Without further ado, the maid stood up and walked into the back room to inform the holy man. He must have given his consent to see us because the maid waved us through. Together, we were taking a couple of tentative steps forward when a crow flew into the filmy curtain, screeching frightfully, and clipped me on the shoulder in its mad struggle to escape into the open air.
“Don’t take one step farther,” the medicine man commanded. “You are being followed by an evil spirit.”
Mam pulled me close to her bosom. I could feel her body trembling, and thought for a moment that she had forgotten how to speak. We stood still.
“Go back and bring me two bottles of highland arake, a roll of Akuda chat and twenty birr in cash, wrapped in a green banana leaf,” the medicine man ordered.
Mam bowed her head in submission, and we left the room in silence.
The next day, Mam and I returned with the order in hand. The medicine man received us with a slight nod of his head, showing us to our seats while mumbling messages to the spirits around him. He sat on a mattress that was laid on a raised platform. There was a huge incense burner before him, into which he threw lumps of incense from time to time. His savage crow was perched on the only other piece of furniture in the room—an inverted bamboo basket, to which it was strapped.
After what felt like an eternity, the medicine man ceased his mumbling and turned his attention to us. He opened one of the two bottles we had brought him and sniffed at the arake, determining its purity. Satisfied, he poured a small quantity of the alcohol into a colourful glass, and tossed it at the foot of the door. He untied the roll of chat, which Mam had carefully placed on the mattress. He checked it for freshness before determining if it was to the liking of the spirits. Satisfied once more, he turned his attention to our final offering, the one that came wrapped in a green banana leaf. He nodded to Mam, to pronounce his trust, and with that gesture told us he did not need to check the contents. The banana leaf, still folded, was shoved under his pillow, unopened.
The medicine man directed us to draw closer the rags we sat on so that we could face him, with only the incense burner between us. One of the divine gifts of the medicine man was to know in advance why each person sought him out. But he always asked, regardless. People knew that he was already familiar with their problems, and so were quite frank.
Mam broke the silence. “My son has been running into all sorts of problems lately,” she began, with a slightly nervous edge to her voice, though she seemed to be composed.
“What sort of problems are we talking about here?” asked the medicine man, who radiated a knowing confidence.
“He seems to have a problem with his teachers. Not a single month passes by without him getting whipped or dismissed from class for bad behaviour,” she confessed, a tortured look on her face. “I pleaded with the Adbar to intervene, but the Adbar must be tired of my continuous pleas, because no good has come of it. I hope you can do something for him.”
The medicine man still wore his most learned look as he nodded his head and expressed agreement with Mam’s unimpeachable conclusion that he was the only one in town who could solve such an intricate problem.
“When exactly did the problem begin?” he inquired.
“Ever since he enrolled in public school,” Mam answered. “Maybe it is because the building is erected on someone’s grave, but he hasn’t been the same since the first day I brought him there.”
“Come closer, young man,” the medicine man commanded, instructing me to kneel down before him, assuring me that he intended only to read my aura and not to harm me. He opened my left eye wide with his fingers, and asked me to roll the eyeball first to one side, and then the other, before moving on to the next eye. Then he took my palm in his hands and read my life as it was written in the criss-crossed lines of my pink skin. After he was done, he instructed me to grab a generous amount of incense from the container at his feet and throw it in the huge burner.
The smoke rose high and heavy from the burner, becoming so dense that I could hardly see my mother, who sat no more than a metre from me. Uncertain which way to turn, the smoke hung in the midst of the still air, choking me. Various animals emerged from the thick plumes. I saw an elephant standing on its trunk, a horse with six legs and a dog with a crocodile’s body. They all ascended higher and higher until the last of them withered into nothing.
“Put some more incense on the burner,” he commanded, as he watched my entire life unfold, past and future, in those dark plumes. Then the medicine man muttered some sacred words in a language that only he could understand—to aid him in unravelling the mystery of my affliction. He sat before the smoke, turning his head from side to side, so that not a single detail would escape him as he poked the unburned incense into the centre of the fire with a piece of chat stick. Then, as though struck on the head by an invisible hand, he made a quick start, dropping the chat stick on the ground, and turning his one eye on Mam.
“Your son has been invaded by evil spirits,” he announced. “I can see two of them inside him now.”
Mam sighed, feeling both distress and relief. This confirmation put her mind at rest, but she felt regret, knowing she could have brought me to the holy man much earlier and eased her life, as well as mine, much sooner.
“I suspected as much all along,” she finally admitted. “I thought he ran into them when opening an empty room at school. I’ve always told him to stand sideways after opening the door to an empty room, to let the spirits out without startling them,” she elaborated, “but he never listens.”
Indeed, Mam had taught me about the invisible world that was always with us. She had told me about the spirit world we cannot see, which, nonetheless, is as real as the one we live in. Like us, the spirits go about their daily business, visiting each other, solving riddles and sometimes even fighting one another. We are influenced in many ways by the spirits we encounter. When a tree is about to fall on your head, for example, it is a good spirit that alerts you, without your knowledge, to step aside, thus saving your life. And when you see an unattended fruit basket, it is a bad spirit that urges you to steal a banana. Yes, there are good and bad spirits, but there are no good or bad people.
The spirits that we pass through, or those that pass through us, need reasons to stay with us for good. Normally, our relations are fleeting. That is why we don’t steal bananas at every hour, or escape accidents every time. One of the reasons spirits remain lodged in a person is because they are disoriented. That is why Mam always told me not to walk into an empty room right after opening the door. One should always give spirits a chance to compose themselves.
“Have you done anything about this problem?” asked the medicine man, suspecting that Mam might have.
“Well, his teachers have been at him for years. One of them almost skinned him alive, recently. His father whips him and I … I knock his head once in a while,” Mam said, unburdening her grief.
“Beating him will not solve the problem,” announced the medicine man, beaming with learned confidence.
I almost jumped out of my seat with delight. I had always sensed that whipping me was not a good idea, and here was a man, a very learned man, proving me right. I felt bad for being suspicious of him. All along, I had considered this medicine man, with his wild beard and unbecoming eye patch, more like a retired devil than a wise and holy man. Now I was quite ashamed of myself.
“Beating him,” elaborated the holy man, “only harms his body; it can’t rid him of the evil spirits. What you must do is smoke them out.”
I was puzzled. How could one smoke something out of someone?
The medicine man reached for some pouches under his mattress, and handed Mam various types of herbs and substances I had never laid eyes on before.
“This should cure him without any trouble. But if for some reason the evil spirits resist the treatment, there is a second option.” He interrupted himself for a moment, to receive a cup of coffee that his maid brought to him, s
ipping it twice before putting it down.
“As I was saying, if the evil spirits refuse to budge, you should tie his hands and legs behind him and…”
I stood up, ready to flee. I realized I had been wrong in assuming that this man was learned and holy. He was indeed the Devil, and I was not going to let him or anyone else tie me or …
“Sit down, young man,” he pleaded.
But I was not to be convinced. I stood waiting for him to take back his words. Mam beckoned for me to come to her, whispering in my ear that she did not have to do everything he said and that I should not be overly concerned. I believed Mam and decided to sit. Not wanting to be too near the Devil, however, I pulled my piece of rag closer to Mam’s.
“Does your boy understand Somali?” the medicine man asked.
“I am afraid he understands some,” Mam replied.
The holy man turned to me and inquired, “Afan Oromo nibekta?”
“You could sell him in Oromo,” Mam assured him, smiling at me.
Satisfied, Mam and the medicine man started communicating in Oromo. The man did most of the talking while Mam listened intently. Once in a while she asked him a question and he elaborated a point in detail, using both of his hands as well as his one eye. Before we left, he gave Mam a package wrapped in a brown banana leaf, which he pulled from a corner of the room without having to stand up.
Mam and I walked home in silence. She was lost in thought and didn’t seem to be aware of my presence. Once in a while I would ask her a question, which she would answer with a smile, nod or monosyllable. Before we got home, she stopped at an Arab store to buy me cookies, as promised. She pulled a handkerchief from her bosom, untied the knot and gave the Arab a few coins. Mam does not like us to eat in the street, for fear of the evil eye, so she took me to a small bar owned by her friend, where she bought me a bottle of Fanta and told me to finish eating my cookies. Mam told the bar owner where we had been and what the medicine man had said. When she reached the part they had discussed in Oromo, she neglected to translate it.
The weekdays passed without anything happening. I thought that Mam had forgotten about the medicine and I decided not to do anything that would remind her of it. On Saturday I was awakened from my sleep early. I always sleep in on the weekends; it is only the women of the house who awake with the birds. I complained to Mam that it was too early for me to get out of bed, but she told me we had visitors in the living room who wanted to see me.
The visitors were two young soldiers. Dad had helped one of them, a neighbourhood boy, get recruited into the army. He often came to see us with one friend or another, and Mam often made them stay for lunch or dinner, reminding him to celebrate the coming holiday with us before he left. Mam often said the young soldier was like a son to her. I also liked him. Once in a while, he gave me a ride in his Jeep. The Jeep actually belonged to the officer who was usually sitting quietly beside him. I guessed the officer could not drive and so got the young soldier to drive him to work.
In the living room, all of the furniture had been pushed towards the walls, creating an unusually open space, in the centre of which was a big incense burner. Mam told me to take my shirt off, but I became wary and stood there, undecided. The two soldiers grabbed me by the hands, and removed the shirt from my back. I was too scared to think and did not know what was going to happen. I began to review the reel in my head, backwards, spinning it faster and faster, trying to find out what I had done in the recent past to warrant a military invasion.
Mam tried to calm me down, explaining to me that she was just going to smoke the evil spirits out of me, and that she was not going to hurt me. I was seated on a stool by the burner. Mam brought out a blanket and placed it over my shoulders, while the two men held me down. She sprinkled the herbs and powders on the blazing charcoal, waited for a few moments, until the smoke was very dense, and then gave the soldiers the cue to throw the blanket over both the burner and my head.
Enclosed in a dome, surrounded by flame and smoke, I felt that I was in hell. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. The heat was so overwhelming that I thought I would melt like a candle if I stayed enclosed a moment longer. I tried to get up, but was held in a steel grip. I tried to push the fire away, but an invisible hand pushed it back. I became dizzy and was about to collapse into the flame when angels held me up. Encouraged, I pulled my waning strength together and attempted to stand, but the devils pushed me back into the flame. Finally, I became the fire.
Generations passed before the flame lost its vigour, churning out dark and stifling fumes. I walked through the oppressive haze for fifty-five years and a day, before coming to a bright light at the end of the tunnel. When I stepped from the tunnel, I had arrived in a land of clouds, with no earth, trees or buildings in sight. I could see people walking briskly on the clouds: they stepped from higher clouds to lower clouds without missing a beat. When I looked down, I noticed that there were others walking upside down on these same clouds, as though they were a bizarre reflection of the people above, as in a still pond of water. I realized that there was no gravity here, nor any sort of earthly laws. It was an entirely different realm.
When I recovered from the shock of being in this new world, I started to notice details that I had overlooked in my initial shocked state. The people I saw around me were quite different from the ones I was used to: they had long and strong legs, as they did a lot of walking, but their arms were tiny, mere stubs that dangled from their shoulders. I realized that they didn’t do any physical work and so had no need for strong arms. I didn’t see any ears. It was eerily quiet in this realm, and so I supposed they had no need for ears. Once in a thousand years there was a loud announcement that came from the clouds, shattering the serene atmosphere. Everyone would stop and listen to the heavenly message, lifting their stub arms high so that a small ear would open in their armpits like a blooming flower. So they did have ears, after all. But why, I wondered, would they sprout from such an unnatural place? I soon realized why. It was unbearably cold here. An ear on one’s head would not last a single second. It was −10,000°c.
Looking still more closely, I noticed that they did not have eyes, or a mouth. They had antennae, like butterflies, to direct their travels through this realm. They were not in need of eyes, as everything was blinding white. They only needed the antennae so as to avoid running into one another, and so they could find their way on these multi-layered clouds. Mouths had no purpose either. They did not eat, because they were spirits. And they never spoke. If, once in a while, they wished to pass a message to another, they simply bent over—to communicate with their only orifice.
It was an alien world, but here I was the alien. The fear in me subsided only when I realized that no one paid any attention to me. I was curious as to where these spirits were coming from, and headed to. What was hidden in those castles of clouds? I tried to find out, but when I attempted to take a step I discovered that I had frozen to my tracks. I had stood too long in one spot, and my boots were glued to the immobile cloud. Now I understood why they spent their lives walking.
While desperately struggling to free myself, I noticed that the aliens had stopped to watch me. Their antennae were pointed at me like the horns of a herd of wild goats, ready for a fight. A chill ran down my spine. I could not run because I was glued to the spot; I could not speak because my mouth was frozen shut. I was frantic. The strange creatures came closer and closer, finally feeling me with their ridged antennae. They ran these coarse instruments all over my body, in order to determine my shape and find out if I was one of them. Realizing that I was an intruder, they decided to strangle me. A hundred mutant hands held my arms; others held my feet. When one of them put his hand around my neck, instinct took over. Startled, I jumped up. When I opened my eyes, I found Mam sitting next to me, taking my pulse.
“You’ve slept the whole day,” she whispered. “Raise your head and eat something. You haven’t eaten yet, you know.”
I was relieved to see
Mam, but still confused. I asked myself: what am I doing in bed with my pants on? and what time is it? When I looked through the window, I saw that it was pitch dark outside. My head was throbbing and my stomach was churning, as though it could not decide whether it wanted to stay with me or not.
“I’m not hungry,” I replied, gathering my waning strength.
“At least have a glass of milk,” she implored.
I shook my head to say no, because I knew that I could not hold it down.
“Drink it. Let it come out if it must,” she said, reading my mind. She lifted my head and trickled the warm fluid into my mouth. It relaxed my jaws, but my stomach did not welcome it. Mam cajoled me to finish drinking, and I did. My head had hardly touched the pillow when the milk came out in a white gush, punctuated with dark ink.
“Let it come out. It will do you good,” Mam said to encourage me, as she held my chest.
The entire contents of my stomach spilled onto the floor, and my stomach itself struggled to follow. I coughed, and tears rolled down my cheeks. When I blew my nose, a tar-dark fluid emerged. Mam held a piece of rag to my nose, and urged me to clear it out, which I did.
Terribly exhausted, I lay back on the bed. I wished Mam would leave me alone, so that I could sleep, but she still hovered over me. She asked me if I wanted this thing or that, but I had no energy to reply. I felt so drained I could hardly keep my eyelids open.
Mam soon woke me again, to give me some herb juices that would settle my stomach. She sat on the edge of the bed, pleading with the Virgin Mary and the Adbar to help me recover. Encouraged by the medicine staying down, she came back with my favourite dish, dried beef stew, and another glass of milk. I ate and drank half of each, and felt better. Before she left to sleep, Mam brought the framed portrait of the Virgin Mary, holding baby Jesus in her arms, and laid it beside my pillow. She reminded Jesus’ mother to look after me while my own mother went away to rest for a little while.
The next day I was well enough to walk around, but Mam urged me not to leave the compound. Wondwossen came and stayed with me for the whole afternoon. We unfolded discarded tin cans, hammered them flat, and cut them into various shapes from which we assembled toy airplanes and cars. We took our slings and hunted the owls and bateleurs that were invading the pigeon’s nest in our backyard. Before Wondwossen left, Mam served us snacks and glasses of milk.
Notes from the Hyena's Belly Page 6
