Our enemies, our people!
My colleague Pretica Singh and I talked about this unrecorded violence from men as we walked back to the office an hour and a half later. This is the violence that the South African Police (SAP) and Statistics South Africa neither record nor report on. It does not show up as a category in their statistics. This violence that my body has failed to forget! This is the violence that clearly springs from intense hatred and disregard of women as human beings, deserving of respect. This ubiquitous violence we are forced to breathe in and out each time we navigate our way through public spaces.
I have begun to wonder whether my expectation of men can, in fact, be viewed as complicity. I am reminded of how I have never had the courage to ask my two brothers if they have ever raped a woman. I am not ready for their answers. Does this too make me complicit? Is it most disturbing to acknowledge that our violators are our people?
Tongues of their mothers
I wish to write an epic poem about Sarah Baartman,
one that will be silent on her captors, torturers and demolishers.
It will say nothing of the experiments, the laboratories and the displays
or even the diplomatic dabbles that brought her remains home, eventually.
This poem will sing of the Gamtoos Valley holding imprints of her baby steps.
It will contain rhymes about the games she played as a child,
stanzas will have names of her friends, her family, her community.
It will borrow from every poem ever written about her,
conjuring up her wholeness: her voice, dreams, emotions and thoughts.
I wish to write an epic poem about uMnkabayi kaJama Zulu,
one that will be silent on her nephew Shaka, and her brother Senzangakhona,
It will not even mention Nandi. It will focus on her relationship
with her sisters Mawa and Mmama, her choice not to marry,
her preference not to have children and her power as a ruler.
It will speak of her assortment of battle strategies and her charisma as a leader.
It will render a compilation of all the pieces of advice she gave to men
of abaQulusi who bowed to receive them, smiled to thank her,
But in her absence never acknowledged her, instead called her a mad witch.
I wish to write an epic poem about Daisy Makiwane,
one that will be silent about her father, the reverend Elijah.
It will focus on her relationship with her sister Cecilia
and the conversations they had in the privacy of the night,
how they planned to make history and defy convention.
It will speak the language of algebra, geometry and trigonometry,
Then switch to news, reports, reviews and editorials.
It will enmesh the logic of numbers with the passion that springs from words
capturing the unique brand of pioneer for whom the country was not ready.
I wish to write an epic poem about Princess Magogo Constance Zulu
one that will be silent on her son, Gatsha Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
It will focus on her music and the poetry in it,
the romance and the voice that carried it through to us.
It will describe the dexterity of her music-making fingers
And the rhythm of her body grounded on valleys
mountains and musical rivers of the land of amaZulu.
I will find words to embrace the power of her love songs
that gave women dreams and fantasies to wake up and hold on to
and a language of love in the dialect of their mothers.
I wish to write an epic poem about Victoria Mxenge,
one that will be silent of her husband Griffiths.
It will focus on her choice to flee from patients, bedpans and doctors.
This poem will flee from the pages and find a home in the sky.
It will float below the clouds, automatically changing fonts and sizes
and translating itself into languages that match each reader.
This poem will remind people of Qonce that her umbilical cord fertilized their soil.
It will remind people of uMlazi that her blood fertilized their soil.
It will remind her killers that we shall never, ever forget.
I wish to write a poem about Nomvula Glenrose Mbatha,
one that will be silent on my father, her husband, Reuben Benjamin Xaba.
It will focus on her spirit, one that refused to fall into pieces,
rekindling the fire she made from ashes no one was prepared to gather.
This poem will raise the departed of Magogo, Nquthu, Mgungundlovana,
Nanda, Healdtown, Utrecht, kwaMpande, Ndaleni and Ashdown,
so that they can sit around it as it glows and warm their hands
while they marvel at this fire she made from ashes no one was prepared to gather.
These are just some of the epic poems I wish to write
about women of our world, in the tongues of their mothers.
I will present the women in forms that match their foundations
using metaphors of moments that defined their beings
and similes that flow through seasons of eternity.
But, I am not yet ready to write these poems.
1960s
Leila Aboulela
Born in Cairo to an Egyptian mother and a Sudanese father, she grew up in Sudan and moved to Scotland in 1990. Between 2000 and 2012, she lived in Jakarta, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha, then returned to Aberdeen, where she still lives. She was awarded the first Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000 for her short story “The Museum”, which was included in her collection of stories Coloured Lights. Her other publications include The Kindness of Enemies (2015); The Translator (UK, 1999); Minaret (2005); Lyrics Alley (2011), fiction winner of the Scottish Book Award; a collection of short stories Elsewhere, Home (2018), which won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year; and Bird Summons (2019). Her work has been translated into 15 languages.
A Very Young Judge
My best friend, Leena, laid down the law regarding clothes: no green with blue, no checks with stripes, sandals and handbags must match. “The first thing I look at in a man,” she said, “is his shoes.” We were eleven at the time.
She was my companion during the long years of puberty when womanhood loomed ahead of us fractured and out of reach. I visited her almost every day. Her house was more feminine than ours, her father more indulgent. He had a sheepish smile and smelt of lemony, expensive cologne. I watched as Leena stroked his scalp. With him she became a cuddly girl again, her mother taking time from an almost continuous regime of grooming to look up and smile. It was neighbourhood gossip that Leena’s mother went for regular massages. This, in my austere household was viewed as the height of decadence.
In the playground, I smoothed down my new Eid dress, loving its loose softness and flowers. Leena studied me and said, “It makes you look pregnant!” When I stuck to her advice, she sighed and complained, “You’re so repetitive.”
Her comments about other’s scruffiness and vulgar tastes made me laugh. “He looks like he hasn’t had a shower today!” she would say, or “Her ears are too big for her head.” Or she would make pronouncements such as, “An ugly couple will have a beautiful baby” and rattle off the names of acquaintances to prove her point.
Once on our way home from school, stepping out from the grocer, we saw Leena’s father and a woman getting into the back of a taxi. The woman was in tight trousers, a black T-shirt sliding off her shoulders; she shimmered with gold dust and crimson, her hair twisted to one side to show long jingly earrings. Leena and I stood on the pavement and stared as they drove off.
When we started walking again, Leena’s voice was calm and objective, “My father is a womaniser but he has good taste.” I thought Leena would make fun of the woman’s greasy lip gloss or even call her a slut. Instead she turned to me and frowned, �
�You really must do something about your bushy hair. Are you competing with Einstein?”
She was ruthless about her own looks. Every pimple was dealt with without mercy, every excess hair removed. She wore a wide belt under her clothes in order to slim her waist. Even when she dressed casually, it was deliberate and thought-out. The right jewellery, the right shoes, her hair done in a different style, the look innovative and well-matched. Unlike me, she hated our school uniform. Nothing pleased her more than meeting girls outside school and checking out how they dressed. Or the few events when we were allowed to come to school out of uniform.
We attended a Catholic missionary school in which most of the students, like us, were Muslims. It was the best private school in Khartoum but Leena took a dislike to the nuns. Their white habits depressed her, their cultivated plainness was alien to her soul. “Worst of all,” she would snap, “are the pretty nuns. What a waste!”
Once she asked me, “Who do you think is the most beautiful girl in our class?” I nominated the popular, glamorous ones, including her. But she snorted and chose instead a studious Ethiopian refugee on a scholarship. The girl was without the benefit of fancy clothes or trips to the hairdresser. I was taken aback. Leena could scramble and find a gem. She cared enough to look beyond the obvious.
So I gathered my courage and asked for her judgment. I made a mistake when I begged, “Leena tell me the truth, the real truth. Am I pretty?” She passed her sentence on me. Her ultimate assessment. That was when I first started to want to break free from her.
It was for aesthetic reasons that Leena rose against the girls who started to wear hijab. Leena was no less religious than any of us, but appearances were her territory, her unchallenged area of expertise. The first girl who came to school with her hair covered caused a stir. Unlike the rest of us, she was wearing a long-sleeved white shirt and her navy pinafore had been adjusted to reach her ankles. The nuns weren’t happy. It was a violation of the dress code, they said.
In break, Leena dragged me to the hijabi girl. She tapped her on the shoulder and spoke out loud, “Tell me, when your hair is your best feature, why do you hide it and emphasize your big nose?”
The nuns moved to expel the girl but there were now new government policies, which sided with the hijab. A missionary school in a Muslim country would always be vulnerable. The teachers turned a blind eye to the new taunts of the schoolyard. And Leena made the most of this. She got bolder as the popularity of the hijab spread, sometimes drawing these girls out in heated arguments, once even tugging a veil off a junior’s head. I was always with her, her best audience, her side-kick. I didn’t protest when she spread a rumour that girls who wore hijab would never get married. I didn’t stop her when she drove a younger one to tears.
In the school-yard, I walked next to her, conscious of her grooming, her self-conscious air, her aura of fashion. But I was already plotting to match blue with green. To wear the same thing more than once, and move away from her jurisdiction.
Sade Adeniran
Born in London to Nigerian parents, she was taken back to her father’s village in Nigeria at the age of eight, and spent her formative years living with her grandmother in Idogun, Ondo State, before returning to the UK. She has written for radio, theatre and film but is best known for her debut award-winning novel Imagine This, which won the 2008 regional Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Africa. She is also a film-maker, and has written, produced and directed several short films that have screened at various festivals around the world.
The Day I Died
I am guessing you don’t know who I am, because I’ve yet to do anything remarkable with the life God gave me. But most importantly, you don’t know who I am because the 14th of April 2014 was the day I died. That was the day they came for us. It was around 11:30 p.m. I was asleep at the time, but I heard the gunshots in the dream I was having. The sharp tat-tat had no place there, but I ignored the sound and carried on dreaming. I can no longer remember what that dream was about. All that has stayed with me from that night is the waking nightmare my life became.
The moment the rough hands of the man shook away my sleep, the sweet dream disappeared into the place of loss. The horrible smell from his unwashed body made my stomach give him the tuwo shinkafa I ate earlier. It went all over his holed-out muddy boots. I might have kept it in my belly if not for the gun slammed into my stomach when my legs failed me. I heard Amina lose hers too. She was my arch-enemy because of the many disagreements we’d had over things that small girls fight over. She hated me mainly because I was smarter than her; she came second to my first in all the subjects we studied.
My favourite subjects were Biology and English. However, in that moment of sharing our undigested dinner with our Boko Haram captors, neither of us was thinking of the study of living organisms or how to use a conjunction in a sentence. At that moment in time, petty grievances were set aside as we both wondered if we would ever see our families again. Others wailed and as our eyes met across the dormitory filled with frightened children, we briefly became friends, allies, the enemy of my enemy. We finally had something to unite us. We had been fighting over rubbish all school year and became staunch allies over regurgitated tuwo shinkafa.
I don’t know if our friendship would have lasted, but for a little while we bonded over a minor victory, which was of little consequence. But it is these little things that my mind clings to, because the other things, I cannot speak of or bear to remember.
I do not know what happened to Amina, she was braver than me and the rest of the girls. She ran, I did not. Shots were fired after the few who were brave enough to run. I do not know if they survived or if they died in the bush surrounded by nothing but trees, but in my moments of hope, I liked to think they made it back home and that help would soon be on its way. I imagined my father, Bible in one hand and the holy cross in the other, coming into camp and begging for my release. We had plans; he had plans for me.
The first girl in his family who would go to university and become a real doctor. My mother did not agree, she wanted me to marry, to become someone’s wife. It was not what I wanted, neither was becoming a doctor, but going away to university would allow me the chance to see more than our village.
What I wanted more was to see those places I only read about in the novels I ploughed through. To taste the food I saw them cooking on the television. The only programmes my father watched were the foreign cooking programmes, so they were the only ones me and my younger sister watched. I try not to think about her. If not for the fact that she was ill that week and had gone home to get well, she too would have been in school and my parents would have lost both their children. There is not much comfort in this for me, but at the same time it is a good thing.
I did not want to die; what I did not know was that I was already dead. I curse Boko Haram with my last breath, I pray for them to feel a tenth of the pain I have suffered, the pain I know my mother has suffered and will continue to suffer until the day she goes to her ancestors. I want to wish ill on their families and if they have daughters, I pray for what happened to us to happen to them. But as I say these words, I know that it does not make me a good Christian. I have prayed for deliverance, for rescue and for mercy, but the bitterness on my tongue is more bitter than bitter leaf. Where is God? Hours turned into days and the days into months and the months into years. And still there is no rescue, no deliverance and no mercy. My father will not be coming to collect me. When there is an absence of hope, there is an absence of life, and so my death is all but certain, this I do know and this I can finally control.
My father would tell me that it is a sin for a person to take their own life, but if that life has already been taken, then surely God will let me into heaven? I wanted to live, but two stillbirths sealed my fate. The husband I did not want has divorced me and I have become a wife to many. When I felt the new life stir within me for the third time, I did not know who it belonged to. What I did know was that I could not continue
. They call me a witch because of the dead babies. It is true, I did not want any child to survive, how could I? Could I truly love a child born of rape? I felt nothing but hatred towards the man they forced me to marry. I cooked, cleaned and performed the duties of a wife; the one thing I would not do was renounce my own religion. It was the last piece of home I could cling to, they had taken everything else.
The times they took my body, I removed my mind and escaped to other places. I imagined myself arriving at university and graduating with my proud father in the audience clapping and celebrating my success. I imagined myself in a fancy restaurant in Lagos eating suya with a knife and fork. I imagined myself on an aeroplane, high up in the heavens and as close to God as an ordinary person can get.
These imaginings floated through, but I was never able to hold on to them for very long. They were always vague and with no definition. I’d never been beyond our village and the school gates, so the picture of my graduation contained just the family dressed in our Sunday clothes posing outside our house for photos. The restaurant where I ate suya with a knife and fork looked like Alhaja’s house. Her husband is the richest person in our village and their house has an indoor kitchen. So the restaurant looked like the inside of their house. It made no sense, but it helped pass the time.
I could not picture the inside of an aeroplane because I’ve never seen the inside of one. So instead I imagined floating in the clouds in a car with wings. This car also managed to resemble Alhaji’s car. The only difference: the wings; and instead of the boring black, it was a tomato red, which made it stand out against the clouds. My body was theirs but my mind was mine and it soared and explored. I stopped screaming when I realised that only made it worse. So I became silent and thought of flying cars and eating suya with a knife and fork.
I also thought of the times I fought with my younger sister. Two years my junior yet she failed to show me the proper respect due an older sister. We argued over silly things at home, like whose turn it was to sweep the room or wash the plates. As the elder, I of course delegated my share to her when I could get away with it. But when she came to school, I was her protector. I would not let the seniors treat her like their housegirl. Hafsat Umar wanted her to wash and iron her school uniform every day. That was not really an issue; the problem was that Hafsat had a habit of staining her uniform and getting palm-oil out of her clothes was a challenge my sister failed to meet. So Hafsat naturally had to punish her, but she went too far, which is why I stepped in. We have not spoken since that incident; even here in our misery she still holds a grudge. As one of the many who have converted to Islam, she is in a different group, but that has not stopped her adding more misery to my existence. It was she who started calling me a witch, all because I made her eat sand. I wished I had knocked out her teeth at the same time; that way she would not be able to smile her fake smile each time she sees me.
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