She bathed in the bay of bitterness. An islet of granite rock, covered with barnacles, sea snails, sea-eggs and tiny crabs that scurried all over it, stood at the entrance of the bay, indifferent to the wind, indifferent to the waves that prostrated themselves at its feet and the clouds that wept copious tears of remorse. She compared the rock to her father. Silent all these years, unyielding, unforgiving. But he was dying now, of cancer, and before he died she hoped to transform this rock into flesh, free its soul from the hardness of its core, and give it voice to sing her name once again.

All these years her mother had stood by her. Her mother was her rock against the onslaught of the wave of scandal and the wind of shame. After the birth of her son, her mother took her and the child down to the bay and baptized them under the breaking waves in the shadow of an albatross that soared overhead on extended wings. It was a secular baptism, a rite of passage to a different idea of herself. She was a mother now, a woman now, innocent no more; she was no longer an adolescent girl, green and tantalizing. Her spirit had risen and become one with the albatross. She soared like a song, like a seagull. (more…)

The morning sun was a mammy apple, big and round and yellow. On this mammy apple morning a child awoke and went out into the world. It was in the morning of life, filled with the fragrance of lemon grass and the freshness of orange blossoms. There was a green glossiness about the world like the glossy smoothness of mango leaves. Films of dew had formed on the grass and on the tiny leaves of the shy Ti Marie and the precocious jump-up-and-kiss-me that ran together on the ground. Dew dripped from the leaves and branches of the bird-cherry tree and the sugar dish bush. The aroma of coffee and homemade cocoa, brewed from freshly baked and grounded beans had not yet contaminated the scent of lemon grass that was the natural aroma of the mammy apple morning. The makers of breakfast were still cuddled in their beds, late risers on Saturday mornings.

The child skipped gingerly over the gravel and dew-drenched grass towards the gifts that waited under the big longe mango tree at the back of the house. The windblown mangoes lay where they had settled after falling and rolling, waiting for him. But the night wind was not the only bringer of gifts, for there were plums to be collected under the mango tree, big red dimpled plums, sweet-scented pink-skin pomme rose and yellow skin cashew with blushes of red, the nut intact at the bottom end, to be twisted free, put out to dry and, later, roasted. Presents from bats and owls. All went into the old straw hat, one by one, two by two. All except their gifts of galba, good only for pitching as marbles or as missiles for catapult. (more…)

The Nile that divided his land also united it, he believed. If it were possible he would make his life a bridge between north and south. Perhaps blood, his own included, would continue to flow beneath this bridge before finally the clear water of peace and life would wash the blood and bloodstain away. There would be celebration at the confluence of cross and crescent as at the marriage of the White Nile and the Blue Nile. He carried a simple message: the story of a rock that had become a shrine and site of a contest for religious space and gods.

The holy man settled under the shelter of an acacia tree to spend the night. He spread a battered old rug on the gravel ground and, facing Mecca, knelt on it and did salat. A strict observer of the tenets of his religion, he prayed, dutifully, five times a day. He sat cross-legged on the rug after prayer. He deferred the gratification of his thirst and hunger, a discipline his unusual asceticism had taught him. It had taught him to defer the gratification of thousands of hungers, tens of thousands of thirsts. He would endure until he reached the remote village, close to the border with the South, in this dry and sparsely populated part of his country. He was nearing the end of his journey.

He was a tall man, lean and very dark, with a long-flowing white beard. Age had wrung his smooth skin into wrinkles. His head was wrapped in a white turban and he wore a flowing white jelabiyah. His sandals of worn brown leather protruded from under the robe. His deep penetrating eyes, filled with piety, appreciated his surroundings, splashed scarlet, everywhere, with sunset. There was serenity all around. He held his Koran close to his heart and recited, softly to himself, suras he had been taught to memorize since the time when his mind was still in its infancy. (more…)