Kofi ordered two plates of banku and palm-nut stew. The banku was smooth and white, rising from the stew like a chalk hill. Kofi ate with his hands, cutting off a morsel of banku with his fingers, dipping it in the red stew before putting it in his mouth. It was elegant when he did it. When I tried, the banku burned my fingers and the stew ran down my wrist.
“It takes practice. Try again.”
The banku on its own was sour but it was balanced by the thick, rich stew. It was a taste I might acquire with a few attempts. The other diners were mostly men, roughly hewn, with worn clothes and broad shoulders. They ate with their mouths close to their food, their eyes alert. Every time a lorry thundered past, we felt the quake in our plastic chairs.
“Do you know how much this meal cost for two of us?” he asked.
“No.”
“Ten cowries. A man can eat a hearty meal in this country for five cowries, less than two dollars, with fresh, pure ingredients, no genetically modified junk. What do you think about that?
His question had a note of challenge, although I couldn’t see why. I’d never complained to him about the cost, or for that matter the freshness, of Bamanaian food.
“It’s good,” I said.
“Are you finished?”
“Yes.”
He signaled to the waitress. She brought us fresh water in metal bowls and a sliver of soap on a dish. We washed our hands and turned the clear water red.
On the road, Kofi did not play music. The car was sealed off from noise by thick, perhaps bulletproof, windows.
“Tell me about my grandmother,” I said.
“What would you like to know?”
“What was she like?”
“She loved me too much. The Europeans, they’d call it transference. She took the love she had for my father when he died and gave it to me. Of course, as a child I didn’t want it. Nor did I want it when I became a man. It weakens you. I couldn’t have led the resistance if she hadn’t died.”
“What made you take that step?”
“I was young with nothing to lose and I loved my country. The conditions in the diamond mines were so terrible. They were killing our people.”
I remembered the Kinnakro Five but I did not mention them. I didn’t want to anger Kofi. I wanted to know him. There was evil I must overlook if I was ever to become Kofi’s daughter.
“You don’t speak much about your family,” he said.
“My daughter is grown. She works in a large company, travels often. She doesn’t have much need for a mother now.”
“And your husband?”
“We’re separated. Getting a divorce. Maybe.”
“Tell me about your wedding,” he said.
“It was a shotgun wedding.”
“I’m not familiar with the term.”
“I was pregnant.”
“I see.”
“I didn’t marry him because I was pregnant. We just got married sooner than I’d planned. I had to walk down the aisle by myself. My mother didn’t want to do it. She thought it’d make a spectacle.”
I’d made the same choice as my mother, had a child too young and altered the course of my life. I was convinced of our difference and yet our fate was the same. When Rose turned twenty-five, I was relieved that her womb remained peacefully empty.
Outside, the afternoon was fading. Headlamps were switched on. A few drove without illumination, ghost cars on the highway.
“This road runs from the coast to the northern border. My government built it in 1987 and it is still standing. I once had dreams of a trans-African highway stretching from Cairo to Cape Town, but the other African presidents thought I was too ambitious. Who was I, president of tiny Bamana, to dream up a plan for the whole of Africa?”
He was campaigning to me. He wanted my good opinion. We turned off onto a side road and drove for a few miles before veering into the bush. There was no path but the SUV trampled the shrubs and plants that stood in our way. I bounced against my seat belt.
“Where are we going?”
“Almost there now.”
He stopped and switched off the engine.
“Where are we?”
“A good place to make camp.”
“What?”
“Come. We must set up quickly. It will be dark soon.”
He opened the door and got down. It was a natural clearing, perhaps recently razed by fire.
“I’m not dressed for camping.”
There was a tent rolled up in the boot, along with other supplies.
“Is it safe to camp here?”
“As long as we don’t run into any crocodiles. Help me with these poles.”
He was good with his hands. The tent rose quickly. It was lightweight and waterproof. He handed me a small mallet.
“Drive the stakes into the ground. I’m going to gather some brush.”
The soil was firm but not hard. The metal stakes sank into the earth with a few blows from the mallet. A half-moon hung in the sky, casting light and shadows. It was the mystical African bush that obroni went into raptures over.
Kofi came back with dry leaves and twigs.
“Bring me the wood.”
There were logs in the boot, chopped into even pieces and bound with string. He arranged them on the ground and lit a match. It was elemental, the need for fire. Even though the night was warm, I drew closer to the flames.
“Of course, we didn’t have all these shortcuts back then. We mostly caught our own food, or villagers who supported the cause would hide supplies in marked places. It was dangerous for them. Some were killed—unarmed civilians shot by British forces. I am sure you did not learn about this in school.”
There was raw meat in a cooler bag, still chilled from the fridge. He showed me how to prepare a skewer, piercing each lump of beef in the middle so it would cook evenly. I felt the grit of spices rubbed over the meat like sand. We squatted on our haunches and held the skewers over the flames.
“We could cook only when it rained and the rain would hide the smoke. But, of course, if it rained, it was almost impossible to light a fire. Most of the time we were on the run from the British forces. They would have wiped us out if they could, but they did not have enough men.”
When the meat dripped clear juice, it was done. We ate on paper plates and drank from plastic bottles. We wiped our fingers on the grass and burned our plates. From these simple tasks, a mist of camaraderie rose between us, fine as spray.
“I’m sorry about your experience in prison,” Kofi said.
“It wasn’t your fault, and I survived. Like you.”
“Hardly comparable. I was in prison for years, and I didn’t have a cell to myself.”
His lips and cheeks were shiny from the fat in the meat. He glistened in the firelight like an idol.
“Who told you?” I asked.
“What?”
“Who told you that I had a cell to myself?”
“Oh, Sule.”
“I didn’t mention it to Sule.”
“Someone else, then. I can’t remember.”
Kweku was the only person I’d told. Kofi could not forget his own son, a son that he had also imprisoned. It was suddenly obvious and clear.
“It was you. You’re the reason I can’t leave the country.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You had me put in prison, just like you put Kweku in prison when he crossed you.”
“I didn’t know you and Kweku were so close already.”
“You admit it?”
“Well, you wanted a taste of the real Bamana, running around and finding stories about child witches. I thought you might enjoy a night in jail.”
“They were right. You are the crocodile.”
I was close enough to strike him. If he thought he was vulnerable, he did not show it.
“Spare me the sanctimony. Flying in my private plane, eating at my table, sleeping in my hotel, everything paid for by me and you want to play the huma
n rights activist.”
“Adrian warned me about you.”
“What do you know about him? That traitor. He betrayed Menelik. He betrayed us all. It was only decades after the fact that we discovered it.”
“He said he wasn’t a spy.”
“And you believed him? His intelligence days are over, but in the seventies he was instrumental in destroying the radical black left.”
“But you agreed to see him.”
“Because I know how to leave matters in the past, where they belong. I was going to give you this, but clearly you cannot handle the weight of history.”
He had carried Francis Aggrey’s diary all the way from Segu, perhaps in the glove compartment or even on his person, slipped into his trousers and held in place by his waistband. He held it now, its sudden appearance a sleight of hand.
He ripped a page out and dropped it into the fire.
“Don’t,” I said.
“Why not?”
“The man who wrote that diary would spit on you.”
“I am the man who wrote this diary. I am the man who grew up and discovered you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs.”
He ripped out another page and another. It was violence against the past, against Francis Aggrey, my real father.
“Stop.”
“It is my image. It is my right.”
The pages glowed brighter than the rest of the flames, like thin sheets of gold. I emptied what was left of my water on the fire. It shrank but did not die. I stamped on the tiny flames, the heat rising through my rubber soles. I kicked at the ash, scattering it, but the pages were gone. My father’s words had disappeared. Kofi was staring at me.
“You looked like a phoenix. Take it. Take the rest. I’m done.”
I took the diary from him. It felt lighter. I was about to speak when something crashed in the bush. We were still for a moment.
“You shouldn’t have put out the fire completely. The embers scare off wild animals. Come, Anna. Enough of quarrels. It was wrong for me to have you arrested.”
“It seems a rite of passage for your children.”
“At least your sense of humor was not damaged. All right, strike me.”
“Pardon?”
“Strike me in return. For the blow that was dealt in the course of your arrest. An eye for an eye. You were not meant to be harmed in any way.”
He stood with his arms on either side of him, palms upwards like a figure of Christ. It was melodramatic and ridiculous.
“I’m not going to hit you.”
“Well, then, it’s time to sleep. I will sleep outside. We often slept under the stars.” He walked back to the car, away from confrontation. He returned with blankets and bedding. I took my bedding from him and went into the tent. When I lay down, the embroidery of my boubou itched against my neck. He had jailed me and then rescued me. He had freed Bamana and then bound the country in his own chains. It was his pattern, the ying and the yang, Francis and Kofi in one person.
I woke up in the middle of the night. The tent was claustrophobic. I dragged my pallet outside and lay down a few paces from Kofi. I fell asleep to the sound of his breathing, wheezing through his nostrils. The air still smelt of burned paper.
29
I woke up with the sunrise. Birds trilled out of sight, filling the air with sound. Kofi was lying with his eyes open. He turned his head when he saw me stir.
“I’ve been waiting for you. There is a jar of Robb in the glove compartment. Bring it for me.”
I took the keys from his outstretched hand. The SUV was shiny and unnatural in the daytime, its hard lines contrasting with the curves of the bush. I could drive off and leave him. He would either die or discover a way to survive.
I found the jar and returned to Kofi. He had struggled to his side. His eyes looked fiercely away from mine. He was like a wild bird with a broken wing.
“Help me sit up.”
I slid my arm under his body and lifted him upright. It reminded me of the months I spent looking after my mother.
“My shirt.”
The shirt was sewn to fit his form. For a few seconds, his chin stuck in the collar and he was trapped in fabric. He stayed still, breathing faster, while I eased the shirt over his face with my fingers.
“Now the cream on my back.”
My eyes stung when I twisted the jar open. I started with his shoulders, hunched forward in rigor. He flinched and then settled to my touch. My hands ran down the discs of his spine, over scar tissue, clumped in strange shapes, comets and jagged stripes, like lightning.
“The arms now.”
His biceps were still firm but the skin around them had begun to loosen.
“I’ll do the rest.”
I took the diary and left him alone, wandering out of sight. The bush was alive with invisible scurrying. Some trees were in bloom, others had begun fruiting: odd, green fruit, hard and round, the size of eggs. Birds had pecked at them, tearing away the skin and revealing bright pink flesh. I picked one off the ground. When I returned, Kofi was dressed and standing, fully himself.
“Try this.”
He held out a twig to me.
“What is it?”
“Chewing stick. Nature’s toothbrush.”
He worked his twig around his teeth and over his tongue until the stick turned to pulp. When he was done, he tossed it on the ground.
“Hundred percent biodegradable. Your turn.”
“Where are we going?” I asked when we had driven for an hour. The tank was full after a brief station stop.
“You ask a lot of questions. In the bush we could go a whole day without speaking because your voice might carry on the wind.”
“Do you miss being a guerrilla?”
“I don’t miss the hunger, but things were more straightforward then. Our clear objective was to drive the imperialists out. Of course, once that is achieved, you must then build a country. We built it well. Like this road.”
We drove past pedestrians, trudging along with no obvious destination. A few tried to flag us down. They flapped their arms like large featherless birds. Kofi did not stop.
I hadn’t called Rose since our last conversation. It was becoming more difficult to believe that I had ever had a life in London. How had I filled my days before I discovered Francis Aggrey’s diary? Brooding over Robert’s adultery, brooding over Rose’s weight, dead eggs that could never hatch.
And how did I spend my days in Bamana? Waiting for Kofi to turn his attention to me. Even now, after knowing what he had done, I still could not bring myself to fear him. Papa takes care of his children. That was what Kweku had said. Not even crocodiles eat their young.
The road began to wind along a large body of water. We were too far inland for the ocean, but the water did not run like a river. A lake then, but ten times larger than the lake in Gbadolite. A bridge stretched across like a salmon leaping from shore to shore. We drove to the center of the bridge and parked to the side.
“We’re here,” Kofi said.
“Where?”
“Mensahkro Dam. I call it one of the seven wonders of modern Africa.”
He moved stiffly when he got down from the car, shuffling instead of striding. I joined him at the bridge railings. Its metal fretwork vaulted above us, the bars finely woven as lace.
“This is one of the largest dams in the world.”
They had blocked the river with a concrete wall. It could only flow through six sluice gates, six artificial waterfalls. They thundered around us, making his voice small.
“My government built this dam to bring electrical power to Bamana and our neighboring countries. Nobody believed that a tiny country like ours could have such an achievement.”
“What was here before?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Before you trapped the river?”
“Before we tamed and harnessed the Volta River, a few villages.”
“Where are they now?”
> “We resettled the villagers. Thousands were moved for the good of millions.”
Kofi wanted my approval. Not me. Francis Aggrey through me. Everyone he knew from his old life was either dead, like Thomas Phiri, or distrusted, like Adrian. Only someone who knew Francis could tell Kofi if his life’s work was in vain. Only me.
The villages had been destroyed for Kofi’s ambition. Houses, compounds, farms swept away by a man-made flood. The hubris of my father, to so completely wipe away a civilization, to permanently bury it.
“It’s a waste,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“There are still power cuts in Segu.”
Kofi’s grip tightened on the railings. No one had cared what Anna Graham thought in years. To have even this slight power over such a powerful man: it was intoxicating.
“Why did you come to Bamana?”
“To meet you,” I said.
“No. You came to meet a man in the past. There is a mythical bird we have here, Anna. We call it the sankofa. It flies forward with its head facing back. It’s a poetic image but it cannot work in real life.”
A ferry passed below us. Smoke streamed from its funnel. Passengers crowded the deck, sinking the left side of the hull a few inches deeper than the right. I looked down at the same moment a young girl looked up. She waved. I waved back and a fluttering of palms responded, the gesture widening like a ripple.
“That is the country I created,” Kofi said, when they were out of sight. “I am not proud of every single action I have taken in my life, but I created this country and there is much to be proud of. Come. Let’s go.”
“Wait. I want to sketch you.”
“Pardon?”
“I want to paint you, but first I’d like to make a sketch. Stand still, please.”
“You mentioned you were an artist.”
“Yes. Don’t move. The light.”
I withdrew my sketchbook from my bag and braced myself against the car. It was hot. The sun seeped through the metal and into my skin. I reproduced Kofi in short, quick strokes. He stood like someone used to having his portrait taken, shoulders erect, head thrown back.
“Relax,” I said. “Like you were a moment ago.”
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