Radiance of Tomorrow (2 page)

She rounded a corner and dropped the pile, her heart sinking to her waist-bone at the resounding thud of the bones hitting the dusty earth. Her feet gave way under her body as she saw the back of a man sitting on his knees tying bones together as one would a bundle of kindling. She could tell that this was an old man, as his hair was the color of stagnant clouds. The man’s movements expressed his age. This brought her heart back to its proper place, allowing the rest of her body to resume its many functions.

The old man, sensing a shadow behind him, spoke. “If you are a spirit, please pass by peacefully. I am doing this work to make sure that when people return to this town, they may not see this. I know their eyes have recorded worse, but still I will spare them one last image of despair.”

“I will help you, then.” She lowered herself and began picking up the bones she had dropped and some more, making her way toward him.

“I know that voice. Is that you, Kadie?” He trembled, his hands unable to do what they had been doing since he’d arrived as the sky was wiping the last residue of sleep from its surface. Kadie answered quietly, as though afraid to disturb the deep silence that had come about just at that moment. His heart hesitated to give permission to his face to turn around and greet his friend. He sat for some time watching his shadow move. And all the while, he could hear Kadie rattling the bones and sighing as she continued her work. Turning to see her would give his heart the burden of coming to terms with whatever condition she was in. She might be amputated, deformed in some way or another. He sat some more in his torment, and Kadie decided to end his hesitation, as she knew why he had hidden his eyes from his words. She came before him and sat on the ground. His eyes had dug themselves deep into the earth.

“Please remove your eyes from the body of the earth and see your friend. I am sure your heart will perform a joyful dance when you see that I am as well as I can be.” She placed her right hand on his shoulder. He held on to her hand and slowly, like a child caught making mischief, he lifted his head. His eyes surveyed the body of his friend while his mind confirmed: her hands are both there, her legs, too, nose, ears, lips …

“I am here, Moiwa, all of how I came into this world is here.” Her voice stopped his mind’s roll call on her body parts.

“Kadie! You are here, you are here.” He touched her face. They embraced and then sat apart looking at each other. He offered her water in a small old pot. She smiled as she took the water in a fractured calabash that sailed on top of the water. He had one of those round and dignified faces that always had a pensive demeanor and could hold a smile only for a short time. His frame, hands, and fingers were thinner and longer.

“It was all I could find in the ruins that could hold water.”

What he didn’t say was that a week ago he had come nearer to Imperi, near enough that his eyes could see the big mango tree in the center of town, but he hadn’t had the courage to enter it. His mind had immediately stopped longing for home and replayed the horrors of the war. It started with wails of people who had passed, people he knew. He had made a temporary home in one of the many burnt vehicles by the river. Those vehicles had once belonged to the mining company that had been preparing to start operations six months before the war. The company had refused to build a small bridge across the river, which it regretted when the war came, as it couldn’t get its new cars and equipment across. The foreigners who were supposed to start working for the mining company had at first dismissed the possibility that they would ever have to abandon their cars, loaded with food, clothes, and other provisions, but the first gunshot had sent them running with only a bag each, packed in canoes that almost sank, shaking with their nervousness. They pleaded with eyes wide open for the canoe owner to paddle faster.

Moiwa asked his friend Kadie only how she had brought her spirit into town and which route she had taken.

“My feet touched this land on the day that gave birth to this one. And I walked the path, as that is the way in my heart.” She wrapped her fingers around one another and rubbed them to summon warmth.

“I should have known that, my dear Kadie!” She hadn’t changed her ways at all. Kadie almost never walked on the roads. She did so only when there was no path. She believed in the knowledge of her great-grandparents, who had made the paths and knew the land better than those foreigners who just get into their machines and carve roads into the earth without thinking about where the land breathes, where it sleeps, where it wakes, where it entertains spirits, where it wants the sun or the shade of a tree. They laughed, both knowing that part of the old ways remained, though they were fragile. At the end of their laughter, words were exchanged, briefly, leaving many things unsaid for another day that continued to be another and yet another. Some things were better left unspoken as long as handshakes and embraces could manage their emotions—until the voice could find the strength to leave the mouth and bring out what was in the guarded mantle of memory.

Mama Kadie and Pa Moiwa, as all those younger would respectfully call them, spent weeks removing things that did not belong to the surface of the earth. They couldn’t tell which bones belonged to those they had known. At some houses there were more bones than the people who had lived there. Bones were littered around the town and the nearby bushes. It was the same for the many towns and villages they had passed through; some were burnt and some had become forests, with trees growing inside houses. So they made a decision to take the bones to the cemetery and pile them there until it could be agreed upon by the whole town, when enough people had returned, what to do with the remains. During the entire process, they never cried; they spoke very little to each other except when they rested. And even then, it was in the most general terms, about the past before the land had changed.

“I do hope the other towns will come alive soon. I am fond of wandering down the path to another village or town at midafternoon to sit with its elders.” Pa Moiwa surveyed the four paths that came in and out of the town.

“Just as in the old days. You think all such simple things can become our lives again?” Mama Kadie asked. She didn’t want an answer and her friend gave none. They became quiet, each thinking of the day their lives had been shifted in another direction that they were still trying to return from.

*   *   *

Imperi was attacked on a Friday afternoon when everyone had returned from the market, from farms, and from schools, to rest at home and pray. It was that time of day when the sun came to a standstill and flexed the brightness of its muscles so intensely that even for those used to the dry season it became absolutely and unbearably hot. People sat on their verandas or under the shade of the mango trees in their backyards and drank hot tea or something cold, whispering to one another, as even their voices needed rest. The excited voices of children, however, didn’t need any respite. They came intermittently into town from the river, where they swam and played games, chasing after one another, their school uniforms strewn on the grasses at the riverbank.

There were three primary schools in town and two secondary schools nearby. While they didn’t have sufficient school materials, there were a good number of benches and desks. And the buildings were solid, though they had no doors, windows, or roofs. They did have the openings where these “ornaments,” as the headmaster called them, were supposed to be and where sometimes patches of zinc hung on the rafters. The teachers used to joke, “Who needs things covering the roofs, doors, or windows when you need the breeze to blow through your classroom all day or the heat will teach you more of a lesson than what you had planned for your students!”

The teachers were lively and the students were even livelier, in their colorful uniforms, so eager to learn that they would sit on the bare earth under mango trees or under the hot sun, excitedly reciting what was taught to them.

The inhabitants of Imperi had heard of the war that was hundreds of miles away, but they didn’t think it would enter, let alone severely wound, their lives. But that afternoon it did.

Several rocket-propelled grenades introduced the people of Imperi to war when they exploded in the chief’s compound, bringing down all the walls and killing many people, whose flesh sizzled from the explosions. These were followed by gunshots, and screaming and wailing, as people were gunned down in front of their children, mothers, fathers, grandparents. It was one of those operations that the fighters called “No Living Thing”—they would kill everything with life. Anyone who escaped such operations was extremely lucky, as the fighters would ambush towns and attack, shooting at will.

Chaos had engulfed Imperi, and some people, especially the very old and children, were trampled on. The passing soldiers, mostly children and a good number of men, shot those who hadn’t died when they came upon them. They laughed at the fact that by creating a stampede, the civilians had helped to make their operation easier.

Mama Kadie had watched the bullets tear into her two eldest sons and three daughters. They each hit the earth with eyes wide open, filled with surprise at what had just happened to them. Blood poured out of different parts of their bodies and then at last their teeth were covered with red saliva as life departed them. It had all happened so quickly, and she ran toward them not knowing exactly why, but her heart as a mother had been shattered and this was all she could do. She had no fear for her life. But someone seized her arms from behind and dragged her away from the bullets, away from the opening and near the bushes, where she was left to wake up from the shock and where her instincts to live emerged. In such circumstances, one has to abandon not only the feeling of pain but also sometimes even maternal instincts, and it must be done with immediacy.

She thought about her grandchildren. What if they survived, since they were at the river? Even though the voices of the children had ceased coming through the wind since the gunshots started, she wanted to go to the river, but sounds of heavy firing were coming from that direction. She deliberately turned to see her home one last time before she took up all the speed her age could bear, with bullets flying and catching people around her as she ran out of Imperi.

*   *   *

Pa Moiwa woke her from her thoughts with a deliberate coughing fit. Her face, the slouching of her cheekbones in particular, had given away that difficult memories consumed her just now.

“I was here on that day, at the mosque,” he said, “and I ran away from the prayer mat. I think God understood because he let me live through that day.” With a stick, he drew some lines on the ground, a way to distract himself somehow so that the thoughts of that day didn’t get a complete hold of him. They knew they had to put off for a while speaking about this part of the past. But their thoughts diverged. Pa Moiwa’s mind dwelled on the fire that had burnt his house that afternoon. His wife had been at home in bed recovering from a small illness and his twenty-year-old granddaughter had been tending to her. When he saw them run out of the house, slapping the fire off their bodies with all of the remaining might they had left, he thought they would live. But two children, a boy and a girl, had gunned them down and carried on shooting at other people and laughing. He knew he had to go before the children saw him.

“Well.” Mama Kadie’s voice waited for strength.

“The spider sometimes runs out of webs to spin, so it waits in the one it has spun.” Pa Moiwa used the old saying to assure his friend that more words would come to her and she might be able to dwell on things other than the horrors of the past. They were still holding on to old times, to old things, to an old world that didn’t exist anymore. Fragments of it worked every now and then, though. She regained her voice.

“Well, I eventually ended up on a small island near Bonthe. A fishing village that had nothing but fishermen, their families, and huts that the wind tossed into the air and set back down every other evening as though searching for something.” Mama Kadie leaned against the guava tree under which they sat.

“I just wandered everywhere for years, sleeping wherever night found me,” Pa Moiwa said. “My old age became a blessing many times on those days when everyone wished that their youthful qualities were behind them.” He said nothing more for a while and Mama Kadie didn’t ask. He was thinking again about the war, specifically about the numerous times he had escaped death. About the time the soldiers decided instead to chase after the young people, saying, “He is old, so don’t waste the ammunition on him. He can’t go far, so we will catch him and use the knives when we get back.” A group of boys who could have been his grandchildren had run after more agile folks, shooting at them.

But when Pa Moiwa spoke next, he described something different from what had possessed his mind just then. “The bones and muscles in my feet never felt tired of wandering; in fact, they felt restless. It was only when I set foot here—” He placed his palms on the ground and rubbed the dirt with his eyes closed for a few seconds before continuing. “It was only here that my feet and spirit suddenly felt tired.” He let his tongue rest for the passing wind to speak.

The only time they allowed whatever was inside of them to take hold of their faces, driving away their shiny wrinkles even in the presence of the sun, was when they came across bones of children, especially when there were too many of them in one area. They both had several grandchildren; Mama Kadie had five and Pa Moiwa counted six. Mama Kadie would sometimes look at certain piles of bones so intensely that her eyes watered. She hoped that she would recognize something on the bones that might reveal to her that it was one of her grandchildren. After a long period of separation, not knowing whether they were alive or dead, it was sometimes easier to want to bury them; the pain of unknowing was severe and never ending.

“This is truthfully of a girl,” she whispered to herself while examining a pelvic bone. “And these are of boys.” Three of her grandchildren were always together, so she wanted these bones to be them. “If only the clothes on them didn’t rot.”