Ancestor Stones

by Aminatta Forna

  At seven o’ clock when it was light I sat down to breakfast with Yaya. The bread was stale. No point sending out for a fresh loaf, the Fula shops would certainly be shut. I spread a slice with margarine and chewed a mouthful but, though I drank a glass of water, my mouth was so dry swallowing was impossible. The hunger was gone, replaced in my stomach by a tight, hard ball. I made a cup of instant coffee with the water in the Thermos and sipped at it. Its empty, bitter taste was all I wanted.

  ‘Are you still going?’ Yaya asked me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, but a few dry crumbs caught in my throat and through them the word came out fluttering and small. I cleared my throat and coughed.

  ‘Yes,’ again. This time the sound of my own voice convinced me a little.

  We waited together in silence, not in our usual companionable silence, but a taut stillness in which every sound echoed and reverberated.

  The members of the women’s volunteer group had been told a car would be sent to pick us up. It never came. I wasn’t surprised at that. I gave the driver twenty minutes more, then I went to the telephone and dialled the number of the next woman. The receiver hissed faintly with static, the sound of the numbers clicking through, but again and again the call failed to connect. On the other side of the room Yaya fiddled with the knob of the transistor radio. There was none of the usual morning chatter, the endless announcements of births, deaths and marriages, the wishing of luck for exams, congratulations for scholarships, jingles for Mazola oil and Eveready batteries and Bennimix baby food. The dial passed station after silent station, like empty bus stops.

  The crackling again. Once, twice. This time from somewhere in the distance. Followed by the thunder of another truck. I crossed the room to look outside. Yaya called to me to stay away from the windows. I pressed my back to the wall and moved the curtain a fraction. Another truck, also full of soldiers, standing waving their guns in the air, singing songs as though they were on their way to a football match.

  From the radio a single voice rang out. It made me jump. That’s how nervous I was; my heart felt like a trapped animal trying to claw its way out of a cage. A woman’s voice, expressionless and staccato as an untrained actress reading somebody else’s lines, announced the streets were calm, the polls had opened and people were beginning to vote. The elections were under way.

  But the polls couldn’t be open. It was impossible.

  Rofathane. The village was all but encircled by a river that was a wide stream in some places and a deep channel in others: in many ways the place I grew up was almost an island. The path to the playing fields was crossed by means of a footbridge: the slender, swaying trunk of a single palm tree that rested between one bank and the other, spanning the swirling waters.

  My mother taught me to cross that bridge and at the same time she also taught me how to master my own fear.

  By that time Yaya had taken my place on my mother’s back, but was still too small to play with. I used to tag along behind the older children and one day followed them on their way to the playing fields. But when we reached the bridge I stopped, too frightened to go any further. Instead I stood on the opposite bank, listening to the screams and chatter fade away, watching the water rise and fall, seeing myself already plummeting down and disappearing into a whirlpool.

  The next time I came to cross the bridge I was with my mother. As soon as we neared it I clung on to her hand and dug my heels into the earth. My mother was unmoved. She picked me up and set me on the bridge, holding on to me lightly from behind.

  ‘Look straight ahead,’ she told me. ‘Don’t look back. And never look down. I’ll be right behind you.’ And with that she let me go.

  I dared not disobey my mother, so although my knees trembled I did as she bade me, and when in midstream I wavered she prompted me. ‘One foot in front of the other. Don’t think about anything else, just look where you’re going.’

  Urged on by her gentle certainty I summoned my courage up from the inside. And as the years went by, in this simple way I learned to have power over my own fear.

  I had forgotten that time. But that morning, after I listened to the words being spoken on the radio, I walked to the gate of the yard. My mind was set, I looked straight ahead, I ignored the little knot of fear rolling around in the empty hollow of my stomach.

  Yaya came with me to the gate. The look on his face told me he would have tried to persuade me to stay at home. But the look on mine told him I was determined to go. My look won. My brother put his hands on my shoulders, kissed me on each cheek and watched in silence as I started walking down the empty street.

  I dug into my handbag until I found the laminated badge and pinned it to my chest. I placed one foot in front of the other, I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead, I refused to think of the danger. One street later I banged on the iron gates of Redempta’s house. She was ready, waiting for me. Never doubted that I would come, she told me later. I waited a moment while she fixed her badge to her chest. We looked at each other, we laughed because fear hates the sound of laughter. And we walked on.

  Had anyone else been in the streets that morning they would have seen two middle-aged women, out for a stroll in the early light. But the words pinned to our bosoms told a different story: ‘Returning Officer. Presidential Elections 1996.’

  One by one we collected each woman from her home, until we walked two, three abreast down the main road. At every polling station along our route we dropped off a pair of women until, once again, it was just the two of us, Redempta and I.

  A great cotton tree with buttressed roots stood in the middle of the football ground in front of the schoolhouse. Beyond it, on the steps of one of the classrooms, sat a pair of soldiers. They stood when they saw us, began to move towards us. We, too, advanced at an almost identical pace, neither hurried, nor slow. Straight ahead, until we stopped and faced each other: the soldiers and their adversaries, two middle-aged women.

  What did we want? We indicated our badges. Reporting for duty, it crossed my mind to say.

  ‘It may be dangerous to be out today, there might be trouble,’ said the second soldier, as if we would be so easily cowed.

  ‘Then so be it,’ I said. ‘We are here to bring in the vote. Now we need to get on, this station was supposed to open an hour ago.’ For some seconds nobody spoke or moved.

  The soldiers were roughly the age of my two sons. I watched as the one in front of me bit his lower lip, twisted it and then suddenly dropped his gaze and stepped aside. We moved past him and into the building.

  ‘We will stay here for your protection,’ he called after us, in a voice that was hollow at the centre.

  ‘As you please,’ I replied.

  My knees shook as I walked, my hands holding on to the handle of my bag were slippery. Once inside we freed the three ballot boxes from the padlock and chains that held them together and set them out in a short, neat row. Just seeing them there, squat and imposing, somehow made me feel better. In a cardboard box along with paper and pens, we found the sign that said ‘Polling Station’ with a big, black arrow and this we placed outside the door. From her bag Redempta unpacked her own special cheese and jam sandwiches, a flask, a can of Peak milk and two cups. I watched her smooth, placid face beneath that terrible cherry wig she wore, absorbed in the task she had set herself.

  We settled down to wait.

  A man pushing an icebox of soft drinks in an old pram turned the corner, saw the soldiers, thought better of it and moved on with his load. The minutes passed. Dawn had been and gone, not a bird in sight. Outside the soldiers ground one cigarette stub after another under the heels of their boots. That and the scratching of the bats in the branches of the cotton tree, the gentle unfolding and wrapping of wings around bodies, were the only sounds. I could sense my fear skirting the building, attracted by the silence, looking for a way inside.

  What did I think of while we waited?

  I can only tell you what I didn’t think about. I did not think about whethe
r people would come. Nor did I waste the effort on wishing the soldiers away, because I knew they were there to frighten people off. I didn’t think about the trucks carrying more soldiers all over the city. I didn’t think about the other polling stations, sitting in pools of silence all over the country. Nor did I think about what we would do at the end of the day. Most of all I didn’t think about the fear clawing at the cracks in the windows, scuttling under the floorboards, crawling across the roof, looking for an opening.

  Instead I thought about that day, a long time ago, when I sat in a rice-weighing station wearing my favourite pair of red shoes.

  The smell of rice dust on a cool morning, so clean and pure. By contrast this room was sweltering and smelled of ink and sour milk. Then it had been the end of the rains, harvest time. The land had been opulent, bursting with hope and fertility. Now, halfway through harmattan, it was desiccated, a semi-desert. The sky was choked with dust. The city stank. Hope had shrivelled and crumbled away.

  When people are afraid they stay indoors. They close shutters, bolt doors, hide behind the flimsy tin and cardboard walls of their huts. That day even the police stayed inside, safe behind the thick walls of their solid British-built stations. Only the madmen wandered the streets, dazed and smiling, unexpected lords of the city.

  There is but one reason people would venture outside on such a day.

  Women’s voices as muted and soft as the music of water. I had fallen into a kind of wakeful reverie, at first the sound drifted over me as though it had escaped from my dreams. I stood up and walked across the room to the door. The standpipe was on the other side of the football ground. The women approached it up a steep, rocky path hidden between the houses, bordered by tall grass on either side. Some were carrying plastic containers and brightcoloured buckets. They were barely clad, a tank top over loose breasts, a lappa carelessly knotted around hips or hitched up and tucked into underwear. Theirs was hot, damp, effortful work.

  One of the soldiers, leaning against a door frame, had been picking his nose and flicking the hardened snot at an empty tin. At my appearance he straightened and followed my gaze in the direction of the women. I emptied the remains of my cup of coffee on the ground, nodded at him and we stood, both of us, watching.

  A young girl at the water pipe with a baby on her back looked over briefly. I waved. She hesitated, then raised her hand and waved back.

  ‘Morning-o,’ I called and she echoed my greeting before bending back to her work. I called again, to a woman in a black dress with a comb stuck into her partially braided hair. Then to a girl in an old print frock. Within moments the women had formed a cluster over the water pipe. From time to time one of them straightened and looked over in our direction. More women arrived, were beckoned over, set down their containers and joined the huddle.

  Beneath their slouched bodies I could feel the alertness, the muscle and sinew quickening under the skin, as the soldiers watched the water women beneath hooded lids.

  Redempta came and stood next to me. She was a big woman. I’m sorry you never knew her. She was not so tall, but wide and straight. We stood shoulder to shoulder. Redempta began to hum. I remember that, because at first I wondered what she was doing. And then quickly I realised and I joined in. It was a woman’s song, one that we were taught by our elders, we used to sing it on the way to the river with our water jars and again on the way back when they were full and heavy. Perhaps the soldiers knew this, perhaps they didn’t. They must have had mothers and sisters, so I guess they did. We hummed in unison and the sound of our humming carried across the empty ground to the women on the other side and gave birth to the miracle that followed.

  Those that still held on to their plastic containers set them down, they began to wander over. In the lead was the woman with the baby on her back, she was dressed in an old slip that fell off her shoulders, a green cloth tied around her head. There was something slightly unusual about her, something that made you want to stare. I think it was her eyes, they were hazel instead of deep brown, she was a fair skinned woman. Too fair for most people’s tastes, still I remember even then thinking that she was beautiful. I saw the caution in the tread of her feet on the ground, but nobody watching would ever have guessed it from the way she carried herself, the way all the women carried themselves, as though they had never known a day’s fear.

  I straightened the board with the sign on it. I went back inside to take my place. A few moments later I heard Redempta giving directions:

  ‘Collect a voting paper. Behind the curtain, doesn’t matter which one. Mark your X. One X only, against the name of the candidate of your choice. Sign your name, or make your thumbprint before you leave. Thank you.’

  After the women, word went around. Within a short time a queue had formed that flowed across the playing field and looped around the cotton tree. At first people came silent, shuffling, with lowered eyes. But when they saw us going about our business, when they saw how our will had triumphed over the soldiers who now stood uselessly to one side, they raised their heads, took their voting slips and pushed their thumbs into the ink pad with a flourish.

  A man with a cockerel under his arm shook my hand and offered me the bird as a gift. I told him I was just doing my duty. A woman pressed a pair of skinned oranges into my hands. This time I accepted, I handed one to Redempta and sucked the juice out of the other. I was thirsty. There were other gifts, but the greatest reward of all came those times I pushed back my chair and went to the door to stare, with wonder, at the long line of people. Once I looked over at Redempta who, at exactly the same moment, raised her head from the pile of papers she was sorting; our eyes met, she gave me a wink and the slow smile that was hers.

  Through the tightly woven streets in the east of the city, west to the whitewashed villas of the wealthy, south to the fishermen at the wharf, news that people were turning out to the polls spread through the city. Until finally, it reached the northernmost point, to the Army barracks on the hill with the painted cannon in the courtyard.

  Nobody heard them coming, we were too busy taking names and counting heads, filling in voting slips and making thumbprints. Maybe we were too busy telling ourselves how clever we were. Maybe we had stopped paying attention.

  The truck barrelled out of a side road, straight across the open space, sending people in every direction. From the canopy at the back jumped one, two, three — a dozen or more soldiers, guns at the ready. The people didn’t wait to find out what was happening. Inside the station papers fluttered up like doves as people scattered. I wanted to run after them, to shout: ‘Come back!’ I wanted to scream and weep to see them go like that, knowing they were gone for good.

  It was for our protection, the Commanding Officer told us. Tensions were rising in the city. All the time he was speaking his eyes roamed around, gathering details. He ignored us when we thanked him and said we did not need his protection. Voting here had been peaceful. He clicked his fingers and pointed. There, two soldiers set off at a trot. There, another two, guns at the ready. There, there, there! Men raced hither and thither at his command, and when the activity came to an end, I saw they had the entire polling station surrounded.

  Nothing to do then, but go back inside and wait.

  Redempta and I, neither of us had a word to say to each other. We moved about the room, tidying the papers that had fluttered up in the panic, setting the chairs and the table back. When we sat down again we did not meet each other’s eyes, but looked mutely at our hands. There was nothing left to do.

  In the heat the minutes stretched out, one by one. I don’t know how much time passed, less than an hour I would imagine although it felt like an eternity. Then came sounds of life from outside. I straightened in my chair, cocked my ear. Redempta raised her head. Together we crept over to the window.

  Advancing down the lane: boys, you know the ones, always hanging around hustling for a little money here and there, offering to watch your car, playing their music too loud. They came waving p
alm fronds, marching in choreographed mockery of the soldiers, in formation, until they were ranged on the opposite side of the football field. For a while they threw insults across at the soldiers, such colourful words, at another time I might have closed my ears. That day I listened and I watched intently.

  There was one lad, dressed in denim shorts and a ragged T-shirt. Not a ringleader. More like a younger brother or cousin, somebody on the edge of what was happening but who yearns to be at the centre. It didn’t take much to imagine his short life so far. Born with legs as skinny as bamboo that refused to grow straight but were bowed out and kept him home with his mother while the other boys were out playing. But later he became good at other things: mending stereos, fooling passers-by with card games. They give him a nickname and make him feel part of the gang. Most of the time. Except on the nights they put on their dark glasses and jeans and leave their homes, arms around each other, and come back in the early morning, with sour breath, smelling of cigarettes and perfume.

  This lad threaded his way through the line of his companions, found himself a vantage point and stood square to the soldiers, a rock concealed behind his back.

  The soldiers were a poorly trained lot. So many young men wanted to join the military; not for the pay which was miserable and on many months was never paid at all, but for the benefits — the unofficial ones, with which they supplemented their incomes. Everybody knew about the things they did, and yet even their parents and grandparents showed them respect, afraid to do otherwise. Everyone, that is, except the street boys. They had grown up side by side with the soldier boys in the same slum. The street boys knew which taunts were the most exacting. The soldiers stiffened and bristled to hear their mothers and sisters spoken of in such a way. An intake of breath, a sucking of teeth.

  And somewhere among the ranks of the soldiers the bow-legged street boy’s counterpart. One-time victim, now with a gun in his hand. Unconfident, nervy, his trembling forefinger wrapped around the trigger of his weapon.