by Vamba Sherif
On the crest of that mountain, he pointed to a light of fire some hundred metres below them.
Obediently the group descended towards the fire until they were just a few metres away from it. From where he stood, William could see a cluster of thatched huts surrounded by mud walls. In a courtyard at the heart of those huts was a circle of men. Among them were Old Kapu, carpenter Seleh and a host of town elders. Seated in the centre of that circle of men was a figure with its back to William. Slowly the figure turned halfway. It was Hawah Lombeh. She was dressed in an elaborate, handmade outfit, her arms up to her shoulders embroidered with pure gold. She was holding a staff. She looked calmed, collected and regal. The gold that hung from her neck and ears and which covered her arms glittered in the last rays of the sun. She was giving orders to the men, and when at a certain point she stood up, a hush descended on the forest. From that distance William could not hear what she was saying, but the gravity of her words and of her presence was felt by them and by those elders who surrounded her.
Nothing had prepared William for this. All the logic of his thinking process, everything he’d assumed about Wologizi, was thrown to the winds. The woman who was insignificant in Woligizi seemed to rule this world, to hold great sway over it, and she looked proud, powerful, and in her element.
‘The Source, Chief,’ the corporal said.
For the first time, William Soko Mawolo did not doubt the policeman. So, Hawah Lombeh was the Source, the head of an ancient tradition. A woman brought up to be a man.
He could not move, transfixed by the spectacle before him. Hawah Lombeh had by then taken a seat. Two masked figures, one with a mirrored face and the other of a crocodile, had emerged out of the huts. They began to dance before her, honouring her, weaving her name in beautiful songs. Hawah Lombeh raised her head, as if out of intuition, and she gazed in the direction of the group. She had seen them.
The forest began to tremble. The trees swayed as though a storm was gathering force, exposing William and his men to the risk of a tree-fall, which could crush them or bar their way. What he perceived as a storm began to grow in intensity. From all directions came disturbing sounds: loud bellows, plaintive and agonising growls and wailing – all merged into one. One part of him warned him to leave, but the other drew him towards the irresistible ritual, towards the Source, towards Hawah Lombeh.
The nearer he approached her, the more the sounds intensified. He could see her clearly now. She was being borne in a hammock. Was he mistaken, or did he spot the policeman, Corporal Gamla, among the carriers? They were all dancing, their voices rising with a dirge. As he walked on, he could not wait to confront Hawah Lombeh with her love for him, with the womanhood he was sure he’d awoken in her. He, William, would break the Source and relieve her of her power, for he was sure that deep down in her soul she loved him.
It was as if he covered the remaining metres in a cloud of mist, because when it cleared, he found himself within reach of the clusters of huts. The sounds had ceased. There was no sign of Hawah Lombeh, nor of the town elders. The forest was thrown into a strangling silence. No animal made a sound. The men who had followed William breathed heavily, not one of them venturing a word. The Lebanese could no longer withstand the weight of fear; he quaked under it by breaking into tears, whimpering like a child. One of the militia pinched him into silence.
From the right of them another wave swelled. It sounded like the bellows of a thousand horns, or the steady purring of colossal machines digging deep into the earth. The ground shook and the trees cracked. One of them fell before William, a branch bruising his face. Unafraid, ready to confront the unknown, he led his men towards the noise, but just then another wave set off behind them, the most intense of the three. ‘Follow me,’ he told his men, turning around. He pointed the rifle before him and discharged its content, cutting a path of flame that led them to where he thought the sounds had originated. Suddenly he realised that the men were no longer with him. He called out to them, but there was no response.
All at once, from everywhere, a sustained chorus of sounds swelled, approaching him – all powerful, all overwhelming, and all destructive. They rooted him to the ground, nibbled at his heart which, tinged with fear, pumped loads of blood through his body. The gun fell from his hands. The sounds ate up his strength, overwhelmed him and numbed his legs and arms.
In a final moment of clarity, William understood that he was sharing Tetese’s fate. A strange force slithered up to his heart, grabbed it like a pair of hands, and squeezed it with a cruelty that verged on deep tenderness.
He realised suddenly that the cause of his imminent death was not the auditory phenomenon, but his own fear.
From the darkness, a face showed itself, a face he recognised and called out to because he thought it had come to his rescue. His lips formed her name: Hawah Lombeh. But it was too late.
When it was all over, silence fell again on the forest. Then, all of a sudden, like a great avalanche, the skies cracked open, releasing an early downpour that heralded the onset of one season and the end of the other.
CHAPTER 22
The sun was at its zenith and did not cast the shadow of the man who ventured out of the small patch of bush where he’d been hiding for the past hour and took the main road. Soon the man was confronted with the remains of what had once been Wologizi. Corporal Gamla could not believe his eyes. In a concentrated operation that had lasted for four days, the border town had been reduced to ashes by an army dispatched by the Old Man to investigate the disappearance of William Soko Mawolo, the man who had been sent to inquire into Tetese’s vanishing. Of the once thriving town, there was nothing left but grey foot-paths. The earth was baked by fire, and where homes had once stood were now charred spots.
Corporal Gamla, afraid that the soldiers might return and find him, furtively retraced his steps to his hiding place. The urge to see Wologizi after its sacking had been so overwhelming early that morning that he’d slipped away to be the first to report to the townspeople what had become of their town. On the edge of one of the valleys, at the far end of the town, he took an overgrown and hardly recognisable path towards the river.
The people of Wologizi had regrouped along the banks of the river at the foot of the valleys, an inaccessible spot and the last bastion of defence. The fallen had been given impromptu obsequies, and the wounded were being attended to. Some survivors moved about in a state of limbo, wrestling with the aftermath of the attack. Among them was the Lebanese. He’d been tied to a cotton tree to prevent him from hurting himself. Occasionally, the Arab would break into a feverish chant in a tongue no one could comprehend, or he would linger into protracted silences that were often ignored. Boley, the father-in-law, had been wounded and was lying on a mat. He was being nursed by two women from his once large household.
Carpenter Seleh had been killed during the attack. Old Kapu was stretched out in a hammock, sure that his end was near. ‘Carpenter Seleh should have saved himself. That was his problem, his foolish display of strength,’ Old Kapu said when Corporal Gamla joined him under the cotton tree and brought up the subject of the carpenter.
The Lebanese began to mutter to himself again, swearing and cursing. He accused the townspeople of conspiring against him, declaring him mad when he was saner than any one of them could ever be.
‘Let’s not remember Carpenter Seleh as a foolish man, but as a strong man,’ Corporal Gamla argued, but Old Kapu disagreed.
Seated under another tree a short distance from them was Hawah Lombeh, closely following the conversation. She had assumed her old role again, of the chief’s wife, the obedient, self-sacrificing woman.
Old Kapu, who watched her closely, thought that something weighed heavily on her conscience. They were interrupted by the girl with whom the houseboy had once shared a hut. She passed a calabash of water around. When it was his turn, Gamla asked her to offer it to the Lebanese first-hand. After the Lebanese had had his fill, the calabash was passed over to him. Th
anking her with a nod, Corporal Gamla watched her join the other women who were busy with their daily chores. Something greatly troubled the corporal.
‘If the houseboy had remained alive, or if he had died by other means, the town would have been spared.’
‘It had to be; a betrayal means death,’ Old Kapu said.
The old man was staring at the dark green branches of the cotton tree. Hawah Lombeh went and sat beside him. Now and then, his frail hands would lash out at an insect or a fly. Gamla shook his head.
‘We should have punished him by other means.’
‘No,’ the old man snapped, and he sat up and leaned towards the policeman, his eyes burning. ‘That was the only way.’
The corporal felt a sour taste in his mouth as he thought about the high price Wologizi had paid, and he was afraid that the worst was yet to come. ‘The soldiers will return again,’ he said.
‘No one can destroy the secrets of the Poro.’ Hawah Lombeh spoke for the first time since the soldiers’ assault on Woligizi. ‘The president knows that whoever leaves the Poro alone will be left alone himself.’
She stood up. There was a stern edge to her voice that silenced the two men. Corporal Gamla knew that it was useless to oppose the president. The Old Man would never leave the Poro alone. He would pursue it as long as he lived and make sure it was destroyed. This was war, and in every war a winner had to emerge in the end. In fact the war had begun a long while ago. A wheel of events had been set into motion by the Old Man with his appointment of Tetese as paramount chief, then by Tetese himself, and then by the proud but short-sighted William. There was nothing anyone could do now to reverse it.
‘What do we do with Baldhead?’
At the mention of his nickname, the Lebanese looked up with a vacant stare and then mumbled something incomprehensible.
‘We’ll send him home,’ Hawah Lombeh said.
Corporal Gamla gazed at her, marvelling at the hard expression on her face, not daring to oppose her. The corporal left them and went towards the river, as though he was washing his hands of the harsh course of action that Hawah Lombeh was taking. He had followed her orders and had led William to the mountains. He thought that perhaps what was happening now could not be influenced by mere mortals but by powers beyond them. He knew that he could not escape his lot, which was Wologizi, the town that had made him. He had a past deeply rooted in that forest region, a past that was not particularly colourful but of which he was nevertheless proud.
Old Kapu was troubled by his wife’s abstraction. For the first time he doubted her ability to bear the responsibility with which the people had shouldered her. He watched her heading for the river. Since the town’s destruction, the river had become the people’s only source of existence. Its water was drunk, used to cook and wash laundry. Hawah Lombeh avoided the spots where the women were crowded and went down the river in search of a quiet place to sit and ponder on the changes in Wologizi. Would the townspeople ever lead a normal life again? Would Wologizi ever be rebuilt? What would be the fate of a secret society that had survived the caprice of time? She could not get rid of William’s face as death strangled him. The face, which had recognised her in the darkness, had borne the expression of a profound knowledge, as if William had resigned himself to the inevitable. Ultimately he had been consumed by a combination of anger, ambition and perhaps revenge. His obsession for Makemeh had weakened him, and made him vulnerable. Hawah Lombeh had warned him. One of the most important aspects of being a leader, was the ability to wear at all times the mask of calmness that concealed various emotions, including pain. She had to make sure that her pain was never revealed to anyone again.
Hawah Lombeh walked along the river, thinking about the auditory phenomenon, other aspects of the Poro that were inexplicable to even Old Kapu, not to mention the men and women of Wologizi and the forest region; only she knew about them. She would pass on the knowledge to a suitable candidate. More than ever she felt that the time was right.
She headed towards the women who were occupied with different tasks. On her way, she saw a young woman bent over a calabash. Hawah Lombeh recognised the smell of the bitter concoction which was normally administered in small doses to clear the stomach.
The concoction, by the pungent smell of it, had another purpose, and the thought of it frightened her. Frowning with concern, she hastily approached the young woman and laid her hand on her stomach.
‘Your child is a gift, Makemeh,’ she said, ‘not a burden.’ She paused and then added: ‘I predict a great future for the child.’
Makemeh turned to her with a questioning gaze.
‘I’ll help you,’ Hawah Lombeh said. ‘I’ll teach you what a mother needs to know. And I’ll teach you much more.’
Makemeh let go of the calabash. She thought of the stranger who had loved her but had gone astray in the process, the man who had braved the mountains to meet his fate.
Hawah Lombeh sat beside her and for a long while both women were silent. Then Makemeh laid her head on the lap of that extraordinary woman who began to reveal to her in a soft tone a series of secrets that would change her life forever.
Secrets that were intended only for Makemeh.
HopeRoad Publishing
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First published by HopeRoad 2015
The right of Vamba Sherif to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Copyright © 2006 Vamba Sherif
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ISBN 978-1-908446-32-9
elSBN 978-1-908446-38-1
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