The Great Agony & Pure Laughter of the Gods

by Jamala Safari

  Landu’s letter focused on Risto’s ghosts. His wish to contribute to the rebuilding of Risto’s life was still in his mind, and he wanted to understand the reasons for Risto’s departure. So he had gone into his background, and had learned of Risto’s love for Néné. Landu had met a boy, Jeanvier, who had been part of Risto’s group in the forest; he had escaped from the militia in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park. Jeanvier had confirmed Risto’s account of Benny’s death; he also told him it appeared that Néné was pregnant, and the situation in the forest was still the same: abuse and killing. These stories turned Risto’s eyes into water fountains.

  They say that meditation heals bruised hearts and deep wounds in the inner being. Maybe hard work in a forgotten and solitary land and in the blowing desolation of a place like Marathan glues and repairs torn-up souls. It was healing the wounds of two fragile hearts, Merci, with his rebellious scars, and Risto, with his invisible earthquakes and haunting past. Merci had never thought he would become a refugee, but his journey was triggered by his anger against his parents. His father, an ex-senior manager at the Sucrerie de Kiliba, one of the biggest sugar-producing companies of the former Zaire, became unemployed when the company went bankrupt. Merci had been used to luxury, a flashy lifestyle, expensive clothes and pocket money. Things went upside down; first his family was unable to buy him a bus ticket to school; then the school fees became a problem. This didn’t bother Merci as much as not being able to buy fashionable shoes, or snacks at lunch breaks.

  He grew angrier, believing his parents hadn’t done enough to protect their good life. Soon he was rarely seen at home. He absented himself from his family’s meagre lunches and dinners. During the fragile so-called peace in Uvira, he spent his days hanging around the markets babbling with street kids and vendors. It was during this time that he narrowly escaped two kidnappings, one by the rebel movement and another by the Mai-Mai, who were forcing children to join their army. He soon realised his life was at risk.

  This was when Merci stole money from his father and headed off on the journey that had led him to the refugee camp, searching for gold in the sands of Mozambique. He now cultivated tomatoes in the desert. The journey had given him wisdom, and Risto had helped him to reconcile with his parents and family. Sometimes he would break the sacred silence that reigned in their little field and ask, ‘Who taught you so much about life?’ Risto had no answer. He did not believe he knew a lot about life; he was eager instead to learn about life.

  But Risto felt the unfairness; he had heard Merci’s story, but he had not shared with his friend the secrets of his own journey to Mozambique. Whenever he wanted to start telling him, his mouth went dumb and his heart sobbed.

  ‘My past has starving ghosts who wait for me to turn back so that they can swallow me,’ he told Merci.

  ‘But how can you go back in history?’ asked Merci, puzzled.

  ‘Not literally … but I have seen bad things, and talking about them will take me back to the horrors of that time. That is why I cannot speak about my past.’

  ‘Take it easy, brother … our friendship is strong, maybe it is not the right time. This will pass, believe me,’ Mercy would say, trying to comfort him.

  Risto enjoyed the early Sunday church services in the camp. These took place under a giant fruitless tree of unknown name whose branches created a double ceiling for the people in the straw and mud church. The church was packed with songbird women with magical tones and velvet-voiced men with trombone tunes. There was no pain on the faces of these forgotten people buried in a land of hopeless dreams, in a forgotten pocket of time; their singing was pure happiness and joy. It carried him back home, as if he was rocking on the majestic and sleeping Lake Kivu among brave fishermen as they performed their morning chanting. He saw again the colourful waving loincloths of women as they danced and sang for beloved friends soon to be wed in Bugobe village. He saw all these images as he dreamed of Congo and experienced the reality of the Sunday service in the Marathan refugee camp.

  The voices of these women and men were more coordinated than in an opera. Each one knew the power of his or her voice, its mysterious effects on the souls of those waiting for heavenly whispers. Each one knew his or her time, when and where to lead and when to hand over to the next person. Their feet were like drumsticks tapping over the wooden floor. They stepped strongly and rhythmically, clapping their hands as their heads moved in cadence. Their souls melted in spiritual enchantment, their bodies breathed in joyful vapours. A woman, travelling in time and spirit above the universe and heaven, with eyes closed, banged two metal rods together. A stinging and piercing sound arose, adding its noise to the mass choir.

  The church, which had no sophisticated electronic instruments, used African handmade instruments to invite the holy fire to cleanse people’s souls. What happened next left Risto in wonder. Two women and one man came forward with tambourines made of goatskin hooked onto their hips. As the three tambourines were hit by six sweaty hands, a penetrating sound cut through the air, and the whole congregation sang hymns from a little book they had. Then the tambourines stopped and everyone burst into prayer. They prayed in unknown tongues that Risto had never heard before; some jumped up, others kneeled down as they clapped their hands; one would have thought that the holy fire had burned them.

  When the prayers ended, the music became soft enough to change a rock into cream. It was a code indicating the need to remain quiet. Many people wiped away tears. Then the music stopped, and a man with a voice that was first velvet then harsh came forward with bible stories in different languages, Portuguese with French and Swahili translations. The crowd responded with hurrahs and hallelujahs. Risto thought that the Holy Spirit had descended to touch the heart of each person in the little church. The voice of the preacher whirled and the listeners followed like wind above a wave. But he was not preaching; he was giving a testimony, which left people in tears of joy this time; his entire life had been a miracle, he said.

  While the man was still giving his testimony, a leader with a stinging but soft voice started a song and the whole congregation took over; the soulful dances went on. People were lost in soothing hymns, and sometimes it would be an old man with a thick deep voice who would start the singing. Everybody else would follow until the preacher would finally stand up in his beautiful suit to lead people through the stories from the bible.

  Risto found the same scenes every Sunday. The pain and hardship that these people faced each new day were conquered by the celebration of faith, courage and love. Pain and suffering were ever-present in their lives. Many lived in tiny shacks, trading in any objects they could pick up, or working little fields for only a handful of vegetables. But these precious Sundays allowed them to conquer their hunger, their anger and grief at their lost inheritance, and to strengthen the dreams they carried within themselves.

  . Chapter 17 .

  Risto arrived for his second interview. The curious were already lurking. In a camp where interviews took place in absolute privacy, it was a riddle to interviewers how the following day, women in the flea market would debate the outcomes. Many believed the nightly gossip spirits of the camp told everything to Bi Maimuna, Mama RFI. Rumours in the camp revealed what went on behind closed curtains; night-watchers reported that two of the men who sat at the interview table had each been spotted leaving her house early in the mornings.

  Bi Maimuna was already in the office when Risto showed up; she greeted him in a rush as she passed. She said she had come to ask if any letters from the United States, a country that had agreed to take her for resettlement, had arrived. There were none. She left the office; Risto stayed in the little waiting-room scanning through magazines. Ten minutes hadn’t gone by before she appeared again; this time she wanted to know if Risto’s host family were at home. Yes, everyone was there. She left. A few minutes later, there she was again, itching to hear the mystery of the boy’s history, but she had no questions left to ask.

  She seemed puzzled by
the four chairs and the small table that stood in the interview room, as if there should have been an extra chair for her. She smelled of an expensive floral perfume; her lips were honeyed; her loincloth was wrapped above tight trousers. She was in her seductive clothes, some people had whispered as she crossed the flea market.

  ‘So, you know this is your last chance, eh Risto?’ she said as she leaned closer to his ear.

  Risto looked at her for a few seconds, and then went back to his magazine.

  ‘Are you talking today? You should trust me; I can help you with this. What don’t you want to say, what is it that your heart doesn’t wish to share? I can help, if you will tell me.’

  Risto ignored Mama RFI.

  ‘We will know all, boy; don’t think there is a secret in Marathan, this is our own small country,’ she exclaimed, as she left, furious.

  The interviewers started with their soft smiles, with easy questions, the news of the camp, and so on. Then they went on to ask about name, family, town and country of origin.

  ‘The whole camp is talking about your last harvest of tomatoes,’ said Mr Thomaso Dwanga, the only Mozambican at the interview table; he spoke a nice Swahili.

  ‘You know this camp talks about anything, even a rain that the heavens have not yet thought about.’

  The two refugees present, Mr Rashid and Mama Lemwalu, who represented the board on camp management, were astounded by the wisdom of the young boy; they had heard about it, but now they saw it for themselves.

  ‘You know this is your second and last interview,’ Mr Thomaso reminded Risto.

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘I believe you are ready to talk today,’ added Mr Thomaso.

  ‘Let me remind you, any lies will lead to rejection of your application for refugee status, and then deportation. We are here to help you formulate a good report for the United Nations. Ask questions when you don’t understand well.’ These were the wise words of Mama Lemwalu.

  ‘This interview will determine whether you qualify for refugee status or not; so tell us now, your reasons for leaving your country, Congo.’ It was Mr Thomaso speaking again, eyes flashing at Risto.

  ‘Yes … um …’

  Risto felt nervous; he didn’t like it. He had come to tell all and get it done with.

  ‘Could I have a glass of water, please?’ he asked.

  His throat was drying, talking was becoming difficult, he felt warmer. A glass rested in his hand, he coughed as he put it to his mouth, his shaking teeth were in danger of breaking the glass.

  He needed to be strong, he told himself. But in the limpid water, he saw his life in slow motion: Risto with his parents; Risto with his siblings; Risto with Néné in a wedding gown, playing children’s wedding games; Risto in military uniform in Kahuzi-Biega National Park; Risto with a machete butchering another child soldier who had disobeyed; Risto holding a smoking gun over a shaking, half-dead Mai-Mai soldier; Risto in Panzi hospital, his crutches by the bed, a crying girl with a baby; Risto running away from ghosts, voices; Risto in a broken boat on Lake Tanganyika. The pictures were so real, so vivid, they took him back, he was standing before a jury with eyes that judged, hearts that could not pardon, he was shaking without control.

  There was so much hot hair stuck in his muscles, in his arteries, in his stomach, that his nostrils couldn’t contain it. He swelled, he shook. The last picture in his head was of Néné putting the bracelet on his wrist. He wanted to touch that bracelet, but there was no more strength; he could hear voices calling his name, echoing from faraway mountains, the voices of Mr Thomaso and Mama Lemwalu, both calling together; he couldn’t see them.

  Mr Thomaso was the first to touch him, feeling for his heartbeat, racing, dying down. Mama Lemwalu had run to the phone. Mr Rashid had run for his car.

  The car left dust and wind in the flea market as it went, leaving women guessing at all sorts of theories.

  The clinic had no doctor, just a trainee nurse, who had nothing in mind but an injection for malaria. Mr Rashid refused; the poison in Risto’s bloodstream was not malaria. By the time a man in a white lab coat arrived, Risto was begging to be left alone. He knew his illness, he said; he needed to be alone.

  After this, Risto changed. He wanted to be away from any gathering. He enjoyed loneliness. Silence became his way of talking; people’s eyes annoyed him, their stories bored him. He would spend an hour looking at the moving branch of a tree, or sitting on a remote rock where he listened to the wind whispering. Nothing seemed interesting to him any longer, and he would sometimes cry for unknown reasons. In the early hours in the tomato field, he would sit in the sand singing lamentations, staring at the sky, asking heaven impossible questions. He wished time could go back; he wished he could touch his past; he wept and refused Merci’s consolation, and this in turn made Merci cry.

  Risto’s life story had become more important than Bi Maimuna’s braiding job. Every day, a large crowd gathered at her place to listen to her analysis of the situation. There were rumours that the interviewers might be fired because they had caused the boy’s collapse and withdrawal.

  Mr Thomaso had argued that Risto should be resettled in the United States, as he had clearly suffered great trauma and danger. Many in the camp consulted the most powerful witchdoctors and made sacrifices so that their applications would be successful; others fasted and prayed for weeks, then celebrated for days and nights when they were approved.

  But Risto’s attitude worried everybody; he ignored Mr Thomaso and his proposal. Nobody could understand the strange boy, or read his face, or guess what was in his mind, and Bi Maimuna had no fresh news, merely speculations. But an anonymous reporter was the only one with breaking news. She had seen Risto talking to himself as he held a bracelet against his chest, crying and saying strange words with no meaning.

  The entire camp expected something unprecedented, something that would leave a mark in the history of Marathan: if not a thunderstorm, death; if not death, madness. The majority agreed upon thunder and death; they read it in the eyeball of the sky; they said these two things followed the boy with the mysterious history. Some said what had happened to the boy was the result of a curse. Others believed that his ancestors were very upset. So they concluded that the boy had seen a warning sign; a storm was coming, death would follow.

  Christmas arrived in the camp, but it was invisible. Risto wanted to see Christmas lights, hear the voices of children singing Christmas carols, but there were none. There were no flowers on doors, no Christmas trees in houses; all was dull and sad. He thought that if he could speak to his family, maybe their voices would heal his wounds. But when he was told that the Cellphone Man had been relocated to Canada, he whirled in such a bizarre mood that he no longer understood who he was anymore. He wondered what his family were doing on this special day. He kept wishing there was a payphone nearby, but it was a sterile wish. He was stuck in a dull maddened camp, angry and hungry, missing his family.

  Christmas was a sacred time at home. A week before, the bells of the Catholic church rang each night with a special melody, and their lights and decorations could be seen from afar. At the same time, everyone sang carols, children shouted and called ‘Noël’ everywhere. There were decorations on the doors and gates of every home, and each child looked for flowers and a banana tree for the house. At home, Risto had been in charge of his family’s flower garden; his sisters needed his permission to cut even one flower, but at Christmas they were allowed to cut whatever they needed, and even to give flowers to friends. He cut a banana tree in the garden to make the Christmas tree; his father bought Christmas lights, and his sisters did the decorating with his mother.

  On Christmas Eve, his mother did not sleep; she would be busy baking and watching big boiling pots until midnight, when the streets sang that Jesus was born. At 4am, the whole family walked to church en masse. Christmas morning was the beginning of the party; the new clothes, the precious gifts that each child longed for. The nativity scene was performed at
churches, followed by much singing and sweets for each child. The party mood brought children from different faiths to the churches, mostly to those with sweeties to give away.

  In Marathan, Christmas existed on the calendar, but not in people’s lives; they were busy scratching for things at the flea market, searching for fuel, looking for basic things that could keep them alive. There was no gathering of family or friends in the camp. Risto realised how much precious family time he had missed, how much he had not celebrated. And this day hurt terribly; it took him back to rivers of memories he had seen and could no longer touch; he understood now that the simplest things gave his life the most meaning. The healthy noise of children in the streets, the soothing Christmas carols, the smiles on the faces of the parents: these precious memories had injured his fragile soul; he could no longer hide within them when his soul craved happiness.

  That night was very different to all his previous nights in the camp; he had hoped for Christmas dreams, but he didn’t know which way he should bend his body or position his head on his small mattress. He even used his shoes as a pillow and put a rock beneath them to raise his head a bit higher, but breathing was still difficult. Finally he sat on his bed, pushing hard to breathe. It didn’t change a thing, and the sweat was coming too.

  Merci sat beside him, watching his friend closely. ‘Talk when you feel like it, we all have a dark corner in our heart. Even though Congo has made us strangers to ourselves, it is sometimes good to release ourselves by opening our hearts. After all, we are all human,’ he added softly.

  He had many concerns about Risto’s health; he had often found him crying for unknown reasons, holding a bracelet to his heart; he feared that things might be going seriously wrong. Now Risto began mumbling strings of unstable stories, names that meant nothing to Merci, but which left Risto devastated, begging forgiveness from a Néné whom he had betrayed. He spoke of an Amani that he would kill to free Néné, he called out to Benny, he argued that he had never wanted to harm anyone, he was forced, he had to follow orders or die. But the name of Néné kept coming back: ‘Néné, I have betrayed you, Néné, I will come to save you, Néné, I am coming to tell you how much I love you,’ he said until Merci hushed him to sleep.