by Vamba Sherif
‘War and drought compelled us to move and settle here,’ he would say. ‘Our founder, a woman of great strength and wisdom, stumbled on this place with our people and decided to stay here. The trees at that time were so tall that days went by without sunlight touching the ground. We lived side by side with the animals. But with time we drove them deeper into the forest and further away from us.’
Sometimes I would dream I was in a battle. I would have no weapons. Enemies would fall and come to life again. The war would drag on until the few still standing fell. But suddenly they would rise up again and the war would begin anew. The dream tormented me, and as I grew older, the dreams intensified. One day I told my father.
‘We should consult the Muslim scholar,’ he said.
The man suggested sacrificing a white chicken.
‘What is the meaning of the dream?’ I asked.
‘When the time comes, you will know, Halay.’
My father then took over teaching me. He taught me wrestling, and one day he decided to put my wrestling prowess to the test. He invited some of my friends over to dinner and then said, ‘My son says he can thrash you all.’
My friends were dumbfounded.
‘Yes, he says you are not men.’
‘Father!’
‘I will let him explain it himself.’
One of my friends said, ‘Uncle Kollie, you shouldn’t be surprised when your son returns home later with a broken leg or an arm.’
7
I didn’t want to fight. I loathed the act of hitting someone and causing him pain. Trained by my father, whose achievement among others was to wage war on his mother’s people, a warrior in every sense, I was reluctant to fight. But failing to persuade him, I had no other choice but to follow my friends to the town square. The moon, concealed by clouds and then moments later exposed, dazzled with its effulgence, the distant horizon sprinkled with fading hues. A bevy of girls trailed after us as we walked along, singing our names in teasing voices. In the square, the heart of New Town, the girls formed a circle around us. The boys I was to fight gathered in a single group, facing me. On taking off my tunic, a flurry of cool breeze enveloped me, and I felt the first intimations of cold. I clenched my hands into fists, whirled them around, but felt awkward. To become a fighter, a warrior in the best sense of the word, my father had taught me, one had to be prepared to summon strength at any moment. But I found that I couldn’t.
My main opponent, the one who had threatened to thrash me, a tall young man of my age or thereabouts, declared, ‘It’s time you ran away to your mother. Why are you still here, Halay?’ He turned to the other boys. ‘Do you want to see some fun?’
His words were working me into a fighting mood.
‘Boys, he is creeping all over with fear.’ Turning to the girls, laughing now, he said, ‘Form a tight circle around him. He’s bound to escape. You are not a fighter, spoiled child, return to your mother.’
This did it for me. For some time now, boys had mocked me behind my back for the fact that even after being initiated into the Poro Secret Society – a process that still awaits you, Edward – I still slept in the same hut as my mother, which was not true.
I threw myself at him then, but found myself lying in the dust and blinded by it. As I tried to stand up, I stumbled into one of the girls, who said, ‘Fight, you coward, or I will never sing your name again.’
I couldn’t see her because of the dust in my eyes. But her words had cut me to the quick. I attacked the boy again, but he proved a formidable opponent. He moved around the ring made by the girls, fierce, agile on his feet despite his size, trying to pin me down with his bulky figure. But at every attempt, I would cut loose. We tugged at each other for a while, during which I managed to grab him around the waist, lifted him and sent him falling with an ease that astounded me.
I turned in the direction of the girl’s voice but did not see her. The girls were singing my name now. The next wrestler did not even have the opportunity to get into the fight. I sent him sprawling in the dust. The girls’ song rose. The third wrestler darted out of the group, flashed a blow across my face and cut me on the tip of my nose. I got clear and felt my nose. I was not seriously wounded. Head bowed, hands shielding my face, I moved towards my opponent, raining blows on him. One of the blows caught him in the stomach, and he uttered a yelp like a wounded animal. Another assailant lifted me up and whirled me around, and when we landed on the ground he hit me with steady blows. I shoved him, dug my feet in the ground and jumped up. I was prepared when he came at me again. I dodged him and when he fell, I held his arms behind his back and began to squeeze. ‘Halay,’ he grunted, but I ignored him. His sobs only served to feed my anger.
The girls began to admonish me.
‘Halay, you’ve taken the fight too far,’ one of them said.
‘We were trying to have fun here.’
‘So, you hate your friends that much, Halay?’
‘How can you be so cruel?’
I brushed aside their grumbles and walked home. A figure tore away from the group and called my name. It was the girl who had called me a coward. She was of my height, with slender legs and arms, and hair plaited into little portions tied with black threads.
Whenever she smiled or frowned, her face broke and then coalesced into expressions that made my heart lurch.
She was dressed from chest down to her knees in a single wrapper. She looked me square in the eyes.
‘I thought you were clever,’ she said.
‘You were the one who called me a coward,’ I said, determined not to flinch from the embers in her eyes. But the hardness in her gaze did not falter.
‘So you think you are a great fighter now.’
How could she have lived in the same town as I did without me ever noticing her until that moment? Yet I knew her. She was Mambu’s daughter, Miatta, the daughter of my father’s rival, his sworn enemy.
‘Is this how you will treat me when I become your wife?’
Sweat broke out on me.
‘If ever you lay those hands on me, I swear I will put an end to your life, do you hear me, fighter Halay?’
‘I don’t like fighting,’ I said.
‘What a way of showing it.’
‘I don’t ever want to fight.’
‘Then our future will be a difficult one.’
‘Miatta, will you agree to marry me?’
‘I’ve been watching you all my life, Halay. I know you.’
‘I will tell my mother about you.’
True to my words, I went to see my mother that night. I met her seated before the fire in her hut, staring at it intently. Her lips quavered and her eyes glowed. She was eager to talk with me.
‘That’s not how you treat a friend,’ she said.
‘Mother, I did not start the fight.’
‘Your friend’s mother came over to see me. She said you fought her son like you were fighting an enemy.’
She fretted with the firewood, shoving a piece into the fire and stoking the embers by blowing on them. My mother still bore traces of her youth, of her beauty, which was apparent in her neat set of teeth, in her gentle voice, in her smile and smooth forehead. Was my father attracted to that smooth face that seemed not to have aged? I could not imagine that tiny body, lean and fragile, ever bearing the man I had become, one of the tallest in the town, focused on avoiding fights and trying to know the world beyond the town.
‘I was once a centre of attention in my land, Halay,’ she said. ‘Our home brimmed with hordes of young men who came every day to narrate stories of courage and offered to marry me. My father, your grandfather, was a generous ruler. He had so many children we could fill up a whole village. But for reasons I cannot understand, he doted on me and preferred me to all his children. If I had stayed in my land, if there had been no war, he would have asked me to succeed him. It was not uncommon. We’ve had women rulers in the past. But your father brought war, put an end to everything, and took me with him.�
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‘But you can return home, Mother.’
‘I belong here now. My father is long dead and his children have scattered across the land. And I care about you.’
As she spoke while blowing on the fire I could detect in her voice something that hinted at a remote origin, at traces of a culture unknown to me. Manifestations of her illness were rare now; she hardly ever stared vacantly or communicated with spirits as she was wont to do during my childhood. My real mother had returned.
‘I could go home with you,’ I said.
‘Don’t be a fighter, Halay. By fighting, you nurture enemies.’
She snorted and dried her tears with her wrapper.
‘I shouldn’t be crying in front of you,’ she said.
Moved by the grief in her voice, I knelt before her. She took my head and guided it onto her lap and began to ruffle it.
‘I met the girl I want to marry, Mother.’
Her eyes glowed, and she smiled.
‘Tell me about her. You never talk about girls.’
‘She’s Mambu’s daughter.’
She was silent for a long time.
‘Your father will not approve of this.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Well, we will stand up to him, won’t we?’
She sang to me in the Kissi language, not a word of which I could understand, but it was a beautiful song, and all the fear I’d had vanished, and I fell into a dreamless sleep on her lap.
8
Why would a girl who had agreed to be my wife the other night prove so impossible during the day? I wondered as I stood in Mambu’s compound. I had gone to fetch firewood for Miatta earlier that morning, a bundle of a size meant to impress her, the wood of the best kind, and I had negotiated my way into the compound, avoiding her father, avoiding as many people as I could, to the hut she shared with her mother. I let the firewood fall on the ground with a thud that was meant to draw her attention. No one came out of the hut to receive me. I waited, my exasperation growing with every passing moment, for I was sure that Miatta was in the hut.
I called out several times but received no response. I was about to leave when she came from behind the hut. The embers in her eyes were of such intensity that I avoided her gaze. I found myself scrolling patterns on the ground with my toes.
‘Where did you get the wood?’ she asked.
The gentleness in her voice surprised me.
‘In the forest around our farm.’
‘I don’t like men fetching wood for me.’
‘Why is that?
‘They will stop fetching wood later on.’
‘Not me. Not when it comes to you.’
‘You might change your mind.’
‘Never, Miatta. Never.’
‘I don’t believe you. Forget what I said last night. Take your firewood and leave. Mother is waiting for me.’
She left me standing there and went round the hut to join her mother, leaving me wondering what had happened between the night and this moment to have changed her mind.
‘I would not oppose my daughter marrying you, Halay,’ Mambu said from behind me. ‘But your father has to agree to it. Only then will I give my consent. You two are meant for each other.’
I knew Mambu took to me, but I had not expected such generosity, and knowing him as I did I could not but wonder whether he had an ulterior motive for this gesture. I couldn’t wait to tell my father.
But he had left with the smith to lead a punitive campaign against our southern neighbours who were fighting with our farmers over land rights. He had wanted me to accompany him, for in his own words I was a warrior now, better than most.
But my mother refused. ‘If you dare take my son with you, Kollie, you will return from that war to an empty home. I will take him with me to my people and you will never see us again, do you hear me?’
He wavered before her threat, which was real, for he could see the determination in my mother’s eyes. So he said, ‘You will take care of the house in my absence, Halay.’ He had more than a hundred warriors under his command. He was in his war gear, a hat and tunic adorned with cowries thought to deflect bullets, and he had a rifle in one hand and a machete in the other, ready to confront the enemy. My father smelt of herbs and the weariness of war, and while he was with me I could see that his mind was elsewhere, perhaps on the battlefield. He drew me aside, as if he was about to impart a terrible secret. ‘Open your eyes, Halay, see the world as it is and not as it should be,’ he said.
On returning home from seeing Miatta, I could not avoid mother.
‘Talk to your mother, Halay.’
‘Miatta hates me.’
She laughed. ‘I cannot tell you exactly what she feels about you. But she does not hate you. Last night she agreed to marry you.’
‘But she refused me today.’
‘Wait a few days and talk to her again.’
‘I am tired.’
‘Never give up pursuing a woman.’
‘I have to win her, Mother.’
‘You will, son. You will.’
The next morning, I went to see the Muslim cleric. I met him doing his ablutions in preparation for prayer. The man had an attractive forehead and a beard sprinkled with a dash of grey. It was believed that the cleric could perform wonders, transforming misfortune into luck and altering the prospects of barren women with the power of his rosaries. Even though only a handful of people besides his followers espoused his beliefs, some of the masked beings and most of the walls of our homes, our waists, biceps and necks were adorned with amulets he had prepared, using verses from his holy book. Hidden in the ground of almost every home was a pouch he had made to deter malevolent spirits.
‘Halay, the chosen one, please approach.’
It astounded me to hear this. What did he mean? How could I ever be a chosen one if all I felt was a terrible apprehension about the world. The wall of his hut was covered with ancient manuscripts up to the ceiling.
‘I know why you are here. I can see longing in your face.’
So he could also read minds, I thought to myself.
‘It is love, isn’t it?’ he asked.
I explained. ‘She refused me,’ I said.
The man went on counting his rosary.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
‘She looked at me with contempt.’
‘Or was it love?’
‘What?’
‘Maybe it was love that you saw.’
‘It cannot be. I saw hatred in her eyes.’
The man laughed.
‘We shall see,’ he said.
He spread out a large mat before me with circles, triangles, rectangles and other mathematical figures drawn on it. Strange figures and letters were written in these shapes. Around a large circle were stars and beautiful writings in black, red, gold and blue. The cleric asked me to step onto the mat and sit crossed-legged in the middle. Then he closed his eyes and counted the rosary. Gradually I felt a burning sensation in my stomach. It swelled until it was unbearable, and I stood up to leave.
‘You are running away from your destiny, Halay.’
I sat down, and the sensation surged up in me again.
‘I can see the sign clearly now. It is in you.’
‘What sign?’
He ignored my question.
‘Miatta, although part of it all, is very small in the circle of things, Halay. Go to the river. You are destined for great things.’
What did he mean? What destiny? What great things? I left for the river bothered by these questions.
The river teemed with people. Not knowing why I had come but obeying the cleric’s instruction, I sat under a tree from the top of which young men of my age and older jumped and plunged in the river. I had done this several times before, but it always amazed me to see others do it, plunging from such a height.
Miatta was there with other young women, but she ignored me, which added to my bafflement. Later I was alerted to her scream. I
turned to the river to see Miatta being tossed about and dragged towards a whirlpool, which had claimed lives before. Without a moment’s hesitation, I plunged in the river, reached Miatta and guided her safely to the bank.
9
Rifle shots and jubilant war cries interrupted us while we were celebrating my rescue of Miatta that night. My father had returned. My mother joined me as I stood with my friends, with Miatta, anxious to see him. ‘Your father has brought us victory,’ she said, and held my hand. Together with the townspeople, who numbered in the hundreds, we moved towards the western gate to welcome my father and his men. I knew what awaited us. On meeting my father, the people would bear him on their shoulders and would not halt until they had reached the town centre, where he would be gowned in the most precious fabric, a hand-woven cotton tunic perhaps red in colour, to go with baggy trousers. My father would be showered with praises night and day. The land would celebrate him for days, for weeks, for his fame would spread to include other towns and villages, other hamlets and farms.
The crowd reached the western gate but encountered pandemonium. My father, I was told, had been shot. Those who had remained of the defeated enemy had pursued him and his men to our town where one of them had shot him. Confronted with this enemy, the crowd surged backward and fled. The enemy went on a killing spree.
I lost sight of my mother, and I raced about in search of her, in search of Miatta, in search of the blind man, but was hampered by a warrior with a spear. He aimed his weapon at me but missed, and I charged at him. A litany of awesome shrieks and yells took hold of the trembling night. I fought my enemy by employing my rage as a weapon, and in no time I had broken his neck. I did not pause then to take in what it meant to kill a man, only later when the urge to be alone had overwhelmed me. All around me, the dead lay with their faces twisted in eternal repose. I failed to find my mother, Miatta or the blind man. It was impossible to search for them without encountering the enemy, and in the end, routed and in disarray, our warriors took to their heels, and I followed suit.
