The Devil that Danced on the Water

by Aminatta Forna

  That Sunday morning our father, the Taqis and Sarif Easmon were joined on the platform by Dr John Karefa Smart, who had recently left his job as deputy director of the World Health Organisation and come home to Sierra Leone. John Karefa Smart spoke first and the people listened patiently. But when Mohamed Forna took the stage the roar of applause stretched into minutes, rising high above the park until it reached the heavy, closed curtains of State House less than a hundred yards away. A group of forty red-shirted thugs appeared and began to shower the crowd with rocks from the other side of the wall. At the edges of the gathering people began to scatter as scuffles broke out; one man was struck by a rock in the eye. For a while it looked as though a full-scale riot could ensue. But a moment later, as quickly as they had come, the Red Shirts departed, climbed back into their vehicles and drove away.

  The creation of the new party was announced a few days later. We called ourselves the United Democratic Party. The UDP was to be the third force to end bi-partisan tribal politics and our plan was to fight and defeat Stevens and the APC at the general elections, due within the next three months.

  All this time Stevens himself had delayed his return to the country. As soon as the new party was announced he flew back from the safety of neighbouring Liberia. Hours after his plane touched down he made a broadcast to the nation: he declared a state of emergency and an immediate halt to all public meetings.

  The UDP refused to be cowed. Our father responded, pointing out the state of emergency was illegal without a parliamentary mandate. In an act of defiance United Democratic Party vehicles toured the city streets with loudhailers calling supporters to another rally at Victoria Park. Once again thousands crowded through the gates, despite the blocks on all roads into Freetown. In the park the people found themselves surrounded by armed police, who stood guard and watched but did not move to break up the meeting. The party wasn't even officially registered and yet every day hundreds more people came to sign on as new members. The government newspaper the Daily Mail printed an article saying people were being paid to join, but the opposite was true. Folk from Freetown, from the provinces, Creoles, Temnes, even Mendes, former members of the APC and people who had never belonged to a political party in their lives added their names to the growing list and paid their registration fee. Quite simply people were desperate to get rid of Siaka Stevens and the APC.

  From the outset the real nerve centre of the UDP was our compound in Tengbe Farkai. Meetings were held there all day and into the night. There were endless comings and goings, familiar faces and new ones I had never seen. Many people just wanted to sign up and we directed them to the office in East Street. Our party symbol was the sun and the moon. At Tengbe Farkai I watched as cars drove in and out with the logo, sprayed in orange, on the side panels. It began to appear everywhere throughout Freetown, painted on walls, drawn in the dirt, emblazoned on shirts. The sun and the moon, source of light, symbol of unity. Wherever a person was in the country, or even in the world, at any time of the day or night, it didn't matter who you were, when you turned your gaze up to the sky there was the yellow sun or an amber moon, and they were exactly the same to everyone.

  25

  At six I wasn’t scared of the dark, not at all, no. But gradually I learned to be. The fear grew until, by the time I was an adult, I had to switch on all the lights in the hall if I got up in the night and I even started to leave the bedside light on when I stayed in a hotel or a new place. At some point staying alone in a house at night became simply out of the question. During the evening I would sit still, pretending to be relaxed, trying to avoid any errand that might take me upstairs or into the kitchen, or anywhere else at all out of the safety zone of artificial noise and light thrown out by the television. Later, instead of sleeping I would lie rigid and cold with dread, falling in and out of consciousness, giving flesh to the demons in my nightmares until the line between wakefulness and sleep became indistinguishable and fear stalked either side of the boundary. It isn’t fear of the dark, per se, I suppose. It’s the fear of what the dark conceals. It’s the horror that comes of feeling hampered, disadvantaged by losing the use of one of your sense. You can’t see them, you have no idea where they are. Noises are louder. One man can sound like ten. Ten men can sound like one. Voices echo and multiply. Footsteps come out of nowhere and suddenly fade away, as though they belong to spirits instead of men. And they, whoever they are – they know where you are.

  At Tengbe Farkai they started coming under cover of the night to throw rocks through our windows. The first rock landed on the roof, while we were at supper. The crash resounded on the tin roof. We stopped eating and waited, startled into silence. A second crash brought the household to life. Downstairs in the yard Santigi, Amadu and Amara, who had been gathered around a shared plate of rice, were running to close the tall metal gates and bar the entrance to the compound. Rocks were falling all around. Outside in the lane shouts bounced between the high walls and disappeared into the black. There were scraping noises, the double tread of feet running in flip-flops; more stones hit the front of the house – one shattered an open window and the glass fell onto the ground below.

  Our father left the room and reappeared holding his hunting rifle. He ducked out onto the balcony at the front of the house. One, two, three, we slipped out of our seats and followed him. He stood overlooking the alleyway in full view of anyone who might be below. He drew up a chair and sat down, the rifle across his lap. When he spotted us waiting there, he waved us behind him, and so we crowded in and wedged ourselves between the wall and his back to watch and wait. I did not feel afraid. I felt excited. And the tremors began in my knees and tickled my thighs and stomach as I stood squirming with my nose pressed into my father’s shoulder. The alley was quiet. I didn’t know whether they had gone for good, or if this was just the beginning. But I knew that if they came back we were waiting for them, and our father would deal with them in such a way they would really be sorry.

  Ever since the announcement of the new party the leaders of the UDP had been receiving constant threats. Death threats were telephoned daily to the office in East Street. Red Shirts turned up at every meeting and rally. They heckled, jostled and spat and they set upon supporters of the UDP en route to the meeting place. The same youths drove past the offices at high speed, jeering at the people waiting outside to register. The day after our house was stoned our father, accompanied by John Karefa Smart, whose family had also been badly frightened at his brother’s house in Murraytown, requested a meeting with Banja Tejan Sie, the governor-general.

  Tejan Sie murmured words of sympathy, for he had differences with Siaka Stevens himself. Stevens had never wanted Tejan Sie, a northerner and a long-standing SLPP man, in his government. Since 1968 Tejan Sie had been acting in the post and Stevens consistently refused to bestow upon him the full honour of his title, something known to chafe Tejan Sie considerably. During his tenure as minister of finance our father had often brought his grievances to Tejan Sie; now he asked the acting governor-general for help in arranging protection for the leaders of the UDP and their families. Tejan Sie promised to see what he could do. Nothing could be done without the sanction of the prime minister, he warned, who now had a stronger grip on the police force than ever. He stood up and shook the hands of his former colleagues; the situation was clearly becoming dangerous and he promised them he would talk to the prime minister immediately.

  Tejan Sie was true to his word. He saw Siaka Stevens in a matter of a few hours. The meeting was followed by a swift announcement from State House: Banja Tejan Sie, formerly acting governor-general of Sierra Leone, had been made the country’s permanent governor-general. We were even more isolated than before. The next night, after the black descended, the thugs gathered round to stone our home, and they did the same every night after that.

  Still the ranks of the United Democratic Party swelled. People were travelling down to Freetown from the provinces, using the back routes to circumvent the road bloc
ks, turning up at the house and the office, offering their help. Some of the new arrivals volunteered to guard our compound from the Red Shirts and to keep watch at night. They moved in, sleeping on the hard veranda and sitting around in groups of three or four during the day. They were unfamiliar faces in my world. I steered round them, keeping my focus on those adults I knew. Our stepmother and Auntie Amy cooked around the clock, great vats of rice over open fires, just to keep everyone fed.

  While the protection the men offered was needed, the UDP organisers decided they had to stop any more people coming into Freetown. There was only a limited amount the people could contribute and the situation risked getting out of hand. The only way to stem the flow of people into the capital was for the leaders of the party to take the message to the provinces themselves. Our father elected to go and he travelled in a convoy to Port Loko, S.I.’s constituency, and to Lunsar, a little distance farther north. Despite the best efforts of the hired thugs thousands swarmed to the rallies. Spurred on by this success the party organisers began to lay plans to visit Makeni and Magburaka, home territory for our father where we were guaranteed a triumphant reception.

  We had stopped going to school, and neither did we go out to the beach or to Cape Club or to the tennis club any more. Instead we spent the days trying to amuse ourselves, endlessly repeating our childish games. One afternoon Memuna stood in the centre of the sitting room, counting aloud with her eyelids squeezed shut; Sheka and I raced for the exits and while he disappeared into the bedrooms I ran down the staircase to the ground floor, heading for the kitchens and the storeroom. My plan was to hide in a discarded rice sack, behind the stacks of empty baskets or the giant vats of palm oil.

  At the bottom of the stairs I saw a better opportunity: long coats hanging from a peg on the wall. I pushed them aside so I could slip behind, but as I did so I bumped up against something else already there. I stepped backward, back into the light. A dozen panga knives, the sort used for cutting wheat in the fields, were propped against the wall, a sheaf of curved and polished blades. I stood still and stared at them. For a moment I stopped breathing. I must cover them up, and yet for a few seconds I could do nothing at all. I forced myself to open my fingers, let the coats fall and flutter back into place as though they had never been disturbed. I ran and hid in the storeroom and I stayed there for a long time before the others found me. I didn’t tell my brother and sister what I had seen. I knew why the cutlasses were there and I worried about what trouble I might get into if anyone found out I had discovered them. Somehow, I knew instinctively this was knowledge to keep to myself.

  We were playing on the red earth near the entrance to our compound a few days later. The sun was already low and within the hour the sky would switch from light to dark. There were voices in the lane and we looked up to see who was coming. We saw the alley full of people, crowding down the narrow path like a rush of flood water down an open storm drain. The three of us scattered in the direction of the house. We reached the bottom step, where Auntie Amy pushed us bodily up the stairs.

  I climbed up to one of the windows overlooking the yard and watched as scores of Red Shirts invaded our compound. The men were armed with bottles, night sticks, machetes. They caught our volunteer guards unawares. Already two of the invaders had one of our men cornered against the wall. The man was trying to shield his face and head, half crouching, turned to the wall as the blows from the cudgels fell across his back. A man dressed in white raged through the crowd. Down the front of his shirt the splattered blood looked like red embroidery. Our compound was transformed into a battlefield as every man in the house had run out to grapple with the invaders. They were locked in each other’s arms like couples on a dance floor. Above them a great cloud of dust billowed up over their heads and raised arms.

  In the kitchens the women were boiling water with the idea of repelling anyone who tried to break into the house. A tall, thin, very black woman pushed past me and stared out at the fracas. Sucking air through her teeth contemptuously, she turned and ran down the stairs into the yard, where she deftly slipped off one of her stiletto shoes and struck a Red Shirt in the face. He screamed and clasped his cheek. The woman seemed emboldened and the last I saw of her she was wading deeper into the fray brandishing her shoe.

  I left my place next to Memuna and Sheka and slipped away. I crept to the top of the stairs. No one noticed me leaving. Down the stairs I went, past the kitchens and the storeroom, until I reached the outside steps. I edged around the door and stood with my back pressed flat against the wall. I was only a few feet from the battle. I told myself I was really here to look for Apollo, to bring him in so he wasn’t hurt, but I had no idea where he was. I considered jumping the short distance to Uncle Bash and Auntie Amy’s house. I could see Amadu in the middle of it all. Amadu the cook, who would lose the hearing in one of his ears because of a blow to the head.

  I craned my neck for a better view but it was all so disorderly it was hard to make out what was happening. Out of the clouds of dust two people lunged towards me. One was a Red Shirt. The other one – I don’t know who he was – reached me first. He picked me up and rushed with me back into the house and up the stairs. Auntie Yabome hadn’t even realised I was gone.

  Our father wasn’t there the day we were attacked. As my stepmother scolded me I saw her lips move, heard the words, but really I was transfixed by the look in her eyes: it was new, something I had never seen before and which I failed to understand. She could have punished me but she didn’t. There seemed to be a hollowness at the centre of her anger.

  The announcement banning the United Democratic Party came when the convoy carrying our father arrived in Makeni, the evening before a mass rally. Stevens had issued the order to arrest the leaders earlier in the day. But when the police commissioner refused to allow his force to be used to carry out a blatantly political act, Stevens turned to the army. Who knows how the prime minister persuaded the force commander to do his bidding? But he did. For the UDP and our family it proved to be the turning point. Our father had miscalculated, thinking John Bangura was a match for Stevens and would never send his men to arrest them. He had been betrayed twice in a few days: first by the governor-general and now by the head of the army.

  As it turned out the officers sent to Makeni could not get near him to carry out their orders for most of the day – our father was surrounded by so many of his supporters. Later in the evening his young aide, on his way to visit a girlfriend, picked up the news broadcast on his car radio moments after he had left his boss at the home of the local doctor in Makeni, where they were to spend the night. The young activist turned the car and drove at speed down the unlit roads back to the house. If he was lucky they might both still have time to escape. The area was full of local supporters who would shield them for a few days; after that they could probably make it out of the country. He dashed up the steps of the house.

  Although he listened, our father was opposed to the idea of going into hiding. Within minutes a contingent of Limba army officers arrived at the front door of the house and demanded entry. Our father nodded to the doctor, the owner of the house, to open the door.

  The army had warrants for the arrest of two men – Dr Mohamed Forna and his aide – but they emerged from the house to find it surrounded by a crowd of defiant supporters barring the way. The soldiers and the people faced each other. Eventually the officer in charge gave orders to arrest each and every one of the protesters. So in all more than fifty men accompanied our father on his five-hour journey to Pademba Road Prison. The only person not among them was his young aide. He had not been recognised and in the confusion he slipped away and, a few days later, crossed the border into Liberia.

  26

  I saw a garden: waxy red and orange anthuriums displaying proud yellow stamens; trails of lace-edged hibiscus; fragrant frangipani; star apples and guava trees; scented lilies nodding their giant freckled heads at me; spires of mighty amaryllis. The sun was shining and the garden w
as empty. The three of us crept down the dark, wooden staircase and out of the front door. In the heavy, airless day the garden was suffused with perfume. I broke off a piece of spiky Jerusalem thorn and watched the milk drip from the broken end, felt it sticky on my fingers, beginning to bind them together. We wandered towards the high wall of the boundary, gazing at the fruit, considering whether to climb up and take some down. The garden was alive. An iridescent blue hummingbird, smaller than a baby’s fist, flew from petal to petal ahead of his plain, brown mate; a column of ants trooped into the earth; a pair of tiny black beetles stood by and waited for them to pass. Beyond the tall, wrought-iron gate someone was walking down the road: a man carrying a basket on his head. He waved at us and we called and waved back.

  The man called Pa Cook appeared from the side of the house. He was gesticulating at us. We couldn’t tell what he was saying; we thought he was waving at us too, and we waved at him. He was old and quite bowed in the leg. It took him a long time to reach us, even though he was trying to run. He looked peculiar, all out of breath and worried as though it was his job to guard the fruit. He pushed us, herded us back towards the house, and once we were inside he shut the door and locked it from the outside. We watched from the upstairs balcony as he made his way back round the side of the house to the kitchen.

  Shortly before the arrests a convoy of United Democratic Party supporters on their way to the rally in Makeni had passed a vehicle carrying APC Red Shirts on their way to disrupt the same event. Lying on the front of the bonnet of the APC Land-Rover as it travelled through Hastings was a notorious Red Shirt who went by the alias of Omole. The two groups clashed and somehow in the ensuing fracas Omole had been knocked off the vehicle and run over by his own people. He was hurt; there were even reports that he had been killed. Stevens blamed the UDP for the incident and used it as an excuse to ban the new party and arrest the leaders, none of whom had been present when Omole was hurt.