Gods and Soldiers (10 page)

Then things took a rather unexpected, mysterious turn. Zulai bowed her head and suddenly felt a tenderness toward her husband and even blamed herself for all of their marital misfortune. “Our marriage has brought nothing but ruin to him; the disgrace that awaits him once the test is over. I wish I knew what to do to make him do well,” she said to herself. “Maybe I should tell the old woman that I was lying about his manhood.” But she also knew it was too late for her to alter what everyone on the street already knew—the horses are already lined up before the open field, and the derby cannot be canceled.

For Mr. Rafique's part, looking at his estranged wife suddenly turned him soft, not between his legs, as one might have expected, but in his chest—in his heart.
Why the hurt and the vendetta? Why not forgive everyone, so that you can move on with your life?
Mr. Rafique couldn't believe the thoughts he was having, and was perplexed as well as relieved by these questions.

Zulai, whose head was still bowed, wondered what was going on. She lifted her head to steal a glance at her husband, whose eyes were directed at Zulai. The two were suddenly face to face, eye to eye. And Mr. Rafique saw in his wife's face all the qualities that had drawn him to her some eight months ago: her confidence, charm, and warm personality. As he looked at her large, seductive eyes, he felt an intense passion for her—it was a joyous, yet aching sensation, as he still couldn't rid his mind of the pain of the past months. Mr. Rafique saw himself at an emotional crossroad, not knowing whether to “perform the test or to renounce everything—the test, sex in general, Zulai, the people of Zongo Street, and anything that had been in the way of my happiness.” Mr. Rafique, resolved to renounce it all, prepared himself to break the news to his wife and the old woman; he was renouncing the test, and thereby granting Zulai the divorce she had sought.

“By separating myself from the spell sex and love cast on people, I can continue to love her, spiritually, wholly, for the rest of our lives,” thought Mr. Rafique. He was just about to speak to Zulai when he heard the lafiree's voice. “Are you two ready?”

“Yes,” Mr. Rafique answered calmly.

Zulaikha, utterly confused as to what would happen next, looked away from the door. The lafiree—who had expected to see a lot more than what she saw—seemed disappointed.

“I have changed my mind,” said Mr. Rafique, avoiding Zulaikha's eyes.

“What are you talking about?” the old woman cried, grabbing his forearm.

“I don't really know, to tell you the truth, but I won't do it even if you leave the room.” He paused, glanced at his wife, and continued. “And I hereby grant her the divorce, one, two, three times!”

“Wait, Rafíku,” the old woman said. “Why do you want to do this to yourself? You know what the Zongo people will say, don't you?”

“Yes, I do! But, for all I care, they can say whatever they want to say! My heart tells me I am doing a good thing. That's what matters to me, not what the Zongolese think.” The lafiree shuddered at Mr. Rafique's pronouncement. And Zulaikha, who one might have expected to rejoice, sat with eyes half-closed and brows tightly knit, as if she had just received tragic news. Mr. Rafique took a step toward Zulaikha. He lowered his head, and with his left palm on his chest extended his right arm to her, in a gesture of love and respect.
“Ma-assalám,”
he said politely and turned and began to walk out of the room. The women stared at each other and then at his back, still unable to make head or tail of what had taken place.

 

No sooner had Mr. Rafique walked through the palace gates than rumors started floating around that he had failed the manhood test. By the next day, there were half a dozen new stories, each one a slight variation, salted and spiced as it went from one mouth to the other. Some rumors claimed that Mr. Rafique had actually passed the test, but had soon afterwards pronounced the divorce, as a means of revenge on his wife. One swore that Mr. Rafique's “pen had run out of ink” in the middle of the test. Another maintained that he had failed miserably, that he “wasn't even able to get his
thing
up,” to begin with; and that he had never been a
man,
and that Najim was someone else's son after all, a child forced on him by “his harlot-mother” because the real culprit had denied responsibility for the pregnancy.

The lafiree, who had apparently noticed the bulge in Mr. Rafique's trousers when he entered the test room, defended him. She swore by her many years and the
strength
of her dead husband that “the young man Rafíku is a real man! I saw his trouser-front with my two eyes, and believe me I can tell a real
man
when I see one!”

So much for the old woman's attempt to tell the truth of what she saw. The street's rascals nicknamed her “Madam-real-manhood.” And to the chagrin of the poor lady, that nickname followed her to her grave.

 

Life went on as usual on Zongo Street after the dust of this drama settled. Zulaikha's life didn't change much after this event. A rumor soon circulated that she was the one who indeed
killed
Mr. Rafique's penis, as he was virile and had a child before he met her. But Zulai wasn't bothered by these assertions, and continued to live her life in the foolhardy manner she had always lived. She threw away the head scarf worn by married Muslim women and divorcées, exposing her permed hair to the world, and refused to be classified as a
bazawara,
a term that had taken on a derogatory meaning to describe a divorced woman—often seen either as someone with emotional baggage or as damaged goods that men should try to avoid at any cost. She didn't marry again until six years later when she was twenty-five, and it was to a rich man in the capital city, Accra, over two hundred miles away.

Mr. Rafique's life went on too, though in a rather different manner. After he left the palace he had headed straight to Apala Goma, the beer parlour down on Bompata Road. He felt as relieved as a donkey that has returned from a long journey and finally has the load it carried taken off its back. Mr. Rafique felt even more relieved and freer than the donkey, because “the animal never has the choice of carrying or not carrying a load in the first place . . . if it does, it will not carry the load at all. Who likes to suffer? But an ass is an ass, always at the mercy of its master, whereas I am my own master!” As Mr. Rafique contemplated in this manner, he stepped into the doorway of the drinking parlour. “Henceforth, I am going to live my life the way I see fit,” he thought while he waited for a double shot of straight gin, the first of many subsequent drinks that night. By the time Mr. Rafique left the bar, around a quarter past midnight, he was as drunk as a pagan celebrating the death of his grandfather. Fortunately for him, the rascals who had the habit of thrashing drunks at night had vacated the street. It surprised Mr. Rafique that as drunk as he was, his thoughts were still clear. He vividly recalled the incidents of the whole day, and grinned to himself.

On reaching the house, Mr. Rafique found the main gate locked from the inside. To avoid trouble between him and Mamman Salisu—Mr. Rafique's self-righteous half brother who denounced his drinking with religious vehemence—Mr. Rafique proceeded further down the compound, to the small concretized prayer lot where the boys and young men in the neighbourhood slept on very hot nights. There was a common saying of the streetfolks: “Men who want to command respect should not sleep in the company of kids.” Mr. Rafique laughed and walked to the back of the lot, where straw mats were kept in an old oil drum. He selected a mat and spread it in an empty space between two young men who were both his nephews. After removing his shoes, he curled up on his right side. He closed his eyes and placed his hands between his legs. Mr. Rafique had never before experienced the inner peacefulness he felt at that moment. “They will not get me again! They can drown themselves if they don't like the way I live!” he said to himself at that moment when sleep and consciousness cross paths in their tireless effort to bring Light and Darkness to humanity, to unite Joy with Suffering, to bring Inner Peace to the pulsing heart of Man.

 

 

 

AND THIS.

Even this. This memory like all the others was a lie. Like the sound of someone ascending wooden stairs, which she couldn't know because she had never heard it. Still it was as real as this one. A coffin sinking reluctantly into the open mouth of a grave, earth in clods collected around it in a pile like froth from the mouth of a mad dog. And women. Gathered in a cluster of black, like angry crows. Weeping. The sound was something she had heard only in her dreams and in these moments of memory—a keening, loud and sharp, but not brittle like the screeching of glass or the imagined sound of women crying. This was something entirely different. A deep lowing, a presence, dark and palpable, like a shadow emanating from the women, becoming a thing that circled the grave and the mourners in a predatory manner before rising up to the brightness of the sky and the sun, to be replaced by another momentarily.

Always in this memory she stood next to her father, a tall whip of blackness like an undecided but upright cobra. And he held her hand in his, another lie. He was silent, but tears ran down his face. It wasn't the tears that bothered her. It was the way his body shuddered every few moments. Not a sob, it was more like his body was struggling to remember how to breathe, fighting the knowledge that most of him was riding in that coffin sinking into the soft dark loam.

But how could she be sure she remembered this correctly?

He was her father and the coffin held all that was left of her mother, Abigail. This much she was sure of. However, judging by the way everyone spoke of Abigail, there was nothing of her in that dark iroko casket. But how do you remember an event you were not there for? Abigail had died in childbirth and she, Abigail, this Abigail, the daughter not the dead one, the mother, was a baby sleeping in the crook of some aunt's arm completely unaware of the world. She looked up. Her father stood in the doorway to the kitchen and the expression she saw on his face wasn't a lie.

“Dad,” she said.

He stood in the doorframe. Light, from the outside security lights and wet from the rain, blew in. He swallowed and collected himself. She was doing the dishes buried up to her elbows in suds.

“Uh, carry on,” he said. Turning abruptly, he left.

The first time she saw that expression she'd been eight. He had been drinking, which he did sometimes when he was sad. Although that word, sad, seemed inadequate. And this sadness was the memory of Abigail overwhelming him. When he felt it rise, he would drink and play jazz.

It was late and she should have been in bed. Asleep. But the loud music woke her and drew her out into the living room. It was bright, the light sterile almost, the same fluorescent lighting used in hospitals. The furnishing was sparse. One armchair with wide wooden arms and leather seats and backrest, the leather fading and worn bald in some spots. A couple of beanbags scattered around a fraying rug, and a room divider sloping on one side, broken. Beyond the divider was the dining room. But here, in the living room, under the window that looked out onto a hill and the savanna sloping down it, stood the record player and the stack of records. Her father was in the middle of the room swaying along to “The Girl from Ipanema,” clutching a photograph of Abigail to his chest. She walked in and took the photograph from his hands.

“Abigail,” he said. Over and over.

“It's all right, Dad, it's just the beer.”

“I'm not drunk.”

“Then it's the jazz. You know it's not good for you.”

But she knew this thing wasn't the jazz, at least not the way he had told her about it on other countless drunken nights. That jazz, she imagined, was something you find down a dark alley taken as a shortcut, and brushing rain from your hair in the dimness of the club found there, you hear the singer crying just for you, while behind her a horn collects all the things she forgot to say, the brushes sweeping it all up against the skin of the drum. This thing with her father, however, was something else, Abigail suspected, something dead and rotting.

“Shhh, go to bed, Dad,” she said.

He turned and looked at her and she saw it and recognized what it was. She looked so much like her mother that when he saw her suddenly, she knew he wanted her to be Abigail. Now she realized that there was also something else: a patience, a longing. The way she imagined a devoted bonsai grower stood over a tree.