by Vamba Sherif
Every time he looked at Miatta now, she reminded him more and more of her dead father: the shape of her nose, her lips, and her eyes – features that were more honed and sharpened in her than in her father.
The elders had told the people that King Mambu had left at short notice to settle a dispute between distant family members in a neighbouring region, and that he would return soon. ‘In a few weeks we will announce that he has been murdered by our enemies on his way back and that you are now our king, Halay,’ they had said. Halay had shaken his head.
Sooner or later, he thought now, Miatta was bound to find out what had happened to her father. It was certain to trigger everlasting rancour, and would shatter everything the two of them had worked for.
Miatta covered the food to keep the flies off it.
‘You seem to enjoy this, don’t you?’ she said.
She stood before him, glaring at him.
‘Just tell me in all honesty whether you enjoy all this, this strange behaviour of yours, this disregard for your family.’
‘Miatta, you are making it impossible for me.’
‘You know, there are people who wallow in their suffering. They take on the burden of the world as if it is theirs alone.’
‘The burden of the world?’
‘They carry it around as if it is their inheritance. Your past does not give you the right to put us through this.’
‘You are not being fair.’
‘No! I don’t want a husband who turns his back on me and my child at the mere sight of a crier. The world will go on despite everything.’
‘Not our world, Miatta.’
‘Hear him. Not our world?’
She sucked her teeth and left for one of the huts.
‘Salia,’ she called. ‘Your father doesn’t care about us any more. You and I are alone in this world. From now on, I am your only parent.’
Halay burst into tears.
4
The initiation period lasted a few months. Halay saw Edward on a daily basis during that time. The town and the land were at peace. The crier had been silent for a while. It had to do with the initiation, Halay thought. He was sure the man would return as soon as it was over. Halay had decided in that period to build a few huts to accommodate the growing number of children who fell under his care; he plastered the walls of the old homes, emptied the granaries and filled them with the new harvest. He had to do something to keep his mind off the inevitable, and because he was a man who took pride in work, who saw the creases in his hands as proof of his labour, he worked on for days. The walls of the huts were already finished, except for the roof, which would consist of palm fronds or grass. Over a brief span of a few months, Halay succeeded in bridging the gap between him and Miatta. He seemed to have discovered her anew, more so because her father’s absence had been explained. Miatta received him every night, both of them clinging together as though fearing that the other could vanish at any moment.
One night he slipped out of her grasp and started for the Poro ground. He thought of Edward who had begun to show strain associated with the trials of the initiation. His friend hardly slept, he took to eating fruits of the forest and not the sumptuous dinner presented to the initiates every day. Halay met him in front of the main hut, scraping away at the ground with a stick, pulling at the grass.
Edward spoke in snatches, and to the consternation of other initiates, he spoke in riddles like the masked being.
‘Edward, come sit beside me,’ Halay said.
‘Tell me, Halay. What language do these beings speak?’
Halay shook his head.
‘Do they eat like we do?’
‘Edward, stop!’
‘How come people are so afraid of them?’
‘It’s enough!’
‘Can one of you become a masked being?’
‘This is scandalous!’
‘How were the masks made?’
‘Edward!’
‘Do the beings live forever?’
‘Lower your voice!’
‘Do they bear children?’
‘I can’t stand this!’
Halay looked about him. The men in the compound and the initiates were hard at work, doing their chores, feigning not to hear him.
‘Are they married?’
‘Will you stop this, Edward!’
‘You have to tell me, Halay.’ He looked at Halay, and then said, ‘I was told the masked beings change form, how?’
‘I cannot answer you.’
‘Those beautiful feathers, how did they come upon them?’
All of a sudden Edward went silent. He leaned against Halay and cupped his face in his hands.
‘I am not who you think I am, Halay.’
‘You are who I think you are, Edward.’
‘What if I said it was all for love?’
‘The love of a woman?’
‘You wouldn’t understand, would you?’
‘I am not understanding you now.’
‘I knew it. My best friend fails to understand me.’
‘I am trying to understand you.’
‘Well, try a bit more.’
‘Edward …’
‘I was such a fool.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I shouldn’t have done what I did. I should have stayed with them, closer to them. I shouldn’t have abandoned them.’
‘Abandoned who?’
Edward stood up and paced about.
‘You will forgive me, won’t you, Halay.’
‘We are friends, so yes I will forgive you.’
Edward told Halay about Charlotte and their years in America. He told him about their son.
‘The longing for them has crippled me. I left a part of me in Monrovia. I am not fully myself here.’
‘I understand. You could arrange for them to come. Or you could leave to see them. Monrovia is not that far away from here.’
‘Yes, you are right.’
‘After the ceremony, I will arrange for you to see your family.’
The two men went on talking for most of the night. In the morning, Halay left for town.
5
The head of masked beings appeared before the initiates for the last time and charged Halay with caring for Edward. Around dusk, on the final day of the initiation, it addressed the initiates. ‘You’ve completed the tasks set before you. You’ve ensured that our way of life will be passed on to your offspring, that we as a people will live on. This means that we’ve fulfilled our goal of making you men, just as in a few years, if we are still around, if war doesn’t do away with us, our young women will be in the Sande Society.’ The masked being turned to Halay and dozens of young men who had formed a circle around it.
‘Son of our king, our ruler, we are tasking you with caring for the man who chose to be one of us, who deserves our protection, our love,’ it said.
Edward, too unstable to be part of the event, had been kept in a home where he was tended to by two men, and when Halay, who went to fetch him, met him, Edward broke into a plantation song.
‘It’s over now, Edward,’ Halay said, and together they came out to join the initiates. Edward stared vacantly, his steps unsteady; he seemed a broken man, as if he’d undergone a terrible ordeal.
‘Don’t be afraid, our wigi – our westerner,’ the masked being said. ‘You came to us to meet your destiny, to find yourself.’
‘Kanikokoi – he brings fortune,’ the crowd burst out.
‘You’ve heard them, Halay, he brings fortune just as you do. Take him home and don’t leave him till he’s well.’
With its task accomplished, the head masked being retired to the largest hut to wait until such a time as the land needed it again.
The next morning, the initiates dressed in new tunics, painted their faces with chalk, and with a solemn song accompanying them they danced towards town. They were met by a procession of mothers singing their praises. The women circled them, danced and sang their names. Groups of singers, drummers, an
d salsa – rattle players – danced about them. The crowd was so huge that there were rumours the ancestors had joined the ceremony. One woman claimed to have encountered a man of impeccable beauty dressed all in white who held his hand out to her, and she was about to take it when he vanished. A child saw a long form whose head was shrouded in the clouds. One man swore that he had met one of his ancestors among the crowd, had spoken to him, but the ancestor had not answered and had then merged with the people. These incidents heightened the excitement of the dancers.
The best drummer in the land could tell stories with his drums. His presence brought the bleary-eyed, the crippled, the blind, the old and the young pouring out of their homes and onto the streets. The sound of his drum rose above the stamping feet and crashed across the hungry mass. The ceremony had begun.
Meanwhile, at Halay’s home, Edward’s condition seemed to have worsened. Halay sat beside him in the main hut.
‘I want you to fetch my notebook,’ Edward said.
‘What do you want with it?’
‘I want to describe what’s happening.’
Halay left to fetch the book and on his way met the crowd dancing to the beat of the master drummer. Around him, a group of women had coalesced, fanning him, wiping the pouring sweat off his face, which wore a haughty expression. Halay thought of his father-in-law, whose absence was beginning to be noticed by the people. He left the crowd.
At Edward’s house, with its neat rooms, living room and verandah, he located the notebook. It had drawings of the town, the houses, the roads, and a detailed description of daily life – all noted with accuracy. Edward had chronicled their lives as if he would need to recall their life later. When he returned with the notebook and a pen, Edward sat up and asked Halay to give him a few moments.
Night came with Edward still at work. Halay went in to ask him to join him for dinner. He met a man sweating, feverish and yet focused on his writing. Edward looked up with fiery eyes, as if he had awoken from a terrible dream, and Halay asked, ‘How are you, my friend?’
Edward did not respond.
‘You must eat,’ Halay said and put the food in front of him. ‘I will not leave your side until you’ve eaten. No one is going to accuse me of neglecting you. You will eat, Edward, or I will force-feed you.’
The determination in his voice won Edward over.
‘You will live to witness it all, Edward.’
The crier’s voice interrupted them. Edward stopped eating. The voice was ominous, laden with urgency. The drums, the celebration stopped. Halay came out of the house. The sun was yet to set.
For the first time in months, Halay came face to face with the man whose voice had disrupted every happiness the land had known. The crier was tall, with a slender frame and narrow face; a fretful man with a feline lilt to his gait, his eyes darted everywhere but avoided Halay’s.
‘Oh! It’s you, Halay,’ the crier said.
A nervous laughter twisted his lips.
‘When will this ever stop?’ Halay said.
The crier, almost cowering into himself, answered, ‘It will never stop.’
He held his drum as though under a tremendous strain, his limbs were unsteady, but as he did so he lost his grip on the drum and it fell. He cursed as he stooped to pick it up. He was all agitation now, his frail, effeminate features trembling, as if Halay’s presence were unbearable.
‘You know that such a sacrifice is impossible,’ Halay said.
The crier clutched the drum. Sudden tears clouded his eyes.
‘You, of all people, should not be saying this,’ he said.
‘But I mean it. It is impossible.’
The crier’s hold on his drum became tighter, his teeth chattered.
‘If so, Halay, if so, then we are all lost.’
He broke into a run then, and from a distance Halay heard his voice rise, not with a warning of what was to come, but with a wail, a singular dirge that lamented the end of things as they were.
6
Halay entered the hut and met Miatta not in bed but on her feet, as if she had been waiting for him. Perhaps she had overheard his exchange with the crier, he thought. They did not speak. Later, while in bed with her back to him, she reached for his left hand and folded it within hers, clutching it tight to her breasts, and she remained silent even during those moments when sleep was far from her grasp. She had nothing to say, for the man lying beside her, whose breath she could feel on her nape, was a shell of a man. The real one was gone now, far out of her reach.
In the morning, after his bath, she went to the wooden box where the two kept their belongings and fetched his best outfit, a red and black tunic with baggy trousers bought from a trader across the river. She helped him into them, and while at it she touched the hems of his tunic, touched his shoulders to feel the strength in his arms, the arch in his spine, touched his hands which had become crude as result of farm work, and then she drew close to him, wanting him to hold her, which he did, holding her so tight that she fell into a swoon and didn’t want it to stop.
She led him out of the hut and through the compound, and stood watching him as he took the road towards the town hall. Miatta had resigned herself to the inevitable, to a life without him, and with the resignation came a deep wisdom regarding the whimsical nature of life. However, as she joined her son, she was yet to fully embrace this wisdom.
The town was quiet, holding its breath, waiting. Halay met the elders arguing in the town hall. He was surprised they were so early.
‘We should make offerings of cows,’ one of them said.
‘Dozens of cows,’ another said.
‘Will that be enough?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ another said. ‘We have to do something.’
‘I will do it,’ Halay heard himself say.
The elders looked on.
‘I have come to offer myself to save you.’
His own revelation startled them. The elders turned to him, dumbstruck by the tenacity and courage in his voice.
‘You are our king now. Soon, we will announce that Mambu has perished during his journey across the river. No one will know.’
‘I am not doing it because of his death.’
‘Halay, you are an only child and the father of an only child,’ the eldest said. He stood up and walked to Halay.
‘I’ve made up my mind. Our people will never suffer the scourge of war again, never. The land will live in peace.’
The eldest fell to his knees before Halay.
‘Think this over, son, wait a month or two and if you return with the same answer, then we will do it.’
‘I’ve made up my mind.’
The elders, failing to persuade him otherwise, led him surreptitiously to a hut on the outskirts of the town.
Soon afterwards, the crier beat his drum, announcing in an agitated voice that a saviour had been found. The land will live on.
Halay, alone in the hut, was sure that his son would live to be like him and his land would never know war. His son would wed and bear a child whose name would be his name and he would live on in the child of his child, in the child of that child, the chain unbroken forever.
Soon a crowd gathered in front of his hut. The whole day and night he would spend in isolation. The crowd kept vigil outside. When morning came with a gentle breeze blowing through the thatch of the roof and with a bird singing somewhere, Halay awoke and peered through the cracks in the door. The crowd had not dispersed.
Miatta came in the afternoon with a bowl of food.
‘How’s Salia doing?’
‘I cannot tell him. I will not be the one to tell him,’ she said.
‘He must know. You must tell him.’
‘He will not understand, Halay.’
‘How about Edward?’
‘He’s there. He keeps writing. He says he wants the world to know what happened in our land, what happened to you.’
‘You don’t approve of my decision.’
�
�You are saving the land,’ she said.
‘I am saving you.’
‘I cannot understand.’
‘But it is simple, Miatta.’
‘We could leave this land before the war comes.’
‘Where to and what will we live on? On memories, which would fade until we’ve ceased to remember?’
‘What about our son?’
‘He will live on, Miatta.’
‘But without a father.’
Her objections unnerved him. He accompanied her to the door and stared after her as she took to the road, but as she moved further away, he noticed a tremor in her steps. All of a sudden Miatta stumbled and fell. The crowd rushed to her. She had fallen into a faint.
Halay held her, waiting for her to come to, and as he did so he began to doubt his decision. What will happen to her? What if she did not survive the aftermath? What will happen to their son?
‘You are not the only one in the land,’ she said after she had regained consciousness. ‘You are my husband.’
‘Countless people will be saved,’ he said.
She didn’t respond. The crowd took its place in front of the hut when she had gone and Halay had retired indoors.
Once alone, he gazed at the cracks in the walls of the hut, at a spider weaving a web in the palm fronds and thatch that formed the roof, at a gecko that often emerged and nodded at him; at an amulet buried in a cow horn that hung at the threshold; at a goatskin mat on the floor and at a clay container filled with water. He touched the bowl of food, the mud bed, and the door; he touched everything that could give him a sense of belonging to this world, and all those things felt real. And he doubted.
The days quickly flew by. He began to take particular interest in life around him. The cock crows announcing dawn were distinct, so were the voices of people outside, which came to him as sudden but vivid memories that burst into his mind, lodged there and took on shapes. He could tell by a woman’s laughter that she needed her husband to receive her that night, or that she was disappointed or glad. He would analyse the timbre in the voices, the level of anger, frustration, love or tenderness, and attributed stories to them. Images of Miatta and his son would appear in his mind’s eye, images of himself alone with his wife, making love to her, the act sending them into a firmament of bliss and to a garden opulent with the freshest vegetables and with plants that had healing powers. Later he would imagine the three of them in the future, imagined himself a grandfather, a great-grandfather, his family at peace, the land at peace, the world at peace. Or he would be beset with doubts regarding the relevance of his action, doubts about his courage, about his strength, about the end. What if it was all for nothing?
