I felt hands grab me by my upper arms and drag me outside. By now I was numb to any feeling or sound. Yet I didn’t open my eyes for fear that I would still see what was going on. I felt a heavy thud against the side of my head and knew before I passed out that, it definitely was a wooden object. Then nothing!
My eyes opened to this painful drowsiness and I felt this muddy wetness from a mixture of soil and blood on the side of my head. I felt the cold soil against my left side and felt my heart beat again. I could see people in a sort of frenzy. I could feel the fire’s warmth. See its golden, hell like light. My house was on fire. So were other dwellings. Little fiery sparks ascended from the inferno with the smoke and night breeze into the sky and disappeared among the stars, a story being concealed there.
…
He stopped his revere and imagined the star he was looking at among a million other stars, crumbling into a spark from the fire near which he lay. Then he imagined that sparks back to fire, to be one with the ashes and the dust. That seemed the only possibility left. But how could he? Returning was not an option for him. He supposed the heavens to be this overrated lie with their glamour and preferred the grey area between that lie and the raging fires of hell. The spark lost in some darkness before the heavens yet not in the fire. Earth? That could be an option. The very earth upon which he lay, was maybe unsure of his state of mind? Was he asleep, awake or imagining things? He only laid there, in the cold of that valley under the bridge on no man’s land. The evening breeze blew again, sending a chill through his bones. A familiar chill though.
…
I began to see pews, the high windows and roof of a church building; the paintings of black Jesus on the wall. At second glance, I saw many people around me seated or laying down on the pews. Some were crying, some were nursing crying babies, some nursing those who were crying with crying babies in their arms, many looking broken in spirit, plenty more, broken literally, bandages around their heads with blood stains on them and some with casts on their limbs. I had a blanket wrapped around me. I began to feel a slight head ache and tightness around it. I reached and felt gauze like material and quickly knew what it was. I didn’t even know who had brought me here and where they had found me. I didn’t even know if I should be grateful or not. In a moments glance I saw the Jesus nailed to the cross to be looking sadly down at his people, crying tears of blood. Blood was dripping from the wounds on his head inflicted by the crown of thorns. Blood was dripping from his palms and feet and gushing out like burst water pipes. Jesus was crying loud and mourning in some instances. “Wasn’t He called the lamb because He wouldn’t cry?” I looked around again to confirm what I had seen and at first saw a peaceful, dead as the log that He was curved from Jesus with a cross nailed to his back. I began to notice the blood to be from the heads and broken limbs of the people in the church, giving a reddish color to some parts of the bandages. The man next to me was mourning in pain, with an open wound just below his left ribs as some church sisters attended to him, so were some young girls, some babies, older women and men. I felt colder as I held tighter to the blanket. “His children suffer and cry bitterly and all He does is remaining expressionless”. I heard my stomach growl like a helpless browbeaten beast and a back door flung open. Carts with bowls of hot soup were pushed through and many people helped themselves to it hungrily and in this greedy attempt to nurse the cold.
…
The cold was becoming unbearable as he laid there under the bridge, his mind falling in and out of consciousness. Some part of him yearned for belonging; yet that very part was unclear – where to? He felt this sudden surge of energy grip him and seize control of him like a demon. Without any conscious control of his feet or his mouth, he leaped to his feet and began to speak, to himself passionately.
“Our people began leaving our home land many zeroes ago. We were seeking lesser zeroes many marginalization’s’ ago; many atrocities and many stolen ballots ago. Many brutalities, blood spills, corruptions, poverties, bigotries, nepotisms, massacres, greediness’s, ignorance’s, fondled histories, dictatorships, globalizations and neo colorizations ago. Our people left to begin anew. In a desperate search for as few zeroes as was possible by which ever means disposable to them. Three, two, one zero would do. No zero was even better an option. Many zeroes got slashed since then and yet many suns have chased as many moons, and still our people haven’t returned home. In movements of many, our people crossed the mighty flow of life but death, many living, many dying. Many finding new life across this flow and many finding a new form of death…”
He realized that he had stood up and couldn’t fathom why. He didn’t know what just happened, was he thinking it or… yet he remembered the words clearly like he heard them from somewhere. He couldn’t go in either direction. “Back home, where our living was being deliberately tailored not to benefit us?” Across the border where we are slain for trying to survive? To enjoy that one gift that is from God himself. Life! He stood there and wondered what wrong his people had done to deserve such. He decided that he will remain on this no-man’s-land for it seems his people weren’t wanted on either side of the border. He would not go back to the city of his forefathers. No! He wouldn’t be a part of that life but then again, he felt unwanted on the side of the life he wanted to be a part of. All that was left for him was this place, the untreated trauma that was playing out in an alternation between memories, dreams and realities and a mind that couldn’t separate these three.
…
“I remember when I left,” he recalled, sitting on the pew, talking to the Methodist Church priest, while a few of the people around him listened, “on my journey south, too tired not to go, too exhausted mentally. Many had already left, before me. And many were yet to continue on this preference to this, that we were leaving behind. Not many knew of my plans to leave. No! Never tell anyone lest your journey fails.” He whispered. “Only the closest are told. The most immediate, the loved ones, because it is for them that we all leave.”“I asked her not to cry, my thumb wiping the tears from her cheeks. Tears continued to form in her round, sparkling eyes and this wasn’t making it any easier. Those lovely eyes, expressing that need to hold on to me and never let me go, yet somehow through those very eyes, she said she understood that I had to and that, she had to let me go. My two little girls – Beauty and Patience, were hugging daddy at the knees.” He smiled, tears falling from his eyes. “Like their mother, they cried. The impatience of the car horn outside disturbed the intense moment of tears and goodbyes. There was hope in the anticipation of a new life; one better than this. I picked up my bag and threw it over my shoulder, held my jacket in my hand. A new beginning awaited, not these zeroes and empty food shelves and monotonies that was news and entertainment and nothing. I kissed her and the little girls, looked into their eyes with a stare that assured them that I would not fail them.” His tears gave birth to sound, with the priest holding his hand not knowing what to say. “I failed them. I failed my loved ones. I can’t look them in the eyes like this. I can’t go back to them. I won’t. I failed” he cried bitterly unable to contain himself. He got up suddenly and ran out of the doors of the church.
(Image source: Pparl from Wiki Commons used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license)
(By: Tswarelo Mothobe from our partner Kwantuthu Arts Mag. Read Part I of this story here)