Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [144]
‘You can trust me, Mariama.’
A pause. Tap, tap. Of course, we were talking about God.
‘So what do you think about, when you think about God?’
‘I think he doesn’t like black people very much.’
* * *
Something happened here. A change. Stealthy, creeping, slow. Like the way the desert is gradually covering the plain, one grain of sand at a time. It took place without us even noticing, so that the moment when we might have resisted passed unremarked. Suddenly it was irreversible. The evil had been let loose. But it was no longer among us, it was within. Everybody became part of it.
In the city the animals grew fat while the humans starved. The dogs were sleek and fit, their coats glossy. Vultures gorged until they could barely take to the air. The abundance of food gave the dogs a new confidence, the only ones with the freedom of the city. Under the bridge the fish nibbled at the jetsam of human corpses jamming the bay where every night suspected insurgents were shot by the dozen, their bodies tossed over the railings.
From the East, which had fallen into the hands of the rebels, a cloud of smoke drifted across the river to the West, bringing with it the scent of blood and fear. And every night the stars formed the shape of a beautiful butterfly hovering over the city. We hid and waited for them to arrive. And waited, until in the end we were forced out by our hunger.
I was standing at a checkpoint, behind a queue of people. The checkpoint was manned by black soldiers from another country, sent by their government to fight our war. They were poor; they were afraid for their lives; they had no choice; they hated us for it. Nobody spoke. You could smell the perspiration on the people as they waited silently for their papers to be checked.
Then, suddenly, from behind me — a woman’s voice, shrill and steely.
‘Rebel!’
Again. ‘Rebel!’
The soldiers’ heads snapped up. One of them handed back the identity card he was holding, tightened his grip on his gun. Two of them began to move down the queue, towards the source of the outburst. I dared not look around. None of us did. The soldiers were heading straight towards me. Weapons at the ready, their faces arranged into expressions of hostility to cover the fear. Only when they had passed me did I dare turn around.
A woman was pointing at a younger woman further back in the queue. She stood with her legs apart, one hand on her hip, glaring fiercely. With her other hand she jabbed the air, shrieking the word repeatedly. ‘Rebel! Rebel!’
Up until that moment the woman she had been pointing at had stood quite still, as though none of this had anything to do with her. The instant the soldiers seized her and pulled her out of the line of people, however, she came alive — struggling, begging and screaming. Her accuser, who was relentless, now released a torrent of accusations. She had seen the young woman with a pistol, had seen her in the east end of the city earlier in the month. A man, clearly the young woman’s husband, came forward from the back of the line to his wife’s defence. He approached the soldiers hesitantly, holding his hands out in front of him, the palms turned up. It was all a misunderstanding, he pleaded. But the soldiers didn’t seem to want to listen. One of them slapped the man’s wife, slapped her repeatedly, asking questions, demanding answers. Then they began to hit him, too. Both of them. He shielded himself by bending over double, but she had her arms pinned behind her back and took the full force of each blow. Their pleas, the sound of their voices, were lost in the flood of accusations.
And people knew the killers came in all guises: as men, as women, even in the form of sweet-faced children.
The officer in charge ordered them to be executed. There and then, in front of us. The soldiers stripped them, forced them to kneel. They shot her first. Then him. She was