After they had gone past, Mamvulane resumed her journey, which was without event until she had almost cleared the thicket. She could plainly see the houses to the back of her own, on NY 72, when suddenly her ears picked up a not too faraway buzzing.
She stopped to hear better from which side it came. But even as she stood, her ears straining hard to pinpoint the source of the disturbance, the sound grew to a cacophony, discordant and threatening.
Right about the time her ears told her to look a little toward her left, in the bushes hiding Fezeka High School from view, her eyes picked up tumultuous movement.
She stood as though rooted to the spot. From sheer terror.
Mesmerized, Mamvulane watched as the unruly throng crowded in on her. Leading the rabble were a few women and one elderly man. She realized then that a few of those whose heels were chasing their heads were not just ahead of the group—they were actually fleeing from it.
She needed no further notice. Turning from the spectacle approaching her, she ran toward the houses, now so desperately near.
Mamvulane ran. The other women and the old man with them ran also. They all ran. But the army of young people at their heels had speed born of youth on their side.
Just as she came to the T-junction, where NY 74 joins NY 72, she found her way blocked. Some of her pursuers had taken a shortcut by jumping over fences from NY 75 to NY 74 and were now ahead of her. In seconds, she was completely surrounded.
Without further ado, someone snatched her plastic bag from her. “Let us see what you have in that bag, Mama?” he said, ripping it open.
Out spilled her groceries. And as each packet tumbled onto the hard, concrete road, it split or tore open, spilling its guts onto the sand, and there joined other debris that had long made its home there.
Happy and willing feet did the rest. Stamping and kicking at her food so that everything got thoroughly mixed up with the sand and with other food items. The samp and the mealie meal and the sugar and the dried milk and the coffee and the broken candles and the paraffin—everything became one thing. All those things, mixed together, became nothing. Nothing she or anyone else could use.
“Sigqibile ngawe ke ngoku, Mama. We are finished with you,” announced her tormentors.
Walking home, her knees weak from the encounter, Mamvulane met one of her neighbors, attracted by the noise. “Mvulane, what is happening? Why are all these people staring at you?”
“I can’t talk now, Mandaba,” answered the other, not pausing in her unsteady walk. Mandaba, suspecting the cause of her neighbor’s reticence and disheveled appearance, remarked, “Hayi, you are naughty, Mamvulane.” To which the latter said not a word but just continued walking to her home as though the other had not spoken at all.
When she got to her gate, Mamvulane shooed away the straggling group, mostly curious children and one or two adults, that was following her. What the comrades had done to her had disarranged her. But her heart grieved. And that was definitely not on their account. About the comrades, she supposed she should be grateful they had done her no bodily harm. She remembered the man Mdlangathi had told her about the previous evening—the man the comrades had forced to drink Jovel. That man, after he had brought up little chunks of meat, and of course the liquor that had caused him all the trouble to start with, had eventually brought up blood. His own. So, when all is said and done, I suppose I’m lucky, Mamvulane told herself after she had calmed down some. At her home. But, her eyes smarting, she could feel her heart bleed. Because of the other thing.
Her husband was home when she got there. “What happened to you?” he asked, seeing her disheveled appearance. For although she had not been beaten, she had been manhandled.
Mamvulane recounted her experience while her husband listened to her in dumb silence. And then she told him, “ … and among the comrades who did this to me, there was Mteteli, our son.” There, it was out in the open. She had mentioned the despicable, unmentionable thing that had gnawed at her heart since the comrades had fallen upon her.
When she said that, mentioned Mteteli as one of her attackers, she burst out crying. Mdlangathi started up and for a moment his wife thought he was going to go out of the house in search of their son right there and then.
But no, after two or three hesitant, halfhearted steps, he sat down again and quietly inquired, “You saw him? With your own eyes, I mean?”
“Oh, why wouldn’t I know my own child, even in a crowd.”
“Mmmhhmh.” That is what Mdlangathi said. Only that and nothing more. On being told that his son was part of the crowd that had spilled his wife’s groceries on the sand, all that was heard from him was that sigh. That is all.
Mamvulane waited for more reaction from her husband, usually so easy to reach boiling point. But no, not today. Today he kept so calm that his wife became resentful of exactly that calmness that she had so frequently and desperately sought from him. Today, when she least expected it or welcomed it for that matter, here was her priceless husband displaying remarkable sangfroid.
“I’m glad, Father of Fezeka, to see that you appreciate the risk I took, nearly getting myself killed by these unruly children, so that you would have something to eat.” She spoke in a quiet voice. Inside, however, she was seething. What did he think! That she had gone to Claremont only so that she could buy a loaf of bread and stuff it down her own gullet? That would have saved her all the trouble and bad name she, no doubt, had earned herself.
But Mdlangathi would not be drawn to a fight and, after seeing that, Mamvulane soon found her anger dissipate.
When she had rested a little and was sure there would be no follow-up action on the part of the comrades, Mamvulane went to her bedroom and closed the door. When she emerged, in her hand was a tray full of sausage. There were also two loaves of bread and a plastic packet of powdered milk.
“That is all I was able to save,” she told her husband, showing him her spoils. “To think I spent more than fifty rands at Pick ’n Pay … and that is all that I was able to save!”
“But how?” he wanted to know.
And she knew he wasn’t talking about the money she had spent.
For the first time since she had come into the house, harassed and agitated, Mamvulane allowed a slow smile to appear on her face. Her eyes widening in mock disbelief, she exclaimed, “Tyhini, Tota kaFezeka! Don’t you think that a woman should have some secrets?” And refused to divulge how she had achieved the miracle.
As she prepared the meal, she wondered what he would say if she were to tell him that she had girdled the sausage around her waist, put the packet of milk in the natural furrow between her breasts and carried the loaves of bread flattened in the hollow of her back, one atop the other so that they formed a pipe. Ah, Mdlangathi, she thought, feeling the smile in her heart, these are not times for one to be squeamish.
But thinking about the whole indaba later as she stirred her pots, now and then peering into this one and then, a moment later, the other one, she was a bit miffed. Mdlangathi had been more upset about the drunkard the comrades had forced to regurgitate his beer than over what they had done to her. Imagine that! A man to have more sympathy for someone like that than for his own wife. She was sure she didn’t know what to make of it. His lack of indignation on her behalf galled her, though.
On the other hand, she had to admit relief that he had not carried on the way he had about the stupid drunk. A fight might have broken out between father and son. Mteteli had become quite cheeky with this new thing of children who had secrets from their parents and went about righting all the wrongs they perceived in society. Yes, she told herself, perhaps it was just as well his father said nothing to the boy, or didn’t show anger on her behalf. Anger that he had participated in her humiliating attack, which had resulted in the loss of her groceries.
Mamvulane dished up and father and children fell on the food as camels coming upon an oasis after crossing a vast desert.
As usual, Mteteli had missed di
nner—out attending meetings. “Wife, times have truly changed,” said the husband. “Do you realize that all over Guguletu and Nyanga and Langa, not just here in our home, people are having dinner, with their children only God knows where?”
“You are quite right,” replied his wife. But seeing that he was getting angry, she added, “But you must remember that our children live in times very different to what ours were when we were their age.”
“And that means we must eat and go to bed not knowing where this boy is?”
Although he didn’t name names, she knew he meant Mteteli, for he was the only one of the children not in. The girl, Fezeka, for some reason that wasn’t clear to the mother, was not that involved in the doings of the students, although she was the older by three years.
“Well, that is what is happening in all homes now. What can one do?”
“Mamvulane, do you hear yourself? Are those words that should be coming from a parent’s mouth? ‘What can I do?’ Talking about the behavior of her own child?”
“He is your child too, you know. But all these children are the same. They don’t listen to anyone except each other.”
“Hayi! You are right, my wife. I don’t know why I argue with you when what you say is the Gospel Truth. Here I am, having dinner when I do not know the whereabouts of one of my own children. Very soon, dishes will be washed. Then we will say our evening prayers and go to bed. And still we will have no idea where Mteteli is. And you tell me there is nothing to be done about that. Not that I disagree with you, mind you.”
“Well, what could you do, even if you knew where he was right now. What could you possibly do?” Mamvulane stood up, gathered the dishes, and took them to the kitchen, where Fezeka and the two youngest children were having their meal.
When Mamvulane returned to the dining room, Mdlangathi, who was smoking his pipe, said, “Do you know what’s wrong with the world today?” And quickly answered himself, “All of us parents are very big cowards. The biggest cowards you have ever seen.”
She hummed her agreement with what he was saying. But in her heart she didn’t believe that what he said was wholly true. Powerless, perhaps. That is what she thought parents were—overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness in the face of the children’s collective revolt, where the mildest child had become a stranger: intransigent, loud of voice, and deadly bold of action.
“Mama, kuph’ okwom ukutya? Where is my food, Mama?” asked a grumpy voice in the dark. It was Mteteli, all right. The mother knew at once. Only he had not had supper. Only he would come in the middle of the night, demanding food when no one had sent him on an errand anywhere that he should have been absent during dinner.
“My son,” replied Mamvulane without bothering to strike a match and light the candle standing on a small round table next to the bed. “I am surprised you should ask me for food when you know what happened to the groceries I went to get in Claremont.”
“Are you telling me that no one has had food tonight, here at home?” His tone had become quite belligerent.
Before the mother said a word in reply, Mdlangathi roared at his son: “Kwedini! What gives you the right to go about causing mischief that I, your father, have not asked you to perform and then, as though that were not grief enough to your poor mother here, come back here in the middle of the night and wake us up with demands of food? Where were you when we were having dinner?”
“Awu, Tata, what is this that you are asking me? Do you not know that a war is going on? That we are fighting the hateful apartheid government?”
“Since when is this woman lying next to me the government? Is this not the woman you and your friends attacked this evening?”
“Mama was not attacked. She was disciplined for …”
But Mdlangathi sprang out of bed and, in the dark, groped his way toward the door, where he judged his son was standing. Grabbing him by the scruff of his neck, he bellowed, “She was whaat? Are you telling me you have a hand to discipline your mother? What has happened to your senses? Have they been eaten away by intoxicating drugs?”
By now, Mteteli’s teeth were chattering from the shaking he was receiving at the hands of his father.
Quickly, Mamvulane lit the candle.
Startled by the light, the two grappling figures sprang apart. Both were breathing heavily.
“Are you fighting me?” quietly, the father asked his son.
“You are beating me.”
“I asked you a direct question. Are you lifting a hand, fighting with me, your father?”
“All I want is my food. I’m not fighting anyone,” said Mteteli sullenly.
“I suggest you get out of my house and go and seek your food elsewhere. I do not work hard so that I shall feed thugs.”
“Now I am a thug because I want my food?”
Mdlangathi had had enough of sparring with Mteteli. Abruptly, he told him, “Go and look for your food from the sand, where you threw it away when you took it from your mother by force.” Fuming, he got back into bed and covered himself with the blankets till not even his hair could be seen.
“Yes, Mteteli,” Mamvulane added. “Remember all the sand, and samp you and your group threw down onto the sand, that was to be your supper. You spilled your supper on the sand out there—birds will feast on it on the morrow.
“Andithethi loo nto mna, ngoku.”
“Mteteli, your father goes to work tomorrow morning. Leave us alone and let us have some sleep. You are the one who doesn’t have time for doing this or that, you come and go as you please, but don’t let that become a nuisance to us now, please.”
“Mama, I don’t know what all this fuss is about. All I said I want, and still want, is my food. Where is my food?” Mteteli had now raised his voice so high people three doors away put on their candles. The whole block heard there were angry words being exchanged at Mdlangathi’s house.
Mteteli, angry at the reception he was getting, and hungry, having gone the whole day without eating anything substantial, approached his parents’ bed and stood towering over them, his bloodshot eyes trained on his mother.
“Hee, kwedini,” came the muffled sound of his father’s voice from under the blankets. “What exactly do you want my wife to do for you, at this time of night?”
“I want my food.”
“That we tell you it is where you spilled it on the sand doesn’t satisfy you?” Mdlangathi stuck his head out of the blankets again.
“Andithethi loo nto mna, ngoku. I’m not talking about that, now.”
Under his bed, Mdlangathi kept a long, strong, well-seasoned knobkerrie. A flash of bare arm shot out of the blankets. A heave, and he’d strained and reached the stick.
Before Mteteli fully grasped what his father was up to, his father had leapt out of bed and, in one swoop, landed the knobkerrie on Mteteli’s skull.
“CRRAA-AA-AAKK!”
The sound of wood connecting with bone. The brightest light he had ever seen flashed before Mteteli’s startled eyes. A strong jet of red. The light dimmed, all at once. A shriek from the mother. In a heap, the young man collapsed onto the vinyl-covered floor.
“Umosele!” That is what people said afterwards. One of those cruel accidents. How often does one stroke of a stick, however strong, end up in a fatality? He must have ruptured a major artery.
The boy bled to death before help could get to him, others said.
Yes, the mother tried to get one of the neighbors to take him to the hospital, you know ambulances had stopped coming to the townships because they had been stoned by the comrades. But the neighbor refused, saying, “Your son can ask someone who doesn’t drink to take him to hospital.” Apparently, he was one of the men the comrades had forced to bring up, forcing them to make themselves sick because they had “drunk the white man’s poison that kills Africa’s seed.”
Of course, later, some people condemned the man who had refused to take Mteteli to the hospital. But others said he taught the comrades a lesson long overdue. And
others still pointed at the father and said, “Why should someone else bother about a dog whose father wouldn’t even ask for permission to come to his funeral?”
Yes, many wondered about that. About the fact that Mdlangathi was not denied permission to come to bury his son but had not requested that permission from the prison officials. That was something even Mamvulane found hard to understand. Harder still for her to swallow was his answer when she’d asked him about his reasons for the omission.
“Andifuni.” That was all he would say. “I do not want to.”
However, so did she fear being bruised even more by events that seemed to her to come straight out of the house of the devil himself that she could not find the courage to ask what he meant: whether what he did not want was to come to the funeral or to ask to be allowed to attend the funeral. She did not know which would hurt her more. And did not dare find out.
—1996
Nuruddin Farah
(BORN 1945) SOMALIA
Often described as a writer’s writer, Nuruddin Farah is one of the most prolinc—and most influential—novelists from the continent. The praise and devotion of his readers have stemmed in large part from his extraordinarily sensitive portraits of African women. From a Crooked Rib (1970), his first novel, was welcomed by feminists as the groundbreaking story of a Somali woman constrained by her traditional world. Western readers, confused by the author’s name, assumed that he was a woman and wrote him letters addressed as “Ms. Farah.”
Farah’s first novel was followed by A Naked Needle, in 1976, and then the trilogy subtitled “Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship”: Sweet and Sour Milk (1979), Sardines (1981), and Close Sesame (1983). A second trilogy—again with strong political overtones—began with the publication of Maps (1986) and Gifts (1993) and will conclude with Secrets. Farah has also published essays and occasional short stories.
Farah was born in the Italian Somaliland, in Baidoa, in 1945, and grew up in Kallafo, under Ethiopian rule in the Ogaden. The ethnically and linguistically mixed area of his childhood contributed to his early fascination with literature. He spoke Somali at home but at school learned Amharic, Italian, Arabic, and English: “We learned that one received other people’s wisdom through the medium of their writing … .”
Under African Skies Page 33