‘Time’s Footprints’

‘August is a thunder-wind of

seasons in conflict and we await,

harassed, the stroke of the Spirit.’

Musaemura B. Zimunya

(from the poem ‘It’s Blowing’)

He knew he would find her sitting on the big, flat rock by the river. She was scribbling in her diary again and seemed oblivious to the sound of the birds and the gurgling water of the Pungwe. She kept on writing, her small frame shadowing him from the big black diary that had almost become a part of her, part of the landscape he called home. He knew she had worn the pink, layered skirt for him.

She looked up, saw him coming, and quickly climbed down from the rock and ran towards him, her arms outstretched, her pink skirt floating and swirling around her. She was barefoot but the long skirt gracefully covered her small feet.

‘Steve…?’ He remembered what she wanted from him – a bouquet of flowers from the forest. When she drew closer he hugged her, then took her hand and guided her through the trees. They started picking wild blooms and he tickled her nose with the flowers and watched her dreamily breathe in their aroma before she flung her head back and laughed. He joined in, savouring every moment that he was with her, knowing she would record this moment in her diary and he in his heart.

‘Hannah…’ He had to tell her how he felt.

There was a loud crashing sound. Steve woke up. He was sweating. The alarm clock was on the floor, broken. He sank back into his pillow and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He closed his eyes again. The image of the pink skirt filled his mind. He wondered why this dream kept recurring. The news of Hannah’s death still haunted him.

Steve had received the news just before he went to bed. The message was from his father. It was the first sms from him in three years since his emigration to England.

Stephen, Hannah passed away yesterday morning at Hauna

District hospital. We have informed her relatives. Yours Baba.

He told himself that even when Hannah was alive he had often dreamt of her, but now…? Was she trying to tell him something? Was she freeing him from his conscience? Had she forgiven him for leaving her alone with the children that night when members of the People’s Army came looking for him?

He kept telling himself that Hannah had been an attractive woman and could have moved on without him, despite their three children, but a small voice insisted that she could not have done so because he had promised to come back for them once he’d settled down in the United Kingdom. It had been one month before the June presidential elections when a group of villagers had stormed his father’s homestead in Honde Valley demanding to see him.

They had found Hannah and the children instead and he’d heard all the insults that were hurled at her from his hiding place in the banana plantations as she tried to calm the villagers down. Hannah was a negotiator but that night she failed to placate them. They’d started beating her up. Every cry and every scream tortured him but he did not come out of his hiding place.

It was his father’s intervention that had saved the day. He told them to kill him and not to touch his daughterin- law. He spoke in a loud, authoritative voice so that all those in nearby homesteads would hear him. His father instructed them to stop what they were doing to her and to shed his blood if that is what they wanted from her. The group complied but not before Steve heard a sharp, painful scream from Hannah.

He had known that whatever had happened at that moment was not something that he wanted to hear from his father or from Hannah. He told himself that for as long as he lived he would not be able to live with this memory, but he had. He had never discussed that night with her. In the morning he had packed his bag and left the village.

For the first time in three years he started sobbing. He knew that it was time to return home. He owed Hannah and the children this visit. After all, he had chosen not to remember his promise. Steve had to leave the comfort of his London flat and take the first flight home.

The cab that he hired in Mutare only took him to Masere Business Centre, a few kilometres away from Samaringa village where Hannah would be buried, and access was by a footpath. The August winds roughly fanned his cheeks as he followed the dirt track that led him far into the misty hills of Honde Valley. Downhill, he came to a stream and he dusted his shoes and took a long cool drink. Despite the dust and the wind he walked on. Each time Steve hit a stone he cursed in English. When he got to Samaringa Business Centre his curses were drowned by the thick accents of the township revellers.

Suddenly, the wind became stronger, blurring his vision. The dusty spirals from the township grounds rose as everyone scuttled for shelter in the shops. Steve stood rooted to the spot. The whirlwind enclosed him, dust biting his eyes. Steve sighed. It was the wind that Hannah loved most about this place, he thought; she used to say that on a windy day the Mtarazi Falls brim with life as they cascade down the mountains. The wind carries its whispers with it.

Emotion increased Steve’s pace as he walked through the banana plantations, which were near the village, a project his father had pioneered when he was working for Agritex. He kept reminding himself that if Hannah had not died he would not be here. The plantations brought memories of that night in June 2008 when Hannah had screamed and he had felt hopeless as he hid among the giant banana leaves, like a stranger intruding on someone’s privacy. As his wife’s scream echoed in the thick darkness he knew he should surrender to the mob, and he also knew that he would not do so.

As he drew nearer, he heard voices rise in sad song. The wind carried the words. His father’s deep baritone seemed to shake with emotion. The singing was punctuated with the wailing of women. The cries drowned the sound of the waters of the Pungwe as it wound its way to the Indian Ocean. Hannah’s death had brought him home.

A muddy path branched out of the banana plantations. Steve followed it until he could see the funeral procession. They were going to the cemetery near the Pungwe. Hannah had once told him that she wanted to be buried near the river where she could listen to the sounds of the water at night. He had called her his ‘mermaid’. On the day he left the village he had gone to the flat rock and stood there until the village boys who worked for his father had arrived. They helped him to cross into Mozambique. When they were on the other side, he hurriedly scribbled a note to his wife and his father and told them that he would send for them as soon as he had settled down ‘wherever the wind was taking him’.

Women from the Mothers’ Union were pall-bearers. He was not sure which faction of the church Hannah belonged to after the Good Shepherd Church had split into two factions. When they were still communicating she had sent him an e-mail in which she updated him on the latest developments at home. She told him that there had been political interference in the church and as a result the local priest had lost control of the church and was now conducting services under the muhacha tree near Masere. The ‘Muhacha Tree’ faction was not allowed to wear the blue and white church uniform and neither were they allowed by members of the other faction to use the Mufudzi Wakanaka hymn books or regalia. Hannah had even asked him to guess which side she was on. He had not bothered to respond. He moved forward when he saw his father. Steve noticed that Hannah’s coffin was a cheap one made by the local carpenter, Mr Gatsi at Hauna.

‘She has carried her simplicity to the grave,’ he thought. Drawing nearer, he was unnoticed as his father opened the coffin. She looked rested and at peace in her red dress, surely a tribute to her vivacity. Steve was glad that the villagers had not, as habit demanded, buried her in her church uniform. Knowing Hannah, he did not doubt that she had had a hand in the selection of the dress while on her deathbed. She had always fussed about colours and hated to see him in grey or black, and he felt suddenly very conscious of the black shirt that he was wearing. Her eyes were closed. She did not look bitter. She was just as he had known her, but now it was too late, he could not talk to her and tell her that he had been granted asylum and wanted to take her and the children away from the village and away from the painful memories that haunted him.

She was a fighter and he respected that. She had continued to fight long after he had left the country. He felt a coward, standing there, his children observing him as if he were a stranger. If only he had come out of the banana plantations to face his enemies. She had done it for him and had paid the ultimate price. This, he was to learn when his father narrated Hannah’s ordeal to the mourners gathered by the graveside. He recounted the events of that night in June when some villagers had descended on their homestead. Steve heard for the first time how masked men took turns to rape Hannah while his father and mother watched. He had known then as he hid in the banana plantation what they were doing to her but he simply did not have the strength and the courage to give away his life for her. Somehow as he sank deeper among the banana leaves, he had told himself that she would survive, no matter how much they hurt her. From the moment he met her he had known that she was a survivor. Of course, Hannah had been there to patch up his life. She had stood by him. She had fought his battles for him. His friends often joked that she was the one who wrote all the speeches he presented at the party meetings. He had laughed then but he had not told them that she was his ‘think tank’. All the ideas for the speeches came from a simple village woman who had no interest in moving to the city. Now he listened as his father told people how she had survived this abuse as if nothing had happened to her but in the end had succumbed to cervical cancer.

About the Author

Ethel Irene Kabwato is a mother, teacher and writer. Her short stories have been published in Writing Now and Writing Free. Her poetry has been published on the Poetry International website and she has read her poetry at the Hay Festival, UK. She was also a guest of ‘Cinema without Borders’ at the Amnesty International Film Festival, Amsterdam in 2008. Currently, she is working in a project called Slum Cinema, a voluntary initiative that seeks to empower disadvantaged communities through multi-media work. Her inspiration is derived from her two daughters, Nadia and Wynona.