by Andrea Eames
We all went to church every week, even Steve. We gathered together, sang songs and comforted each other.
‘God is working in Zimbabwe,’ said one of the banners above the altar.
We prayed for peaceful change. Our priest was openly political, and in his sermons he talked about Mugabe and his plans to take the white-owned farms.
‘He’s going to get himself into trouble,’ said Steve.
‘It’s his duty to speak out,’ said Mum.
‘Ja, well, sometimes it’s better to fly under the radar and not get yourself arrested,’ said Steve. ‘When he’s chucked into Chikurubi Prison he won’t be any use to anybody, will he?’
When we sang ‘Jabulani Africa’, people stood with their hands up and tears leaking from their eyes. It almost felt like we were talking to God.
There was a march for peace planned for the first day of April. April Fool’s Day, a Saturday. They told us about it at church. Lots of people were planning to go, even the children and the very old people. They would carry banners. ‘No to violence’. ‘No to intimidation’. ‘No to military rule’. We all helped to make them.
‘Can we go on the march, Mum?’ I asked.
‘Don’t be bluddy stupid,’ she said.
‘Kurai’s going.’
‘Kurai’s mad, you know that.’
‘Why can’t we go? We have to do something.’
‘No, we don’t.’
‘It’s a peaceful protest.’
Mum turned to me. ‘Do you still think there’s such a thing as a peaceful protest? Don’t be bluddy stupid.’
I locked myself in my room and sulked, but Mum paid no attention. And neither did Steve, who I thought might be more sympathetic. ‘There will be trouble,’ he said. ‘You just watch.’
It took a great deal of careful planning. Kurai’s parents were not happy with her going either, but her older brother was going into town under the pretence of getting a part for his car. Kurai had persuaded him to let her tag along, and I was going with.
‘Is it all right if I go to Kurai’s house on Saturday?’
‘I thought she was going to that bluddy march.’
‘No, her parents won’t let her.’
‘All right then.’
‘Tafadzwa’s going to pick me up.’
Mum was suspicious of Tafadzwa. He drove with his windows down and rap music on his car radio, and he wore thick sunglasses that hid his eyes.
‘He’s a good driver,’ I said.
‘I don’t know how he can be a good driver with all that racket in his ears.’
‘Can I go?’
‘Ja.’
I considered asking Sean to come too, but I had an uncomfortable feeling he would tell me I was being stupid, as Mum had.
On the day of the march, the house was very quiet. Steve sat in the dining room, pasting newspaper clippings into a scrapbook. Mum was gardening. Tatenda and Saru went about their work.
The gate intercom rang. ‘I’m off,’ I shouted and ran down the driveway.
‘Take care!’ Mum shouted back.
In Harare, the air was fresh in an early-morning way that overrode the smell of petrol fumes and garbage. Hundreds of people stood around, letting their placards hang by their sides. Black and white. More black than white, probably. I stayed close to Kurai and Tafadzwa.
‘Welcome, welcome,’ people said to us. Complete strangers clasped my hand. Smiles, laughter. Even the drifting jacaranda flowers seemed like confetti. Kurai and I did not have banners, but we positioned ourselves behind someone who did. There was a white family a few feet away from us who were sharing a Thermos flask of tea – parents and two little children. I could see at least two people in wheelchairs.
‘So many people,’ said Kurai. She smoothed lip balm on to her mouth. ‘Hey, it’s starting.’
The crowd had started to shuffle and murmur expectantly.
‘Is that the police?’ said someone. I saw a brown uniform skulking several metres away from the crowd, then realised there was more than one.
‘Kurai.’ I nudged her and pointed.
‘What?’ She followed my gaze. ‘They’ll leave us alone.’
‘Let us pray,’ said someone into a megaphone. We all bowed our heads. I kept my eyes open, so I could see who squeezed their eyes tight shut, who mumbled words along with the leader, and who just stared at their feet. The policemen did not come any closer. I thought the prayers had spooked them.
‘There are blockades around the city,’ I heard someone saying. I turned round.
‘What was that?’
The speaker was an elderly white man. ‘Blockades around the city,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘To stop people joining the march.’
‘But it’s a peace march.’
He turned away from me. I tugged at Kurai’s arm.
‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘Typical Mugabe, he just doesn’t want the media to see us. Don’t worry.’
‘Ready, everyone?’ said the voice from the megaphone, and we started walking down the main street. The tarmac was satisfyingly hard beneath our feet. The banners flapped and snapped in the breeze. It was a beautiful day. The tiny purple balloons of jacaranda flowers popped beneath my feet. Even the Zimbabwean flags on the street lamps seemed to be complicit in what we were doing; they took on a cheerful air, like bunting.
Passers-by waved and smiled, some of them joining us. Tourists in the pavement cafés stood up to take photos. Even people in cars, who could not drive down the road because of us, honked their horns in support. It felt like a big party, but it also felt like we were doing something important. My heart swelled in my chest, and I walked with my head up.
‘It’s going well,’ said Kurai.
Someone started singing a hymn, and people joined in. I did not know the tune, but I sung along anyway, as loudly as I could.
We turned a corner and saw a group of young black men jumping down from bakkies. A ripple of fear went through the crowd, and people’s steps faltered. ‘Keep walking!’ someone shouted.
We moved our feet forward, but the young men were advancing too. They carried makeshift weapons – clubs, sjamboks. They looked purposeful, and organised. This was not just a group of youths causing trouble. This was something that had been planned. The crowd shifted, uncertain. One of the black women from church started singing again and others joined in. This gave us courage, and we stepped forward.
I did not see who was hit first.
People started to scream, and run. The War Vets – I was almost certain they were War Vets – did not discriminate. The orderly lines of marchers disintegrated and scattered. I saw an elderly couple stagger past, the man’s white hair smeared red and gleaming against his scalp.
‘Where’s Tafadzwa?’ said Kurai.
‘I don’t know.’ We had lost him. ‘Where shall we go?’
Kurai grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the side of the road, where the shops were. We saw a couple of tourists sitting outside a pavement café, untouched cups of coffee sitting in front of them. The woman’s mouth was slack with shock, but the man was taking photographs.
‘Don’t be bluddy stupid!’ Kurai yelled at them, but it was too late. A sjambok cracked across the man’s skull and he slumped forward on to the table. His wife did not scream but let out a strange, ladylike yelp before leaning over the table to cradle her husband’s head. His camera had fallen from his hands. As we watched, a young black man snatched it and ran off.
I lost Kurai. She was beside me, and then she was not. I could not see where I was going – whether I was headed towards the worst of the conflict, or away. I was carried along by the press of bodies.
‘Tear gas!’ someone shouted. I could not see the police, but when I looked up I could see the still blue of the sky and the lilac jacarandas, and then a mist of droplets settled on us. It felt like a very fine curtain of rain, the kind we called guti. There was a second when it was almost pleasant, and then it burned.
I felt like all my insides had turned to liquid and were leaking out wherever they could – through my eyes, my nose, my mouth. It was difficult to breathe. Whatever air I managed to suck in seemed to go straight back out again without giving me any oxygen.
The tear gas had made me close off into my own body, doubled over, clenched inwards. I realised everyone else was doing the same. Everything in the world melted and swam. Shouts. Bodies pushing. An elbow in my side. I saw many faces that were so clear and vivid they almost seemed like hallucinations. I could see right down to the pores on their skin and the yellowed veins in the whites of their eyes. I had lost Tafadzwa, I had lost Kurai, I had lost everyone and I should have listened to Mum when she told me that there was no such thing as a peaceful protest in Zimbabwe.
A white boy bumped into me and I tripped and fell, landing with my hands and knees flat on the tarmac. My hand was covered in little shards of glass. I realised the street had disappeared under debris. There was something small and cold under my hand – a tooth.
I was right outside the Edgars store, where we bought our underwear. A black man I did not know pushed me into the doorway. I fought against him.
‘Get inside!’ he yelled. His eyes were streaming and red.
‘My friend . . .’
‘Get back inside! They are targeting you Whites.’
Then he was gone, sucked back into the crowd. But I obeyed him, and ran into the cool, carpeted shade of the department store. Even as I ran, I hated being lumped with ‘you Whites’.
The Edgars store was in chaos. Someone had set up a makeshift first aid centre, and people were bandaging their cuts with bits of clothing. An elderly white woman was holding her cardigan to her head, and red was seeping into the beige wool.
‘Elise!’ Kurai was there. For a moment I did not recognise her – everything was so strange that her familiar face seemed suddenly alien.
‘Kurai! Where’s Tafadzwa?’
‘Don’t know.’ She did not seem concerned. ‘He can take care of himself. You all right?’
‘Ja, you?’
‘Ja. But you have a big cut on your head.’
I raised my hand to my hair. It was sticky and had arranged itself into little wet spikes. ‘How big?’
‘Doesn’t look too bad.’
We looked out of the windows, just in time to see a War Vet crack a sjambok across the head of a black boy.
‘Shee-yit.’
There was no way I could hide my presence at the march from Mum and Steve now.
Mum came to pick me up, hours later, when the crowds had dispersed and all that was left was litter, blood and vomit on the streets. She did not talk to me in the car on the way home. Her freckles stood out against the white of her face.
When we got home, Mum cut my clothes off me and threw them away. They were still infused with tear gas, and every touch burned. Then she washed me, as if I were a baby again. I stood up in the bath and she sponged me down with soap and water. She kept her lips tight together and her face set, until she came to the top of my head, where blood had formed a bird’s-nest of hair and dirt. Then she sat down on the edge of the bath and cried.
I stood in the pink water, watching.
No one shouted at me. I was not sure if Mum had spoken to Steve about it or not, but he showed no reaction when I came through to the dinner table with a bandage on my head. We ate in silence. And then we heard the sound of a helicopter.
‘Traffic helicopter?’ said Mum.
‘Too early,’ said Steve. ‘Police.’
We sat, and chewed, and listened to the whop whop whop of the blades cutting the air. It faded. And then we heard a siren, very far away.
‘It’s fine,’ said Steve.
When the setting sun cracked like an egg yolk on the horizon, Mum poured us all a cup of tea. The steam smelled like burning wood.
We sat there, holding our cooling cups of tea, and did not drink.
When we went into town the next day, the street was still littered with broken posters, blood and pieces of brick. It smelled of tear gas, a smell that closed up my throat and made my stomach lurch into my chest.
We saw footage on all the news channels. ‘Why, why? We came in peace,’ said one black woman into the camera.
I saw the woman with the ‘No Violence’ banner struck by a policeman. Her face looked surprised as her legs buckled and she fell to her knees. A middle-aged white man had a bloody split in his head. We watched as the marchers hoisted him on to their shoulders. The white man looked embarrassed.
‘A judicial order for the march to proceed without interference was presented to a senior policeman,’ said the smooth newsreader voice, ‘who took it and threw it on to the pavement.’
The blind singer who performed at the corner of First Street and George Silundika Avenue had his guitar destroyed and his money and CDs stolen in the fight.
‘I am appealing for help to raise money for a new guitar,’ he said into the camera with dejected, puckered eyes that were even blanker than usual. There was a postal address at the bottom of the screen for anyone who wanted to help him raise the money. I giggled, clapped a hand over my mouth, and stopped. It wasn’t funny.
We lived a strange life. We got up, went to school and work and lived our lives during the day, then came home to watch the news and see what was happening in the country. Obsessively, we checked all the channels we could. ZBC. CNN. The BBC. Sky News. It was like living two lives. As if nothing had really happened until we saw it on the television that evening. Our own lives had all but disappeared – absorbed into the wider drama.
That night, the sky was streaked pink, like my blood in the bathwater.
‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight,’ said Mum.
We sat and watched the sky change colour. Saru left for the day, jingling her keys in her pocket and calling, ‘Goodnight Baas, goodnight Medem,’ as she crunched down the gravel. Tatenda let her out of the gate, tipping an imaginary cap, then ran whistling down to the khaya where he would probably get ready for a night in the shebeen. Mum dished up roast chicken, sadza and vegetables. Steve poured beers with creamy heads. Black began to leak into the sky, leaving a trail of stars.
The moon was big tonight, and orange, like a naartjie hanging on a celestial tree. I could see the pockmarks in its skin.
‘It’s an optical illusion,’ said Steve. ‘Look.’ He stretched out his hand and measured the moon with his fingers.
I tried it. The moon was swollen and juicy, but when I pinched it between my finger and thumb it shrank to its normal size.
‘It’s not real,’ said Steve. ‘It just looks that way. It’s always the same size.’
I watched it rise above the broken glass on top of our wall.
Kurai called me that evening. ‘Hi, howzit?’
‘Good.’
There was silence on the other end. This was unusual with Kurai.
‘Look,’ she said after a moment, ‘Can I come over tomorrow?’
‘Of course.’
‘Because I’m moving to the States.’
‘You’re what?’
‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
Kurai and I sat on a rug in the back garden. There were Cokes and a bowl of crisps in front of us, but we hadn’t touched them.
‘It’s not like we’re not going to see each other again,’ said Kurai. ‘I’ll probably bump into you at some glamorous party in New York.’
She was moving to America to live with her older sister.
‘What will you be doing there?’
‘I’ll be some kind of executive. With a corner office. And my secretary will have a secretary.’
‘And what will I be doing there?’
‘How the hell should I know?’
‘Right.’
‘Are your parents staying?’
Kurai shrugged. ‘Ja, well, it’s not so bad for them.’
‘Because they’re . . .’
‘No, because they’re rich.’
&
nbsp; ‘Sure.’
‘I’ll probably be back in the holidays.’
‘Will you come back here to live? After uni, I mean?’
‘Who knows?’ She took her first sip of Coke.
‘That’s very sad for the country,’ said Steve when I told him.
‘What?’
‘Well, that people like Kurai are leaving.’
‘What do you mean, people like Kurai?’ I was in a combative mood.
‘It’s not going to be people like us who change this place,’ said Steve. ‘You know that. Kurai is the future.’
He was right. Kurai was the future. And I was not.
Our minister at church gave a special sermon that Sunday. ‘We will not give up,’ he said, and ‘God is watching over us.’
‘Good will triumph,’ said one of the banners on the wall. We bowed our heads and prayed in special, robotic praying voices for God to bring us peace and justice and democracy.
When I was at church, I sometimes forgot the horror and the hopelessness. I looked around as we sang and saw all the faces tilted upwards, looking at a God I could almost believe was there somewhere. For a moment I believed that it would all work out. That our prayers would be heard.
But when we prayed, the words were sucked into a vacuum. There was just darkness out there. Darkness and the old vengeful gods of Zimbabwe, the ones who wanted blood-offerings and sacrifices. On a blazing blue-sky day, I could not imagine a God somewhere up there. Instead it felt like a bright, merciless eye, pinning us to the world like bugs to a board, watching us squirm with a compassionless gaze. There were older things here than Christianity. They were here first. They were stronger.
Chapter Twenty
Once again, I was home from school. I sat in the farm office with Mum, addressing envelopes for the monthly invoices. Mum turned the radio up for the news. It was bad, as always. All we hoped for was less bad news than the day before.
Mum’s parents had called us from England the night before. They sounded frail and old on the phone. I knew they were asking us to leave, because Mum poured herself a big gin and tonic before speaking to them and said ‘Ja. No. Ja. Yes, Mum. I know, Mum,’ for a long time.