Radiance of Tomorrow (21 page)

“I will not do that. I will stay here until help arrives,” Rogers said to the voice.

“Then consider yourself suspended until further notice,” the voice responded, and the radio went silent. In a matter of minutes, a Toyota with tinted glass arrived and another employee took the radio from Rogers, got into the truck, and drove it away from the scene of the accident. The back tires, soaked with blood and bits of dirt, painted the already disturbed earth with the boy’s life. The vehicle that had dropped off the new driver sped back toward the mining site, near where the hospital was, leaving the boy in the arms of his mother. Rogers told the mother they should carry the child to the hospital. He knew that help wasn’t coming—the vehicle that was supposed to take them hadn’t. The mother stood up with her son, and that was when life completely departed him. She laid the boy down carefully and sprang on Rogers, hitting him everywhere until she was exhausted. He threw his arms around her and embraced her, weeping.

“He was my only child left. I lost everyone in the war and now am alone,” she said, sobbing as she removed herself from the embrace of Rogers and picked up her son. Benjamin and Bockarie tried to help, but she wanted to carry her child herself. She walked toward the mining site. Rogers followed, not knowing what he could do.

“I wonder where she’s going,” Bockarie said.

“And Rogers, that poor fellow. Just when he was regaining himself from the death of his son,” Benjamin said. They watched the woman walking far into the middle of the road, so cars had to swerve to avoid her.

When she reached the gate at the mining site, she called for who was in charge to come out and see what they had done to her child. The security guards received orders to escort her out of the area.

No one anticipated what happened next. The woman ran with her child in her arms toward one of the electric security fences and leaned against it, electrocuting herself. A crow cried sharply nearby and the silence deepened. Something had torn in the fabric of that day. Rogers ran from the crowd toward Imperi. He didn’t go home but into the bushes, tearing off his clothes until he was naked. He never came back, but he was sighted every now and then eating raw food and roots at the edge of town. Had he gone mad, or was he punishing himself for the accident? No one knew, not even his wife, as he didn’t speak to anyone and appeared to have forgotten even his family, friends, and workmates.

As for the woman and her child, they were removed from the fence at night after the armed guards dispersed the crowd. No one knew who removed the bodies or where they were buried. There was nothing about them reported anywhere. It was as though they had never existed.

11

LESS THAN A WEEK AFTER THE INCIDENT
, there were white men all over town, aided by some locals who carried their equipment. They began marking houses, trees, and the ground with paint: red, white, and yellow. Rumor had it they were geologists (those who speak to the earth to find out what it chooses to give to the living—this was the closest translation for the elders) who had determined that there were large mineral deposits under the ground of Imperi. People knew what this meant: soon their town would be bulldozed to extract the minerals. But they refused to believe it. What did the colors mean? Where were they going to go? These questions took hold of every gathering in town and even intruded on private whispers. As the confusion increased, the geologists moved into the cemetery and started marking gravestones and cutting trees.

The elders, about eight of them, decided to confront the white men, waking up early and waiting patiently at the end of the road where the path into the cemetery began. A few hours later, four white men got out of their vehicles and rubbed something on their arms, faces, and necks; they put on hats and started talking among themselves while the locals offloaded their equipment.

The elders cleared their throats. “You there, young white fellows. We have been told that you are supposed to listen to the earth and learn from it. But what you are doing is different and against those whose role is to listen to the earth,” an elder with grace and wisdom in every part of his being said to the foreigners.

“We have permission to mine anywhere we find rutile in this chiefdom,” one of the geologists said.

“Who gave you that permission?” another elder asked.

“Your government. Our company has it for ninety-nine years.”

“Even if that is the case, would you dig up your own grandfather’s or grandmother’s grave to find some minerals?” Pa Moiwa asked. The white men ignored the question.

The elders couldn’t get any more answers. They had a quick meeting standing at the entrance of the cemetery and agreed to send someone to plead with the paramount chief. They couldn’t believe that someone would lease their land for ninety-nine years with impunity and no monitoring whatsoever; they couldn’t comprehend that someone chosen as a minister or president of a country could make such a decision. Even local chiefs didn’t do that to people they knew and grew up with. However idiotic it was, a solution must be found, and there was no need to give up yet on the one who was supposed to represent them. Surely she would rail against the decision to mine where their ancestors were buried.

The paramount chief sent word back the next day that she would come to town for a meeting in two days and that until then all work on the cemetery and around town would stop. The work did stop. There was some relief in the air: finally, someone was listening.

On the day she arrived, everyone brought whatever hope and strength was left in them to the football field. It was the only space big enough to accommodate the crowd. Some men from the government came, too—their dark sunglasses and fancy cars gave them away. And of course there were the white men in charge of the company, escorted by their armed guards and police.

“Finally, we can have a discussion together about this land,” someone shouted, and the people clapped and chanted old slogans about solidarity.

The paramount chief took the megaphone and the chanting died down. “We have had meetings with your section chiefs and they will tell you the details, but here is what we’ve decided: this town will be relocated. Your houses will be rebuilt elsewhere and you will be paid surface rent for your farms and properties. You must cooperate and cause no trouble for these men.” She put the megaphone down and shook hands with the government officials and the foreigners. They all seemed pleased with themselves, smiling as though they had performed a remarkable service for the many hardened faces before them.

The crowd started shouting: “We own this land! No one consulted us!” The officials, shielded from the people by their armed guards and police, got into their vehicles and left the townspeople to their quarrels. Pa Moiwa fainted and had to be carried home. That evening, the usual layered clouds that summoned night to cloak the sky were broken into many pieces and struggled to make their call. Thus the night, too, arrived at a defeated pace that deepened the gloominess of the town. Even the birds didn’t chant; they just went quietly into their nests, as if they knew that they would soon have to find new homes.

As though the company felt that if it waited, the people would find a way to stop them, men started tearing down the cemetery a few days later.

No one knew how the machines came to the cemetery, but they were there one morning, ready to further wound the shattered backbone of the community. The armed guards and police were there as well, in full riot gear, standing by a barrier that had been made with sticks and pointing their guns at anyone who came too close or looked too hard.

The machines’ engines bellowed, releasing smoke that rose toward the morning sky and tormented the rising sun. The blades of the machines dug into the graves, pulling out bodies, skulls, and some bones still wrapped in old cotton clothes; they were all deposited in a big hole the machines had dug. People cried and shouted in vain. They apologized to the ancestors. No one had ever witnessed an entire cemetery destroyed like this.

Some people refused to believe that this was actually happening. They thought they were having a nightmare that would pass. It seemed the sun had told the moon what it had seen, because the moon refused to come out that night. There was a silence that made the dark last longer, longer than it had even during the war. The next morning, hesitantly, one after another, the townspeople went to the cemetery. The place was now a deep hole with all the graves gone and no indication that they had ever existed. The big hole where all the dead had been piled up was covered. The people left offerings there, prayed, and cried.

Pa Moiwa got sicker. His friends told him he mustn’t die of heartbreak.

“There is no place to bury you, to join the others. So you have to live,” Mama Kadie pleaded with him.

“I must go and tell them that we tried to stop these things, that they must try and be with us another way,” he told his friends as they walked home. The elders took off their shoes to feel the earth, but it felt different: abrupt and bitter.

There were flames by the cemetery that night and an explosion that killed two unarmed local security guards. Someone had set fire to the machines. But it was only a small setback—the destruction soon continued, and more armed guards were deployed everywhere. News of such things did not make it to the papers or radios of nearby cities, let alone the capital of the country. The mining company’s annual brochures were filled with colorful stories of community building, stories of new schools and libraries. There were no mentions of the destruction of towns and cemeteries, the pollution of water sources, the loss of human life, or the children who now frequently drowned in the many dams.

*   *   *

Pa Moiwa died a few weeks later and so did many other elderly people. They were buried near the old cemetery with the hope that their spirits would join those who had gone ahead. But the area, along with the mass grave near it, was soon flooded.

The town was in the midst of a relocation to a barren land. The new houses were smaller, with weaker foundations. They were made of mud brick, not cement or clay. As a result, they sometimes collapsed on families, killing everyone inside. Of course, the police reports blamed the inhabitants for not maintaining the houses the mining company had had built for them. The new town also had no trees, no proper land to farm on, and no streams for water. Every morning, a truck carrying a tank would come to distribute water to the people. Everyone, even women and children, fought one another just to get a bucket or two, even though the water smelled impure and had rust in it. The schools that had been destroyed hadn’t been rebuilt, so everyone had to go to the town where the secondary school was. This meant long walks on roads with big trucks passing frequently. When your child left you for school, you waited anxiously to see if he or she would return alive. Accidents were common. The vehicles didn’t stop when they hit someone; the company took no responsibility whatsoever.

Benjamin and Bockarie still worked for the company and Rogers had completely disappeared. The older people waited in what gradually became the carcass of Imperi. Everyone moved out except some of the orphans. When the foreigners came to count the number of houses they had to pay for or rebuild, they didn’t count any households occupied by the youngsters, the orphans, the former child soldiers. Some adults tried to assume ownership of the houses so the children could be compensated—their parents had, after all, owned the buildings—but such efforts were to no avail. Families took in as many of the orphans as possible, but their numbers were too great. At Kula’s insistence, Bockarie took in Colonel’s group, with the exception of Ernest, whom Mama Kadie had grown fond of.

Mama Kadie purposefully gave tasks to Ernest that would bring him in contact with Sila. Sila had started speaking to the boy, uttering words in his direction without looking at him. He’d started after Ernest had defended his children from some bullies without using violence. One bully had thrown a stone and Ernest stepped in front of it with his back to it. Then he growled at the bully, who ran away, and winced from the pain. But as soon as Maada’s and Hawa’s eyes caught his, he smiled, and they did, too. Sila had seen it all from a distance.

“Thank you, Ernest,” he said, lowering himself to hug his children. Ernest walked off, still feeling that he hadn’t done enough or could never do enough for them.

But now wasn’t the time for mending broken connections. It was the time for teaching the heart to relocate to another land, to hold the memories of the land that would soon be abandoned, to embalm the image of what had existed so it wouldn’t decay with time, so it could live on vibrantly in the stories.

How do you pack up to leave your town for mining? It was easier to run during the war—you knew that no matter what, if you stayed alive, you would be able to return home and stand on your land. Now the land would be flooded; it would disappear.

*   *   *

It was the last day of the life of the real town of Imperi, before its name became something new, something that the tongues of its inhabitants had to try to get used to. Mama Kadie and Pa Kainesi had asked everyone to spend Saturday there one last time. The sky had washed its face and its tears had soaked the dirt road, so the dust seemed unable to rise. Even the trees now rejoiced, shaking their leaves lightly with the passing wind, relieved from the burden of carrying dust.

The elders slowly found their footsteps on the road, their bare feet leaving marks on the ground that the earth embraced with familiarity. The houses looked lonely now. After every few paces, the elders raised their heads toward the sky. They sent a boy to run around town asking everyone to gather at the field after the rain. They sat on Pa Kainesi’s veranda and waited. As soon as the boy finished the announcements, it started to rain again, this time with such vigor that each raindrop left a deep mark on the ground.

Pa Kainesi cleared his throat. “Ah, my friends, we are alive yet another day to collect memories. My blood is full with so many memories. So I must stand and stretch to make more space before we start talking.” He stood and paced up and down the veranda, slowly moving his shoulders and lifting his knees.