by Vamba Sherif
Soon after my birth, my mother would tell me, a cold wind swept across the land followed by a downpour that lasted days. Homes quivered under the weight of the deluge, the land gasped for breath, frogs littered the roads, and the clutch of death released its hold on the people.
One day, I must have been seven, my father met me dawdling over my meal of shrimps prepared in a sauce of mushrooms and served with rice. He presented me with a bird he had cut down with a single catapult shot. ‘Just for you, now eat, namesake of my father.’ But I refused.
My mother sat me on her lap and narrated one of the stories of the ever-cunning spider. ‘Some villagers were about to punish Spider for a crime he had committed,’ she said. ‘Spider claimed he could not swim and preferred being burnt alive. The townspeople decided to go against his wishes by throwing him in the river. Spider quickly swam to the other side and turned to the villagers, saying, “Stupid people, didn’t you know that I was a born swimmer.”’
Then my mother set me down and urged me to eat. ‘Just wait until you have a brother or a sister, then you will stop this foolishness,’ she would say. But seven years had passed without a brother or a sister. I had ceased to believe her. I had become adept at holding her attention, at making her world revolve around me, so much so that when I refused to eat, my stubbornness would drive her to tears.
‘What is it, namesake of my father?’ my father asked. ‘Are we not hungry today? Then let’s drop by your friend, Koilor.’
My eyes lit up with anticipation, for I was about to see the man I admired most beside my father, the blacksmith.
My father and I went through the town, which was surrounded by a chain of mountains, mysterious and fecund with ancient lore. One story was that our founder, a woman whose story had become a legend, stood on the peak of one of the mountains, beckoned to the sky and it descended and touched her fingertips. ‘Her footprints are found somewhere on one of the mountains. She guards over our town, Halay,’ my father said. Hard-worn paths divided the town, which consisted of several quarters, each bearing the name of a family or a place. Where I lived with my parents went by the name New Town. ‘The new town came about because the children of our founder, who were twins, went to war over the right to rule Old Town,’ my father said. ‘As a result the young brother left and set up his town across the stream.’
The town was quiet except for the sporadic sound of the smith hammering away at a piece of metal and the chanting of the Muslim scholar and his students. Someone would throw a greeting across the road, and it would be answered with a voice in the deep thrall of midday lassitude, and then the chanting and the sound of the smith’s hammer would take over again. Seated on my father’s shoulders, in the embrace of his strong arms, I felt secure, invincible, loved, which allowed me to break into laughter for no reason at all. Perhaps it was because I was the son of a man who bore the burden of his people with such pride.
Smoke rose from the smith’s workshop perched on the slope of a hill in the distance. Some of my friends came running towards me.
‘We want to play with Halay,’ they said.
‘Can I join them, Father?’
‘What do you want to do, play or see Koilor?’
‘I want to see Koilor first,’ I said.
Just then, I saw my father’s rival approaching, the man who craved his position and made no secret of it. His name was Mambu.
‘So where are you off to today, Halay? Isn’t it about time that you let this child be a man, Kollie? In a few years, he will be initiated into the Poro Secret Society. You have to prepare him. What would happen if the child were to come face to face with the masked beings?’
‘What I do with my child is none of your business.’
‘Your father is insulting your uncle, Halay.’
My father ignored him and climbed the hill toward the smith’s workshop. On turning around, I saw Mambu winking at me, smiling.
‘What are masked beings, Father?’
I had heard of the masked beings but every time one of them appeared in the town we children were told to stay indoors.
‘When the time comes you will know.’
The smith was cross-eyed. Every time his gaze alighted on me, he would nod or blink, though the look was meant for my father. Sometimes he would go into a fit of coughing or sneezes, sending his hammer or anything within reach flying to the other end of the shack.
‘You’ve brought my friend with you,’ he said.
Koilor shoved his work, the cutlasses and hoes, into a corner with his bare feet, creating space for me and my father.
‘Look at these rifles, Halay,’ he said. ‘I’ve repaired more than two dozen of them. In a few months we will be ready.’
And he handed a rifle over to me.
‘Don’t touch it, Halay,’ my father said, snatching the rifle from me. ‘We won our last battle with such a rifle. The enemy was crushed before the battle was even joined. Once upon a time courage was measured by the ability to face the enemy and defeat him. Now all you need is the skill to hit him with a single rifle shot. Times have changed.’
‘I’ve heard there are better ones on the coast,’ the smith said. ‘The Liberians on the coast and the English on the other side of the river trade in better rifles. All I can do is to repair them.’
‘These will do, Koilor,’ my father said.
‘After this battle, you will have no choice but to expand your family to include more wives, which means more children, Kollie.’
‘Let’s not discuss war before the child. He’s here for your stories.’
The smith smiled. ‘Did I ever tell you that I defeated every wrestler in the land, Halay? I was hired by towns and villages to fight for them at wrestling matches. After defeating my opponents, women would line the road to welcome me and sing my praises,’ he said.
The smith began hammering with strokes that seemed aimless at first but meticulous as the metal took shape. And he recalled a time he admitted he would never relive again. ‘Those were the days, Halay,’ he said.
‘But there was a man you failed to defeat in your many encounters with him, Koilor,’ my father said. ‘Do you remember?’
‘You will make the child stop respecting me,’ the smith said.
‘Tell him the truth.’
‘He doesn’t have to know.’
‘What is it, Father?’
‘Your father was the man I failed to defeat. He might be small in stature, but he’s the strongest in the land.’ The smith paused. ‘But if we were to fight today, I would defeat him very easily. He’s losing his edge.’
‘Let me know whenever you are ready,’ my father said.
‘I don’t want to shame you before the child.’
The smith moved the iron from the furnace to the anvil and back to the furnace again. Gradually I began to see the metal take shape, from a crude form into a smooth pot, which he would later adorn with beautiful images of animals or shapes. I turned to my father with a pleading look.
‘I want to be a smith, Father.’
The smith nodded as if he understood me, and I went on to name things I wanted to fashion from metal – trees, animals and people. ‘I want to make the biggest pot in the world, Father.’
‘Not a bad idea, Halay,’ he said. ‘But you must know that smiths are makers of utensils, cutlasses and weapons, not the world around them. Moreover, I hope you will succeed me one day.’
Later, after we had left and were on our way to the town hall, where my father held court and settled disputes, he suggested that we see his friend the blind man, Tellewoyan, who had become ill.
Tellewoyan looked handsome, his shaved head and smooth face belying the fact that he was blind and older than my father.
‘Come here, Halay,’ he said. He was sitting outside his hut, in the shade of a tree. ‘Who told you I was sick? My enemies begrudge me my success with women. Tellewoyan, sick, never! Come closer.’
Addressing my father he said, ‘Let the child come to see
me every day. Did I ever tell you about those mountains whose peaks were clouded with whiteness, Halay? Yes, as white as clouds.’ The blind man told me of huge canoes that transported people to distant lands. ‘A white man on the coast in Freetown told me about those lands. The man also taught me to read and write before a cobra spat in my face. If not for the incident, I would have gone to England. I want to share what I know with you, Halay.’
‘We will see,’ my father said.
‘Times are changing. The child needs education.’
Tellewoyan insisted I shared a breakfast of boiled plantain with him. ‘The child will not leave my home without eating some of my food,’ he said, and I ended up consuming all the food.
‘And you say he refuses to eat,’ the blind man said. ‘Bring him to me next time and he will eat, Kollie.’
We got to the town hall, which was a round structure with a thatched roof; it was an open space large enough to hold more than fifty people. Despite my age and protests from some who brought cases to my father to be settled, he insisted that I attend the sessions. ‘It would help him avoid making mistakes in the future,’ he said. I watched him at work, settling marital squabbles and disputes over farm borders or misunderstandings over the wrong use of words.
It occurred to me then how people, even those who are close, were often at odds, some even hurting or murdering the other. I could not imagine leading such a life. I would not allow it.
On returning home, we met my mother preparing the evening meal. Though our compound was full of family members, including uncles, all of them were related to my father, none to my mother.
‘What did you do all day?’ she asked.
I told her about the smith and the blind man.
‘Why do you let the child listen to stories of war and fighting? I don’t want anyone talking about war in this house, Kollie.’
‘War brought us together.’
‘Yes, but war resulted in the death of my mother and in losing my language. No one speaks my language here.’
‘The war is over, Siah.’
‘Yet you are preparing for another war. If this goes on, I will have no other choice but to return home with my son.’
‘There are enemies out there threatening our very existence. I cannot bear the thought of losing you to an enemy.’
My mother spoke our language as though she were a newcomer, which often amused me. One day I laughed at her attempt to articulate a particular expression, but the laughter froze when I felt her hand sweep across my face with a force that sent me crashing in the dust.
During the meal, which I ate seated across from her in front of the hut that I shared with her, my mother went into one of those occasional relapses which resulted in her staring vacantly for a long while. But unlike other occasions, she began to mutter quietly to herself, as though she were conversing with invisible beings. It fascinated and terrified me at the same time, and I was about to rush to my father when she turned to me with a panicky face and then a smile. She reached out and cuddled me, as if she needed some assurance.
I decided not to think about it, but it kept bothering me. There were rumours she was haunted by an evil spirit who had fallen in love with her and wanted her for himself. I retired to bed that night with her face – the sudden panic and then the smile – in my mind,.
The hut had few ornaments – a few pots, calabashes, clothes – for my mother set no store by material things. Once a week, she would change into a different tunic and wrappers, which covered her lanky frame, and around her neck hung a simple necklace, but her face, the most remarkable aspect of her – for it seemed permanently youthful – was often furrowed into a weary aspect. She seemed to pass through life as though it were a path to a better destination, bearing her past with her and refusing to share it with anyone, including me. Her constant worry about my well-being sometimes frightened me. I wallowed in her attention but would shy away from it whenever it threatened to suffocate me.
But that night, after what I had witnessed, I had the urge to be close to my mother. I refrained from playing with my friends in the moonlight to be with her, to listen to her voice, which was often soothing.
‘Don’t let your father involve you in his talk of war,’ she said, while lying on a mat in a corner of the hut. ‘Never, Halay. There are other ways to live than waging war. Remember that.’
‘Mother, I want to be like the smith Koilor,’ I said.
Outside, the voices of my friends rose with a song accompanied by clapping hands. ‘That smith is as hungry for war as your father. I will ask the blind man to teach you to read and write,’ she said.
What did reading and writing mean? I wondered, and how would Tellewoyan, a blind man, teach me? I couldn’t wait to find out.
2
That night I had a dream, and in the dream I saw the masked beings. There were four of them, two with the carved wooden faces of women but terrifying in their beauty. One had no pronounced features but a smooth slab of wood flanked with long tresses of yellowish ropes. Another had the muzzle of a crocodile with huge plumes of feathers as hair on its head. These masked beings were all floating in the stifling void around me, beings that belonged to the Poro Secret Society, a society of adult men, the counterpart to the women’s Sande Society, to which a child had no access. Every time they dived towards me, about to sweep me off the mat, I felt an oppressive weight that denied me speech. At one point I could see the thatched roof and the pouches my mother had placed around the hut to deter malevolent spirits, which meant I was awake and not in a dream. Not only were the masked beings dancing about me, but gradually I felt them becoming part of me, as though I were a fish net through which they were gliding like water. The fear I would become part of those beings, whose presence was as unbearable as a burning fire, compelled me to scream so hard that my mother awoke and the compound with her. She did not enquire as to the nature of my dream, as if she was privy to it, as if she had expected it, or had passed on her afflictions or whatever made her so out of this world to me. All she did was cuddle me in her embrace and stay with me for the rest of the night. The next morning, she prepared my bath, which I had standing at the back of the compound, facing the valley, the soothing movement of her hands across my back as she soaped me, reviving me.
I would have consigned this experience to oblivion were it not for the reaction of others in the compound. Most kept their distance or were quiet, including my father who wore a solemn, almost funereal expression on his face. ‘It was a bad dream, Halay,’ he said when I attempted to share the dream with him. ‘It’s over now.’
Seated on a mat across from him, before a bowl of rice porridge, I could feel eyes boring holes in my back, and I wished my old father would return and my mother would stop worrying her head about me.
‘I will take you to the blind man,’ my father said.
Tellewoyan did not touch on the issue of the masked beings although my father or someone else must have told him. Instead, he sat with me under a tree, while the morning sun burned our backs.
‘You are going to learn how to speak first,’ he said. ‘That means I will say the alphabet and you repeat it after me.’
The blind man had kept some books from his days in Freetown. ‘I got these from the white man who taught me,’ he said. ‘One day you will learn how to read all of this.’
Weeks drifted by punctuated with luminous lessons from the blind man, whose patience made me acutely aware of his handicap, so much so that occasionally I would stare at his dead eyes for a long while, and in the silence, perhaps sensing what I was doing, he would break into laughter, his face sweaty from embarrassment.
‘Return to your lesson, Halay,’ he would say.
I often wondered who prepared his meals, especially when I saw him one morning boiling cassava in a clay pot. ‘There are enough women willing to prepare a meal for this blind man, child,’ he said.
Leaving him, I would join my father in the town hall or head for one of the two riv
ers that flanked the town.
One day, after a bout of swimming, I had gone in search of firewood in the forest near the river. I was on my way home with a bundle of wood on my head, when I saw a figure standing with its back to me, erect like a carved god. The ominous figure was attired in long raffia, its hard breath distinct within the silence that had descended on the forest, as if every creature was aware of its presence.
Then it turned. The figure was the masked being from my dreams, the one with the features of a crocodile. It not only followed me home but it also sneaked its way into my dream. It came to me in the form of a storm, chasing me while I tried to escape it. On opening my eyes, I noticed that my sleeping mat was wet with rainfall. There was no sign of my mother. I crawled out of my corner and when I stood up, a fit of sneezing caught me, and the world around me changed into a haze of crimson shades, which took a while to recede. I anticipated another sneeze, which did not materialize. What came was another wave of the masked being’s presence, and this time it lashed me against the wall of the hut. The being approached me in terrifying silence and then opened its marbled eyes. There was fire in them. I tried to shut my eyes, to force the image out of my mind but couldn’t. Employing the scarce strength left in me, I attempted to move, but the masked being went on prancing about. My chest was numbed, my feet frozen as it gnawed away at my being. It was at this point that I saw its drooling beak and teeth, and then it bore me out of the hut and flung me right before my mother.
For a while she did not budge, and then she broke into a scream and made hysterical gestures, followed by a sudden loss of consciousness. For the first time, I began to take the whispers that accompanied my mother everywhere seriously, whispers that she was haunted by malevolent spirits, which made her not of this world or the other, and that perhaps those spirits had set their gaze on me in the form of the masked beings. I began to be apprehensive of my mother.
Meanwhile my father went about the compound picking fights, saying, ‘Who is out to harm my son?’ On seeing his friend the smith, he pounced on him. ‘Koilor, tell me that my son will be all right. Tell me.’ But the smith sucked his teeth and shoved him aside, approaching me.
