R is fierce with indignation, his anger huge. I feel it there beside me. Equals? I am afraid the flimsy façade of the prison tour is about to crack open into a skirmish of sorts. Equals? You terrorists committed atrocities in the name of freedom, then drive our country into a ruinous state of violence, disease, poverty, economic decline. Equals? I can read the cartoon bubble above his head. I nudge R’s thigh with my knee in order to say … to say … what? That I, too, find this eerie, the way this struggle, so recent, so raw, has been packaged, branded—history, revolution so quickly turned into an economic opportunity? Please.
I want to explain, too, that I know R has grown up on the other side, has been shaped by a misguided belief system that was confirmed for him by the worst violence and human degradation which he had seen on duty. I want to say that I will try to understand but I cannot accept. I am not bothered one smidge that unsuspecting South Africans like him might be manipulated into confronting their recent pasts, that they are trapped for a fleeting hour in a cell, listening to what they think of as a simplistic one-sided take on history. Can I go on loving him in spite of the hate and resentment he harbours? For the first time, I feel the magnitude of the gulf between us, large as the Atlantic that cleaved our childhoods.
That night R and I sit in the dark of the Baxter Theatre watching Sorrows and Rejoicings. The performances are stark and intense, but the play, about an exiled writer who cannot come to terms with the lives he has ruined, is like a ferocious punch that misses its mark, goes flailing into space. Apartheid was good for art, the Sunday Times says. Oh, how art thrives on resistance. Oh, how we become lost, collapse in on ourselves, without clear enemies. That strange lure of opposition, of defining oneself against something. There in the dark, I think of my home so far away, think of me living now in such a lonely place under the steady blink of the Agulhas lighthouse, think of the sickening luxury of self-imposed exile, the strange prisons we construct for ourselves. Where is the rejoicing?
The whale-sized dolphin woman rolls her eyes, huffs a little and asks Derek in a voice thick with superiority, “Can we go and see the rest of the prison now?”
Derek opens the cell door, and all of us file out—perpetrators, victims, consumers—uncertain of our complicity then, our roles now. We are as responsible for creating joy as we are for eradicating the errors, the sorrows of the past, are we not? It’s not about blame. It cannot be about resignation. It’s about where we go from here. R is here beside me, and I know instinctively that the hour in the cell could split us forever. What dawns on me as we file past the place where Mandela spent eighteen years, is that had my family and I not left Rhodesia when we did, the gap between R and me might not be this wide. My African childhood, uprooted, transplanted in Canadian soil, enables me to draw a distinction between terrorist and freedom fighter. I am able to register suffering on both sides, to see the dangers of clinging to hate. I am no longer an African who moved to Canada; I am a Canadian transient in Africa. I feel the difference, a change in the trajectory of my identity, the core of me reoriented for good.
The whale-sized dolphin woman chirps on her cellphone, planning the evening braai. She says to her friend, “Summer is on its way. Finally we can do some real drinking.” Drinking. Amnesia. They are lifestyles here. R and I step out of the prison. We have a play to go to, but part of me wants the simplicity of the sea and the wild-flowers, ostriches and whales. I am overcome with sorrow and joy for the two of us snagged on this juncture in history, caught at the end of Africa, between two oceans, between an off-season and a growing season. I reach for R’s hand, wink and say, “Let’s go see the jackass penguins.”
Nikki Barrett was born in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), and has lived most of her life in Canada. Her writing has been published in Chatelaine, Write magazine, Blood & Aphorisms, Pagitica and enRoute magazine.
026Destination: Iceland
THE BALLET OF PATRICK BLUE-ASS
Patrick Woodcock
When I flew into Keflavik airport in February, it was for two reasons only: I needed both darkness and isolation to focus on a book of poetry I had begun fourteen months earlier in Moscow. It was NOT to become a ballet dancer.
Whenever I’ve met other people who have travelled to Iceland, they all retell the same story. They flew to Iceland in the summer months, when the weather is favourable for camping, hiking or biking. They wanted to visit the country of poets, the land of 100 per cent literacy, to see theatre in and out of doors. They love to talk about how unique the country is. I usually agree and politely try to change the topic of conversation. Their Iceland isn’t mine; they ventured there for reasons that, for the most part, mean little to me.
Iceland is stunning in the summer. There is a certain grace to its countryside that can only be seen then, especially since summer is the only time the Number 1, Iceland’s only national highway, is accessible. But for me, the problem with summer is more personal. I have inherited from my Irish father a skin that, on the white scale, is more clear than pale. I have never been able to tan; the only sunscreen that has ever worked for my wan cheeks is the roof of a house. Therefore, ever since childhood,
I’ve had an aversion to sunlight. I think Woody Allen had a line that says it best: “I don’t tan, I stroke.”
By the time I left Iceland in May, there was never any darkness, and nighttime brought a hazy dreamlike dusk that played havoc with my mood. I always felt like I was walking in that alcoholic fog Eugene O’Neill wrote so well about. I tried covering my windows with a layer of tinfoil and tape, followed by two winter blankets. It worked—I couldn’t see my hand an inch away from my face. But I still knew there was light outside; patient and unmoving.
The Iceland I wanted was the tourist-free, dark, cold, unforgiving home of volcanoes and glaciers. I flew from Boston on a practically empty plane and arrived in an agonizingly loud hailstorm that sounded like Norse gods were tearing apart the fuselage. I was both amused and uneasy during the forty-kilometre bus ride from the airport in Keflavik to Reykjavik. I sat behind the bus driver and could see no more than three feet out the front window—snow, rain and hail were all battering us incessantly. I was obviously the only tourist on the bus, being the only one not sleeping. I just sat there drinking from a small bottle of vodka and shaking.
During those winter months, it would be Iceland’s wind, my nemesis, that would provide me with the most misery and frustration and consequently the most entertainment. The wind in Iceland hugs you like a drunken uncle. There is no sign heralding its arrival; it catches you off guard, holds you, ignores your struggles, and only lets go after you are exhausted, frustrated and completely embarrassed. It is the demented choreographer of the ballet of the absurd in which you are the acrobat. After contorting you into pirouette after pirouette, it forces you to attempt a few “I’m losing my balance” arabesques only to conclude with—much to the approval of the university students I passed daily—an “I give up” grand jeté, which usually leaves you looking for your camera, Walkman or wallet beneath a parked car.
And there is nowhere to hide. Alleys, storefronts, even culverts, are all amphitheatres and dance halls for this shrieking demon. It attacks from all angles to remind you of one thing: you are in Iceland, and in Iceland, the wind is omnipotent, owns you and can devour you.
And how does the Icelandic government try to aid you in your fight against this tempest? Well, it sprinkles volcanic ash over the sidewalks to help you with your traction. Unfortunately, this only serves one purpose: to cover your clothing in volcanic ash. I am certain the Icelandic government has a clandestine agreement with every laundry detergent company selling its product in corner stores.
I did not have a washing machine, so I washed my clothes in my bathtub with a broomstick. I fell daily, I purchased more detergent than bread or vegetables and was given the Sagaesque name “Patrick Blue-Ass” by a bartender at The Dubliner, Iceland’s first Irish pub. “You fall down more than our regulars,” he observed one day, and later a
dded, “but more gracefully.”
A few weeks after my arrival, my roommate, a filleter named John from Newcastle, awoke me to watch the Icelandic news—Hekla, a volcano roughly 110 kilometres southeast of Reykjavik, had erupted, and thousands of Icelanders travelling to see it were trapped in a blizzard. The anchorman announced that even with the help of the army and volunteers, it would still take days to rescue all those stranded. I returned to my bedroom in a rare state of contentment, eager to write, feeling I had finally found the foreign country I’d been searching for. One that was invigorating while being ruthless and demanding.
Iceland was and still is, as Lowry wrote years before about Mexico, a country of “desolate splendour.” It is a place where a wind suffused with a devilish playfulness creates radiant undulating snowdrifts, re-shapes vast majestic panoramas and, if you are not prepared, demands the occasional dance or two before allowing you to return to the safety of your apartment. It is there that you are left alone to rest, write and practise the inevitable “I just lost my hat” ballotté for the next day’s recital.
Patrick Woodcock is the poetry editor for the Literary Review of Canada. His fourth book, The Challenged One, has just been published. He has fallen down in seventeen countries, most recently, in Bosnia.
027Destination: India
AFTERSHOCK
Jill Lawless
I grabbed the driver’s shoulder—“Stop, stop!” Wrenched at the door handle, rested forehead on forearm, and forearm on window frame, and vomited a thin, clear cascade into the Indian dust.
Sat up, gulped from a water bottle. A couple of deep breaths, tangy with earth. Calmed the stomach, contorted with hunger and nerves. The brown eyes of the driver—I’d already forgotten his name, damn—flashed alarm in the rearview mirror. The stream of people trudging along the roadside, hauling sacks and bundles and small children, diverged around the puddle and flowed past us toward the city and solidity.
Dozens of villages had decanted their populations onto the road that led to the city. The villages had crumbled like sandcastles. From the road, you could see what was left of them: small, jagged mountains of debris rising from the desert.
We were driving toward the epicentre of an earthquake. There was a town at the epicentre. Had been a town. My stomach churned.
I leaned forward, stretched out a trembling arm. “Okay. Keep going.”
I didn’t want to keep going. This was not my beat, and I’d used up my last shot of adrenalin somewhere between the cracked and tilting city a hundred miles back down the road and this teeming crossroads.
The first bit had been easy: Just keep moving; get as close as you can. Flight, airport, another flight, taxi. Inquire, haggle a bit, find a car and agree to leave at dawn. Go to bed and lie awake, thinking of aftershocks.
The city hadn’t looked too bad. Squat buildings had sprouted cracks and gashes, and high-rises tilted at dangerous angles; but the luxury hotel was still standing, and the shops were open.
Heading back toward the city, it was like rush hour: buses grumbling under roof-rack suitcase mountains; jammed cars of all descriptions; open-backed trucks, their flatbeds packed with passengers like vertical sardines; families on tractors. West, toward the destruction, went the first of the relief trucks, laden with hastily assembled cargoes of clothing, water and biscuits; white government jeeps; and cars full of passengers with shiny white faces: journalists.
Our progress slowed as we drove west. The road developed bumps and fissures, and the buildings that dotted the roadside had been reduced to jumbles of bricks and concrete and timbers and tiles. Amid one pile, a filing cabinet stood inexplicably upright, gleaming and unscathed. It was the tallest object in the landscape.
We came to another crossroads and slowed to a crawl. Hundreds of people stood or sat beside the road; some leapt into the traffic, trying to flag down already crammed eastward-bound vehicles. Five women in rich maroon saris, tin water pots glistening on their heads, walked in elegant single file along the road, then turned—defiantly, it seemed—and headed across the desert for a rubble drumlin half a mile away.
We crawled on through thickening devastation and reached a town turned inside out. The buildings had been eviscerated, their innards strewn on the dusty ground: pipes, refrigerators, clothes and blankets, wall calendars, images of gods, and pictures of children.
Here I was. I had a mobile phone (no signal), a laptop (no electricity), a satellite phone (ditto) and a notebook (blank).
I got out of the car, took a few steps. I had no idea what I was looking for. I soon found it.
“Christ!” blurted the perspiring, notebook-clutching figure who appeared out of the dust. “Terrible, isn’t it? Where’ve you been and what have you seen? I’ve just been to the military hospital, what’s left of it. They’re operating in the open air. Amputations galore. Bloody awful.”
“I’ve just arrived,” I said. The stranger boasted an English accent and a vest bulging with external pockets—a combination that never fails to intimidate. His broad face was a luminous, glistening pink. “I’m just getting my bearings.”
“Do you have a car? Brilliant! I’ve mislaid mine. Let’s go to the old city; I’ve heard the damage is worst there.”
It was a plan. I felt better, having a plan. We drove on into the shattered town, stopped beside a gate to the old city. You couldn’t drive in or even walk—you had to climb.
We picked our way into the heart of the town: hopping, teetering, scrambling. Here and there, concrete slabs formed precarious bridges. I stepped on one tentatively; it shifted squelchingly underfoot, with a smell that burned my nose and caught the back of my throat. Looking down, I glimpsed the bloated beige flank of a cow. The smell got stronger the deeper you went. A little farther on, an outstretched arm and a woman’s bare midriff, the flesh soft and greying.
People squatted atop the heaps, handkerchiefs tied round their faces, peering through gaps in the rubble. For survivors or salvage; I didn’t know which. One man crouched, painstakingly enlarging a hole. Now and then, he pressed his face to the gap, then reached in an arm and pulled out a battered pan or an item of clothing, which he folded neatly and placed in a battered suitcase at his side.
My English friend scribbled feverishly in his notebook. I uncapped a pen, flipped open my own notebook. Paused. Wrote “suitcase” and “children’s clothes.”
“I can’t give a shape to this,” I thought—my clearest thought of the day. “I can’t put this into six hundred words. Or six thousand.”
The Englishman was speaking to people, quietly and deliberately. Simple questions: What happened? Where is your house? Your family? The answers were obvious, but people answered without anger or tears, in what English they had. “It’s shock,” I thought. “It was only thirty-six hours ago; it hasn’t sunk in yet.”
“This is great stuff,” he said. “I’ve got to file. Shall we go back to HQ?”
He directed the driver to a large hotel. On the wide lawn behind the listing building, the world’s press was imposing its own order upon disaster. Tent clusters and sleeping bags dotted the grass. Trestle tables had been set up, generators hummed, satellite phones whined and fingers tap-danced on keyboards.
I hauled my knapsack and my laptop and the flat, dense brick of my satellite phone from the trunk of the car and staggered to the nearest cluster.
No one paid me any attention. Surreptitiously, I explored the dense tangle of wires and sockets and found a spot to plug in the phone. It hummed gently. I placed it on a clear patch of grass, angled its lid toward the sky, watched the little signal bars sprout on the tiny screen. Then I punched in a phone number. It rang. Magic.
“Hello. Hello, newsdesk? It’s me. I’m in India. Yes, fine. No, terrible. Look, can you take dictation?”
I took a breath. Thought of what I’d seen, thought of six hundred words of crisp wire copy. “The residents of this earthquake-shattered town …” I began, faking it, and ten minutes later I was finished: “
… a child’s teddy bear.”
The news editor came on the line, booming across a great chasm. “Good stuff,” he said. “Look, try to find some Americans or even Canadians. A lot of people have relatives over there. We need local angles. Tragic families are good. Miracle survivors are even better. Got it?”
I got it.
Then, fortified with sardines on toast—courtesy of the Englishman—I unrolled my sleeping bag and went to sleep. I slept so soundly that I didn’t feel the aftershock at dawn that jolted the residents of the town from their outdoor beds, driving them instantly upright, hearts pounding, ready to flee.
The atmosphere in the camp was chaotic and congenial. Journalists are territorial, but here the caginess and rivalry were muted. Television spoke to print, and photographer to reporter, sharing scoops, gently prodding for information. Comrades who’d met in previous wars or disasters renewed their acquaintance with offhand bonhomie. Around the campfire, the old veterans would reminisce about jeeps and guerrillas, artillery fire and malaria. Sometimes they spoke of dead colleagues, killed in the line of news-gathering duty.
These stories fascinated and terrified me. I was not like these people, brave and self-important. I did not want to go to a war. I liked my job, but I was rather homesick and increasingly, shamefully, certain I wanted a quiet life.
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