Welcome to Hawa's

Semia Harbawi

My shoulder blades bunched with effort. All my concentration was funnelled into the task at hand. I glanced at my nails. They turned white with the sheer effort of squeezing. Squeezing seemed all I was doing these days. My eyes crinkled and I gritted my teeth as the squirming yellowish, grub-like matter squirted between the crescents of my nails. That stubborn blackhead finally gave in and the client, Mrs. Berrish, emitted a strangled squeal, followed by a whoosh of relief. Her cratered face was twisted with pain. Her eyes watered and she sniffled several times before telling me off with that whimpering voice of hers that always got under my skin: "Could you be more careful, Amina? You're hurting me! And what's taking you so long to finish the job?" I stood at the head of the couch on which she was reclining for her bi-monthly facial. As a beautician in Hawa's, one of the poshest beauty parlors in Tunis, I could not possibly tell her that she had the oiliest, most disgusting skin I had seen in all my life.

Mrs. Berrish was the wife of one of those high-flying nouveaux riches who seemed to pop up and prosper like parasitical fungi in Tunis these days. Mrs. Lakhal, el maâl'ma, the owner of the salon and our nemesis, so shamelessly and utterly fawned on Mrs. Berrish that the latter had only to wag her fat pinkie to get any of us small fry axed on the spot. Mrs. Berrish fretted over her complexion as if it were her most precious asset, and it was perhaps just that, since the rest of her ranged from coarse to downright revolting, a stump of a body that she deported with the utmost arrogance. She was not an exception, but a run-of-the mill sample of the clientele that constituted our maâl'ma's business. My days were spent at the beck and call of such captious women who had so much leisure time on their manicured hands and so much money poured by guilty husbands into their grabbing palms that they expended it on entertaining the preposterous illusion they still had a beauty to entertain. I was called upon to squeeze their blackheads, pluck their mutinous eyebrows, fasten acrylic fingernails to their talons, lighten their complexions with creams that cost more than I could earn in a week, unkink the hair on their heads and wax the superfluous patches of hair on cacti-like legs or in those places their husbands no longer deigned to explore. I stoically endured their moans and tantrums and mean streaks that were accompanied by even meaner tips. For I had the girls, Hawa's girls, the other beauticians of the salon, who inspired me with enough resilience to withstand Mrs. Lakhal's scathing snarls and the general pettiness of life.

After only two years in this place, we came to form a formidable sorority. Our bonding was so solid and concrete that it cut through individual miseries and allayed what at first seemed like insuperable pains. Bonding was all we had in the face of caddish boyfriends or husbands who had the infuriating tendency to play nasty tricks on us, with lies as the staple fodder, a practice apparently sanctified by a macho tradition. We formed a sort of emotional catapult that helped each one of us to rebound back into the orbit of her own life, galvanized to fend for herself.

There were seven of us. Like those seven mercenaries in an old Western movie, with Mrs. Lakhal in the role of buzzard wheeling over our heads in ominous circles, ever watchful and alert, ready to swoop down and pick our bones clean. Monia was the butter-fingers of the group and the prime target of Mrs. Lakhal's harassment. Aziza collected men as one might collect stamps, which was no small feat given the difficulty of doing so without being branded a slut of the blackest dye. In a place like Tunis, merely speaking with a man on a street corner could unleash a whole barrage of speculations that would ultimately leave the girl's reputation (but never the man's) reeling to never regain its balance again. Neyla pined for her fiancé who was serving time in an Italian prison for being a ghabbar, a drug dealer. For my part, I was hooked on a married man who, true to the cliché, always promised to get a divorce from his wife, but somehow never could bring himself (in other words, did not have the guts) to as much as air his discontent to her about her harping and carping. Neziha was our ringleader, our mother and our sister all rolled into one. She was the one who covered up for us and took the brunt of Mrs. Lakhal's attacks when the latter's peptic ulcer made her ooze acid all over the place. Neziha was the one to whom we turned when Leyla's period failed her after her stupid boyfriend's sheath had split in the middle of the business. We always referred to it as the business, by the way. Perhaps that was because men made us think of it in those terms. Neziha took the matter of Leyla's dilemma in her hands and convinced the gynaecologist to get paid in monthly instalments for the abortion, while the rest of us were willing to chip in a chunk of our salaries to pay them. It was also Neziha who injected Samira , a young divorcée with a son in custody, with the grim stamina to dun her ex-husband until he 'belched' nafka, child support. It was an obsession of ours to make men 'belch:' eithe the money, or the truth about their marital status and/or projects. This was an arduous struggle.

We prided ourselves on being hard-bitten vixens despite the deceptive amiability of our miens and the sleek kowtowing ceremonial we performed around clients. But Afeefa, the youngest recruit, was not as tough as the rest. She carried herself as if she were a fragile stem destined to snap, though I always marvelled at her capacity to work six-hour shifts and massage women who were sometimes twice her size. Her clients spoke fondly about her calamine touch that worked wonders on their knotted muscles and aching joints. The most disgruntled old dragon could turn into a purring kitten after half an hour under Afeefa's hands. While the rest of us were inured earthen pots simmering with rage, laughter and pain, Afeefa was a delicate vase. We acted as padding between her and the unpalatable facts of life in locum of her doddering mother. She was our mascot, our baby, the little sister we wanted to protect. She also provided a sort of foil for Neziha, and together they acted as what the Chinese call the yin and the yang, a balancing axle that ensured the cohesion of our group even when the arguments got heated and out of hand.

Sometimes we did not need words to express our misery amidst the stench of singed hair under the assault of hair-dryers or the effluvia of incalculable tinctures and dyes that permeated the air till our noses became dull. A quick look sufficed to guess at each girl's mood of the day. We would exchange glances and comforting smiles to carry us till the midday pause when we could swap stories and seek salves to dress our wounds. We lived for that hiatus in the day when we would sample the smorgasbord of our grievances and seek one another's advice between hurriedly smoked cigarettes and cold meals gulped in hassled precipitation, with Mrs. Lakhal's arctic breath coming down on our necks.

Mrs. Lakhal was the carrion eater, the dung roller, the tick who fattened herself on fellow women's illusions. But she proved a security valve, bless her mean wisp of a soul! The laughs we used to have at her expense: her sachet-smelling clothes and the saccharin smiles she reserved for the wealthiest clients. We also envisioned her with her uxorious husband and took turns mimicking her boastful reminiscences about the glorious days of her youth when she penetrated the peak of the beauty world in Italy, and was penetrated by it as dead-pan Aziza would quip. This never failed to send us into fits of insuppressable giggles. We fantasized about slipping a laxative into Mrs. Lakhal's herbal tea to see how much venom would seep out of her. But we would dilute the substance of our bawdy jokes and innuendoes whenever Afeefa was within earshot. We also took turns to alleviate the worries of virginal, wide-eyed brides, most of them from good families, who came to the parlour to have their hair done and faces painted in those garish, ritual tints that signalled their passage into a worthier plateau of existence. We would try to embellish the perspective of the sacrosanct nuptial bed, while we secretly empathized with the impending throes of abrupt, thrusting realization. You see, each one of us, save for Afeefa of course, had come upon that disappointing realization a long time ago, whether 'legitimately' or not.

We allowed little to impinge on our happy routine. We closed ranks and grappled with our predictable lot, content to plough ahead with no major problems to dim our collective cheerfulness, until the day Afeefa's dotty mother took it into her head to marry her daughter to her sister's son, Hafedh. He had a mild look about him; he did not seem the assertive type. At least, not in the beginning. He had a soft voice and guarded manners when he started turning up each day to escort Afeefa home at closing time. He would mutter his greetings without meeting the gaze of any one of us and we had ascribed this at first to his apparent shyness. He had a sparrow-like quality in the way he carried his slight frame. His epicene face flaunted a weak mouth to which he tried to give a certain leverage by growing a moustache that looked more like a pathetic strip of down shadowing his upper lip. There was a darkish smudge, a sulking moon, high in the centre of his brows: it was the stamp that is usually rubbed off by the praying rug; the meretricious evidence that he was one of the faithful with a guaranteed niche in God's paradise. He also wore sandals with socks. "Poor Afeefa! How tacky is that?" Monia would exclaim. "Mark my words! You can never trust a man who wears socks with sandals!"

As days went by, we remarked perceptible alterations in Afeefa's clothes and demeanour. The hems on her skirts were let out. She started scrunching up her hair in a strict bun that did not suit her in the least. At first, she refused to tell us what irked her. But then one day, at Samira's house, as we were chattering away about samosa recipes and Aziza's latest escapade, Afeefa broke down without warning. She cried softly, burying her face in Neziha's ample bosom. And then it all came out in a torrent of pent-up rage: "He wants me to quit, to get out of this 'hotbed of vanity and vice' as he always refers to the parlour! He wants me to stay home after we get married. He says no wife of his is expected to work and that he'll provide for me. He says that I must start wearing hijab as soon as possible. He forbids me putting on make-up, wearing my hair loose, chewing gum, and watching movies, especially the Western ones; he says they are the work of the Devil. I'm not even allowed to listen to songs he deems too scandalous and not fit for a chaste girl's ears!" In a sluice of righteous uproar, we all started speaking at the same time. Afeefa told us that Hafedh's family was a bunch of bigots who pressurized him to impose on her their life-style. It was Hafedh who enjoined her to put on longer dresses and wear her lustrous hair in that austere, obnoxious way: "I told him that a woman's hair is God's creation, so why hide it? And you know what? He's stalking me! Wherever I go, he'd be there! And Mother says he's right and that it's my duty to do the biddings of my would-be husband!" She was at her wits' end, so we tried to raise her spirits and encouraged her to disregard her mother's directives and do what she deemed best for herself. A few days later, Afeefa announced to us that it was over. She could take it no more and had confronted him with her weariness at the stifling hold he acquired over her life. He had slapped her hard. So she had flung his engagement ring in his face and ditched him. "Good riddance," we exclaimed in an exultant chorus and resumed our contented routine.

A week later, a busy day mercifully came to its end. Rain came down in solid sheets that lashed at our faces the moment we emerged from the parlour's outer door onto the deserted street. We were hunched over on our way to the nearest bus stop, as a gruff wind blew in glacial gusts. All of a sudden, he was there at the turn of the street, a shadowy presence that had been lurking in wait. Hafedh addressed Afeefa in a reedy voice, while his inscrutable eyes stonily ignored our presence. "I want to speak to you. Alone. Just a few moments. Please." He was shivering under the onslaught of the spiteful rain. His voice had an urgent quality and his eyes a fixed glaze. His hair was plastered to his skull and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down in his agitation. A stubble of beard darkened the hollows of his cheekbones. Samira and Leyla nudged Afeefa to move along, but she relented and asked us to go ahead: "I won't be long, promise!" We stood on the other side of the street waiting for her. We looked on at his gesticulating hands and the adamant way in which she shook her head. They were standing under her umbrella and, to a passer-by, they would have looked just like a flirting couple who took advantage of the downpour to edge closer to each other. And then it happened in a flutter of movements that left us transfixed. The lamplight glinted off the shiny surface of a long metallic object. It was a switchblade. Hafedh's arm moved with incredible speed, a blur to my eyes. An arc of blood appeared on Afeefa's cheek.

His mouth lolled open. He stood panting, staring as she lifted her hand to the gash oozing dark blood that drenched the front of her dress. Her umbrella lay upturned at her feet and she crumpled on the sidewalk like a paper figurine that grew soggy and lost its crispness. Her cries came in a keening crescendo that had her rocking to and fro in a trance of staggered pain. It was Neziha who shattered the spell that seemed to have frozen our limbs. She lurched forward in a frantic run like a woman possessed. Her massive frame moved with brutal purpose and a blood-curdling howl. We followed suit. The man's head swivelled. He was startled out of his inertia. His switchblade clattered onto the pavement as it slid out of his hand. He turned his body and ran away, pumping with all his might as Neziha stooped to collect stones from the gutter to pelt his receding figure, catching him between his shoulder blades and on his scraggy buttocks. Spittle dribbled down her chin as she let out a flow of invectives that not even the rain or the wind could mute.

We hunkered down on the sidewalk surrounding Afeefa like praetorian guards, cradling her head and dabbing at the neat, yawning gash. She thrashed in a flailing frenzy, then slumped and subsided into moans: "It burns – God, how it burns!" Queasiness wrenched my insides and bilious acid surged up my throat. Squinching her eyes shut, she looked like an disarticulate doll whose face got disfigured by a playful child. We waited while Monia flagged down a passing cab. The driver reluctantly agreed to take Afeefa and three of us to the nearest hospital. The rest joined afterwards to find her prone on a hospital bed in a sedated daze. "They are going to suture her face, her beautiful face!" Neyla howled, then started sobbing. We restlessly lingered in the reception area. When Afeefa's mother came, she was accompanied by two women who flanked her, each clutching her by one arm. She hurled insults at us and blamed us for what happened to her little girl. She said that we were sluts who had set a bad example to her innocent child and had waylaid her into breaking up with her fiancé. Things started smelling nasty and we felt we had to leave.

The following day, we went to work like automatons. Neziha told Mrs. Lakhal what happened. The latter only rolled her reptilian eyes and said the timing could not have been worse, as Afeefa's massages were regularly solicited by many of the clients and that she would have to reschedule all those appointments. The roar of hair-dryers superimposed itself on our inner tumult, the stunned distress trapped inside our throats. The smell of seared hair substituted itself for the acrid smell of bitterness and the aftertaste of bile. Discarded fragments of clipped nails mocked the futility of our sorrow. During the midday break, we rushed three at a time to the payphone on the street behind the parlour to enquire about Afeefa. A woman's voice answered in curt, dismissive tones that she was home, but not in a condition to speak to anybody. We didn't get Afeefa on the phone until a few days later. She told us she was a little better and intended to go back to work.

Despite our joined supplication, Mrs. Lakhal refused to take Afeefa back. It would not be good for the reputation of her place, she haughtily informed us, to have an employee who got herself involved in such a vile business. In addition, she had her clients to think of. They would not be keen on having a disfigured aesthetician tend to their well-being. A few weeks later, we met Afeefa at Samira's house. She had agreed to come because she missed us. Her mother was driving her crazy. To our bewilderment, Afeefa was wearing hijab. She said she had to, not out of a newly-found religious zeal, but to hide the puckered slash. "Now this thing at least serves a purpose!" snorted Neziha, gesturing to Afeefa's scarf. "But that son of a dog who did this to you has got what he wanted in the first place! You're out of work and you're wearing hijab! There's no damn justice in this world!" Afeefa's nougat eyes, which used to sparkle, were desolate. She resigned herself to her new life of eking out a living by making home calls in the popular neighbourhood where she lived, helping women with their hairdos and make-up on big occasions. No man in his right mind, as her mother repeated to her often enough, would have her now, since she was merchandise that had been tampered with. Too many people believed that to not make it come true. We all knew that. Afeefa said, "It's mektoob, my fate, and I have to make do with it."

But, we, the rest of Hawa's girls, could not. We learned that Hafedh was shortly to get married. The wretch had got away with a ridiculous sentence and was about to start a new life oblivious of the one he had wrecked. On the afternoon of the wedding day, we slapped make-up on our faces like combatants preparing for war; a death squad moving in for the kill. We cinched our bodies in the tawdriest outfits we could lay our hands upon. Bosoms were hoisted up and allowed to overflow outrageously slinky bustiers. We teetered on high heels, garbed in slut paraphernalia. There was a bounce to our steps and a provocative twitch to our behinds as we sashayed into the large, full-to-bursting banquet hall. The wedding ceremony was in full swing. The audience was almost exclusively composed of hijab-clad women who craned their necks and stared in outrage at our spectacular entry. Our smouldering charcoal eyes blazed in unabashed defiance and challenged any one of them to block our progress. Hafedh was sitting in an ornate chair on a raised platform by his bride's side. We parted the sea of white and pink and yellow hijabs and positioned ourselves in front of the platform like a firing squad. He regarded us uncomprehendingly until Leyla started screaming at the top of her voice: "Did you think you could get away this easy? Did you think I wouldn't find you and expose your duplicity? You bastard! You used me. You toyed with my feelings and I trusted you! Trusted him, you hear?" She turned to the incredulous audience. "He did to me whatever he wanted, the jerk, and I let him because he promised he'd marry me! And by the way, has he told you that he cut a girl and served time in prison? I bet he hasn't!" Horrified gasps met her thundering words. The bride in her pristine-white hijab was sobbing. A woman came forward and helped her step off the dais. There was a mighty uproar. Hafedh seemed paralyzed. Finally he managed to splutter: "It's all a pack of lies! She's a slut trying to set me up!"

"So you admit that you know her?" interjected an old man, clearly the bride's father, who looked like he was on the verge of a coronary.

"Yes, but . . ."

"What shame you brought on our heads! That's enough! I won't live to see my daughter married to a godless scoundrel!" With those words, he turned on his heels and herded his daughter and family women away. People started milling around and filing out of the hall. The ceremony was over and we marched out of the place with slow deliberation, basking in the glow of our vengeance.

We were Hawa's daughters and woe to anyone who messed with us. It was a vow we made to ourselves and to one another that day. In our ears the whispered echo of Afeefa's words. Mektoob. Kismet. Nobody could possibly evade destiny. Not in this world, not in the other.

It was all part and parcel of Hawa's lot. Welcome to Hawa's!

Dreams of Trespass

Fatima Mernissi

The problem with entertainment, fun, and foolishness at our house was that they could easily be missed. They were never planned in advance unless Cousin Chama or Aunt Habiba were in charge, and even then, they were subject to serious space constraints. Aunt Habiba's story-telling and Chama's theatre plays had to take place upstairs. You could never really have fun for long in the courtyard; it was too public. Just as you were starting to have a good time, the men would come in with their own projects, which often involved a great deal of discussion, such as going over business matters, or listening to the radio and debating the news, or card playing, and then you would have to move elsewhere. Good entertainment needs concentration and silence in order for the masters of ceremony, the storytellers and the actors to create their magic. You could not create magic in the courtyard, where dozens of people were constantly crossing from one salon to the other, popping in and out of the corner staircases, or talking back and forth to one another from one floor to the next. And you certainly could not create magic when the men were talking politics, that is, listening to the radio on the loudspeakers, or reading the local and international press.

The men's political discussions were always highly emotionally charged. If you listened carefully to what they were saying, you had the impression that the world was coming to an end. (Mother said that if you believed the radio and the men's comments, the planet would have disappeared a long time ago.) They talked about the Allemane, or Germans, a new breed of Christians who were giving a beating to the French and the British, and they talked about a bomb that the Americans across the sea had dropped on Japan, which was one of the Asian nations near China, thousands of kilometers east of Mecca. Not only had the bomb killed thousands and thousands of people and melted their bodies, it had shaved entire forests off the face of the earth as well. The news about that bomb plunged Father, Uncle 'Ali, and my cousins into deep despair, for if the Christians had thrown that bomb on the Asians who lived so far away, it was only a matter of time before they attacked the Arabs. "Sooner or later," Father said, "they will be tempted to burn the Arabs too."

Samir and I loved the men's political discussions, because then we were allowed into the crowded men's salon, where Uncle and Father, each dressed comfortably in a white djellabas, sat surrounded by the chabab, or the youth - that is, the dozen adolescent and unmarried men who lived in the house. Father often joked with the chabab about their uncomfortable, tight, Western dress, and said that now they would have to sit on chairs. But of course everyone hated chairs; sofas were much more comfortable.

I would climb up into my father's lap and Samir would climb up into Uncle's. Uncle would be sitting cross-legged in the middle of the highest sofa, wearing his spotless white djellabas and a white turban, with his son Samir perched on his lap in Prince of Wales shorts. I would nestle in my father's lap, neatly dressed in one of my very short French white dresses with satin ribbons at the waist. Mother always insisted on dressing me in the latest Western fashions- short fluffy lace dresses with colored ribbons and shiny black shoes. The only problem was that she would fly into a flurry if I dirtied the dress, or disarranged the ribbons, and so I would often beg her to let me wear my comfortable little sarwal (harem pants), or any traditional outfit, which required less attention. But only on religious festival days, when father insisted, would she let me wear my caftan, so anxious was she to see me escape tradition. "Dress says so much about a woman's designs," she said. "If you plan to be modern, express it through what you wear, otherwise they will shove you behind the gates. Caftans may be of unparalleled beauty, but Western dress is about salaried work." I therefore grew to associate caftans with lavish holidays, religious festivals, and the splendors of our ancestral past, and Western dress with pragmatic calculations and stern, professional, daily chores.

A Handful of Dates

El Tayeb Salih

I must have been very young at the time. While I don't remember exactly how old I was, I do remember that when people saw me with my grandfather they would pat me on the head and give my cheek a pinch - things they didn't do to my grandfather. The strange thing was that I never used to go out with my father, rather it was my grandfather who would take me with him wherever he went, except for the mornings, when I would go to the mosque to learn the Koran. The mosque, the river, and the fields - these were the landmarks in our life. While most of the children of my age grumbled at having to go to the mosque to learn the Koran, I used to love it. The reason was, no doubt, that I was quick at learning by heart and the Sheik always asked me to stand up and recite the Chapter of the Merciful whenever we had visitors, who would pat me on my head and cheek just as people did when they saw me with my grandfather.

Yes, I used to love the mosque, and I loved the river, too. Directly we finished our Koran reading in the morning I would throw down my wooden slate and dart off, quick as a genie, to my mother, hurriedly swallow down my breakfast, and run off for a plunge in the river. When tired of swimming about, I would sit on the bank and gaze at the strip of water that wound away eastwards, and hid behind a thick wood of acacia trees. I loved to give rein to my imagination and picture myself a tribe of giants living behind that wood, a people tall and thin with white beards and sharp noses, like my grandfather. Before my grandfather ever replied to my many questions, he would rub the tip of his nose with his forefinger; as for his beard, it was soft and luxuriant and as white as cotton wool - never in my life have I seen anything of a purer whiteness or greater beauty. My grandfather must also have been extremely tall, for I never saw anyone in the whole area address him without having him look up at him, nor did I see him enter a house without having to bend so low that I was put in mind of the way the river wound round behind the wood of acacia trees. I loved him and would imagine myself, when I grew to be a man, tall and slender like him, walking along with great strides.

I believe I was his favorite grandchild: no wonder, for my cousins were a stupid bunch and I - so they say - was an intelligent child. I used to know when my grandfather wanted me to laugh, when to be silent; also I would remember the times for his prayers and would bring him his prayer rug and fill the ewer for his ablutions without his having to ask me. When he had nothing else to do he enjoyed listening to me reciting to him from the Koran in a lilting voice, and I could tell from his face that he was moved.

One day I asked him about our neighbor Masood. I said to my grandfather: I fancy you don't like our neighbor Masood?

To which he answered, having rubbed the tip of his nose: He's an indolent man and I don't like such people.

I said to him: What's an indolent man?

My grandfather lowered his head for a moment; then, looking across the wide expanse of field, he said: Do you see it stretching out from the edge of the desert up to the Nile bank? A hundred feddans. Do you see all those date palms? And those trees - sant, acacia, and sayal? All this fell into Masood's lap, was inherited by him from his father.

Taking advantage of the silence that had descended on my grandfather, I turned my gaze from him to the vast area defined by words. I don't care, I told myself, who owns those date palms, those trees or this black, cracked earth - all I know is that it's the arena for my dreams and my playground.

My grandfather then continued: Yes, my boy, forty years ago all this belonged to Masood - two-thirds of it is now mine.

This was news for me, for I had imagined that the land had belonged to my grandfather ever since God's Creation.

I didn't own a single feddan when I first set foot in this village. Masood was then the owner of all these riches. The position had changed now, though, and I think that before Allah calls me to Him I shall have bought the remaining third as well."

I do not know why it was I felt fear at my grandfather's words - and pity for our neighbor Masood. How I wished my grandfather wouldn't do what he'd said! I remembered Masood's singing, his beautiful voice and powerful laugh that resembled the gurgling of water. My grandfather never laughed.

I asked my grandfather why Masood had sold his land.

Women, and from the way my grandfather pronounced the word I felt that women was something terrible. AMasood, my boy, was a much-married man. Each time he married he sold me a feddan or two. I made the quick calculation that Masood must have married some ninety women. Then I remembered his three wives, his shabby appearance, his lame donkey and its dilapidated saddle, his galabia with the torn sleeves. I had all but rid my mind of the thoughts that jostled in it when I saw the man approaching us, and my grandfather and I exchanged glances.

We'll be harvesting the dates today, said Masood. Don't you want to be there?

I felt, though, that he did not really want my grandfather to attend. My grandfather, however, jumped to his feet and I saw that his eyes sparkled momentarily with an intense brightness. He pulled me by the hand and we went off to the harvesting of Masood's dates.

Someone brought my grandfather a stool covered with an oxhide, while I remained standing. There was a vast number of people there, but though I knew them all, I found myself for some reason watching Masood: aloof from that great gathering of people he stood as though it were no concern of his, despite the fact that the date palms to be harvested were his own. Sometimes his attention would be caught by the sound of a huge clump of dates crashing down from on high. Once he shouted up at the boy perched on the very summit of the date palm who had begun hacking at a clump with his long, sharp sickle: Be careful you don't cut the heart of the palm.

No one paid any attention to what he said and the boy seated at the very summit of the date palm continued, quickly and energetically, to work away at the branch with his sickle till the clump of dates began to drop like something descending from the heavens.

I, however, had begun to think about Masood's phrase, the heart of the palm. I pictured the palm tree as something with feeling, something possessed of a heart that throbbed. I remembered Masood's remark to me when he had once seen me playing with the branch of a young palm tree: Palm trees, my boy, like humans, experience joy and suffering. And I had felt an inward and unreasoned embarrassment.

When I again looked at the expanse of ground stretching before me I saw my young companions swarming like ants around the trunks of the palm trees, gathering up dates and eating most of them. The dates were collected into high mounds. I saw people coming along and weighing them into measuring bins and pouring them into sacks, of which I counted thirty. The crowd of people broke up, except for Hussein the merchant, Mousa the owner of the field next to ours on the east, and two men I'd never seen before.

I heard a low whistling sound and saw that my grandfather had fallen asleep. Then I noticed that Masood had not changed his stance, except that he had placed a stalk in his mouth and was munching at it like someone sated with food who doesn't know what to do with the mouthful he still has.

Suddenly my grandfather woke up, jumped to his feet, and walked toward the sacks of dates. He was followed by Hussein the merchant, Mousa the owner of the field next to ours and two strangers. I glanced at Masood and saw that he was making his way toward us with extreme slowness, like a man who wants to retreat but whose feet insist on going forward. They formed a circle around the sacks of dates and began examining them, some taking a date or two to eat. My grandfather gave me a fistful, which I began munching. I saw Masood filling the palms of both hands with dates and bringing them up close to his nose, then returning them.

Then I saw them dividing up the sacks between them. Hussein the merchant took ten; each of the strangers took five. Mousa the owner of the field next to ours on the on the eastern side took five, and my grandfather took five. Understanding nothing, I looked at Masood and saw that his eyes were darting to left and right like two mice that have lost their way home.

You're still fifty pounds in debt to me, said my grandfather to Masood. We'll talk about it later.

Hussein called his assistants and they brought along the donkeys, the two strangers produced camels, and the sacks of dates were loaded onto them. One of the donkeys let out a braying which set the camels frothing at the mouth and complaining noisily. I felt myself drawing close to Masood, felt my hand stretch out toward him as though I wanted to touch the hem of his garment. I heard him make a noise in his throat like the rasping of a sheep being slaughtered. For some unknown reason, I experienced a sharp sensation of pain in my chest.

I ran off into the distance. Hearing my grandfather call after me, I hesitated a little, then continued on my way. I felt at that moment that I hated him. Quickening my pace, it was as though I carried within me a secret I wanted to rid myself of. I reached the riverbank near the bend it made behind the wood of acacia trees. Then, without knowing why, I put my finger into my throat and spewed up the dates I'd eaten.

Africa Kills Her Sun

Ken Saro-Wiwa

Dear Zole,

You’ll be surprised, no doubt, to receive this letter. But I couldn’t leave your beautiful world without saying goodbye to you who are condemned to live in it. I know that some might consider my gesture somewhat pathetic, as my colleagues, Sazan and Jimba, do, our finest moments having been achieved two or three weeks ago. However, for me, this letter is a celebration, a final act of love, a quality which, in spite of my career, in spite of tomorrow morning, I do not possess in abundance, and cherish. For, I’ve always treasured the many moments of pleasure we spent together in our youth when the world was new and the fishes flew in golden ponds. In the love we then shared have I found happiness, a true resting place, a shelter from the many storms that have buffeted my brief life. Whenever I’ve been most alone, whenever I’ve been torn by conflict and pain, I’ve turned to that love for the resolution which has sustained and seen me through. This may surprise you, considering that this love was never consummated and that you may possibly have forgotten me, not having seem me these ten years gone. I still remember you, have always remembered you, and it’s logical that on the night before tomorrow, I should write you to ask a small favor of you. But more important, the knowledge that I have unburdened myself to you will make tomorrow morning’s events as pleasant and desirable to me as to the thousands of spectators who will witness it.

I know this will get to you because the prison guard’s been heavily bribed to deliver it. He should rightly be with us before the firing squad tomorrow. But he’s condemned, like most others, to live, to play out his assigned role in your hell of a world. I see him burning out his dull, uncomprehending life, doing his menial job for a pittance and a bribe for the next so many years. I pity his ignorance and cannot envy his complacency. Tomorrow morning, with this letter and our bribe in his pocket, he’ll call us out, Sazan, Jimba and I. As usual, he’ll have all our names mixed up: he always calls Sazan ‘Sajim’ and Jimba ‘Samba’. But that won’t matter. We’ll obey him, and as we walk to our death, we’ll laugh at his gaucherie, his plain stupidity. As we laugh at the other thief, the High Court Judge.

You must’ve seen that in the papers too. We saw it thanks to our bribe-taking friend, the prison guard, who sent us a copy of the newspaper in which it was reported. Were it not for the unfeeling nation, among a people inured to evil and taking sadistic pleasure in the loss of life, some questions might have been asked. No doubt, many will ask the questions, but they will do it in the safety and comfort of their homes, over the interminable bottles of beer, uncomprehendingly watching their boring, cheap, television programmes, the rejects of Europe and America, imported to fill their vacuity. They will salve their conscience with more bottles of beer, wash the answers down their gullets and pass questions, conscience and answers out to waste into their open sewers choking with concentrated filth and murk. And they will forget.

I bet, though, the High Court Judge himself will never forget. He must remember it the rest of his life. Because I watched him closely that first morning. And I can’t describe the shock and disbelief which I saw registered in his face. His spectacles fell to his table and it was with difficulty he regained his composure. It must have been the first time in all his experience that he found persons arraigned on a charge for which the punishment upon conviction is death, entering a plea of guilty and demanding that they be sentenced and shot without further delay.

Sazan, Jimba and I had rehearsed it carefully. During the months we’d been remanded in prison custody while the prosecutors prepared their case, we’d agreed we weren’t going to allow a long trial, or any possibility that they might impose differing sentences upon us: freeing one, sentencing another to life imprisonment and the third to death by firing squad.

Nor did we want the lawyers in their funny black funeral robes an opportunity to clown around, making arguments for pleasure, engaging in worthless casuistry. No. We voted for death. After all, we were armed robbers, bandits. We knew it. We didn’t want to give the law a chance to prove itself the proverbial ass. We were being honest to ourselves, to our vocation, to our country and to mankind.

‘Sentence us to death immediately and send us before the firing squad without further delay,’ we yelled in unison. The judge, after he had recovered from his initial shock, asked us to be taken away that day, ‘for disturbing my court’. I suppose he wanted to see if we’d sleep things over and change our plea. We didn’t. When they brought us back the next day, we said the same thing in louder voice. We said we had robbed and killed. We were guilty. Cool. The judge was bound hand and foot and did what he had to. We had forced him to be honest with his vocation, to the laws of the country and to the course if justice. It was no mean achievement. The court hall was stunned; our guards were utterly amazed as we walked out the court, smiling. ‘Hardened criminals.’ ‘Bandits,’ I heard them say as we trooped out of the court. One spectator actually spat at us as we walked into the waiting Black Maria!

And now that I’ve confessed to banditry, you’ll ask why I did it. I’ll answer that question by retelling the story of the young, beautiful prostitute I met in St Pauli in Hamburg when our ship berthed there years back. I’ve told my friends the story several times. I did ask her, after the event, why she was in that place. She replied that some girls chose to be secretaries in offices, others to be nurses. She had chosen prostitution as a career. Cool. I was struck by her condour. And she set me thinking. Was I in the Merchant Navy by choice or it was because it was the first job that presented itself to me when I left school? When we returned home, I skipped ship, thanks to the prostitute of St Pauli, and took a situation as a clerk in the Ministry of Defence.

It was there that I came face-to-face with the open looting of the national treasury, the manner of which I cannot describe without arousing in myself the deepest, basest emotions. Everyone was busy with it and there was no one to complain to. Everyone to whom I complained said to me: ‘if you can’t beat them, join them.’ I was not about to join anyone; I wanted to beat them and took it upon myself to wage a war against them. In no time they had gotten rid of me. Dismissed me. I had no option but to join them then. I had to make a choice. I became an armed robber, a bandit. It was my choice, my answer. And I don’t regret it.

Did I know it was dangerous? Some girls are secretaries, others choose to be prostitutes. Some men choose to be soldiers and policemen, others doctors and lawyers; I chose to be a robber. Every occupation has its hazards. A taxi driver may meet his death on the road; a businessman may die in an air crash; a robber dies before a firing squad. It’s no big deal. If you ask me, the death I’ve chosen is possibly more dramatic, more qualitative, more eloquent than dying in bed of a ruptured liver from overindulgence in alcohol. Yes? But robbery is antisocial, you say? A proven determination to break the law. I don’t want to provide an alibi. But you just think of the many men and women who are busy breaking or bending the law in all coasts and climes. Look for a copy of The Guardian of 19 September. That is the edition in which our plea to the judge was reported. You’ll find there the story of the Government official who stole over seven million naira. Seven million. Cool. He was antisocial, right? How many of his type do you know? And how many more go undetected? I say, if my avocation was antisocial, I’m in good company. And that company consists of Presidents of countries, transnational organizations, public servants high and low, men and women. The only difference is that while I am prepared to pay the price for it all, the others are not. See?

I am not asking for your understanding or sympathy. I need neither, not now nor hereafter. I’m saying it as it is. Right? Cool. I expect you’ll say that armed robbery should be a special preserve for the scum of society. That no man of my education has any business being a bandit. To that I’ll answer that it’s about time well-endowed and well-trained people took to it. They will bring to the profession a romantic quality, a proficiency which will ultimately conduce to the benefit of society. No, I’m not mad. Truly. Time was when the running of ruining of African nations was in the hands of half-literate politicians. Today, well-endowed and better-trained people have taken over the task. And look how well they are doing it. So that even upon that score, my conscience sleeps easy. Understand?

Talking about sleep, you should see Sazan and Jimba on the cold, hard prison floor, snoring away as if life itself depends on a good snore. It’s impossible, seeing them this way, to believe that they’ll be facing the firing squad tomorrow. They’re men of courage. Worthy lieutenants. It’s a pity their abilities will be lost to society forever, come tomorrow morning. Sazan would have made a good Army General any day, possibly a President of our country in the mould of Idi Amin or Bokassa. The Europeans and Americans would have found in him a useful ally in the progressive degradation of Africa. Jimba’d have made an excellent Inspector-General of Police, so versed is he in the ways of the Police! You know, of course, that Sazan is a dismissed Sergent of our nation’s proud army. And Jimba was once a Corporal in the Police Force. When we met, we had similar reasons for pooling our talents. And a great team we did make. Now here we all are in the death cell of a maximum security prison and they snore away the last hours of their lives on the cold, smelly floor. It’s exhilarating to find them so disdainful of life. Their style is the stuff of which history is made. In another time and in another country, they’d be Sir Francis Drake, Courtes or Sir Walter Raleigh. They’d have made empires and earned national honours. But here, our life is one big disaster, an endless tragedy. Heroism is not in our star. We are millipedes crawling on the floor of a dank, wet forest. So Sazan and Jimba will die unsung. See?

One thing, though. We swore never to kill. And we never did. Indeed, we didn’t take part in the particular ‘operation’ for which we are held, Sazan, Jimba and I. The operation would’ve gone quite well of the Superintendent of Police had fulfilled his part of the bargain. Because he was in it with us. The Police are involved in every single robbery that happens. They know the entire gang, the gangs. We’d not succeed if we didn’t collaborate with them. Sazan, Jimba and I were the bosses. We didn’t go out on ‘operations’. The boys normally did. And they were out on that occasion. The Superintendent of Police was supposed to keep away the Police escorts from the vehicle carrying the worker’s salaries that day. For some reason, he failed to do so. And the policeman shot at our boys. The boys responded and shot and killed him and the Security Company guards. The boys got the money all right. But the killing was contrary to our agreement with the Police. We had to pay. The Police won’t stand for any of their men being killed. They took all the money from us and then they went after the boys. We said no. The boys had acted on orders. We volunteered to take their place. The Police took us in and made a lot of public noises about it. The boys, I know, will make their decisions later. I don’t know what will happen to the Superintendent of Police. But he’ll have to look to himself. So, if that is any comfort to you, you may rest in the knowledge that I spilt no blood. No, I wouldn’t. Nor have I kept the loot. Somehow, whatever we took from people – the rich ones – always was shared by the gang, who were almost always on the bread line. Sazan, Jimba and I are not wealthy.

Many will therefore accuse us of recklessness, or of being careless with our lives. And well they might. I think I speak for my sleeping comrades when I say we went into our career because we didn’t see any basic difference between what we were doing and what most others are doing throughout the land today. In every facet of our lives – in politics, in commerce and in the professions – robbery is the base line. And it’s been so from time. In the early days, our forebears sold their kinsmen into slavery for minor items such as beads, mirrors, alcohol and tobacco. These days, the tune is the same, only articles have changed into cars, transistor radios and bank accounts. Nothing else has changed, and nothing will change in the foreseeable future. But that’s the problem of those who will live beyond tomorrow, Zole.

The cock crows now and I know dawn is about to break. I’m not speaking figuratively. In the cell here, the darkness is still all-pervasive, except for the flickering light of the candle by which I write. Sazan and Jimba remain fast asleep. So is the prison guard. He sleeps all night and is no trouble to us. We could, if we wanted, escape from here, so lax are the guards. But we consider that unnecessary, as what is going to happen later this morning is welcome relief from burdens too heavy to bear. It’s the guard and you the living who are in prison, the ultimate prison from which you cannot escape because you do not know that you are incarcerated. Your happiness is the happiness of ignorance and your ignorance is it that keeps you in the prison, which is your life. As this night dissolves into day, Sazan, Jimba and I shall be free. Sazan and Jimba will have left nothing behind. I shall leave at least this letter, which, please, keep for posterity.

Zole, do I rant? Do I pour out myself to you in bitter tones? Do not lay it to the fact that I’m about to be shot by the firing squad. On second thoughts, you could, you know. After all, seeing death so clearly before me might possibly have made me more perspicacious? And yet I’ve always seen these things clearly in my mind’s eye. I never did speak about them, never discussed them. I prefer to let them weigh me down, see?

So, then, in a few hours we shall be called out. We shall clamber with others into the miserable lorry which they still call the Black Maria. Notice how everything miserable is associated with us. Black sheep. Black Maria. Black Death. Black Leg. The Black Hole of Calcutta. The Black Maria will take us to the beach or to the stadium. I bet it will be the Stadium. I prefer the Beach. So at least to see the ocean once more. For I’ve still this fond regard for the sea which dates from my time in the Merchant Navy. I love its wide expanse, its anonymity, its strength, its unfathomable depth. And maybe after shooting us, they might decide to throw our bodies into the ocean. We’d then be eaten up by sharks which would be in turn caught by Japanese and Russian fishermen, be refrigerated, packed into cartons and sold to Indian merchants and then for a handsome profit to our people. That way, I’d have helped keep people alive a bit longer. But they won’t do us that favor. I’m sure they will take us to the Stadium. To provide a true spectacle for the fun-loving un-employed. To keep them out of trouble. To keep them from thinking. To keep them laughing. And dancing.

We’ll be there in the dirty clothes which we now wear. We’ve not had any of our things washed this past month. They will tie us to the stakes, as though that were necessary. For even if we were minded to escape, where’d we run to? I expect they’ll also want to blindfold us. Sazan and Jimba have said they’ll not allow themselves to be blindfolded. I agree with them. I should want to see my executors, stare the nozzles of their guns bravely in the face, see the open sky, the sun, daylight. See and hear my countrymen as they cheer us to our death. To liberation and freedom.

The Stadium will fill to capacity. And many will not find a place. They will climb trees and hang about the balconies of surrounding houses to get a clear view of us. To enjoy the free show. Cool.

And then the priest will come to us, either to pray or to ask if we have any last wishes. Sazan says he will ask for a cigarette. I’m sure they’ll give it to him. I can see him puffing hard at it before the bullet cut him down. He says he’s going to enjoy that cigarette more than anything he’s had in life. Jimba says he’ll maintain a sullen silence as a mark of his contempt. I’m going to yell at the priest. I will say, ‘Go to hell, you hypocrite, fornicator and adulterer.’ I will yell at the top of my voice in the hope that the spectators will hear me. How I wish there is a microphone that will reverberate through the Stadium, nay, through the country as a whole! Then the laugh would be on the priest and those who sent him!

The priest will pray for our souls. But it’s not us he should be praying for. He should pray for the living, for those whose lives are a daily torment. Between his prayers and when the shots ring out, there will be dead silence. The silence of the graveyard. The transition between life and death. And it shall be seen that the distinction between them both is narrow as the neck of a calabash. The divide between us breathing like everyone else in the Stadium and us as meat for worms is, oh, so slim, it makes life a walking death! But I should be glad to be rid of the world, of a meaningless existence that grows more dreary by the day. I should miss Sazan and Jimba, though. It’ll be a shame to see these elegant gentlemen cut down and destroyed. And I’ll miss you, too, my dear girl. But that will be of no consequence to the spectators.

They will troop out of the Stadium, clamber down trees and the balconies of the houses, as though they’d just returned from another football match. They will match to their ratholes on empty stomachs, with tales enough to fill a Saturday evening. Miserable wretches!

The men who shall have eased us out of life will then untie our bodies and dump them into a lorry and thence to some open general grave. That must be a most distasteful task. I’d not do it for a million dollars. Yet some miserable fellows will do it for a miserable salary at the end of the month. A salary which they will augment with a bribe, if they are to keep body and soul together. I say, I do feel sorry for them. See?

The newspapers will faithfully record the fact of our shooting. If they have space, they’ll probably carry a photograph of us to garnish your breakfast.

I remember once long ago reading in a newspaper of a man whose one request to the priest was that he be buried along with his walking stick – his faithful companion over the years. He was pictured slumping in death, devotedly clutching his beloved walking stick. True friendship, that. Well, Zole, if ever you see such a photograph of me, make a cutting. Give it to a sculptor and ask him to make a stone sculpture of me as I appear in the photograph. He must make as faithful a representation of me as possible. I must be hard of feature and relentless in aspect. I have a small sum of money in the bank and have already instructed the bank to pay it to you for the purpose of the sculpture I have spoken about…

Time is running out, Zole. Sazan and Jimba are awake now. And they’re surprised I haven’t slept all night. Sazan says I ought at least to have done myself a favor of sound sleep on my last night on earth. I ask him if I’m not going to sleep soundly, eternally, in a few hours? This, I argue, should be our most wakeful night. Sazan doesn’t appreciate that. Nor does Jimba. They stand up, yawn, stretch and rub their eyes. Then they sit down crowding round me. They ask me to read out to them what I’ve written. I can’t do that, I tell them. It’s a love letter! And at the point of death! Sazan says I’m gone crazy. Jimba says he’s sure I’m afraid of death and looks hard and long at me to justify his suspicion. I say I’m neither crazy nor afraid of death. I’m just telling my childhood girlfriend how I feel this special night. And sending her on an important errand. Jimba says I never told them I had a girlfriend. I say that she was not important before this moment.

I haven’t even seen her in ten years, I repeat. The really compelling need to write her is that on this very special night I have felt the need to be close to a living being, someone who can relate to others why we did what we did in and out of court.

Sazan says he agrees completely with me. He says that he too would like to write his thoughts down. Do I have some paper to lend him? I say no. Besides, time is up. Day has dawned and I haven’t even finished my letter. Do they mind leaving me to myself for a few minutes? I’d very much like to end the letter, envelope it and pass it on to the prison guard before he rouses himself fully from sleep and remembers to assume his official, harsh role.

They’re nice chaps, are Jimba and Sazan. Sazan says to tell my girl not to bear any children because it’s pointless bringing new life into the harsh life of her world. Jimba says to ask my girl to shed him a tear if she can so honor a complete stranger. They both chuckle and withdraw to a corner of the cell and I’m left alone to end my letter.

Now, I was telling you about my statue. My corpse will not be available to you. You will make a grave for me nonetheless. And place the statue on the gravestone. And now I come to what I consider the most important part of this letter. My epitaph.

I have thought about it, you know. Really. What do you say about a robber shot in a stadium before a cheering crowd? That he was a good man who strayed? That he deserved his end? That he was a scallywag? A ragamuffin? A murderer whose punishment was not heavy enough? ‘Here lies X, who was shot in public by firing squad for robbing a van and shooting the guards in broad daylight. He serves as an example to all thieves and would-be thieves!’

Who’d care for such an epitaph? They’d probably think it was a joke. No. That wouldn’t carry. I’ll settle for something different. Something plain and commonsensical. Or something truly cryptic and worthy of a man shot by choice in public by firing squad.

Not that I care. To die the way I’m going to die in the next hour or two is really nothing to worry about. I’m in excellent company. I should find myself recorded in the annals of our history. A history of violence, of murder, of disregard for life. Pleasure in inflicting pain – sadism. Is that the word for it? It’s a world I should be pleased to leave. But not without an epitaph.

I recall, many years ago as a young child, reading in a newspaper of an African leader who stood on the grave of a dead lieutenant and through his tears said: ‘Africa kills her sons.’ I don’t know what he meant by that, and though I’ve thought about it long enough, I’ve not been able to unravel the full mystery of those words. Now, today, this moment, they come flooding back to me. And I want to borrow from him. I’d like you to put this on my gravestone as an epitaph: ‘Africa Kills Her Sun.’ A good epitaph, eh? Cryptic. Definite. A stroke of genius, I should say. I’m sure you’ll agree with me. ‘Africa Kills Her Sun!’ That’s why she’d been described as the Dark Continent? Yes?

So, now, dear girl, I’m done. My heart is light as the daylight which seeps stealthily into our dark cell. I hear the prison guard jangle his keys, put them into the keyhole. Soon he’ll turn it and call us out. Our time is up. My time expires and I must send you all my love. Goodbye.

Yours forever,

Bana

The Case of the Prison-Monger

Hama Tuma

Great Expectations make frustrated men. Our parents, being realists, teach us from the outset not to yearn for big things – when you stretch up to reach higher things you drop what you had under your arms. Moral of the saying? Hold on to what you have and be satisfied. The more you want, the more chance you will lose what little you already have.
Still, we produce ambitious men. Anomalies, actually; a handful among millions. However, try to keep what you have is a standing order for all. Without exception. This is why an Ethiopian is surprised, even if opposed, at the extent to which the State goes to protect itself. Or, say, the Great Chairman himself. He has liquidated many of his close friends, he has struck alliances which change swiftly, he has ordered Terror and Massacres (what we call the TM diet) against the people, he has peddled the country’s sovereignty to the highest bidder (in this case none other than Russia which came big and fast with the item the Chairman needed most at the time – arms). From a rabid anti-socialist he has metamorphosed himself into the symbol of socialism in Africa (even if many say it is play-acting). All in order to keep what he has – absolute power.
The wife who expects affection and not love lives happily ever after with her husband who, like all husbands, spreads his love around. Parents who expect some consideration from their children and no more end up with disappointment. Pray to God but don’t expect miracles. Watch your health, but you may die soon. The less you expect, the less you get frustrated, and the greater is your happiness if you get more.
It is a philosophy of poverty and servility, you may say. Perhaps. Actually, it was expounded in a coherent form for the first time in the eighteenth-century manuscript by St Gebre the Poor. The manuscript, which read like a ‘How-to-live-satisfied-with-an-empty-stomach’ manual, could have sold well in the present weight-and-diet-conscious western world. It dealt not only with the filling capacities of a one-fruit-a-day-meal and warned how one can get fat and lazy by not exercising the mind, but it also advised believers on how to let ambition steam in its own pot and how to realize happiness through deprivation. A Chinese philosopher said to have plenty is to be confused. St Gebre said to want plenty is more than being confused, it is to court frustration, sin and eternal damnation. Next to Zarayacob, St Gebre is our only philosopher – and in themselves the two are also anomalies in this society of ours which looks at mental exercise with extreme contempt.
Over the years, the art of wanting little or being satisfied with what we have has become part of our culture. We do not even think about it, we just act by reflex. Contradictions and wars arise when our rulers want more. Take the late king. He raised the price of food and petrol. There we were, enjoying our starvation and famine, when he pops out with his price increase measures to take even the little we had left. He was reaching for more money, we rebelled and he lost what he had. A simplified but precise rendition of the revolution we had. Take the guerillas in the rural areas. They are seeking higher things like freedom, equality, peace and democracy. They want more than the slavery they have. The result? They lead a hard life of war and suffering, facing death and the TM diet. St Gebre wouldn’t have approved for sure.
Let it be said, however, that not all Ethiopians subscribe to the teachings of St Gebre. This is why we have upheavals, mutiny, unrest, wars and destruction. But the adherents of reduced expectations are still in the millions. It’s the only way to survive. When you live in the valley of the shadow of death you cherish life even if it is a mere existence.
The case of the prison-monger was a good example of the philosophy of satisfaction with poverty. In my opinion, the man should have been given a medal (if not the Lenin Prize or the Chairman’s Medal of Valor, at least the Medal of Ingenuity in Accordance with the Teachings of Our Great Chairman). But let me not rush you…
‘Look at the accused,’ said the prosecutor pointing at the man in the Cage. ‘He’s young, I believe somewhere in his early thirties. He is robust, he is healthy. He could contribute to the building of the New Ethiopia. But no! For the last ten years, he has been continuously in and out of jails and prisons. As soon as he serves one sentence out he goes to commit another crime and to come back again. And each time he deliberately makes sure that the crime he commits does not get him the death sentence. He is an expert of the Articles of our Penal Code. He readily admits his crime every time he gets, or rather lets himself be, arrested. He has shown great inventiveness in managing to get himself behind bars. He is a prison addict, a real prison-monger. While in prison he studies via a correspondence school and is now in his third year of law. Can you imagine!?’
‘Our prisons are congested: we want to empty them. This prison-monger must, however, be punished. Up to now he has been arrested six times; if he reached the legal limit of ten then he would automatically get death, whatever the gravity of his crime. But he also knows this. I suspect he has plans to go up to the ninth with his petty crimes and prison sejours. How do we punish him? Do we send him back to prison? He wants that. To labour camps? He would be pleased. I think the best punishment is to set him free. If he goes to commit another crime, he should be arrested and set free again till he reaches his tenth arrest. Then we shall execute him. We want the prisoner freed, Comrade Major Judge.’
‘Objection, Your Honour!’ said the defence lawyer. ‘The accused admits his guilt. He has confessed to his crime and wants to pay for it. He has the right to be punished. , he has the duty to receive punishment. The law demands it. We can’t just set him free.’
‘I agree,’ said the judge. ‘The prosecutor must realize that this is an open court with its own message to our enemies. So, we must hear what the accused has to say, at least. And then give him the necessary punishment. Proceed,’ he added to the defence counsel.
‘Thank you, Your Honour. I shall call the accused to the witness stand.’
The accused walked briskly to the witness stand – a healthy, athletic figure indeed.
‘You are Matteos Gudu?’
‘Yes.’ A firm voice.
‘Is it true you have been in jail six times?’
‘Very true.’
‘What have you done this time?’
‘Shoplifting.’
‘Do you admit it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you a kleptomaniac?’
‘No. But I am a prisonomaniac. I love prison.’
‘Why?’
‘I was born poor. I lived with my family – all eight of us – in one single room which was so small that my friends used to joke about it, by saying that every time I turned over in my sleep I left the room. As a result, big rooms and open space suffocate me. Reverse claustrophobia you can call it. In prison, where close to seventy of us are stacked in a room fit for twenty, I feel alive and at peace.’
‘Come now! We know that even if you stay outside you can easily get a small room to rent. In fact, that is the only thing you can get if you are lucky.’
‘Yes, I know that. It brings us to the second reason why I love prison. Money.’
‘Money?’
‘You see, after my first stint in prison, I looked desperately for work. I couldn’t get any. I had lodging problems as well; you must know that I haven’t had any living relatives in this city for a dozen years or so. Broke, hungry, sleeping on the pavement – I was destined to be a guttersnipe. I refused to submit to this. I stole again and got back to prison. This time for a year. No lodging problem, food was little but regular and even if it does not arrive, you can do nothing about it really. So you don’t worry. In prison, you could say, I found happiness and calm. When they came to release me, I begged them to let me stay but they refused. But I went out and came back again.’
‘Prison is a punishment. How could you not feel the lack of freedom? Being cooped up in a little hole? Being unable to move around as you desire?’
‘What is freedom, I ask you?' said the prison-monger. ‘Who is he who can roam freely in our country nowadays? You need permission. When you are hungry, worried about it,  broke and with no place to sleep, freedom is an illusion. Your aching stomach does not enable you to sing with the birds or to roam like a well-fed ibex. You suffer and writhe, that’s all you get. But in prison, I found freedom even if I was hungry. My mind was at rest.’
‘But you studied?’
‘That’s another thing which made prison lovely. In prison, I found a lot of intellectuals. They were ready to help me continue the studied I had interrupted a long time ago. I threw myself into books, I finished the school leaving certificate exams with honours and qualified for the university. I chose law since I am interested in this field. I am now in my third year.’
‘Your teachers are anarchist?’
‘They are political prisoners. We don’t discuss politics; I am not interested in it. But they are capable teachers and as you know the students who get the highest grades in the national exams are the ones in prison.’
‘Theirs is a wasted life. Why do you fashion yours accordingly?’
‘They are in prison for what they believe in. That’s their life. Mine: it would have been wasted on the outside. Can you guarantee me work? Do that and I will leave prison with joy.’
‘I am a lawyer, not an employment agent. Maybe when you finish your studies, I could see. Anyway, don’t you feel ashamed to be a burden on the State?’
‘I am not a burden on nobody. The State sends me to prison to punish me. I receive this willingly. Once in prison, I work, and I am now one of the best carpenters in the prison workshop.’
‘You found no job as a carpenter outside prison?’
‘Are you joking? There are hundreds of more able carpenters who are unemployed.’
‘What about as a domestic servant? Or maybe you think that’s a lowly job?’
‘No job is lowly if you need it. The servant field is saturated. Besides, not many people can afford servants these days. Others think maids and servants are becoming spies and are troublesome. So, no job.’
‘Doesn’t it bother you to spend ten years of the prime of your life behind prison walls?’
‘I told you no. you are in prison if you believe it to be so. Your house can be your prison. A palace can be a gilded prison for a king. The monk who shuts himself up in total isolation in a cave is not in prison. In prison, I met very many really free people.’
‘Do you expect us to believe this?’
‘I believe it.’
‘What you want from life seems to be very little.’
‘I yearn not for riches or high positions.’
‘Commendable, indeed. But by being in prison, you try to escape the anguish and pain which gives life its salt.’
‘Life has its miseries wherever you may be. King or beggar, free or a slave – each will get his share, though not equally.’
‘Into each life some rain must fall…’
‘It floods onto the poor. They try to dam it somewhat. My prison is such an attempt.’
‘What sentence do you now expect for your crime?’
‘I should be sent to prison for five years as Article 689 of the Penal Code states.’
‘What if you are set free?’
‘That will be a crime!’ The accused looked really shocked. ‘I have violated the law and I should be punished.’
‘But if you are set free, would you commit a crime again?’
‘I couldn’t avoid it. For the public good and mine, I belong in prison. To finish my studies as well. You know I can’t go to college on the outside with thousands of eligible students still on the university waiting list.’
‘If you commit three more crimes, you will be killed.’
‘Then death will be a relief indeed. Not punishment but real salvation.’ The prosecutor looked pensive.
‘You can cross-examine him,’ said the lawyer to the prosecutor.
‘I think you are insane!’ the prosecutor shot at the accused. The accused kept quiet.
‘I think you are a no-good lazy person,’ the prosecutor added. The accused remained silent.
‘I think you are a parasite who likes being one,’ stated the prosecutor. The accused said nothing.
‘I think you are a fellow-traveler of anarchists and a shame on your country,’ said the prosecutor. The accused just looked back at him.
‘I think being set free will fry your testicles to ashes,’ the prosecutor added in a matter-of-fact way. The accused looked startled but remained silent.
‘I think, Your Honour, I have no more questions,’ concluded the prosecutor.
Judge Aytenfistu exhaled a lot of air and cleared his throat. The ritual over, he spoke.
‘You, the accused, you are a no-good, fast-talking, lazy, strange, crazy person. As the prosecutor said you are a parasite. You are also dangerous. Whoever finds joy in prison, whoever feels free in our jails goes against the order of things, goes against the expected. A cow can’t give birth to a puppy. Prison is punishment, not a source of calm and freedom. If such feelings as yours spread, our society will be in chaos. I agree with the prosecutor, you are hereby sentenced to immediate freedom.’
‘But Judge…’ the accused began to protest.
‘No more! You are freed! Case dismissed!’
‘You can’t do this! You must send me back to prison!’ the accused screamed.
‘Take him away!’ the judge ordered the policeman.
As the policeman signaled the accused to get moving back to the Cage, the latter seemed to be struck by a revelation. He turned to the judge and what came out from his throat paralysed the whole court.
‘You call yourself a judge, you fat pig! You are an ignorant fool! Half the time you sleep on your bench! Your only qualification is your stupidity. I bet you are an impotent sissy. You…’
‘SHUT UP!’ The scream came from the judge as well as from the prosecutor and the defense council.
‘You motherless squit!’ the judge fumed. ‘I will show you who is impotent. You castrated parasite! You can’t insult a judge and get off scot-free. I sentence you immediately to ten years of hard labour in the Robi Desert state farm. Take this dog away at once!’ the judge was beside himself.
‘Your Honour! That’s what he wants!’ protested the prosecutor.
‘That’s what this foul-mouthed son of a slut is going to get! Case dismissed. Court recess for ten minutes!’ The judge got up and walked out of the court angrily.
Well, what can I say? The prosecutor growled at the accused, the defense lawyer did the same, the audience just stared. The policemen manhandled him. And the accused? If I ever saw a smile of happiness and satisfaction, there it was on his face. I wonder if St Gebre would have approved of such unorthodox methods to keep what little one has. The prison-monger went back, not to prison but to a state farm, and no one who knows state farms will say that they are not worse than prisons. The accused will even get anarchist teachers there. What more could he ask – a small over-filled room to sleep in, a piece of bread  or two for the day, backbreaking work, possibility of study, no worrying, freedom. He had it made, the lucky prison-monger. Still, I wouldn’t trade places with him. I will cling to my own little world. Who is free; me or the prison-monger? As St Gebre said centuries ago, it’s a world of relative freedom and relative bondage.

Who Cares For The New Millennium?

The hue and cry for the new millennium has left me cold and totally unmoved. As is always the case with the Africans, I am forced to ask if it really is our millennium. Taking into account that most rural Africans would not even know a new year has come let alone a new millennium, and adding to these millions of Muslims who have their own calendar (and are not yet close to the twentieth century) and the Ethiopians, who also have their own calendar and who would be seven years shy of 2000 when January comes, I dare to affirm that the so called millennium is not our affair.
Which does not mean we will not join the reveling if we could get the chance and the time out from the wars and the dreary struggle to survive. We Africans are condemned to repeat the past not because we forget it but mainly because we are forced to relive it. We repeat the tragedy as a tragedy and if there is any humour and joy in our life it is because we have stolen it or perhaps due to something in the African soul which makes us smile in the face of adversities and when everything and more goes wrong. This must be why well-to-do Africans from Abidjan to Addis Ababa, from Cairo to Pretoria are reserving rooms in those expensive Sheratons and Hiltons to celebrate the coming of the new millennium. It is comforting to note that at least our own bourgeoisie and rulers will enjoy the event just like the donors who bankroll them in the name of development and corporation.
The new millennium will probably be a rerun of the B-grade life we Africans have been forced to endure in the one that is winding up. What makes the whole thing complicated is that words have now changed meaning and we do not know what is what. In the past millennium, we knew of the slave trade, we endured colonialism, we were subjected to neocolonialism and everybody said tribalism was bad and evil and this thing called ‘ethnic’ a backward concept, and national liberation struggles were fashionable. Come the new millennium, we are entering it as slaves but labeled free and independent. We are subjected to tyranny and foreign domination but we cannot utter the very word imperialism without risking being called an old guard, outmoded, archaic, a fossil. National liberation struggles seem to have died with Che and nowadays the guerillas are (check Sierra Leone and Uganda) worse than the government they are struggling against. Tribal and ethnic have now become kitsch and fad words; foods are ethnic, clothes are ethnic, ethnic is cool, Tribal Jam is the name of a musical group and does not refer to a traffic problem between warring tribes, and there are even governments who enjoy the support of the Western world while boldly proclaiming that they practice ethnic politics. So, who will fight? The enemy is dissimulated, hidden behind words, we are confused and in our confusion we are likely to welcome their millennium by fighting among ourselves. It is like ‘the whole thing is complicated. Let me kill my neighbour’ kind of reasoning. A Somali, Liberian and Rwandese logic you could say, to mention only a few. Maybe they will survive in the coming millennium while all others perish.
I am sure some people would accuse me of being a cynic, bleak in my vision if I even have one. Others could possibly say I am a reactionary with no ‘we shall smash all the walls’ revolutionary fervor. Perhaps they are all right but my problem is with this thing called our reality. My people say: a flower tree which is near a cactus will always weep. By nature or design, our continent is attached to the cactus (I do not want to call it Satan like the Iranians), it is forever weeping, bleeding. As I look back at the past century and observe that the new one our rulers are planning to celebrate with their masters finds us in the most depressing and disastrous condition, my optimism abandons me. I can tell you I am no wide-eyed True Believer or optimist but a Gramscian pretender with an ‘optimism of the heart and pessimism of the mind’. The most impoverished people? The highest infant mortality rate? The highest number of ADS victims? The most number of refugees? The highest number of illiterates? The least developed countries? Ask any such question and the answer is Africa. Wouldn’t it be better to claim that sometime in the past millennium they, whoever they may be, have conspired with our unelected leaders and stolen our next millennium and all the possibilities of our welcoming it with joy?
If the past and the present do not augur well for the future it does not mean, of course, that we Africans should not enjoy the celebration. Even those whose calendars do not say 2000 can still have a good time. Not for the ordinary reason of just enjoying themselves but to stand up to the callous rulers and power holders in the metropoles. We must go out and have a wild time to welcome in the new millennium just to show to Bill Gates and the few other individuals who own more money than our continent can make in years, that they do not own the monopoly on joy and that poor as we are we have the right to party and enjoy ourselves. Celebrating the event should be our way of telling the IMF and all those claiming that they own our souls that we still gyrate and swoon to our own music and no one can steal our laughter even if they may hold us in debt.
But can we do it? Will, for example, Kabila and his enemies realize the importance of this particular event and let the people dance the new century in? I have my doubts. As I tried to explain something before, our rulers lack a sense of perspective and humour. They hate sharing joy. They will feast and party to welcome the millennium but they will for sure keep the prison gates locked and their soldiers out on the streets or in murderous operations. Our rulers are jealous of us, they want to see us famished and forlorn, bleeding and dying, suffering and groaning. In short, our rulers want us to live the new century like the past one. Some of us may thus be forced to become Muslims and postpone the coming of the new century. More optimistic ones could become Ethiopians and postpone the millennium for seven years. This may be the politics of the ostrich (hiding your head in the sand and imagining the danger has gone away) but in Africa it may be the only salvation for quite a few people, provided they are willing to change their religion and hoping that the Ethiopian government, which says there are no Ethiopians but ethnic groups living in a place called Ethiopia, could agree to accept that we call ourselves Ethiopians and get back to 1993.
It is so complicated this coming millennium. Should we ignore it? Should we acknowledge it and celebrate it so as to send messages to the industrialized countries? So many questions, so few answers: the perennial problem of Africa. Come January 2, 2000, tell me, if you will, if the new millennium has relieved us of the likes of Iyadema, Kabila, of famine and AIDS, of subservience to the West and of poverty, or if it even promises to do some of that and I will eat back all my bleak words and apologize and hail the new millennium with the fervor of a Bill Gates or of any African tyrant who had been hoping to continue to dance on our backs.

Hama Tuma