Land of My Fathers

by Vamba Sherif

  ‘Where is mother?’ I enquired from my father who shrugged, tucked his hands between his legs and went back to sleep.

  From a nearby well, I fetched a bucketful of water and had a cold bath. My father was still asleep. The old woman had brought us a breakfast of eddoes cooked with palm oil. She told us that a batch of people had arrived from our land and had set up camp at the other end of the city. I ate a little of the food and came out of the house.

  Along the road, down a hillock, a group of men were involved in a heated discussion, and children were playing in the sand. One was rolling a bicycle wheel and chasing after it up and down the road. Seated on a stool outside the house, her beautiful face filled with warmth, the old woman told me that the language that sounded strange to us was in fact a variation on ours. ‘Just listen carefully, you will hear the similarities,’ she said. And I did. Words I had thought sounded strange were in fact versions of our own. The languages were indeed related.

  My mother returned at late noon, drenched in sweat but in a lively mood. She unfolded a bunch of Dutch wax material from a bundle she had put in front of us.

  My father who was awake by then asked her, ‘How did you get these clothes?’

  ‘I persuaded a businesswoman to give me these wrappers after much talking, telling her who were in our country.’

  ‘She gave them to you just like that?’

  ‘I told her I will return them with profit at the end of the month.’

  ‘Can you do that?’

  My mother nodded, and my father did not enquire further but turned his back to us and went back to bed.

  After that, my mother frequented the market and returned late at night. My father slept most of the time. When awake, he avoided looking at me and hardly spoke except in snatches. He would sit up in bed whenever the old woman came over after a few days of absence, and he would rub his flabby face and manage a smile. He would grab the food offered us and wolf it down. During one of her visits, the old woman told us of frequent reports of fighting between the refugees and the hosts who had to cope with the huge number of people.

  When my mother came home, my father did not mention the fights to her. She told us about her struggles at the market, her rudimentary grasp of the language, and my father nodded and kept silent. She referred to her thriving business before the war, the stores she managed, the houses she let out, and for the first time in weeks, my father referred to the life we had left behind: ‘I can’t wait to return home, Jowo. I will expand the farmers’ cooperative into a national enterprise, where all farmers will be allotted a fair share for their labour. That will be my goal on our return.’

  I realized, as he went on, that his dream was ensconced in realities that seemed far-fetched, for there was no guarantee that we would ever go back. I grabbed my sketchbook and I drew the shape of his hands, which had been bruised during our flight. I drew his face, which was robbed of strength and still sagged with fatigue.

  Later, by the time I was finished, my parents were fast asleep. I went out into the night and stared at the star-studded skies. How could I draw the one thing I feared most, the one that had sent us fleeing for our lives? I wondered as I stared into the great expanse of sky. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that I did not have it in me to draw war.

  During the day, I would often spend hours roaming the forest behind our house, listening to the birdsong, plucking and smelling the flowers, tasting and squeezing them for colour or odour. I would try to put onto paper memories of home, with my parents seated on the verandah of our house at sunset receiving the farmers. My father would note down their complaints and he would surprise them by visiting them on their farms with materials they lacked.

  With these memories, came my longings. I wanted to be a great artist, a medical doctor, a saviour of the country, one who would bring peace to it, and I wanted to shake my father out of his stupor. I wanted to be like the bird now perched on a tree close to me, one to which all and sundry would listen and relish its beautiful, enchanting song. When I gazed around me at the lilies of the swamp, heard the croaking of the frogs, the songs of the birds, breathed in the perfume scent of the flowers, the mild wind of the forest, and admired the patterns made by sunlight on the forest ground, I wanted to remain in that forest, far away from everything. I would return home elated, sure now that perhaps I was on my way to understanding what made my mother so resilient, while my father wasted away. Her being alive was not enough of an explanation for me, for in that life her husband played no role.

  My mother purchased new wrappers, using the profit from the first sales. ‘I am right on my way to conquering the market, Frederick,’ she told my father one night. The language of this land was yielding to mother. She would repeat sentences and words that she had learned at the market to us.

  The old woman came one afternoon, stayed longer and ate some of the food we offered her. She told us about the camps that hosted the fleeing people, which were now spreading along the edges of the city. The refugees were building their own city in the land of exile.

  3

  For months now, I had confined myself to the house and its environs, leaving only to run errands for my parents in the neighbourhood, or go to the forest to draw trees, plants and flowers or to write awkward poems. One day I decided to brave it to the city. Farms and vegetable gardens lined the road. Some men were tending to their coffee and cocoa farms. Further down the road, women were pinching rice stems into the soggy earth. As I approached the city, the noise of purring car engines and the shouts of marketeers assaulted me. The pervasive odour of gasoline, garbage and sweat hung in the air. Vendors called out their wares and some offered fake jewellery and watches. Girls carrying massive heaps of vegetables, fruit and loaves of bread on their heads moved along the road.

  Before a weak corrugated-iron cubicle, I saw a little bald man sitting on a chair. What struck me about him, besides his dwarfish size and baldness, was the confidence he portrayed. He was arguing with a man twice his size. In carefully chosen words, he addressed the giant who at first fended him off with laughter. The spectacle attracted me. The little man hauled himself at the giant and his blow caught him around the crotch. He shouted victory, slapped the ground, and swore to truly show the world the stuff he was made of. His sour epithets and derisions were inventive. The giant turned to the crowd, his laughter revealing a neat set of teeth. He threw a punch meant to knock the little man out, but he missed. The two men went into a clinch. It seemed to last forever. Then I heard a crack. In a second the little man was free. The giant stood for a while and then fell to his knees. The crowd, including myself, thought he would never rise again. His face was contorted with pain, while the little man capered about, sucking his teeth and spitting. It was the roar of the giant, which sounded like a wounded lion, which shifted our attention to him. He was rushing at the little man, but did not reach him, for a group of men blocked his way. They managed to force him to his knees.

  The crowd went berserk. From the house I was standing in front of a man darted out, almost colliding into me, and flung himself at the crowd. Utensils flew around and chairs were shattered upon heads. The most inventive of curses rang the air. A child was crying and a man was bleeding, having wounded his leg. One of the men held me by my shoulders, shook me as if I were an empty sack, and then let go of me, butting his way into the crowd. The fighting went on.

  It was the police who finally broke it up. I slipped away while a policeman was handcuffing both the little man and the giant, and I moved through an alley of makeshift homes to a bar.

  It was crowded. A mother dressed in rags sat at a table with her four children. She was trying unsuccessfully to attend to them all. She would yell at one, pet the other, breastfeed one and called sweetly to another. A man with an empty bottle before him and his head resting on the table was fast asleep. Another was tapping on the table and staring at the ceiling. In a corner, three men were playing draughts. Music was blaring. The singer, who was popu
lar in the late eighties, was singing:

  The flowers have withered

  The grounds scorched

  And the earth longs for rain.

  When will it pour?

  The barman, an old grey-haired man with uneven teeth, his skin so black that it glinted blue, beckoned to me with a smile. I moved towards him. He leaned on the counter, and spoke to me in his language.

  ‘Do you want something to drink?’

  ‘I don’t have money.’

  He searched an old refrigerator behind the counter and pulled out a plastic sack of ice water, and I swallowed at the sight of the drink.

  He handed the drink to me.

  ‘You saw the fight, didn’t you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘One of them, the giant, is from your country. The little one was born and bred in this town. He’s a troublemaker.’

  I was silent.

  ‘Have you been here for long?’ he asked.

  ‘We came here a few months ago.’

  The music continued playing, and I nibbled at the ice.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Halay,’ I told him.

  ‘Did you see the war?’

  ‘We fled on the very first day.’

  ‘So you don’t know how it feels going through war?’

  ‘We fled under volleys of gunfire.’

  ‘But that’s not enough. To be a true victim of war, you must have experienced war itself,’ he said.

  ‘Did you ever experience war?’

  ‘Yes, a bigger one.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The Second World War. I fought in it.’

  ‘You were a soldier?’

  ‘Don’t mention that word. I am not proud of being a soldier.’

  The music rose to a crescendo, and the singer was displaying his mastery of the guitar. The man who had been gazing at the ceiling was now hitting an empty bottle in tune with the music. The sleeping man had awoken and chimed in to the song. He stood up and swung his hip, snapping his fingers as he danced. I took a bite of the ice.

  The barman said: ‘Yes, we fought that war like men. We fought in trenches, in rain, in forest, in cold, side by side. You should have seen me then, a young man who fought not because he had to but because he believed that justice must prevail. I saved lives in that war. Perhaps that’s why I am a poor barman today. Perhaps it takes all the courage in a life to save another. I don’t have a life now. Long ago, I gave it up to save others in the trenches of those snow countries.’

  He stopped and eyed me, his gaze intent.

  ‘Any word from home?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I answered.

  ‘That’s how it always is. Remember this, child: whenever the silence breaks, it is accompanied by the most fearsome noise.’

  Some people came into the bar, and he left to attend to them. Looking at him as he cheered up his customers, I could not believe he was the same man who had fought in the Second World War. My father had seen war and it had turned him into a man who spoke in snatches and hisses. Maybe the barman had witnessed something in that war that had made him capable of managing a smile or even a laugh.

  I was about to leave when he said, ‘Come and see me again.’

  I nodded and stepped out into the sun. The streets were deserted, the air shimmered. A flurry of dust swirled and headed towards me but I dodged it. On the roadside, a girl with eyes that had become blood-red from the fire called out to me to buy the plantains she was frying. I smiled at her and moved on. I met my father in front of the house, working on a fishing net. He looked up when I approached.

  ‘I am going to be a fisherman,’ he said.

  A twinkle of light leapt to his eyes. He continued working on the net until my mother came home. She seemed surprised.

  ‘Your father is becoming a fisherman,’ she said.

  ‘I will start small, Jowo, watch me. Then I will expand. I will go on to unite all the fishermen in this place. Watch me.’

  We were interrupted by the old woman. She had come to tell us something of the greatest importance: the signs of things to come.

  ‘What things?’ my mother asked.

  ‘Can’t you see the signs?’

  ‘What signs?’

  Perhaps she was referring to the fight I had witnessed in town earlier that day, I told my parents after the old woman had left. The two shook their heads, but did not enquire further. The next morning, my father left to go fishing and asked me to join him.

  ‘I am going with mother to the market.’

  ‘You will miss the silences.’

  ‘What silences?’

  ‘Of the river. Fish hate noise, you know.’

  My father promised to bring us a catfish. My mother looked beautiful. Her silver earrings dangled from her ears and her bracelets clanked to the movement of her hands. She owned a stall in the market now, where we sat till midday without selling a thing. Vendors, young girls moved with their wares, their strident voices rising above the noise of the market. We waited. I tried to sing, but struck the wrong note and my voice trailed off into silence.

  A bulky woman from the stall next to ours informed us that a handsome man was going around the market saying he would only purchase from the most beautiful woman at the market. My mother laughed, and I did too. Soon we saw a man walking up to our stall. Tall and with a shaved head, he wore a skullcap decorated with images of the crescent moon, and he had applied kohl to sharpen the outline of his eyes. He was clad in a white gown with flowery designs upon it. His handsome face sweated a little as his gaze rested on my mother. My mother stood erect, elegant and graceful, and I saw what the stranger saw: pitch-dark skin shrouded in colourful wrappers, a woman so radiant that her beauty held the man in thrall.

  With a voice that sounded like a revelation, the man said: ‘Truly, you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’

  My mother blushed and I noted her smile, but her face quickly regained its normal expression. Even when the man went on to purchase all the goods in our stall and placed an order for the next supply, my mother’s expression did not alter. In fact, as his long, slender arms counted out the notes and handed them over to my mother, her face clouded with anger that verged on repulsion. I wondered why. The man bundled up the goods and left the market, never turning or speaking to anyone.

  My mother chose not to mention the day’s incident. But the spectacle had not gone unnoticed. We packed up and returned home earlier amid the envious glances of the market women.

  The next day, the women turned against my mother. Her neighbour, the bulky woman who had helped her set up her business, now tried to draw her into a fight. Some days, she would return home, complaining about the market women and their fights against her. ‘They are making it impossible for me to do business, Frederick,’ she would say. During those moments, my father would be close to her, cracking jokes and reminding her of life before the war. He would stay with her all night.

  4

  One day my father caught a trout. He moved about the compound displaying his catch, his gentle face aglow with pride. Despite objections from my mother, he decided to prepare the fish himself. The result was an over-seasoned sauce not fit for consumption. While we were trying to eat the food, focusing on the rice and not the sauce, my mother remarked, ‘It’s too spicy, Frederick,’ and this sent him into a rage.

  ‘In your eyes, I never seem to do anything right here,’ he said, and stood up, fuming. ‘Yes, look at me and say it, Jowo,’ he said.

  And my mother, her eyes fixed on the food, replied, ‘Say what. I am not saying anything.’

  My father sucked his teeth. ‘You will say it, Jowo. Say what you think of me. I can see it in your eyes and in your behaviour whenever you return from that market of yours. Say it and then Halay here will know what you think of me!’

  My mother stood up but as she tried to lay her hands on her husband’s shoulders, to calm him, he stormed out of the house and returned late, wearing a somb
re look accentuated by the flame of the hurricane lamp. It was not because of the food, he said. Our house, he told us, a proud mansion with six rooms, one of the best homes in our city, had been demolished, our furniture stolen. Our city was now a deserted place where not even a dog barked. All the domestic animals, dogs, chickens, sheep, goats have been consumed by hordes of fleeing people. ‘It’s that fact that’s slowly killing me here, Jowo,’ he said.

  She nodded, and as she went on to console him I turned away and thought of the war. Would life be the same even if one day we had the chance to return home?

  The next morning, my father took to singing old and new songs, songs sung by men and songs sung by women, nursery songs and songs forbidden to my ears. Later, he began humming a single tune which went on the whole day. He gave up fishing for a while and confined himself to the house. He would try to lull my mother into a fight but would fail every time. He would throw strange glances at me, bare his teeth and grunt. He would ask me questions I had no answer to. Why did people choose to slaughter each other? Why did they demolish homes that did not belong to them? Who was behind those destructive forces? Tell me, Halay, you are the artist, explain this war to me? I would slip out to escape his temper.

  For weeks I had not been to see the old barman.

  ‘You are here, Halay,’ he said when he saw me.

  I nodded and took a seat on one of the bamboo benches.

  ‘Why have you been away for so long?’

  ‘I draw most of the time.’

  ‘What do you draw?’

  ‘People mostly and nature.’