites, that their main problem was that they did not have enough
faith. Maybe they would not have needed to if they had had enough
sense to stick together.

“I have enough for both of us,” I venture.

“Enough what?”

“Cash. To cross by dinghy.” She snorts. “I’m sure.”

“It’s true. I’m not bragging. It’s right here. I’ll share with you.” I pat my
left sneaker. For a moment she purses her lips. Perhaps she is worried
about our dinghy capsizing.
“What?” I ask. She turns away. “Oh, you’re young. What am I doing?”
I poke her in the ribs to force her to smile. “Come on.” The woman pulls
my face right into her armpit. “So,” she says. “Just like that, for no
reason, you will help me cross the sea?” So long as the sea does not rise
up against us. I hold my breath as if I am about to dive. Her armpit stinks
to high heaven. She says she will go to Tangier and find a samsara there.
She travels with another woman who is going there to buy chicken feet.

Morning. I began to untie our tent. Obazee is busy organizing the move
to another part of the forest. Almost everyone has agreed to go, which
means that everyone must. This is the way it is around here, all together,
through the forest, up the mountain, up, two, three. One day, I fear they
might move so far they will reach the cliff and fall off. Obazee makes
his rounds and guides them like Moses. “You,” he says, snapping his
fingers when he passes by me. “When is your mummy coming back?”

“She is not my mother.”

“Well, remember that by evening, we’re leaving this place.” I fold the
tent as he walks on. The ground is bare except for our footprints,
Patience and I. Noon. Most people have moved to the new site. Those
who remain, gather clothes, pick up pots, and search for what is lost. I
sit on the tent as if it is a mat and lean against a tree trunk. Obazee comes
by again.

“She’s not back yet?”

“It takes long.”

“Not this long,” he says checking his watch. This time, he does not even
stop to look at my face. I spread my toes. There is space in my sneakers
now: too much space since Patience took my money. Dusk. I can count
the people left in the camp, besides me. One of them is the woman who
left with Patience. They have cleared up everything except for a sandal,
a bucket handle and a red rag. Obazee startles me.

“You’re still waiting?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t think you should come at this rate?”

“No.” I can spare him only one word at a time. He contemplates the little
I have said and then bends to wipe his forehead with his shirt. “Don’t
worry,” he says. “Maybe she got stuck. Whenever she appears, follow
the way to the cliff. You’ll find us there.” He points to the others. I would
prefer that he tells me to take my pick.

After they leave, I turn on Patience’s flashlight and flick through her
Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. I cannot find the story. I reach
Revelation and still cannot find the stupid story she told me, but you will
not catch me running off like some girl. I will wait until morning if
necessary. If I shiver it is because of the winds. They come from the
desert and the sea. They carry sand and salt. They clash right here in the
forest and can pierce to the bones no matter how well you are prepared
for them; it is funny. I hope she drowns.

Understanding and appreciating the story

1. What false details are on the narrator’s passport?

2. Where is the narrator going? How does he raise his fare and at what
risk?
3. Describe the character of the narrator’s mother.
 4. Identify an incident of child abuse in the story? Is this an isolated
case or is it happening in the world today?
5. What is the narrator’s attitude towards his mother? Is he justified to
feel the way he does towards her?
6. Compare the living conditions at the camp to camps for Internally
Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Kenya.
7. Write a short summary on the suffering that the illegal immigrants
undergo as they try to move to another country.
8. Identify instances of irony in the story.
9. What is the relevance of the dreams in the story?
10. Imagine you are the narrator. Write a brief diary of the days that you
have spent in the camp.

Discussion questions

1. Why do you think Africans are desperate to leave Africa

and what do you think should be done to contain the
situation?
2. Based on the details provided by the narrator, debate
whether the trek across the Sahara is worth the effort.
3. The narrator argues that Africans make spectacles instead
of fighting for themselves. Do you agree? Do you think a
united Africa would be better equipped to fight poverty,
disease, war and other ills affecting it?

I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen (USA)

 I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with
the iron.
“I wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your daughter.
I’m sure you can help me understand her. She’s a youngster who needs help and
whom I’m deeply interested in helping.”
“Who needs help?” Even if I came what good would it do? You think because I am
her mother I have a key, or that in some way you could use me as a key? She has
lived for nineteen years. There is all that life that has happened outside of me, beyond
me.
And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total? I will
start and there will be an interruption and I will have to gather it all together again.
Or I will become engulfed with all I did or did not do, with what should have been
and what cannot be helped.
She was a beautiful baby. The first and only one of our five that was beautiful at
birth. You do not guess how new and uneasy her tenancy in her now‐loveliness. You
did not know her all those years she was thought homely, or see her poring over her
baby pictures, making me tell her over and over how beautiful she had been—and
would be, I would tell her—and was now, to the seeing eye. But the seeing eyes were
few or nonexistent. Including mine.
I nursed her. They feel that’s important nowadays. I nursed all the children, but with
her, with all the fierce rigidity of first motherhood, I did like the books said.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
From Tell Me A Riddle by Tillie Olsen, Delta/Seymour Lawrence, New York,
1956, pp. 1—12. Reproduced with permission of Rutgers University Press via
Copyright Clearance Center.
Though her cries battered me to trembling and my breasts ached with swollenness,
I waited till the clock decreed.
Why do I put that first? I do not even know if it matters, or if it explains anything.
She was a beautiful baby. She blew shining bubbles of sound. She loved motion,
loved light, loved color and music and textures. She would lie on the floor in her
blue overalls patting the surface so hard in ecstasy her hands and feet would blur.
She was a miracle to me, but when she was eight months old I had to leave her
daytimes with the woman downstairs to whom she was no miracle at all, for I worked
or looked for work and for Emily’s father, who “could no longer endure” (he wrote
in his good‐by note)
“sharing want with us.”
I was nineteen. It was the pre‐relief, pre‐WPA world of the depression. I would
start running as soon as I got off the streetcar, running up the stairs, the place
smelling sour, and awake or asleep to startle awake, when she saw me she would
break into a clogged weeping that could not be comforted, a weeping I can yet
hear.
After a while I found a job hashing at night so I could be with her days, and it was
better. But it came to where I had to bring her to his family and leave her.
It took a long time to raise the money for her fare back. Then she got chicken pox
and I had to wait longer. When she finally came, I hardly knew her, walking quick
and nervous like her father, looking like her father, thin, and dressed in a shoddy red
that yellowed her skin and glared at the pock marks. All the baby loveliness gone.
She was two. Old enough for nursery school they said, and I did not know then what
I know now—the fatigue of the long day, and the lacerations of group life in
nurseries that are only parking places for children.
Except that it would have made no difference if I had known. It was the only place
there was. It was the only way we could be together, the only way I could hold a job.
And even without knowing, I knew. I knew the teacher that was evil because all
these years it has curdled into my memory, the little boy hunched in the corner, her
rasp, “why aren’t you outside, because Alvin hits you? that’s no reason, go out
coward.” I knew Emily hated it even if she did not clutch and implore “don’t go
Mommy” like the other children, mornings.
She always had a reason why we should stay home. Momma, you look sick,
Momma. 1 feel sick. Momma, the teachers aren’t there today, they’re sick. Momma
there was a fire there last night. Momma it’s a holiday today, no school, they told
me.
But never a direct protest, never rebellion. I think of our others in their three‐,
fouryear‐oldness—the explosions, the tempers, the denunciations, the demands—
and I feel suddenly ill. I stop the ironing. What in me demanded that goodness in
her? And what was the cost, the cost to her of such goodness?
The old man living in the back once said in his gentle way: “You should smile at
Emily more when you look at her.” What was in my face when I looked at her? I
loved her. There were all the acts of love.
It was only with the others I remembered what he said, so that it was the face of joy,
and not of care or tightness or worry I turned to them—but never to Emily. She does
not smile easily, let alone almost always as her brothers and sisters do. Her face is
closed and somber, but when she wants, how fluid. You must have seen it in her
pantomimes, you spoke of her rare gift for comedy on the stage that rouses laughter
out of the audience so dear they applaud and applaud and do not want to let her go.
Where does it come from, that comedy? There was none of it in her when she came
back to me that second time, after I had had to send her away again. She had a new
daddy now to learn to love, and I think perhaps it was a better time. Except when we
left her alone nights, telling ourselves she was old enough.
“Can’t you go some other time Mommy, like tomorrow?” she would ask. “Will it be
just a little while you’ll be gone?”
The time we came back, the front door open, the clock on the floor in the hall. She
rigid awake. “It wasn’t just a little while. I didn’t cry. I called you a little, just three
times, and then I went downstairs to open the door so you could come faster. The
clock talked loud, I threw it away, it scared me what it talked.”
She said the clock talked loud that night I went to the hospital to have Susan. She
was delirious with the fever that comes before red measles, but she was fully
conscious all the week I was gone and the week after we were home when she could
not come near the baby or me.
She did not get well. She stayed skeleton thin, not wanting to eat, and night after
night she had nightmares. She would call for me, and I would sleepily call back,
“you’re all right, darling, go to sleep, it’s just a dream,” and if she still called, in a
sterner voice, “now go to sleep Emily, there’s nothing to hurt you.” Twice, only
twice, when 1 had to get up for Susan anyhow, I went in to sit with her.
Now when it is too late (as if she would let me hold and comfort her like I do the
others) I get up and go to her at her moan or restless stirring. “Are you awake? Can
I get you something?” And the answer is always the same: “No, I’m all right, go
back to sleep Mother.”
They persuaded me at the clinic to send her away to a convalescent home in the
country where “she can have the kind of food and care you can’t manage for her,
and you’ll be free to concentrate on the new baby.” They still send children to that
place. I see pictures on the society page of sleek young women planning affairs to
raise money for it, or dancing at the affairs, or decorating Easter eggs or filling
Christmas stockings for the children.
They never have a picture of the children so I do not know if they still wear those
gigantic red bows and the ravaged looks on the every other Sunday when parents
can come to visit “unless otherwise notified”—as we were notified the first six
weeks.
Oh it is a handsome place, green lawns and tall trees and fluted flower beds. High
up on the balconies of each cottage the children stand, the girls in their red bows and
white dresses, the boys in white suits and giant red ties. The parents stand below
shrieking up to be heard and the children shriek down to be heard, and between them
the invisible wall “Not To Be Contaminated by Parental Germs or Physical
Affection.”
There was a tiny girl who always stood hand in hand with Emily. Her parents never
came. One visit she was gone. “They moved her to Rose Cottage,” Emily shouted in
explanation. “They don’t like you to love anybody here.”
She wrote once a week, the labored writing of a seven‐year‐old. “I am fine. How is
the baby. If I write my leter nicly I will have a star. Love.” There never was a star.
We wrote every other day, letters she could never hold or keep but only hear read—
once. “We simply do not have room for children to keep any personal possessions,”
they patiently explained when we pieced one Sunday’s shrieking together to plead
how
much it would mean to Emily to keep her letters and cards.
Each visit she looked frailer. “She isn’t eating,” they told us. (They had runny eggs
for breakfast or mush with lumps, Emily said later, I’d hold it in my mouth and not
swallow. Nothing ever tasted good, just when they had chicken.)
It took us eight months to get her released home, and only the fact that she gained
back so little of her seven lost pounds convinced the social worker.
I used to try to hold and love her after she came back, but her body would stay stiff,
and after a while she’d push away. She ate little. Food sickened her, and I think much
of life too. Oh she had physical lightness and brightness, twinkling by on skates,
bouncing like a ball up and down up and down over the jump rope, skimming over
the hill; but these were momentary.
She fretted about her appearance, thin and dark and foreign‐looking at a time when
every little girl was supposed to look or thought she should look a chubby blond
replica of Shirley Temple. The doorbell sometimes rang for her, but no one seemed
to come and play in the house or be a best friend. Maybe because we moved so
much.
There was a boy she loved painfully through two school semesters. Months later she
told me how she had taken pennies from my purse to buy him candy. “Licorice was
his favorite and I brought him some every day, but he still liked Jennifer better’n me.
Why Mommy why?” A question I could never answer.
School was a worry to her. She was not glib or quick in a world where glibness and
quickness were easily confused with ability to learn. To her overworked and
exasperated teachers she was an over‐conscientious “slow learner” who kept trying
to catch up and was absent entirely too often.
I let her be absent, though sometimes the illness was imaginary. How different from
my now‐strictness about attendance with the others. I wasn’t working. We had a new
baby, I was home anyhow. Sometimes, after Susan grew old enough, I would keep
her home from school, too, to have them all together.
Mostly Emily had asthma, and her breathing, harsh and labored, would fill the house
with a curiously tranquil sound. I would bring the two old dresser mirrors and her
boxes of collections to her bed. She would select beads and single earrings, bottle
tops and shells, dried flowers and pebbles, old postcards and scraps, all sorts of
oddments; then she and Susan would play Kingdom, setting up landscapes and
furniture, peopling them with action.
Those were the only times of peaceful companionship between her and Susan. I have
edged away from it, that poisonous feeling between them, that terrible balancing of
hurts and needs I had to do between the two, and did so badly, those earlier years.
Oh there are conflicts between the others too, each one human, needing, demanding,
hurting, taking—but only between Emily and Susan, no, Emily toward Susan that
corroding resentment. It seems so obvious on the surface, yet it is not obvious. Susan,
the second child, Susan, golden and curly haired and chubby, quick and articulate
and assured, everything in appearance and manner Emily was not; Susan, not able
to resist Emily’s precious things, losing or sometimes clumsily breaking them; Susan
telling jokes and riddles to company for applause while Emily sat silent (to say to
me later: that was my riddle, Mother, I told it to Susan); Susan, who for all the five
years’ difference in age was just a year behind Emily in developing physically.
I am glad for that slow physical development that widened the difference between
her and her contemporaries, though she suffered over it. She was too vulnerable for
that terrible world of youthful competition, of preening and parading, of constant
measureing of yourself against every other, of envy, “If I had that copper hair,” or
“If I had that skin. . .” She tormented herself enough about not looking like the
others, there was enough of the unsureness, the having to be conscious of words
before you speak, the constant caring—what are they thinking of me? what kind of
an impression am I making—there was enough without having it all magnified
unendurably by the merciless physical drives.
Ronnie is calling. He is wet and I change him. It is rare there is such a cry now. That
time of motherhood is almost behind me when the ear is not one’s own but must
always be racked and listening for the child cry, the child call. We sit for a while and
l hold him, looking out over the city spread in charcoal with its soft aisles of light.
“Shuggily” he breathes. A funny word, a family word, inherited from Emily,
invented by her to say comfort.
In this and other ways she leaves her seal, I say aloud. And startle at my saying it.
What do I mean? What did I start to gather together, to try and make coherent? I was
at the terrible, growing years. War years. I do not remember them well. I was
working, there were four smaller ones now, there was not time for her. She had to
help be a mother, and housekeeper, and shopper. She had to set her seal. Mornings
of crisis and near hysteria trying to get lunches packed, hair combed, coats and shoes
found, everyone to school or Child Care on time, the baby ready for transportation.
And always the paper scribbled on by a smaller one, the book looked at by Susan
then mislaid, the homework not done. Running out to that huge school where she
was one, she was lost, she was a drop; suffering over the unpreparedness,
stammering and unsure in her classes.
There was so little time left at night after the kids were bedded dowm She would
struggle over books, always eating (it was in those years she developed her enormous
appetite that is legendary in our family) and I would be ironing, or preparing food
for the next day, or writing V‐mail to Bill, or tending the baby. Sometimes, to make
me
laugh, or out of her despair, she would imitate happenings or types at school.
I think I said once: “Why don’t you do something like this in the school amateur
show?” One morning she phoned me at work, hardly understandable through the
weeping: “Mother, I did it. I won, I won; they gave me first prize; they clapped and
clapped and wouldn’t let me go.”
Now suddenly she was Somebody, and as imprisoned in her difference as in
anonymity.
She began to be asked to perform at other high schools, even in colleges, then at city
and state‐wide affairs. The first one we went to, I only recognized her that first
moment when thin, shy, she almost drowned herself into the curtains. Then: Was
this Emily? the control, the command, the convulsing and deadly clowning, the spell,
then the roaring, stamping audience, unwilling to let this rare and precious laughter
out of their lives.
Afterwards: You ought to do something about her with a gift like that—but without
money or knowing how, what does one do? We have left it all to her, and the gift
has as often eddied inside, clogged and clotted, as been used and growing.
She is coming. She runs up the stairs two at a time with her light graceful step, and
I know she is happy tonight. Whatever it was that occasioned your call did not
happen today.
“Aren’t you ever going to finish the ironing, Mother? Whistler painted his mother in
a rocker. I’d have to paint mine standing over an ironing board.” This is one of her
communicative nights and she tells me everything and nothing as she fixes herself a
plate of food out of the icebox.
She is so lovely. Why did you want me to come in at all? Why were you
concerned?
She will find her way.
She starts up the stairs to bed. “Don’t get me up with the rest in the morning.” “But
I thought you were having midterms.” “Oh, those,” she comes back in and says quite
lightly, “in a couple of years when we’ll all be atom‐dead they won’t matter a bit.”
She has said it before. She believes it. But because I have been dredging the past,
and all that compounds a human being is so heavy and meaningful in me, I cannot
endure it tonight.
I will never total it all now. I will never come in to say: She was a child seldom
smiled at. Her father left me before she was a year old. I worked her first six years
when there was work, or I sent her home and to his relatives. There were years she
had care she hated. She was dark and thin and foreign‐looking in a world where the
prestige went to blondness and curly hair and dimples, slow where glibness was
prized. She was a child of anxious, not proud, love. We were poor and could not
afford for her the soil of easy growth. I was a young mother, I was a distracted
mother. There were the other children pushing up, demanding. Her younger sister
was all that she was not. She did not like me to touch her. She kept too much in
herself, her life was such she had to keep too much in herself. My wisdom came too
late. She has much in her and probably
nothing will come of it. She is a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear.
Let her be. So all that is in her will not bloom—but in how many does it? There is
still enough left to live by. Only help her to believe—help make it so there is cause
for her to believe that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before
the iron.

Understanding and appreciating the story

1. The story is addressed to a “you.” Who might the you be?

2. In what ways was Emily different from her siblings at birth?
3. Emily’s mother had to work when Emily was a baby. How did this
affect Emily?
4. How old was Emily when her father left? Why did he leave?
5. Compare and contrast Emily and her sister Susan.
6. Discuss the many challenges Emily faces as a child. How does she
cope?
7. Describe the living conditions at the convalescent home.
8. What is the tone of this story?
9. Comment on the following phrases.Why do you think the writer has
used them this way?
a) She rigid awake
b) Sharing want with us
10. Identify the use of symbolism in the story and discuss its role.

Discuss questions
1. Every society has its own way of doing things. Assess the culture
of the American people and see how it compares or contrasts with
our own.
2. Communication is key if parents and children hope to nurture a
fulfilling relationship. Drawing examples from the story, discuss
this statement.
3. Identify the challenges of single parenthood in a country like
America.

The Retraction by Stanley Onjezani Kenani (Malawi)

“There are many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of
hearts being broken by love, but what really broke a heart was
taking away its dream-whatever that dream might be.” – Pearl
Sydenstricker Buck
“You have achieved what you wanted,” the email began, just like
that, with neither the introduction of the author nor of the issue,
“I have been fired. Thy will be done.” I stopped reading for a
minute or two, staring hard at the name of the sender, which read
only as Tatha. Whether Tatha was the first name or the surname I
had no idea. I quickly thought it was one of those unsolicited
emails that flood your mailbox every day, ranging from Viagra
adverts to lotteries that tell you you have won a million dollars- a
bolt out of the blue. I was just about to delete it when the eye
darted to one sentence after the other; and then the eye’s attention
was firmly captured, and the whole body responded by having the
arms folded to support the jaws.
“I remember you pretty well,” the email continued. “You sat on
seat number 12D on a flight to Johannesburg on the tenth of
November. You kept asking me for beer even when your glass
was still full. Little did I know that when I advised you I would
bring you some more beer after the glass had been emptied of its
contents, you would take offence. The next thing, you wrote your
angry comments to the airline, that I was rude to you throughout
the flight. Malawi Air management takes such comments very
seriously, as the airline is trying hard to operate at world-class
level. So they have fired me as a warning to the rest…”
Tatha! Now I remembered. I remembered the tall, beautiful girl,
very beautiful actually, with a bewitching smile that no man
would ignore. Her eyes were big and lovely, and her legs
belonged to a super model. I even remembered asking her what
Tatha meant, and I think she said it meant “we have perished.” I
was on the flight to Johannesburg, my very first time to fly, and,
I must add, the only one to this day. I got the opportunity courtesy
of an air ticket I won at a raffle draw organized by the Lundazi
District Council. Now I have even forgotten what the proceeds of
the draw were going to be used for. But what I shall never forget
is that the first prize was a brand new Toyota twin cab and the
second was a flight to the glamour of Johannesburg for two nights
at the Parktonian All-Suite Hotel in Dekorte Street, Parktown,
complete with a one thousand dollar shopping voucher at the
Westgate Shopping Mall.
I was very excited, no doubt. This was history in the making. I
was going to be the first person from my village called Botolo in
Chief Zumwanda’s area in Lundazi District of Zambia to fly to
Johannesburg- or to fly at all. In fact, when news spread that I had
won an air ticket, the whole village gathered to see me arrive from
town. All of a sudden, everyone wanted to talk to me! Even those
that never talked to me wanted to behave like they were my
closest friends. By the time I left for Johannesburg, which was a
week after winning the ticket, one vimbuza dancer in the village
had composed a song about my flight!
I travelled by road to Lusaka, a city I was seeing for the first time
too. I had heard so much about Lusaka, about the Cairo Road and
the Arcades Shopping Mall. When I checked in at the Hotel
Intercontinental, it was all like a dream. The people from my
village who had visited Lusaka before talked about the Hotel
Intercontinental with such high praise that one would think it was
the eighth wonder of the world. They had not slept in the hotel
themselves, but now here I was, looking at the beautiful fountain
next to the main entrance as I walked to my room!
The following day I took a Malawi Air flight from Lusaka to
Lilongwe, where I connected to Johannesburg. It was on the
Lilongwe-Johannesburg flight I saw this girl called Tatha. “What
you must know is that you have succeeded in destroying a vision,”
the email continued. “Since I was young,I always wanted to work
for Malawi Air. I dedicated all the twenty-three years of my life
in pursuit of this vision. “But now all that has been broken into
pieces. The disciplinary committee gave me a photocopy of the
comments you made. I hang it on the walls of my room at home
in Blantyre. This is where I got your email address, the only
contact detail you put on the Passengers’ Comments Slip. You
have killed my dream. You have taken away from me what I loved
most.”
Suddenly I felt deeply touched. Without knowing it, a tear had
formed in my eyes. I only realized I was tearing up when the tear
rolled onto my cheek and dropped onto the pink shirt I was
wearing. Using the back of my right hand, I wiped the tears and
sat staring at the computer for a long, long time, looking at
nothing. “It’s time to close, sir,” the café’s receptionist said,
standing over me with a note in her hand. “That is the bill, sir.”
I sat up straight as if a needle had just pricked me in my back. The
bill read fifty thousand kwacha, something around thirteen
American dollars! This wiped out a big chunk of the money I had
for the remainder of the month, and there were twenty days to go!
I should not have come to the café in the first place. It was a luxury
I could have done without. Yet the issue of Tatha resurfaced in
my mind, and my heart once again accompanied the young lady
wherever she was in her suffering. Why did I make such a
negative comment about her? Why did I make any comment at
all? A string of questions followed in my mind, but no answers
were forthcoming. “I said what name should I put on the receipt,
sir?” the girl asked, a trace of irritation or sarcasm or both
creeping in her voice. Apparently I did not show that I had heard
the question the first time she asked it. “Zgambo,” I said. “Francis
Chumachamara Zgambo, Z-G-A-M-B-O.” She had already filled
the whole space where the name needed to be with Zgambo in
block letters in the least admirable handwriting. In fact, even
before I finished spelling out my surname, she had already torn
out the receipt, her hand stretched out for me to receive it. She
could not wait to close.
I walked out of the E-World Internet Café in the heart of Lundazi
town. As I walked to my village on the edge of the town, I thought
hard about Tatha’s situation. At the material time, the whole
incident was hardly more than a joke to me. We had thirty minutes
before landing at the OR Tambo International. The lady in charge
of the cabin crew walked in the aisle, waving some white pieces
of paper. “Your comments about our service please,” she said,
smiling. Without giving it much thought, I got one of the papers
from her and started filling it out. I had been drinking for two
hours. In common parlance, it could be said that I was drunk,
although it should be mentioned that I was not completely
sozzled.
When on a drinking spree back home, I was used to buying lots
of bottles at once. In our community, it was a sign that one had
money- the more the bottles on one’s table. As luck would have
it, as I got drunk, I wanted to repeat the same feat on the plane. I
thus kept pressing the bell-button over my head to attract the
attention of the cabin crew. As it turned out, it was only Tatha that
kept coming. She refused to put more beer on my tray before my
glass was empty, which made me think she was rude. Thus I found
myself commenting as much on the Passengers’ Comments Slip.
It was the only comment I made. I signed off with my name and
my email address in case they wanted to follow up the issue. To
be honest, I forgot all about it as soon as I handed in my
comments.
Until that afternoon.
Now the careless comments had ruined somebody’s career. A
whole vision had been crashed at the stroke of a pen by a hand
that was drunk. The issue clouded my mind all the way home.
That night, I tossed and turned on my mat, sleepless. I must take
back my comments, I kept telling myself. The girl is innocent.
She committed no wrong. The more I thought about it, the more I
strengthened my resolve to take back my words. But how? I
wondered. How? How? How?
I thought of many possible ways to do it. I could email the airline
a reversal of my complaint. I could word my apology in the most
beautiful way possible, choosing every word carefully. On second
thought, I decided not to use email. Emails are still largely
regarded an informal way of communication. But then the most
formal way meant sending by post, and with our unreliable
postage system, the letter would take ages to reach Malawi Air.
Far into the night, I just sat up and said: “I must go to Malawi. I
must go to Blantyre myself to take back my comments. The girl
must not be penalized. She must not be victimized.” I spoke out
loud. If anyone had heard me, the impression created would have
been that I had gone indubitably mad. Strangely, though, I slept
peacefully after saying this.
The following morning, I decided to take a wristwatch I had
bought in Johannesburg to Lundazi town. It was a very beautiful
Rolex. I walked to a lot of places, offering it to many people at
the price of one hundred and twenty thousand kwacha, the
equivalent of the price I had paid for it. No one seemed interested
in a wristwatch to begin with, not to talk of one that was that
expensive. Later, much later in the afternoon, when I was tired
and hungry and thirsty, an Asian who ran a shop in the main street
offered to buy it at eighty thousand. I could not hesitate. I accepted
the price eagerly.
After visiting the nearest restaurant, I went back to the internet
café. I responded to Tatha’s email, telling her how deeply hurt I
was by the fact that she had actually been fired over my
comments. I had resolved, I said, to come to Malawi myself to
retract my comments from her employers. Would she kindly tell
me her physical address?
I wanted to personally apologize to her when I was in Blantyre. I
would be coming that very week, I emphasized. I was hopeful she
was going to be reinstated. That night I slept well.
I was at the café first thing the morning after. I checked in my
mailbox. Tatha had not responded. I went about town selling most
of the things I bought in Johannesburg with the raffle money. I
had to raise money as quickly as possible to go to neighboring
Malawi. It was going to be a long journey, made worse by the fact
that this time I would be travelling by bus. I therefore needed a
lot of money, more than my miserable salary could afford, which
was why I had resorted to selling the South African possessions.
I kept dropping by the café every once in a while to check my
email in case Tatha had responded. But by five, as the girl closed,
I had just done my last check and there was nothing. Not even the
unsolicited emails containing Viagra adverts. The following day
I would be leaving for Blantyre.

I arrived in Blantyre a very tired person. The journey was long

and strenuous. My back ached terribly, and my legs were in great
pain. The buses I had travelled by were small and jam-packed
with sweating humanity. Sometimes during the journey, I
wondered whether that email from someone I did not exactly
know deserved all this effort. That she had been treated unfairly I
had no doubt, but wasn’t life so full of inequalities and injustices?
She was just another item in the statistics of unfairness, probably
one better off than thousands of women who got smuggled across
borders with promises of lucrative jobs, only to be sold into sex
slavery. Such vices, I concluded, were far worse than mine. On
second thought, however, I asked myself: would I live with a clear
conscience ever after? It was doubtful. Yet, I mused, if they
needed comments on those buses I had just ridden to Blantyre, I
was sure going to write plenty. It was no good to sacrifice human
comfort with the sole purpose of maximizing revenue.
Unsurprisingly, there was no room for any comments on the
service of such buses.
I checked into the Paradise Inn, a big inn in one of the suburbs of
Blantyre. At night, as I lay on the small bed of my room, I
wondered whether Paradise looked like the dirty rooms of that
inn, because if it did, I had reservations about going to it. I also
wondered what would happen at the offices of Malawi Air the
following morning. Would they accept the retraction of my
comments? Due to fatigue, I slept like a dead piece of wood.

“I would like to see the Chief Executive,” I said to the

receptionist, a girl who seemed to speak endlessly on the phone.
“Hold on…” she said to the person on the other end of the line,
“you said?”
“I would like to see the Chief Executive.”
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.
“No.”
She stared hard at me. I wondered whether in my corduroy
trousers and a short sleeved shirt fashioned by a Chinese designer
whose name I could not read, I looked unfit to meet the Chief
Executive. “Is it business or personal?” she asked again at length.
“Business.” She frowned. She flipped through something that
looked like a diary and shook her head. “ The whole morning is
occupied. Try at two.”
“But I won’t need much of his time. Maybe ten minutes, that’s
all,” I pleaded. “I have travelled all the way from Zambia for this
meeting,” I added.
She gave me the look of you-could –as –well-have-travelled-
from-Mars-but-that-won’t-change-anything. “Come at two,” she
said flatly and continued talking on the phone. Judging by the
direction of her telephone conversation, it certainly was not
business. Whoever was on the other end wanted a male child for
a first born.
At two o’clock, I sat opposite the Chief Executive on the first
floor of the Malawi Air House. I narrated the purpose of my visit,
deliberately avoiding to mention that all this had been triggered
by an email I received from Tatha. “Although I was drunk when
I wrote those comments, I clearly remember that I wrongly
accused one of your cabin crew, a girl called Tatha, of rudeness.
Now, more than a month later, I have had no peace. It simply is
not true. I made those comments under the influence of alcohol.
She committed no crime. I would like to retract my comments.”
The Chief Executive sat silently for some time. “You will have to
put the retraction in writing for it to be effective,” he said. “In fact,
I have already written,” I told him, producing a letter from my
breast pocket. I passed it over to him. He opened it and read it,
nodding here and there until he folded it and looked up. “I’ll
present this to the disciplinary committee,” he said. “I am sure
they will reconsider her case.”
“You realize, sir, that it was going to be easy for me to merely
send this letter by post,” I said, “but I have had to endure
travelling almost one thousand kilometres in most difficult
circumstances to retract the comments in person, as a way of
showing remorse for what I did.” “I will mention all this to the
disciplinary committee when it convenes,” the Chief Executive
said. “I am sure they will understand.” I walked out of the office
feeling assured that the girl would be reinstated. At the reception,
I again found the receptionist talking on the phone. This time the
conversation was to do with mushrooms or something like that.
When she attended to me after putting the person on the other end
on hold, I asked how I could trace the whereabouts of Tatha, a
former employee of the organization. “Go to Chileka
International Airport and ask for Towera, her best friend. She will
lead you to Tatha.”
“How can I get to the airport?” I asked. I was a total stranger here.
I knew nothing about places. “Are there any taxis nearby?” “Why
do you Malawian men like mushrooms…?” she was on the phone
again, her attention completely shifted away from me. I walked
out.

I had to wait for thirty minutes for the girl called Towera to come
out of the Malawi Air offices at the Chileka International Airport.
She apologized for taking so long, saying she was so busy she
could not have managed to leave her desk before the official
knocking- off time of 5 p.m. I quickly told her my story and asked
if she could lead me to Tatha. Towera looked at me coldly and
said: “So you are the one who destroyed Tatha’s life,” she said,
half as a rhetorical question, half as a mere statement of fact. “This
is all she wanted in her life, and you took it away from her.” I felt
so guilty and looked down, avoiding her severe stare. I did not
know what to say. “I realise…” I attempted to say something, “I
realise my wrong. I have come to correct it. I want her to forgive
me.”
“I was at her home yesterday,” Towera explained. “She had not
eaten for five days. She could not speak to me. She just stared
emptily. Her mother told me she has hardly been out of bed since
the sacking. Do you know she is the sole bread-winner of the
family?” I did not answer. She began to walk to the taxi rank. I
silently followed. We found a taxi. “Take us to Chitawira,”
Towera told the driver.
It was dark and raining heavily when Towera instructed the cab
driver to stop. “This is where she lives,” Towera pointed to a small
house. A solitary bulb shone from under the eaves directly over
the doorstep. “I won’t go with you as it late,” Towera went on. “I
have to rush home.” I produced a few Malawi kwacha notes to
contribute to the fare of the taxi. I opened the door and stepped
into the rain.
The cab sped off immediately after I banged its door shut. The
seconds it took me to dart from the cab to the doorstep left me
heavily soaked as I had no umbrella. I knocked several times.
Nobody seemed to hear the knock. With the rain hitting me hard,
I tried to push the door handle. The door was locked. I knocked
again and again, the rapping loud enough to wake the dead.
Finally, a key turned. The door opened slightly. A thin, fail
woman framed herself in the opening. It was Tatha herself, but so
different from the plump and beautiful lady I saw on the plane.
“You!” she shouted in a moment of instant recognition above the
pounding of the rain on the corrugated iron sheets of the roof.
“What do you want on my doorstep?”
“I have come to say I am sorry!” I shouted back. “Please let me
in. I am freezing out here.”
She did not move. “You have come to say sorry?”
“Yes!”
She stared at me from top to bottom. “What difference will that
make?” she asked, without attempting to open the door wider to
let me in. “Your arrogance,” her voice rose higher, above the
thunder and the drip-dripping of the rain, “your unfeeling, cruel
hand signed my death sentence, killing my dream! And you
thought it was easy to kill a dream and show up from nowhere to
say you’re sorry? What difference will that make? Shall I dream
your apology? Shall I live your apology? Shall I …?”
“Listen, Tatha, I am only human, perhaps more fallible than I
knew,” I reasoned. “ I realise the mistake I made. That’s why I
have travelled all the way from Zambia to say I am sorry…”
“What is done cannot be undone,” she said sternly, almost
harshly. “Don’t waste my time. Please, leave.”
“Tatha, I …”
“Just go away!” Without another word, she shut the door. The key
clicked.
I stood facing the door for a long time, oblivious of the rain, the
thunder and the lightning. Several times, I lifted my hand to the
door to knock again, but the hand hung there, with my fingers bent
at an angle, yet without doing the actual knocking, until it fell
back limply at my side. Slowly I turned and began to walk away.
“Come back!” I heard a voice behind me. “Come into the house!”
Tatha was calling me from the door.
I was confused. I stopped momentarily, looked back, looked
forward again and continued to walk.
She ran and joined me in the rain. “I am confused, OK?” She said.
“I do not know what to do, what to say! There is a lot of pain in
my heart. But I think it is not good to pay back one wrong with
another. Come into the house. Leave after the raining stops.” I
walked on. She stopped, resignedly letting me go. I turned the
corner and disappeared into the bowels of the dark night.

A couple of years have now passed, yet my mind still refuses to

wipe out that episode. Every strand of detail keeps showing up in
my mind, the way one is bound to remember the pictures of King
Kong’ or ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’ or such other memorable
movie. Sometimes I talk to myself, asking myself questions why
it all happened the way it did.
Yesterday I was in downtown Lundazi, chatting with my
girlfriend during the lunch-break at her office at the headquarters
of the Chipili Hills Travel Agency. I casually picked a copy of
Msafiri, an in- flight magazine of Kenya Airways. I lazily flipped
over the pages amid the chat.
Suddenly, I froze!
“What is it, Francis?” Lyaniso asked me.
A big, beautiful picture of Tatha was pasted there, far healthier
than I last saw her, smiling, radiant, full of life and happiness.
Under the picture were the words: “Meet Tatha, Kenya Airways’
Employee of the Year.”
“Nothing,” I lied in response to my girlfriend’s curiosity. I
quickly closed the magazine and put it back on the rack. I have
not told Lyaniso the story yet, for our relationship is only a few
weeks old. But, one day, I will.

Understanding and appreciating the story

1. Describe the tone of the email message.
2. Why did the narrator write to Malawi Air? Was his action
justified? Why?
3. Was the airline fair in firing Tatha? Explain your answer.
4. This story is told from the first-person point of view. Why do
you think Kenani made that choice?
5. In your own words, describe the narrator’s journey to
Johannesburg.
6. What does the narrator’s behavior on reading the email reveal
about him?
7. Why doesn’t the narrator mention Tatha’s email when he
meets the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Malawi Air?
8. Does the receptionist’s behavior towards the narrator impact
negatively on the image of the company? What do you think
should be done to ensure that integrity and professionalism are
observed at a work place?
9. What lessons do we learn from Tatha?
10. Imagine you are the narrator. Draft an email to Tatha
apologizing for the loss of her job.

Discussion questions
1. The world has become a global village. Drawing examples
from the story, comment on this statement.
2. The government is in the process of establishing internet
villages in the rural areas. How would this be beneficial to
those living there?
3. Alcohol abuse in most cases leads to unpleasant situations.
Do you agree? Support your answer with illustrations from
the story.

The Bamboo Hut by Grace Ogot (Kenya)

The setting sun was ablaze, and its angry rays coloured the
waters on Lake Victoria. Mboga’s heart beat fast. He had
never seen the disc of the setting sun look so big and
ominous. He moved towards the foot of the sacred Hill of
Ramogi where his forefathers had, from time immemorial,
worshipped God and pleaded with the ancestors. For many
years, Mboga had beseeched Ramogi, the ancestor of the
Luo people, to intercede on his behalf for a son, an heir to
the beaded stool of the Kadibo people. He had decided to
make one final plea on this sacred spot. He spat in the
direction of the setting sun, and then prayed.
God of Ramogi and God of Podho
You led us from distant lands,
And protected us against all our enemies.
You gave us land and other possessions,
Let the name of Ramogi continue
Let us multiply and expand in all directions
People call me Mboga the Mighty, the handsome ruler,
Father of the clan.
What is a mighty ruler without a son?
What is a father without an heir?

Darkness was falling when Mboga reached home. In the

inner compound of his homestead, his ‘numerous
daughters,’ as he always referred to them, were busy
helping their mothers prepare the evening meal. And
although he loved all his sixteen daughters, they were like
the birds of the air who, at the appropriate season, migrate
to other lands. Who would comfort and succor him in old
age?
The drizzle that had started in the evening continued up to
the early hours of the next day. The children stayed in their
mother’s huts. Agiso took a red sweet potato from a basket
and buried it in the cow-dung fire. She added a handful of
dry cow-dung to the fire, and then turned to Achieng’, her
mother.
“Mama- why can’t we live in the bamboo hut? It is clean,
cosy, cool and beautiful. Please ask Baba if we can move
into it,” she said appealingly.
“But our hut is one of the best in the compound, my child.”
“I know that, Mama, but it can’t beat the bamboo hut. Our
hut has no inner chamber and we have no bamboo beds or
beaded stools.” Agiso took a wooden poker and turned the
potato over.
“Right, Mama,” she said, throwing the poker down. “If you
are afraid of the chief, I will ask him myself. I am not
afraid.”
The bamboo hut stood next to the chief’s large hut. It
looked beautiful in the morning drizzle. Agiso’s mother
took her eyes away from it. She was expecting her second
baby after an interval of nearly seven years. She knew it
would be a girl. The chief, who had nine wives, had
promised the bamboo hut to whoever bore him a son, an
heir to the beaded stool.
Two months after Mboga’s visit to the sacred hill, Achieng’
gave birth while she was out at the well. It was a baby girl!
The long-nursed desire for a son turned her heart against
the baby, and she wept bitterly. “How do I break this sad
news to my husband? Will the chief bear the thought of
another girl! No, no, no. Let my mouth remain sealed for
ever- the ancestors have wronged me.”
But Achieng’s weeping was interrupted by a sharp pain that
stabbed her belly and back. It was like one of those miracles
that occur only once in a while. Achieng’ gave birth again-
it was a boy! The river bank was still deserted as most
women did not fetch water at midday. Everything was so
quiet, apart from a few frogs who seemed to be rejoicing
with her. She felt very tired, and for a few minutes different
passions played a wild dance within her. Love, hatred,
anger and happiness crossed and intermingled. The chief
had waited for a son for over twelve years. Let the chief
have only one child, a son, so that he might see the
fulfilment of his life’s dream. Achieng’ made up her mind.
She made a grass- basket and lined it with leaves- there she
laid Apiyo and hid the basket near the well. She gave her a
long, close and last look, and then ran a finger over her face,
hair, lips and delicate fingers. She then walked home with
her baby boy, and slipped into her hut unnoticed while
people were having their midday meal.
The important news was conveyed to Chief Mboga by his
elder wife while he was resting in his hut. “God of Ramogi
has covered the nakedness of the father of the people.
Achieng’ has given birth to a baby son.” Mboga looked at
his wife unbelievingly. A joyous smile played on his lips,
and then disappeared, leaving only muscles twitching at the
corners of his mouth. He eyed his wife and then got up to
go to Achieng’s hut. But his elder wife barred his way.
“The great chief should not be over-powered by emotion.
Achieng’ is under the care of women for four days. Only
then can the great chief see his beloved son.”
Mboga moved a few steps backwards and sat on his stool.
“All right, tell Achieng’ that I have received the news.”
Then the Chief’s drum boomed out to announce the birth
of a new baby. This time it boomed out four times instead
of the usual three for a girl, and the family rejoiced. Envy
mixed with bitterness in the minds of Achieng’s co-wives,
but they did not show it. A sheep was slaughtered for the
delivered mother and all good things were showed upon
her.
Chief Mboga never laughed or shed tears in public, but on
the fourth day when he held his son at a naming ceremony,
his close relatives saw a big lumps of tears rolling down his
cheeks as he called out the name of the boy.
“You will be called ‘Owiny’ after the second son of
Ramogi. You will live long, and in my old age you will
hold the staff of Ramogi in your right hand to rule your
people.” Then the chief’s beaded staff was placed in
Owiny’s right hand and the chief’s ornamental bracelet put
on his wrist.
On that day, Achieng’ and Agiso, her daughter, moved to
the bamboo hut. There, they were to bring up Owiny, heir
to Mboga’s beaded stool. The chief offered numerous
thanksgiving sacrifices at the foot of the sacred hill. His
prayers always ended with the refrain:
“Now I know you did indeed choose me to be a ruler among
these people. You have given me a son.” Amid all the
reverlry, Achieng’ maintained a most singular gravity. She
felt as if something in her heart were breaking. She could
not go on like this any longer- but what was to be done?
Should she look for her daughter? No, she could not do
anything like that. Could she tell her husband the truth- but
how?
She went to the well on the sixth day to bathe herself after
confinement. She walked hurriedly past the place where
she had abandoned her daughter Apiyo. There was nothing
on the spot to betray her, and the long grass stood erect as
though nothing had ever rested on it. As she trudged along
on her way home, Achieng’ had many thoughts, confused
thoughts, but thoughts nevertheless, and even visions,
about her lost daughter.
She saw an old, withered woman pick up her daughter by
the well. She saw her perform a kind of witches’ dance
round the basket, before carrying it away. The route
followed by the old woman was towards the no-man’s land
lying between the Kadibo folk and their enemies. She then
saw her daughter being thrown away in this forest, which
was known to be infested with wild animals.
Unconsciously, she yelled! Her heart began to beat and a
sudden moisture wetted the middle of her palms. Was it
true? “No, no, no!” she replied.
Years slipped by, but Achieng’s distraught mind showed
no signs of improvement. It was a life of visions and
depression in the day-time, and of nightmares at night.
Neither her privileged position among the chief’s wives nor
the future prospects for her son were adequate to fill the
acute emptiness she felt in her heart. Owiny grew up into a
fine, young man, with the usual characteristics of single
children- sulky, headstrong and independent. One
afternoon, as the chief was on one of his regular walks to
the sacred hill, he encountered a group of young women
carrying loads of fire-wood. The girls left the path and hid
behind the long bushes to let the chief pass. But one girl put
her bundle down and stood waiting. When the chief got
close to her, she bowed her head and greeted him.
“Peace be with you, great chief.”
“Peace, my child,” said the chief, who was obviously
moved by the courage of this young girl.
“Are you not afraid of the chief like your sisters?” the chief
teased her.
“No. It is my lucky day to meet the kind chief.” Then she
put her bundle on her head and walked away.
That night Mboga called his son and told him about the
young woman.
“She is the daughter of Owuor Chilo the clan elder of
Usigu. She is visiting her aunt here. Try and see her
tomorrow. If you like her, we will approach her parents.
She should make a good wife.”
Owiny was curious to meet the young lady whose
personality had impressed the chief so much. He kept
watch on her movements; and when a messenger informed
him that the girl and her friends had been seen swimming
in the river Odundu, he immediately rushed to the scene.
At the river half a dozen young women were swimming and
shouting at one another. One of the older girls saw Owiny
first, and rushed out of the water yelling. “The chief’s son!
The chief’s son!” The girls, taken unaware, scrambled out
of the water and hid behind the nearest bushes. But the girl
who obviously looked younger than the others continued to
swim, undisturbed. Owiny moved closer to her. “Why
aren’t you afraid of the son of the chief?” he asked her,
jokingly.
The girl was not bashful. She looked knowingly at him,
raised her head a little and, concealing her breasts, said,
“Because the son of the chief does not respect ladies’
privacy.” “I was on my way to the hills to hunt, when I
heard some shrieking noises- I therefore came to check.”
“Right,” she said with finality, as she dived in and out.
“Now that you know who were shrieking, you can continue
with your journey.” Owiny stood there puzzled. This
foolhardy girl was not from his clan- her accent was
foreign. She could be the girl the chief had told him about.
“Can’t you come out and give your friends their loin
cloths? I didn’t mean to be rude to them.” “It would be
better if you left us alone- we are still swimming.” “No,”
Owiny said firmly. “I want to talk to all of you about the
coming festival of the chief.”
“All right,” she said. “Throw me my loin cloth-it is the
beaded one.”
Owiny was shocked by the girl’s natural air of importance.
He never took orders from anyone, let alone any woman-
he was always waited upon. He swallowed his pride and
threw her the beaded loin cloth. The girl wrapped her loin
cloth round her waist and emerged from the water unafraid.
She grabbed the other loin cloths in her arm and handed
them to her friends behind the bushes.
Owiny felt warm and uncomfortable where he stood. For
the first time in his life he was unsure of himself. He took
a close look at the girl- she was much older than the chief
had suggested. Her long slender legs would fill up with
maturity. Her fingers were long and graceful; and she had
a straight back and flat lovable belly. Her breast were still
young and stood erect like wooden carvings on her chest.
Her skin dotted with water was the colour of the rising sun.
As Owiny looked at her, she reminded him of Arosi, the
legendary and beautiful goddess of the sea. They
exchanged a few words, and she told Owiny that her name
was Awiti.
That evening, Owiny was in a melancholy mood. A newly
discovered fire was burning in his heart. He reported to his
father that he had seen the girl and that he liked her very
much. In those days, the marriage preliminaries for the son
of a chief were conducted with proper punctilio. The chief
therefore sent out messengers to investigate the girl’s
background. Gossip had reached Achieng’ that her would-
be daughter-in-law had no equal for beauty in all Luoland.
She had, moreover, been brought up with great care and
was diligent.
The messengers returned with red dust on their feet and
with empty bellies. On seeing them, Chief Mboga went to
his hut to receive the news. They told him:
“The family of Owuor Chilo did not deal with us kindly
when we enquired about the girl. It seemed that word had
reached them that the young man, your son, may be seeking
her hand in marriage. They insisted that Awiti was too
young, that they should be given time. But we pressed
them. We had seen the girl- she is beautiful and ripe for
marriage. The family then conferred among themselves
outside, and when they joined us, they told us that Awiti
may not wish to marry the chief’s son.”
The messenger who was speaking looked at the chief
anxiously and moistened his dry lips.
“Go on,” the chief roared aggressively. He looked past
them so that they could not notice the angry frown which
distorted his face. “They said, great chief, that it is
impossible.” Mboga’s fame was not confined to his clan
alone. Who was Owuor Chilo whose daughter could reject
the offer of the son of the chief?
“Go on,” he repeated.
“We were not satisfied with the excuses given, so we called
at a neighboring village and enquired circumspectly about
the girl. We were told that Awiti has no parents. She was
found abandoned by the well by Owuor’s elder wife who
adopted her.”
The messenger cleared his throat, and mopped away a
mushroom of sweat from his forehead. The air suddenly
became still and suffocating, as Chief Mboga discharged
his messengers. He knocked his pipe on a wooden log
nearby to empty the dead ashes. Owiny’s new hut caught
his eye. Mboga knew that his son would not accept the
news. But a chief’s son could not marry a nonentity, a
woman of unknown parentage. That evening when the
restless cows had been milked and the tired children sat
around the fire by their mothers waiting for the evening
meal, Owiny was summoned to the chief’s hut. Mboga
broke the sad news to his son.
“My son, you cannot marry Chilo’s daughter. She was
abandoned as a baby by the well- the wife of Chilo found
her and brought her up.” Mboga sucked his pipe and then
spat on the hard-beaten floor.
“As the future ruler of the land you cannot marry a woman
whose background is a mystery.”
Owiny tightened his buttocks on the oily stool he was
sitting on. He wanted to rise and leave the chief’s hut, but
he fell back. Breath had gone out of him, and he felt dizzy.
As he recovered from the shock, he had a hazy vision of
Awiti- he saw her beautiful figure and her provocative
breasts. The fire revived in him. He must tell his father the
truth.
“Father let me take her to be my wife. I love her. I want to
live with her. I …”
Tears choked Owiny and he could not complete the
sentence. “No, my son,” the chief said, she is not good
enough for our home- the ancestors would be displeased.
We shall find you a suitable woman.”
Owiny got up unexpectedly, paced up and down the room
and then turned sharply to face his father.
“Will the great chief change his mind and allow me to
marry the woman I desire?”
Mboga gripped the ruling staff tightly.
“No,” he thundered and his voice rang in the still night.
Owiny stood before his father for a while before he spoke
gravely. “Great chief, you will not see my face again. I have
chosen the daughter of Chilo-you can keep your beaded
stool.”
Without waiting for his father’s reply, Owiny left. He shut
himself up in his hut-he wished to blot the whole world out
of his sight. What was he to do? Commit suicide? No, he
must live to marry Awiti. Run away- but where?
The dismay in the homestead, when the news became
known, may well be imagined. But all the uncles, aunts and
other relatives agreed with the chief that Awiti would not
make a suitable wife for Mboga’s son. Only Achieng’,
Owiny’s mother, knew the truth. Was she to die with this
secret? Her son’s life was at stake- why not face the chief
and tell him the truth? She might ruin his life-but he was
old enough to die. Her son had all his life before him. She
made up her mind- she must say it.
She went to the chief’s hut and fell at his feet weeping.
“She is my daughter. Awiti is the daughter of the great
chief, and twin sister to Owiny, your son. I abandoned her
by the well because I wanted to give you nothing but a son.”
Mboga sat still and the hairs on his skin stood erect like
those of a frightened cat. The scene on the path from the
sacred hill when Awiti greeted him by the roadside came to
his mind. Yes, her face resembled that of his son. Mboga
looked past his wife into the dark night. Only a few hours
more and it would be sunrise, then the whole land would
know the truth. He knew his people were going to persuade
him to send Achieng’ away. She had thrown away her new-
born baby, she had angered the ancestors; she was not
worthy of being a chief’s wife.
But Mboga made up his mind. No-one was going to take
Achieng’ from him. She was the centre of his life. The self-
doubt that often follows the betrayal of life-long trust crept
into Mboga’s mind. He wondered what other secrets were
still hidden in the bosoms of his wives. He lifted Achieng’s
head from his feet.
“Mother of Awiti, arise. For my sake you have borne a
heavy burden for many years. You have denied yourself the
pleasure a mother gets from seeing her child. Go and tell
your son that he has a very beautiful sister. I shall give him
my choicest bull to slaughter and eat with his sister and
friends- let us all rejoice and thank our ancestor Ramogi.”

Understanding and appreciating the story

1. Why was chief Mboga so desperate for a son?
2. Do you blame Achieng’ for abandoning her infant
daughter? Explain.
 3. Why do you think a chief was not meant to shed tears in
public?
4. Describe Awiti’s beauty in your own words.
5. What is the relevance of the song to the story?
6. How is Awiti different from other girls in the story?
7. Do you think there is suspense in the story? How is it
brought out?
8. Do you think it is right for chief Mboga to forgive
Achieng? Why?

Discussion questions

1. Discuss the traditions of the community in the story. Are there any
signs in this story that there could be changes to the old ways as time
passes?
2. Discuss the different roles of men and women in the society as
brought out in the story. Compare these roles with what is happening
in our society. Do you think there will be equality between men and
women in the future?
3. Discuss the importance that this community placed on sons. Can you
think of a situation in modern politics where there have been
discussion about whether a woman can make a good leader?

Tuesday Siesta by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia)

The train emerged from the quivering tunnel of sandy rocks, began to cross the
symmetrical, interminable
banana plantations, and the air became humid and they couldn’t feel the sea breeze
any more. A stifling blast of
smoke came in the car window. On the narrow road parallel to the railway there
were oxcarts loaded with green
bunches of bananas. Beyond the road, in uncultivated spaces set at odd intervals
there were offices with electric
fans, red‐brick buildings, and residences with chairs and little white tables on the
terraces among dusty palm
trees and rosebushes. It was eleven in the morning, and the heat had not yet begun.
“You’d better close the window,” the woman said. “Your hair will get full of soot.”
The girl tried to, but the shade wouldn’t move because of the rust.
They were the only passengers in the lone third‐class car. Since the smoke of the
locomotive kept coming
through the window, the girl left her seat and put down the only things they had
with them: a plastic sack with
some things to eat and a bouquet of flowers wrapped in newspaper. She sat on the
opposite seat, away from the
window, facing her mother. They were both in severe and poor mourning clothes.
The girl was twelve years old, and it was the first time she’d ever been on a train.
The woman seemed too old to
be her mother, because of the blue veins on her eyelids and her small, soft, and
shapeless body, in a dress cut
like a cassock. She was riding with her spinal column braced firmly against the
back of the seat, and held a peeling
patent‐leather handbag in her lap with both hands. She bore the conscientious
serenity of someone accustomed
to poverty.
By twelve the heat had begun. The train stopped for ten minutes to take on water at
a station where there was
no town. Outside, in the mysterious silence of the plantations, the shadows seemed
clean. But the still air inside
the car smelled like untanned leather. The train did not pick up speed. It stopped at
two identical towns with
wooden houses painted bright colors. The woman’s head nodded and she sank into
sleep. The girl took off her
shoes. Then she went to the washroom to put the bouquet of flowers in some water.
When she came back to her seat, her mother was waiting to eat. She gave her a
piece of cheese, half a cornmeal
pancake, and a cookie, and took an equal portion out of the plastic sack for herself.
While they ate, the train
crossed an iron bridge very slowly and passed a town just like the ones before,
except that in this one there was a
crowd in the plaza. A band was playing a lively tune under the oppressive sun. At
the other side of town the
plantations ended in a plain which was cracked from the drought.
The woman stopped eating.
“Put on your shoes,” she said.
The girl looked outside. She saw nothing but the deserted plain, where the train
began to pick up speed again,
but she put the last piece of cookie into the sack and quickly put on her shoes. The
woman gave her a comb.
“Comb your hair,” she said.
The train whistle began to blow while the girl was combing her hair. The woman
dried the sweat from her neck
and wiped the oil from her face with her fingers. When the girl stopped combing,
the train was passing the
outlying houses of a town larger but sadder than the earlier ones.
“If you feel like doing anything, do it now,” said the woman. “Later, don’t take a
drink anywhere even if you’re
dying of thirst. Above all, no crying.”
The girl nodded her head. A dry, burning wind came in the window, together with
the locomotive’s whistle and
the clatter of the old cars. The woman folded the plastic bag with the rest of the
food and put it in the handbag.
For a moment a complete picture of the town, on that bright August Tuesday,
shone in the window. The girl
wrapped the flowers in the soaking‐wet newspapers, moved a little farther away
from the window, and stared at
her mother. She received a pleasant expression in return. The train began to whistle
and slowed down. A
moment later it stopped.
There was no one at the station. On the other side of the street, on the sidewalk
shaded by the almond trees,
only the pool hall was open. The town was floating in the heat. The woman and the
girl got off the train and
crossed the abandoned station—the tiles split apart by the grass growing up
between—and over to the shady
side of the street.
It was almost two. At that hour, weighted down by drowsiness, the town was
taking a siesta. The stores, the
town offices, the public school were closed at eleven, and didn’t reopen until a
little before four, when the train
went back. Only the hotel across from the station, with its bar and pool hall, and
the telegraph office at one side
of the plaza stayed open. The houses, most of them built on the banana company’s
model, had their doors locked
from inside and their blinds drawn. In some of them it was so hot that the residents
ate lunch in the patio. Others
leaned a chair against the wall, in the shade of the almond trees, and took their
siesta right out in the street.
Keeping to the protective shade of the almond trees, the woman and the girl
entered the town without
disturbing the siesta. They went directly to the parish house. The woman scratched
the metal grating on the door
with her fingernail, waited a moment, and scratched again. An electric fan was
humming inside. They did not
hear the steps. They hardly heard the slight creaking of a door, and immediately a
cautious voice, right next to
the metal grating: “Who is it?” The woman tried to see through the grating.
“I need the priest,” she said.
“He’s sleeping now.”
“It’s an emergency,” the woman insisted. Her voice showed a calm determination.
The door was opened a little way, noiselessly, and a plump, older woman
appeared, with very pale skin and hair
the color of iron. Her eyes seemed too small behind her thick eyeglasses.
“Come in,” she said, and opened the door all the way.
They entered a room permeated with an old smell of flowers. The woman of the
house led them to a wooden
bench and signaled them to sit down. The girl did so, but her mother remained
standing, absentmindedly, with
both hands clutching the handbag. No noise could be heard above the electric fan.
The woman of the house reappeared at the door at the far end of the room. “He
says you should come back after
three,” she said in a very low voice. “He just lay down five minutes ago.”
“The train leaves at three thirty,” said the woman.
It was a brief and self‐assured reply, but her voice remained pleasant, full of
undertones. The woman of the
house smiled for the first time.
“All right,” she said.
When the far door closed again, the woman sat down next to her daughter. The
narrow waiting room was poor,
neat, and clean. On the other side of the wooden railing which divided the room,
there was a worktable, a plain
one with an oilcloth cover, and on top of the table a primitive typewriter next to a
vase of flowers. The parish
records were beyond. You could see that it was an office kept in order by a
spinster.
The far door opened and this time the priest appeared, cleaning his glasses with a
handkerchief. Only when he
put them on was it evident that he was the brother of the woman who had opened
the door.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
“The keys to the cemetery,” said the woman.
The girl was seated with the flowers in her lap and her feet crossed under the
bench. The priest looked at her,
then looked at the woman, and then through the wire mesh of the window at the
bright, cloudless sky.
“In this heat,” he said. “You could have waited until the sun went down.”
The woman moved her head silently. The priest crossed to the other side of the
railing, took out of the cabinet a
notebook covered in oilcloth, a wooden penholder, and an inkwell, and sat down at
the table. There was more
than enough hair on his hands to account for what was missing on his head.
“Which grave are you going to visit?” he asked.
“Carlos Centeno’s,” said the woman.
“Who?”
“Carlos Centeno,” the woman repeated.
The priest still did not understand.
“He’s the thief who was killed here last week,” said the woman in the same tone of
voice. “I am his mother.”
The priest scrutinized her. She stared at him with quiet self‐control, and the Father
blushed. He lowered his head
and began to write. As he filled the page, he asked the woman to identify herself,
and she replied unhesitatingly,
with pre cise details, as if she were reading them. The Father began to sweat. The
girl unhooked the buckle of her
left shoe, slipped her heel out of it, and rested it on the bench rail. She did the same
with the right one.
It had all started the Monday of the previous week, at three in the morning, a few
blocks from there. Rebecca, a
lonely widow who lived in a house full of odds and ends, heard above the sound of
the drizzling rain someone
trying to force the front door from outside. She got up, rummaged around in her
closet for an ancient revolver
that no one had fired since the days of Colonel Aureliano Buendia, and went into
the living room without turning
on the lights. Orienting herself not so much by the noise at the lock as by a terror
developed in her by twenty
eight years of loneliness, she fixed in her imagination not only the spot where the
door was but also the exact
height of the lock. She clutched the weapon with both hands, closed her eyes, and
squeezed the trigger. It was
the first time in her life that she had fired a gun. Immediately after the explosion,
she could hear nothing except
the murmur of the drizzle on the galvanized roof. Then she heard a little metallic
bump on the cement porch, and
a very low voice, pleasant but terribly exhausted: “Ah, Mother.” The man they
found dead in front of the house in
the morning, his nose blown to bits, wore a flannel shirt with colored stripes,
everyday pants with a rope for a
belt, and was barefoot. No one in town knew him.
“So his name was Carlos Centeno,” murmured the Father when he finished
writing.
“Centeno Ayala,” said the woman. “He was my only boy.”
The priest went back to the cabinet. Two big rusty keys hung on the inside of the
door; the girl imagined, as her
mother had when she was a girl and as the priest himself must have imagined at
some time, that they were Saint
Peter’s keys. He took them down, put them on the open notebook on the railing,
and pointed with his forefinger
to a place on the page he had just written, looking at the woman.
“Sign here.”
The woman scribbled her name, holding the handbag under her arm. The girl
picked up the flowers, came to the
railing shuffling her feet, and watched her mother attentively.
The priest sighed.
“Didn’t you ever try to get him on the right track?”
The woman answered when she finished signing.
“He was a very good man.”
The priest looked first at the woman and then at the girl, and realized with a kind
of pious amazement that they
were not about to cry. The woman continued in the same tone:
“I told him never to steal anything that anyone needed to eat, and he minded me.
On the other hand, before,
when he used to box, he used to spend three days in bed, exhausted from being
punched.”
“All his teeth had to be pulled out,” interrupted the girl.
“That’s right,” the woman agreed. “Every mouthful I ate those days tasted of the
beatings my son got on
Saturday nights.”
“God’s will is inscrutable,” said the Father.
But he said it without much conviction, partly because experience had made him a
little skeptical and partly
because of the heat. He suggested that they cover their heads to guard against
sunstroke. Yawning, and now
almost completely asleep, he gave them instructions about how to find Carlos
Centeno’s grave. When they came
back, they didn’t have to knock. They should put the key under the door; and in the
same place, if they could,
they should put an offering for the Church. The woman listened to his directions
with great attention, but
thanked him without smiling.
The Father had noticed that there was someone looking inside, his nose pressed
against the metal grating, even
before he opened the door to the street. Outside was a group of children. When the
door was opened wide, the
children scattered. Ordinarily, at that hour there was no one in the street. Now there
were not only children.
There were groups of people under the almond trees. The Father scanned the street
swimming in the heat and
then he understood. Softly, he closed the door again.
“Wait a moment,” he said without looking at the woman.
His sister appeared at the far door with a black jacket over her nightshirt and her
hair down over her shoulders.
She looked silently at the Father.
“What was it?” he asked.
“The people have noticed,” murmured his sister.
“You’d better go out by the door to the patio,” said the Father.
“It’s the same there,” said his sister. “Everybody is at the windows.”
The woman seemed not to have understood until then. She tried to look into the
street through the metal
grating. Then she took the bouquet of flowers from the girl and began to move
toward the door. The girl followed
her.
“Wait until the sun goes down,” said the Father.
“You’ll melt,” said his sister, motionless at the back of the room. “Wait and I’ll
lend you a parasol.”
“Thank you,” replied the woman. “We’re all right this way.”
She took the girl by the hand and went into the street.

Understanding and appreciating the story

1. At what time of the day does the story begin?

2. Pick out instances in the story that indicate that the girl and the
woman are poor.
3. The woman described in the story looks too old to be the girl’s
mother. What does this suggest about life?
4. Describe the circumstances in which Carlos Centeno had been killed.
5. The mother describes her son as a very good man. The Father thinks
otherwise. Whom do you agree with?
6. How is suspense created in this story?
7. Describe the character of Carlos Centeno’s mother.
8. Find an instance of flashback in this story. What difference would it
have made if that information was revealed at the beginning of the
story?

Discussion questions
1. Identify instances of environmental degradation from the story
and show how it has affected the lives of the people in this town.
2. “It is not appropriate to take the law into our own hands.” Drawing
examples from the story and other instances you have seen or
heard about, discuss this statement.
3. If we do not restore our forests, our city could end up like the one
in the story? Do you agree?

Two Stories of a House by Leila Abouzeid (Morocco)

Khadija Bent Ahmed! Meeluda Bent Al-bacheer!” At this
resounding call, two old women in the waiting room gathered up
the voluminous folds of heir veils with their designs of blooming
red roses. They rushed to the courtroom and stood in front of the
judge. He was turning over some papers on his desk.
“Khadija Bent Ahmed!”
“Yes, Sir!”
“Did you leave your house of your own free will?”
“I didn’t, Sir! This Meeluda told me I could come back. She swore
by Mecca that I could come back as soon as her ceiling was
repaired. Her ceiling is the floor of my house, Sir. So I left
everything there. I only took my clothes, because she said the
repairs would just take a month. But she broke the landing and
demolished the stairs. Now, my two rooms are like they are
suspended in the air. I can’t get to them, Sir. It has been two years.
And because my rooms are suspended, I go to my brother’s for a
while and then to my sister’s. It’s just two rooms, true, but it’s my
little home.”
She burst into tears, wiped her eyes with the hem of her veil, and
began to sob like a child. “I entered that house as a bride,” she
went on, “and I intended to stay there till the end of my days.
Haven’t we paid for it? Yes, we have, more than its worth, in the
thirty years we have been living there.”
“Big deal,” snorted the defendant. “Forty dirhams a month.
What’s that? It wouldn’t buy even a kilogram of meat.”
“Stop it!” shouted Khadija. “What about the blood? Your blood
from childbirth that I cleaned with my own hands? What about
the meals I cooked for your feasts and your mourning
ceremonies?
What about your children, who grew up on my back? It’s thirty
years, six hundred and sixty monthly rents, two million centimes,
perhaps more. Couldn’t that amount have bought us your house
and mine? Couldn’t it? If it weren’t for my late husband’s
carelessness and extravagance. They call it generosity! He wasted
his money feeding his ungrateful, so –called friends. Meat was
brought to our house seven kilos at a time. If he…”
“Forget your late husband now, will you?” ordered the judge.
“Was it your husband who told you to lock the house and give the
key to the defendant?”
“I didn’t give her the key, Sir. The key is still with me.” She raised
her skirts, bent over, and pulled from the pocket of her bloomers
a big black key. “There! But what good is it? The house has no
stairs and no landing. It’s suspended in the air.”
“You mean you just locked the door and walked away?”
“Well, she’s my neighbor and she swore by Mecca. Wouldn’t a
good Muslim lock the door and walk away? I believed her.?
“What do you want now?”
“My home!” Tears overwhelmed her again and she murmured as
if to herself: “I can’t stop crying when I pronounce that word.”
And to the judge: “I am frightened of moving, very anxious, as if
I was being expatriated or was dying. It’s my little home, Sir.”
She started to cry again.
“Where have you been all this time? Why haven’t you submitted
your case to the court before?”
“I had it in the hands of saints, Sir.”
“And you took it back, I guess,” said the judge, smiling. The
audience smiled, too. Then he asked the defendant: “What’s your
statement?”
“Two years ago, bless you, Sir, dirt started coming down from my
ceiling. So, I asked this person to evacuate her house above it, so
we could repair the ceiling. But when the worker touched it, the
landing collapsed, and carried the staircase with it. Were it not for
God’s grace, the poor man could have lost his life. That’s the
whole story.”
“What are you saying?” cried Khadija. “You swore by Mecca,
Meeluda! You said to leave for a month! You said you’d do the
repairs and I could come back!”
“Stop wailing! There’s no way to fix it. The whole house is
collapsing, for heaven’s sake!”
“Enough!” ordered the judge, then pronounced the following
sentence: “Tomorrow morning, if God wills it, at ten sharp, local
firemen will bring Khadija Bent Ahmed’s belongings from the
house located in number 3 Baker Street. She will take her
possessions, in the presence of the police, and return the key to its
proprietor. Case closed. Next.”
That day Khadija Bent Ahmed learned that a divorced old woman
was renting a room in the house she had once lived in. The old
woman now lived in a wooden hut on the roof. On the ground
floor, an old man occupied another room with his wife, a rough
country girl hardly twenty years old, baked by the sun from work
in the fields.
Khadija Bent Ahmed told her story to the old woman on the roof.
“Oh! My neigh… I was going to say my neighbor. Excuse me,
but I called someone by that name and I am a dummy to honour
her so.”
“Tell me about it,” said the old lady. “There’s no good neighbor
in this world, no grateful people, no faithful husbands. You say
that Meeluda was your neighbor for thirty years and threw you
out. Well, my story is worse.” She gestured to the ground floor
with one earring. “I’ve been married to the old man down there
for forty years, but after he saw that country bumpkin he ignored
me completely.”
“And who sent him the country bumpkin?”
“I did. I brought her to him myself. I found her shedding tears in
the shrine. She was pregnant. She was scared of her brothers and
was hiding there. So I said to myself: “Well, there’s an unborn
she’s carrying with terror while you have no children at all. Why
don’t you take her home and when she delivers, she’ll go away
and you will have the baby.”
“That woman said to me: ‘This shrine is a witness between you
and me.’ And we concluded a pact on the saint’s tomb, according
to which I would hide her shame and she would leave me the
baby. She stayed with me till she gave birth, with God’s
omnipotence, to twin boys. The old man registered them in our
family booklet at once.”
“I took care of her as if she were my own child. It was out of the
question to let her go right after she gave birth. I said to myself:
‘Wait one week,’ and at the end of the week I said: ‘Wait another
week!’ Then the old man said: ‘You’ve accomplished a good
deed, carry it to the end. Keep her a bit longer. She’ll breast feed
the babies and she’ll finish her forty days. God will reward you.’
Amen!’ said I.”
“And at the end of the forty days,” said Khadija Bent Ahmed in a
teasing tone, “you said you’d keep her until the babies were
weaned?”
“No. At the end of the forty, I took her to the public bath, dyed
her hands and feet with henna, gave her some money and presents,
and said to her: ‘It’s time for you to go.’ ‘Oh no,’ she retorted.
‘It’s rather time for you to go. I’m here in my own house, with my
children.’ And she pulled out a marriage contract.”
“The old man married her?”
“And repudiated me.”
“What a fool! But it’s your fault. You let her stay. She has breast
fed her children and got attached to them.”
“Well, when she waved that marriage contract at me, I ran to my
chest, got out my family booklet, and shoved it in her face, saying:
‘You can have the old man but you will never have the babies.’ I
slipped the booklet in my shirt, took the twins in my arms, rushed
up to my hut and locked it.”
“But why do you stay in the same house?”
“Where would I go? I have no family, and the life savings I earned
with my sweat are in that house. You say that Meeluda swore by
Mecca? Well my country bumpkin concluded a pact with me on
the saint’s tomb.”
The twins are three years old now. When the old woman goes out,
she slides a sheet of tin over the grillwork that covers the patio
opening and then she locks the roof door. As soon as she has gone,
the country girl takes a long reed pole and pushes the tin sheet
away with it. She calls out: “ Hassan! Hussein!” And when the
boys’ faces show up at the opening, she stretches the reed out to
them and there are sweets tied at the end of it.

Understanding and appreciating the story

1. Where do the events of Khadija Bent Ahmed’s story occur?
2. How was Khadija tricked by Meeluda?
3. How long has it been since Khadija lost her house? Where
does she live?
4. Why is she so attached to the house?
5. Besides paying rent, what else has she done that makes her
believe the house is hers?
6. Describe the character of her late husband.
7. What is the judge’s verdict? Is it fair or not? Why?
8. Identify humour in the story and discuss its role.
Discuss questions
1. “There is no good neighbor in this world, no grateful
people, no faithful husbands.” What makes the old lady so
cynical? Do you agree with her? Explain.
2. Traditions form a large part of our life. Study the story and
pick out instances of traditions common to the people in the
story.
3. Discuss what this story reveals about women’s lives?

Law of the Grazing Fields by Cyprian Ekwensi

(Nigeria)
This is the law of the wandering cattlemen of the savannas:
that a man may elope with the woman of his choice, maiden
or matron, wife or spinster. But woe betide him if he is caught
on the run. Yet all is well if he can but get his beloved home
without being caught. On the evening of our story a brother
and sister were quarrelling. Modio, the brother, had just
pushed Amina, the sister, violently. “Kai!” Amina shouted,
struggling deftly backward. “Take your hands off me.”
Her lips were parted, but not in a smile, and her full breasts
heaved so that the necklace of silver and fruit seemed to come
to life. Amina just managed to retain her balance by clutching
at the wall of the grass hut.
“Don’t you dare touch me again!”
“By Allah,” Modio raged, “I’ll teach you some sense.”
She glared at him. He was crouching before her, his hands
curved like the claws of a hawk about to strike, his muscles
tense. “You’ll go nowhere!”
“You lie!” she cried. “This night I will be with Yalla. He’s the
husband I’s the husband I’ve chosen.”
“What of Jama, the husband our father chose for you? What of
the cattle Jama’s been paying?” “That is your affair,” she said.
“Did you- Oh, let me go, you devil. Are you mad?”
She felt the stroke of his rough hand across her mouth. His arm
tightened about her waist and she was struggling as he carried
her out to his own hut. With his bare foot he kicked open the
door; dust rose in a cloud. He thrust her in. She fell forward on
her face in the dust and lay there, her body heaving with sobs.
Amina was young and in the fullness of her bloom. Her long
hair, unplaited, fell over her back and lay buried in the dust.
Tears mingled with the red cream she had painted on her
cheeks.
“You wretch,” she heard her brother say from the other side of
the door. He was fastening the door and presently she heard
him stamp away, cursing her. She let the tears flow freely as if
tears alone could heal the ache in her heart, the desire for the
man she had chosen. But there must be hope, she thought. No
one, nothing could shut her away from Yalla for ever. She
must go to him, she must.
Hatred burned within her breast. Was it her fault that she did
not like Jama? Her father had accepted the cattle first and told
her about it later. He turned out to be a weak-kneed, effeminate
man. A man who could not weave mats or take the cattle out
to graze. A coward who had wept and begged as they flogged
him at the sharo. He had taken his flogging, it was true, but he
had not taken it like a man and it would be humiliating to
marry him. Her father might give her away to Jama, but he
would not be present when the other maidens would taunt her
with having married a coward: “And how’s your husband? The
one who stays in bed till sunrise, who must not be soaked by
the rain? Ha, ha! A husband indeed!”
The mistake had been Yalla’s, for he had not honoured the
arrangement in full. It had been a simple arrangement. She and
Yalla were to escape from the camp before Jama brought the
bulls that were the final instalment of the brideprice. Yalla was
to have come to the hut at the hour when the hyenas begin to
howl over the grazing fields. He was to scratch in the manner
peculiar to the grey hawk that steals chickens and she would
then know that he was waiting for her under the dorowa tree.
She had waited for Yalla’s screech. In the early hours of the
evening before the hyenas slunk out of the rocks, she had
thought about her man- tall, wide-shouldered, with a copper
ring in his plaited hair, a man who could break a stubborn bull
or calm the wildest pony in her father’s stables. Yet when he
smiled or held her hand, his face was so gentle and so sweet.
She liked to place her head against his deep wipe chest and
look up into the darkness of his brown eyes. He was fond of
playing with her ears, and sometimes he irritated her and she
would threaten to go to Jama. Jama, the coward. Could Jama
protect her home from the gales that swept the grazing fields?
Could he outwit the wild dogs, and the hyenas, the leopard and
the lion, when they came to raid the herd?
A husband indeed. She had been his ‘wife’ ever since she
could remember. Five hundred head of cattle was a good price,
but she was no article for sale.
Early this evening Yalla had come to her father’s settlement.
He had stood outside near the dorowa tree and had whistled to
her. She had been very excited. To think she was leaving her
home for good. There could be no goodbyes, no tears. She was
running away with a man they could gladly kill. There was
dead silence over the veld. Amina had peeped out cautiously.
There was the veld before her. It was all hers and Yalla’s if
only they would dare. The stunted trees, bowing in the cold
wind, the rushing streams, the rocks, the thorn forests. They
were all calling out to her and to Yalla to go forth and conquer
them; to begin their own camp with a group of bulls and cows-
their own. Yalla had screeched again, impatiently, and this
time he did sound like the grey hawk. She had not hesitated.
She ran. She took nothing with her, not even one of the wooden
ladles that her mother had given her for stirring the milk. And
that was when her brother had intercepted her. She did not
know that he had been hiding all the while in a nearby tree. He
had a pack of wild cattle-dogs with him, and these he at once
unleashed on Yalla. He had seized Amina and had laughed at
her threats and clawing and curses. For Yalla and Amina the
law of the grazing fields was broken.
Now she was a prisoner in the hut, but Amina found it
impossible to imagine that Yalla never would be hers. There
must still be a chance. If only he could somehow manage to
free her from this prison and take her to his hut before Jama
paid the full price of five hundred cattle, she could still be
Yalla’s by right of his night. No one could deny this law of the
grazing fields. All cattlemen knew it and respected it. But how
was Yalla to know where she was, or when Jama would be
coming. Everything was over, Amina decided with a fresh
burst of tears.
“Oh, Yalla, my Yalla! Come and save me, Yalla. I am yours
and you are my man!” She pushed and screamed and
threatened until her brother warned her to be quiet. But how
could she be quiet when her body itched from the dust and the
thorns? Oh, death! It would be better to die than to live as
Jama’s wife. Already she could hear an argument about the
saddling of the horses. Her other brothers had returned from
the fields. One of them said she must wear a black veil, and
the other said a white one was the custom. Such trifles! The
eldest brother said he would ride behind the bride; he could
not trust her for a moment after what she had been through
with Modio. And all this because of five hundred head of
cattle.
Quite suddenly she became conscious of silence. The
chattering ceased and the coarse jokes. A fearful pause lay
over the veld. She began to cough. The air in the little room
hung heavy and thick. And then her brother’s voice cut in
hoarsely.
“Fire!” he shouted. “Fire!.. Yes… whoo… fetch water…fire!”
Amina started. Heavy fumes began to fill her little prison. She
was coughing and gasping fearfully. Desperation gave her the
strength of ten. She flung herself at her door. The fumes were
now pouring in through every crack in the hut. The boys
outside shouted and yelled, keeping the cows from panicking.
Their shouts beat dimly against her ears. She was choking. Did
they not even remember her? Could they be so cruel? Were
their cows more valuable to them than her life?
A rough hand thrust open her door, and a man’s gruff voice
urged her, “Follow me. It’s Yalla.” Her heart gladdened, but
no words came to her choking lips. The man’s arms circled her
waist and swept her off her feet. The thatch caught her hair,
and the man’s hands detached the burrs tenderly. She must be
dreaming. She felt the air rush into her throat. She saw the
yellow sheets of flames shoot skyward in dazzling columns.
And, as she raised her hand to shield her eyes from the glare,
Amina saw her brothers dashing here, there and yonder,
collecting sleeping mats, money purses, milk bowls. It was a
dream no longer. That voice –it was real.
“There she is!... Brothers, there’s our sister. Catch her!”
“Yalla,” Amina sobbed, “what shall we do? They are coming.”
“Let them try. My hut is five miles from here. It will be a good
race.”
She felt herself carried across the encampment and saddled
onto a horse.
“Away, now!” Yalla shouted. “Away…”
Every forward leap of the horse jarred her bones. Her hair
streamed in the wind. Behind them came her brothers.
Relentless, cunning riders, angered beyond repair. Amina
could clearly hear the clatter of the pursuing horses. By Allah!
What could she do?
Twang.
That was an arrow. Best to give up now.
“Oh, Yalla, let us get down and go back home. It’s useless
running in this manner.” The man’s laugh, big and thunderous,
made her feel silly. Was he laughing at the poisoned arrow that
might have stiffened his back and sent him coughing and
clutching to his death? What a nerve! Their horse had begun
to pant under the combined weight. They were now in a part
of the scrub with few trees and many rocks and hills. This was
where clever horsemanship would tell. This was where this
thief would lose her or gain her for ever. She held her breath.
Her body prickled with a thousand pains but she knew the
prize that lay ahead and it gave her courage. The horse labored.
Even Yalla, man that he was, ground his teeth in pain and
weariness, urging his steed ahead with a slashing whip.
“Yee- whoo!” he shouted, the sweat running down his face and
falling into Amina’s eyes. “Yee- whoo!” She was the first to
see the light in the distance.
“My hut,” Yalla said. “My lonely hut!”
“Our hut, you mean.” He laughed again. Twang! And Yalla
moaned. “They’ve shot me! My back… Allah save me. I’m
dying…” Before the words were out of his mouth, Yalla was
sliding down the saddle, for an arrow’s poison acts fast. Yet
more arrows twanged past even as the distance between them
and their pursuers narrowed.
“If I die, you go ahead. They can’t touch you once you’re in
my hut. It is the … the…”
Terror, panic, Amina looked over her shoulder and saw her
elder brother’s figure looming out of the darkness. Yalla had
barely enough strength to crawl. Amina dragged him on. She
was a girl of the veld, fresh, strong and brave. His strength
waned fast. Ahead of them, the cows in the gloom bolted out
of their paths. Rams bleated anxiously. A cock cackled,
waking all the rest which now set up a deafening crow. They
were actually in Yalla’s settlement, but not in the hut.
“You thief!” A few yards behind the paddocks, just beyond the
poultry yard, Amina bent down. With all her might, she seized
Yalla and pushed him into the hut, falling in after him. He
breathed a sigh of relief.
“My wife!” he moaned. “Mine at last! But first, this arrow.
You can still save me. The antidote…”
Amina’s brothers drew up before Yalla’s hut.
“You thief!” they raved. “Give us our sister.”
“Thief?” he sneered. “You are thieves. Have you not stolen the
bridal horse?”
“Our father, Jama, will know no rest till you’ve compensated
him for his cattle.”
“Leave that to me,” Yalla said. To Amina he murmured, “Oh
my back. The antidote…”
The brothers wheeled their horses and cantered slowly back to
their own camp. One of them said: “That lad, Yalla, he is a
man. Setting fire to our camp, stealing our sister, and then
calling us thieves for taking back our horse which we saddled
for another bridegroom! The law of the grazing fields. He’s
won.”

Understanding and appreciating the story

1. In your own words, state the “law of the grazing fields.”
2. In your own opinion, how appropriate is the image of a
‘hawk about to strike’?
3. Describe Amina’s feelings as she lies in her brother’s hut.
4. Make notes on the character of Jama, as seen from Amina’s
perspective?
5. In your own opinion, what kind of person is Modio?
Explain your answer.
6. Contrast Yalla with Jama. Describe Amina’s attitude
towards Yalla and Jama.
7. What goes wrong in Amina’s first attempt to elope with
Yalla?
8. Why does Yalla laugh when Amina tells him it is useless
to run? What feelings does his laughter evoke in Amina?
9. Identify figures of speech used in the story. How
effectively have they been used?
10. Identify the major theme in the story.

Discussion questions
1. In your opinion, should fathers have a say over who
marries their daughters? Why? Do you think that dowry
should be paid?
2. Discuss the role of men in this society. Do you think
their roles have changed in the present time?

White Hands by Jane Katjavivi (Namibia)

The place of her liberation was Birmingham, England.

Strange city, she thought. Strange name. More shops than
she ever knew existed, and roads that flew through the sky.
But that is where they helped her, away from family and
friends and everything that was familiar. Far away from the
children. Angelika came to learn English, at a small college
funded by the Church. So really it was the Good Lord who
helped her, as always. But she did not expect Him to have
white hands.

Her church had black bishops linking Africa and African

Americans. So despite all the pictures of Jesus looking like
a European, she had never thought of him like that. Her
knowledge of the Lord was her knowledge of the care of
those around her, of community, of people helping each
other in the difficult times under South African rule. Her
knowledge of the devil was the temptation of all people to
selfishness, jealousy and anger but, most of all, the actions
of the South African army- young white soldiers
conscripted and sent on military service to Namibia, who
were hardened by the training process and brutalized by
what they did in the fight against those who wanted
freedom.

The Namibia that Angelika left was hot and dry and highly
militarized, where political leaders were detained, tortured
or forced into exile and only the churches could set up
projects to help people. Survival came through mutual
support, through solidarity within communities and within
families: helping people who did not have enough food,
caring for those who were sick, looking out for each other’s
children.

The England that she came to was cold, wet and seemingly
calmer. But she came to find that England, too, was
becoming more militarized, with a miner’s strike that pitted
government against trade union, a new leader who declared
war on them, and police on horseback charging at the
protesters. People sent food parcels across the country to
areas where the strike held out the longest. Solidarity was
strong but it was stretched to breaking point by distance, by
the need to get out and find work, by people giving up and
moving on. Solidarity was what kept Namibians alive.
Solidarity was what grew and died in England at that time.

Angelika arrived in Birmingham in January, in the middle

of winter, with one suitcase and no coat. Unlike the desert
cold she knew, this did not disappear as the day went by,
but settled damply in her bones. The little English that she
knew disappeared as soon as she arrived and she was hard
pressed in conversation and in class. She was among a
group of international students, with common church
connections, but the other students were younger than her,
busy at parties, while Angelika, quiet in her college room,
slowly learnt to speak.

Her aim was to go on to study a course in Community

Studies that would help her in the work she had undertaken
back home-running a children’s centre for her husband’s
church. Eighty pre- schoolers came each day. Mothers
dropped them off in the early hours, before they boarded
buses heading to the white suburbs where they worked.
They collected the children as it began to turn dark. So
Angelika and her colleagues provided everything for the
children during the day-food, care and a safe place to play.
Her colleagues wrote to her now, telling her how they were
all waiting for her return, telling her how the children were
growing- children whose love helped to make her whole.

Angelika had always expected to have a lot of children, as

many as the Lord might offer her, but when she got married
they were disappointed, because none came. The years
went by. At first she and her husband would talk about the
children they hoped for but in the end, they stopped
speaking about it. They took in three girls from her
husband’s family and looked after them.

It was Tembi, a nursing student from South Africa, who

began to show Angelika around and make sure she did not
spend too much time alone in her room. She urged
Angelika to go to the doctor and see what the problem
might be.

“Look, you have the opportunity while you are here. You
know how bad medical care is at home. Go see the doctor
while you can get proper treatment. Maybe they can do
something.”

“I don’t like hospitals,” replied Angelika. “People go there

and die.”

“No,” replied Tembi, thinking of the similar conditions in

South Africa. “Not always. People go to hospital so late
that some of them are too sick by the time they get there.
By then it’s too late for them. Better to see the doctor
sooner. They then can do more for you.”

So she found her way to the women’s Hospital in

Birmingham, a concrete block, daunting and unfriendly at
the end of a long bus journey. Green lino on the floors and
tired pale green paint on the walls, but a better reputation
for care than some newer hospitals. “So,” asked the doctor,
going through the preliminary questions. “Tell me about
your medical history. When did you first menstruate? Have
you normal periods? Have you ever been pregnant?”

“Not ever,” replied Angelika. The doctor directed her to a

couch for a preliminary examination.

“Tell me about this scar,” he said.

“Appendix,” Angelika replied. “Ten years ago. The one

time I was in hospital.”

“Long scar for an appendix,” commented the doctor. “Let’s

see what else we can find.”

She had never been to a gynaecologist before, never had an

intimate examination. Her body stiffened as he bent
towards her. Afterwards, they sent her for an ultrasound
scan. Then the doctor called in a colleague and discussed
her case. They talked to Angelika together.

“Tell us more about your medical history. About your

hospital visits.”

“There’s nothing. My appendix. Sometimes headache or

flu, that’s all.” She was lucky, she thought. Some people
were sick all the time, exhausted by the workload, queuing
at the hospital in the mornings, taking the precious
prescribed pill, with hope and expectation, even though so
often it was just a painkiller, she had been told.

“Yes, but apart from the appendix, when did you have the
other work done?”
“Other work?”

“Well, we’re a bit confused. You’ve come to us to find out

why you can’t get pregnant. But the answer’s clear. You’ve
been sterilized.”

“Sterilized?”

“You can’t get pregnant because you had an operation to

stop you getting pregnant. Your tubes have been cut.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your fallopian tubes have been cut.” He got out a diagram

to show her.

“Here. These are the tubes where the egg comes down into
the uterus. Yours have been cut. This is what’s done when
a woman comes to us and says she has enough children and
doesn’t want any more.

This is one way to prevent you from having children. It’s

longer-term than other methods. It’s permanent.”

The doctors at home- young white men- some from South

Africa, some of them soldiers, who parked their rifles at the
consulting room door, working their military service out on
Namibian bodies. “Tell us about the symptoms you had
before your appendix was removed,” continued the doctor.

“Stomach pain. More and more. Then one night it was

terrible. My brother took me to the hospital. I had to wait
long and the pain was bad. Then they came, they examined
me, they say my appendix is bad. They make me sleep.
Then they cut me and they took the appendix.”

“Maybe it was your appendix,” replied the doctor. “But is

it possible that you could have been sterilized at the same
time? What consent form did you sign?”

She could not remember any signature. There had been no

discussion. She could think only of the faces of the young
doctors and their white hands, cutting, stitching. Who
knew what they might do when you were unconscious and
cut open? Cutting, stitching. This time caring. This time,
trying to repair. “We may be able to reverse it,” the doctors
comforted her. “It’s not usually possible, but we have had
some success reconnecting fallopian tubes.”

So she went back to hospital. The church carried the cost.

Others around her, including Tembi, wanted to shout about
it, to write letters to the newspapers and contact the United
Nations, to make public what had happened to her and use
it in the campaign against South African rule. But Angelika
could not bear the thought of people discussing her in that
way. She wrote and phoned to tell her husband, but it was
hard at that distance to explain. She was constrained by the
thought of their conversation and letters being monitored
and she felt compelled to shield him from what other men
had done to her, feeling somehow shamed by it. So Tembi
spoke to the church leaders on her behalf and they helped
her to go home during the vacation.
There was not much privacy in their home- four square
walls, mercifully made out of brick and cement, not
corrugated iron like the homes of so many others. They had
an inside toilet and shower, and a kitchen, so they did not
have to cook outside. The furniture was big in the small
rooms, though. There was only a narrow space to squeeze
between the bed, the wardrobe and the walls in their
bedroom. The other bedroom housed the girls they had
taken in. The sitting- cum-eating area comprised a small
table and chairs, two wooden framed armchairs with foam
cushions and television. The house was full of people when
they got home from the airport, and full, much of the time
that she was there.

“I haven’t said anything,” said her husband. “I just said that

you had been to hospital for treatment. But you know how
word gets round.”

“That’s good,” she replied. “I don’t want people looking at

me and talking. And I don’t want to think about it
myself…” Each time she thought about it, she stepped back
in horror. When she asked herself why this had happened
to her, she thought of the other women it must have
happened to as well, who neither know nor have the chance
to reverse their enforced childlessness.

The British doctors had told her they were hopeful, that
they believed the operation had been successful but her
tubes would still be scarred and her body, no longer so
young, might not be able to hold and nurture a baby. She
dared not hope that something good might eventually come
out of the discovery. She approached her husband with
trepidation.

They travelled to the village, into rocky hills where her

people had been pushed by colonial settlement. It took
three hours to get there, although the actual distance was
not so long. Well-maintained gravel roads led through the
white commercial farms, but petered out when they
reached the reserve, and the last twenty kilometres were
over hard rock, through dried out riverbeds, and up steep
slopes.

It was August, the driest time of the year, when the colours
were all browns and greys and each stick stood out hard
and dark against the earth. Two more weeks and the night
temperatures would begin to rise, bringing blossom to the
thorn bushes and leaves to the larger trees with deeper
roots-a time of wind and hazy sunshine.

They walked to the huts on their arrival and were taken to

the elders. There the keeper of the holy fire welcomed
them. He took water in his mouth and spat it three times
onto the ground, talking to the ancestors, thanking them for
the safe return of their child and asking for their blessing
for her. Then the cow was slaughtered and everyone came
from the huts around to share the feast.
The following Sunday, they gathered in church and her
husband led them in singing hymns and calling for God’s
guidance and God’s blessing on them all.

Two weeks later, Angelika returned to England, buoyed by

the warmth of family, determinedly not counting the days.
She took the bus from the airport north to Birmingham and
found her way to the college, more capable now, more
knowledgeable about the transport system and the
language. Her fellow students came to greet her, asking for
news.

“It is the same,” she said. “People struggle to cope. The

number of children at the centre increases each day. There
is not enough water in the reserves and people wait for the
early rains. The children are protesting in the schools. They
are marching in the streets.” Things at home were the same,
she thought, and yet so much had changed for her.

Time went by. She dared not hope. But no blood came. She
waited a few weeks and then went hesitantly to the doctor.
“I’m very pleased to say that you are pregnant,” he smiled.
“Seven weeks. Hopefully everything will go smoothly but
we need to monitor you carefully to make sure everything
is OK. In the meantime, don’t do too much, be careful not
to lift heavy things. Get plenty of sleep and eat well.”

She could rest in her single student room, away from the
noise of other people and their prying eyes. She could study
while she rested. She could afford to eat well, her
scholarship allowing her the fruit and vegetables that were
difficult to afford at home. She told Tembi but asked her
not to tell anyone else. She dared not even tell her husband,
for fear that something might go wrong.

But the Lord was with her. The baby stayed and grew. She
felt it kick.

Angelika approached the church once more and asked to

stay in England until the baby was born. She could not face
returning to the hospital in Windhoek. They offered her
assistance from an emergency fund so she could give birth
in Birmingham and continue her studies afterwards. When
she became so large that no one could deny it, she told her
husband of the news. When she had safely delivered she
sent a message home.

At last, a son is born. A miracle child. Give thanks.

Six months later, surrounded by people at her farewell,

Angelika holds her baby, chatting and laughing.

Understanding and appreciating the story

1. Why is Birmingham, England, the place for Angelika’s

liberation? What does she get liberated from?
2. Do you think Angelika has a clear understanding of
Christianity?
3. Make notes on the problems facing citizens in
Angelika’s native country.
4. Why do you think the young white doctors sterilized
Angelika?
5. “Thinks at home were the same, yet so much had
changed for her.” How true is this statement and in what
ways had Angelika changed?
6. Why do you think Angelika keeps her pregnancy secret?
7. The author uses short sentences like: “But the Lord was
with her. The baby stayed and grew. She felt it kick.”
Why do you think she uses such sentences and what
does she achieve?
8. Describe the character of Angelika’s husband.
9. In your own words write a paragraph describing
Angelika.

Discussion questions

1. Do you think there are instances of human rights abuse

in this story? Discuss.
2. Discuss the relevance of the title, “White Hands,” to the
story.
3. Do you think the use of dialogue has enriched the story?
How?