FEAR &
CO UR AG E Edited by RenĂŠe Hollis
T I M E L E S S
W I S D O M
True stories that reveal the depths of the human experience
INTRODUCTION
E
veryday day news we hear remarkable true stories Every in in thethe news we hear remarkable true stories that that demonstrate thethe resilience of the human spirit. We We thought it it demonstrate resilience of the human spirit. thought was time that more of these stories were heard, so we organized was time that more of these stories were heard, so we organized an international internationalshort short-story-writing competition.which This resulted has an story writing competition, in resulted in the publication of the ‘Timeless Wisdom’ collection the publication of the Timeless Wisdom collection of books. of books: Fear and Courage, Human Kindness, Love and Loss and We were overwhelmed by the variety and richness of the Struggle and Success. hundreds of entries from around the world. Our criteria for final We were overwhelmed by the variety and richness of selection were that the stories should reflect a diversity of writing, the hundreds of entries from around the world. Our criteria blend humour and pathos, and balance moments of drama with for final selection were that the stories were written by mature those ofover quietthe contemplation. writers age of sixty, that they should reflect a diversity There is much to be said about the extraordinary human spirit. of writing, blend humour and pathos, and balance moments of You will be inspired and motivated as you read these stories about drama with those of quiet contemplation. fear courage. Thesee, telling bookabout will enthral and As you will theremoments is muchintothis be said the you extraordinary humanofspirit. Youinspiration. will be inspired andA.motivated and provide a source practical As John Shedd said, as ship you read stories, but and that’s encounter telling moments ‘A is safethese in harbour, not what ships are for.’that From a will both enthral and provide a source of practical inspiration. man seeing a robbery just about to take place, to a woman’s intrepid Interspersed stories are by quotes relevantspider journey to Antarctica,between to a ladythe being bitten a poisonous to each book’s theme by people as diverse as J.R.R. Tolkien, on a hiking trip; from a young boy’s recollection of travelling from William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Maya Angelou, Stephen London to Canada with a crowd of war refugees, to one woman’s Hawking, J.M. Barrie, Plato, George R.R. Martin and Jesse journey through radiotherapy and another’s unexpected naturist Jackson. The result are books that encapsulate all that is best experience — these are stories of unexpected fear and courage that about human nature. have had a lasting impact on the storyteller.
Interspersed between the stories are quotes about fear and
We have provided you with a preview of two stories from the courage by people as diverse as J.R.R. Tolkien, Maya Angelou, twenty-five featured in Fear and Courage. Flip over for two Plato, Stephen Hawking and George R.R. Martin. The result is a stories from Human Kindness. Enjoy. book that explores all that is best about human nature.
Fear and Courage | 9781925820065 | Hardcover | 227 x 170 mm | 9 x 6¾ in | 232 pages | RRP: AU $29.99 | NZ: $29.99 | UK £12.99 | 1US $19.99 | CAN $25.99
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Courage is knowing what not to fear. P L AT O
63
DANGEROUS LIAISONS Joan M. Baril
S
urprisingly, the air seemed much warmer in the evening. The day had been chilly but as I walked back to my camper, beads
of sweat were running down my back under my T- shirt. I stopped on the camper steps to listen to the rhythm of surf across the dune that separated me from the Gulf of Mexico. Tiny stars prickled the inky sky. It was January 2003 at St Joseph State Park in the Florida Panhandle. It was warmer inside the camper. But it wasn’t until I undressed for bed that I understood the heat was originating from my body and not the weather. A pink circle, 4 inches in diameter, was inscribed on the skin of my left thigh. In the centre sat a second circle coloured a dark glowing red. In the middle, a tiny black dot created a pattern like a target at a rifle range. When I put my hand over the bullseye I could feel heat emanating into my palm. The entire design was slightly raised and seemed to vibrate with a faint pulse. Obviously I had been bitten by something. I guessed it was a spider. Four years ago, on my 65th birthday, I got a spider bite on a canoe trip. A circular red welt rose up on the cheek of my ass. The doctor said it would go away in a day or two and it did. So now, in Florida, visiting from Canada and on my own, I determined to ignore it and head for bed.
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At dawn and out birdwatching as usual, I felt hot and dizzy as I stumbled through the palmetto behind the camp. I turned back to my vehicle. Time to take action. I had never been to an American hospital before and the small plain building in the city of St Joseph was unprepossessing, a basic one-storey, windowless box covered with scabby pink paint. In the shabby lobby, orange plastic chairs circled the worn linoleum. In spite of the early hour, a dozen patients lolled about. I presented myself at the small counter and flipped up the hem of my shorts so the nurse could get a good look at my fancy thigh. ‘Oh my God!’ she said. ‘Oh my God!’ She ran around the counter, grabbed me by the elbow and hustled me across the room, past the startled patients, through a set of double swinging doors and down a short corridor into a small consulting room. She thrust me inside and then rushed away. I had barely sat down when the doctor appeared, stopped inside the door and stared at my leg. I was coyly holding up the hem of the shorts. He was a handsome young man with a neat reddish beard. He threw himself on his knees in front of me and leaned his face a few inches from my thigh. ‘I don’t like this,’ he said. ‘I don’t like this at all.’ Springing to his feet, he rushed out returning a few seconds later with the nurse. A minute later, down came the shorts and a needle shot into my butt. ‘You’ve been bitten by a brown recluse spider,’ he told me, and then asked several questions about what I was doing in Florida,
12
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where I was camping and so on. At the same time, he was writing out prescriptions. ‘Get some spider spray and go over your camper, especially in the crevices. Better bundle up the bedclothes and take them to the laundry. The spider may be hiding in the covers or lurking in the cracks. Or you could’ve been bitten outside, perhaps at the picnic table. This spider hides away, hence the name, brown recluse.’ Drops of my perspiration dripped on the prescription paper. I was getting dizzier by the minute. ‘Anything else?’ I said. ‘Wash the area with soap and hot water. Wash it a lot. There’s a danger of necrosis.’ I stood up unsteadily, unsure of the meaning of necrosis, but it sounded unpleasant. ‘And if you feel your throat swelling shut, or your tongue swelling and your airway closing, come right to the hospital’ ‘Right-oh,’ I said, and wove my way outside and around the corner to the pharmacy. I asked the pharmacist for a glass of water so that I could take the two pills immediately but when she heard the words ‘brown recluse’ she looked so stricken I was sorry I mentioned it. Several customers clustered around to hear my story and stare at my thigh. Then clutching a large aerosol can of spider spray, I wobbled forth to battle. I drove the truck camper a block to the laundromat and parked in the lot across the street. Then I stripped my bed, shoving everything into a green plastic garbage bag. After tossing the mattress on the floor, I held my breath as I sprayed the entire camper and left it to marinate in the foul-smelling vapour. Once I got the 13
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bedclothes into the washer, I went into the restroom, washed and soaped my leg and covered the area with Mecca Ointment. I have a lot of faith in Mecca Ointment and if necrosis meant what I thought it did — gangrene — I was counting on the old-fashioned Canadian remedy, one that had cleared up infections in the past. Driving is not easy when you are dizzy from fever and psychological shock. When I got back to the campground I sprayed the camper again, closed it up and then sat outside at the picnic table, my book unopened, dripping sweat and watching the tops of the palms sway against the sky. Suddenly, I remembered the doctor’s words about the picnic table. Grabbing the spider spray, I leaned under it, spraying every tiny crack. I moved to a lawn chair and fell into a doze, getting up every once in a while to check the smell inside the camper, take another vitamin C, boil water and wash my leg and then slather on the Mecca. The woman in the next campsite came over to check on me. Apparently my story had gone round. She was a nurse. ‘If you feel your airway swelling, come and get me at once and I’ll drive you to the hospital,’ she said. When she asked if there was anything she could get for me, I requested a cup of boiling water for tea. She looked puzzled. Tea in Florida means iced tea, but she kindly brought me what I needed. Psychologically, Canadian Red Rose Tea is the answer. By evening I felt better. I phoned my daughter Suzanne at home and she laughed when I told her the spider story. ‘Put on Mecca Ointment,’ she said. Half an hour later, she phoned back. ‘The kids looked up “brown recluse” on the internet,’ she said. 14
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‘People get gangrene. They have to amputate. They found this guy’s diary on line. They’re really upset. We’ll come and get you.’ ‘I think it’s fading,’ I said. ‘I’ll phone you in the morning. Since I’m heading home anyway, I’ll be in Canada in a few days.’ The next day, I was in Alabama at a Days Inn hotel typing in brown recluse on the computer, and after a bit of scrolling found the diary of Kevin Smyth who, two years previously in 2001, was bitten on the foot by a brown recluse spider when he was cleaning the garage. Kevin lived in a small town in Georgia. His description of the bite resembled mine. I read through a page or two of short comments, which seemed to have been written from a hospital. ‘Mom visited and brought some cards.’ was one post. Then on 17 February, ‘Gangrene has set in and the foot has to go. Doc will do it tomorrow.’ The next post was dated 10 March, three weeks later. ‘Found out that they have to take the entire leg off.’ I wanted to stop reading but could not. The next entry was dated 31 March. ‘Guess I am not going to make it. Gangrene spreading.’ The last entry was written by someone else. ‘Our beloved Kevin died April 7, 2001. Rest in Peace.’ No wonder my granddaughters had gone into hysterics. They weren’t the only ones. As I drove north, heading for cold temperatures, I held tight to every bit of courage I could muster. At night, in the motels, I sent reassuring emails to the family telling them I was still alive. Two days later I was driving across Illinois, my fever gone and the temperature outside close to freezing. If the spider, a tropical creature, was still hiding in the camper, it was getting the 15
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shock of its life. And once we hit Thunder Bay, Ontario, where the temperature was twenty below zero, it did not have a chance. ‘Die, you bastard,’ I muttered. The Canadian flag was flapping in the distance wrapping its colours around me. Home.
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Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practise any other virtue consistently. M AYA A N G E L O U
169
Courage is found in unlikely places. J.R.R. TOLKIEN
9
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O U T L I V I N G T H E C AT Shane Joseph
M
y dad’s many lives began at the age of 37. He lived in fear at the time, scared that he would die of a heart attack, just
as his father had done at the same age. For Dad smoked, suffered from hypertension and was overweight, despite having been a body builder in his twenties. I was entering my teens back then, and there were three younger siblings — not a time to die, especially when Dad was the sole breadwinner. So Dad took a walk in the dusk one evening, threw away his cigarettes and matches, and didn’t touch another smoke again. If he had withdrawal symptoms, there were no signs. If he suffered, he did so in silence, and we never knew what he went through — relief, is my guess. When I was in my late teens, Mum rushed into my room one dark morning, screaming, ‘Your father is dead at the top of the road.’ I dressed hurriedly in the dark and rushed to the scene of the tragedy. A car had crashed through a fence and was half inside a house that straddled a bend in the main road. ‘Drunk driver,’ I was told by onlookers. ‘Fell asleep at the wheel.’ Dad, who had been walking to the bakery to buy bread for the family’s breakfast, had been swiped by the car, tossed over a barbed wire fence and deposited not far from the wall from which the rear end of the still-smoking car stuck out. The ambulance was yet to arrive. Dad 39
FEAR & COURAGE
was not dead but groggy, and he had broken his hand. I bundled him into a taxi and took him to the hospital emergency room. The nurses, occupied by much larger calamities, did not pay much attention to his injuries. ‘He’ll mend,’ they said. And he did. A few years later, and now employed, I was returning home from work late one evening in the pelting tropical rain. As I rode my scooter down stately Ward Place, a wide boulevard bordered by colonial bungalows, I saw a bus that had skidded off the road and embedded in the wall of a nearby mansion. It reminded me of Dad’s previous accident and I wondered whether, by some quirk of fate, my father had been involved again. When I arrived home, Dad was sporting a fractured arm — he had been on that bus. I learnt not to speculate after that. His complaint was not so much about his injury but the fact that someone had stolen his glasses in the confusion. Flash forward a few more years. I was working for an airline in the Middle East. Dad was working for the same airline in the old country, Sri Lanka. The news flashed across our CRT screens that an aircraft had been blown up by terrorists on the runway at Colombo airport. Knowing how thin the security at that airport had been when I had worked there, I sent Dad an intercompany telex, seeking information, even deriding the puny security arrangements back home. He answered promptly, ‘Don’t criticize. I was on that plane.’ It turned out that Dad had been on a business trip to the Maldives and, as per his usual habit, had boarded last. The plane was behind schedule by 20 minutes due to a late arrival from its previous point of departure. As he was entering the cabin, the 40
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O U T L I V I N G T H E C AT
bomb, which had been timed to go off while the aircraft was in mid-air, exploded, throwing him out of the plane and onto the mobile stairway. His allocated seat was blown to bits. On the stairway, struggling to get to his feet, he realized that he had lost his glasses, again. He was not to be deprived of those expensive lenses this time, so he began groping for them as fire and mayhem raged around him. He claims that an angelic voice kept urging him to ‘Get up, please get up’. Which he did — but only upon finding his glasses. And then invoking ‘the speed of Carl Lewis’ he ran for the terminal before any further explosions occurred. He didn’t count the number of times he was stopped by mobs who were burning Tamils with tyre ‘necklaces’ in Colombo as he ferried his staff to and from work through the curfews and civil unrest in the mid 1980s. ‘Occupational hazards,’ he tossed in his laconic way. Dad faced another crisis before emigrating to Canada. His spine started to give way and the diagnosis showed he had suffered an attack of polio as a child, which at the time had been put down to a bout of fever. He was given two options: (a) maintain the status quo and end up paralyzed within five years, or (b) undergo an operation with a 50 per cent chance of success. He was admitted to hospital, prepped for option b but suddenly had a revelation: ‘I gave up the cigarettes through will power, I can beat this,’ he resolved. He discharged himself and scurried home before the doctors could arrive at the operating theatre. He took acupuncture treatment instead. That was over 30 years ago — he is still walking.
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HUMAN KINDNESS
Edited by RenĂŠe Hollis
T I M E L E S S
W I S D O M
True stories that reveal the depths of the human experience
INTRODUCTION
E
veryday day news we hear remarkable true stories Every in in thethe news we hear remarkable true stories that that demonstrate thethe resilience of the human spirit. We We thought it it demonstrate resilience of the human spirit. thought was time time that that more was more of of these these stories storieswere wereheard, heard,sosowe weorganized organized an international internationalshort short-story-writing competition.which This resulted has an story writing competition, in resulted in the publication of the ‘Timeless Wisdom’ collection the publication of the Timeless Wisdom collection of books. of books: Fear and Courage, Human Kindness, Love and Loss and We were overwhelmed by the variety and richness of the Struggle and Success. hundreds of entries from around the world. Our criteria for final We were overwhelmed by the variety and richness of selection were that the stories should reflect a diversity of writing, the hundreds of entries from around the world. Our criteria blend humour and pathos, and balance moments of drama with for final selection were that the stories were written by mature those ofover quietthe contemplation. writers age of sixty, that they should reflect a diversity There is muchhumour to be said about the extraordinary human spirit. of writing, blend and pathos, and balance moments of You willwith be inspired motivated as you read these stories about drama those ofand quiet contemplation. fear courage. Thesee, telling bookabout will enthral and As you will theremoments is muchintothis be said the you extraordinary humanofspirit. Youinspiration. will be inspired andA.motivated and provide a source practical As John Shedd said, as ship you read stories, but and that’s encounter telling moments ‘A is safethese in harbour, not what ships are for.’that From a will both enthral and provide a source of practical inspiration. man seeing a robbery just about to take place, to a woman’s intrepid Interspersed stories are by quotes relevantspider journey to Antarctica,between to a ladythe being bitten a poisonous to each book’s theme by people as diverse as J.R.R. Tolkien, on a hiking trip; from a young boy’s recollection of travelling from William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Maya Angelou, Stephen London to Canada with a crowd of war refugees, to one woman’s Hawking, J.M. Barrie, Plato, George R.R. Martin and Jesse journey through radiotherapy and another’s unexpected naturist Jackson. The result are books that encapsulate all that is best experience — these are stories of unexpected fear and courage that about human nature. have had a lasting impact on the storyteller.
Interspersed between the stories are quotes about fear and
We have provided you with a preview of two stories from the courage by people as diverse as J.R.R. Tolkien, Maya Angelou, twenty-five featured in Human Kindness. Flip over for two stories Plato, Stephen and George R.R. Martin. The result is a from Fear and Hawking Courage. Enjoy. book that explores all that is best about human nature.
Human Kindness | 9781925820058 | Hardcover | 227 x 170 mm | 9 x 6¾ in | 240 pages | 1 $19.99 | CAN $25.99 RRP: AU $29.99 | NZ: $29.99 | UK £12.99 | US
8/4/19 10:56 am
Kindness makes a fellow feel good whether it’s being done to him or by him. FRANK A. CL ARK
45
WOLF Sue Corke
H
e had caught my attention. I looked again at the bedraggled figure in front of me, his face taut and greenish in the bad
subway light, eyes unfocused, his slight body slumped against the wall. Just as I put my token in the slot, he called out to no one in particular that he was going to jump, that this was the end. He pulled himself up and stumbled down the steps towards the platform. I was in no doubt about his intentions. I yelled at the ticket guy, trapped behind his glass, to get help. I flung myself through the turnstile, overtaking him as he reached the bottom of the stairs, the sound of my high heels hollow on the cement. ‘Hold on,’ I squeaked, scared and shaky. ‘What’s going on? Help is coming.’ I manoeuvred my bulky briefcase to block the path. I took a hard look at him. He was sobbing now, a small, bony man in a mud-streaked grey jacket and dirty jeans, ripped around his ankles. He must have been about 50 although he was shopworn and it was hard to be precise. I took out a Kleenex and gave it to him. ‘What’s wrong? What’s your name?’ I asked, introducing myself. ‘Just leave me alone,’ he snuffled. ‘Go away. It hurts so bad. It’s the lupus. I’ve made up my mind. You can’t stop me.’
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‘We can get you to a hospital. It’ll be okay,’ I ventured. It sounded weak and inadequate. I was out of my depth, painfully so. The train came screeching through the tunnel and down the track, into the station. My single focus was to prevent him from getting past me, from doing what he wanted to do. He made no move but I couldn’t let my guard down. I kept up a meaningless chatter. Each time a train came in I stiffened and prepared for a physical encounter. His name was John Elias Wolf. He had been ill for months, he said. He couldn’t work any more; his kids hated him and his wife had left him; he couldn’t pay his rent and had just been evicted. His meds weren’t working. He just wanted it all to end. I wouldn’t normally have been at that subway station so early on a February evening. I had a moment of self-pity. I wasn’t having such a great day either. I had just been fired by my latest shrink. She said I was wasting her time, finding anything and everything to talk about except what was really going on with my ex and my rampant daughter. I had slammed out of her office after 10 minutes, vaguely wondering if she would charge me for the whole hour, scrabbling in my purse for a subway token, angry and disappointed both at myself and at her. I pondered how surreal it was to switch roles from patient to counsellor in the precarious situation in which I was now irrevocably embroiled. I changed tactics. I told Wolf that it would hurt me forever if he jumped before my eyes; that I would never be the same again, that my life would be ruined, I would have post-traumatic shock, nightmares, be unable to live with myself knowing I should have 4
Human kindness.indd 4-5
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tried to stop him. Perhaps that might matter to him, although why would it? I certainly felt it to be true. ‘Well,’ he said in a sober tone, ‘why don’t you just go on home then. I’ll wait until your train is gone.’ He thought that would make me go away. But, of course, it didn’t. ‘Mr Wolf,’ I said, in what I hoped was a reasonable, practical tone of voice, anxious to keep my mounting desperation under wraps, ‘the police are on their way. If there’s a reason why you’d rather not see them, perhaps you should just go back up the stairs and leave now.’ ‘Who do you think I am?’ he sputtered. ‘I’m an honest man. I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.’ Now I had to apologize, make nice; I had offended him. It was exhausting. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ I mumbled, ‘just not sure what to do to keep you safe.’ Then I began to tell him about my life, not just to build some kind of rapport and manipulate him into changing his mind, but also because I was wound up and it was a relief. It poured out of me in a rush of pent up emotion, months in the making. It was now me who was in tears. I told him that since my husband had left, everything in the house had broken: the toilet; the garage door; the pot lights in the kitchen; the washing machine. I told him that my teenage daughter was only pretending to go to school and I had caught her with her boyfriend in bed; that we had a homeless kid living with us who was eating all our food; that I was lonely and no one was lining up to be with me. And that the one person who had actually been paid to help me navigate my new circumstances had thrown me out of her office. He listened 5
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HUMAN KINDNESS
carefully. He empathized. What a strange pair we were: me, a middle-aged, overweight, harried bureaucrat having a meltdown in the semi-light of the underground; and he, a shabby, sick, skinny fellow on the brink of a life-threatening decision. We bonded. ‘Things will turn around for you in a bit, you’ll see,’ he said, wisely. ‘They always do.’ ‘Do they?’ I replied. ‘For you too, do you think?’ My words were not lost on him. The minutes ticked by. There was no one else around but us. We were engaged in a deep mutual confidence. I heard more about his life, which had been good until the last few years. He heard some more about my separation, my whacked-out kid, my out of control domestic life, my financial troubles. I stopped worrying after an hour or so about whether he would jump. He was going nowhere. We were jolted out of our bubble by loud, commanding voices, yelling, ‘Don’t move. Stay where you are.’ Hands pushed us apart, pinning Wolf forcibly against the wall. A policewoman asked me, ‘Did he attack you? Are you alright? Do you need an ambulance?’ They had it all wrong. Two policemen, holding him tightly, marched him back up the stairs. I screamed out, ‘Don’t hurt him. He needs medical help. He’s a good man.’ I didn’t even have the chance to hug him goodbye, this stranger who had become so intimate. I gave my name, phone number and a very brief description of what had happened. I put as good a face on it as I could muster. 6
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Then I got on the next train. I was trembling throughout my entire body; the adrenaline had worn off. No one was home. I remembered that it was her night with her dad. I had a double scotch with a splash of water, some toast and Marmite, watched Coronation Street, and went to bed. I told no one what had happened the next day because I had just started a new job. I didn’t know too many people and I was the boss. Bosses don’t confide in their staff in some workplaces, and this was one of those. So I pushed it to the back of my mind. As time went by, I noticed little things that had begun to turn around in my turbulent life. I went on a couple of dates; I got a generous tax rebate; my work was challenging; the washing machine got fixed. ‘Hah, an angel is on my shoulder,’ I told my sister, laughing. ‘Must be the magic of Mr Wolf.’ Late that August, I got a phone call from the police. Wolf had been taken to hospital that February night where he had recuperated. I was nominated for an award for heroism. I exhaled. Wolf was going to be fine, he would survive. And so, it seemed, would I.
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There’s no such things as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end. SCOTT ADAMS
37
WHEN THE TERRORISTS AT TA C K E D O U R H O M E Sultan Somjee
I
was seven years old when the terrorists attacked our home. We lived in an isolated house in Eastleigh on the outskirts of Nairobi.
It was a stone house surrounded by a 12-foot high bamboo fence that my grandfather had built to keep away hyenas from the forested Mathare River valley about 10 kilometres away. Behind the house was the 30-feet high thorn fence of the St Teresa’s Catholic mission and then, then, there were no other buildings or trees around. Around mid 1951, we began hearing about an insurgency brewing in Kenya. The elders talked about it on their evening walks. In the same breath, they talked about India’s recently ended 100-year-long freedom movement and the violence it entailed. Sometimes, I accompanied my grandfather on his walks with his peers because his vision was failing and he had difficulties seeing in the evening. A year later, in 1952, the governor declared the state of emergency. It was then we learnt that the gang that had attacked our house was called the Mau Mau, a freedom movement against British colonialism in Kenya. I feared as much as I hated the Mau
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Mau. To me they were the terrorists who had looted our home and terrified us. It was around 2 a.m. in the dead of night when I heard the door break like there was an explosion. The crash that seemed to come out of pitch darkness shocked me out of my sleep. It was so intense that even today more than half a century later, I cringe every time I hear a door slammed. A rock jumped twice on the floor and landed near my bed. Splinters of wood weighed down on my mosquito net like a haul of shells and shrimps in a fisherman’s net. We lived in one room. We were a family of five: my parents, my elder brother, my four-year-old sister and me. The revolutionaries entered immediately. It all happened at once: the bang, the rock, wood splinters flying about the room, and then the phantom faces, their bewildered eyes and sweaty faces set in black wiry dreadlocks. I felt their looks pressing me down. Like ants, they spread around the room with clubs and machetes. One stood over my mother with a club and another over my father with a machete. A smell like that of caged jungle animals at the zoo filled the room. Later, it was reported on the radio that a contingent of the Mau Maus lived in the caves of the Mathare Valley and that the residents of Eastleigh were asked to immediately report any suspicious character to the police. The guerrillas who roamed from late evenings to dawn were in two groups: forest guerrillas who mostly attacked white plantation owners, and urban guerrillas who attacked residences in the towns. We were, most probably, attacked by the urban guerrillas.
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W H E N T H E T E R R O R I S T S AT TA C K E D O U R H O M E
At that moment of horror of the attack on our house, all I saw were the terrorists’ bloody eyes scuttling about the room, impatient and jumpy like a flock of trapped birds. When one of them looked at me, I felt stabbed. I saw my father dragged across the room and tied to a chair. They gagged my parents with dirty socks left for washing in a bucket. My brother and I sat back to back on one bed, terrified. Our backs were wet, absorbing each other’s sweat. I continued looking down, pressing my chin to my chest and calling on God to help, while all the time I felt bloodshot eyes tearing into me. They started emptying clothes and whatever there was from the cupboards. From under the heap of clothes they had made on the floor, my sister’s doll cried musically, which fascinated one of them. He stood there momentarily and then picked up the pink plastic English doll and began turning it over, listening to the melodic note from its perforated back. Hearing the sound of her doll crying, my little sister woke up suddenly, bright eyed in wonder, smiling and talking excitedly as four-year-olds do, chattering to herself, and walking round her cot holding the bars of the metal frame. Then she stopped and watched, her eyes widened, inquisitively, puzzled at what was happening. ‘My dhingly doll!’ she wailed in Swahili. ‘I want my dhingly doll.’ She began crying and looking around for Mother. The General, as I heard them calling their leader, turned around and looked at my sister. His bloodshot eyes stilled on her. I froze. He was over 6 feet tall. He stood there like a giant by the
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cot. He had his palms on his hips, arms akimbo. Then his red eyes softened like a father’s eyes put to the child appealing for a favour. ‘Don’t take the little girl’s ka-rendi, and anything else that belongs to this child,’ he instructed his men. When finally the Mau Mau left after what seemed like a night of plunder and terror, they had taken everything in the house that they could carry. My clothes, shoes and even my Lego set was gone. But there was a pile of dresses, toys and shoes left behind on the floor. The revolutionaries had left behind everything that belonged to my little sister.
A
Years went by. The horrific propaganda against the Mau Mau lessened, and the story of the attack on our home faded into a distant nightmare. Kenya became independent in 1963. We celebrated liberation from colonial rule and the end of racism only to pave a way for nationalism and brutal dictatorships that followed. I completed my high school, joined the university, went overseas to do postgraduate studies and returned in the early 1970s to join the University of Nairobi as a research fellow in material culture. I was interested in Africa’s indigenous cultures and its history from ‘the people’s point of view’. I had started leaning towards socialism and joined the rural theatre that was an outfit of the underground against the despot Jomo Kenyatta. 194
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W H E N T H E T E R R O R I S T S AT TA C K E D O U R H O M E
I worked with the communities of peasants, farm and factory workers in an area that was known as the hub of the Mau Mau. I came across former Mau Mau fighters and almost everyone had a relative in the anti-colonial organization. Ironically, the first play, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), that we put up was about the Mau Mau. The experience had an impact on me, for I began to think differently about the Mau Mau. They were no longer the wild terrorists who had looted and traumatized me and my family but revolutionaries fighting for liberation from colonialism. In fact, they became heroes in my young man’s mind. I read everything I could lay my hands on about the Mau Mau. I even drew them from photographs. The frightful images of their eyes in my mind changed to those of heroic warriors with idealism shining on their faces that spoke of sacrifice for freedom and human dignity. Today, as I turn 75, my mind sometimes immerses in reflections from the past that come and go like waves of an ocean washing so vast a shore of my lifetime. There are thoughts on the good deeds and bad deeds I have done. Some fill me with pride about my achievements, and some with sadness about my deceits and failures. Some are full of fear and even hate that sometimes I speak out loudly to myself in abuses hurled at someone or something. Self-talk, I have come to accept, comes with ageing in some people. Sometimes, a dream from my childhood returns in a scream. The sound of the door crashing down on me has stayed with me. The image of the bloodshot eyes of the Mau Mau revisits me. Sigmund Freud would call them childhood memories in my 195
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subconscious and construct a theory around it to write an essay on my personality. However, when awake and with a conscious mind, when I talk about the night the Mau Mau attacked our house in Eastleigh in Nairobi, when I was seven years old, I speak about the compassion of the leader they called the General. How he looked at my four-year-old sister and kindness filled his bloodshot eyes even as he held the deadly machete in one hand. I speak about this incident as a reflection on humanity that I have come to know we all have in us. That even the fiercest looking people from other countries, other cultures and other religions that we see or hear about in the media as enemies carry compassion in their hearts. One day, I wish to write a story for children called ‘When the terrorists attacked our home’.
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The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose. HADA BEJAR
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