stopped him and took him home. He got a teaching job in a private school and managed to save enough money to travel to Sierra Leone in search of better opportunities. His family back home assumed he was studying in America. He was in Sierra Leone when his father, your grandfather, became sick. As the first son, he was expected to be there to lay his father’s hands across his chest when he breathed his last. The elders conferred and decided to consult a medicine man to cast a spell on your father to bring him back home. It was this spell that brought your dad back from Sierra Leone. By the time he arrived, your grandfather had breathed his last, but not before placing a curse on his son who had broken his heart. He said that just as your father had disappointed him, your father’s own children would in turn do the same to him.
Do you still recall the birds that migrated all the way from Australia to our village to nestle in the rice farms? They wore shiny gold bangles around their feet, embossed with the words “Melbourne Zoological Gardens.” You must remember going to watch them play and sing all day, as they pecked at rice seeds and bathed in the pools of water by the rice paddies. They were large colorful birds with feathers that looked as if they had been painted with a hand brush. The farmers didn’t bother them; they looked like royal visitors and behaved as such, never being overly destructive, unlike the local
kwela
birds, and only pecked at the rice seeds that fell on the ground. As soon as it was time to harvest the rice, they gathered themselves together, conferredfor a few minutes as if praying for journey mercies for the trip ahead, and flew off together as a group.
But one year, one of the visiting birds stayed back. While the other birds gathered together, limbering up, preparing for takeoff, it sat on the ground pecking without concern. The departing birds made signs at it and spoke to it in their shrieking bird language, but it did not pay them any heed. Discouraged, the other birds left it behind. When the farmers came the next day, they tried to drive it away and persuade it with signs to fly away and return to its homeland, but it just stayed there pecking at rice seeds. After some time, it flew slowly toward a group of local
kwela
birds and joined them in their destructive scattering of the unharvested rice. The farmers said to themselves that the bird no longer comported itself like a visitor, and decided to do to it what they did to the local birds. They shot it with an arrow and used its meat to prepare rice stew. My son, I hope you have not become like that strange Australian bird that forgot its homeland.
Janjaweed Wife
W hen we were living in Fur, whenever my sister Nur and I did something Mother disliked, she would frighten us by invoking the name of the Janjaweed. If we whispered to ourselves in the dark as we lay on our mat at night—our same mat that smelled faintly of urine no matter how often it was put out in the sun to dry—her harsh whisper would carry into our room.
“Are you girls not going to sleep? You had better stop your whispering lest the Janjaweed hear you and carry you away on their horses and make you their wives.”
Nur and I would laugh quietly to ourselves in the dark and stop our whispering. Shortly Nur would startle me with her wall-shaking snores. I would prod her on the ribs with my elbow. The snores would temporarily cease and then start again, and I would prod her once more. I would prod and prod her and would not know when I fell asleep.
I recall one occasion when Nur was chasing me around the house. We were screaming and laughing and making so much noise, Mother shouted at us to stop.
“Have you people forgotten that you are girls? Good girls do not run around screeching, feet pounding
gidim, gidim, gidim
like the hooves of Janjaweed horses. Both of you had better go and sit down quietly in some corner before I marry you off to some Janjaweed so you
Do you still recall the birds that migrated all the way from Australia to our village to nestle in the rice farms? They wore shiny gold bangles around their feet, embossed with the words “Melbourne Zoological Gardens.” You must remember going to watch them play and sing all day, as they pecked at rice seeds and bathed in the pools of water by the rice paddies. They were large colorful birds with feathers that looked as if they had been painted with a hand brush. The farmers didn’t bother them; they looked like royal visitors and behaved as such, never being overly destructive, unlike the local
kwela
birds, and only pecked at the rice seeds that fell on the ground. As soon as it was time to harvest the rice, they gathered themselves together, conferredfor a few minutes as if praying for journey mercies for the trip ahead, and flew off together as a group.
But one year, one of the visiting birds stayed back. While the other birds gathered together, limbering up, preparing for takeoff, it sat on the ground pecking without concern. The departing birds made signs at it and spoke to it in their shrieking bird language, but it did not pay them any heed. Discouraged, the other birds left it behind. When the farmers came the next day, they tried to drive it away and persuade it with signs to fly away and return to its homeland, but it just stayed there pecking at rice seeds. After some time, it flew slowly toward a group of local
kwela
birds and joined them in their destructive scattering of the unharvested rice. The farmers said to themselves that the bird no longer comported itself like a visitor, and decided to do to it what they did to the local birds. They shot it with an arrow and used its meat to prepare rice stew. My son, I hope you have not become like that strange Australian bird that forgot its homeland.
Janjaweed Wife
W hen we were living in Fur, whenever my sister Nur and I did something Mother disliked, she would frighten us by invoking the name of the Janjaweed. If we whispered to ourselves in the dark as we lay on our mat at night—our same mat that smelled faintly of urine no matter how often it was put out in the sun to dry—her harsh whisper would carry into our room.
“Are you girls not going to sleep? You had better stop your whispering lest the Janjaweed hear you and carry you away on their horses and make you their wives.”
Nur and I would laugh quietly to ourselves in the dark and stop our whispering. Shortly Nur would startle me with her wall-shaking snores. I would prod her on the ribs with my elbow. The snores would temporarily cease and then start again, and I would prod her once more. I would prod and prod her and would not know when I fell asleep.
I recall one occasion when Nur was chasing me around the house. We were screaming and laughing and making so much noise, Mother shouted at us to stop.
“Have you people forgotten that you are girls? Good girls do not run around screeching, feet pounding
gidim, gidim, gidim
like the hooves of Janjaweed horses. Both of you had better go and sit down quietly in some corner before I marry you off to some Janjaweed so you
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