Ancestor Stones (36 page)

Once I stood thousands of feet up on the edge of an escarpment, side by side with Janneh watching a storm race across the plain below. In the distance tiny figures ran ahead of the dust, dark clouds bearing down upon them. They were huddled over, clutching at their clothing, holding on to children, trying to shield themselves from the fury of the storm. In between us and those terrified souls, I could see more people, just beginning to sense the growing tempest, hurrying along, not yet caught up in its violent swirls, gazing up at the sky in an attempt to read the signs. Directly below were others still, oblivious to what was happening only a few miles away, tending their animals, watching their children at play, sitting outdoors in the sunshine.

I remember how we wanted to shout and wave and jump up and down. But instead we did nothing. We were too far away. And even if they had heard nobody would have believed us, for where they stood they could not see the omens in the sky.

Sometimes I think this is what happened in our country. Nobody heeded the warnings, nobody smelled the rain coming, or saw the lights in the sky or heard the roar of thunder, until we were all engulfed by it.

In Italy before the war in Europe, Benito Mussolini made the trains run on time. I read that once in a history book. He also wore a white uniform and a helmet with a plume on the top, and knew how to talk to people in a way that made them want to believe him.

We had a new President. A young man, who might have been a Benito Mussolini, who was handsome and finely attired in his uniform and who wore mirror sunglasses and swaggered in front of other heads of state, men in their sixties and seventies whom he appeared to despise, perhaps because they reminded him of the President he had just chased from our country. Nobody wanted to be ruled by the old, fat President and his corrupt cronies and because the new, young President cleaned up the streets and emptied the gutters of filth and spoke about democratic elections and looked so fine, the people were happy. Women sewed dresses printed with his delightful features, young men copied his mode of dress and eyewear, everyone joined in the campaign to clean up the streets. Clean up the Government. Clean up the country. People turned over their mattresses, bleached the steps in front of their houses and hosed down the walls, swept the dirt from their yards into the street from where it was miraculously removed. We were putting our house in order.

It felt good.

Some of the fat men who had financed the old President feared reprisals and left. Good riddance. Others, less high profile, stayed quiet and bided their time. Overnight it became impossible to find a single person who would admit to ever having supported the former President. The shopkeeper on the corner of the street who had voted for the party all his life gave his store a lick of paint and stencilled the new regime's slogan on his shutters. Ambrose printed up business cards and boldly offered his services to the new leaders.

The President's face in his mirror shades appeared on the front of international magazines. ‘The youngest leader in the world,' said the headline. He had not even celebrated his thirtieth birthday. We were so proud of our baby-faced leader: so slim and strong, not bloated on bribes and flattery. So proud we handed him our anguish and hopes and fears to carry on those broad shoulders of his. The rest of the world looked on, smiling fondly. Or so we thought. We could not see they were really laughing at our foolishness.

In their neat and shining homes, people settled down to wait.
And waited. And waited. And just as they were beginning to wonder how much longer we might have to wait, to fear our leader was just a pretty face with a silver tongue, he was toppled by another young man with equally babyish features though he was not quite as silver-tongued. So that when, in a tarnished voice, he announced we were to have elections for the first time in many years few believed it, and many didn't hear at all because they had given up listening a long, long time ago.

A Monday. The year, 1996. I was in my late fifties.

I stood before my reflection in the mirror on my wardrobe, watching my own movements in the half-light. No electricity for three days running. The clothes I had put out the night before hung from the door: a trouser suit in pale blue linen. I discarded it and instead chose an orange-gold gown embroidered at the sleeves and around the neck. In the dimness of the morning I made up my face, applying the brushstrokes from memory: foundation, powder, lipstick, mascara. Then I slipped the gown over my head. From the shoe rack on the back of the door I chose a pair of gold shoes to match the gown, with open toes and high heels and a strap that encircled my ankle, bought from Bally of Bond Street. I slipped gold bangles on to my wrists, clasped a necklace around my neck and hooked earrings in the lobes of my ears.

Since the early hours angry sounds had rolled over the city. Sounds like thunder from the direction of the Army base on the hill. A booming and the spit and crack of lightning. But in the morning, no sign of a storm, nothing to be seen at all, only a light dew on the ground that soon transformed itself into pale, curling vapours and vanished in the heat of the day.

In the lane a single hawker called his wares outside houses that were still in darkness. Silence everywhere. No car horns, no chatter of schoolchildren. Most schools were closed for the day. The corridors and classrooms of those that remained open were empty, as parents kept their children at home. A pair of dogs scrapping, a cockerel trumpeting: these were the only sounds.

From the verandah I looked out over the street. A woman
emerged from a house and threw a pan of dirty water into the road, ducked back inside without once looking over or offering a greeting. A rumbling, growing in the distance. An Army truck loaded with soldiers rolled past the junction swiftly on out of sight.

At seven o' clock when it was light I sat down to breakfast with Yaya. The bread was stale. No point sending out for a fresh loaf, the Fula shops would certainly be shut. I spread a slice with margarine and chewed a mouthful but, though I drank a glass of water, my mouth was so dry swallowing was impossible. The hunger was gone, replaced in my stomach by a tight, hard ball. I made a cup of instant coffee with the water in the Thermos and sipped at it. Its empty, bitter taste was all I wanted.

‘Are you still going?' Yaya asked me.

‘Yes,' I said, but a few dry crumbs caught in my throat and through them the word came out fluttering and small. I cleared my throat and coughed.

‘Yes,' again. This time the sound of my own voice convinced me a little.

We waited together in silence, not in our usual companionable silence, but a taut stillness in which every sound echoed and reverberated.

The members of the women's volunteer group had been told a car would be sent to pick us up. It never came. I wasn't surprised at that. I gave the driver twenty minutes more, then I went to the telephone and dialled the number of the next woman. The receiver hissed faintly with static, the sound of the numbers clicking through, but again and again the call failed to connect. On the other side of the room Yaya fiddled with the knob of the transistor radio. There was none of the usual morning chatter, the endless announcements of births, deaths and marriages, the wishing of luck for exams, congratulations for scholarships, jingles for Mazola oil and Eveready batteries and Bennimix baby food. The dial passed station after silent station, like empty bus stops.

The crackling again. Once, twice. This time from somewhere in the distance. Followed by the thunder of another truck. I crossed the room to look outside. Yaya called to me to stay away from the
windows. I pressed my back to the wall and moved the curtain a fraction. Another truck, also full of soldiers, standing waving their guns in the air, singing songs as though they were on their way to a football match.

From the radio a single voice rang out. It made me jump. That's how nervous I was; my heart felt like a trapped animal trying to claw its way out of a cage. A woman's voice, expressionless and staccato as an untrained actress reading somebody else's lines, announced the streets were calm, the polls had opened and people were beginning to vote. The elections were under way.

But the polls couldn't be open. It was impossible.

Rofathane. The village was all but encircled by a river that was a wide stream in some places and a deep channel in others: in many ways the place I grew up was almost an island. The path to the playing fields was crossed by means of a footbridge: the slender, swaying trunk of a single palm tree that rested between one bank and the other, spanning the swirling waters.

My mother taught me to cross that bridge and at the same time she also taught me how to master my own fear.

By that time Yaya had taken my place on my mother's back, but was still too small to play with. I used to tag along behind the older children and one day followed them on their way to the playing fields. But when we reached the bridge I stopped, too frightened to go any further. Instead I stood on the opposite bank, listening to the screams and chatter fade away, watching the water rise and fall, seeing myself already plummeting down and disappearing into a whirlpool.

The next time I came to cross the bridge I was with my mother. As soon as we neared it I clung on to her hand and dug my heels into the earth. My mother was unmoved. She picked me up and set me on the bridge, holding on to me lightly from behind.

‘Look straight ahead,' she told me. ‘Don't look back. And never look down. I'll be right behind you.' And with that she let me go.

I dared not disobey my mother, so although my knees trembled I did as she bade me, and when in midstream I wavered she
prompted me. ‘One foot in front of the other. Don't think about anything else, just look where you're going.'

Urged on by her gentle certainty I summoned my courage up from the inside. And as the years went by, in this simple way I learned to have power over my own fear.

I had forgotten that time. But that morning, after I listened to the words being spoken on the radio, I walked to the gate of the yard. My mind was set, I looked straight ahead, I ignored the little knot of fear rolling around in the empty hollow of my stomach.

Yaya came with me to the gate. The look on his face told me he would have tried to persuade me to stay at home. But the look on mine told him I was determined to go. My look won. My brother put his hands on my shoulders, kissed me on each cheek and watched in silence as I started walking down the empty street.

I dug into my handbag until I found the laminated badge and pinned it to my chest. I placed one foot in front of the other, I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead, I refused to think of the danger. One street later I banged on the iron gates of Redempta's house. She was ready, waiting for me. Never doubted that I would come, she told me later. I waited a moment while she fixed her badge to her chest. We looked at each other, we laughed because fear hates the sound of laughter. And we walked on.

Had anyone else been in the streets that morning they would have seen two middle-aged women, out for a stroll in the early light. But the words pinned to our bosoms told a different story: ‘Returning Officer. Presidential Elections 1996.'

One by one we collected each woman from her home, until we walked two, three abreast down the main road. At every polling station along our route we dropped off a pair of women until, once again, it was just the two of us, Redempta and I.

A great cotton tree with buttressed roots stood in the middle of the football ground in front of the schoolhouse. Beyond it, on the steps of one of the classrooms, sat a pair of soldiers. They stood when they saw us, began to move towards us. We, too, advanced at an
almost identical pace, neither hurried, nor slow. Straight ahead, until we stopped and faced each other: the soldiers and their adversaries, two middle-aged women.

What did we want? We indicated our badges. Reporting for duty, it crossed my mind to say.

‘It may be dangerous to be out today, there might be trouble,' said the second soldier, as if we would be so easily cowed.

‘Then so be it,' I said. ‘We are here to bring in the vote. Now we need to get on, this station was supposed to open an hour ago.' For some seconds nobody spoke or moved.

The soldiers were roughly the age of my two sons. I watched as the one in front of me bit his lower lip, twisted it and then suddenly dropped his gaze and stepped aside. We moved past him and into the building.

‘We will stay here for your protection,' he called after us, in a voice that was hollow at the centre.

‘As you please,' I replied.

My knees shook as I walked, my hands holding on to the handle of my bag were slippery. Once inside we freed the three ballot boxes from the padlock and chains that held them together and set them out in a short, neat row. Just seeing them there, squat and imposing, somehow made me feel better. In a cardboard box along with paper and pens, we found the sign that said ‘Polling Station' with a big, black arrow and this we placed outside the door. From her bag Redempta unpacked her own special cheese and jam sandwiches, a flask, a can of Peak milk and two cups. I watched her smooth, placid face beneath that terrible cherry wig she wore, absorbed in the task she had set herself.

We settled down to wait.

A man pushing an icebox of soft drinks in an old pram turned the corner, saw the soldiers, thought better of it and moved on with his load. The minutes passed. Dawn had been and gone, not a bird in sight. Outside the soldiers ground one cigarette stub after another under the heels of their boots. That and the scratching of the bats in the branches of the cotton tree, the gentle unfolding and wrapping of wings around bodies, were the only sounds. I could sense my
fear skirting the building, attracted by the silence, looking for a way inside.

What did I think of while we waited?

I can only tell you what I didn't think about. I did not think about whether people would come. Nor did I waste the effort on wishing the soldiers away, because I knew they were there to frighten people off. I didn't think about the trucks carrying more soldiers all over the city. I didn't think about the other polling stations, sitting in pools of silence all over the country. Nor did I think about what we would do at the end of the day. Most of all I didn't think about the fear clawing at the cracks in the windows, scuttling under the floorboards, crawling across the roof, looking for an opening.