Out of Darkness, Shining Light

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Out of Darkness, Shining Light Page 7

by Petina Gappah


  “What does that mean?” asked Ntaoéka.

  “And what is this collar that you talk of?” said Misozi. “Surely you cannot want to be a slave again and wear the sign of servitude?”

  In an impatient voice, Jacob said, “I have explained already, Misozi, that clerics wear a cloth collar around their neck. It is not the same as the collar of enslavement.”

  In a more gentle voice, he turned to Ntaoéka and said, “To be buried on ground that is consecrated means that he must be buried within the grounds of a place that is blessed, like a church.”

  “Then there is no question,” Ntaoéka said. “Jacob is right. We cannot bury him here.”

  She said his name in a simpering, coy manner that made me look at her sharply. Her eyes met Jacob’s and she looked down with a flutter of her lashes. Jacob looked down, then up again at her. The lump on his throat moved as he swallowed. I may not know about maps and books and stars, but I know what it means when a man looks at a woman like that. I glanced at Mabruki to see what he would make of it, but he had seen nothing.

  “But the Reverend Wainwright said to us that all ground is hallowed where a good man lies,” said Matthew Wellington. “Think of all those poor souls who are buried at sea.”

  “It is what he always said he wanted for himself,” Chuma said. “He said he wanted to be buried in any place that he fell, he said. It was certain that Africa would claim him, as it had his wife. She lies in Shupanga at the mouth of the Zambezi.”

  From the back of the group of the inferior pagazi, Chirango coughed and made a movement with his arm. Amoda ignored him. Before he could call on anyone else, I said, “He wanted to be buried in a swamp like this, did he? And you yourselves, you would want to be buried in a swamp like this, would you, with no burial rites? How long did it take for us to get this far from Unyanyembe? And what about his children?”

  “Women always talk of children,” said Chowpereh.

  “As Chuma said, his wife is buried in Shupanga,” Susi said. But his face was looking troubled, and I noticed that he and Chuma were eyeing each other. I pressed the advantage.

  “That is even more reason why he should not be buried here,” I said. “Ntaoéka is right. Think of his children. How will they be able to visit the grave of their own father?”

  “It is too much,” Ntaoéka said. She was now breathing loudly, in shallow and quick gasps, and her voice was trembling. “It is too much. They have never seen the ground over their mother’s bones. And now they will never see where their father lies.”

  She raised her voice in a wailing lament.

  Ntaoéka can always be trusted to burst into tears over the smallest thing. Even a spilled pot of water or a fire that won’t burn the right way is guaranteed to set her off. It is how she escapes censure even when she causes trouble. That day in Unyanyembe when the Bwana rebuked me, and I ran away, it was she who had been at fault. I beat her because she had been making eyes at Amoda, but she had immediately burst into tears and the Bwana had taken pity on her and turned his wrath on me instead. That is why I ran off; I could not bear that she should receive all the comfort when she was the cause of everything.

  This time, her tears were most welcome. I raised my voice to join her, nudging Misozi as I did so. She looked at me blankly. Laede, Khadijah, and Binti Sumari were quicker and raised their voices too. Misozi finally caught on and added her voice. My poor little Losi was startled by my sudden weeping and held my face in her hands to comfort me. I held her close to me. All talk was suspended until we had spent ourselves. In the silence that followed, Chirango coughed again.

  “Have you something to say?” Amoda barked out.

  “Chirango has nothing at all to say,” he said. “What can Chirango say to you; to you, the wise and enlightened, the ones who have swallowed the knowledge of the white man without being choked by it, and who wear his clothes and speak his tongue, for he is only Chirango of the One Eye, though others know him as the Chirango Kirango, the prince of Dzimbahwe, descendant of Nyatsimba the Salt Gatherer of the Great Houses of Stone and father of the great prophetess Nyamhita Nehanda.

  “Though Chirango may have higher claims than most, he has only this one eye that you all see—and we all know how it is that Chirango only has the one eye, though the less said on that subject the better—and so all that he can say in his now-humble position is that Bwana Daudi was a great man in his own land, a great man in ours too, for he held the whip over those brought low like Chirango and blinded them too, and so, being a great man, this whip wielder, he must lie with other great men, though it be us humble ones who take him thither.

  “And it is as well to take him thither, for who knows what blame will be assigned to us should we leave this country without him. Who knows what accusations, what foul talk of neglect, and, perchance, even murder, will follow us always. For when men report a death in a far-off land there is always talk talk, much talk. And if you should all get a large reward for bringing him home, well, Chirango says it is no more than you deserve for such a loyal service.”

  At the mention of a reward, the men began to talk excitedly.

  “Reward?” said Chowpereh “What does he mean by reward?” He looked to Amoda as he spoke, rather than to Chirango himself, for an explanation. Amoda made no reply but merely looked at Chirango, who licked his lips.

  When Amoda made no objection, he said, “Chirango means only that you may get something for your troubles, and why not, after all the work that you will have done in the service of a great man.”

  “That should have nothing to do with it,” Jacob Wainwright said. “That should be no reason at all. What we do if we do anything must be done because we are men of honor, because we are men of God, doing that which is pleasing in the sight of God.”

  Chuma spoke up. It was not often that he and Jacob agreed, but now he said, “Jacob is right. We served him to the end of his days, and to the end we serve him.”

  Majwara stood up. He shook like a leaf in high wind, poor thing, and no wonder, for I do not ever recall his speaking at these meetings; as the kirangozi, his job was to beat the drum to call them, not speak at them. His voice, not yet a man’s but not quite a child’s, was low, but every word was clear. “I will take him to the coast myself if you will not,” he said. “He ransomed me from slavery. He cured me when I lay ill. I will take him myself if you will not do it.”

  In the silence that followed, Chuma put his arm on the boy’s trembling shoulders.

  “But how will we carry him?” Amoda said. “He will begin to smell by the end of the day, it will be worse than carrying a fish.”

  I knew then that I had won through.

  But I also knew what Amoda meant. In a matter of hours, the doctor would be like those poor ones who fell dead at the slave market in Zanzibar. He would blow up and all the air and water inside him would burst and his skin crack, and the worms come out of him, and oh, the smell. Had his been the body of a slave who had fallen at the market, I can tell you that the smell would have been so strong that only the dogs would have approached to rip his flesh apart.

  It was the word “fish” that gave me the idea. It is not for nothing that I am a cook, I can tell you that.

  “We will smoke him,” I said.

  “Smoke him?” said Jacob, horrified.

  The men looked at me as though I were mad.

  “That’s right, smoke him,” I said with purpose. “Just as you would a fish. We could have preserved him in oil, if we had oil, but he would be too heavy. We could also salt him, if we had enough salt. Or you could lay him in the sun and dry him that way. Yes, that’s the best way. Split him open. Take everything out, and dry him in the sun. Like spices on the Liwali’s drying roof. He would be light enough to carry then. I know all about preserving flesh, don’t I, being that I am the daughter—”

  “—of the cook in the Liwali’s kitchen . . . ,” tittered Ntaoéka.

  “. . . who was also the Liwali’s suria . . . ,” added Misozi.


  “. . . but did not bear him a child to become umm al-walad . . .”

  “. . . and was his favorite though she was dark as midnight.”

  She and Ntaoéka clapped hands to each other and laughed. That is the problem with these two. Just when you think you are together, they do something like that. I was just making up my mind whether I should say something cutting to them both when Amoda said, “Have you lost your minds, you women? Is this the time?”

  Susi smiled in my direction and said, “Halima is right. It would take a great deal of drying, but it could be done.”

  Carus Farrar said, “And what do we do with the viscera, with his heart and his inside parts? We can’t dry it all, surely.”

  “We bury his heart here,” said Susi. He was smiling now. “That is the perfect solution. We prepare his body for transport but bury his heart and innards here. And if he should ever visit us and ask us why we carried him away, we will say, we left you where you died.”

  “And if he should visit us and say why did you leave me there, we will say, we brought you home,” added Wadi Saféné.

  Susi smiled. “Yes. It is right that we bury his heart here and carry his bones to his own land. Halima has presented us the perfect solution.”

  I smiled to hear his approval but quickly wiped the smile off my face when I saw Amoda give me the eye of thunder. I pretended to admire the pattern I had made of Losi’s braided hair. Amoda’s dark looks aside, I must say that my mind was not at rest at the thought of leaving any part of Bwana Daudi’s body in these horrible swamps, but I knew better than to go on after I had carried my way. And that is how the men decided to bear his body to Zanzibar.

  11

  * * *

  Successive crowds of people came to gaze. My appearance and acts often cause a burst of laughter; sudden standing up produces a flight of women and children. To prevent peeping into the hut which I occupy, and making the place quite dark, I do my writing in the verandah. Chitané, the poodle dog, the buffalo-calf, and our only remaining donkey are greeted with the same amount of curiosity and laughter-exciting comment as myself.

  David Livingstone, The Last Journals of David Livingstone

  Sure enough, it was that empty vessel of a Misozi who caused the catastrophe that almost befell us. When she finally understood what was to be done, she clucked and fussed that the whole thing was impossible, that we were all mad to even think of it, and that we would come to regret it.

  “Whoever heard,” she said, “of a group of people marching from place to place with a dead body?”

  The meeting broke up soon after the decision had been made. But before it broke up, the caravan leaders gave us jobs in our groups. Bwana Daudi could not be prepared where he lay, Chowpereh said, and Amoda said we were to build him a new hut. Chitambo should be kept in ignorance of Bwana Daudi’s passing, they all agreed. “For if Chitambo finds out,” Susi said, “he will inflict upon us a fine so heavy that our means will be crippled, and we will not be able to pay our way to the coast.”

  Well, Susi should have told his own woman that. The caravan leaders went off to find the best place to build a hut in which to prepare Bwana Daudi’s body while the lower pagazi were sent with axes to cut wood. Another group was sent off to collect boughs and saplings.

  “As for you women, Halima,” Susi said, “we have need for more salt.” Wadi Saféné had salt that he had bought from Kalunganjovu’s land, he said, but it would not be enough. The women and I were to go to the village to trade cloth and beads for as much salt as we could get.

  We were to be careful, Susi said, not to raise suspicions. That is why I asked Kaniki and Laede to stay behind with Losi and the other children in case they followed us. Kaniki is Chirango’s woman, and seems to exist only to serve him, for she rarely mixes with the rest of the women, living in his shadow and carrying his load for him, much like the two slave children he had once that the Bwana made him send back.

  The children wanted to come with us, as they usually did, but I was afraid that they might let something slip. Ha! The children, indeed!

  I should have known that it was not the children but Misozi whom we needed to take care about, for though she was a grown woman, she seemed unable to keep secrets clutched within her heart.

  The women and I went straight to the Chief’s main wife to pay our respects. She was surrounded by her own women. They chatted and laughed as they plaited their hair and, oh, the beautiful patterns they made. I thought one or two would look fine on Losi and resolved to try them out as soon as I had undone the pattern I had just plaited.

  They spoke another tongue, Chitambo’s people; we had a few words here and there that were the same, but we had met on first going there a young woman who had, in her former years as a girl, been taken captive by the Mazitu, who had sold her to Kumbakumba’s men. She escaped from Tabora and returned after three years. She spoke our tongue well enough, and it was through her that our dealings with Chitambo’s women were conducted.

  “Your master,” said the Chief’s wife through the young woman, “how did he sleep?”

  “He slept well enough,” I said.

  The young woman explained what I had said.

  I was about to say more when I saw in the near distance a figure that I recognized. It was Chirango. He was talking to Chitambo’s medicine man. I knew it was he, for we had all seen him, hadn’t we, on the day we arrived, he was hard not to notice, for he wore different types of animal skin and had a face like he had lived forever. I was wondering what Chirango was doing with him but I soon had to pay attention to Misozi, who said, “Well, yes,” then gave a shrill giggle.

  I gave her a look that was full of meaning but she continued to giggle nervously. The young woman looked at Misozi so sharply that it forced me to add, “He sleeps well enough.”

  “Well enough, well enough,” echoed Misozi.

  Then she added, “He sleeps so well that he will not get up today.”

  “What do you mean, will not get up today? Is he so very unwell?”

  “He is well, well,” I said. In my eagerness to cover up for Misozi, my words tumbled out before I could think them. “I mean he is not well, but he sleeps well, he sleeps very well.”

  Misozi’s eyes were now darting all over the place, like black ants that had been disturbed by the lifting of the stone under which they rested. “It is as Halima says. He sleeps the sleep of the dead. Oh!” As soon as she said the dread word out loud, she clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “Is your master dead in our land?” the woman said. She spoke in a loud voice to Chitambo’s wife. They talked quickly in their own tongue. Chitambo’s wife said something to the young woman and before we could stop her, she had run in the direction of the Chief’s hut, leaving the Chief’s wife to stare at us as though we were ourselves the Bwana’s corpse.

  Ntaoéka and I mumbled our goodbyes as they tried to stop us. We beat a steady retreat to warn the others, Ntaoéka and I scolding Misozi all the way. She was now silent as anything, a state that, as I said to her, would have suited us all very well just moments ago, but oh no, not Misozi, she is never one to say nothing when the wrong thing can be said. In our hurry, I clean forgot all about seeing Chirango talking with Chitambo’s medicine man.

  The Chief’s party was hard on our heels, for no sooner had we dismayed the others with the terrible news of Chitambo’s certain knowledge of Bwana Daudi’s death than we heard the Chief’s retinue. And, in a matter of moments, we were face-to-face with Chitambo.

  12

  * * *

  The laugh of the women is brimful of mirth. It is no simpering smile, nor senseless loud guffaw; but a merry ringing laugh, the sound of which does one’s heart good. One begins with ha, Héé, then comes the chorus in which all join, Haééé! and they end by slapping their hands together, giving the spectator the idea of great heartiness. When first introduced to a chief, if we have observed a joyous twinkle of the eye accompanying his laugh, we have always set
him down as a good fellow, and we have never been disappointed in him afterward.

  David Livingstone, Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambezi and Its Tributaries

  I must say that he surprised us all greatly, that fat Chitambo. The first thing he did when he reached our group was to throw back his great big head with a great bellow. His people echoed his weeping. Then he turned to Chuma and said, in his terrible manner of speaking our tongue, “Why you not tell me truth? I know that your master, he die this night. Why you not let me know? Why you afraid of me? I am good friend, yes, good, good friend to your Bwana, and good friend to you.”

  Susi and Chuma prostrated themselves before the Chief. All the men got down on one knee in the way that they had seen Chitambo receive his people and begged him for forgiveness. Chitambo made a sign to raise them and sighed. “Do not fear no longer,” he said. “I too, I travel. I travel and more than once I go to coast, before road destroy by Mazitu. I go to coast and I know that you have no bad thinking, because death, it is bad, yes, and many time it follow the travelers on the journeys.”

  The men clapped in gratitude. They played it well, I will give them that. They told him of their intention to prepare the body and to take it with them. They would not trouble them with Bwana Daudi’s corpse, they said, they respected him far too much to inflict on him and his people, and on the spirits of this place, the body of a stranger.

  As Chitambo listened, his big face showed great surprise. He consulted his own men, and there followed a furious conversation between them in their own tongue.

  After a tense few minutes, he turned to our group and said, “We talk,” he said, “we talk and we agree and we say that we want that you bury him here. You afraid that I no give yes, but you no worry, I no give no. I go to coast before Mazitu they destroy road. I see many men. I too, I travel. I know that not all men the same.”

 

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