When the Tiger Roars

by Graeme Cann

  When Mishka was a teenage girl and herself a student in the one-room school, Alofa was still the Father-Mother of Loloma and her grandfather Ofa encouraged her to spend as much time as possible with Alofa’s wife, Misha, after whom she had been named. The names Mishka and Misha have the same meaning: “woman of grace.” Mishka always believed that Misha was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, and for her to sit and listen to this gracious lady tell the story of her life as a child, and the stories of her escape from Sampa, and her life in Loloma, was the greatest privilege that she could have imagined. In later years she realised that it was much, much more than that. It was a remarkable revelation that would inform and influence her entire life. Now at the age of eighty, she understood that Misha had not only been her friend, but in a magnificently beautiful way had become the source of an all-revealing light that had illuminated her understanding of the most central and most important issues that the people of Loloma would face as they laboured to rebuild what Sampa once had. To fully appreciate what shaped and drove Mishka as a leader and reformer, we must hear and understand Misha’s story as Mishka had done.

  Misha was born in Sampa, the eldest of four girls. Her father was an Elder of the village and had served under the evil and cruel leadership of Kaluba. He was a military officer and was responsible for enforcing the conscription of young men into the army, and the barbaric way he treated the boys under his command was replicated in his own home. Often drunk and always angry, he would quickly resort to violence. His wife, Misha’s mother, lived in constant fear and for almost as long as Misha could remember, carried some physical injury. So accustomed did they become to the incessant violence, the children simply ignored their mother’s black eyes, the bruises, the swellings, and even on more than one occasion, a broken limb, because it was more often the rule than the exception.

  Misha came to learn later in life that many of her mother’s beatings and injuries came as a result of her protecting her daughters. One dark day Misha returned from school to find that her mother had gone, taking with her the younger girls. She had fled not to another house in Sampa, but across the river and into the mountains, where she sought refuge in one of the many small villages that nestled amongst the hills.

  It was the beginning of four unimaginable years of terror for twelve-year-old Misha. No longer allowed to go to school, she was forced to stay in the house and be her father’s “wife.” During the day, locked in the house, it was at least peaceful. She would clean the house, wash the clothes, and cook the food, knowing that should her father be displeased with her work, she would be punished, and when it was done she would sit looking wistfully through the bars that her father had installed on the windows. Sometimes in the distance she would see a young man of about sixteen years of age going about his duties as a soldier. She had known Alofa all her life, and secretly dreamed of him one day being her husband. She dared not call out to him, however, because she was frightened and ashamed. The beatings she received from her drunken father were bad enough, but they faded into insignificance when compared to the horrific nights spent in his bed. She could never forget the odour of his body, the smell of the wine on his breath, and the terrible, unbearable pain. And when it was all over and he would fall into a drunken sleep, she would creep from the bed and lie in a dark corner of the house in a foetal position.

  Sometimes when she fell asleep, she would dream that Alofa would come and sweep her up in his arms and carry her to the river. In her dream she would swim in the river until she felt clean and pure again.

  When Misha was fourteen years old, she fell pregnant to her father. At first she kept it a secret from him. Sometimes she hoped that the beatings he gave her and the incessant sexual violence would cause her to lose the baby, but such thoughts only amplified her feelings of guilt. On the night the baby was born, her father went out and when he returned he brought his mother with him. She helped deliver the baby boy, and when she had attended to Misha she left without a word, taking the baby with her. Misha never saw her little boy again.

  Two days after she gave birth, she became gravely ill and feared that she would die. So afraid did she become that when one morning she saw Alofa pass by her house, she gathered all her strength and courage and cried out his name. He heard her and broke into the house by smashing the door down and took her to his mother’s house, where he also lived. Misha had no memory of the next few days but according to Alofa, her life hung in the balance. Her fever, driven by a horrific infection that had invaded her body, resulted in her being in a deep coma. Sometime later, when she emerged from the coma, she found Alofa and his mother sitting by the bed where they had been for several days. It would be many months before she became physically well again, but in that time she experienced real love and care for the first time in her life.

  As her strength gradually returned, she spent many hours sitting by the river, often alone and sometimes with Alofa. She felt emotionally numb, physically broken, and spiritually confused. She engaged in a desperate search for answers to the unceasing questions that plagued her mind. For her it seemed that it was all about betrayal. Her mother had betrayed her by leaving the family home and exposing her to the violence and sexual perversity of her father. Her father had betrayed her, because instead of being the one who loved and protected her, he had become the predator who left her ashamed, broken, and bewildered. Her grandmother had also betrayed her. She had thought that she had come to help her give birth, but she had only come to cover up her son’s horrendous actions and to destroy all the damning evidence. But the most puzzling and frightening thought was that the Great Creator had also betrayed her. Had she not believed that the Creator would keep her safe and come when she was in danger and deliver her from the evil that was being perpetrated on her? Why had there been no deliverance? Was it because she was evil and all that happened to her was punishment for her sins? She even wondered if the Great Creator was a man like her father and had found some sort of perverse pleasure in watching her being beaten and raped.

  She grieved deeply for the little boy that she had carried but never held. She was angry not only with her murderous grandmother, but again with the Great Creator who had been implicit in stealing him from her. She felt overwhelming guilt that she had not been able to protect him, and as she sat by the river she wept copious tears for her baby and herself. Whenever Alofa joined her, her tears dried up and she was left only with overwhelming shame, guilt, and sadness in the presence of this gentle and deeply caring man.

  She would be eternally grateful to Alofa and his mother not only for their loving nonjudgemental acceptance of her and their sacrificial care of her during her convalescence, but also for the protection they became against her father whom now she greatly feared. He had found where she was and instead of being grateful for the intervention that had saved her life, he had arranged for Alofa to be expelled from the army and sought to have him gaoled for breaking into his house. The only thing that saved Alofa from doing gaol time was that Kaluba was his grandfather and he did not at that time want to suffer the embarrassment of having a grandson who was incarcerated for a criminal offence. At first her father demanded that she return to his house, but to her astonishment she heard Alofa declare his intention to marry her, and therefore she would no longer be her father’s sex slave. After a time her father moved another girl into his home, and Misha could well imagine the nightmare that she now endured.

  There was no doubt in Misha’s mind that she loved Alofa, but there was no way that she could convince herself that he truly loved her. How could any man love a woman who was so deeply and profoundly damaged? Pity her, perhaps, even feel some sense of obligation toward her, but not love her. In her shame, she thought of herself as dirty, used, and discarded. She felt disconnected from her sexuality. She despised her body, and both inwardly and outwardly she would shrink even from Alofa’s mother when this loving lady reached out to touch or embrace her. She could not find the words that expressed her deep se
nse of worthlessness.

  One evening as they sat by the river, Alofa spoke of his love for her. As she listened, the sensation she felt was that of someone listening to a story about someone else. He remembered when she was twelve and he was sixteen, and how he had decided then that he would wait for her to grow up and when she was sixteen and he was twenty, he would marry her. He talked of her beauty and of her courage. He spoke sadly of the time that she had no longer been visible in the village because she had become her father’s prisoner. He told her of how every day for two years he had deliberately passed by her house, hoping that she would see him and somehow understand that he was waiting for her. He wept as he recalled that day when he heard her calling his name and how he had come to the window and saw her lying on the floor. He spoke about his feelings of fear and anger as he broke down the door, swept her up in his arms, and carried her to his mother’s house. His anger was toward her father, and his fear was that he was too late to save her. He recalled the hours he had sat by her bed willing her to survive, watchful for the slightest sign of recovery and struggling to control the panic that he felt at the thought of her dying.

  When they were alone together, he would sometimes reach out to touch her or to hold her hand and she would involuntarily recoil from his touch. She had hated herself when this happened because in her mind she had known there was no need to be afraid of Alofa. On one hand she ached to be touched by him, held by him, but on the other, the sheer horror of her father’s fondling and groping controlled her physical responses. She had told him that she could never love him the way he would want her to. She believed that her capacity to experience the joy and comfort of real intimacy had been destroyed forever. She was not the pure eager virgin that she dreamt she would be when she married; she was second hand, discarded, and profoundly wounded emotionally and physically. She had sometimes tried to be angry with him, so that she would have an excuse to push him away. She would deliberately misinterpret something he said or did and then angrily withdraw into herself. Almost immediately, however, she would feel terribly afraid that he would pull away from her. She hated the neediness that he seemed to ignite in her, but she was determined never to lower the protective wall that she had erected around herself.

  Whenever Misha told her story in the years that followed, she would recall three encounters that featured prominently in her search for answers and in her ultimate healing. And because she was to exercise a very significant role in the healing of generations of women in Loloma, it is important for us to know what they were.

  Alofa continued to speak to her of their marriage, and Misha continued to insist that even though she loved him and he loved her, marriage was out of the question. When she was alone by the river she would be aware of a fierce battle raging in her mind. She could not deny the deep sense of love and neediness she felt for him, and it frightened her almost as much as the thought of being married. She felt that she could not live with him because of her self-revulsion and fear, nor could she live without this man who loved her like no other. Sometimes the battle would rage until she was screaming her pain, her hatred, and her outrage at the sky. Then exhausted she would lay on the grass by the river and weep herself to sleep. One day as she awakened from one of these sorrow-induced slumbers, she became aware that Alofa’s mother was sitting beside her.

  Misha loved Alofa’s mother more that she thought was possible. It was hard for her to believe that this beautiful, gentle, compassionate woman was the granddaughter of Rubin, the man who had been implicit in the murder of the last Mother-Father of Sampa, and the daughter of Kaluba, the evil tyrant who ruled over Sampa at this very time. She evinced no fear and no anger, and wherever she went she seemed to exude an aura of peace and calm. As she awoke, Misha felt that peace envelope her.

  “I have been looking at the river,” Alofa’s mother said simply, “and I have been thinking of the stories it could tell. It has been flowing continuously in this very spot for thousands of years. For much of that time its purpose was to build up this beautiful valley. Several times a year when the rains came it would flood, covering the floor of the valley with the rich fertile soil that it carried down from the mountains. Deer and antelope grazed on the native pastures and drank from the river.

  “One day, the Great Creator placed our ancestors, Alpha and Maria, in this valley that had been so lovingly prepared for them by the river. Ever since then, generations of Sampians have come and gone and all the stories, both grand and glorious and sad and tragic, have been witnessed by the river. The valley has changed, the people have changed, but the river has stayed the same, both in constancy and purpose. It continues to serve the people of the valley, whether they are at peace with nature or at war with it. It does not need to be summoned or directed. It never departs from the valley nor does it direct its flow elsewhere. It is all-knowing, all-powerful, and ever-present. If the river stopped flowing, the pastures, the trees, the animals, and the people would die. It does not exist to make bad people good, it exists to preserve and promote life, so that people can choose to do the same.

  “For hundreds of years the Sampians chose to do that. Under Abele’s Covenant they lived at peace with each other and with the tigers of the rainforest. They welcomed the strangers and nurtured the poor. They treated each other with love and dignity. My grandfather and his followers changed all that and since then we have raped the forest, killed its animals, and lived in fear of the tiger and each other. My father and your father continue to choose to perpetrate evil. Sampa is no longer safe. But the river keeps flowing. It keeps lovingly watering the land, and people like Alofa see it and know that hope for the world lies with those who preserve and promote life without fear.”

  “And people like you,” whispered Misha through her tears.

  “Misha, the river is like the Great Creator who chooses to give and preserve life, knowing that there will always be people who choose to do the same. Just as the constant flow of water overcomes the power of a drought, so the constant flow of love from the Great Creator overcomes the power of evil. Just as a river can transform a desert into a fertile plain, so the Creator can transform a desolate heart into a fountain of love. The Creator, Misha, is all-knowing, all-powerful, and ever-present.”

  Misha allowed Alofa’s mother to embrace her and for the first time she returned the embrace. She clung to her, instinctively aware that when this amazing lady spoke of the transformation of a desolate heart into a fountain of love, she was not speaking of Misha but of herself. For the first time Misha realised that the reason Alofa’s mother could so deeply empathise with her pain was that she had been where Misha was now. After a long time they released each other, and Alofa’s mother left as quietly as she had come.

  Alone once more, Misha felt that instead of sinking into what to her always seemed like a deep, dark mire, she was bathing in a soft, golden light. Outside the globe of light, standing in the shadows, was her father. He was hurling fiery darts toward her and they pierced the globe of light around her, striking her body and causing her pain, but she did not die. Her father became increasingly angry because he could not destroy her and at the height of his fury, he suddenly began to diminish in size. Although he kept screaming obscenities and abuse, he continued to shrink until with one last frustrated scream, he completely disappeared. Then Alofa and his mother stepped into her golden globe, and she was no longer afraid. She knew now that the Creator had not refused to come when she had called, but was there all the time, preserving and promoting life without fear.

  Misha’s second life-changing encounter occurred only days after the first. She had been walking along the riverbank with Alofa when he had gently taken her hand in his. She did not recoil from him but found herself gripping his hand. “Misha,” he said, “I had a dream last night. In my dream I saw a flower standing in what at first appeared to be a desert. The flower was the darkest red, indeed it was almost black. It stood tall, but its head was bowed toward the ground. The earth out of which i
t had grown was dry and stony, and the plants that grew around it were thistles and other noxious weeds. I wanted to rescue this beautiful flower from its depressing surroundings, and I reached out to pluck it from the ground. Each time I did so the flower would lean away from me so that I could not reach it.

  “In my dream, I saw nearby a spade, and a voice that seemed to come from the flower told me to cultivate the land around the flower and to clear away the stones and the noxious weeds. When I did that, I looked and there was a great river close by and the voice told me to dig a channel from the river so that water could flow to the flower. I dug the channel as the voice told me to, and as I watched, the ground around the flower became saturated, and the flower lifted its head. Its colour began to change from the beautiful but sad dark red to the most beautiful gold, and around the flower, where all the stones and noxious weeds had been, all kinds of other flowers sprang up, all with their faces turned upward toward the first one. Then to my amazement, as I continued to watch spellbound, the magnificent golden flower kept growing and changing, until, my darling Misha, it was transformed into your image.”

  Misha never forgot the feeling of pure happiness that flooded her heart that day. Ever since her encounter with Alofa’s mother, she had known a growing peace as she continued to live in her golden globe. What she had begun to feel was that she was no longer tormented by that aching neediness for Alofa and the accompanying fear of intimacy. Instead she was filled with a sense that she had been prepared by the painful events of her life to give love to others and particularly to Alofa, and it seemed to her right now that his dream confirmed that these new feelings were real. They had walked in silence for a while, but now they stopped. She turned, and he drew her close to him. She lifted her face toward his and their lips met. For a long time they embraced each other in silence. Then he said, “You, Misha, will always be my golden flower.”