The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter’s Memoir. Aminatta Forna
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blocking my air passages and making it hard to breathe. I began to feel nauseous. In the farthest fields of my vision I could just about make out my brother and sister crying too. I took choppy, shallow breaths and pushed the sobs up through my chest and out of my gulping mouth.
Our mother’s voice briefly cut through the clouds. ‘You must be joking if you think I’m staying here. I’d rather sleep in the car.’ She was holding onto a sheet and a pillow. Maybe she had them before. She may have even been on her way there already. I don’t know. Whatever, she still didn’t move. Her eyes locked onto my father’s.
In that second Memuna broke ranks, ran forward and put her arms round my mother’s thighs. Our mother hugged my sister to her and they stood defiant. Our father looked exasperated but no less angry as he stared at them both.
‘I’m going with you, Mummy,’ said my sister, a cub facing off the leader of the pride.
For a moment I had no idea what was going to happen. We were all suspended in the moment, afraid to breathe or move. My father shrugged. ‘Fine, fine.’ He turned away. Suddenly he swung around and his gaze dropped down on my brother and me, hard like a pebble. The sob in my throat hung suspended, bobbing and trembling, too terrified to come out, but incapable of returning. My chest quaked.
‘And you two? Do you want to go with your mother as well?’
Us, us? What did this have to do with us? Up until then I had thought I was just watching, as I did everything else that went on in the house. I couldn’t even begin to imagine why my father was suddenly questioning us. I automatically thought I must have done something wrong. I certainly didn’t want to sleep in the car.
‘No, Daddy,’ we said.
My sister and my mother went out to the car and stayed the night there. Sheka and I crept back to our beds.
By the time of their fifth wedding anniversary our parents’ marriage was falling apart. The only time I remember them together, actually physically together in the same space, was the night their raging broke into my dreams. My father, obsessed only with his patients and politics, had withdrawn almost totally from his wife. He was away for days at a time; when he returned he was wearing the same clothes he left in; he was unwashed and the skin round his eyes sagged with exhaustion.
The young activists were travelling huge distances, moving from village to village around the country canvassing and holding meetings, many of them clandestine. They were forced to stay out of the way of the authorities, especially the police, who were breaking up APC gatherings and arresting the leaders. At night they slept rough or on floors and ate whatever their supporters, who were mainly poor villagers with little to eat themselves, were able to spare.
My father went round his Lebanese diamond-dealer clients, soliciting funds and persuading them to back the APC. Most of them traditionally supported the SLPP but they were alert to the mood of the country and anything that might influence their chances of making money. They donated generously to the new party and, to cover themselves, funnelled a bit more cash in the direction of the SLPP as well.
At home my mother was left holding the fort. She spent her days with no idea where her husband was or when he was coming back. There was nothing to tell the sick people who came to the clinic, except that the doctor wasn’t in. When my father did eventually come home, usually after two or three days, it was late in the evening. He showered quickly and changed his clothes, but instead of going to bed he would unlock the surgery and usher any waiting patients inside.
One evening a young woman arrived at the house in time for evening surgery. She was haemorrhaging badly: the back of her lappa was stained dark red and blood streaked her legs. She was weak and stumbled as she tried to walk, supported on her husband’s arm. My mother let them wait on the veranda. By now my father’s appearances and disappearances had a sort of rhythm: he tended to be gone for two nights, three at the most, return for one night and depart again early in the morning of the next day. He was never at home for more than a day at a time. The woman settled to wait. On our veranda her husband spread out cloths to lie on and mixed a little of the rice and sauce they had brought.
In the early hours of the morning the headlights of a car lit up the front of the house. My father was home. As soon as he saw the bleeding woman he admitted her straight into the ward. After she was comfortable he lay down and slept for a few hours. In the morning he called my mother and she helped while he rapidly performed a D&C. When the patient had recovered sufficiently, he was gone.
By now our income was dwindling fast. My mother still worked at the Volkswagen garage and gradually her earnings alone supported the family. The clinic was no longer bringing in money and our father had contributed the family’s savings to the political fight. Added to that, the Austin was gone – given to the party to help ferry activists around the country. Fortunately, my mother still held on to her Beetle.
In February 1967 a date for the elections was announced. They were to be held in March, just one month away. Everyone in the country had been waiting and preparing for this moment. The APC planned to challenge virtually every seat, with the exception of some of those in the southern Mende heartlands, where they reckoned they could not possibly win. They mobilised a formidable campaign. At its heart was the message to the people that the APC intended to stop Albert Margai’s republican constitution from advancing any further.
One night we children were already in bed; my mother was sitting up talking with Foday, the man who owned the bookshop in town and who occasionally stopped by for a visit. We were good customers; my sister and brother were avid readers, my sister especially: a precociously early learner she earned her place in family lore by finishing Lorna Doone when she was four. I hadn’t conquered reading or discovered the world of books; my pleasures were as yet confined to ants, dogs and mud. Foday had brought my mother a gift: a copy of the newly published Encyclopaedia of Cooking.
They had been keeping company a while when my father stepped through the door. He was as unkempt as usual, but beneath the tiredness he was restless and evidently excited. He kissed his wife, sat down next to her and waited. Foday sensed his company had become superfluous and stood up to go. When the door closed behind the bookseller my father pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and passed it to my mother. He gave no explanation, just watched her closely. He looked pretty pleased with himself, my mother said later, puffed up from inside with pride.
In her hand was a flyer, no more than about eighteen inches in size. At the top of the sheet was the red rising star, the symbol of the APC; in the centre a picture of my father. He had recently shaved off his beard, and in the photograph his chin was clean. The printer had touched up the white shirt he was wearing and also the whites of his eyes, ever so slightly, in order to give some definition to what was a rather poor quality image. The whole effect was to make my father, who already looked startlingly young, even more wholesome. His name was printed in capitals, below that his qualifications: MB, ChB, DRCOG and then the words:
‘This is Your APC Candidate.
He is your Karefa-Smart’s Choice
Vote APC all the way.’
Siaka Stevens had personally asked him to take on John Karefa Smart’s former seat of Tonkolili West and our father had agreed. It was his home constituency. My father was the obvious – indeed, the perfect – choice.
As the election date drew closer, my father was absent round the clock. His constituency was a whole day’s journey away. By now the small, discreet meetings had burgeoned into rallies attracting huge crowds, but in order to hold a political meeting of any kind the candidates needed the approval of the paramount chief, most of whom were loyal to the government. It became routine for permission to be refused. Under these circumstances any meeting that went ahead, impromptu or otherwise, was likely to be heavy-handedly broken up by the police. Across the country there were frequent, sporadic clashes between government and opposition supporters.
Koidu, in Kono, lay on the axis between the SLPP Mende strongholds of the eastern provinces and the Temne north, which was mobilising behind the APC. One afternoon, on the way back to our house from school, with we three children in the car, my mother