1

THE VISITATION OF dread didn’t change our lives in any particular way. Mum went on being harassed at the market. When she moved her stall to another part of the market the thugs would turn up, posing as potential customers. They pestered her and tipped over her things and took her goods without paying. Then they would denounce her, making the most outrageous accusations, and those who wanted to buy provisions from her went somewhere else. Mum came home without selling much. She made very little money.

Dad returned earlier each night. He too was increasingly harassed. He was more worn out than ever and his back hurt so much that some mornings he had difficulty standing up straight. Dad became clumsier. His neck ached all the time. He developed sores on his feet. The skin around his shoulders, the back of his ears, his neck, and all along his spine began to peel away. His skin turned a greyish colour because of the salt and cement that spilled on him from the loads he carried.

For a while I ceased in my wanderings. When I got back from school I stayed outside our compound and played in the streets. In the evenings I ran errands for Mum and Dad, who were too fatigued to do anything. I bought candles, mosquito coils, ogogoro. I warmed the food, washed the plates, cleaned the room. I picked herbs for Dad to use in his secret medicines. I went to herbalists for medicines with which to treat Dad’s back. We all went to bed early and Dad didn’t sit for long hours in his chair.

When the candle burned low, and the rats began to eat, I would put out the light and lie awake in the dark. I would listen to Mum and Dad snoring on the bed. Sometimes when I fell asleep a lighter part of me rose up from my body and floated in the dark. A bright light, which I could not see, but which I could feel, surrounded me. I would be lifted out of my body, would find it difficult to get out through the roof, and would be brought down suddenly by the noise of the rats eating. Then I would sleep soundly.

One night I managed to lift myself out through the roof. I went up at breathtaking speed and stars fell from me. Unable to control my motion, I rose and fell and went in all directions, spinning through incredible peaks and vortexes. Dizzy and turning, swirling and dancing, the darkness seemed infinite, without signs, without markings. I rose without getting to heaven. I soared blissfully and I understood something of the inhuman exultation of flight.

I was beginning to learn how to control my motion that night when something happened and a great flash, which was like a sudden noise, exploded all through me. I seemed to scatter in all directions. I became leaves lashed by the winds of recurrence. I felt myself falling through an unbearable immensity of dark spaces and a sharp diamond agony tugged deep inside my lightness and I tried to re-enter myself but seemed diverted into a tide of total night and I fought and tried to be calm and then I felt myself falling with horrible acceleration into a dark well and just before I hit the bottom I noticed that I was falling into the face of a luminous moon. The whiteness swallowed me and turned to darkness. I burst out screaming. And when I regained myself I heard, for a moment, the rats chewing, my parents snoring, and someone banging relentlessly on the door.

I stayed on the mat for a while without moving. I had a violent headache. Lights spun in my eyes. I felt empty inside. My body felt odd. The knocking continued and interrupted my parents’ breathing. Even the rats fell silent. I got up and went to the door and asked:

‘Who is it?’

Dad turned on the bed. Mum stopped snoring. The person knocking didn’t answer. One of the other tenants from their window, shouted:

‘Who is that knocking? If you don’t want trouble leave now, you hear?’

The knocks came again, gently, like a code that I was expected to understand. I opened the door. Crouching in front of our low wall, his camera dangling from his shoulder, was the photographer. His frightened eyes glowed in the dark.

‘It’s me,’ he said.

I stared at him for a long time. He didn’t move. The neighbour shouted:

‘Who is there that wants to die?’

I opened the door wider for the photographer and, still crouching, he came hurriedly into the room. I lit a candle. I saw that he was bleeding from the head. He sat on my mat, blood dripping down his forehead, past his eyes, and soaking his yellow shirt. He breathed heavily and tried to quieten it. His hair was rough, his face bruised, one eye was swollen, his lower lip was puffed and discoloured.

‘What happened to you?’ I asked.

‘A small thing,’ he said. ‘Nothing that a man cannot bear.’

He sat, then he knelt, his head in his hands. When he looked up his eyes were big and bright, full of fear and wisdom.

‘I heard all about what happened in the street. It is happening everywhere. One way or another we will continue to fight for truth. And justice. And we will win.’

His blood was on his hands. He wiped it on his shirt-front. The red on the yellow made me feel ill.

‘Believe me,’ he added.

It was a while before he spoke again. His eyes were remembering and there was a faint smile on his lips.

‘When the three men came the other night I jumped out of the window, ran out into the marshes and stayed there, hiding under the wooden foot-bridge, till the worms began to eat into my feet. I came out from under the bridge. I was afraid. A dog whined at me and followed me wherever I went. A two-legged dog. The wretched animal went on annoying me and whining and people kept staring at me and I didn’t know who was an enemy and who wasn’t so I kicked the dog. It fell down and didn’t get up.’

He paused.

‘Then I went to a friend’s house. He had a girl-friend with him. I washed my legs and stayed outside. Then I went to look for my relatives.’

He stopped.

The rats continued chewing away at our lives.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, starting.

‘Rats.’

‘Oh, them,’ he said.

He was silent and I thought he had forgotten what he was saying. He blinked and rolled his eyes and groaned. A drop of blood that rolled down his forehead stopped on his cheek. I watched it as he resumed what he was saying.

‘I stayed with one or two relatives. I noticed that strange people started watching their houses. I heard about what happened in the street. I owed rent. I needed things for my camera. I thought enough time had passed. And then I found myself coming back home tonight. As I came I hid in dark places and tried to be careful but as I neared my compound two people jumped on me and hit my head with a cutlass and a stick and I fought them and ran into the forest. I stayed there. The mosquitoes bit me. The two-legged dog began to whine in the darkness. I couldn’t see it. I became hungry and I heard voices in the trees and then I decided it was time to come home and face the music.’

He paused again. The blood didn’t move on his cheek. Then he continued.

‘I took another route. This time I didn’t hide and I avoided dark places because I wanted our street people to recognise me. As I neared home two people, who had been hiding in the burnt van, jumped out and set on me. I shouted and they gave me as good a beating as they could before they ran. And then I came here, because I didn’t feel safe in my room or anywhere else.’

He was silent again. He listened to the rats and wiped his cheek with the back of his hand.

‘They must be big rats,’ he observed.

‘How do you know?’

‘You can tell by listening to them.’

I listened.

‘They have big teeth, sharp teeth,’ he said. ‘Did you know that in Egypt rats ate up a whole camel?’

‘What is a camel?’

‘The only animal that can survive in the desert.’

I marvelled at the idea of such an animal.

‘And rats ate it?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘With their teeth.’

I listened to the rats.

‘Will they eat us?’

‘They would have done so by now. But you can’t be sure.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of their hunger.’

I listened again.

‘But I know a good poison for killing them. The best. I will bring you some.’

The rats stopped eating.

‘They can understand us,’ I said.

‘Good.’

He stood up.

‘This head is hurting me. Lead me to the backyard. I want to wash away all this blood.’

I went out with him. The wind swept hard through the passage. At first it was very dark and I thought the clothes on lines were men in black glasses, but the wind made them flap, and I got used to the darkness. The photographer washed his wounds from a bucket near the well. He groaned in horrible agony. When we got back to the room Dad was awake.

‘Who is that?’ he asked as I came in.

I lit the candle. The photographer stood at the door with water and blood dripping down his neck. Dad looked at both of us without changing his expression. While the photographer dried his hair on his shirt I told Dad what had happened. I tried not to be loud, but soon Mum woke up. After Mum had learned what was going on she went and warmed some food for the photographer and pressed ointments on his wounds. They all talked deep into the night. They discussed what they could do for him and insisted that he stay till the morning. They decided many other things as well but I don’t know what they were because I became drowsy and fell asleep.

When we woke up in the morning the photographer had gone. On the centre table there were the pictures of the celebration of my homecoming.