Act One:
[A Court in a European capital, presided by a judge listening attentively to the prosecutor reading the charges against the defendant, Karim Fawaz.]
Prosecutor: Your Honor, the defendant, Mr Karim Fawaz, is a repeat offender who has admitted in writing to breaking the Emergency Public Law 1278, Sections 1 through 7, and 1282, Section 1 through 9.
The Judge (turning to Fawaz): You again, Mr Fawaz? Didn’t you learn a lesson from your last punishment? How long did you serve the last time?
Fawaz (stands): Four and a half months, your honor.
The Judge (shaking his head): You’re an intelligent man, why don’t you respect the law even if you disagree with it?
Fawaz: I obey a higher law your honor, the law of conscience. Nothing that collides with that law has priority even if it has the entire justice system behind it.
The Judge (to the prosecutor): Proceed. Read more of this article »
(A Sierre Leonean hangout near the nation’s capital)
Red Apple is not just another grocery store – it’s a way of life for Africans in the Washington Metropolitan area. It’s situated at Langley Crossing shopping center in Maryland, a heavily immigrants populated area. Red Apple is owned by Asians – Chinese immigrants with a mostly minority work force from third world nations of North, Central and South America and Africa. This is a place where Africans, especially Sierra Leoneans, come to shop, hangout and gossip. Here, one can give and take updates on past, present and future events. One can hardly see inside the store from outside because its dirty windows are papered with posters and flyers of announcements of past and future events. Many, in fact, are several years old. Inside, shoppers, mostly Africans, crisscross its busy aisles, to buy oggiri[1] and kaenda[2], to buy maggi[3] and peppe.[4]
The checkout clerks at the cash registers are all Chinese. Immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean and South America make up the rest of the store’s work force – mostly stock clerks and meat cutters. Tall poles are welded onto the store carts to prevent shoppers from taking, riding and abandoning them in the parking lot of a huge apartment complex, a block down the road, nicknamed Little Freetown but known officially as New Hampshire Towers. Its rear balconies are lined with rusted railings caused by years of residents hanging their laundry out to dry. In response, the complex’s management sent a strongly worded letter to its mostly Sierra Leonean residents banning this practice, and continues to send reminders, especially to the “jos cam”[5] residents. In and around the lobbies and parking lots of Little Freetown, the tones and inflections of Krio[6] abound.
Claudia Johnson, a long time resident of Little Freetown, stood by the door of the south tower looking for Rugi, her friend who lives in the north tower. Rugi is slender in shape, but when dressed in a burgundy mini skirt she is fond of, her waist and belly look like half a portion of red apple. It was a hot summer day, and Claudia watched her walk on the sun-lit sidewalk across the towers. Claudia was dressed in a locket-and-lapa, an African outfit that is made of a gara[7] cotton blouse and a wrap-around. She is slightly heavy with over-sized buttocks and she thinks African apparel fits her better. Claudia and Rugi used to be dark in complexion, but are much lighter now having bleached their skin. Traces of their former complexion could only be seen on their knuckles, which are resistant to bleaching. Rugi pushed open the door and beckoned Claudia outside. Read more of this article »
[Set somewhere in a USA east coast barrio.]
Si, si, I knew Father Delgato, some twenty years. But he was here long before that, you know? When this barrio was new, he came then. You ask the old people, they remember. Maybe thirty years back it was. Even twenty years ago this was a different barrio. Different south side, too. Better or worse, I dunno. People was poorer then, maybe more chances today. But back then people was more honest, and less in a hurry. Well, times change, no? Them times gone. An’ priests like Father Delgato, them gone, too.
You know that church on 4th? Si, si…that one all closed up now. That was his. Long time back that was something. Everybody went. Mass, weddings, baptism, funerals, you know. But then, kinda slow like, it died off. Times change. Father Delgato used to hold the Mass anyway. Necesscito, comprendi? Only some of the old people went though. I know, I used to bring my mother. God rest her.
But when I was a kid we’d go every Sunday. Father Delgato, his Mass, easy to understand. Simple stories, simple Spanish. Was just a kid, but even I knew his meaning: some things is right, so do it, an’ some things ain’t, so don’t. My mother, god rest her, said he was a genuino padre. I didn’t know what that meant. Now I do. Read more of this article »
She smiled as she remembered the night it all began. He was so handsome and danced like there was no tomorrow. The music played softly in the background and the full moon cast a spell on the slow moving tightly embraced couple. That was truly a night designed especially for lovers, life, love and laughter, she thought.
“You have the sweetest and deepest brown eyes I have ever seen on anyone,” he said looking intently into her shy eyes, and gently running his fingers up her exposed back. She was pleased and felt a flush of pleasure spread on her face. “The way you say it I could almost believe you,” she said softly.
“Believe me, I speak true,” he whispered into her ear.
“Is this what you say to all inexperienced farm girls like me?” she quipped feeling suddenly daring.
“Life generally gives fortunate people three things, a good heart, a good mind and a brilliant smile but you life gave one more – the most beautiful eyes in the universe,” he said in an intimate mesmerizing tone.
He smiled that cute smile of his- his gold tooth glinted in the soft light and she felt like heaven was here and now and all that mattered was this precious moment.
“O thank you Emily for lending me the evening gown,” she thought as she buried her face against the cashmere dinner jacket he wore ever so elegantly.
“No! She said,” breathlessly. Read more of this article »
Posted in Fiction, South Africa
For eight years and four months she waited for him. They were married for four years when she and her daughter emigrated to America. Her husband couldn’t come with them, for his request was not approved. “Some complications,” the consul had explained. “Some complications.”
Josephine remembered how her heart sank when the consul gave them the news. She remembered staring blankly at the man who wouldn’t grant her husband permission to go to the land where they say milk and honey literally pour down from the sky. She thought she saw the stranger’s green eyes penetrating her flesh before uttering indifferently that her husband was not qualified. The stranger’s skin was pale. So pale that she wondered if he had any blood running in his veins. He said that when her father filed the papers she and Emille were not married; she would have to file for him once she got to America. How her heart throbbed when she heard this!
To think that she must separate from her man so soon, after only a few years of marriage.
She was not used to looking at these kinds of people in the eyes, for they seemed too uppity and too intimidating with all their wealth and yellow skin and supple hair and eyes the color of thirsty grass or even the color of the sky when it’s in its happiest state, but that Friday morning, sitting in a square windowless room, she raised her face and pierced the stem of the man’s eyes with her own, hoping he would read the “shame on you and how could you be so heartless?” message in her eyes and grant her husband the visa. Her three-year-old daughter, Marguerite, clutched her hand and buried her tiny sugar-brown face in her mother’s skirt. Read more of this article »
The Nile that divided his land also united it, he believed. If it were possible he would make his life a bridge between north and south. Perhaps blood, his own included, would continue to flow beneath this bridge before finally the clear water of peace and life would wash the blood and bloodstain away. There would be celebration at the confluence of cross and crescent as at the marriage of the White Nile and the Blue Nile. He carried a simple message: the story of a rock that had become a shrine and site of a contest for religious space and gods.
The holy man settled under the shelter of an acacia tree to spend the night. He spread a battered old rug on the gravel ground and, facing Mecca, knelt on it and did salat. A strict observer of the tenets of his religion, he prayed, dutifully, five times a day. He sat cross-legged on the rug after prayer. He deferred the gratification of his thirst and hunger, a discipline his unusual asceticism had taught him. It had taught him to defer the gratification of thousands of hungers, tens of thousands of thirsts. He would endure until he reached the remote village, close to the border with the South, in this dry and sparsely populated part of his country. He was nearing the end of his journey.
He was a tall man, lean and very dark, with a long-flowing white beard. Age had wrung his smooth skin into wrinkles. His head was wrapped in a white turban and he wore a flowing white jelabiyah. His sandals of worn brown leather protruded from under the robe. His deep penetrating eyes, filled with piety, appreciated his surroundings, splashed scarlet, everywhere, with sunset. There was serenity all around. He held his Koran close to his heart and recited, softly to himself, suras he had been taught to memorize since the time when his mind was still in its infancy. Read more of this article »
I was nine years old when she sold me into slavery. Not slavery as the world knows it, but an exile that is no less painful. It was the year nineteen eighty-nine. I thrust my scant possessions into an old nylon bag: one chewing stick, one Ankara cloth, a pocket bible and rosary beads that shone like stars when it was dark. I wore my only dress, a colourful frock with short sleeves and kissing pleats that made me trip when I rushed. I put on my lime green slippers, slung the plastic bag across my shoulder and followed my mother on an endless journey.
The soil was drenched with dew. We walked past familiar strangers, past a post office with walls made of cherry mud and rowdy markets where green-bellied flies danced to the rhythm of rottenness. We ran past the church with life-size statues of saints in it and the massive school gates I had stroked longingly but never crossed. We ran. Or rather Mother ran and pulled me roughly after her. When we reached the motor park we stopped so that Mother could tie her scarf tautly across her head and fasten her lappa tight about her portly waist. I watched her, eyes swimming with questions that I dared not ask, wishes that could not be spoken. When she grabbed my hand again I shed my first tear. When we boarded the bus, I shed the next.
“Don’t cry,” Mother said, although her voice lacked maternal warmth and her eyes were like riverine pebbles. “You’ll be alright, you hear? They will feed you. They will send you to school…” Read more of this article »
For many nights when I return, late, I’ve found a donkey lying at the dark corner of a dirty street. One front leg is broken and I am sure he cannot move. Always I make a plan to do something for him, but in the morning I forget. Both my own legs are fine and I have to do a lot of work to survive until my front leg is also broken.
There is something more to this donkey: it bears a remarkable resemblance to Hussani Poweley. Who is Hussani Poweley?
Let me tell you the story of that man.
When I learned the first ten numbers of calculations,
I came to know that Hussani Poweley was a human being. Though it is a study of humanities that enable us to recognize Man, in my case it was mathematics, which enabled me to identify Humans.
My father first tested my studies by asking how many animals were in our courtyard. I replied confidently: Nine. “No there are not nine, my son,” my father retaliated with the same confidence. But according to my learning there were nine, and to prove the truth I started counting on my tender fingers: “Two cows, three goats, one mare, one donkey, one dog, and one Hussani Poweley — so that is nine.” Read more of this article »
Andrzej Adamczewski yearns to transcend Leczyca, a small town in provincial Poland, and become a famous artist in the west. His apprentice, Roman, dreams to escape his poverty by owning his own design studio and a western sports car. Intuitively they blame each other for their frustrations. In reality, their fates are intertwined in small town clashes between old and new Poland. When Ela, an aspiring film director from Lodz, visits Leczyca, Andrzej regains hope. But can hope survive in a town where a mythical devil, Baruta, guards over the people’s fate? Read more of this article »
The hodja was talking with tremendous speed. He was sitting cross legged on a thin cushion, waving the upper part of his body to and fro in harmony with his words as he spoke.
His eyes were fixed on those of the six boys sitting in front of him in two rows, aged between eleven and fifteen, crossed legged as himself, on a worn out wool carpet two meters by six. The only window in the room near to the ceiling was covered with a thick cloth, and the damp patches on the white washed walls suggested that they were below the level of the pavement. All six of the pupils and the hodja wore similar outfits. A long robe covering the whole body; white shirt tightly buttoned up to the neck; baggy trousers; a turban girded on the head, and white socks. The shoes were left by the side of the cracked wooden door.
The long black beard of the hodja was stained with saliva from his foaming mouth which had gushed words nonstop for the last fifteen minutes. The day’s subject was impious women whose sins were enough to get them boiled in the hot waters of hell’s cauldron in the after life. “They show their hair to you, they walk around with bare legs, they call you to sin. The Devil boils the cauldron, the Devil orders them, the Devil orders them, the Devil orders them, to drag you in, to drag you in, to drag you in….”
The door creaked open, letting in the tall figure of a man. The hodja paused suddenly and jumped to his feet in respect. The six turbaned heads turned around to see the new comer. The man picked up a black robe which was hanging from a peg on the wall beside the door. It matched the size of his big body and he wore it over his expensive navy blue suit decorated with a red silk necktie, then he fished out a green scull cap from its pocket and covered his bald head. He stroked his short trimmed white beard as he walked towards the hodja, his penetrating black eyes scanning the young boys. Read more of this article »