A Return

I arrived. The warm heart. The dark heart. A country so far away and made to sound so exotic that it might exist in another reality. A dismissible reality. There are some freshly paved and widened streets. There are more buildings and more cars, but mostly it is unchanged. A short distance from town the edges of the two-lane highways remain eroded. At points the bites taken by years and seasons of rain have left the road just wide enough for two vehicles to pass traveling in opposite directions. Men in threadbare suits ride single gear bicycles along the tattered edges. Do they pray with the sound of each vehicle approaching from behind to overtake them? Or has necessity made them fearless? 

 There are the sounds I hadn’t remembered to miss. Crickets and frogs at night. The purring of ngumbi wings hitting my window, their spasmodic fluttering imitating breathing or soft steps in gravel. They are drawn to the light on the khonde and then crawl under the door. Just fluttering now against the frame, in the ditch formed by the groove of the sliding door. They are there fluttering their wings off. In the morning I will find their inert bodies littering the khonde and sprinkled over the floor closest the door. Then there is the bark, no, the stuttered cough of a dog from a distance. I can hear the leash tight around his neck. Drifting to sleep I remember the man with the security company. I once walked through his yard where he kept the dogs and turned quickly away from a man beating one savagely. “They need to be mean” I was told. So, these men, working for less than would feed their families, beat the dogs. I wondered what happened to the hearts of the men. Where else were they now capable of rationalizing brutality? Or were they simply harnessing and turning their own daily passive brutalization on the dogs? I was only slightly surprised to later learn that the company owner was a pedophile. He played the role of the beneficent uncle well. In truth, it was the dependency he savored. The dependency of his siblings and his community, that kept their mouths silent as he took young girls to his bed. Who would want to upset peace and stability which merely demanded the sacrifice of a few young virgins? And, who to call? What force of justice might come to rescue the girls, when their own families consented to their sacrifice? 

 “Madam” they call me. Excessive deference to the entitled. In the beginning, even my mother and father-in-law would say madam to my light skin and blue eyes. Here there is still permission to remain comfortable with just a little ordinary racism. No one needs to stand on guard against their own implicit biases. No one will call you out. You may allow them to comfortably ooze out around the edges. Egos buffed with soft microfiber cloths “madam” “madam”. You may request your house boy to wear white gloves and stand to the side of the table as your guests eat. You may gently scold him with a look when the wine bottle slips from his gloved fingers. Afterall you are paying him well, and you are paying his daughter’s secondary school fees. He is so grateful. Without you, where would he be?