StoryTime
Listen. She is a dark, tall, beautiful, witty Senegalese young woman in her twenties, with white teeth accentuated by her dark healthy gums. He is a Caucasian Alaskan boy of about same age, with smiling eyes and a liking for humour tainted with sarcasm that it turns out mademoiselle Senegal digs. This boy is also a bit of a punk. He’s not a full blown punk but he has a punkish flair that somehow works. What does this Senegalese girl turned woman have in common with this boy turned man from Alaska?Not language.Not skin colour.Their names reveal their differences.She, Aminata Senghor; he, Robert Patrick Harrington.Even though she speaks foreign tongues as if they were her own, sometimes English, sometimes French, and even though she speaks in English, prays in French, whenever she weeps, she weeps in Wolof.Her skin is the darkest of the black shades and he; they don't come whiter than him. His skin is queerly mottled with moles and freckles and red blotches. His beard grows at a rate faster than her dark, coiled kinks. He loves her skin.It is smooth all over, from her face, down her nape, over the contours of her bosom, her rich dark areolas and her massive nipples which lie nestled in what looks like dark crinkled organza by Nicole Miller. Travelling further down her belly button, then deviating to cusp the smooth roundness of her behind, when boy Alaska tells fille-Senegal that he likes her skin, it means more than a mere compliment. It assumes so many meanings. Is he telling her that he likes her as she is, all her sins, borne of her blackness forgiven or is he just enjoying the uninterrupted caress of her skin?Oh, they have things in common for they discover to their delight that there are shared experiences that transcend race, colour, culture, even social class. They both remember so vividly the rotten egg smell from high school chemistry class. They both remember how they used to get such a rush from reading innocent love scenes in novels. They are kindred spirits. He lost his virginity at eighteen; she gave hers at twenty one. They were both too old. They knew how to wait. These are the things that join them.They laugh over their differences. She says it's cold in the middle of Fall. He says, cold? Are you from Africa? She likes the experience of discovering so many new things. Unlike the Senegalese men that litter her past, this Alaskan talks.He talks when she's upset.He doesn't call her baby.Or whisper sweet nothings.When he says something, it means something. He gushes over her. The descriptors he assigns her, she's never heard from Senegalese lips. He calls her gorgeous, beautiful, too pretty, and he wonders how he got so lucky. He tells her that he enjoys kissing her more than any other woman he had ever known because she actually has lips to kiss.She on the other hand, likes his eyes that are sometimes azure, sometimes hazel. The only thing that disturbs her is she can find no names for these colours in Wolof, but perhaps therein lay the appeal. To her, he is exotic. It bothers her not that he may be merely experimenting with her, for she is not certain that she is not doing same.Time goes by and when she attempts to sever the bonds of their relationship, he cried. She stayed because until now, no man had ever cried over her. She also realised then that even if it had once been, this was no longer an experiment. Even though she pretended not to have heard, it secretly pleased her when he announced that he would learn Wolof if it mattered to her.If this was not real, someone needed to teach her what real is.But how could she go on with this man, who kissed her tears when in Senegal, parents had met and smiled over a certain other young man, chosen to be her husband. She was practically married! She should count herself lucky that despite her feminist proclivities and big mouth, a normal man wanted her.One day, as she and boy Alaska sat beneath the skies, admiring the constellations in a bushy clearing far away from any other humans, in short, doing white people things, she imagines what her life might be if she proceeds with him. That excites her. She’s always preferred the unknown. Then she thinks of the young native man. And it occurs to her, that she doesn't really know what he might be like, what his kiss may be like, so she begins to think that maybe he would be even more of a discovery.One day, long ago, someone had advised her to forget what everybody else wanted and just choose based on what she wanted. She had chuckled at this seemingly sage advice because she knew that even though the world told her this, no one was ready for what she wanted. She wanted both. But the world wasn't ready for that. So as she sat in the clearing, she thought of a poem by Kwesi Brew that she had memorized long ago:"'We have come to the cross-roadsAnd I must either leave or come with you.I lingered over the choiceBut in the darkness of my doubtsYou lifted the lamp of loveAnd I saw in your faceThe road that I should take"And she exploded inwardly out, at the absurdity of poems and life and how poets over romanticize and make love seem so easy. Right then, in the darkness of her doubts, she wanted to do right, but how could she? She was scared; scared of being with boy Alaska because even though a year had passed, he still did not know that she prayed five times a day. While he was moral in his own way, perhaps even more so than many "good Muslims" that girl Senegal knew, he seemed to despise all religion.The first movie they had seen together was a parody of Christianity. Perhaps that should have warned her, but it didn't quite register.Right there that night, watching the big dipper and trying to distinguish the double star in its handle, her eyes brimming with tears she ended her secret relationship with Robert Harrington. She chose boy-Senegal not because she loved him better; she didn't even really know him! She chose him because she conned herself into believing that life with him would be simpler.Choices was written by Esi W. Cleland.Copyright Esi W. Cleland 2008. More Esi W. Cleland:Wo So Ekyir...The AFRican read less
Sun December 28 2008
Listen. She is a dark, tall, beautiful, witty Senegalese young woman in her twenties, with white teeth accentuated by her dark healthy gums. He is a Caucasian Alaskan boy of about same age, with smiling eyes and a liking for humour tainted with sarcasm that it turns out mademoiselle Senegal digs. This boy is also a bit of a punk. He’s not a full blown punk but he has a punkish flair that somehow works. What does this Senegalese girl turned woman have in common with this boy turned man from Alaska?Not language.Not skin colour.Their names reveal their differences.She, Aminata Senghor; he, Robert Patrick Harrington.Even though she speaks foreign tongues as if they were her own, sometimes English, sometimes French, and even though she speaks in English, prays in French, whenever she weeps, she weeps in Wolof.Her skin is the darkest of the black shades and he; they don't come whiter than him. His skin is queerly mottled with moles and freckles and red blotches. His beard grows at a rate faster than her dark, coiled kinks. He loves her skin.It is smooth all over, from her face, down her nape, over the contours of her bosom, her rich dark areolas and her massive nipples which lie nestled in what looks like dark crinkled organza by Nicole Miller. Travelling further down her belly button, then deviating to cusp the smooth roundness of her behind, when boy Alaska tells fille-Senegal that he likes her skin, it means more than a mere compliment. It assumes so many meanings. Is he telling her that he likes her as she is, all her sins, borne of her blackness forgiven or is he just enjoying the uninterrupted caress of her skin?Oh, they have things in common for they discover to their delight that there are shared experiences that transcend race, colour, culture, even social class. They both remember so vividly the rotten egg smell from high school chemistry class. They both remember how they used to get such a rush from reading innocent love scenes in novels. They are kindred spirits. He lost his virginity at eighteen; she gave hers at twenty one. They were both too old. They knew how to wait. These are the things that join them.They laugh over their differences. She says it's cold in the middle of Fall. He says, cold? Are you from Africa? She likes the experience of discovering so many new things. Unlike the Senegalese men that litter her past, this Alaskan talks.He talks when she's upset.He doesn't call her baby.Or whisper sweet nothings.When he says something, it means something. He gushes over her. The descriptors he assigns her, she's never heard from Senegalese lips. He calls her gorgeous, beautiful, too pretty, and he wonders how he got so lucky. He tells her that he enjoys kissing her more than any other woman he had ever known because she actually has lips to kiss.She on the other hand, likes his eyes that are sometimes azure, sometimes hazel. The only thing that disturbs her is she can find no names for these colours in Wolof, but perhaps therein lay the appeal. To her, he is exotic. It bothers her not that he may be merely experimenting with her, for she is not certain that she is not doing same.Time goes by and when she attempts to sever the bonds of their relationship, he cried. She stayed because until now, no man had ever cried over her. She also realised then that even if it had once been, this was no longer an experiment. Even though she pretended not to have heard, it secretly pleased her when he announced that he would learn Wolof if it mattered to her.If this was not real, someone needed to teach her what real is.But how could she go on with this man, who kissed her tears when in Senegal, parents had met and smiled over a certain other young man, chosen to be her husband. She was practically married! She should count herself lucky that despite her feminist proclivities and big mouth, a normal man wanted her.One day, as she and boy Alaska sat beneath the skies, admiring the constellations in a bushy clearing far away from any other humans, in short, doing white people things, she imagines what her life might be if she proceeds with him. That excites her. She’s always preferred the unknown. Then she thinks of the young native man. And it occurs to her, that she doesn't really know what he might be like, what his kiss may be like, so she begins to think that maybe he would be even more of a discovery.One day, long ago, someone had advised her to forget what everybody else wanted and just choose based on what she wanted. She had chuckled at this seemingly sage advice because she knew that even though the world told her this, no one was ready for what she wanted. She wanted both. But the world wasn't ready for that. So as she sat in the clearing, she thought of a poem by Kwesi Brew that she had memorized long ago:"'We have come to the cross-roadsAnd I must either leave or come with you.I lingered over the choiceBut in the darkness of my doubtsYou lifted the lamp of loveAnd I saw in your faceThe road that I should take"And she exploded inwardly out, at the absurdity of poems and life and how poets over romanticize and make love seem so easy. Right then, in the darkness of her doubts, she wanted to do right, but how could she? She was scared; scared of being with boy Alaska because even though a year had passed, he still did not know that she prayed five times a day. While he was moral in his own way, perhaps even more so than many "good Muslims" that girl Senegal knew, he seemed to despise all religion.The first movie they had seen together was a parody of Christianity. Perhaps that should have warned her, but it didn't quite register.Right there that night, watching the big dipper and trying to distinguish the double star in its handle, her eyes brimming with tears she ended her secret relationship with Robert Harrington. She chose boy-Senegal not because she loved him better; she didn't even really know him! She chose him because she conned herself into believing that life with him would be simpler.Choices was written by Esi W. Cleland.Copyright Esi W. Cleland 2008. More Esi W. Cleland:Wo So Ekyir...The AFRican read less
Sun December 28 2008
Listen.Choices by Esi W. Cleland She is a dark, tall, beautiful, witty Senegalese young woman in her twenties, with white teeth accentuated by her dark healthy gums. He is a Caucasian Alaskan boy of about same age, with smiling eyes and a liking for humour tainted with sarcasm that it turns out mademoiselle Senegal digs. This boy is also a bit of a punk. He’s not a full blown punk but he has a punkish flair that somehow works. What does this Senegalese girl turned woman have in common with this boy turned man from Alaska? Full Story Cost of Courage by Beaven Tapureta When I was not with Brother I was with it again. Tonight it found me alone, away from Brother. It was like an incurable mental illness which came with voices and visions. It was like a nightmare yet I could not fathom how far it was from the real world. I kept walking on the dark deserted road. My eyes hardly blinked; there were demons playing wild soccer in the natural turf of my mind, howling 'Punch him down! Punch him down!' I knew it was it again. I whispered to myself that I was not going to fall or be punched down by whatever or whoever those demons were. Full Story Still Going by Emmanuel Sigauke I was going to the gathering and no one would stop me. Not even Mai, not Maiguru. Nothing, not even the duty to take care of the goats would get in the way. I was going to meet with Chari behind Chisiya Hill, join others like us on the road to Mototi Primary School, and arrive at the gathering before the dancing began. The only person who would have been able to stop me was Mukoma, but he was away in South Africa and no one knew when he would be back. With no one to stop me, I was sure going to that gathering. Full Story Framed by Masimba Musodza After Cleveland, the stretch of motorway to Marondera was clear of traffic and Abby felt that he had it all to himself at last. With an exultant chuckle, he really put his foot down on the pedal and felt the Land Cruiser shudder as it went in to Warp 9. On the vehicle's mp3 player, some new local act was chanting a mindless ditty in the vernacular, to the tune of a popular American RnB hit, Abby couldn't remember which. Outside, to the right, the lights of distant Chitungwiza shone like candles held by thousands of adoring fans at a rock concert. 'Hey, you're going too fast!' Full Story The Lottery by Ivor W. Hartmann 'What are we now? Can we really call ourselves human any more? What of our souls, heaven, and hell?' -Emergency Online Transference FAQ's. Israel Sabula was a newly transferred and he did not like it. He had awoken from death in this white chair, to this white room and its barren smooth lines. A far cry from the bubbling and whirring room of machines wired into his dying body, which saw his lonely departure from that mortal coil. There was an utter silence in the room and even though he continued breathing from habit, there was no breath, no air, no sound, not even a deafening silence from real world ear feedback. He snapped his fingers and heard the click and then that weird silence. Full Story In the Blood by Masimba MusodzaThe urge to drink was strong, but there was nothing stronger to drink in the office than water. Batsi Makoni gulped down half a bottle before realising how refreshing, how calming it actually was. She stared at the bottle as if in wonderment, then at the rest of the displayed contents of the open fridge. The water had definitely cooled her down enough for her to sit at her desk and think. Leave the yoghurt and the cheese and the ice-cream and the cake alone. For now. It was late in the afternoon. From outside drifted the slow progress of down town Harare's traffic. The window behind her looked over Africa Unity Square. From somewhere within the huge edifice that housed her suite of offices emanated the gentle whirr of a copier. Mundane, familiar sounds. The assurance of continuity and comfort. But her eyes fell on the folders on her desk, and the shock that had seized her moments earlier began to return. Full Story The Devil's Advocates by Ivor W. Hartmann'The contents (sealed after these words of introduction), have been painstakingly pieced together from ancient data records. These records handed down the ages as inert sacred relics of another era, were preserved somewhat unwittingly, yet propitiously, by our order. After recognising that the relics were, in fact, ancient data storage devices, it has taken us fifty long years to reconstruct the technology, necessary to access them. Whilst the records are severely damaged, I do believe there is enough surviving, coherent content, to discern the nature of the events described.' Full Story Yesterday's Dog by Masimba MusodzaIt had been It had been a long drive, and Stanley was beginning to doze off. Harare was less than 20 kilometres away on the Mutare Road. The radio was not working, and he had exhausted the four tracks that made up the only CD, why did Zimbabwean record companies sell these as albums? And the air-conditioning wasn't working, leaving him at the mercy-or the lack-of the October heat. He would have gladly stopped somewhere, but the need to get to Chitungwiza was urgent. Already, the sky to the west was tinged with mauve.Stanley had shut his mind from the outside scenery. So, when the man appeared on the road, he seemed to have materialised from another dimension of his consciousness, an apparition from a half-remembered and not very comforting dream. Full Story Kennedy by Emmanuel Sigauke The entrance to Kubatana was dotted with scantily-dressed women and peanut vendors, a curious combination about which I shook my head as we entered the flood-lit bar. 'Tonight youll see a side of me that will blow your mind away,' said Mukoma, my big brother. 'What hes saying is that he has something important to tell you,' explained Jakove, his friend. 'And to show you,' added Mukoma. The beer hall was crowded. Shouting men waved at us. Mukoma and Jakove waved back at acquaintances scattered in the swaying crowd, where loud music competed with the loudest of voices. Full Story The Land of Darkly: Act Four When Harabladi disembarked from the gondola that evening, well staggered whilst Hacktar kept him upright by holding the scruff of his jacket, he felt nothing. Well not nothing, his body screamed at him all manner of abuse and his brain felt like a large bowl of pulsing cold porridge, but he felt not the beady red eyes of Grom, not even the merest twinge. For a moment, he wondered if perhaps that last heavy blow his skull endured from Hacktar was the one that finally shook something loose, permanently. Then he felt that familiar twinge, not like Grom, no that had its own unique suicidal butterflys kind of twinge, but definitely someone with ill intent towards him. Unable to deal, as he could barely see blearily, with any one or thing right now he chose the safest course of action. Hacktar barely paused as he felt Harabladi go limp and quickly whipped him up onto his giant-tortoise large shoulder. Full StoryThe Land of Darkly: Act Three Mrs Perkins, and her husband, Mr Perkins-Fiddle, were lying, snoring, in the shade of a large oak tree. They were halfway between the city of Darkly, and the village of Krep, which lay nearly three leagues south of the south gate of the city. They were thus at the four-mile marker, which itself lay in the shade of the large oak tree, a fact that made giving directions a hit-and-miss affair, since four-mile-markers were all there were, and the marker itself was nearly invisible in the shade. Full StoryThe Land of Darkly: Act TwoThe prince, in the meantime, went to his chambers for a lie down to recover from his meeting with his mother. Gelmernia, his manservant and best friend, awaited him with a cup of tea, and a cup of something else that glowed blue and occasionally released a bubble into the air of the expansive suite, where it would drift until encountering something solid like a wall or a window. After etching away part of the wall or the window, the bubble would pop and release an extremely noxious smell into the air. Full StoryThe Land of Darkly: Act One The king was in his counting-house, counting out his money - well, he was watching Fittle, his oldest and most trusted servant, count out his money. And, to make things even clearer, they were only counting out the NEW money. The rest of the money had already been counted and stored on the shelves around them, which stretched into the darkness surrounding the King and Fittle where they sat at the counting table. They had encircled the counting tables with candles, lamps, and few roaring torches - ostensibly to see better, but really because, of all the rooms in the Royal Castle, this was the one the King liked the least. Full Story read less
Sun December 28 2008
Listen.Earth Rise by Ivor W. Hartmann No matter how many times he prayed, pleaded, begged and screamed, Thomas Church could not die. Desperate scrabbling fingers and toes early measured his kingdom of darkness - a coffin of rough pine that needled deep before it wore smooth. He rubbed the silky wood, tracing the grain, and almost missed the agony of a sliver pierced between fingernail and flesh. Thomas had no awareness of time. Instead, he nurtured memories of light. A time before the six-walled kingdom that laid his body flat beneath the earth. Sometimes he laughed until the laughter took control and battered him against the silent boards. Full StoryLast In Line by Bruce M. Menin You've all seen the picture. They say it was once the biggest selling postage stamp in American history. I don't know this for a fact, although it may be true - selling is something that my white brothers know a great deal about. That isn't bitterness; I know that I have none. It is just something that is true. They sell; The People have always bartered or given. I helped raise the flag on Iwo Jima. Twice. One time with my friends who died and once for the press photographer. Like I said, you have all seen the picture. I am the last one in the line, the picture taken just after I had let go of my part of the flagpole. The People are always the last ones in line. Full StoryMen Don't Cry by Adesola Orimalade I switched on the television and was greeted by the sight of a man who was crying his heart out. The tears rolled as he recounted the horror of seeing members of his family killed by a mob protesting the results of the election in Kenya.'A man is not meant to cry' The words rang very quietly in my ears and my mind wandered to a time in the past. It was a few days to Christmas; that time of year when school is closed and children can spend the whole time at play. Full StoryAll Good Boys Learn Their Lesson by John Zur Let us call him Bobby Jefferies. Bobby Jefferies is like any other sixteen-year-old boy. He drinks with his friends, he smokes with his friends, and he is the epitome of a good son in front of his parents, Frank and Susan Jefferies. Bobby thinks he is playing the game better than anyone else. Bobby also hates the adult cliché that states that he is one of the teenage subscribers to the notion that he is invincible. Quite the opposite is what holds true. Bobby is a good boy. Bobby is the good son of Frank and Susan and he knows when to behave. He also knows when to deceive his parents and himself. He knows when to act out and become a rebellious soldier in the war of adolescence. Full StoryBad News Travels Quickly by Adesola OrimaladeThe cock raised its red crowned head and crowed loudly. In the quiet early morning, it roused men from deep sleep, ushering in a new day. A man sitting on the now worn wooden stool, his wrapper carefully wound around his robust frame, he heard it too. The sun was still trying to shoot out its rays over the early morning clouds. He could hear men and women passing by his window heading to their farms, but he just sat there and stared into space. In the palm of his left hand, he held firmly a small open pint-size calabash filled with rich foamy palm wine filled to the brim. By the side of his bare feet rested a soccer-ball-sized gourd filled with the same substance. Full StoryThe Suburban Neighborhood by John ZurThe gloaming came in after daylight's death and wandered about throughout the homes while the families slept comfortably in their beds. The children were tucked in and dreamed of captaining pirate ships through periwinkle seas of graying skies and washing ashore on the tops of watermelon mountains. They snuggled their woven blankets with tattered ends and saw personified animals in the ceiling and pixie spies under windowsills. They spoke to their imaginary friends and took hints from the carpetbaggers' ghosts passing through.Full Story The Blue Flower Mountain by Ivor W. Hartmann The waning sunlight glimmered softly through tall ethereal gum trees that waved in zephyrs, crisp from snow capped mountains. A narrow red earth dirt strip road sliced languidly ahead into Fynbos foothills. A small blue sign fat nail hammered onto a termite mud encrusted crumbling pole, jutted out from the wild grasses roadside. Neatly painted in elegant white script it spelt out the name, 'Bloublommitijies Kloof', or Blue Flower Mountain. Full Story read less
Wed December 24 2008
Listen. When Harabladi disembarked from the gondola that evening, well staggered whilst Hacktar kept him upright by holding the scruff of his jacket, he felt nothing. Well not nothing, his body screamed at him all manner of abuse and his brain felt like a large bowl of pulsing cold porridge, but he felt not the beady red eyes of Grom, not even the merest twinge. For a moment, he wondered if perhaps that last heavy blow his skull endured from Hacktar was the one that finally shook something loose, permanently. Then he felt that familiar twinge, not like Grom, no that had its own unique suicidal butterfly's kind of twinge, but definitely someone with ill intent towards him. Unable to deal, as he could barely see blearily, with any one or thing right now he chose the safest course of action. Hacktar barely paused as he felt Harabladi go limp and quickly whipped him up onto his giant-tortoise large shoulder. Stallay Mechudra watched Hacktar and Harabladi pass by from a dark alley, even unconscious with Harabladi's dirty flopping head gently nosing Hacktar's, back, he looked so, so, gorgeous. She felt a patter of little feet caroming vengefully around her heart, and could barely restrain herself from leaping out to kiss his grimy lips. Sweat beaded and rolled down her honeyed cheeks, hidden in deep shadow by the dark hood of her black robe, evidence of her internal torture. With a gasp, she turned and strode the opposite way deeper into the alley, and for a moment, she thought she smelt cigar smoke. Stallay's fellow black robed sisters gathered in the great hall of the temple Okranu, gave way to her as she swept forward through the crowd. With her hood thrown back Stallay's beauty shone forth like an almost terrifying blinding light, it was as thought all the gods of beauty had scrimped on millions, saving it all for her. Stallay's passage from above looked like the effect of a dancing bee (talking about an approaching forest fire) on a swarming hive floor. The truth was no matter your gender, age or even species, Stallay seemed to be the most beautiful creature you had ever seen, or ever would see. Even as a child, she had sent hordes of men, women, and a few brighter than normal dogs into PA, paedophiles anonymous. Until the day, she came to the attention of Mother Superior Tilwayh of the Okranu order. Her mother had more than willingly sequestered Stallay into the orders care. Not only for a generous sum but also frankly, Stallay's mum was simply exhausted from fending off the dazed and confused. Stallay never blamed her mother for leaving her, raised by the Okranu sub-order of blind virgin priestess assassins. She came to understand what she was and what she could do. Slowly introduced to the effect she had on sighted beings (they started with chickens). Stallay slowly and surely became the orders top-secret most deadly weapon. 'How DARE you come before us UNCOVERED!' Stallay heard as she parted the sea of bodies before her. It was the soprano voice of Tilwayh, of that there could be no doubt; some said she rivalled the Queen herself in pure decibel output. Stallay could hear the slap of knees pressed together and little orgasmic gasps following behind her, and part of her quailed at her bold actions. Tilwayh was quite rightly not amused, few of their order had ever seen Stallay bare faced. Even the great Tilwayh, hardened by years of gradual exposure, still had to fight the temptation to bathe Tilwayh's feet in milk and suck them clean (her number one fantasy). However, another part of Stallay rallied and firmly squashed the other wetly underfoot, driven by those damn little feet that rocked her world. The last of the sisters dispersed before her, leaving Stallay marching alone up to the gilded dais upon which Tilwayh stood and glared down at her. They locked eyes with an almost audible clash, an infinite island sea blue matched with an unfathomable emerald green. At one hundred and four Tilwayh had the pale umber skin of a forty-year old, and the most extraordinary bleached-bone-white dreadlocks, which hung to her ankles and contrasted vividly with the black robe. However, it was those large green eyes that demanded attention blazing outward belying her innocent small pixie face. They both remained glaringly silent; Stallay was waiting for the quiet sighs, moans, and general commotion of the gathered sisters to subside. (And not even the Forgotten Mountain Gradzod Mind-melders, could know what Tilwayh was really thinking.) Eventually a strained silence ranged across the vast gloomy hall, a pregnant absence of normal sound, that screamed its opposite was just around the corner. 'If you think I am going to discuss anything with you here and now, think again pipsqueak,' Tilwayh said in a tight-lipped whispered that was certainly only audible to Stallay. From close by Stallay heard the faintest of cloth brushes, and knew that behind her now stood, at least five of her blind virgin priestess assassin compadre's. 'So why don't you put on your milk, er, hood and depart with your squad to my chambers and we will have a nice chat when I am done here'. Stallay considered her options quickly, she hadn't really thought this through enough, and of course, she would be seen as an open threat to the Mother Superior, indeed to all who were here now. It was this beast called love that ravished her senses and turned everything upside down; even now, it roared and stamped its little feet, even harder. She would bewitch them all she decided firmly, if it meant she could be with Harabladi. Stallay smiled gloriously at Tilwayh (who suddenly felt her knees weaken and smelt milk on naked flesh), but then collapsed lifeless onto the slate floor, from an expert blow to her occipital skull bone. Grom awoke and his first thought was, well I guess the dead do sleep, he could even remember brief dream fragments, and dream too. He sat up groggily and found himself eye to eye with the most ugly bloody slime ridden features he had ever seen. Not just one set of them either a whole pack of them, all staring hungrily at him. Startled he bolted backwards only to smack painfully into what felt like glass, the creatures made no move toward him, but continued to gaze at him fixedly. Looking over the heads of the diminutive creatures it appeared to Grom, as if they were in a great round glass hall whose walls stretched upward beyond sight. It was empty of anything except the pack of creatures and he, with an impenetrable blackness all around. However, from high above, like the light from a lone far away comet in a starless night sky, a dim glow gave form to his surroundings. Feeling the smooth hardness with his hands behind him, he turned and hammered on the glass barrier in confusion. Was not he a ghost, and in his brief experience as a ghost nothing had been impenetrable, nothing, and gone was that waft and slight urge to be near Harabladi. Perplexed he turned back to face the creatures, and going on pure habit asked. 'Any of youse got a deck of cards?' Harabladi woke up the next morning with a great big smile on his face. He leapt out of bed energised, and did not even give his painted younger-self corpse opposite, a first glance never mind a second. Nothing it seemed could remove the grin from his face. Not even discovering Hacktar comatose in the kitchen surrounded by the empty bottles of his entire vintage red wine collection. It was Juddday, which for many in Darkly, was the only day of rest in their thirteen-day week, and the streets of Desee were crammed with jostling people in a carnival mood. In just four hours Harabladi well disguised as a black ops insurance accountant disguised as a tourist, exchanged the magic gold coin some fourteen times. He then disguised himself as a hands-on nobleman disguised as a trader, and promptly spent it all in a supremely delicious bout of retail therapy. Grom thought he recognised the man when he popped out of thin air and landed in the middle of their card game. It was however only after much greatly agonising tip of the tonguing that he recalled the unconscious man's name. As he watched him propped up against a wall it came to him, he was Thilgrad the moneychanger's Ulag's brother. By the time the fifteenth, ghostly, unconscious, moneychanger or related body, slammed into their card game (they had tried moving the game around the hall but it made no difference), Grom thought he glimpsed a pattern. Just then, one of the horribly ugly creatures sitting in the card circle, coughed violently, shivered, wheezed, wiped the blood of its lips, and lit up a cigar stub (the only one who had so far beaten Grom in a game of Fingers Five). Once the cigar stub was drawing well, it looked up, eyed out Grom, and then said. 'Hello Grom, let me tell you something about what a good cigar, really is.' The Prince returned from his swim in the river, clean and sparkly, carrying two large dead fish, looking very pleased with himself. Gelmernia thought smug might be the right word. 'My Lord,' said Gelmernia, 'You do realize you are wearing nothing.' 'I am wearing fish' replied the Prince. 'It's the latest fashion in, well, here'. The fish were, Gelmernia saw, draped strategically, and somewhat optimistically, in front of the Princes groin. Really, thought Gelmernia, Minnows would have done just as well, 'You killed them yourself, my Lord?' 'Yes!' shouted the Prince, proudly. 'Well, no. In a way. My vomit seemed to have some sort of unpleasant effect on them. They left the river. Once they were on the bank and wriggling, it was fairly easy to order one of the guards to club them with a stone. Wow! Horse-urine shots, hey? They really do have a kick to them, get it?' He laughed and his guards laughed with him. Gelmernia could only chuckle weakly, and not just because of the awful pun, and the fact that he'd heard it exactly eighteen times before from the Prince. He realized, sadly, and somewhat nervously, that the amount of pringleberry that had accumulated in the Prince's organs had reached a certain level of toxicity. It was this component in the bile of the Prince's reverse-swallowing act that had driven the fish out of water. He couldn't let the Prince have any more for at least a week. Damn. This was going to make The Library Scheme far more difficult than he had anticipated. 'Well,' said the Prince, taking a Royal robe from one of his bodyguards, and in turn handing him the fish, 'These will do nicely for lunch, will they not?' 'Uh, no,' said Gelmernia. 'They may look, to the layman, like normal, uh, trout, but in fact these fish are very toxic.' He sounded more convincing than usual, because he was telling the truth. Most of it, anyway. 'Really?' said the Prince, looking at the fish suspiciously. 'A pity. One was really looking forward to fish for lunch.' 'My Lord, I'm sure one of your many soldiers, along with two or three cooks, might find some more palatable examples in the river.' He pointed to a nearby guard. 'You!' 'Yes, My Lord Intelligencer?' asked the guard. 'Fish. In the river. Retrieve several and we shall have them for lunch.' 'Very well, my Lord' said the guard, and turned to the river. 'Wait!' said Gelmernia. The guard turned back. 'From the area downstream of where the Prince bathed, it appears the trout are of a particularly toxic and deadly species, probably due to, uh, proximity to the Forest. I did see some perfectly suitable food trout further upstream. About a mile or so.' He paused, doing some calculations in his head. 'In fact, it was two miles.' The guard sighed. "As you say, My Lord" He turned towards the river again, headed upstream, drawing his short-sword as he went. On seeing this, Gelmernia sighed, and muttered, 'When all you have is a hammer,' He raised his voice. 'Lunch may be a while, My Lord'. 'No trouble' said Rolan. 'In fact, I may have a pre-lunch power nap'. 'Excellent idea, sir. We shall await your return before cooking, whatever it is, that guard manages to catch with his, fishing implement'. The Prince moved off with his bodyguard, leaving Gelmernia staring at the forest, lost in thought. How was he going to get the Prince to follow his exact orders without pringleberry? There was always Throatwood, he had sufficient supplies of that. But the effects on the voice of the victim were unpleasant and eventually irreversible. Eventually, all they could utter were barking noises, hence the name. And although he shuddered at the pun, Gelmernia understood that the inhabitants of the Forgotten Mountains would have their little jokes, he supposed it made up for their lack of offspring that could walk upright on two legs, and so frequently had three...or more tails. Gelmernia had to admit to being slightly jealous that he, himself, did not have a tail. Preferably a forked one. Just for special occasions, of course. There was an antidote to Throatwood, Catfer, but that in itself was horribly toxic and the thought of watching the Prince lick himself clean did not endear that particular substance to Gelmernia. He was considering his store of compulsion-compounds when he suddenly became aware of a sharp, pressing pain in his bladder. Not now! But it would not leave him, and, attempting to hide his limp, the pain was severe indeed, he made his way to his large tent, only slightly smaller than the Royal Pavilion itself, walked in, and made sure the entrance was firmly sealed before collapsing onto the ground. He'd had his steel-wood chest removed from the carriage. It was about half the size of a coffin. This chest of compounds, mixtures and substances was at the back of the tent, and it took him four painful minutes to crawl that far, cursing himself all the way for not putting it at the entrance, and the cursing himself for cursing himself, no-one could see the contents of the chest, and leaving it by the entrance was just asking for trouble, which was exactly why he'd put it at the back of the tent. Additionally, how could he have foreseen this, of all things? He'd expected another month before any of them returned, and they had the strictest instructions not to return this way unless it was imperative. It had better be imperative, or there would be more than just fish for lunch. Unlocking the chest took a further five minutes, mostly because of the number of padlocks, straps, and magical wards. Crawling clear, he whispered 'Cas razata'. A black fog shot up from the chest to the roof of the tent. That fog was instant death for anyone else, and even Gelmernia, who took the antidote every morning, would have an unpleasant few moments of struggling to breathe should he be exposed to it directly. After an excruciating further two minutes, holding his abdomen, lying on the ground, the fog returned to the reservoirs in the chest. The manufacture of the chest was a mystery to Gelmernia himself. It had been his ticket to success, certainly; his predecessor had taught him the rituals and rites that accompanied it; but even that venerable gentleman (who had somehow choked to death on a simple cup of, um, tea, that Gelmernia had prepared for him) had not known the history of the chest. It was really the only true expression of actual magic in the Kingdom of which Gelmernia was aware, even the Forgotten Mountains specialized in alchemy, rather than magic. Although they did edge toward that boundary sometimes, particularly when either the moon or the buckets of moonshine were full, then the banjos would play, Unfortunately it seemed all of the chest's magic was malevolent and involved the infliction of pain, or painful death, or pain that made you made you want to die, but didn't let you, or variants thereof. Gelmernia reached into the chest. It was at this point that Gelmernia would have benefited from knowledge of the history of the magical chest. The history of that chest was stored in the very library Gelmernia was, in general, attempting to loot. It is doubtful that he would have found that history, of course, because of everything else that will be going on at the same time that he gains access to the Library. But the Guardians Of The Scrolls, and the intersection of their existences with that of the Prince, Gelmernia, Stranger-To-All, and The Little Girl In The Red Hood, have their story later in this narrative, in strict chronological order. Had he found that history, it would have told the following story, in an ancient language written in an indecipherable alphabet: Seven hundred years earlier, in the snow-capped peaks above the Forgotten Mountains, in a modest cave, had lived a sorcerer. A depressed sorcerer. Well, depression goes without saying. Who wouldn't be depressed, living in a cave? Perhaps grieving might additionally convey his mood more appropriately. A depressed, grieving and, since his coat had had been stolen and eaten by a snow-tiger during his once-a-month bathe the previous day, a cold sorcerer. It was going to take a while for the snow-tiger pelt to cure, after all. He woke up one morning, and went to the mouth of the cave, completely naked. Since he was cold, and very, very old, that is all the description that is really necessary. A sudden flurry of snow directly in front of him puzzled him for a few moments until the blue flashes of lightning emanating from it allowed him to recognize an Arrival. This made him very angry, but he restrained himself. If only, he thought, everyone else would restrain themselves. The flying snow melted and turned into steam, and from the resulting cloud, stepped a tall man who wore something black that appeared to be melted into his skin. The tall man beamed in greeting. 'Lorchas! My old friend!' Then he grimaced. 'Do put something on, my old, old friend.' Lorchas, for such was his name, grunted. 'Nothing to put on, Aven,' he said. 'Besides, all this hair keeps me warm.' 'It's not the temperature that concerns me, old friend. It's my appetite.' Aven patted his ample stomach. Lorchas grunted again. 'No need for appetite. Nothing to eat. Well, snow-tiger stew, but it's not very good. And besides, I'm not sharing.' Aven approached Lorchas, and gingerly patted him on the back. 'Well, let's see this cave of yours, shall we?' Lorchas sighed very deeply. 'Very well'. He turned and led Aven into the cave. Aven couldn't repress a shiver of revulsion, as he took a quick opportunity to wipe the newly transferred carpet of Lorchas's old matted hair off his hand and onto the rock beside the entrance. All the while trying to remember a few simple disinfectant spells that didn't require vocalization. The cave was, in the manner of caves, dark. Apart from the reflected sunlight from the snow, in fact, there was no other source of light. Aven automatically raised his hand, and snapped his fingers. A warm yellow light blossomed above his hand and rose to the ceiling. Lorchas whipped around, and snapped his own fingers. A coiling black fog encircled the pretty light, and strangled it. 'Why,' said Lorchas, with some venom, 'Do none of you listen to me?' 'It was just a light, Lorchas!' Aven said, frowning. 'A simple little light. I can't see a damn thing in here.' He quickly added, 'Old friend.' Lorchas said, 'I haven't adjusted the mirrors yet. Hold on. And do not move.' Then came an annoyingly long as Lorchas hobbled around the cave, doing things that squeaked. At one point, he walked straight into Aven, scaring both of them into girlish screams. 'I told you not to move!' yelled Lorchas. 'I didn't move!' 'You did!' 'I did not.' 'You did so. And don't talk back, you'll get my dander up!' Aven shut up, although he tried again to remember those simple unvoiced spells that might kill the things crawling up his arm from his hand, where it had come into contact, again, with Lorchas. He really had to accomplish his purpose quickly, he thought if only for the sake of his hygiene. After one final long protracted squeeeeeeeeak light from the outside bounced from one shiny silver mirror to another. It illuminated the interior of the cave very nicely, Aven had to admit, although, on seeing the interior, he sort of wished it didn't. Several bloody animal skins, most with some of the animal still attached, hung, rotting, from a rope on the right. Apart from that, there was a chair, a cold fireplace above which hung a pot that looked about as sanitary as the skins. That the pot was half-full did not reassure Aven in any way. He could well imagine that it was never quite empty, and thus probably held some sort of record for the longest-lasting stew in the world. Which would have been fine if it had still been cooking, Eeeugh Aven thought, but managed to suppress the shiver this time. There were also several wooden shelves mounted at angles other than perfectly horizontal to the back wall of the cave. They held an overflowing pile of books. There it is. His library. Pretending little interest in the books, he turned and found Lorchas a few inches from his nose. He let out another girlish scream, not least because, in the very act of drawing breath for the scream, he had breathed of Lorchas's breath. 'You want the books,' said Lorchas. 'No, I don't.' 'Yes, you do.' 'No, I do not.' 'Stop arguing, you little twit. You always thought you had the world fooled with your lies, but I always saw through them, didn't I?' After a resentful pause, Aven nodded. 'Well, I'll give them to you. There's not much purpose to them anymore, is there?' said Lorchas, turning away. 'I wouldn't say that,' said Aven. 'I would,' said Lorchas, turning back, and Aven was embarrassed to see a tear or two trickling down into the long white beard, where, he reflected, the liquid would probably be feeding an entire ecology of, things. 'The magic,' said Lorcha. 'Is dying'. 'You know,' said Aven 'There are some of us who disagree with that analysis', 'You mean you'. 'Yes. Although I have managed to convince the Council of my views'. 'And so the waste goes on.' Lorchas grabbed Aven by the collars of his skin-suit, the only parts that protruded. 'What happens when it's all gone? Hmm?' 'We really doubt that will happen.' 'And if you're wrong?' 'Well, then, you win.' Lorchas sat on his stool and put his head in hands. 'I dont want to win, you little toilet-stick. I want people, well, sorcerers, anyway, to listen. Just to listen.' 'Look, I don't disagree that it's getting weaker,' said Aven. 'No-one does.' 'And every time you use it for a little light, or for rearranging the furniture in that country house of yours, the one with the pretty scullery boys, it gets less. It gets used up.' 'Um, I think you mean scullery girls' said Aven. Lorchas lifted his face, and then one eyebrow. Aven hurriedly changed the topic 'We've identified something. Something new'. Lorchas lifted the other eyebrow. 'Don't think we haven't listened, you old snow loon. We have. And obviously, since all our power in the affairs of simple men lies in our manipulation of magic, we are equally concerned. So we've been looking.' 'For what?' asked Lorchas. He almost looked interested, thought Aven. 'We've done some very carefully controlled experiments. And it appears that, although our little tricks do use up some of the magic, the source itself is being drained. By someone else.' 'Who?' 'We don't know,' said Aven. He nodded to the library. 'We were hoping to find the answer in there somewhere. Those books don't actually belong to you, you realize that.' 'Well, the college refused to pay my annual bonus. It only seemed fair.' 'To take all of the most ancient and precious manuscripts?' Aven waved a hand. 'Never mind. You were always the most learned of us, if not the most powerful.' 'Oh, yeah?' snarled Lorchas. 'I remember dunking you in the pool with nothing more than a quill in my hand.' 'I've been trying to forget that all of my life,' said Aven. 'Even saw a therapist, it helped a bit. You should try it. I'll give you his card, hah, silly me. He'd be very dead by now, of course. But I was an initiate. I'm stronger than you now. We both recognize that, I trust?' 'No' said Lorchas. 'Yes' said Aven. 'No, you're not' said Lorchas. 'Yes, I am' said Aven. 'Power,' said Lorchas, 'Is not a simple measure. It's not who can channel the most magic without hurting themselves. It's really those who can use the least to accomplish that which needs to be done.' Aven digested that. 'Lorchas,' he said. 'It's precisely thoughts like that that we miss, on the Council. Please come back. Help us find out who this person, or this thing is, that is removing magic from our world.' 'You're sure about this?' asked Lorchas. 'I'd be happy to be wrong about my theory.' 'We're very sure.' 'Well, I can't join you,' said Lorchas. 'I'm dying. And that's something I'd prefer to do alone, frankly.' There was a moment of silence. Which, all things considered, thought Aven, was somewhat, premature. 'I'm sorry to hear that,' said Aven. 'If you would just take a little, a trickle, from the Source, it would be unnecessary. You know now it won't make much difference.' 'No,' said Lorchas. 'On the contrary. If you identify this thing that is, eating our magic, you'll have to do battle with it. It is inimical to our very existence'. 'I see,' said Aven, making a mental note to look up the word inimical when he got back to the College. 'And you'll need everything you have, including, possibly, what I might take from the Source in order to heal myself, or prolong my life any further.' 'Well,' said Aven. 'If that's your decision. We on the Council do have one favour to ask.' 'Yes?' 'We need an Artefact. And you were always the best Fashioner'. 'Yes, I know' said Lorchas 'What is it you require?' 'We too have foreseen the possibility of actual combat. And, as you yourself said, long ago, war is about information.' 'It is,' said Lorchas, 'In this case, the identity of your assailant would be the primary piece to obtain'. Aven nodded, somewhat impatiently. 'We are doing that. But we would deny him, or it, the most secret of our secrets. We need, in a word, a safe. In the form of a secure chest.' 'Ironwood?' asked Lorchas 'It's difficult to come by, these days'. Aven flicked his fingers and a large sack appeared next to him. 'This is what remains,' he said. 'Be conservative. We're growing more, but I don't think we'll have the two hundred years that it takes before the need for the chest becomes, necessary.' He frowned, mostly at the redundancy in that sentence. 'We may not even have a year. We need to attack before the Source is exhausted.' 'Two weeks' said Lorchas 'I can guess the size'. 'Two weeks, then' said Aven 'I'll be back. If I may take the books, though? We do need to begin researching, well, stuff'. Lorchas laid a hand upon Aven's shoulder, much to the latter's silent revulsion. 'It will be my masterwork,' he said. And it was. So when Gelmernia reached into the chest and found the scroll tucked away in the corner, he didn't realise what he'd just done, despite having done it many times before without any ill effect. The magical ward he'd triggered, by reaching into that corner of the box just so, at this particular time of day, something he'd never done before, - started building. It had only the smallest fragments of magic to draw on, and it would take days to reach its full power, but once set in motion, it was unstoppable. Lorchas had called it The Ultimate Vortex Of Summoning And Destruction And Blood. Which, once his subtle use of language was analysed and penetrated, did not, it could not be denied, really bode very well. The pain in Gelmernia's bladder was extreme. He now felt as though he was trying to pass a stone the size of a decapitated head. He had an idea of what was happening, or rather, who, but he needed to make sure. In his own excellent penmanship, on the scroll, was marked a list of organs of the body, and, next to each, the code names of his agents. Yes. It was indeed Troublemaker. Which meant something serious was up with the Varangians. He replaced the scroll and carefully selected a vial from a carefully marked section of the chest. It was filled with glowing green liquid. Fortunately, unlike the agent in question, Gelmernia did not need to drink the liquid. This is going to be awkward to explain to the Prince, Gelmernia thought. But he had no choice, really. And it was in service to his Kingdom, after all. Which would one day be his! Enough! cried his bladder. He dropped the vial on the grass over which his tent had been erected, extracted a small hammer from the chest, and smashed the vial. 'Ah,' he said, as the pain in his bladder vanished. A sudden swirling gust filled the tent, sucking at the canvas and picking at Gelmernia's clothes. It was much stronger than he expected Much, much stronger... The roaring gust built up in seconds to nearly hurricane force inside the tent, and then, 'Oh, shit' Gelmernia had time to say, before it, all went to the hells, The Royal Bodyguards, surrounding the Royal Pavilion, and the snoring Prince, heard the sound of a screaming wind, very strange in this clear, still, blue air, , and then were quite surprised to see The Royal Intelligencer's tent crumple oddly, turn around, and then charge at them, neighing wildly, as crossbow bolts hissed passed their heads. In perfect formation, they turned and ran screaming towards the river. The tent came to a fairly abrupt halt, and started grazing on the tall grass. 'You stupid sod!' came Gelmernia's voice. 'Get that thing out of here, before I kill you. Stop whining! That's just a crossbow bolt, -- you think that is painful, well, you'll have a chance to reconsider that fairly shortly!' There followed a series of threats and words which, for the sake of sensitive readers, will not be set down here. Mostly, these threats involved tender parts of the male anatomy. Then, a completely different voice, 'Oh shut up, you stupid Quill-Pusher!'. Followed by a meaty thud. And the Ultimate Vortex, which had played no part in what was, when all was said and done, the Return of Stranger-To-All To The Kingdom—well, it continued building, silently, in the place where the tent had been. Feeding on the remnants of magic used by Gelmernia's little spells. So, whether what happened later was Gelmernia's fault, or that of Stranger-To-All, for using the green vial and invoking an automatic Spell Of Return, could be debated. But at the moment it seemed quite doubtful either of them would have the chance to have that debate. Because, unnoticed by anyone, while all of this was going on, from the Forest, had emerged a little girl with a red hood. And she Was Not Happy.Act Four was written by Colin Meier and Ivor W. HartmannPreviously... Act Three, Next...? read less
Sat December 20 2008
Listen. When I was not with Brother I was with it again. Tonight it found me alone, away from Brother. It was like an incurable mental illness which came with voices and visions. It was like a nightmare yet I could not fathom how far it was from the real world. I kept walking on the dark deserted road. My eyes hardly blinked; there were demons playing wild soccer in the natural turf of my mind, howling 'Punch him down! Punch him down!' I knew it was it again. I whispered to myself that I was not going to fall or be punched down by whatever or whoever those demons were. Social exclusion's tinted eyes looked at me from a precarious viewpoint. The wild soccer suddenly ceased, was replaced by ear-splitting shouts not such as one hears in a football stadium:Cry Freedom!Cry Freedom!Cry Freedom! Cry Freedom!Raucous voices screamed. I had watched the film Cry Freedom sometime ago and it had stung me with memories yet not of soccer, but of Steve Biko and his Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa's apartheid era. The throaty screams became harsher and harsher like pained war-cries grinding against the buttocks of guns, drowning in teargas and blood:Cry Freedom...!Cry Freedom!FREEDOMMMMMMMMMM CCCCCCCCCCRY!An ensuing crumbling, blasting and splitting of sound, an explosion of voices, and sharp squeal of stampeding women and children, combined into... Horror... Like other maimed victims, I was blindly running like a fugitive when unexpectedly I found a red spoor which, upon following it, led me over to the high mountains where I abruptly found myself in a certain black kingdom on whose gates was written a name in sweat, tears and blood. Zimbabwe. I felt a stranger, outdated, outcast, and a squatter in my own body, own mind, and own home. But there was no one to welcome me. The gates were locked to the hilt.'Is anyone home?' I screamed.'Is any one home?!'Suddenly my ears picked some murmur of voices and I dreamily opened my eyes. The sun peeped through the doorway like a morning messenger bearing empty news. My clothes were damp as I beat the blankets away from me. It disappeared as fast as it had come. It just was nowhere, only the blankets, sweat, and the distant decibels of an already busy morning.My friend was a young lonely man simply christened Brother, a poetry freak unemployed like I was; a comforter who shielded me from it without knowing. Writing was his wife; he had a fire-child inside that needed fulfilment by pen and paper. His family's history was sad, he told it to me in bits and pieces and between intervals of days, sometimes months. I confess I knew very little about him, he talked little and wrote more. My friendship with Brother got much stronger because I loved poetry even though I was not able to excellently express myself in its written terms/form. Brother's poetry was like the resilient music of a bird airborne over a troubled land, chirping on top of its individual pain and struggle. He to me appeared like God's legislator, for hadn't Percy Bysshe written that 'Poets are the un-acknowledged legislators of the world.'I visited Brother to wish him a happy thirtieth birthday. I found him relaxed in his shabby room but his face was not in that celebration mood at all.'I am getting old and this is not a proper job, see,' he said, his voice a bit watered down by self-pity. His sullen lips twitched as of someone under a great desire to talk but the words were just being pulled back by a stronger reaction he could not understand. I could not understand either. He looked at me for a moment, searching for an assurance before he blinked twice and then opened his mouth.'I have dreams Kenny, to drive a beautiful car, own a house in the low-density suburbs and an office in town and find a beautiful lady to marry like what other buddies of our age are doing.'He looked at me.'Life is unfair Brother but one day our day is going to come, alright?' I said and still felt my words had fallen emptily like an insufficient salve upon his wretchedness. I fixed my eyes on the empty pots and plates scattered on the floor. I went on, 'Those buddies are not earnest, and we can't imitate dishonest people, no matter how rich they are.'Brother said nothing, twitched his lips before he locked them in silence again.His eyes sullenly gobbled as if at a tapestry of his wasted YOUTH. The Ghetto was nothing but a community of empty shirts/dresses, littered dust streets, slapdash empty, awkward houses overstuffed with hunger, misery and struggle, and lots of toilets which got more visitors because of the cholera outbreak; and hunger and indigestion the people's daily meal.But I did not want to weep too much for ourselves. The people in the Ghetto carried a peculiar beauty they did not know about which existed underneath the hunger-tortured pigskin of their faces, a light beneath the unshed tears in their eyes and wisdom in their soft-spoken words. I did not want to pity them too much because I knew they had a strength which lurked in their silence like a hidden time-bomb.Brother's room had a 'writing corner' where there was a desk and chair both weighed down by books and manuscripts lying one over another like mating frogs. From a certain flat file on the desk 'PUBLISHED MATERIAL' he quickly drew out an old poem. I did not read the entire poem but it had a date on which it was published and the name of the magazine.'How did you feel when you first saw it in the magazine?' I asked him. He looked at me and said, 'All I know is how it feels to fight for one's spirit even when the risk is too deep to bear or when there seems to be no reward or food on the table for it. I felt identified, that's all.'He cleared his throat and went on.'I used to feel functionless because of an absence of aesthetic appreciation, goodwill, and opportunity. I am like a shiny young bream swimming from the gloomy waters of life and striving towards the shores of glory yet it seems God is not even willing to save me from the approaching storms and goldfish-eating sharks. It is very sad indeed.'I handed Brother the poem.'Thank you,' he said, shifting a little on his stool.Afterwards, we talked about other issues before I left him and went back to my one-roomed house a short distance away from where I watched during the sizzling days people hauling up their burdens like blessings on their shoulders, school-less children running around the shabby Ghetto houses which blind-walled and nurtured them into thugs, murderers, rapists; hungry mothers walking to the shops where there was nothing to purchase, fathers sweating as they wrestled with the choice of whether or not to sweat it again, sell a little more of their energy so that their families can feed.The dusty streets were as busy as a vast 'open-air' factory where the manufactured good was just illusive; yet none could stumble on it except thin traces of its scent being plundered to impenetrable destinations. The youths had surrendered their virtues and brains to the preoccupying mathematics of daily living and, whether they liked it or not, they assumed fixed countenances of disquiet and the mortification of having to grow old while getting smaller and smaller in terms of hope, unable to dream supreme dreams of youth. I understood the language of their eyes, of their bodies and their environment of contradictions and crucified silence more than I understood the language they spoke. Their humanity seemed beyond any verbal manifestation. In silence they carried erect burning spears of a sexual revolution which the elders never deeply understood. They walked, talked, and lived eye-to-eye with the quest for a certain physical satisfaction.***One day I boarded an overloaded bus to the city center. The music in the bus sometimes drowned the voices and only receded when the driver came to a roadblock. As the bus moved I realized that the windows were closed. I leaned over the two passengers to my left to open the closest window but the window could not open because it was obsolete, stuck in its rusty rail permanently. I was one of those passengers who were standing in the crowded aisle, one of those that were asthmatic to crowded places. We were standing too tight to each other that there was no space for breathing. Soon I began to feel vertigo. Before I knew it my feet melted and I swayed then sank down into oblivion.I found myself perspiring and sitting on the passenger's seat where a certain young lady had been. Other men had removed my shirt and shoes and were urging other passengers to give me some fresh air. The conductor looked very worried. The driver had slowed down the bus. Children wondered what the hell was going on.'How are you feeling now?' she was the first to ask me.I looked around. Other passengers were looking at me with long faces that seemed to wonder if I was hungry or had epilepsy.'You fainted,' she said it harmlessly. But I was shocked.'Are you feeling okay now?' another gentleman asked.I stammered, trying to look fine but I was not. My head was heavy like a ball of steel. What had happened to me? Some dudes at the back seat were stifling their laughter after one of them whispered, 'Its hunger.'Every one in the bus looked at me and others kept asking how I was feeling. Even when I got off the bus in town I could not tell why it happened.As I crossed the street I remembered the moon-face of an angel who had given me a place to sit in the bus when I fainted. She had gone with a piece of me and I wished I could see her again and thank her.Late afternoon after roaming in the city I stood debating with myself outside a certain supermarket where there were lots of people in a queue who wanted to purchase bread, one of the scarce commodities in the city. I was thinking of joining the queue but also I wanted to go home and my money was short.The sun was fast giving in to the dark umbra covering across the sky. It was in this moment of indecision that suddenly in front of me a certain cleanly dressed lady accidentally dropped the fresh bread which she had just bought. She had been in the queue for a long time. The loaf slipped off before she could wrap it in her plastic bag. It lay in the dust, sneering at her. She looked around shyly, undecided. She caught me looking at her. It was like she hit me right between the eyes with something that the young woman who helped me in the bus hit me with. But hunger knew no beauty; she picked it up and quickly vanished behind the shadows of stranded commuters.It was busy in the heart of the city. It was rush hour. At my back there was another young woman' waiting for transport to go home. A young man who marched her in terms of fashion approached her. He wore colourful casual jeans, an extra large 50 CENT T-shirt and tan Caterpillar shoes which had chains for laces; a Samsung D780 Dual SIM glittered like a magic box in his right hand. As he talked to her his hands waved up and down until he pointed to a Peugeot parked across the road. She smiled.Big buses and mini buses zipped in and out of the ranks filled with exhausted passengers. I saw them walking across the road to the car together. He drove the car away revving soon after she jumped in. The next morning we were to wake up to the news of a woman robbed, raped and murdered near some shops in Glen View.I went to Brother's house that evening and found him sitting quietly in his 'writing corner'. When he was in this state usually it was like he was possessed by some spirit. I sat on a bench like someone wiling to listen, to hear, to share with him all that rock of anger blocking him in his throat; I was as usual willing to be his audience, to grab whatever there was that could free us from the shame of our failure to realize what we both carried inside. Brother looked me with very oppressing, analyzing and dreadful eyes that told me stories yet to be told. His lips shook and he began.'It was in 1990. My father sat for a long time by the window in his office, looking outside, at the birds in the trees, at the people walking by. Suddenly, car tyres screech outside the office, people yell, motorists hoot; obviously, an accident behind the offices had happened again. It was Friday, and it was such a day when the Devil baked human bodies in an oven of beer and pleasure and creamed them with the pus of death. My father shrugged his shoulders, disappointed; nevertheless, he picked up his jacket and called it a day.The kombi kindly drops him right in his area and he hurries home, patting a copy of the Herald against his thigh as he move like a hero towards his quarters of joy. Nomalanga, six years old, was my sister and I was only thirteen years old then. We were in the dining room and mother had left a delicious smell in the kitchen where she was baking some cakes for our lunch the next day at school. Now she was in the bedroom, doing some work known only to her.When father comes into the house he could tell things are not okay between Nomalanga who was sprawled on the floor fiddling with a ball pen in her hand and me sadly staring at the writing pad on the sofa. I had some homework I wanted to do but naughty Nomalanga made sure she had my pen to herself and mom could never do anything to settle things between. Things like this needed father to solve. She already had it in her little head, the writing habit, my little sister Nomalanga. O Noma! We had been fighting over the pen and as usual I had given up. Nomalanga jumped in joy when she saw father coming in.'Dad, dad,' she calls. 'Hey little darling,' father says and opens his arms for her to jump in. He dangles her in his arms and carries her to the sofa. He sits down, looks at me who hadn't budged with his appearance at all. I am wearing an incensed face, un-blinking and defiant eyes.'Hie, sonny,' father says but I remain downcast. Father then authoritatively says, 'I said hie, what's the matter?'Father's voice always frightened me so I opened my mouth and reported, 'She took my pen. I have homework. My teacher will beat me up tomorrow if I don't do my homework.'Nomalanga is indifferently fiddling with my pen and scribbling something on her hand. She looks at father, smiles and says, 'Look, dad, I write very well than Brother.' She shows father what she had drawn on her hand. 'A bird,' she says.Father laughs but he knows how to play it the diplomatic way when dealing with Nomalanga.'Can I borrow your pen for a moment?' he says as he beckons his hand towards the pen in her hand. At first Nomalanga winces backwards and doesn't want to give away the pen but then knowing that father is a strict man, she reluctantly hands over the pen to him but when father makes a gesture to pass the pen on to me she screams like a burning butterfly and furiously retrieves the pen from his hand. Her action turns me morose, my face fall apart and eventually I begin to cry.'I wanted to laugh but Brother went on.'Father give her back the pen and pats me on the back as he stands up and whispers to me, 'Don't worry.' He goes to the bedroom singing, 'Pam-pa-pa-p-ava-v-a Pam... Should-I-say-yes, should-I-say-no?' Nomalanga follows him to the bedroom, shouting behind him. 'Dad, dad, give me paper to write on.' She had just used up and torn away all my note books; father just grabs a blank paper from somewhere in the bedroom's book-rack and gives it to Nomalanga.Mother's voice is low, sweet, unworried by all the sounds blowing in the house.Father goes forward to look for a spare pen in one of his drawers. He finds one and walks from the bedroom to the dining room, singing his should-I-say-yes-should-I-say-no song. I am miserably sitting in tears on the sofa, still clutching my books and writing pad, without a pen. It was on this very evening that I began to view the pen as an important tool in my life. I now see myself crying for my pen, a certain pen in this world. It was unfortunate that when the next day came father died in a car accident and suddenly life for the whole family took to the steep. Father's death caused total disintegration. The home and property was seized by family relatives and Nomalanga went to live with Uncle at a certain farm a few miles away. I grew up here in the Ghetto where my mother was dumped by her in-laws and is now engaged in night shift business. For me now life is a fiendish rogue that haunts the tired terrains of my memories.'His voice died and my stomach began to complain. I had no time to digest his story.It was too dark when I left Brother and went to my one-roomed house a short distance beyond the Dandemutande Dam.As I walked home the ghetto boomed around me with an exhibitionistic night in which sordid things happened. Sixteen to eighteen year old girls slithered in and out of shanty brothels to meet their bosses who drove those sporty cars and thundered out mutinous, obtrusive lyrics. This was their employment. Some of the local guys could be seen competing in this game of sex, money and power. Uderneath this liveliness barked rhythms of fatal desire. From somewhere, one or two houses away, I heard screams likely to have been of a girl muffled under the heavy weight of a father-businessman-politician-church leader-AIDS-sucking-fucker! On to my left there was this incomplete building, part of a clinic project onto which the MP only adds a brick when election time comes. I didn't want to think about the MP, I wanted to go home and think about Brother's story.Back in my one room I gazed at a picture on the wall of my mind, of workers putting up an extension to the existing house of hunger. I felt poor, betrayed and I knew Brother was probably feeling the same where he was. That night I slept on empty dreams and I woke up very weak the next day. For the whole day I had no appetite for food, no desire to go any further beyond the gate, saw no need to see anyone or talk to anyone. I didn't want to see Brother; the wounds inflicted on my mind by his story were still fresh. I stayed indoors, tried siesta, woke up, slept, and woke up again until I restlessly drifted to the shores of sunset. My thoughts magnetized the air around me and I began to see everything in policy formats. My being unemployed was somebody's policy. The type of my life was also somebody's policy. My clothes, their shabbiness, the hunger in the Ghetto, Brother's daily worries, the deadly night life in the ghetto, the untreated water we drink from the taps and the cholera.Still the undying voices of people outside my house brought to my ears details of an un-stoppable quest for fulfilment at whatever cost. Life just hung everywhere like a nameless fruit over-ripening towards a nameless decomposition. My candle burnt like a flood-light that swallowed all shadows of tomorrow.Brother visited me at exactly seven that evening. Brother looked at me, from top to bottom, with squint eyes before he sat on the only chair I owned.'I have been to the shops. The prices of cooking oil, sugar, mealie meal, all things have gone up, for the fifth big time in a month,' he said.I looked down at the floor to avoid his penetrative eyes.I did not open my mouth. He went on.'I have an idea. What about border jumping into Botswana or Joza?''What for Brother?' I asked. 'Survival,' he said.'Brother, are you out of your mind?''Nop!''Brother... this is ridiculous. If you get caught you can go to jail, plus it's dangerous. The Limpopo River is always teeming with crocodiles if you decide to cross to South Africa illegally.'Brother rose to his feet suddenly.'If I don't see you tomorrow take good care of yourself.'I thought he was joking but alas he made it to the door.'You are not serious Brother. Why don't you sit down and let us talk about some other alternatives, eh?''I will find alternatives beyond the Limpopo.'And he left.I closed the door and buried myself under a blanket. A darkly cloud slowly hung over my eyes and it was after half an hour of deep thinking when sleep overtook me and a beautiful stretch of land began to unfold. A scenic preview of the future... Happy families and well fed children galloped in joy around their beautiful homes; harmony ruled in the bedrooms, in the churches, in the House of Assembly, in the streets, everywhere people socialised without the daily worry of having to grope for a living in empty darkness.I liked this world. I liked the beautiful children who came to me and begged me, 'Kenny can you make kites for us! Make kites for us!' I liked the joy of playing with the kids free from the shooting guns of hunger, disease and abuse. The men and women in this land did not know of any injustice, of any segregation, social, political, economic, or gender-based. Instead they sweated together, enjoyed together, cried together, and struggled together to build a one country. They spoke one language of survival. Their government was the government of the whole people. The person whom they respected and feared was one. Only God. And only God. Nobody else, nothing else, transcended this truth. No man, no animal, was supposed to take their freedom and gormandize it for self-fattening goals. If there was commotion, the women and men, together formed a shield that blocked the enemy's spears from reaching their children.I liked to play with the kids on the lawns. A short big boy –SBB came running at me and he hit me in the face. I fell to the ground heavily and yelled as if in pain, 'Wow, wow, wow.' Then I feigned crying. SBB came over to me and knelt beside me; he reached out his hand to me and pulled me up, begging me to stop crying. I told him I was not crying but he said I should stop crying so that he can also stop crying. Tears were a symbol of someone in pain. Pain needs to quell by love. They did not like pain. They felt love. And SBB was transferring such love to me. I grabbed him into the crook of my hands and screamed just to show him I was happy for him, that I was not crying. I liked this world... this beautiful, innocent world. And I knew Brother would like it too. Yet it was not there the next morning.When I met Brother he told me of a different dream he had.'Mine was a nightmare,' he said.'I was in the middle of a hailstorm when a man called me from afar. I walked over to him and the man stretched his hand to greet me. This is what the man said to me: You are looking for me daily yet I am with you, within you. I am you. You grope but can't find me. So much dirt you absorb from outside yourself while inside you there is so much beauty if only you had eyes to look without fear. I am not God. I'm you. And the man disappeared.The scene changed suddenly and I saw a place of nobility. I was being crowned king, and just when I was standing up to wave my hands in joy to the crowd the dream disappeared. So I am totally flummoxed,' Brother said as he looked at me deeply worried. Brother, as usual, abruptly stood up and left. He stayed home that day and so did I.I did not see Brother for some days after we shared our dreams/ nightmares. I visited his home but he was nowhere to be seen. His neighbor told me Brother seemed to have found a house somewhere else because he no longer came back home at all. His words, I will find alternatives beyond the Limpopo, came alive in my mind. ***The other day I went to the city center hoping to find something that pays earnest money but nothing came by. I ambled on and on like I was being blown by the wind.'Hey mister, hie.'I turned around.'Hie.' I said, waited if the man had something more important to say or ask. He seemed to be lost but then he was excited and smiling. He extended his hand and I was caught again extending mine to greet him. Three ladies milled around me, exhibiting some foreign currency in their hands so that I read their business. They kept chanting lowly, 'Cash iripo, ma Rands, ma US$, ma pula' {Zim-dollar plenty, if you have some Rands, US$ and Pula}I waited for a few more seconds before he spoke again.'I buy Rands, green-backs,' he said.'I don't have any,' I told him straightaway.I looked at him and felt sorry for the way he grinned at me.I told him, 'Please I don't have any money better leave me alone,' and actually I left him open-mouthed.I walked down the street until I decided to turn off and walked towards the rank. I was 100% bored. The pavement I walked on was busy and congested. The streets across were just sick with people in different dresses, people of different backgrounds, missions, colors, ideas and sexualities.I kept walking towards the rank where I saw from afar a crowd of stranded commuters. Different workers in different suits and different tattered clothes waited to be ferried to their different suburbs and Ghettos by these kombis which charged us exorbitant moneys.Brother's father's death set the family's downfall inter-twined with the political events that prevailed. Brother led his own life in the ghetto. His Uncle did not live up to the expectation that he would protect Nomalanga and send her to school at the farm where he worked. The demon of neglect impounded Nomalanga and some other young women to the beer halls.When Brother later found out the kind of life Nomalanga was living, it was far too late. He told me the story as if he was reading it from a patch of dry skin; picking up words, dropping some, all in a bid to tell the unspeakable. Now fifteen years old, Nomalanga had grown up in close relationship with two wayward friends at the farm whose real names were less known but they called themselves Katie and Tasha. Katie, seventeen years old, was tall and dressed almost daily in the same shoulder-less blouse and a mini-skirt with marching light-weight shoes. Tasha, eighteen, was short, dark faced and liked to smoke ganja. Tonight, like any other night, they were in the Signal Night Club as men sniffed around them like hungry bulldogs. Tasha was speaking to a certain man in a corner. Katie was silently swaying to the music playing in the night club. Nomalanga sat on a stool closely adjacent to her friends. The three young ladies stood talking like parentless, history-less girl comrades in a war they never would control.There was another man listening near Tasha. The man had been trying to engage Tasha into conversation but the two seemed to be misunderstanding each other.'When it does not rain the world blames the woman.' Tasha said. 'Why a woman? Why me?' At first Tasha's words carried no meaning to her friends, no context at all until the man next to Tasha shouted: 'It's your fault. Bitch! Look I am sick and it's your fault!'The argument became hot and other revellers close by began milling around Tasha and the infuriated man.The man raised his fist to hit Tasha but Katie and Nomalanga moved in too quickly and parried it before it crashed on Tasha's forehead. Conflicts like these had seen Nomalanga, Katie and Tasha ever bonded together like blood sisters. They shielded their friend against the attacker who looked furious, violent and wanted to hurl another fist at Tasha but Nomalanga caught it too fast again before she hit back the man hard in the face. He fell down, groaned. Nomalanga got hold of an empty bottle and crashed it on the man's head. He vomited all the thick African beer he had been drinking and collapsed. The club bouncers suddenly appeared and asked Tasha what had happened.'That fool, always blaming women for his AIDS!' she shouted and spat at the man on the floor.The bouncers acted quickly and pulled the man outside the Signal Nite Club and left him on the pavement to regain his consciousness. And Bob Marley and the Wailers wailed from the gigantic speakers pitched in every corner of the popular Signal Nite Club like nothing had happened. Three little birds...Later, Nomalanga was the first to be picked up for night-long sexual aerobics; she was driven in a SUV Pajero to a guest lodge a few kilometres away from the farm run by a pot-bellied, minister-like man who portrayed an air of menacing confidentiality and non-existent accountability.Tasha and Katie decided to leave the night club for their domestic quarters at around midnight. It had been a fruitless adventure at the nite club. They had not been asked out.On their way home they talked about how lucky Nomalanga had been tonight when a pair of gum-booted shadows, one taller and dreadlocked, and the other dwarfed, a bit nervous but never exhibiting it too much, evanesced from the dark emptiness of the night. Apparitions... they had never seen ghosts in their lives.'Stop where you are, ladies. Don't move. Freeze. Ok. And you girl,' he said pointing to Katie, 'come over here.'Katie saw herself standing before a dreadlocked Goliath and she was a David caught unprepared without a pebble.Tasha and Katie had heard about the latest story of the war veterans coming to the farm to boot Lamek the farm owner out and take over the farm but they had dismissed the story as a circus. Such stories had been said to have taken place at some other farms owned by whites in the country of Zimbabwe. It was rumored that the war vets would enrich the farm workers whom they said were being given a raw deal by the white farmers.'Quick,' he barked; his dreadlocks indifferently shook sideways like long stubs of soot.'Hey, quickly!' he barked again.Katie pulled herself towards the man who immediately seized her by the hand.'Where you going?''Home.''Where are you coming from?''From our fiend's house situated beyond the Signal Night Club, in Area 6,' Katie lied with the hope that the lie would set them free. Area 6 was one of the most popular residential areas situated at the outskirts of the farm.Katie breathed faster. She looked at the pair of men and then at Tasha, then at the ground and before she knew it the men grabbed the two ladies into the bushes. Where they were taken there were five other men who talked highly of the land as belonging to them and as one reason why they had to fight the war of liberation.Katie and Tasha, regardless of the labels society had given them, knew any one would condemn them to hell for standing up against these men but reality was that after they were dragged into the bushes, the gang of men undressed them, accused them of supporting the white farmers and whipped them, shamed them, and used them as sexual playthings. Needle-deep agony as that of skin being slit open charred through Katie's and Tasha's vaginas as they were forced into unprotected sadistic sex. Their dreams of ever recovering from the already planted trauma of poverty in their lives were shattered that night. The painful experience further rendered their hold on life traumatic. Their womanhood was gang-eaten and the seeds fell from grace to the swampy garbage of man's politics whose penis hit through their flesh like nails, biting like a cobra. After the bone-shaking, spirit-devouring, body-shaming abuse Katie passed out and Tasha spent all night under the heavy weight of a war veteran who kept reminding her that the country and its soil was theirs and these white people who owned the farms were going to pay for it willy-nilly and that she could marry him after the farm invasion and when the land is given back to the people he would make her happy.It was a long night of pain for Nomalanga too. In the room there was a poorly dressed and smelly double-bed, a chair, a creaky table in the middle and a bucket in the corner. There was a bad smell coming from the rotting tube-like plastics in the bucket. Outside, there were disco sounds coming from the multiple beer halls and music bars situated at the outskirts of the farmland. The man had bucks she could tell by his flashy clothes, the pompous look in his eyes, and by the way he harangued incessantly about the bank especially his foreign account, about his next schedules of meetings with the other political ministers and business captains of Zimbabwe, etc. He sighed and then said, 'Tell me do you have a father and mother, brothers or sisters?' He sipped his beer, and then lit a Madison red cigarette soon afterwards.'I don't know,' Nomalanga said.He guffawed. 'What do you mean?' he said.Nomalanga didn't reply. It was too long a story to start telling it now. She was reluctant to tell the story, the long sad story. He fished out his cell phone and looked at the time. He started to drink his alcohol. He looked at her and said, 'I am so lonely.'He had a twist of brown hashish in his pocket and he asked her if she minded pumping it with him. She shook her head to say 'no'.'What's your friend's name, the fierce one at the club?''Tasha she's the one who had a fierce argument with that man.''Oh I remember she is a very fierce woman.'There was a dim candle light lingering in her memory, a budding fire which had been ignited by his question 'Tell me do you have a father and mother, brothers or sisters?' He forced her take a single pull at the pipe, then a second, third... Swiftly history came throwing muddy stones at her. Her mind drifted away. The room began to suffocate. Her mind rotated and rotated, double-rotated. The world altered. He quickly budged from where he was sitting and came to stand in front of her, began to undress himself, eyes robot-red, muscles tensed. It seemed he wanted to give an annual speech from his ministry but alas! 'Ready?' he asked her.He tore away her clothes, jumped at her like a rabid father jumping at his naked daughter. The next morning she woke up in shivers and sick again with a viral disease, sick of her own defencelessness which haunted her like chosen fate.* * *This morning it's a bit cold and windy in the city.I walk along First Street, my mind fogged up with different views about where to go and hunt for work. I have not seen Brother for weeks now. He probably has found work in the industries. Maybe he's in jail. I have looked for him all over the ghetto day and night but have not located him. Neighbours don't even have a clue about his whereabouts. I can't forget about Brother, the stories he told me about his mother, sister, father, just can't. One day somewhere in the city I will find him. I was certain one day Brother will meet his sister and mother again. Now that he was nowhere to be found, I could see and hear him talk in the silence of my mind. 'Why? Why? Hunger continues to ransack our souls. Why?' 'I will find alternatives on the road.'The city is like a home of widowed and orphaned ghosts. Faces bypassing me in the street are smeared with an insipidness too wearisome to look at; they look at me like they want to dig out the very last small piece left of me now. I watch the gray spectacle around me concluding itself into a show business of hunger. Elderly beggars have awoken from their beds of flattened cardboard boxes in the nooks of the disused stinking council buildings. Street children snatch food from the unsuspecting avant-garde ladies cat-walking in and out of the expensive food outlets, fashion shops and hair saloons, blind beggars sing religious songs on the pavements to attract alms, their voices add music to the already discontent aura in the city as their silver plates ring loudly with each coin tossed by the passers-by. I question why things are looking the way they are, why God made some people rich and others poor, blind, crippled, and beggars.I try by all means to belong, at least to the group of people around me but it is difficult.I walk, my head rocking this and that way, and sometimes talking to myself, looking ahead as if my eyes are casting out for a sight that could satisfy my quest. I reach the foot bridge and wait there by the balcony like I am waiting for a particular person.After I leave the flyover and walk past the bakeries which are to my left from which coming is this slow sad music that's like the scent of a fresh delicious promise of an extended marriage with hunger, slow sad music which suddenly remind me of Brother whose poems I read almost every day... I miss him so much, an artist lonely at heart.I cross the street, my eyes look at the woman dressed in very opulent clothes that leave some parts of her body uncovered, and she looks at me as if she were reading a letter she read many years ago.I forfeit the few dollars in my pocket to buy the Saturday paper from a book stall. I read as I amble on to the Africa Freedom Park along Second Street. Everything is serene around this place. At least serene though it looked like a place where demons had played football, like the aftermath of my shattered dreams.The grim news in the paper gave me that 'not-yet-uhuru' feeling. Weird things were happening around the world, people eating each other, lovers killing each other, leaders threatening each other with war, women and children dying in war torn zones.I sit on a lonely bench in the Park and carry on poring over my newspaper. A man, dry lipped, weak looking but book loaded, comes to sit on the same park bench beside me. The bold bar-line on the centre fold read, 'Bakers Increase Price of Bread by 1000%.' And a certain filler was captioned 'Fuel price skyrocket as supply dwindles'The dry lipped, weak looking but book loaded man half-stealthily cranes his head to read the headline also, and then he shakes his head and says to me, 'A time is coming when we will pay with our lives, not with money, for the basic commodities. Corruption will cut the leaders away from the people in Africa. Power will corrode communication. Violence will be the only dish of hot soup hurled upon an already poor people. The violence will come in the form of abnormal price hikes, and the empty gimmicks that try to justify the doings of unscrupulous fathers who abuse power to the detriment of the masses. Look over there.'The man points to a group of people watching a drama between a vendor and the municipal police. I feel dizzy when I notice across the street ten beautifully uniformed municipal policemen beating up a vendor with black batter sticks and hell-sent kicks. The vendor, a youth, tries to run away but he is grabbed by the belt, and his back is slashed and chopped by batter sticks as fruits and cigarettes scatter all over the dirty tarmac and pavement. Meanwhile, like others in the park, I have stood up and am watching the sweating municipal police throw the young man to the back of their van cramped with seized fruits, vegetables and vendors. The women who are illegally selling cell phone re-charge cards on another street try to run away but are captured by other members of the municipal police in civilian clothes and thrown into the van. The scene concludes itself with people dispersing quietly. And that is that; people have simply watched and then dispersed as the municipal police truck headed for the Town House burdened its human loot. The man walks away.I leave the Park and wander away. A young woman with the face of Africa looks at me so dearly I wonder why. The face, oval, glinting, golden, kind, and intelligent, summarized all about her and there were no loose ends whatsoever. I looked at the young woman as she walked by and disappeared without a backward glance. She reminds me of one of the women whom I have met somewhere or whom Brother have described to me sometime back. Anyway, I fold my paper and head southwards to the heavy industries where I hope to spend the whole of today playing draught with other redundant men as we wait for employers who needed loading and unloading helpers.Cost of Courage was written by Beaven Tapureta.Copyright Beaven Tapureta 2008. More Beaven Tapureta:Beaven TapuretaBudding Writers Association of Zimbabwe read less
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