Land of My Fathers

by Vamba Sherif

  We met at the Poro Secret Society ground to take stock of our losses and to lay out a strategy as to how to reclaim our town.

  It was then that I came to learn that my mother had not survived, nor had the blind man and dozens of others. I couldn’t bear the news, and so I left the gathering to amble through the forest. My grief was like a storm that gathered strength with every passing moment and crashed over me, over and over again, until it forced me to my knees. I remained kneeling until day broke with beams of sunlight sprouting through the trees, forming alternately bright and dark patterns on the forest floor. I got to my feet, fighting to remain sane.

  I hastened to join the men and reached the Poro ground at noon. No one enquired where I had been. We rehearsed our plan in minute detail. Certain of victory, we left to carry the fight to the enemy. We surrounded the town and then launched our attack.

  The town was deserted. The invaders, having worked out our strategy, had concealed themselves. War cries resounded as the enemy poured into the town but this time on horses, which I was seeing for the first time. The riders went snatching heads off like a farmer cutting rice stems with a sharp knife. We did not stand a chance against such a force.

  Our enemies had solicited help from warriors of a type that we had never confronted before. We ran into the forest, through briers and sharp thorns, which cut us. Every now and then I was assaulted by the sound of horses’ hooves, as if the enemy were hard on my heels. Climbing difficult hills, racing into strange bushes with knife-like plants, sometimes falling but never once halting, I ran on until my legs could carry me no longer. When I stopped, the forest seemed to be listening to my heavy breathing. The shrill cry of an animal conquered the silence and was answered with a chorus of other animals. A white form glided past me, and I thought it was one of the wandering beings believed to inhabit the forest at night. Cuddled in a hollow of a tree trunk that I had cleared of leaves, I waited for dawn. Strange birds hovered in the air. An owl hooted. Bats flipped about me, and a leopard, perhaps in search of a place to rest, paused before my hideout, stared at me with its marbled eyes gleaming in the moonlight. I shut my eyes, and when I opened them it had gone. Dawn came when I was about to fall asleep, and I stood up and carried on my flight, following paths no one took any more, heading for an unknown destination. I rambled on for days, for weeks, perhaps for months. I would follow paths I had walked before and finish up where I had begun. A strange thought occurred to me that perhaps I had become a hostage of the invisible dwellers of the forest, of beings who had blinded me and who now dictated my every step.

  This fear resulted in a fever of delirium. I began to ramble to myself. At a stream, I gazed at my twin self and rebuked it for an entire afternoon, calling it names and slapping it. Voices spoke to me in a chorus of confused din. But a lone voice would silence the voices and narrate stories I had forgotten. I would repeat the songs of those stories. I ate the wild fruits and drank from the streams. There were moments when everything was clear, and I could gaze into the past and see myself in a different light and into the future and know what lay in store for me. I would speak to the birds, to the animals, some of which were amiable and comprehended my longings and fears. I spoke languages I could not remember ever learning. Gradually, I became one with the forest.

  One day, during my wanderings, I happened upon a cluster of shacks with calabashes, pestles and mortars like those on our farm. The palm-mill pit, the grey mortars with their smooth insides and the slender pestles were like ours. On entering one of the shacks, I recognized a smell that belonged to my parents. I had arrived at our farm.

  My wanderings had ended. I waited until dawn broke to steal into our town. I was amazed to find that it was populated with my people. The invaders had looted everything and had left.

  Miatta had survived the war, so had her father Mambu, my father’s sworn enemy, who had been chosen as our new king.

  A year after my return, I wed Miatta. On our first night, the women brought Miatta to her new home covered in layers of clothes that I had to remove one after another, as if I was peeling a fruit to reach its core. Alone with her, after the act, lying beside her, smelling her, I thought our future was secured. Many years later, after the birth of our son Salia, the drum sounded and everything changed.

  Book Three

  The Sacrifice

  1

  The drumbeat gathered pitch as the town crier drew closer to Halay’s home. Halay shifted in bed and his elbow nudged Miatta who awoke from her sleep. Tired of the town crier’s message Halay eased out of the mud-bed, groped in the darkness for his tunic, threw it on and came out into the night. The crier was calling for an important gathering. Experienced in affecting hearts, in eliciting tears, the crier drummed the message into the ears of the townspeople, as he had done every night for the past week, his steady, stentorian voice bearing terrible tidings. ‘Never before in all our history has our land been faced with danger of this magnitude,’ he said. How he emphasized every word, pausing between his sentences, his silence carrying as much portent as his message, got on Halay’s nerves. For a while, he shut his ears to the message, but he knew no one could ignore it. He certainly could not.

  He returned to the hut to find Miatta awake. She had lit a fire in the hearth. A single wrapper covered her from bosom to knees.

  She sat on the bed behind him and caressed his shoulders with her hands, including his nape, and ran her thumbs up and down his spine. Above his waist, below his armpit, she grabbed him and pulled hard, expelling the fatigue of farm work out of him, including the hours spent in the town hall with the elders and King Mambu, deliberating on the crier’s message.

  Salia, their son, interrupted them.

  ‘I cannot sleep, Father,’ the child said.

  He was around the same age as Halay when the masked beings visited him for the first time, and Halay feared for the child’s future.

  ‘Did you have bad dreams?’ Miatta asked.

  ‘No, Mother. It’s the town crier’s voice.’

  A long silence ensued.

  ‘Tell me a story, Father.’

  What could he tell the child – stories of the cunning spider, the clever rabbit or the tortoise? He had heard those before. He must tell him about the movement of the people and the founding of the land and of the forces that had threatened to alter its destiny over the ages, including the present. ‘The British want us to be part of them, which is what the blacks along the coast in Liberia also want. Edward is one of them,’ he said.

  ‘Uncle Edward still has trouble speaking our language,’ Salia said.

  ‘He’s new here. He’s doing his best.’

  ‘He sounds funny every time.’

  ‘But he’s a good teacher, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. He tells us stories of his life in America. He says he was forced to become a slave to people who had no regard for him.’

  ‘It must have been a difficult life.’

  Outside the crier’s voice swelled. ‘War of a kind that not even our ancestors ever witnessed is about to befall us. The oracle has spoken. War is on its way. It has to be averted by all means.’

  ‘How can war be averted, Father?’ his son asked.

  Halay sighed and gazed at his son.

  ‘I don’t know. But it has to be averted.’

  The crier’s voice trailed off, his drum sounding at every interval. Halay stood up and led his son to the hut he shared with other children who had fallen under Halay’s care after his father had died.

  He waited until silence had settled on the hut and he could hear his son snoring before sauntering into the night. The town had changed. It now boasted a school where many children, including his son, went to lessons. Edward taught them English, arithmetic, and the Bible. Beside the school, he had built a small church, which a handful of his students attended. Once a week, he moved about the town preaching his religion. He talked about things that were already familiar to Halay from his interaction with the Muslim cleric, b
ut some things were still incomprehensible to him. But he admired Edward. Although he was different in many ways, Edward had become a pillar of their society, an adviser to Mambu, the new ruler, the letter-writer to the government of Liberia and to the English in Sierra Leone. Edward gathered with the townspeople to discuss issues pertaining to the land’s existence. Within a year of his arrival, he had traded his American clothes for simple tunics. He had become one of them.

  The drum sounded again, and the crier’s voice rose. ‘I swear he takes pleasure in torturing us,’ Halay heard someone say.

  The crier’s voice was now faint, barely audible. Halay thought of the warriors who were yet to come. Would they be the horsemen who had killed his parents, the midwife and the blind man? he wondered. Or would they be Liberians from the coast or whites from Sierra Leone?

  On returning home, he sought refuge in Miatta’s embrace. He nestled by her side, needing her touch, scared out of his wits by a destiny that was certain to befall his people. She undressed him. The faint rustle of her wrapper triggered the urge in him to have her. Her body scent was of musk and shea butter, and while he relished it, he buried his face in the small of her back. But he refrained from making love, for he was not sure he was fully up to it. Miatta soon fell asleep, her gentle breath rising and falling. Halay went on pondering the fate of the land until the cocks began crowing. Dawn slicked into the hut.

  With her usual promptness, Miatta left the hut to warm his bath. The town had awoken. Halay heard an angry and commanding man’s voice directed at a woman, followed by the clanking of calabashes. Wisps of water vapour rose from bathrooms stretched out along the edge of the forest. The muezzin of the mosque called the faithful to prayer; his simple, untrained voice rose in the morning air.

  Halay listened to his wife admonishing their son.

  ‘You are old enough to bathe yourself.’

  Salia mumbled something.

  ‘If girls were to see you being bathed by your mother, none of them would want to come near you again.’

  The child grunted.

  ‘As of tomorrow, you will bathe yourself.’

  Halay came out and sat in front of the hut in his compound, watching the children having their breakfast. On seeing him staring into space, Miatta’s face broke into furrows of weariness. ‘Don’t ignore us, Halay. This whole house is your responsibility,’ she said.

  He did not respond. Later she brought a breakfast of eddoes prepared with palm oil and waited for his compliment, which often resulted in an intense session of lovemaking. It did not come.

  Halay took the food to his son.

  ‘I brought you this, Salia,’ he said.

  His son eyed him, astounded, for his father always brought him leftovers and not a whole bowl of food. The child hesitated.

  ‘Eat, your mother prepared it.’

  ‘I am not hungry, Father,’ Salia said.

  ‘I say eat.’

  His son would not touch the food.

  ‘You will eat this food, now.’

  The child responded by drawing the food closer, but the way he ate, slurping, gagging, about to burst into tears, angered Halay.

  ‘Treat the food with respect. Behave.’

  Halay bowed over his seated figure, and sucked his teeth; he compelled the child to eat one handful after another until the bowl was empty. The child stood up and darted off.

  ‘Come back here.’

  The child returned in tears.

  ‘Wipe those tears and tell me where you are going.’

  Salia mopped his eyes. More tears fell.

  ‘If I see a single tear again, you will be in trouble.’

  The child wiped his eyes with the end of his tunic.

  ‘Now, tell me where you are off to.’

  ‘I, I am going …’

  ‘Raise your voice, I can’t hear you.’

  ‘Stop hurting him,’ Miatta said.

  She rushed to her son and took him away.

  ‘You are acting strange. For weeks now, you’ve not been yourself.’

  ‘I can’t bear it any longer.’

  ‘Can’t bear what?’

  ‘The drum, the voice, the message. They haunt me.’

  ‘They haunt us all and yet we are alive. Your family doesn’t have to suffer because of a message. Your son doesn’t have to suffer.’

  ‘Life is not just about family. It’s more than that.’

  ‘What do you mean, Halay?’

  ‘I cannot tell you.’

  ‘I want to know why my son suffers. Why I suffer. And why my husband hardly ever sleeps. You are not the only one in this town.’

  She faced him with fire in her eyes. Her eyes, unwrinkled forehead and dimpled cheeks showed that she was still beautiful. Unaware of it, lost to him for months now, perhaps for years, was a young woman who seemed to have budded in her again.

  ‘It will be all over soon,’ he said.

  It was all he could do to allay her fears. He left the compound. The morning was the same as the night, shrouded in a tranquillity within which the people brooded, pondered and questioned their destiny. A dog scampered past him, halted, turned in his direction, barked and then made off. On the wall of an abandoned hut, a goat rubbed its back, bleated, rubbed again, and bleated again. Following a tiny path off the main road, Halay saw a woman bathing a screaming child. She was oblivious of Halay. Behind her hut was a line of dyed clothes hung to dry, and a loom set for the day’s work.

  Halay reached the market centre. The stalls were built of wood and uncovered, like trees bare of leaves after a storm. A few marketeers were setting out their wares of fruit and vegetables. Near a heap of cassava leaves were bunches of potato greens, mangoes and bananas, eggplants, garden eggs and bags of rice. Cutlasses, knives, pots and spoons of various sizes were spread on the planks. Halay ambled through the market and came upon an old man dressed in a kaftan like the town cleric, and with amulets spread out in front of him, hawking them. The man claimed they were charged with powers strong enough to fend off all possible evil.

  ‘Can they fend off war?’ Halay asked.

  The man gaped at Halay, attempted to say something but was confronted with his customer’s relentless gaze. The man lowered his head and mumbled something in his language. Along the path that led to Edward’s home, a herd of cattle were being tended to by a man from the savannah.

  Edward’s home, unlike most homes in the town, was a rectangular-shaped house rather than a round one, and consisted of four rooms in one of which was a sextant, a barometer, a thermometer, a gold measuring device, the books Edward treasured, a small painting of himself, and a pile of books in which Edward often noted down his observations.

  Edward was sweeping the front of his house with a large broom.

  ‘Halay, you are here,’ he said.

  Edward dusted the two chairs he had arranged for himself and for Halay, and before sitting on the chair he glanced at it again.

  ‘The seats are fine, Edward,’ Halay said,

  ‘The town crier returned last night again,’ Edward said.

  Halay nodded.

  ‘There are other ways of averting wars than the one you people are contemplating, Halay. Just pause and think about it. This can’t be the way.’

  ‘Tell me about the other ways, Edward.’

  ‘You could do everything to ensure peace.’

  ‘Peace can be ensured only if you know the enemy. But we don’t know who our enemy is. How can you avert a war that is predicted to decimate our people, to alter everything forever?’

  ‘What have you decided then?’

  ‘We are yet to decide.’

  ‘You’ve told me your story several times these past weeks to make me understand fully what you must do to avert this war. Yet, despite your personal story, despite everything, I believe there are other ways.’

  ‘Tell me if you find them,’ Halay said.

  Edward decided that there was no way he could persuade his friend to act otherwise, and so
he said, ‘You know I am writing down your stories, for my sake as much as yours.’

  ‘Please be honest in your depiction of our lives.’

  ‘I will be honest.’

  ‘Share some of the stories with me.’

  ‘They are not yet complete.’

  ‘Is anything ever complete?’

  Edward prepared slices of pawpaw and shared them with Halay. The two men ate slowly. ‘One day, I will return to Liberia or to America. Your stories will be witness that I lived here. I will share them with the world.’

  ‘You are different from all the people who have ever visited us, including the Liberians and the English. Why is that?’

  ‘Maybe I look at things differently.’

  Halay glanced at Edward. He had lived among them for years now, and in his presence Halay always felt a sense of pride in his land, in his home, in his family. Edward had left America and had chosen not to live on the coast like most settlers but among them in the forest.

  ‘I don’t think you will ever leave, Edward.’

  Edward heaved a sigh.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘I am going to visit my ancestors’ graves.’

  ‘Should I accompany you?’

  ‘No, Edward. Not now. You are not yet fully one of us. The time will come when you will be fully accepted as one of us.’

  ‘I thought I was already one of you.’

  ‘You are still an outsider, Edward.’

  ‘What do I have to do to become one of you?’

  ‘That you should not know beforehand.’

  ‘I cannot wait for that day.’

  ‘I can hardly wait for it myself.’

  Halay arrived at the graveyard where his parents, the midwife, the blind man and the founder were buried. Grass had swallowed up most of the graves. Crouching down, Halay searched for mounds that were the graves and found a series of them. He brushed off the grass with his cutlass until he had cleared the graveyard, working for most of the morning. He fetched sands from the river and strewed them on his parents’ graves, and then ran his hands on the graves, poured a drop of wetness into the dust and rubbed his face over and over with it.