by Gavin Chait
‘It is our nature to forget. Even the greatest of us become shadows upon which others may cast their own dreams and fears. Our memory like dust,’ he says, looking to the waters where the last white traces are diminishing in the river, lost to rain and tide.
‘He will have honour and memory and it will fade. It is always so.’
She follows his gaze, watching as the waters return to their tawny muddy flow. ‘What will they remember, though? The stories they tell about him. I don’t recognize him in them. Where do they come from?’
‘From where we draw all stories,’ he says. ‘To hold on to what has been loved and lost, to explain and teach in ways that seep into memory.
‘There is a story I would tell.’
‘Will I hear it?’ she asks, her voice so soft as to be almost submerged in the waters flowing beneath.
The griot puts his hand on her shoulder. ‘Painted-dog’s child sits quietly, thinking on the migration of so many . . .’
Tales from Gaw Goŋ: Harmattan, la mémoire comme de la poussière
Painted-dog’s child sits quietly, thinking on the migration of so many.
‘Where are your thoughts, Painted pup?’ asks Baboon, as he rubs dust into the baked food remains inside the two black-bellied pots. The waters of the ouahe are sacred, to be used for drinking or offerings, not for cleaning.
‘I am not certain I understand all that you have shown me,’ she says, sitting up on her elbows. ‘I have never seen Men in such numbers, or the strange things in the sky or which float, or waters so vast but which one cannot drink.’
‘Aha, aha. Even so,’ says Baboon, ‘there is a story that you understand.’
‘Yes, grandfather. It is the same as when we follow the herds while they are following the waters,’ she says, scratching behind her neck with her hind paw. ‘The migrating Men seek a place of refuge, where the waters run clear and there is plenty to eat. There are many obstacles they must overcome, just as my family must journey far and struggle greatly to run down our prey.’
‘Aha, aha, my child,’ says Baboon, taking up his koubour. He begins to hum softly as he plucks and strums, drumming with his fingertips on the stretched skin of the instrument’s body.
‘Perhaps I am uncertain because I have never seen so many Men. When does their migration happen? Is the story you have shown me in the future or the past?’
Baboon continues his gentle melody, deep tones filling the bowl of the ouahe. ‘Is it the pattern of your fur that predicts your future, my child?’
‘No, grandfather, for each of my brothers and sisters are different, and our fur offers no guide to our future.’
‘It is similar with a story. The place and time are like painted colours. They permit us to identify a particular story but not to know where that story will go. And the same story may take place in a different setting yet still be the same.’
‘Yes, grandfather, but this story seems so far away. Is this in the memory of the genii?’
‘You have seen that before each telling I gather dust and blow it into the flames?’ he asks. ‘Do you know why?’
‘That I do not, grandfather. It is of the magics of the gaw.’
‘Even our magics require a seed, my child. The dust of the harmattan is carried far. It sees everything and sticks even where it is not wanted.’
Scratching at her ribs, Painted-dog’s child sighs. ‘It does, grandfather, even as I try to honour my mother and stay clean.’
‘Aha, aha,’ he laughs. ‘It is so, Painted child. Our memory is like dust. It is carried far, sticks tightly and lingers in the past, present and future. Who is to say from where the dust has come?’
Excitement in Painted-dog’s child’s eyes. ‘And so you blow dust for the genii, to remind them of what they already know?’
‘Aha, aha,’ he smiles. ‘None are forgotten as long as the dust from their passing is still with us in this world. Even the least of us are remembered.’
‘I am glad, grandfather, for I fear for Joshua and his people in your story. They travel far from their people, and the lands where they journey do not seem to honour the genii.’
‘One may achieve honour even in a place not of one’s birth,’ says Baboon. ‘We are reaching the end of this part of our story. Are you ready?’
Painted-dog’s child looks nervously into the flames burning almost invisibly in the brilliance of the afternoon. The erg around the ouahe turning orange and red with the arc of the sun.
She draws in a deep breath and nods. ‘Yes, grandfather. I am ready.’
Still playing his koubour with one hand, Baboon takes up a handful of dust, whispers to it and, as Gaw Goŋ, blows it gently into the flames, the red-brown mist glowing in his eyes. A swirling green-grey pool opens above the flames, shot through with flecks of red and black.
Gaw Goŋ motions at the portal, pulling it wider until it fills the space before them. He whispers again, and the pool clears.
-
If the ocean of the Mediterranean was strange for Painted-dog’s child, what she sees now lacks even the familiarity of water upon the earth. Before her is a city where fine powdered water, like the great rivers of sand flowing in the erg, hangs in overlapping rolling hills in the sky above.
The city is grey and dark even though it is still early in the afternoon. There is mist and showers of rain falling on to the ground, cold and muffling sound.
A young man wearing a long coat, his neck and head buried in the upturned collar, walks purposefully along an uneven pavement. His thoughts chase and wrestle, stirring his steps to rising fury so that each foot slams into the ground with determined force.
‘It is time the council did something. Think of the children who could be hurt. This is outrageous and something must be done. I can be a bystander no longer.’
He carries a recording band crumpled in one hand, thrust deep into his coat pocket where he fiddles and twists it between his fingers.
Past the low brick houses reinforced against the floods which often come through this area. Over iron grids fixed tightly on top of the wide culverts beneath the pavement, filled with their permanent gargling rush of floodwater being drawn away. Nearing the temple with its carved cows on the roof and the dancing many-armed gods on its blue-tinted walls. Turning left into a street cluttered with pedestrians.
The crowds force him out of his churning thoughts, giving him a new source of anxiety. For now he is amongst the foreigners who have flooded this impoverished and previously almost empty area, changing its character and making him feel alien even in his own home.
The old streets, with their tangle of stalls and shops, sing with a different rhythm and simmer with distant flavours. The millions have washed up all the way to this shore where they struggle with its cold and damp even as they flourish and set down fast-growing roots.
He reaches his destination and the source of his turmoil.
A derelict clock tower topped with a tarnished gilded crown stands forlorn in the middle of a shouting, bargaining, living market. Around the outside border marked in bent and leaning metal seats are stalls selling stews, fish broth, vegetables, clothes and printed goods. Music of different tempos and cultures blends into melody at once ancient and new.
The young man stands bewildered for a moment, for it is different from when he was here only weeks ago. Still the millions arrive, and he wonders where they will all go and how they would be stopped.
Children run laughing and excited through the market.
He remembers his objective for, even if these be the children of seekers, their danger is still his to bear. He pulls from his pocket his crumpled recording band and sets it over his brow. It vibrates, a brief indication that it is active, recording everything before him and streaming the image on to the connect.
He is unworried if no one sees it now. It will serve as a record for when he presents his case to the council.
Walking, careful to maintain a steady flow, he skirts the outside of the stall
s around the tower.
‘I am in the market around the Lewisham clock tower,’ he says, as clearly and as bravely as he can so that his voice can be heard above the cheerful tumbling rumble of the people all around him.
He pushes through and between two stalls until he is in the silent oasis like a moat around the tower. He is on the wrong side and walks around until it comes into view.
‘You can see the door or, rather, where the door used to be, that leads down from the tower to the works below.’
And it is true, for where an old heavy wooden door used to guard the inner rooms of the tower, there is a dark, open space. The remains of the door hang loose, broken and torn, to the side.
‘We passed children playing here, and you can see how many people walk around this place. It is unacceptable that the city council do not recognize the dangers of leaving this way open and that they do not fix it. The guard rail on the staircase inside is corroded and broken, and a person would fall more than ten metres to the rooms below. Think of what would happen if one of the children fell inside? If it was your child—’
He stops as a man begins to shriek in violent rage.
It all seems to happen so quickly. Afterwards, he will review his recording and realize that he saw everything, but as it happens he catches only fragments.
A man wearing a bulky jacket runs up to the clock tower, shouting. People all around scream in terror. A child brushes against the young man’s legs, and he looks down, then up again straight into the face of a tall, straight-backed man.
They see each other, eye to eye.
The straight-backed man is in a thick jacket and trousers that he wears with both unfamiliarity and pride. He looks into the young man’s eyes as if to say, ‘If not me, then who?’
And then the straight-backed man runs with all his strength at the shouting man. He captures him in his arms, and his strength and momentum carry them through the clock tower doorway.
The young man, still recording, watches in confusion, his mouth open, breathing slow as his heart thumps once in his chest.
He hears the scrape as they miss the guard rail and the soft slump as they smash into the solid floor far below.
A moment of silence.
After, he can only say it felt as if the earth rolled like a boat on water. The explosion is so loud that he is unable to hear it, only a strange dead ringing that continues for days.
He is speechless, even when the young paramedic shines a light into his eyes and persistently asks him his name. In his mind, the eyes of the straight-backed man, his look of knowledge, of comfort, of kindness.
There is panic in the city. ‘Didn’t we tell you these refugees want only our deaths?’ says a woman on the evening news. ‘When will the government do something? Send them home. We do not want them.’
The prime minister of all England and Wales calls for calm and declares that the army will be brought on to the streets. Seekers will be searched and are subject to curfew. Fire and stones are thrown into their crowded homes, their shops looted and destroyed.
Late in the night, as fear and flames creep through seeker neighbourhoods, the young man’s recording is discovered.
It is not believed.
The young man is sought. He is still deafened. Is questioned.
He watches his recording, weeping as he sees again the shared look of the straight-backed man.
The prime minister herself presents the recording to the people. The soldiers will turn around, now to protect and to welcome.
The man in the bulky jacket is known. The security services are embarrassed, for if anyone would do such a thing, it is this man. But he is not of the seekers. He is a white man and so not subject to the suspicion and invasion of thought-of outsiders. Policy must change.
The seeker who sacrificed himself is not known.
One amongst the millions who sought a new life in a distant land.
The young man visits the rubble-filled pit where the clock tower once was. He carries his recording band as if his story is still incomplete. That he owes this unknown man an honour that he knows not how to give.
Row upon row of flowers are piled before the crater. An ocean of colour, an outpouring of grief. In recognition of a man wrongfully accused.
‘You are the boy who told the truth,’ says an old Shona woman, taking his hand.
His lip trembles, and she folds him into her bosom.
Word spreads, quietly and gently, ‘The boy who told the truth is here.’ Many have stories of the man he seeks.
‘He saved me in the forests of the Congo,’ says an old man.
‘He found us food when there was none,’ says a young girl.
The flower-filled square filling with memory, one mote joining another until the life revealed is larger than any one person could ever claim.
The young man is recording. Each story broadcast. And the seeking millions tell their stories to the listening tens of millions.
‘I am Seydou, and he led my family through the war in Uganda.’
‘My name is Gideon, and he rescued my daughter from soldiers who would violate her.’
‘We are Faysal and Aysha. We are to be married. He kept us together when we were to be sent to different countries.’
The young man is led, hand to hand, a canvas on which stories may be told.
‘I am Isaiah, the reborn child, and Joshua was my father. Please, I will take you to my mother.’
A way is made through the quiet streets, and thousands flow, following the young man and the reborn child.
Esther is waiting in the single tiny room shared now only with Hannah, Rachel and Isaiah.
The young man is pressed inside to sit with her.
She smiles at him, and he recognizes the same warmth of the straight-backed man.
‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he says, tears wet on his cheek and on his collar.
She takes his hand, shaking her head.
‘It is well, my son. Do not weep. The genii have blessed him and us with a longer second life than we could have hoped.’
‘I do not understand,’ he says.
‘My husband was a Casamance. A twice-dead man,’ she says, her eyes filled with light and love. ‘He first died during our escape from the airport in Dar es Salaam when soldiers took others in our party. A child died there.
‘His second life was a gift of the genii, so that he could lead us to safety.
‘We shared a lifetime on our journey here.’
The young man feels a future open, as of the hope in the beginning of a great voyage. ‘I would be grateful if you would tell me of your journey,’ he says.
Esther smiles and nods.
And, drifting through the air, memory like dust spreads and settles. That none may forget.
36
‘I remember this,’ says Shakiso, her voice as if waking. ‘From before. It happened a few days after Simon died – all those stories I heard, they were always about Joshua,’ realizing she can recall the journey of the man who was Simon’s friend, who became the Casamance of legend.
‘Why can I hear it now?’ she asks, her mouth fighting against emotion, her eyes a frozen ocean.
The griot places his hands on the flat rail of the bridge. ‘There is a story about two brothers,’ he begins.
Surprised, she laughs, feeling her tension drain away. ‘Ismael,’ she says, ‘always the two brothers with you. I think it’s time you recognize that women get a shot at the lead too.’
The griot grins and gestures at the passing multitude. ‘I am not sure my people are yet ready for such transformation.’
Shakiso stands, one hand on her hip, the other on the rail, her shirt and jeans tight against her body. ‘Dude,’ she says firmly, her eyes with a familiar blue brightness, ‘you’re the griot. You’re the one telling the stories.’
He laughs, his turn to be surprised. Nodding, ‘You are right, but I am only a griot, and I too am still learning.’ He takes her hand, holding it ge
ntly between his. ‘Thank you, my sister. It is well.’
With a chuckle, he begins again, ‘Once there were two sisters.’
‘Better,’ says Shakiso, standing alongside him and both leaning on their elbows and watching the drifting of the waters.
The cadence of his voice rises and falls with the rumble and clutter of trucks and buses over the bridge so that only she may hear his words. She stands leaning over the rails, at moments probing, calm, or seeming to tear at the metal bridge with her hands.
At last the story is at an end and her questions exhausted.
‘I think I understand now,’ she says. ‘Thank you.’
‘You are still not at peace, my sister.’
‘Simon . . .’ she hesitates. ‘They’ve frozen him. They’re sending him to Mars. They think they might be able to revive him in forty years or so, once they have a cure for his cancer. He leaves tomorrow with the settlers. Hollis says, if I want, when I’m ready, I can join him.’ She shakes her head. ‘Is he dead? Do I mourn?’
‘There is a story,’ says the griot, smiling as she glares at him fiercely, putting up his hands. ‘Mourn his loss, my sister, live your life, for even should such a return be possible, it will still be as if you are both reborn.’
She looks up at the sky and across the river towards the mainland.
‘I’m not sure what to do next. Any ideas?’
‘You would take that guidance?’ he asks.
‘I’m only a girl,’ she says, ‘and I still have much to learn.’
The griot smiles. ‘Then you should go to Dakar. Go listen to those who speak truth of Ansar Dine and Abdallah Ag Ghaly. You should bear witness. He must be remembered as well.’
‘What will I find there?’ she asks.
‘That is for you to discover. As for Ag Ghaly, even the stones should weep blood at the anguish of his name.’
37
‘They’re gaining,’ says a man in a green vest, his hands sweating in excitement.
‘But what then? Those drones carry no artillery. They cannot shoot them down. And, even so, that would destroy the cargo,’ says the white man, Belaya, seated at the other end of the table.