New Daughters of Africa

by Margaret Busby

  There is regret in her laugh.

  He laughs because she laughs. He continues, “My people were so proud of me. My mother . . .” Lump in throat. A senior government scientist governing an under-equipped over-heated lab, surrounded by shelves of textbooks, waiting for test-tubes that were never purchased, presiding over circular meetings that were only about what companies linked to which minister would win the lab supply tenders.

  Outside, leaves rustle. Inside, the Colonel continues. “At twenty-nine, I met a grand one-eyed general—I was ready for a great fall. Had been a good boy for so long.” Scoffing laugh. “Who doesn’t want power when it’s offered free?”

  The Colonel moves away. He retrieves a metal jug of water. He fills a tin cup. “Except it’s never free.” He places the vessel in Safiya’s hands. She drinks unquestioning. “You are too trusting.”

  She smirks. “As you are.”

  He watches her. “I became a professional sniper. Ninety-eight per cent first round hitter.” He cocks his finger, “Pttt. I was that good. Flew up the ranks.” He remembers. “Power is sweet. But the government changed. The new dispensation came for my General and me. We disappeared. They hunted out and . . . purged what belonged to us: families, friends. Gone.”

  The Colonel speaks in a rush. “We tried to repair blood with blood. In other years we might have been called ‘Freedom fighters’.”

  Safiya says, “My father the Berber—not Arab—would be ‘terrorist’ today . . . you, officially, black and African, translate only as ‘Warlord’.”

  Thunder.

  It starts to drizzle. Safiya asks in a voice that is mere breath: “May I use my fingers to learn your face?”

  He does not answer.

  She turns, cool-voiced. “They seized your prophet. Helped by the ‘allies’, of course, in exchange for mining concessions and oil-drilling privileges. He’s now dead. Did you know?”

  The Colonel’s dragged-out, hurting “Oooh.”

  She ladles out details. “His body on display. Shown on news outlets throughout the world. His desecrated corpse. An unmarked grave. No ceremony. Hoping he will be erased from memory. You are their next target.”

  7.

  Later, he asked, “Do you still want to know my face?”

  She did.

  8.

  They sat close together on the metal drum, as if it were a cosy sofa.

  9.

  None.

  He has asked, her, “How much time do I have?”

  10.

  He carries out a final raid. A river man’s homestead. His children, his wives. The Colonel had used his harsh voice and waved his rifle. When the Colonel leaves, he is wearing the second wife’s dress and carrying the first wife’s travel papers and her basket, which is filled with the family’s groundnuts, and one of their eight red-headed chickens whose throat is tied to prevent it squawking. The river man had entered into the game, had giggled, but had wrapped the Colonel’s uniform and rifle to toss into deep waters.

  11.

  They would catch the gaunt Colonel in the second town of another country. A police roadblock. His first captors would be balaclava-clad men with guns, and voices baying in assorted European accents. He would not fight back. They handcuffed him, stuffed him into a small blue car, which flew over roads, crashed through borderlands. He was hustled into a helicopter. They landed in a field in the capital city, where he was handed over to balaclava-clad men with African accents. They stripped him naked. They wrapped his body in chains. They bruised his head until it bled. They punched his lips and eyes. They shoved him into a cage, lifted it onto the back of a mud-green lorry. They wanted him to be seen by the public who, on cue, jeered and cheered and banged at his cage, believing they had been saved. He did not fight back.

  12.

  Safiya filmed everything. She did not expect that he would lift his bound, bleeding hands to salute her.

  13.

  The media resorted to superlatives to describe the happening: Dark-souled pimpernel . . . Chameleon warlord . . . they shared a word: “Capturé!”

  14.

  His body was in tatters, but it would heal. He was flown to The Hague, driven straight to hospital. Two weeks later, he was escorted into a detention cell. He had filled out forms; in the “next of kin” section he spelled out one name: “Safiya Fakhri”. No diplomats came to visit him. Two pale-skinned ladies came from the International Committee of the Red Cross. He was impressed by their courtesy. Yes, he confirmed again that he would admit to the “Crimes Against Humanity”. He had reduced his Defence team to one red-faced Afrikaner with a bad shave. After three months of trying to get the Colonel to reconsider, the Defence gave up.

  15.

  “The Prosecutor v. Xavier Aurélien Dikembe. The Chamber was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of Xavier Aurélien Dikembe’s guilt as an accessory, within the meaning of article 25(3)(d) of the ICC’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, to ten crimes against humanity (murder) and five war crimes . . . committed between 14 February 2004 and 17 December 2012 during attacks on the villages of . . .”

  Fifty-five years. He had wanted “Life”. But the Defence successfully presented him as an accessory to a now-dead “real” criminal warlord.

  16.

  She strides into his prison world as “next of kin”, red scarf sailing, a lemon-green trench coat skimming the tops of high-heeled brown boots. She approaches the red bench where he waits, legs crossed. She says in French, “They still would have got you. Once you allowed me in.” She stoops to study his face. “They marred you. It must have hurt.” She straightens, loosens her scarf. “You left me there. You could have killed me.”

  “Bad timing.” He rubs the scars above his ears. They ache in the cold.

  Safiya sits thirty centimetres from him. She shakes off snow from her woollen hat.

  He asks, “What really makes a woman weep in the density of night?”

  Snow flurries on the window. She speaks in jerking words: “One day. An ordinary family outing. A mama, papa, two sons. The mother drove, took a familiar bend—too sharp, too fast. The car soars off the mountainside. Bounces on rocks. Lands in the middle of an old European sea.”

  She looks at him. “There’s a fine art to being broken; there’s a finer art of having your fragments repaired. They used the bones and muscles of my husband and children to put me back together again.” She shifts to lean against the man staring at falling snow. “Was a worker in one of those secret, special security centres. Programme Officer, Middle-East Desk. Imagine that. After I woke up in the hospital, I craved death. The agency offered me a place in an experiment from the book of Suicide Bombers and Trojan Horses. Added sensors to my body, barcodes that ping data to satellites and men lurking in shadows. My weapon,” she turns to him, “is intimacy. You are my only survivor.” She stares. “Are you warm? There was a ground blizzard when I drove in.”

  He adjusts his blue coat.

  He says, “I wondered why you didn’t ask for a way out of the forest. So, what does two-point-five million give you?”

  She grimaces. “Repairs my nieces’ fallen house in my father’s name.” She paused, “I may be doomed to live.”

  “Life imprisonment. That, ma belle, was what I desired.”

  She asks, “Next of kin. Revenge?”

  “Yes.”

  Quiet.

  She asks, “How is life?”

  “I examine the cosmos of Lampyridae . . .” He looks at her. “Fireflies.”

  A window reveals skies obscured by whiteness. Inside the room, they smile at one another. Safiya reaches to pull off X. Aurélien’s large black spectacles, wipes the lenses with her sleeve. She lifts her left hand and, closing her eyes, says, “May I touch your face?”

  Winsome Pinnock

  Born in London, to parents who were both migrants from Smithville, Jamaica, she was the first black female playwright to have a play staged at the Royal National Theatre. She has written for stage, radio and televi
sion. Her award-winning plays include The Wind of Change (1987), Leave Taking (1988), Picture Palace (1988), A Hero’s Welcome (1989), A Rock in Water (1989), Talking in Tongues (1991), Bitter Harvest (1991), Mules (1996), One Under (2005), The Dinner Party (2007), Taken (2011), Clean Trade (2015), Tituba (2017), The Principles of Cartography (2017) and Rockets and Blue Lights (2018) for which she won the Alfred Fagon Award. She is a recipient of the George Devine Award, Pearson Plays on Stage Award and Unity Theatre Trust Award. She received a Special Commendation from the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She was Senior Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University and is currently Associate Professor at Kingston University.

  Glutathione

  Ginette and Simone, two young black women in a room somewhere. Sheets of newspaper laid down on the floor are covered with paraphernalia—needles and syringes, a medication case containing small vials. They both sit back on their heels, facing each other. Ginette takes two of the vials out of the small case and prepares two needles as Simone watches.

  GINETTE: Me first then you.

  SIMONE: Sweet.

  GINETTE: Don’t be nervous. You nervous?

  SIMONE: I hate needles.

  GINETTE: No one’s forcing you, right?

  SIMONE: Go on. I’m watching . . .

  Ginette bends her arm and searches for a vein, but can’t find one.

  SIMONE: How many times you done this?

  GINETTE: Loads.

  SIMONE: And you can’t find a vein?

  GINETTE: Happens all the time.

  SIMONE: Doesn’t inspire me with confidence.

  Ginette takes a strap and wraps it around her arm to raise a vein.

  SIMONE: (suddenly startled) What was that?

  GINETTE: What?

  SIMONE: I heard someone. Coming up the stairs.

  They both listen. They don’t hear anything.

  GINETTE: They won’t be back for ages. Relax . . . Got it.

  Ginette takes a cotton wool pad and cleanses the area around the vein. Simone covers her eyes.

  GINETTE: There’s no point if you don’t look.

  Simone watches. Ginette presses the needle into her arm.

  GINETTE: See, nothing to it. (sets timer on her watch) Three minutes then it’s your turn.

  Ginette attaches a canula and drip to the syringe. Simone unwraps a sweet and pops it in her mouth, offers a sweet to Ginette who declines.

  GINETTE: Took me a year to lose two and half stone. I’m not going back. I’m a passionate person, but I hate making other people uncomfortable. I admit it: I like to be liked.

  Simone receives a message on her phone.

  SIMONE: From Naomi. (reads) “Government’s Audit lays bare racial disparities in UK schools, courts and workplaces” blah blah “. . . data shows disadvantages for black and ethnic minority communities . . .” blah blah “. . . if these disparities cannot be explained . . .” Cannot be explained? Blah blah . . . “disparities cannot be explained then they must be changed.” Blah blah blah bullshit.

  GINETTE: Disparities?

  SIMONE: Racial disparities.

  They both giggle.

  SIMONE: It’s working. You’re definitely changing.

  GINETTE: At least two shades. And that’s only after four weeks. SIMONE: Cool.

  Slight pause.

  SIMONE: What does it do, exactly?

  GINETTE: It stops the . . . it halts the production of melanin.

  SIMONE: And it’s safe? Because I’m careful what I put in my body.

  GINETTE: It’s a hormone. You can’t get more natural than that . . .

  Slight pause.

  SIMONE: Naomi ain’t noticed?

  GINETTE: What?

  SIMONE: That you’re different . . .

  GINETTE: I haven’t seen her. She’s busy with her group.

  SIMONE: She’d go ballistic if she knew about this, wouldn’t she?

  GINETTE: That’s why you ain’t telling her.

  SIMONE: Feels a bit . . .

  GINETTE: What?

  SIMONE: Sneaky.

  GINETTE: You don’t have to tell her everything. You’re entitled to a private life.

  SIMONE: I suppose . . .

  GINETTE: Course you are.

  SIMONE: Does it feel . . . different? Do you feel, you know . . . lighter?

  GINETTE: Lighter, yes. I’m changing and the world becomes . . . less heavy, you know? I’m definitely less anxious. And the people around me are less anxious too.

  SIMONE: Cool. That’s cool. I can definitely see it. I can see the change in you.

  The timer goes. Ginette removes the drip from her arm as she speaks.

  GINETTE: Now you.

  SIMONE: I’m not sure.

  GINETTE: It’s your choice. (slight pause) You asked me, remember. Why did you come up here?

  Slight pause.

  SIMONE: It was that talk Naomi organised last week. That woman talking about her book . . .

  GINETTE: Living Free in a Microaggressive World.

  SIMONE: I’m thinking every word of this is true, but . . .

  GINETTE: But.

  SIMONE: I’ve lived all her examples. Like the one where the barista is cleaning the counter?

  GINETTE: You know they’ve seen you, but they continue cleaning.

  SIMONE: And you don’t say anything because you know what they want. You know that they’re angling for an explosion. So you stand there and wait. Someone else shows up.

  GINETTE: That’s when they stop cleaning.

  SIMONE: They know you’ve been standing there, and they stop, they look at the other person and say—

  GINETTE: Who’s next?

  SIMONE: I’m sick of it.

  GINETTE: You’re lovely you are. Do you know that? A really lovely person.

  SIMONE: That’s nice.

  GINETTE: You wait. You’ll soon see a difference. Everyone else will see it too.

  SIMONE: I’d never have my nose done or anything like that. I like being me.

  GINETTE: I like being me. I don’t hate myself.

  SIMONE: It’s not like I wanna be light-skinned.

  GINETTE: You can be an English rose, for all I care.

  SIMONE: I love being black.

  GINETTE: Black is beautiful.

  SIMONE: I mean it.

  GINETTE: We don’t reject blackness. We reject what it signifies.

  SIMONE: Do you feel anything? When the stuff goes in . . .

  GINETTE: It feels good.

  SIMONE: Relaxing, yeah?

  GINETTE: Left or right? Up to you . . .

  Simone takes a moment, then holds her arm out. Ginette swabs with cotton wool.

  GINETTE: How many marches Naomi been on? You see her change anything? She’s been banging on for years, and it hasn’t made a single bit of difference. Me, I’m sick of identity. I refuse it.

  Ginette picks up a needle.

  SIMONE: Needle . . .

  GINETTE: Don’t be afraid. It won’t hurt.

  Ginette taps Simone’s arm in order to find a vein.

  GINETTE: You know the old saying about how you can’t change the world, but you can change yourself? We’re changing ourselves, Simone.

  SIMONE: I don’t deny my heritage. You understand that, yeah? Because that would be like a mutilation.

  GINETTE: Of course. Where would we be without history? Little scratch.

  Ginette injects Simone.

  SIMONE: Ouch! You said it wouldn’t hurt.

  GINETTE: All done. Nothing to it. Can you feel it seeping into the cells, transforming them? We’re not the only ones doing this, you know. It’s a movement, far more powerful than Naomi’s little group. A revolution of the body, that’s what it is. Thousands of us, breaking free from history. We are a new breed, you and me. History used to be our puppet master, but now we’re in control of ourselves. (the drip is now in place in Simone’s arm) How’s that?

  SIMONE: I dunno, it’s . . . I suppose it’s . . . (beat) it’s . . . all right . . . yeah . . .
I suppose . . . it’s all right.

  ENDS

  Claudia Rankine

  She is the author of five collections of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric; two plays including The White Card, which premiered in February 2018 (ArtsEmerson/American Repertory Theater) and will be published with Graywolf Press in 2019; numerous video collaborations; and is the editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. Among her many awards and honours, she is the recipient of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, the Poets and Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, United States Artists, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches at Yale University as the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry. In 2016, she co-founded The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII). She lives in New Haven, CT, USA.

  From Citizen

  July 29–August 18, 2014 / Making Room

  Script for Public Fiction at Hammer Museum

  On the train the woman standing makes you understand there are no seats available. And, in fact, there is one. Is the woman getting off at the next stop? No, she would rather stand all the way to Union Station.

  The space next to the man is the pause in a conversation you are suddenly rushing to fill. You step quickly over the woman’s fear, a fear she shares. You let her have it.

  The man doesn’t acknowledge you as you sit down because the man knows more about the unoccupied seat than you do. For him, you imagine, it is more like breath than wonder; he has had to think about it so much you wouldn’t call it thought.

  When another passenger leaves his seat and the standing woman sits, you glance over at the man. He is gazing out the window into what looks like darkness.

  You sit next to the man on the train, bus, in the plane, waiting room, anywhere he could be forsaken. You put your body there in proximity to, adjacent to, alongside, within.

  You don’t speak unless you are spoken to and your body speaks to the space you fill and you keep trying to fill it except the space belongs to the body of the man next to

  you, not to you.

  Where he goes the space follows him. If the man left his seat before Union Station you would simply be a person in a seat on the train. You would cease to struggle against the unoccupied seat when where why the space won’t lose its meaning.