New Daughters of Africa

by Margaret Busby

  Surely, seeing me, Frank’s daughter, would soften Mr C. The sight of me would stop him in his tracks, for he hadn’t seen me since the funeral. He would hug me, cup my face, run his thumbs over my cheeks, stare into my eyes and say, “You look just like him! You’re the spitting image of Frank. Wow!” And I would beam and try not to blush and laugh that deepthroated laugh, full and chortling and free. Mr C would take us for coffee at a nearby spot, perhaps somewhere fancy like the Borrowdale Market, somewhere that was likely, during those terrible days of food-shortages and money-shortages and bloody water-shortages and a shortage of just about anything decent, to have banana bread or queen cakes redolent with that freshly baked aroma. We would sit side by side, and over milky, frothy coffee, the good kind that’s bitter and sweet, I would show him the letters we used to write to each other, my daddy and I, and we’d laugh at his short, clipped sentences, their struggle to imitate a child’s language.

  I would ask him, Mr C, “What was my daddy like? I hear he loved to dance, he loved jazz—is this true? I hear he was also very pensive and took his work seriously and loved his alone time, like me. I’m very serious for my age and I like my alone time. Is it true that he was inspired to study land tenure law because of the pain of seeing how my khulu had to be away all the time as a migrant worker after those wretched Rhodesians took away his land during Smith’s time?

  “What was he like in university? I’ll be going to university soon, myself. What kinds of things did he like? Did he have a temper? I have a temper. Everyone says he was brilliant. I’m trying hard to follow in his footsteps, although they are so very large and intimidating.”

  He would tell me how proud of me he was, Mr C, that I was more than enough to fill my father’s shoes, that he had known Frank well and he would be proud of me and how I was turning out. I was his spitting image, after all, everyone said that. We would exchange memories of him, and I’d tell Mr C about my trip to Rome as a child, this trip I had played over and over in my mind because it was the last one I took with my father, and now it felt as though it was all I had.

  I thought he would like to hear this, Mr C.

  I must have stood for a good three or so hours on that quiet street of office buildings, leaning against the wall of his building, busy daydreaming. I went up the stairs to the first floor once, but balked when I got to the reception, and dashed back down the steps and out onto the street. And then he finally appeared, Mr C, not on foot as I had imagined, but in that sleek Jaguar I recognized immediately as it purred out of the office parking-lot. It halted, and I could see him looking first left, and then right, and I saw my chance. I straightened up, hesitated, then took a few steps towards the car. That’s when he saw me, just as he was turning right, into the street, towards me. He must have seen me. I imagine he squinted behind his rimless specs. I certainly squinted, ducking my head slightly for a better view, trying to see him through his car window. I raised my hand, half-waving, half-waving him down. He craned his neck, and the Jaguar slowed down. But then it picked up speed. He did not stop; I thought at least he might. But the Jaguar purred past me, halted by the corner, turned left into Sixth Street and disappeared from view.

  I stood for a long time in that street, on that road, looking this way and that, sucking on my lower lip. And then, finally, I turned and walked down Selous Avenue, towards the bustle of Sixth Street, headed back to my B&B, my shoes crushing the bell-shaped jacaranda flowers carpeting the road—it must have been late October—balmed, in a savage sort of way, by the sight of the boysenberry bruises my feet inflicted on those periwinkle Jacaranda petals.

  I did receive, to my delight, a call from Mr C’s secretary the next day, asking me to come and collect the documents I would need to change the executor of my father’s estate from him to me. (So, he had seen me!) I remember, with a little shame, how so very excited I was, then, taking care to apply a little lipstick in the foggy bathroom mirror adjoining my single room at the B&B, dabbing my cheap-imitation Dolce & Gabbana perfume just behind the lobes of my ears, and on my collar bone as well, staining, in the process, my pin-stripe blouse, which went very well with my black pencil skirt. I looked, I thought, very professional and very grown up; the kind of woman Mr C wouldn’t be ashamed to take to one of his fancy lawyer places for coffee; a version of Frank’s daughter he would be pleased to see.

  But when I went to collect the documents, I didn’t get to go up to him, as I had expected I would, as I had all those times as a child, whisked welcomingly up to his office or the boardroom by his secretary. Instead, the documents were waiting for me at the reception. I asked if I could see him, and the lady at the reception called his office. She frowned slightly at me, the receiver angled to her lips, and then relayed the message that he would not be available that day. I said I would wait, I did not mind. After speaking into the phone again, she turned to me, shaking her head, and said I had to go.

  I felt, then, those fainting spells creeping up on me, and I staggered, hoping to fall, to pass out right there, in Mr C’s office. In my mind, I saw myself falling into his large arms, his face peering above me, his large nose trembling with concern. But I didn’t faint, and though I tried, I couldn’t will the full power of that dreadfulness, right at that moment when I needed it most!

  I don’t know if my eyes were brimming. I certainly felt like crying, though I tried very hard not to, swallowing hard, my throat throbbing with the sensation of suppressed tears. The receptionist winced, appraising me, I thought pitifully, and I could not bear that look of pity; I turned around and stumbled out of Mr C’s offices, cluttering down the stairs, my head bowed.

  1990s

  Yassmin Abdel-Magied

  A Sudanese-born Australian mechanical engineer, writer and social advocate, she worked on oil and gas rigs before becoming a full-time writer and broadcaster. She published her debut memoir, Yassmin’s Story (2016), at 24, then became the presenter of Australia Wide, a national weekly current-affairs show on the ABC. After hosting the documentary The Truth About Racism, she created Hijabistas for the ABC, a series looking at the modest fashion scene in Australia. She is an internationally accredited F1 reporter and a regular contributor to the BBC. Her writing has appeared in publications including Teen Vogue, the New York Times and The Guardian. She founded the not-for-profit Youth Without Borders at the age of 16 and has since served on numerous boards and councils. She is currently based in London.

  Eulogy for My Career

  I recently spent some time in my childhood home of Brisbane. As we drove around the soft bend leading up to my family’s double brick house, I couldn’t help but reminisce. I’d travelled on this road many a time on almost all forms of transport: driving in my new Alfa Romeo at 3 a.m. in the morning, sneaking back into the house from a late-night session (and by session I mean study session, OK? I was an actual certified nerd), walking to the bus stop when that Alfa Romeo lived up to its reputation by inevitably breaking down, and running 2km loops around the block when I was in that short-lived “maybe-one-day-I’ll-do-a-marathon” phase.

  Sitting in the passenger seat of the family car, my younger brother grown and behind the wheel, watching the familiar houses and trees glide by, I grew nostalgic.

  How was fifteen-year-old Yassmina, running around this block, to know that a decade later, these streets would hold more than simple, happy memories of early morning jogging sessions accompanied by the soundtrack of feet lightly padding along the pavement, neatly wrapped in the still silence of suburbia?

  How was twenty-year-old Yassmina to know that, five years later, her hard-won engineering degree would be the last thing that people knew about her, not the first? That six years later, she would have walked away from her dream of working on a Formula One team, ushered out of her job on an oil rig, squeezed out of her newfound role as a TV broadcaster, her mental health spiralling, reputation in shambles, and with a Wikipedia page that mostly talked about “controversies”?

  How was twenty-six-year-ol
d Yassmina to know that a year later she would be returning to the country of her citizenship to eulogise a career she didn’t even know was coming to an end?

  As my brother parked the black Honda Civic, I was overcome with a tidal wave of heaviness, a blanket made of lead that seemed to smother my soul. There was a strange metallic taste in my mouth that I couldn’t quite name, and it wasn’t until I lay in my bed that evening, the single bed I had lain in every night for over a decade, that it hit me. Moonlight was shining through the blinds, glinting on tears that threatened to spill. The weight was more than just jet lag—I was in mourning. What a strange feeling indeed.

  I could feel my face furrowing as I tried to make sense of my emotions. I swallowed, allowing my tears to run down my cheeks and turn the pale pillow cover a darker shade of blue, and I attempted to reckon with reality. What was this deep, cavernous sense of loss that had opened up in my chest? What was this ache in my lungs, making every breath feel like I was drowning, trying to take in air through a snorkel that was rapidly filling up with water? Why did this whole house, this whole street, this whole city now feel foreign to me, like it was only a place I’d visited in my dreams?

  This was grief, but it was not just my career I was grieving. I was grieving my past self. It was the baby Yassmina I had lost, a resolutely positive and perhaps blindly optimistic young person, a soul unburdened by the knowledge of what the world does to people who don’t quite fit the mould and who want us all to be a little better. I had lost an innocence I didn’t even know I had.

  I wanted this eulogy to be funny. I wanted to bid farewell to a Formula One career that waited for all the lights to turn on but never quite got off the starting mark. I wanted to say goodbye to a professional engineering pathway that many don’t know the details of, but that makes me very proud. I wanted to commemorate a broadcasting job that took us all by surprise, as it turned out that I was halfway decent at it. I wanted to talk about the highs and the lows, the bits that make me laugh, the times that gave it all meaning. And there are lots of those moments. But when I sat down to write this eulogy, all that came out was grief.

  It poured out of my fingers and soaked these pages, like rainwater in a drought-stricken desert. It’s actually annoying, really. I’m quite tired of this grief business. I thought I had bid farewell to this traveller. But grief is a visitor that overstays its welcome, and no matter how much subtle hinting at the time, it’s still splayed out on your couch, eating nachos and getting guacamole on your carpet. Turns out grief does what it wants, and pays no attention to schedules or social niceties.

  Grief will turn up when you least expect it—you’re on your way out to a dinner date, and ding-dong, there it is, at your door, walking in uninvited. You’re having lunch with friends, and then poof! It apparates next to you and dominates the conversation for the next hour, paying no attention whatsoever to what you were talking about before. Hell, you could be watching Happy Feet Two on a plane, and grief will pop out of the oxygen compartment above, wave its hands in your face and make you miss the rest of the damn film. Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.

  Part of me also doesn’t want this eulogy to be about anything at all, because that would be admitting that those past versions of myself are gone. Done, dusted, finito. I’m not sure I’m ready for that. Are we ever really ready to let go? That’s the thing about death. It’s kinda like grief. A terrible houseguest. It just turns up, and you’re expected to have the kettle on and the right kind of biscuits on hand. I mean, c’mon man. Cut a sister a break! Send me a calendar invite or something at least, so I can make sure I’m presentable. But no. Death, pain, grief: the bloody three musketeers that they are, they give zero fucks about your plans. It’s brutal, but I guess it’s the only way to ever really level up in this life. If you don’t know, now you know, sister.

  In Islam, when someone dies, we say “Ina lilahi, wa ina lani rajiun”. It roughly translates to: We are for Allah, and to him we shall return. I wondered if I could apply this to my past self, or my various iterations of careers, and then I mentally slapped myself for my indulgence. Girl, get a hold of yourself! You ain’t dead yet! This is eulogy for your career, you indecisive millennial, not you. You’re still here, alive and kicking Alhamdulilah, no matter how much some may wish otherwise. So act like it.

  I got an Instagram direct message on Friday, just before I got the plane from London to Australia. It read as follows: “My Name Is Nelson, and I’m a big fan. Do you mind if I ask just one favour? Please Reply, I love You.”

  Then: “Go to Flinders St Station, Cut Your Wrists and Let them bleed out so we can all watch you die. Lest We Forget. Hopefully I’ll be able to distinguish you from all the other Sudanese Niggers, but I know you’ll be the only ape wearing a ridiculous towel over your head.”

  Nelson, I’m sorry to inform you that this specific favour will not be granted, darling boy, though I may be wearing a ridiculous towel on my head, because well, that’s very on-brand. My past lives might be thoroughly dead, cooked, roasted, their remains served on a platter for all to feast on, but in this moment, I am not. I’m very much still alive, and that is a gift that I cannot bear to waste, and in the words of the great Hannah Gadsby, there’s nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.

  I now think of the death of baby Yassmina as a controlled burn, in the tradition of the First Nations people who are the custodians of this land. They understood that sometimes for change and regeneration, you have to raze the existing growth to the ground and let the new take root. And oh, yes, those flames are searing and yes, sometimes, I still hear the crackle and pop of burning flesh.

  But I’m starting to get used to it, as my careers have a habit of going up in flames. So why do I keep playing with fire? Well, perhaps my previous analogy was slightly off. This is no controlled burn, no regenerative wildfire. It appears that I live in a burning house. Death lives down the road, pain is my roommate and grief is always turning up uninvited. But we’re friends now. We bicker, we fight, we make each other laugh. And I wouldn’t be who I am today without them.

  So bye-bye, baby Yassmina. Bye bye, straighty-180 engineer, toothy-smiled TV presenter, giggling Good Muslim Girl who thought that her trio posse of innocence, positivity and optimism were all she needed. I’ve got new friends now. But your old friends are welcome to visit, of course. Maybe, maybe they can even stay. Maybe, we can get to know each other. Come through, I’ll put the kettle on.

  Rutendo Chabikwa

  A Zimbabwean writer, poet and content creator, she was joint winner of Myriad’s 2018 First Drafts competition. In 2012 she was awarded the Golden Baobab Prize for Rising Writers, and in 2016 she sat on the panel as a judge for the prize. Outside fiction, she writes about African art, as well as long-form socio-political analyses. She is the host and producer of a podcast on diversity in academia and she recently completed her MSc at the London School of Economics and Political Science in Women, Peace and Security. The following extract is from a novel she is working on called Todzungaira.

  Mweya’s Embrace

  I think I am hungry. Mweya always leaves me with an emptiness in my stomach. I am not hungry. I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling in the dark. Dogs are fighting over the garbage in the street. I think they are dogs. There is no barking or growling. I hope they are dogs. I once saw a fox while walking home from the pub. It appeared more scared of me than I was of it, though my heart still pounded heavily in my chest. The dogs tip over a metal trash-can and I hear bags and glass fall out. I imagine them tearing open a bag with their teeth, their snouts nuzzling into the filth. My attention is drawn back to the empty feeling in my stomach. I get up, put on my bedside slippers, stolen from a hotel I stayed in during a conference. I was there to present a paper on embodying intergenerational trauma in the postcolonial subject. I shuffle to the door and pat my way in the dark to turn on the light. I really need to buy a bedside lamp. I could have used my phone but Mweya’s visit toni
ght left me dull-witted.

  Mhai tells me Mweya did not leave my great-grandfather that sharp either. Mhai tells me that great-grandfather Chandapihwa was from kwaChiundura. He was only twenty-three when, in 1944, he was forcibly conscripted into the Rhodesian African Rifles and sent to Burma to help the British fight against the Japanese. Mhai has shown me a picture. Chandapihwa was a tall, dark, lanky man with death in his eyes. Not that he was death, but seeing so much death had displaced the life in him. He wore an oversized wide-brimmed hat, khaki shorts, and an oversized khaki shirt with a badge on his left arm. He saw death, when his fellow recruits dropped like flies around him as they charged against the Japanese army. He felt the depth of pain when a bullet tore through his leg.

  He learned of companionship when he and other black men like himself were flung into a war that did not concern them. He learned of affliction when, upon returning home, all he received was ten pounds. The white regiments received land, gold claims, and money for rehabilitation. They were given his land, his gold claims, and money that his brothers and sisters had toiled for in the name of financing the war. There was no parade, no hero’s welcome. Black regiments were not made of heroes.

  Chandapihwa found Mweya in Burma. She visited him each night as he lay awake in a cramped camp with other black soldiers. She sat and watched him recall the events of each day. She watched him as he remembered his brush with death. She listened to him sigh, dragging slowly across his mind the images of the bodies he had helped bury. She stared at him as he tried to remember all their names, hoping that if he lived to see home, he would tell about the bodies. She sat and watched him hope for a decent burial. Mweya stayed with Chandapihwa, her visits becoming more frequent. He felt her pull him back every time he moved forward. She held his head down every time he tried to float. She always held him close. Chandapihwa returned home from Burma with Mweya on his shoulders, death in his eyes, and a limp in his leg. He wore a heavy coat till he died. He would sink into it whenever he spoke—which was rarely—of the war that killed people like flies. Mweya followed Chandapihwa. She followed him to his job as a prison guard, the job that ended abruptly with no explanation. She trailed in his wake to construction sites that did not pay enough for the family he was starting. She shadowed him to the white farms that his damaged leg could not survive, where the weight of the work and Mweya on his back were too much to bear.