There was the petrol station where the bicycle taxis waited. I hadn’t travelled that way in many months now. It wasn’t such a comfortable way to travel but it was better than being on foot. Anything else was unaffordable. The price of petrol was always going up. Always going up. Nothing ever became cheaper. None of the boys leaning on their bicycles looked up as I passed. Well, I wasn’t young any more.
In front of the covered market I slowed my pace a little, just to see what was on offer. I had a few things to buy, but that would have to wait until the end of the day, when the traders were willing to drop their prices just to be rid of the stuff. Other times I went to market in the early morning. The stall holders liked to treat their first customer well. Not for the customer’s benefit, I should add, only because they thought it boded well for the rest of the day.
Ahead of me two women entered Asana’s fabric store. I wondered whether she was in town or travelling. Who would choose such a life? No husband, no time to talk even. Always busy, working herself into the ground. Well, I suppose she didn’t have any brothers. But really, she should have had more sons. I bought the cloth for my dress there the last time she was out of town. Seven yards of brocade. The girl in the shop — who did she think she was? — looked as though she was about to refuse me credit until I reminded her I was family. I passed by on the other side of the road, deciding against going in. Wait until Lansana was home and then we’d go in together.
I imagined us walking down the street. Him so broad shouldered and handsome. Many months had passed since he’d been given leave. In all that time I had not heard from him, I could only imagine what duties he was undertaking. Who knew where in the country he might be, some place without a post office. And you know, sometimes they didn’t allow them to write, especially when the mission was important or secret.
Rain was threatening, a dark cloud rose up behind the mosque, though the sun still shone. The light shimmered, catching the white robes of the men gathered at the front of the building after midday prayers. Women, dressed in all manner of colours, made their way from the back door. Some people were waiting to cross the road by the roundabout, others stood about in clutches exchanging greetings at the same time as they eyed one another up and down. I slipped into the crowd, mingling, nodding to this person and that person, enjoying the looks that came my way. And sure enough presently I saw somebody I did know: the woman who was once my mother-in-law, in a manner of speaking. Remember Khalil? The one who betrayed me? His mother.
Well, I’m telling you now — it couldn’t have been better. I turned away and strolled on a short distance. When I felt her close behind me, I swung around like I had suddenly remembered something.
‘Aunty!’ I said, as though she was the last person on earth I expected to see there.
‘Hawa,’ she nodded. She would have liked to move on, but I was blocking her path.
‘I hope you are well?’ Or some such irrelevance.
‘As you see me, by God’s grace.’
‘And the family?’ I persisted, though I noticed she made no enquiry as to my own health.
‘They are all well.’ She glanced over my shoulder, wanting to get away. But I was not finished yet. The thing about niceties is that there is no end to them. I asked after every member of the family by name. She took no care to elaborate on her replies. Then I mentioned Khalil’s name. She looked at me directly, then. Suspicious eyes flickered over my face for a moment, until she caught sight of the earrings. I smiled and put my hand up to touch them.
‘A gift from my son,’ I told her.
‘Very nice.’ Thin lips stretched tight into a smile, a mouth like a rubber band.
‘Solid gold. Twenty-four carat.’ She was silent. ‘Bought with his salary, you know. He is in the Army. A Major. A promotion, another one.’ I wasn’t sure if that was correct, but it didn’t matter. And maybe I should have stopped there. ‘He’ll be coming home soon. On leave.’
‘Well, I am glad to see you are so well. Until next time, Hawa.’ And she stepped around me, which was annoying because I had wanted to be the first one to walk away. Still, the victory was mine.
I moved off in the other direction. There were still a good number of people outside the mosque, the imam among them in a long purple coat over his robes. I raised my umbrella over my head as I turned down a side street, passing the stalls selling second-hand electrical goods and suchlike, to where the Syrian traders — Lebanese, they were called now — had their shops. Looking about me I ducked into the nearest entrance.
The man behind the counter, shouting at somebody at the back of the shop, stopped the instant he saw a finely dressed woman enter and smiled at me.
‘Good day, madam,’ he said. That was how impressive I looked. I moved closer to the counter, underneath the dusty glass of which lay many pieces of jewellery, mostly gold.
‘How much for the gold?’ I asked.
‘To buy?’
‘No, to sell.’
‘What carat?’
‘Twenty-four,’ I told him. He raised his eyebrows.
‘Show me.’
I slipped my earrings off and dropped them into his outstretched hand. Oh, it was a difficult thing for me to do. He weighed them in his hand, scratched the surface with a dirty thumbnail and shook his head.
‘This is not twenty-four carat.’
I looked back at him. ‘Eighteen then,’ I said confidently. Still good.
He shook his head at that, and dropped them into a small set of scales. ‘Where did these come from?’
I decided not to mention my son. Not because I had anything to hide, but because these days too many people were saying bad things about soldiers, about the things they were doing. He would try to pretend they had been looted and use that to offer me an even poorer price.
‘Left to me by my mother,’ I replied.
Nine carat! Can you believe it? Of course he was taking advantage, but what was I to do? I didn’t bother to thank him. I took the money and put it in my purse. As soon as Lansana came home we would come back here and give that thief back his money. Redeem my earrings for the measly sum he gave me.
Outside the shop I stepped into a doorway for a few moments to adjust my headdress so that it covered my ears. A few people were still standing around by the mosque. I kept my chin high as I walked by. I could feel their eyes upon me. I looked neither to one side nor the other, but straight ahead, to the bicycle stand, and gave one of the fellows there my address. In full view of the lot of them I climbed on behind him and we rode away.
I felt the wind in my face. I sat sideways on the parcel shelf with my ankles crossed, feeling as demure as a girl out with a suitor. I felt something I had not felt for a long time.
I remembered the last time Lansana had come home, bringing with him a cassette player. He liked to listen to it all day, morning, noon and night. He took baths and changed his clothes, sometimes several times a day. Then sat back down, tapping his fingers or his foot on the floor, turning the cassette over every time one side finished. To tell the truth the noise got on my nerves: the repetitive sound of some man’s voice. One evening I asked him to turn it down. I had to raise my voice over the sound of the music, if that is what you could call it. I repeated myself once, twice. The third time Lansana suddenly swung around and faced me. For a moment he looked furious, I wondered if he had been asleep, dreaming, and I had woken him up. But then his face softened and he smiled. He stood up and grasped both my hands and swung me around, and had me dance with him to that terrible music. Yes, I really did. I danced.
I would not have that feeling of joy again for years to come. After that day when I was forced to sell my earrings, I waited for Lansana as long as I could. By then the girl had gone, I saw the people fleeing all around me, I was too afraid to wait any longer. I pushed three of my dresses into a plastic bag, that was all, there was no food in the house. We followed the footpaths to the main road, passing villages emptied of people. I saw a lad I knew, a sal
t seller, walking in the other direction. ‘Be careful, Ma,’ he warned me. They were shooting northerners at the checkpoints.
When I reached there I listened carefully to the answers people ahead of me gave. My turn came, I bowed my head, I muttered the name of the same town in the South. The soldier demanded the name of the headman, he narrowed his eyes: yellow eyes, dark at the core. I supplied it, giving the name I had just overheard, and passed through. My son is a soldier, I wanted to tell him. He’s in the Army. Perhaps you know him. But I dared not, I kept my head down and carried on walking.
There were no lorries. But there were more checkpoints, each time we passed through another the risk grew. So we left the road and walked through the trees, standing in the shadows whenever we heard people on the path. We were close enough to hear them, to smell them. It was impossible to tell one side from the other, soldiers from rebels, they all looked the same.
Once, a long time later, in the displacement camp, a consignment of food had arrived. All the women gathered around holding their plastic cups and measures, waiting to be given their own share. We had waited a long time for this food. But when the crates were opened there was none. A mix-up. The boxes were full of lipsticks, hundreds of them, in their gold coloured cases. The men in blue helmets immediately surrounded the vehicle and prepared for a riot. All of us had such hunger in our bellies. But a moment later they pushed back their helmets and lowered their sunglasses, to make sure what they were seeing was really true. The women rushed forward, myself among them, to snatch up these shining lipsticks. The many miles between us and our lost homes, our rotting feet, the grass and leaves with which we had tried to line our stomachs, the emptiness of the future: for a short while all was forgotten. We stood in the sun, laughing and ribbing each other, painting our mouths in vivid colours.
But all that was yet to come. For a few moments more I lifted my head up and savoured the sensation of riding on the bicycle, of people watching me from the sides of the street. We freewheeled down the main road, swerving to avoid the potholes, which somehow made it all the more enjoyable. And once we were around the corner and out of sight I tapped the fellow on the shoulder and got off the bicycle. Told him I had changed my mind and walked the rest of the way home.
When I reached the house the girl was there waiting for me, leaning against the door frame with her arms crossed. She smiled at me, lips closed — and did not stir herself to come help with my packages, but watched me as I walked towards her. She didn’t move even when I was inches from her, practically nose to nose. She was grinning openly by that time. Turning my body slightly sideways, I was forced to squeeze past her.
As I did so I reached for the box of sugar cubes in my bag. I dropped it into her hand. And watched the smile fall off her face.
Some people say he is living in America, that lots of soldier boys went there. To the land that created the blue jeans and trainers and rapper singers they love so much. I must confess though, I have a daydream about him, a new one. That perhaps one day he will read my story, there will be a knock on the door and there he will be, in his uniform, with white gloves and shining buttons as smart as the day I went to see him on parade. His eyes will glow with happiness, not glitter with the unfathomable anger that seemed to possess him towards the end. And I will hold out my arms: ‘Lansana,’ I will say. Perhaps I will cry, I won’t be able to help myself, it has been so long. And he will hug me and say something, anything, in the teasing way he did whenever he wanted to make me smile. And there I’ll be, laughing and crying at the same time, as I step aside to let him in.
15
Serah, 1996
The Storm
Once I stood thousands of feet up on the edge of an escarpment, side by side with Janneh watching a storm race across the plain below. In the distance tiny figures ran ahead of the dust, dark clouds bearing down upon them. They were huddled over, clutching at their clothing, holding on to children, trying to shield themselves from the fury of the storm. In between us and those terrified souls, I could see more people, just beginning to sense the growing tempest, hurrying along, not yet caught up in its violent swirls, gazing up at the sky in an attempt to read the signs. Directly below were others still, oblivious to what was happening only a few miles away, tending their animals, watching their children at play, sitting outdoors in the sunshine.
I remember how we wanted to shout and wave and jump up and down. But instead we did nothing. We were too far away. And even if they had heard nobody would have believed us, for where they stood they could not see the omens in the sky.
Sometimes I think this is what happened in our country. Nobody heeded the warnings, nobody smelled the rain coming, or saw the lights in the sky or heard the roar of thunder, until we were all engulfed by it.
In Italy before the war in Europe, Benito Mussolini made the trains run on time. I read that once in a history book. He also wore a white uniform and a helmet with a plume on the top, and knew how to talk to people in a way that made them want to believe him.
We had a new President. A young man, who might have been a Benito Mussolini, who was handsome and finely attired in his uniform and who wore mirror sunglasses and swaggered in front of other heads of state, men in their sixties and seventies whom he appeared to despise, perhaps because they reminded him of the President he had just chased from our country. Nobody wanted to be ruled by the old, fat President and his corrupt cronies and because the new, young President cleaned up the streets and emptied the gutters of filth and spoke about democratic elections and looked so fine, the people were happy. Women sewed dresses printed with his delightful features, young men copied his mode of dress and eyewear, everyone joined in the campaign to clean up the streets. Clean up the Government. Clean up the country. People turned over their mattresses, bleached the steps in front of their houses and hosed down the walls, swept the dirt from their yards into the street from where it was miraculously removed. We were putting our house in order.
It felt good.
Some of the fat men who had financed the old President feared reprisals and left. Good riddance. Others, less high profile, stayed quiet and bided their time. Overnight it became impossible to find a single person who would admit to ever having supported the former President. The shopkeeper on the corner of the street who had voted for the party all his life gave his store a lick of paint and stencilled the new regime’s slogan on his shutters. Ambrose printed up business cards and boldly offered his services to the new leaders.
The President’s face in his mirror shades appeared on the front of international magazines. ‘The youngest leader in the world,’ said the headline. He had not even celebrated his thirtieth birthday. We were so proud of our baby-faced leader: so slim and strong, not bloated on bribes and flattery. So proud we handed him our anguish and hopes and fears to carry on those broad shoulders of his. The rest of the world looked on, smiling fondly. Or so we thought. We could not see they were really laughing at our foolishness.
In their neat and shining homes, people settled down to wait. And waited. And waited. And just as they were beginning to wonder how much longer we might have to wait, to fear our leader was just a pretty face with a silver tongue, he was toppled by another young man with equally babyish features though he was not quite as silver-tongued. So that when, in a tarnished voice, he announced we were to have elections for the first time in many years few believed it, and many didn’t hear at all because they had given up listening a long, long time ago.
A Monday. The year, 1996. I was in my late fifties.
I stood before my reflection in the mirror on my wardrobe, watching my own movements in the half-light. No electricity for three days running. The clothes I had put out the night before hung from the door: a trouser suit in pale blue linen. I discarded it and instead chose an orange-gold gown embroidered at the sleeves and around the neck. In the dimness of the morning I made up my face, applying the brushstrokes from memory: foundation, powder, lipstick, mascara. Then I slip
ped the gown over my head. From the shoe rack on the back of the door I chose a pair of gold shoes to match the gown, with open toes and high heels and a strap that encircled my ankle, bought from Bally of Bond Street. I slipped gold bangles on to my wrists, clasped a necklace around my neck and hooked earrings in the lobes of my ears.
Since the early hours angry sounds had rolled over the city. Sounds like thunder from the direction of the Army base on the hill. A booming and the spit and crack of lightning. But in the morning, no sign of a storm, nothing to be seen at all, only a light dew on the ground that soon transformed itself into pale, curling vapours and vanished in the heat of the day.
In the lane a single hawker called his wares outside houses that were still in darkness. Silence everywhere. No car horns, no chatter of schoolchildren. Most schools were closed for the day. The corridors and classrooms of those that remained open were empty, as parents kept their children at home. A pair of dogs scrapping, a cockerel trumpeting: these were the only sounds.
From the verandah I looked out over the street. A woman emerged from a house and threw a pan of dirty water into the road, ducked back inside without once looking over or offering a greeting. A rumbling, growing in the distance. An Army truck loaded with soldiers rolled past the junction swiftly on out of sight.
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