Radiance of Tomorrow: A Novel

by Ishmael Beah

  During one such fight, Sila and his children had been walking by when a foreigner let fly a bottle he had broken against a table. It hit Maada and slashed the little boy across his forehead. Sila ran toward the fellow and head-butted him so hard that the man fainted. At that moment, the police vehicle was heard from afar on its way toward Imperi. Someone with a walkie-talkie or mobile phone must have called them.

  Ernest, who had been nearby, stepped up to Sila. “Take your child home so you don’t have to go to jail,” he said. Sila hesitated, perhaps deciding whether to trust the boy who had amputated them. But he decided to do as Ernest advised, as his son’s wound needed tending to. Sila pulled his children along while looking back to see what Ernest was going to do, but his eyes lost him in the crowd.

  Ernest gathered some big rocks, stepped in the middle of the road, and sat down on his heels so that the light from any incoming vehicle would not reveal his face. As the police vehicle neared, he threw a few of the rocks with such precision and force that he broke the windshield and side mirrors. Then he stood up and ran, under the cover of darkness. The police chased after him, forgetting about the foreigner who had recovered but with a bloody nose. The police couldn’t catch Ernest, and no one told who he was. And the foreigner was embarrassed because a man with just one hand had knocked him down, so he refused to speak to the police.

  Sila learned what Ernest had done and wanted to thank him. But he still needed time to be able to shake Ernest’s hands.

  * * *

  After months of fights at the bar and men being jailed without their families knowing where they were, wives and daughters, without means and desperate, began to take money from foreigners at first, and eventually from anyone, in exchange for their bodies. And soon enough, young women arrived from other parts of the country to do the same, and prostitution became a booming business in Imperi, and the elders could do nothing about it. And since they were powerless, they withdrew themselves from such sights.

  One weekend, a group of men—two foreigners and two locals—forcibly took a young woman who was returning from the river carrying a bucket of water. They slowed down their vehicle and offered her a ride into town. She refused, so they grabbed her, threw her in the back, and drove her up the hill to their quarters. Her name was Yinka, and she was not from Imperi, but she could have been anyone’s daughter. The next morning, she was found on the side of the road by the bar, her pelvis broken. Unable to stand, she had dragged herself toward her house but could not get that far. The women came with clothes and covered her bloody and naked body. They carried her home and tended to her, but she didn’t want to be in this world any longer. No one knew where she was from and no one came to claim her body. She was buried and people cried for her because she was someone’s daughter and this could have happened to any other young girl or woman in town. The police did nothing, even when people went to the station to give the names of the four men.

  “We know who they are and you do nothing about it! This means you encourage them to do more of such things,” a neighbor of Yinka’s shouted from among the people who had come to the station to demand an investigation. The police threw tear gas into the crowd.

  * * *

  This town—where not so long ago, even after the war, one allowed one’s daughter to play under the moonlight with other children; where, even though things weren’t even close to perfect, a mother and father didn’t stand barefoot in a pot of hot oil each time their daughter left the house to fetch a bucket of water—this town … what was it now and what would become of its people?

  Soon there were rapes that no one spoke of, not only because the women were ashamed but also because the families felt helpless and the only dignity left was silence. Sometimes, the growing belly of a young girl shattered that falsehood and the child she gave birth to had the color of and resembled one of the workers, white or black. Nothing was said about such things. The child became part of Imperi’s forgotten population.

  For the moment, there was some laughter coming through the wind. So life still lived here, after all.

  * * *

  One night, a loud explosion silenced all conversations—even at the bar. People came outside, looking all around for a sign of smoke, but there was nothing, so they returned to what they had been doing. The next morning, there was no water at the mining site or the company quarters, and it took a week before the problem could be found. Someone had dynamited the main water pipe up in the hills under the bushes. The company fixed it, but the water that then came through the faucets and out of the showerheads was contaminated with petrol and rusty murk. For two weeks, it went on like this, then stopped.

  That’s when Colonel and Miller ran out of the petrol they had siphoned from the company machines and got tired of bailing the dam water at night. They had fed the dirty dam water and petrol into the water pipe through a hole they had drilled. Miller laughed as they did it; Colonel showed no emotion.

  Colonel never showed any emotion—except once. One evening Salimatu came home, her face swollen and her dress torn into pieces; she was almost naked. Colonel pressed her to tell him who the men were who had done this. She did, and though his demeanor didn’t change much, it was the first time that tears came to his eyes, and his entire body trembled with anger. He boiled some water and tended to Salimatu. Then, while she rested, he put his bayonet in his pocket and headed for the bar, stopping at a shop to buy a small can of red paint.

  Before going on, he passed by Bockarie’s house and gave Bockarie all of his savings. It was for the others, he said; it was their school fees for the coming year. Then he bought a box of matches from Bockarie’s stand.

  “Are you okay, man?” Bockarie sensed something was angering the young man.

  “Of course. You know, I learned something during the war.” Colonel moved away from the light of the lamp. “I learned that you are not free until you stop others from making you feel worthless. Because if you do not, you will eventually accept that you are worthless.”

  He was gone before Bockarie could find words to respond.

  Arriving near the bar, Colonel observed the area carefully. He saw the four men—the two foreigners and two locals, the same men who had assaulted Yinka and now Salimatu and possibly many others. He crouched near their vehicles and with an old cloth he wrote RAPIST in capital letters on their cars with the paint. The men were still drinking, laughing, and harassing women who walked by. He waited in the dark where he knew each of them was bound to come when the beer no longer had space to settle in them.

  Sure enough, one of the foreigners came to urinate. Colonel attacked with several blows to the man’s temple that made him faint. Colonel dragged the foreigner to the back of the bar, undressed him, and tied his penis with a rope that he attached to the branch of a mango tree. He tore the fellow’s shirt and trousers and used the strips to bind his hands and legs, and gag his mouth. The fellow came to after Colonel was done, and each time he moved, the rope tightened, elongating his privates. His eyes watered but his voice couldn’t go anywhere.

  Colonel did the same to two others, tying them to the same tree. But the last man, a local, stayed in the bar longer than Colonel expected. Finally, watching him inside the brightly lit bar from where he stood in the darkness, Colonel’s anger got the best of him. He needed to finish this before people saw the three men. So he took his bayonet from his pocket and held it tightly behind his back. He went into the bar and sat next to the fellow.

  “Did you happen to run into a young woman today who has some tribal marks here and is quite beautiful?” he asked, touching both sides of his cheeks to indicate where the marks were on Salimatu.

  “So what if I did? I run into girls and women all the time. Are you the police, small boy?” The man rose up from his chair and stood over Colonel.

  “She is my sister, and I am better than the police.” Colonel pressed the bayonet against the man’s side, not wounding him but letting him know he would, and he asked the man to wal
k outside. The man thought about refusing, but he changed his mind as he felt the knife about to enter his flesh.

  He was treated the same way as the others.

  Colonel had a parcel of sugar that he sprinkled all over them. Then he took the keys from their pockets and left.

  They weren’t aware at first of what he had done, but they soon found out, as killer ants started arriving and climbing all over their naked bodies, biting them everywhere, until their bodies became red, swollen, and numb. Meanwhile, using their keys, which bore the names of their quarters and room numbers, Colonel crept into their living spaces and set their rooms on fire, burning everything in them.

  The men weren’t discovered until morning. People gathered around them until the police came with some armed guards and an ambulance. The local fellow described the boy who had done this, and people were forced to give the name of Colonel. But who was Colonel? Few knew his real name and he was nowhere to be found. And those who did know his name said nothing. As for where he was, only Miller knew, and he certainly told no one.

  The rapes ceased and men stopped staying too long at the bar. They also looked around before using unnecessary words to women and girls who walked by.

  9

  THE END OF THE YEAR was approaching and all the teachers were desperate. They hadn’t received their “every three months” salaries that they had gotten used to and adjusted their lives around. It was now almost six months without pay, and they were going into the Christmas holiday—and of course nothing could be earned while on holiday. This caused panic among the teachers. They already had to miraculously make their current salaries work, and such miracles lose their effectiveness if stretched out too much. Simultaneously, while the nerves of teachers who had preached the relevance of education to their students were being tightened by burdensome circumstances, the mining company was advertising job openings for clerks, processing operators, mechanics, and security guards.

  The teachers decided to hold a meeting with the principal, who was also affected by the lack of salaries. He could no longer afford petrol for his motorcycle, and some days he pushed the thing onto the school grounds sweating right through his suit. Sometimes, the students helped push the motorcycle with him sitting on top. The boys thought it was fun, and since there were many of them they didn’t mind, and the principal would give them a few leones every now and then for lunch. He called the boys his “hybrid engine.”

  The meeting ended very quickly, and whatever good spirits had been retained by the teachers were dispelled in an instant. The principal didn’t know when the next pay would be coming, and he tried to plead with his teachers not to abandon their jobs, “which are more than just earning a salary,” he said. But his plea, though genuine, fell on ears that desperation now controlled and that now were able to hear only unpleasantries. Everyone was suspicious of the principal, especially as another secondary school in the nearby district had received salaries before the holiday. What is more, he was finishing a cement house in town that had become the envy of everyone whose eyes saw this simple four-bedroom house.

  For the first time, Bockarie started seriously thinking about working for the mining company. He could not see any other way to take care of his family. When he told Benjamin what he was thinking, Benjamin told Bockarie he’d already gotten an interview and hoped to be hired soon. Benjamin also told his friend about something he had been planning and wanted to accomplish before he stopped teaching.

  “I am going to steal the principal’s ledger and use it against him, sort of force him to do some good things for the school,” Benjamin said. He wasn’t joking around, as he usually did. He was serious.

  “How are you going to do that? Can I help?” After he said that, Bockarie hesitated. He wasn’t sure he should have offered. The thought tormented him, but it also made sense. And, Bockarie thought, perhaps there was a way he could personally benefit from Benjamin’s plan. Perhaps the demands could include using the nonexistent teachers’ salaries to pay for the school fees for all his children. He didn’t mention this to his friend.

  “As a matter of fact, I do need your help—for lookout and distraction, if needed, and for some work that we will have to do after. I have studied the principal’s movements and know exactly when to strike. We strike tomorrow at lunchtime.”

  He abruptly switched the topic. “Wait for me after school today so we can stop by the company’s site, where you can pick up an application.” He forced a smile, but it quickly departed, as though his face wanted only what was pure from within.

  After school, Bockarie told Manawah and Miata to head home without him, that he would see them later on. While Bockarie waited for Benjamin, the principal came by, two boys pushing his motorcycle. He waved to Bockarie with a smile that showed he enjoyed what was happening. The boys took turns making the engine sound of the motorcycle, and the taller of the two honked at Bockarie when the principal waved. Bockarie waved back and smiled at the ability of these young boys to find joy in such a laborious and ridiculous activity.

  Why does he bring his motorcycle to school if he has no petrol? he asked himself, as he had so many times before.

  “Sorry, man. I was getting these.” Benjamin’s voice reached Bockarie’s ears. He was slightly in the distance, jogging lightly, grasping two ledgers under his arm. Bockarie surveyed the area, looking worried. “Relax, man, these are blank.” Benjamin laughed. He said that he had stolen them, one at a time, from the storage room a few weeks back. He went on to explain that the following day, he planned to swap one of these in the principal’s bag for the real ledger. That way, the bag would weigh the same and the principal wouldn’t notice the ledger was gone. Then, throughout the night, with Bockarie’s help, Benjamin would copy the contents of the entire ledger into the second blank one. And then, on the next day, the original would be returned with a note attached, reading, “We have the original and here are our demands!”

  “So, some plans have changed. I will need you, close to the end of school tomorrow, to snatch the ledger, as this will guarantee that the principal won’t notice overnight, and we can do the swap first thing the next morning during assembly when he is speaking.” Benjamin was quite proud of his plan.

  “What if he notices that the real ledger is missing before he goes home?”

  “We would still have the ledger. And we would find a way of leaving our demands in his office. I am going to make sure he knows it is me—especially after I get the job at the company.”

  Slowly, they approached the site of the mining company, stopping at the entrance to speak to a fellow they knew by the name of Ojuku.

  “The teacher men, teachers of knowledge! What brings you to my humble post?” Ojuku asked, even though he suspected why they were there. They shook hands.

  “My man Ojuku, we are here to pick up an application,” Bockarie said.

  “That is right, and we know you are the man in charge!” Benjamin slapped the hand of Ojuku with another handshake.

  “There are no applications for now,” Ojuku said with a laugh, a short laugh that suggested the suspension, from here on, of whatever friendship was between them.

  “The applications are right there, man, on the shelf. We can see them.” Benjamin pointed to the papers.

  “Those papers are papers. I say they are applications only when I want to. For now they are just papers, plain!” Ojuku played with the baton at his side and held the gate open for a fellow dressed in overalls.

  “So give us the plain paper, then,” Bockarie said.

  “Those plain papers are under my watch and they are company property. They are not free.” Ojuku went inside the gate, closed it behind him, and spoke to the teachers from the other side. “Those plain papers won’t last long, though. For some reason people love them and shake my hand with notes that make me see the papers aren’t so plain.”

  “You know that the applications are free, and yet you still make trouble for your own people.” Bockarie raised his vo
ice a bit.

  “I say what is free around here. Can’t you see I am in charge, man?” Ojuku refused to give Bockarie the application for free even though it was free. Bockarie knew it was futile to continue arguing, so he gave him some money and took the papers angrily from Ojuku’s fingers.

  “You were right, my brother. They are applications! I was blind but now I see applications and hmmm.” Ojuku smelled the notes and laughed again. He told Bockarie that he must remember that they would see each other again when he returned with the completed application. He rubbed his thumb and index finger together as a warning that Bockarie should behave or he would have to pay more money upon his return.

  That evening before nightfall, Bockarie paced up and down in confusion on his veranda holding a pen and the application form. He had asked Kula about applying to work for the company.

  “If you think it would help the family, then try it, and you can always quit if the work breaks your heart too much.” Her response assured him that she would stand by him no matter what, but he still felt that this wasn’t right. Realistically, though, it was what had to be done. He asked his father, Pa Kainesi, who said nothing for a while, perhaps because he had hidden his voice within him for some time now. Then after a long sigh, which was even more tormenting to hear than his piercing silence, he spoke.

  “Yes and No are the same these days in this land of ours. Good luck, my son.” He fell quiet again and left for a walk to see his friends, whom he sat with to observe the goings and comings of the townspeople. Bockarie didn’t understand what his father meant. He decided to fill out the application before night fully embraced the clear blue sky.

  It will be temporary and I may not even get the job, he said to himself, his hands shaking as he began by writing his name on the application. He filled it out carefully, thinking about each word before he wrote it. He had only the one copy and he knew if he made a mistake, he would have to give Ojuku more money. He barely had enough money to get Ojuku to receive the completed application and put it in the box where it would be picked up and looked at. He couldn’t afford another.