Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [135]
My visits to the factory also gave me a chance to see Alpha who worked nearby as a teacher’s assistant in a boy’s secondary school. He would cycle to meet me, carrying lunch for us both in aluminium pots wrapped up in cloths. We would share our meal, catch up on each other’s news and after I had rested a little and Alpha run whatever errands he had in town, we would set off to the factory, Alpha walking his bicycle, me alongside him.
The last time I visited, the heat had been dazzling, the sun directly overhead. The grass was pale yellow and bone dry, rustling in what little breeze there was. The great, black boulders scattered at the bottom of the hills glistened in the sun. The sky was hazy, streaked with clouds. It was too hot even for the birds, who hid from the heat in the branches of the trees. The factory was some small distance from the town. Despite the heat Alpha and I walked without stopping, lost in the pleasure of each other’s company.
There was no guard at the factory gate. We passed through, still chattering and we walked on up the empty drive. Mr Bangura didn’t hurry down to welcome me, or wave from his office window as he usually did. I noticed, yes. But did I think it so very strange? I don’t know, perhaps I only think so now.
The big factory door stood open. We stepped through. Inside the main hall, silent pools of colour. A paddle lying on the ground by my feet. Not a soul in sight.
For some reason we did not call out. We stood still and stared around us. Only a moment or two later did we open our ears and listen, and when we did we heard a sound that must have been there all along. A buzzing, like a faint whine, like an aeroplane engine high in the sky. We followed the sound across the factory floor towards the great, double doors that led out to the back, where deliveries came and went. On the opposite side was the storeroom where the tubs of pigment were kept.
One thing nobody ever mentions afterwards is the smell. The indignity of it, I suppose. Such a commonplace smell. One to make your mouth water and your stomach rumble. For the rest of your life at a family gathering, a festival, it will serve to bring back the nausea, return you to the horror.
What is it? It is the smell of roasted meat.
The roof of the storeroom was mostly gone, what remained had collapsed into the building. The windows were ringed with black, shards of darkened glass like broken teeth stuck out of the frames. On the ground below one window lay a tub, partly melted, the spilled violet powder a shock of colour. The door had turned to charcoal, and split apart as Alpha kicked it. The sound of buzzing soared. All around us briefly turned to black as we were engulfed by a great mass of flies. I covered my face and hit at them with my hands, and once the air cleared I saw what was inside.
They had been rounded up and herded inside at gunpoint. We know this because it happened later, to others. Those few who survived all told the same story. At first they imagine it is a robbery, they are being locked up to stop them from raising the alarm. From the window they watch carefully the movements of the armed men. Then they see the plastic containers, smell the petrol as it is splashed on the walls and roof of the store. Men with guns encircle the building. Those inside begin to shout and hammer at the door, frantic now. Somebody takes a tub of dye and throws it at the window, it smashes the glass. They scramble over one another to escape the stifling fume-filled air and the certainty of death. The first one to try to climb out is shot.
The screams of the men as they burned must have been terrible, must have filled the air, sent the birds and animals fleeing. And yet nobody hears them. Their killers are deaf to them. There is no one else for miles. And afterwards, when the gunmen