Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [130]
We were silent, Redempta and I.
‘Eh bo, aunty.’ His voice was changed now, softer, respectful almost. ‘You’ve done your duty. You can tell that to your grandchildren. Now let me do my own. Look how dark it is already. My men will take care of you, make sure you get home. The streets are unsafe, nobody will come to collect these boxes tonight.’
Neither one of us answered. We both thought this last bit was true. We had been forgotten. It was just us, this man and his soldiers.
‘Get up now. My men will help you.’ The officer switched on his torch and directed the beam at us.
It makes me feel like laughing now to think of the sight we must have made. Two middle-aged women, dishevelled and squinting in the sudden brightness, sitting on the dusty floor of a classroom in our gowns and good shoes, holding on to our handbags. The chain that bound us together went around our waists and then through the handles of the three sealed ballot boxes. The key to the padlock was tucked down Redempta’s bodice. As good as at the bottom of the ocean.
The stand-off could not last for ever, but it lasted just long enough. Minutes later, out of the darkness — the sound of an engine. Yaya! He had spent the day waiting, listening to the nonews coming from the radio, knowing the less that was said the worse things must surely be. When night arrived he collected his car keys and stepped out of the house and drove through the streets, not daring to switch on the headlights, until he reached our polling station. Together we loaded the ballot boxes into the back of the Peugeot under the sullen stares of the soldiers, and though every moment we thought that they might stop us or that some authorisation might arrive to arrest us, deep down we knew we had called their bluff. We were not street boys, but three middleaged citizens. The truth is, once we were no longer afraid, there was nothing they could do.
At the counting centre, Redempta, Yaya and I, we handed over the boxes to a white woman wearing a T-shirt printed with the words: ‘INTERNATIONAL OBSERVER’ in bold letters. And after our mission was complete, we drove home through the dark, silent streets, laughing as we went.
Oh, Redempta! My dear, Redempta. She lived long enough to see how all our efforts had been wasted. Even as we sat chained to our ballot boxes, on the other side of the country people with telltale purple thumbs were having their hands sliced off, to punish them for daring to insist upon their own leader. The Army handed over power with one hand, only to seize it with the other a year later. Old enemies created new factions and joined together against a common foe, us: the women and the children and the ordinary people. The new President, who was an old man, shook his head, climbed into his waiting helicopter and disappeared into the clouds. From those same clouds a maelstrom was unleashed, and of the many lives destroyed by its rage, one was Redempta. Murdered, alongside her husband, her children and countless others, the day the rebel army stormed the city.
I had a dream. In that dream I was playing with my children in the sun, not a cloud in the sky. I looked up, and high above me I saw the ghost of Janneh. From the top of the escarpment he was waving at me and shouting, but he was too far away for me to catch the words, so I smiled and waved back at him. A cloud crossed in front of the sun, for a moment I could hardly see him, I let my hand drop back to my side. Janneh was still calling to me. But it was too late, too late! The gathering winds swept his words away and hurled them out to sea.
And from somewhere in the distance, I heard the first, faint roll of thunder.
16
Asana, 1998
The Box
Five months earlier I had woken to a dawn the colour of steel. The curious light lasted through the morning and into the day as if the sun had never risen. The land glowed in silvery shades. Here and there pools of quivering light rested