Fadhila Mazanderani

Fadhila Mazanderani currently lives between Oxford in the UK and White River in South Africa. When she is not trying to finish her doctoral thesis she enjoys reading and writing, walking on the farm, spending time with her cats, dogs and other family (only some of whom don’t have personality disorders), and doing volunteer work for the Good Start Foundation, which supports orphaned and vulnerable children in South Africa.

Snake Season

There are places, pieces of earth, of land and sky that never cease in their singing. I was born and lived in such a place. A place that summers filled with the humming, throbbing promise of rain. A place that growled with the hunger of dry white winters. I would wake into newborn hours and listen to the light as it coiled with the snakes between the matted grasses, and as I walked those dawns their milky pinkness strummed to the tune of my bare feet, to the padding of the dogs at my side, and the air breathed for us alone.

But soon, too soon, the sun would remember this was Africa and toss its mane to fire, and the land would crackle with human life as troops of workers filled it with their voice. A voice that was as much a part of the singing of the land as the clapping of the banana leaves, the calling of the owls, and the drumming of the rain. I used to be greedy to be a part of that singing and so would creep to the edge of the farm where it lived. And staring down at corrugated-iron roofs blinking in the sun, I would listen to the music, broken by the shrill cry of children playing, a thin dog barking, rising from their radios. But then the yellow branches of the fever trees would shiver in warning, reminding me this was forbidden land.

It had not always been forbidden. There had been a time when Angel, my nanny, would tie me to her back and carry me there to kick my puppy white legs in its dirt. Shielded from the sun by the whispering of the fever trees, Angel would sit and watch me play. Her back up against a wall, she cracked nuts stolen from the farm between a brick and a stone, clucking stories with the children and women who bought them from her.

Then she left. With belly swelling and hips swaying Angel went home to have her own round button of a baby. With her leaving there were no more story tellings of the horrors of the tokoloshe while wrapped in the safety of skin that smelt of butter and sugar. No more sucking on the waxy flesh of stolen macadamia nuts. Without Angel the women who lived at the edge of the farm hid their bounty from me and watched under sideways black eyes as their children dared each other to touch me. Still, as I grew older, and the houses grew in number, I continued to go down to the edge of the farm, to stand watch over their voices. But if I stayed too long my traitor’s skin burnt redder than the earth beneath my feet, peeling from me in flaking sheets.

When my father saw me near those metal roofs his eyes, flat as flint, sent me slinking homebound like a thief. I used to think those eyes were angry. And they were angry, but not with me. Angry with this country he had come home to on a wave of hope, when Mandela was a prophet, and before Mbeki failed to fulfil the prophecy. Angry that the land beneath his feet betrayed the one given to his mind as he returned alongside fellow exiles, accompanied by his new English wife, my mother.

He had bought the land, selecting it like a bride for its beauty and its fertility. And it was both those things, beautiful and fertile. But like me, the child that fell from my mother’s womb, it failed to live its promise. So as I grew, nourished by my mother and by Angel, by the sweet sticky pulp of granadilla and by the perfume of papaya, so too did another child. The silent and unspoken child of my father’s disillusioned mind. My shadowed twin, born of his brittled love of a lost land, nourished by disappointment and anger, fed by each theft my father could not stop, suckled by rains that would not come and then came too heavy, too late. Cradled by farm murders, rocked to sleep by the lullaby of land claims, this child swelled behind my father’s china blue eyes, stepping from them to accompany him as he paced through the rooms, checking that the doors were locked, that the alarm was on, that his gun was loaded, and our home closed to the dangers of the night beyond.

I loved the night. My father did not. The slightest change in the groaning of the frogs or the chi-chi-chi of the crickets sent him to the window where he tightened like a fist against it. When that happened, when he filled the house with the pacing smoke of his shadow, my mother took me to my bedroom. She read to me about Jane Eyre, who she did not think should have married Mr Rochester, and Cathy, who should not have married Mr Linton, but for different reasons, and Scarlett, who married Rhett Butler and could have been happy, but wasn’t.

She plaited my hair with monkey tenderness so that in the morning it crisped and curled like hers, and I believed that one day I might be beautiful too. If my mother had been born the moon she would have looked like me, scrubbed dry of any yellow or blue, but she was born the sun, so golden and kissed with it that just being near her warmed you. In the day, she strode through the garden trailed by her four shadows: me, Johannes the gardener, and our two dogs, Bonnie and Delphi. We watched as with skin gleaming she baptised the ground, bringing forth salvation in waves of washed-up blue agapanthus. Clivias peppered with juicy red globes sprung from beneath her shoes and her words freckled the air with jasmine’s honey scent. Watching her I felt the earth through her hands and it did not matter that mine would never bless it in that way.

In spring and autumn Johannes stood guard over us. Sjambok ready to hand, his hunter’s eyes watched for snakes made hungry by the changing seasons. When he caught sight of my naked feet tucked beneath the ropey roots of African irises he shook his head and muttered nyoka, sucking the word through his remaining teeth as though the very thought of those snakes filled his mouth with dread. And they came, Johannes’s nyokas. Their bodies jewelled green and gold in the sunlight, they came, but did not bite. Not even the puff adder that wormed out from under the bougainvillea slowly strangling its weary palm tree host. With one smooth motion of his twisted leather whip Johannes turned the snake’s creamy brown body from deadly to dead. But it was not the swollen stealth of the puff adder Johannes feared, it was the black mamba. The snake with scales of gun-metal grey. Venom without antidote. And he repeated his mantra of instructions on what I should do if I saw that most dangerous of dangerous snakes. Don’t run. Stop. Go still. Stand still-still-still. Then slowly, so-so slowly, move back step by step. Don’t turn your back to him, watch him, watch him and move away step by step, step by step.

On good farm days my father joined us on our garden pilgrimages. Talking intensely, to my mother, to Johannes, he peered into the plants, inspecting their leafy greenness. When I was younger he would call me his little mouse and pick me up and swing me round and round until I felt dizzy and my mother said, put her down she will be sick, but her eyes laughed and he winked at me and pretending to collapse under my weight, tipped me softly onto the grass, so I would not be sick.

On nights that followed days like those, the smell of after-the-rain soil clung to me, precious with its enfolded secrets. On nights like those I could not make the sighing of sleep that filled the house my own and so I waited. Waited for my midnight owl’s call. And when it came I would fall like a peach from my bed and slip through the sleeping spaces of the house, through the sliding glass doors and down the veranda steps, concrete cold beneath my toes, to where Bonnie and Delphi waited for me.

Bonnie was old and slow, her woolly fur coming out in patches. She was my loyal one and followed where I led. Delphi was our scout, our messenger, chasing the sounds and smells of the farm. Running backwards and forwards until her sides heaved with the effort of it and her brave little heart beat fast as a sparrow beneath my fingers. At night, when all of it was mine, I was not afraid. Not afraid of the puff adders or even the mambas. For I knew they would protect me.

Bonnie would lift herself from her bed by the door and come without a question, nuzzling the palm of my hand with her nose. Delphi’s head would tilt, as if to ask if this was something interesting, something worth hunting for, but she always followed. Through the garden to where the owl waited in his tree, she followed and kept me safe.

The owl tree was hollowed out with age and rot, but not dead yet. It was still home to blue-headed lizards that hissed at me, scuttling crablike into hiding when we came too close. Branches grew thick from its baobab trunk and I looked up into them, squinting behind my glasses to see if I could catch sight of him who ruled it. Stretching until my spine unfurled like a flower that bloomed only at night, I reached so deep into that clear night sky that stars nested in the pillow of my hair and stayed there, breathing the secret wonder of it all into the coming day. Sometimes he looked down at me, his round face still. Then he would fly, falling low over the grass and pulling up over the trees. I would watch him pass over the mangos and the avocados, their bodies oily black and hunched in the darkness, before settling in the bleeding fingers of the coral tree, surveying his hunting ground. But Johannes said he was bad luck, said he waited to catch the souls of the dead.

And one day death did come, washed up on to the shores of our farm with a phone call. Bad news. Mr and Mrs Van Heerden. Your neighbours. Killed last night. Shot. Yes. A burglary. No. No suspects, not yet.

My mother sat in the kitchen, her face nothing like the sun. My father stayed at home and pulled me on to his lap, dough-heavy face mouthing how is my little girl? How. My. Little. Girl. Little. Girl. How. Breathing questions without answers. The sky hung low over the surrounding hills and the singing, the singing of the land, was so soft I had to twist my neck, turning towards the open window just to catch the sound of it. And the sound was like no singing I had ever heard before. So I sat on my father’s lap, turned baby again by sadness, by shock. The shock of bullets. Point-blank range in your back.

I sat and remembered the night. Remembered how the owl leaving the coral tree bleeding beneath the moon had swooped down towards the Van Heerdens’ farm. Down to where the men were waiting. Waiting with their guns. Their point-blank guns. I saw the souls hanging heavy as fruit as he pulled them up over the mango trees, past the avocados. Mr Van Heerden with his stomach rolling over khaki shorts, his wife a billowing purple polyester cloud at his side, hooked in the owl’s claws.

I heard a sharp knock and looked up. My mother looked up. My father stood up. A woman was looking in through the security bars that filled the frame of our kitchen door.

A stranger. She looked at me and something like a smile shattered across her face. My mother pushed herself up, pressing her hands against the table for support. My parents were fighting to keep their faces straight, my mother almost managed. My father did not. I must have seen who this was, must have seen that although the butter of her skin had been baked away leaving a creature of glass and bone, the woman standing in the doorway was no stranger after all. But I didn’t see. Not until my mother said. Angel. Angel. Come in. Please sit down.

And with those words Angel, who had left years ago, who had only come back once to visit me after the birth of her baby, was standing in our house again.

She sat on the sofa, folding into its softness until I thought she would be swallowed into a sky-blue grave, that she would be there forever, clammed between the cushions, that we would never get her out. How have you been? my father asked. Why did he ask that? We could see. At first she didn’t answer, but the bones of her chest danced through the thin red cotton of her dress. Danced as they moved up and down, up and down with each breath. Watching her watching me my heart thumped rabbit hard. I was ready to run, but I didn’t know if my muscles wanted to take me to or away from her. Then she spoke.

She spoke and her voice filled our house. Filled it with the singing she had taken with her when she left me. Taken when she went home to have her baby, the small round button of a baby with glossy brown skin who fitted into the hollow I had left in her back. It was a beautiful singing. Beautiful as the rain falling through the sun. Beautiful as the woman who had tied me to her back and carried me to the fever trees. I could not make out the words from the sounds, but I could feel them and they felt like home. Then the voice came again. Ingane is all big. She looked towards me. Come ingane, come say hello to Angel.

But I did not come. Did not say hello. Nor smile. Nor run, nor kiss, nor hug. I did none of those things. I stayed where I was as the silence cemented between us.

My mother cleared her throat. And how’s your boy? Angel looked down and with that downward look death came to the farm for the second time that day. The little glossy button I had been so jealous of, gone. She shook her head. My mother saw her chance. And you Angel, are you sick too? She looked down again. Where had my Angel gone? Where was the woman whose feet barely grazed the ground as she walked? The woman who flicked away the hot eyes of the men working on the farm like so many flies. Have you been to the doctor? She shook her head. Can I take you to the clinic? No. Not the clinic. To the doctor? Yes. The doctor. I will get you an appointment tomorrow. Now you need to rest. And still the bones of her chest moved up and down, up and down, like butterfly bodies cocooned in red cotton, trying to escape to a life awaiting them in the sky. Still she was breathing. She got up and followed my mother to the door. At the door, before passing through it, she stopped. She turned and she looked at me. And I? I looked at my feet.

That night my parents spoke in hushed voices. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could see it in the way my mother shook her head. The way she had shaken it when she had heard about the Van Heerdens earlier that day. I could see it in the way my father rubbed his forehead. They did not think death would stop at two. I fled. Fled from the head shaking and the forehead rubbing to the safety of my room. But once there all I could do as the house fell into sleep was lie tangled in my bed.

I lay, and I waited. I did not know what I was waiting for. But then I heard the low hollow cry of the owl, and I knew. I fell from my bed, but not like a peach. I didn’t slip and the doors did not slide. I pushed through the house tearing at its slumber with the slapping of my feet. Out on the veranda I splashed into the night, and it soaked me in panic. My feet did not have time to flinch at the cold beneath them, nor did I stop to greet Bonnie and Delphi, their eyes wet with concern, ears exclamation marks of surprise. Down the steps and onto the grass I ran. Ran. Ran. Past the hibiscus bush. Past the bunk of the bougainvillea. Past the flightless birds of paradise. I ran. Until stumbling, choking with the night, I reached the owl tree.

He was there. Waiting for me. Watching with unblinking eyes as I battled my lungs. And this time it was not wonder that nested in the pillow of my hair, but fear that scrambled through it. I willed him to stay. To stay there in his tree so that I could see her tomorrow. So I could hug her. So I could kiss her. So I could be forgiven for all I had not done that day. He did not move. He did not blink. Then his wings spread like sails and swept him through the black waters of the night sky. Heading towards the edge of the farm, to where the fever trees grew, to where Angel slept.

I knew I would never be able to reach her before him. Knew I was already too late. But I had no choice. And so I followed. I followed the owl, Bonnie at my side, keeping pace with my pounding feet, while Delphi, quick as destiny, dashed ahead.

It was Delphi who saw it first, black against the black of the pathway before us, and barked a shrill warning. I knew that bark, high-pitched with danger, and shuddered to a halt. I could hardly see it. I almost ignored it, but then it moved, twisting its blunt blade of a face towards me. Johannes’s words rang in my head, as though we were standing together in the sun instead of me alone under the moon. Don’t run ingane. Stop. Go still, stand still, still, still. Then slowly, so-so slowly, move back step by step. Don’t turn your back on him, watch him, move away step by step, step by step. But Delphi could not hear Johannes’s words and continued barking. The snake clenched and hissed, coiling his body close. My eyes fixed on it, my senses pitched to it, and I did not hear the steps behind me, did not hear the ground crunch under running feet. Not until it was too late.

My father’s voice slammed into the night. Slammed with all the anger and fear of bullets. Point-blank-range bullets. In your back. Who’s there? I smelt smoke, gun smoke, felt my silent unspoken twin beside me. And I knew it was too late for Delphi’s warning to save me, too late for Johannes’s words to guide me.

It felt more like shock than pain as I fell against Bonnie, pulling us both to the ground. The earth crumbled like cake between my toes and I melted into it. I saw the owl hover white above me and the snake coil black beneath me and I knew Johannes had been right. This venom was without antidote and the owl was here to collect the souls of the dead. I heard my father, and then my mother, but they sounded like birds, far away and flying. Then I heard another voice. A voice that echoed the singing of this land. A voice that throbbed with the promise of rain and played with the milky morning light. And its singing spun a lap to catch me as I fell, its fingers running forgiveness through my hair. It lifted me from the ground. Lifted me away from Bonnie. Away from Delphi. Away from my mother and my father. It lifted me up into the midnight sky where, light as the music of the stars when they breathe their secret wonder into the coming day, I became part of that singing. The singing of the land to which I was born and died. And I filled this place, this piece of earth, of land and sky with a new song.