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Certain Winds from the
South 3
something wrong with them ... Or how is it we cannot hold
our men? Allah, how is it?
'Twenty years ago. Twenty years, perhaps more than twenty years ... perhaps more than twenty years and Allah,
please, give me strength to tell Hawa.
'Or shall I go to the market now and then tell her when I
come back? No. Hawa, Hawa, now look at how you are
stretched down there like a log! Does a mother sleep like this?
Hawa, H-a-a-w-a! Oh, I shall not leave you alone ... and how
can you hear your baby when it cries in the night since you die
when you sleep?
'Listen to her asking me questions! Yes, it is broad daylight. I
thought you really were dead. If it is cold, draw your blanket
round you and listen to me for I have something to tell you.
'Hawa, Issa has gone south.
'And why do you stare at me with such shining eyes. I am
telling you that Issa is gone south.
'And what question do you think you are asking me? How
could he take you along when you have a baby whose navel
wound has not even healed yet?
'He went away last night.
'Don't ask me why I did not come and wake you up. What
should I have woken you up for? Listen, Issa said he could not
stay here and just watch you and Fuseni starve.
'He is going south to find work, and ... Hawa, where do
you think you are getting up to go? Issa is not at the door
waiting for you. The whole neighbourhood is not up yet, so do
not let me shout ... and why are you behaving like a baby?
Now you are a mother and you must decide to grow up ...
where are you getting up to go? Listen to me telling you this.
Issa is gone. He went last night because he wants to catch the
government bus that leaves Tamale very early in the morning.
So ...
'Hawa, ah-ah, are you crying? Why are you crying? That
your husband has left you to go and work? Go on weeping, for
he will bring the money to look after me and not you ...
'I do not understand, you say? Maybe I do not ... See, now
you have woken up Fuseni. Sit down and feed him and listen
to me.
'Listen to me and I will tell you of another man who left his newborn child and went away.
'Did he come back? No, he did not come back. But do not ask
me any more questions for I will tell you all.
'He used to go and come, then one day he went away and
never came back. Not that he had to go like the rest of them...
'Oh, they were soldiers. I am talking of a soldier. He need
not have gone to be a soldier. After all, his father was one of the
richest men of this land. He was not the eldest son, that is true,
but still there were so many things he could have done to look
after himself and his wife when he came to marry. But he
would not listen to anybody. How could he sit by and have
other boys out-do him in smartness?
'Their clothes that shone and shone with pressing ... I say,
you could have looked into any of them and put khole under
your eyes. And their shoes, how they roared! You know
soldiers for yourself. Oh, the stir on the land when they came
in from the south! Mothers spoke hard and long to daughters
about the excellencies of proper marriages, while fathers hurried through with betrothals. Most of them were afraid of
getting a case like that of Memunat on their hands. Her father
had taken the cattle and everything and then Memunat goes
and plays with a soldier. Oh, the scandal she caused herself
then!
'Who was this Memunat? No, she is not your friend's
mother. No, this Memunat in the end ran away south herself.
We hear she became a bad woman in the city and made a lot of
money.
'No, we do not hear of her now. She is not dead either, for
we hear such women usually go to their homes to die, and she
has not come back here yet.
'But us, we are different. I had not been betrothed.
'Do you ask me why I say "we"? Because this man was your
father. Ah-ah, you open your mouth and eyes wide? Yes, my
child, it is of your father I am speaking.
'No, I was not lying when I told you that he died. But keep
quiet and listen. He was going south to get himself a house for
married soldiers.
'No, it was not that time he did not come back. He came
here, but not to fetch me.
'He asked us if we had heard of the war.
To be continued |
