23 

We drove up to Magburaka to see Pa Roke. The trips up-country were an adventure: the journey took several hours on appalling roads and at times Sullay had to slow the car to a crawl and he and my father, who was in the passenger seat, pressed their fingertips against the windscreen to absorb the impact from the stones kicked up by passing poda podas. Villages lined the road like seeds springing up along the bank of a river after a drought.

At Mile 91 we stopped for refreshments and the roadside sellers homed in on the car, offering oranges skinned to the pith; sun-roasted peanuts with papery skin; mangoes, pawpaws and pineapples. We bought oranges and the vendor sliced off the top; we sucked the juice out, sieving the pips through our teeth. The empty baskets in the boot were filled with fruit to take to the family. All the time the crowd of people round us swelled. Some were there to sell, but most just came to stare. The car, our clothes, especially the fair complexions of my brother, sister and me, transfixed people. In the provinces, away from Freetown, children still shouted ‘Oporto’ after the seventeenth-century Portuguese traders or ‘John Bull’ whenever they saw a pale skin. They pressed their faces against the glass without shame, and behaved as though we too were impervious to their scrutiny.

I was uncomfortable. I hated being stared at, and on top of that I was sitting in the middle of the back seat, where the arm rest went. I leaned forward, gripping the two front seats, with my feet on the centre hump and my knees up by my middle. Inside I was experiencing a tumble of emotions: excitement about the trip and shyness because of the crowd; one of my legs was numb, too. But there was another feeling, a nagging in my brain that made me feel shivery and bad, restless and unhappy all at the same time. Yet I dreaded anyone asking me if I was all right. I had never had this feeling before: I felt as though I had been caught stealing. I felt guilty.

An afternoon, a week or two before, my father had come home carrying a young fawn. Her mother had been killed in a hunting accident, he explained. No one had seen the baby she was shielding with her body. The fawn was ours to raise. I was mesmerised. I knew immediately that I wanted to be the person who looked after the fawn. I reached out and touched her. The hair was slippery smooth and her skin shivered under my touch, but she had let me stroke her.

We had other animals – several dogs, which I regarded as mine; plus, until recently, a mongoose, a hooligan that chased the dogs, stole the sugar from the table and raced up the curtains until one of the dogs plucked up courage and dragged the mongoose round the yard by the tail and it ran away for good.

The mongoose had been followed by a parrot called Sheka, bought at market for my brother, who had shown no interest in the bird so I began to take care of him. Thinking to please my brother, I named the parrot after him. I fed Sheka peanuts and kept him in a cage with a broken lock, tied up with string. Each morning I found Sheka wandering about the floor, the knot carefully unpicked and the string lying on the floor next to his cage. In time the clipped red flight feathers on the underside of his wings grew back and the bird headed for the open window and the sky.

I didn't regret our animals leaving. I don't think it even occurred to me that they were supposed to be permanent fixtures. But there was something about the fawn's vulnerability that made her different. We kept her in my father's downstairs study and on that first evening I carefully carried a pan of milk which I set down beside her and watched as she lapped at the surface.

But we were young and we were excited. We wanted to be near the fawn and so we played in the same room, including her in our games: unwittingly terrorising and tending her by turns. By evening the fawn was showing signs of restlessness. I stood by the door holding the bowl of milk, watching her stumble around the room. She fell to her knees and couldn't seem to rise again. Every time she managed to straighten one leg another would crumple. I put down the basin and ran to fetch Auntie Yabome. My stepmother watched the fawn for a few minutes. ‘She wants to die,’ she said, with old village wisdom.

In the morning the fawn was lying on her side in the centre of the floor. I thought she was asleep and so I left the basin of milk next to her. When I went back and she still hadn't touched it I called Auntie Yabome again. Even then, it took me a while to understand the fawn was dead.

Somewhere in the western hemisphere of my brain I remembered what someone must once have told me, about the survival instinct of animals. Yet we had tormented the motherless fawn until she willed herself to death. I wondered about all the terrible things I had done, how I had tried to get rid of Auntie Yabome. I didn't really worry that my stepmother might lie down on her bed and decide to die, but I began to feel bad all the same.

We reached Magburaka at midday and stopped outside Pa Roke's house. It was painted red, with blue shutters and window frames. But there was no glass in the windows; they were just empty holes, like eye sockets. Everyone called the house ‘Mohamed's house’ because my father's brothers had set about building it for us to live in when he came home from Britain. After he was posted to Freetown the house lay empty until Pa Roke decided to move in. It was the only house in the street with a proper plaster facade; all the rest, including my aunts’ and uncles’ homes, were built of clay bricks with earthen floors that were swept clean morning and evening. None of them had electricity, running water or indoor plumbing. Out back, on the edge of the bush, was the latrine and as I sat, thigh muscles tensed, suspended over a stinking pit in the tiny thatched hut, it was the only part of our visits I regretted.

Pa Roke came out wearing his long gown. He rarely smiled: ‘Impiere.’

‘Seke.’

‘Seke, topia.’

After several exchanges we went inside. There was a pause while we all sat down, then the greetings began again like a mantra. I hadn't learned to speak Temne. I sat there with my shoulders rounded, my chin sticking out, half listening, half dreaming.

People came over to greet my father, sat a while and moved on. Nobody ever seemed to be in a hurry. People say time moves slowly in remote places. In Magburaka time moved at pretty much the same pace as everywhere else, but it had a different texture. In Temne the days of the week have no names, the years have no numbers, there are no dates, no decades, centuries or millennia. There are three words to denote the passing of time: today, tomorrow and yesterday. Everything else is viewed in relation to those three positions and extends only a few days in either direction, perhaps because life in rural Africa is so full of hazards that people prefer to live in the here and now rather than speculate on an uncertain future.

So people don't cook a meal in anticipation of their guests’ arrival, for who can say how long a journey might take? Or whether the guests will make it at all. It was only after a long interval that one of Pa Roke's younger wives arrived with some food and we three children sat on the floor in the middle of the small room eating from a large plate of rice and plassas.

We dug into the mound, burrowing into the slopes in front of us, until gradually the pattern of roses on the tin plate began to appear. I remember I kept up a stream of chatter about it, and began to take food off the top of the pile and once I reached across and dipped my spoon into the rice on the other side of the mound, from where my brother was eating. We ate alone. I don't know where our stepmother was – perhaps she was out visiting our aunts. Pa Roke and my father did not join us. They stood over us, watching and talking in Temne. Pa Roke had a long, oval face like mine. He looked grave. He seemed to be gazing at the three of us intently. Every now and again he would ask something and once I saw him jerk his head in our direction.

In 1967 our father had travelled to Magburaka to tell Pa Roke he wanted to go into politics and to ask his advice. But our grandfather had told his son he was not qualified to tell him what he should do. Pa Roke belonged to a past world, one in which the elders chose the new chief, initiated him and guided him throughout his reign. They ruled following traditions that were hundreds of years old. The chief who refused to pay heed to their advice could be brought before the Poro society or a council of the elders. Pa Roke still sat and listened to cases in the barrie every day. When the British arrived they had ruled the people absolutely and by decree, yet it was they who bestowed a system on all the new nations in which people were supposed to elect their own leaders. No wonder a lot of people were confused.

Three years on, our father had come to ask Pa Roke's counsel again. He had been bitterly disappointed by his experience of government and had lost all faith in Siaka Stevens. The prime minister was an arch manipulator and tireless in his machinations; our father was dangerously isolated in cabinet. Pa Roke listened. What my father told him would not have been entirely new to the old man: the country rustled with rumours; some of the stories had appeared in the newspapers. Pa Roke warned his son that whatever he did he must be careful, and he should be wary of Stevens. The prime minister bore grudges, that much had been demonstrated by the fate of others; he would almost certainly take their fight to the finish.

When we were done eating another of Pa Roke's wives returned with a second dish. This time father and son sat down to eat together while we ran outside to find our cousins. Looking back I realise now the full weight of the discussion that took place between them that day. I imagine now it could only have been that day and no other because it was the last time I saw Pa Roke standing tall. He was already well into his eighties by then and not long afterwards he suffered a stroke. The next time we visited as a family he lay, partly paralysed, on the bed in the corner of the room. With each visit he grew thinner, but the fingers of his one good hand tapped and flew, as alive as ever.

In the afternoon we left Magburaka and Pa Roke and travelled north to visit the Bumbuna Falls, close to my stepmother's own village. The falls lie almost exactly in the centre of Sierra Leone, at the point where three rivers converge into one: the Tonkolili, the Seli and the Rokel. Down the water flows over one hundred miles to Freetown and the Atlantic Ocean. From the village we walked down winding bush paths to the river, just below the waterfall.

Over the edge of the rocks the violent rush of water pitched into a serene, drifting river, edged by boulders, skirted by kingfishers and herons. Here and there pale green weeds below the surface caught the sunlight and the water gleamed phosphorescent. Up close the roar of water was like pounding drums. Yet only a few yards’ walk farther along the rocky edge of the water the silence of the lake completely overpowered the sound of the waterfall. It was as though the river were a lost child looking for its mother and as soon as the two found each other, the child grew quiet.

The villagers viewed the falls with awe and they claimed the waterside was enchanted. People avoided going there alone or at dusk. As we sat in the barrie afterwards someone told us a story about a woman who had been to fetch a last jar of water as night was falling. People had heard her screams as she ran back to the village, where she collapsed in the dust. At first she could barely speak but finally she told those gathered around her what had happened. She had seen a devil, they heard her say, a devil dancing on the water.

The woman was in the barrie with us and I glanced across at her. She was leaning against the wall with her lappa tied carelessly about her waist and a slightly sullen face; she was about twenty years old. She didn't react while the story was being told.

I, on the other hand, was spellbound. ‘What did the devil look like?’ I asked her.

‘It had one big foot. Just one giant foot. It was too far out on the water.’ She was loosening one of her tight braids. She let go of it briefly, waved her hand and shrugged.

‘These devils – they have ears like an antelope and big teeth that stick out of their mouths, nostrils as wide as caves. Not-o-so?’ The storyteller looked at her too, and put his fingers up on either side of his head like a pair of ears, then up to his mouth to make two fangs.

She glanced at him, neither answered nor contradicted. I pressed her: ‘But what else? What was it doing? Did he see you?’

‘I don't know. I didn't stay there. I saw it and I ran. That's all.’

‘But did he say anything to you?’

She paused and she stopped fiddling with her plait for a moment. ‘He was laughing,’ she said at length. ‘I could hear him laughing.’

I imagined the spirit as she had seen him: a solitary silhouette on the flat lake, turning, pirouetting, as graceful as could be on his one proud foot. He was enjoying himself in that beautiful place, laughing with the sheer pleasure of it all, of that I was certain. I thought that it was probably the woman who had frightened the devil, screaming and running away as she had, rather than the other way around. I wondered if he danced alone at dusk every day.

‘I wish I'd seen him. I'd like to see a devil. I'd like to see a devil dancing on the water.’ I privately made up my mind to try and catch a glimpse of him the very next time I could: the very next time we visited Bumbuna. I wondered about my chances of getting down to the water alone and unnoticed. Could I find my way back along the paths?

The man who had told the story in the first place chuckled. ‘Oh no you wouldn't,’ he said. ‘You wouldn't want to see a devil.’ He wagged his finger at me and shook his head. ‘For then something bad will surely happen to you.’

In August our father gave us each money to buy Auntie Yabome a present for her birthday at the end of the month. We went along to Patterson Zochonis, or PZ, where we searched for a suitable gift among the merchandise. Our stepmother dressed with the greatest of care and in the height of fashion and after some searching we found our gift. In the shoe department: a pair of cream and lime-green platform shoes rotating on a dais. We hurried to count our money and left with the shoes hidden at the bottom of a bag.

Auntie Yabome and I were getting along a bit better, and I had managed to overcome my feelings of guilt sufficiently to continue to defy her when the occasion presented itself. Alone in the garden one afternoon, I heard a distinctive hiss from behind the bushes. I turned to see a figure beckoning me from behind the fence. I moved closer, peering through the foliage. It was Milik. I crept through the bushes until I reached him and we squatted down out of sight. Our fingers touched through the fence and he pushed some sweets to me as we whispered together for a while. After a few minutes Milik slipped away, back in the direction he had come.

Both Sheka's and Memuna's birthdays fell the following month, and in the house plans were underway for a big party on the same day to celebrate them both. My parents, worried I might feel left out, included me in the celebrations. For many years I believed it had been my birthday and I remembered that day as my birthday alone and no one else's.

The day began before anyone was awake. In the room I shared with Memuna it was scarcely light when my stepmother shook me awake. She told me to dress and come downstairs, and when I arrived there I found her already waiting in her car with the engine running. We were alone. I climbed into the front seat and we drove down Spur Loop and out onto the roundabout by Wilberforce barracks. I didn't know where we were headed and, because somehow I sensed the start of an adventure, I didn't ask.

The British high commissioner's house was built on the side of the hill above Hill Cot Road, and part of the house jutted out over one of the hairpin bends of the road. I passed it on my way to and from school every day and I liked it so much, surrounded by lawns and flamboyant trees, I dreamed about what it would be like to live there. I told everyone how one day I would buy the house. But I had never actually been inside. When my stepmother turned the nose of the car into the high commissioner's gate and we travelled up the long gravel drive to the porch, it took me a while to realise where we were.

Stephen Olver, the high commissioner, came to the door. He greeted Auntie Yabome first and then he turned to me: ‘So, young lady, I'm told you would like to see my house.’

I nodded, transfixed and tongue-tied. The high commissioner called his son, a boy of about thirteen, and gave him instructions to show me around. For the next half hour I followed him from one splendid room to another, while he kept up an impressive commentary. We looked behind every door, upstairs and down, including the boy's own room, where a dozen model aircraft spun on wires suspended from the ceiling, like flies grown lazy in the heat. At the end of the tour I was brought back to the high commissioner's office, where my stepmother waited.

From the desk in the corner Mr Olver beckoned to me to sit in front of him and asked me if I would like a drink. A moment later a servant brought me the cold drink on a tray. The high commissioner asked me if I liked the house. I replied that I did, very much indeed. How much might I propose for it, then? He was offering to sell the house to me. I gave the question a moment's consideration. I had two leones in my dresser drawer at home and my pocket money was fifty cents a week. It took me a moment but I decided to offer him the entire sum of my savings. He laughed out loud. Up until then our conversation had been conducted in complete solemnity, and only at that moment did I realise that none of them had taken me seriously from the start.

At home I laid my indignation to rest. I shared many of the same presents as my sister, including matching doll's houses, made out of painted tin. We spent the hour before breakfast assembling them. In the late morning we gathered behind the railings of the veranda and watched an acrobat perform cartwheels holding first a glass of water and then a plate of rice. Although the man flipped over and over, ending up in the splits, not a drop or a grain fell to the ground. I recognised the tumbling man from the beach at Cape Club, where we spent Saturdays and where he often served drinks on his hands in exchange for pennies. People would throw coins on the ground and he bent over backwards like a crab to pick them up with his mouth. I did not see him as a busker, but as the most talented performer I had ever known. It was as though Nijinsky himself had put in an appearance and was leaping across the lawn.

At lunch time all the children sat in a circle and our stepmother brought out a record with a blonde woman on the cover and put it on: we sang along to ‘Happy Birthday’. There were jellies, which collapsed in the heat, melting chocolates, pass the parcel and blind man's buff. We sat on balloons and tried to squash them and chased each other round the tree. My brother, whose birthday it really was of course, wore a smart white suit, a pale-blue shirt and a matching bow tie.

Late in the afternoon our father came home. He spoke briefly to my stepmother on the terrace, and then he came down to the garden. We persuaded him to join in our games on the lawn, he took off his jacket and shoes and humoured us for a long while.

The wonderful day seemed to belong to me, a miracle created with me in mind, still untainted by too much knowledge or by disappointment. But that was just an illusion.

It wasn't my birthday, of course, not even close. And on that day our lives changed for good. Our father had resigned in protest from the government. A resolution had been passed by the All People's Congress agreeing to turn us into a republic headed by an executive presidency, and many people – including our father – believed the country was now inescapably on the road to becoming a one-party state. Any minister who refused to agree to the new executive presidency would be refused the party symbol at the next election. Our father had left the house as Siaka Stevens's most senior minister; by the time he came home he was the government's leading adversary. And by bed time we couldn't even call the house home any more because it didn't belong to us – it belonged to the government.