Pat One - Jetlag

            I am here. I am home.

 The jetlag sets in barely two hours after I arrive home.  It has been a hectic twenty-four hours, and my mind reeks with questions. A millennia of them. And they tread around my head like a thousand little devils ready to tempt me to do the unthinkable. A thousand imps that thunder inside my own realm of thought. These are the ever-ending questions that border all around me, questions that need answering. Questions that still defy me in the midst of my asking them. Why am I here? Why was I not here before? Why should I be here in the first place? Why me, most of all? Why should it be me?

The events that have led me to come back in this torturous land are chronological, as all things are all arranged to be. They tick-tock, tick-tock, following that same old heart-beat, that beat of life that never stops for anyone. Not even for the gods themselves. The events have been crude, they have sieved themselves, but yet I still fail to comprehend them. A certain feeling of being here tells me that I have done the right thing this time. This is the good feeling I will carry with me when I face them. But it is the mind that worries me, for it is from the mind that every thread of my life, the life as I know it, is spawning from. I have been etched with a bitter revenge in my heart, and yet I know where that might have stemmed from, but I fail to understand why that feeling, which is both uncanny, and as well as scary, has suddenly, encroached from me. I debate as to whether these events are a mere calling, whether destiny calls me to go out there, to come out here, and face all my demons, or risk being a skeleton in my own closet, for worse times to come. That thought worries me too. It kept me wide-awake on the plane. It made me not to swallow the food properly. I was gawking, almost choking on the food they served me kilometres in the sky. That worry stems from expectation, maybe too much expectation from the people that I will meet back here. But yet again expectation is the one thing that drives all humankind. It is the expectation I have when I meet all those people. The feeling I have in my mind when the plane has finally landed; that cringing feeling of how I will find my country like. And whether I can still manage to blend in with the crowd; whether I do not now wear something that will make me stand out of the blue. It is like meeting the Pope. You know he is a very popular man, but yet again, at the same time he is also a man, and you know he will listen to you as well, if you can give him the time that is. And that is my double-edged sword, and I carry it with me in my heart, even if I still do not know how to wield it when the opportune moment to use it is knocking.

But in the meantime, I need to rest. I need to focus. I need to focus on what is to be done tomorrow. Focus on how the procession will go. Focus on whether my mother will like what I have done for her, after all those years in a cold, strange country. But all things must be waited for, and I must be patient enough not to cross the bridge now.  I still will have to cross it sometime, maybe this time. I must focus, myopia is not on my ingredients list. For now there are people to meet. There are relatives, long lost, who I know will swarm about me; a myriad that will be asking for ‘sound’ advice from me, those who will ask for my money, for anything that I might have brought with me from the land of the white man. They will ask for anything, anything and everything that can be salvaged from my character. And then there will be old friends to have a drink with, friends to share old stories of mischief with, and women to hug and old foes to reckon with. They may be girlfriends in the picture, but time will tell. It always does. But for this period, all foes are friends. It is the occasion that brings us together. The ‘great hullabaloo of people wait for you on the other side’, a friend of mine told me when we were at the airport just before I left her. ‘You go there, and you go there to fight your demons’ she told me, ‘No one can fight those demons. No one will do that but yourself…’

And so here I am, in the land of my father, in the land of my dear mother. The forgotten son is coming home. The prodigal one, the black sheep that that would not bleat when told to do so, the sheep that left the shepherd and the herd.

          The sheep that ran away...

Yes, as hard as that decision has been, that sheep has come back. It found the road back home. It has managed to stumble on the right path. It was lost but now has been found. Maybe these are the trustees of posterity that Benjamin Disraeli was talking about. Maybe this is ‘…the youth of a nation…’ that he envisaged in his famous speech. But in my case, only time will tell. Tomorrow never fails to come. A past that has been bruised can heal its wounds in the future. For time is a great wizard of patience and healing. He does things only when the time is right, and for me, that time seems to be now. I must wait no more. Strike the iron while it is still hot. I must wait no more. I have already lost too much by waiting…

The jetlag is kicking in with a severity. I must rest. Tomorrow the big day arrives. Tomorrow the soothsayer details the future.  Tomorrow the day of reckoning knocks at that door of my life, I must be healthy enough to embrace the confusion I might find on the other side of the door. The tears will be of happiness, of anger and disgust. Indeed there will be tears, rivers of them; but the great old ones say that a man’s tears only run down the inside of his heart. I must be ready. I have to be ready. But first of all, I must rest my mind. I must rest everything; mind, body and soul…

The jetlag is kicking in now…

Part Two - Occasion

Dreams haunted me. Things without shadows and with gleaming eyes were all around me. Matrixes that lack all form and figure. Angry deities that chased me in my sleep till I woke up, drenched in my own cold sweat.  And alone, as I sat upright in the hugging darkness, I heard a voice tell me that ‘It is only a dream and will go away.’ And that tamed my fears, so that like man and his lurking beasts, I managed to snake back into those sweat-drowned sheets, and eked out a decent amount of sleep left in my body. I know that this land is doing this to me. The test I was told about before I left England is finally here. I now recall her exact words, ‘Your past, it will linger around you, it will hunger for you. It is a mighty thirst that must be quenched. Things will look for you out there, and they will find you. Indeed it’s only imperative that they find you, for without finding you, redemption will remain only a fleeting illusion. You will need strength to fight back. You will need to be brave…’

The night has been doused by decent streaks of light in the horizon. I smile and wake up. The night has been unforgiving, but all things that are dark always come to an end. It is always darkest before dawn. And so here I am, this morning of the occasion, an occasion that will test the best out of me. Like her voice in the dead of night, I will need to be brave. I will need to be strong for the day. Strong for my little brothers and sisters. The funeral arrangements have all been done, and today I see my mother’s cold body. I must embrace the fact that she is gone, departed from the life we know, and that I will never see her again. My Christianity wavered when I went to England , and I think that my life as an atheist has been better for me. I do not believe that I will see her again. She is gone now. What will remain is a mere shadow of her, a shadow of her former self, of her deeds, however good or bad they were. This is the ballad of life, and that is how we remain singing it long after a person has departed. Samuel came into my bedroom in the light of morning. She is her last child, my little brother whom I barely know. He is now doing Grade Five at an expensive school in the city. I pay for his tuition, but, I barely remember him when he comes to my bedroom. I smile, and pop my head from the sheets when I hear him entering. I have hardly slept during the evil night.

   “So what did you bring me from England?” he asks, innocence stretched all over his smooth face. I smile, then force a very big yawn. This is big brother to small brother bonding. This is what I need. A smile. A yawn. A pep talk with my sibling that has no mention of troubles, or money or appointments and meetings that must be attended. I have missed the trivial things that life’s composed of.

  “You saw all the toys I sent to you last year? For Christmas?” I ask, still finishing up a yawn.

He smiles back. That smile reminds me of myself when I was somewhere his age. She used to say, my mother, that I had the smile of a woman. I look at Samuel, my head nodding profusely, “I will see when I wake up. I’m sure there’s something for you in that big suitcase I brought with me. You saw it?”

My young brother nods, and then he skips outside of my bedroom, leaving the door slightly ajar. When I get up from my bed to close the door, I hear Samuel asking someone a question that I wish he will not ask me anytime soon. “When is mother coming from where she has gone to?”

          She is not coming don’t you know? They have lied to you, small child.

          She is dead. She is now another cold thing in a wooden box. She has been

          taken by the Lord. Her time is done. She has gone for a long trip, and is

          never coming back.

The words ring in my ears. I fail to even hear how they lie to him again. My mind gets angry at why they won’t tell him what happened to his mother, our mother. Samuel understands all these things now. Who doesn’t at this age? Who doesn’t understand little things like death now? What with all the movies that little children watch? They have even gone to the extent of including cartoon movies where the animated characters die. What with funerals being attended by small kids these days? They even allow the little ones to view the bodies of the dearly departed. It’s a techno-age that we’re living in, they all tell us. Times have changed and death must be understood from a small age. But that is not the way we were raised, but that is the way we must raise our children these days. Lest they get derailed in this the hectic ride of life. My little boy knows about death. I told him about it when his puppy suddenly died at our home. They say if children don’t see the body of a person lying inside the coffin, and that coffin being lowered into the earth, they’ll always think that that person has just gone somewhere, and will come back after sometime. But will they hide the coffin from Samuel? Will he not be curious at the sight of all the people coming to the house today? Will he not grow up and ask us questions about his mother? These questions race on my mind again, taunting me, and I fail to notice that my grip on the door handle has become tenacious and my veins are now appearing on my arms. The world is a chessboard, and we are the pieces being moved by circumstances happening all around us. Death is the unfortunate present of being in a world ruled by the laws of longevity. Death simply is there to prove that we are creation, and mortality is born and woven into our very beings. Samuel will know. Everyone has to know when someone they love has departed.

The questions reel in again. What really happened to you mother? Why did you die so suddenly? They tell me that there was an accident at a rally that you attended last week, and that you were one of the unfortunate victims that the riot police fired their live ammunition at. I still fail to grasp the story. When they told me at first, I thought they would digress, tell me a better tale. A better tale that would ease the pain that is within me. But no, they keep telling me about politics, and that maybe she had gotten deep into that world, and that the police were looking for her or something.

The knock on the door snaps me back to reality. It is Vukani, the one who was born three years after me. “How did you sleep brother?” he greets me with a question, his right hand still on the door handle. A slight smile is etched on his tired face.

  “I’ve had better nights, my brother. The dreams were terrible.” I confess with a timid smile. “Everything going smooth?” I ask, but I realise a bit too late that the question is wrong timed. Nothing is going smooth. Nothing can go smooth. Where do I get the audacity to ask such a question? What must be going smooth? We are preparing to bury our mother, and asking whether that is smooth is not a right question. The woman who brought us into this world is gone. Nothing can be smooth in such a situation. But that question has already left my lips and I cannot take it back. Vukani’s eyes lock with mine for an instant.

He says, “Those will continue my brother. The bad dreams, I mean. We live inside them, and they amongst us. They are like parasites on our skin. We are inseparable with such things of life.  We cannot run away from such dreams, especially after such a tragedy has hit us.” He sighs, his shoulders hunching slightly, only for me to notice. Vukani is the one in the family who always has the right advice on anything. When we were still young I used to think that he matured a little too early for his age. Vukani is small in size but colossal on the right things to say. He took our father’s body. He is a tiny framed man, and he looks weak at first glance, which is totally opposite to what he has accomplished in his life. He stares at me, and then says, “I just came to tell you that the bathroom is free now. You must hurry though. There is a queue of people who wish to use it as well.”

  “How did it happen Vukani?” I ask my brother, realising that my question on things being smooth has inevitably been ignored.

He stares at me again, as if saying ‘there is nothing that you have always known’, and then says. “It was an accident. The riot people shot at some people at a rally. She was the only one who died from the wounds. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, as they say.” Vukani says the sentence without emotion. “By the way, malume John says he wants to take a shower too, and when he does that, he usually takes his time. The man still loves being the tidiest one around.”

Vukani smiles as he says this.

I smile with him. It is good to smile with my brother. It is good to be here with my siblings, with my kith and kin.

John, my uncle, is the one man we grew up with. He stayed with us when our father decided to follow a woman after work and that was the last time we saw him, except when he came back one day, drunk like a fish. He was coming to collect his thoughts. They fought in their bedroom, my mother and him, and then he stormed out of the house and never laid a foot in the yard again. People said the alcohol and the new woman drained him to his grave. His brother John, the favourite of our uncles had come to stay with us. And we grew up calling him our father, which he truly was. “Oh, when did he come?” I ask Vukani?”

   “The day the accident happened. That’s the day Uncle John came.”

Uncle John loved the bathroom in his hey days, and from the look of things that habit never left his character. It will be good seeing that smile of his. The smile with two front teeth missing. Things might just be good after all, I try to convince myself. But before I can ask about the accident once more, Vukani’s face has disappeared from the door in the same manner it came. His words remain with me though.

An accident? The riot police fired their guns like a pack of wild cowboys, and she was the only one who died from the wounds.

 It all seems like a bad dream to me. A life has been taken. My mother’s life. Our mother’s life…

And they still call it an accident. There is only one word for it.

It is murder…

***

An absurdity of life we are living in. A sacrificial lot we have turned out to be. A demented society with no values of respect we are now. Violence seems to be the only form of universal language that we have begotten since our independence. I wonder what she thought when that piece of metal gored through her soft flesh. They say our life flashes before us in a time of death. Did she see us, the family, compact as we used to be? Did she see me? How did she want me to be like? How was I like in that last vision?

My thoughts are entrenched too deep. I cannot excavate them all at once. I must go down with a very bright lantern to take them out one by one, and then lay them on the table of sins. I must seek to find out why all of this happened. I still had to win my trust from her. I still had to make peace with her. Still had to make her believe in me again, and I was on that verge, and all things seemed to be going parallel, that is until this ‘accident’ occurred. I close the door, and take my towel and soap, and then sit on the edge of the double bed.

  “Why are you doing this to us?” she asks me.

I turn around. There she is, my mother, and it is five years back, and I am sitting across her, the beer bottle on my lap. “What am I doing mother? You mean this?” I dangle the bottle in the air, spilling some of the contents on the red carpet. She nods at me from her sofa.

  “That, and more, my son. Sort out your life. What you have done is shameful…”

The sojourn suddenly ends, and I snap back to reality. There is some noise in the kitchen. Some people have just realised that I came yesterday, and they are relieved. There has been talk that my mother had said that she was sure I would not be coming to bury her bones at her death-bed. It has been hard trying to convince myself that it must have been the pain in her heart that was making her say those words. Mothers are strange beings, especially to their sons. They say if you want to see how deep the love a son has for his mother, mess around with her and see what happens. I know that she wanted me to come to her funeral, and that I know with a confidence that runs deep in the trenches of my heart. I just have a hard time when it comes to knowing whether she had forgiven me at all. Forgiveness is not an easy thing for one to do. Forgiveness does not come from saying ‘I am sorry.’ There’s something to it, something sacred that only the forgiver, and the forgiven can know. I do not know whether she forgave me. That voice that should be telling me that she forgave me is too faint in my heart of hearts.

Vukani suddenly calls me again. “Malume John says you should come out and greet the people! He says some have even forgotten how you look like. Especially him!!”

There is a sombre smile on my mouth. “Tell malume John that I am coming, Vukani.”

Vukani’s smile says it all. He is glad that I am home. So am I.

             It is good to be home again.

 ***

  “Do you know how the chameleon catches a fly?” Uncle John asks me. “Do you know?” 

We are sitting beside a dying fire, on a neighbour’s bench. I shake my head, the smile still on my face. It is good to be home.

          Tell me everything, Uncle John. Everything...

The man does not smile. He winks slowly for me to pass him the salt shaker. “Use the right hand, son.” He reminds me. “We must not forget the traditions of our forebears.” That done, the man sprinkles it on the plate of rice and meat sitting on his lap and says, “The chameleon, you see, he waits, nephew. That’s what he exactly does. Waits and watches his victim. The fly sees him but thinks the chameleon will do nothing.” He pauses, the heaped rice on the spoon disappearing into his toothless mouth.

   “So the chameleon waits, until the fly gets too close, and just then he shoots his tongue at the fly, and gobbles him in a flash. And the fly’s life is ended just like that.” Uncle John stares at me. “Well, so much for trusting something that seems harmless at first sight.”

I nod my head. It is good. Good that I am talking to this man I have grown calling father. Good that here in this country I am surrounded by family. I am protected even if there is no danger lurking around me.

   “How is your wife, and the child?” Uncle John suddenly fires me with a question, and instantly I know where this will lead. He still heaps his spoon with rice in the process. And he speaks without looking at me. He speaks to the plate on his lap, and then he looks at me.

   “Good. They are good, uncle. I wanted to bring her with me so that the family could see her. But things happened too fast and we couldn’t prepare her visa.”

Uncle John nods his head. Whether he is agreeing to the good food, or to what I have just said, I cannot discern. “We need the woman to be formally introduced to us. She is a white woman, isn’t she?”

         Must we go there, Uncle John?

  “Well, isn’t she?” the man continues.

A nod from me. A slight one.

   “And the son. How old is the boy?”

More sounds of chewing, metal spoons grinding with glass plates. I look at the horizon, and then at the contents of my plate. Still full. I haven’t touched my plate. “The boy has a name, uncle. He is called Michael, Michael Philani.”

Silence. Then more sounds of spoon against ceramic plate. A burp from one of the men sitting around an embering log. And yet more chewing sounds. Women laughing at a cooking fire. The chatter of men passing the traditional drinking gourd around. Uncle John coughs systematically. “Michael?  He has two names? A white man’s name and a black man’s name, I see. And the wife, who are her people?”

I stare at him. She told me to expect all of this. She had told me to expect it with her family, and she had been right when we visited them for the first time. ‘They will exhume your character for it.’ she said. She is never wrong, at least about the important things of life. I nod at nothing, then take a strong stare at my full plate.

   “She is Irish, uncle. Her family has been good to me. The colour of my skin has nothing to do with it. I love her, and she loves me, and we have a child to show for it. That is the most important thing.” I know that I have lied about her family being good to me, but I have not lied about her loving me. That I know she does.

Uncle John looks at two children playing outside the yard, then he wipes his greasy mouth at the same time. “You know, Sibongile, your mother. Her death was inevitable, you know.”

           Why do these old people talk in riddles? Why do they say things that are sometimes too hard to comprehend?

I fail to understand what goes on their minds. Inevitable? Death is the most inevitable thing on this earth. But it has its time. It has to follow a certain law. Yes, we cannot abscond its call, but we can sometimes manage to dodge it, cheat it...

  “But the funeral was well attended. She must have known many people.” I put in.

A quiet nod from uncle John. “Yes, she knew many people, and they loved her warm heart. I warned her about the politics of the area. But she was a strong woman, Sibongile. Stubborn too. Intelligent though. Even managed to send my brother away from the house…He was my brother, but he was not a good man for her.”

I whirl with evidential anger. “Please don’t mention a man who failed to be man enough to see us live through life. Your brother was a sorry excuse for a father. Please let’s not go there, uncle.”

   “If you say so, nephew.” His voice has suddenly lulled. He heaps his spoon, and then wipes his lips before the rice disappears into his mouth.

   “I say so, Uncle John.” I tell him, reverting to the initial topic. “What happened to her? No one has been able to tell me the whole story. They say you came over as soon as you’d heard about the incident. You should be able to tell me about the days leading to her untimely death.”

The man stares into my face, drilling into my bare soul. He is still chewing. Bits of rice falls off his mouth. Rachel would have a fit if she saw this man eating the way he does. Manners maketh all men, that’s her motto. She is a good woman, Rachel. A very good wife. A good mother for Michael. We just come from very different parallels of upbringing and race.

My uncle is speaks;

  “You see, Sibongile; she got mixed with a lot of these wrong people. A maize plant should never be made to grow with weeds. Even if the weeds look like maize when they are young. You never rear a lion’s cub because he looks like a kitten.”

I nod all this time. I really nod at nothing. Riddles is what this man here is telling me. What happened to telling it like it is? I want to know what happened to my mother. Riddles are not what I want. I did not fly over the ocean to come and be given hints about what happened to my mother.

  “She was the maize, Sibongile.” Uncle John tells me. “But she grew up in the wrong crowd. She led a life that was intertwined with danger...”

   “What happened to...?”

Uncle John snaps, chunks of meat flying out of his greasy mouth. “Has England taught you to interject adult’s talk?”

I shake my head silently. Even Rachel, stubborn as she is, would wilt under this man’s sharp tongue. But she would understand, hard as it has been for us to be where we are. Our families did not approve of our love, or at least some of the relatives felt what were doing was taboo. Rachel, the Irish girl of my dreams has a loving heart, and a beautiful smile. She is the mother of my child, and sometimes, far from the maddening crowd of family and friends, we hold hands together and thank the Lord for taking us through this harsh stretch of road. ‘Believe in your heart. Listen to what it says and you will never go wrong…’ she has told me on numerous occasions.

   “When are you going back to England?” The sudden question comes as an insult to me. And it also brings me to the present. And I hurt inside, especially at the fact that it is this man who has asked this question. This man, who I call my father Just when my feet touch the motherland; just when I arrive at the land of my forefathers; he asks me when I am going back?

   “You do have important people there, don’t you, son?” he asks me again, his fingernails dislodging meat pieces stuck between his teeth.

           Old man. What is wrong with you? Why do you ask such strange things? Strange questions that I have no answers too?

   “So no matter what happens to me. No matter where the wind decides to call me, my home will always be here. Here besides you, Uncle John.” I manage to point out the fact to him. But he is not convinced by my reply at all. Suddenly there is a painful thought inside of me. He just called me his son. I am not his son. I never will be. Maybe it is my only emotions playing with me, but then I deserve to be angry also. After all, am I not human like everybody too? Am I not hurting from the death of my mother too? Am I not my mother’s son? Everyone seems to think that I came here to make an impression. I saw them all during the burial. They gave me that look that says it all;

          Go back to where you have been hiding all this time. Go back because we don’t need you here, we don’t need 

          your fancy looks, your fancy smell, and the way you look at some of us, as if you are better than the rest of the 

          world. Just go back. Leave your mother to rest in peace. You drove her to this madness that got her killed. She 

          was already dead in her heart, but you hammered the final nail…

Looking at him squint his eyes at me, his fingers working in trying to remove whatever’s dislodged between his mouth, I say with boldness. “I’m not going back to England. I cannot run away from my problems anymore. Rachel and the child will be joining me very soon.”

Uncle John stares at me, the mouth agape, the finger still working inside the toothless mouth. “You’re saying that you’re now…?”

   “Yes, uncle. I have come here to stay. We will come to stay.” That impromptu speech dazzles me as well. I do not know why I said it. But it has been said, and what has been said must now be done.

Rachel will not be pleased with me at all.

Part Three – Meeting

Dusk sets in now... 

Uncle John stands, and clasps his hands firmly; his back slightly bent as he nods at all the men around him. “The service has been done, and Sibongile in now with the ancestors. I want to thank everyone who came to help us send her off to be with our ancestors.” He looks at me, me, who sits opposite him in a bench. I cringe, and rub my eyes. The smoke from the fire is stinging me hard. My uncle continues.

  “I was with Sibongile when she drew her last breath.” He says slowly, the tobacco pipe on the side of his lips churning out thick smoke. “She was a good woman. She had good children, well mannered children, although a few strayed from the paths of our ancestors.” He does not look at me when he says this, but I look at him, without a note of emotion etched on my face.

           What are you saying old man? Why do you have to say this now? Now, when all I want is redemption? 

           Now, when all I want is to be cleansed of my mistakes?

Hands and nods. Mumblings and coughs. Then silence.

  “How many of you remember him? He was quite young when he left this place.”

  “Salibonani”. I say. The family responds warmly. It is a good feeling. My heart warms up to this.

Uncle John motions for me to sit down. “This is Sibongile’s boy. He left for England ten years ago. Some of us thought he had died. Because we had never heard from him until now. We thought he had shunned us, shunned the clan and favoured the traditions of the white people.”

There is silence. Only the crackling flames leap into the air, dancing eerily in the moonlit darkness.

***

Vukani comes to my bedroom later. He closes the door after him. “You must be tired. The day was long and hard.”

I smile. “The same goes to you. You worked hard. Mother was very proud of you.”

Vukani smiles back. “Yes she was. I stood by her. I loved her.”

A man must be strong. His tears must not be seen, but I swear that Vukani’s eyes are glistening as we speak. He is the emotional one in the family; has always been.

  “I want to know Vukani.” I begin.

He understands me well, my brother. He looks at me first, then shakes his head. “You really hurt her feelings, brother. She was bitter when it came to you. Why did you do it?”

  “Do what? Do what? What did I do wrong Vukani? Was leaving for England such a bad thing? Did I not support you guys when I was there?”

Vukani looks at me and nods. “You always thought that money could buy you anything. Well, it doesn’t.”

      Money buys you love. It buys you everything.

  “So do I. So does everyone out there.” says Vukani. “But the bond of family far surpasses everything material. We do not choose which family we are born into, but at the end of the day, we stick to that family, through light and dark, through thin and thick.”

         You speak like Uncle John, young brother. Why have you changed? Or am I the one who has changed? 

         Have I been away for too long, that I now do not know my own brother?

I stare at him. “You read minds now?”

Vukani smiled. “No brother. But I can see that you mind borders somewhere. You are not here. Your spirit is not in this place.”

I smile. “It is here, Vukani. I have to fix the wrongs and make them right.”

Vukani smiles. “It is a good thought. It is a good start. Then let us begin as soon as we can. The ancestors will be pleased.” He says.

Dawn...

The night’s silence breaks is broken early, slowly at first, and light finally shatters the darkness of night. Crickets stop squealing, bats hibernate for the day; and the women, their progeny huddled behind their broad backs, and with their long swishing skirts, begin to sweep the yards outside, kicking great balls of dust that swirl around them. I wake up instantly, as if from a long surreal trance. And the cracks of the morning rays begin to dance before me, peeking through the wall and roof cracks, like little ghosts on their first haunting. They seem to bay at me, through the seeping the thin walls. They want nothing; only the sinews of my heart. These must be snapped, twanged, chopped into minute pieces. I sigh, again. The day is here, finally. I do not know whether I have waited for it, or whether it has been doing the waiting. But all I know is that it has been a long wait. Thoughts fly across my head. Morbid thoughts. Morbid yes, but thoughts that must not be ignored. Thoughts I have kept in my closet for far too long. Skeletons that have refused to rust. For such thoughts run the course of our lives. We live with these morbid thoughts, we live for these thoughts. They make us. Mould us into tiny little matrixes They journey with us. And in the deepest recesses of darkness, or in the glowing realms of light, it is these same thoughts that keep us alive. They are our genetic pattern, woven carefully, intrinsically stitched into the hem of our skins.

Why did I not do this before? Would things have been different?

I sigh again. What must be done must be done. And it must be done today. What occurred cannot be reversed. The wheels of time cannot be turned back now. It is too late. I sigh, and slowly wake up from the unwelcoming thin sheets. The night has been strangely warm. Strangely quiet. No voice called me in the darkness. No angry women and children bayed for my blood. It is warm in here. Yet winter is in full swing, but I never felt a chill throughout the night. Perhaps my fears have kept me warm. Perhaps my misdemeanors shielded me from what is to come. They say you do feel the warm hug before the biting cold sets its teeth in you. Is this what it has to come to? Rejection? Loneliness? Confusion?  Guilt? I fail to decipher any answer from the myriad of questions that pound on my mind. Sitting on the bed, I think again. I calculate. I re-align. I try to re-order the mess of things. An owl hoots from somewhere, above the corrugated roof. I look up, and shake my head solemnly. The wave of euphoria that sweeps around me holds me together. This has to be done. It must be done.

A knock on the door brings me back from my sojourn.

  “It’s me, Uncle John.” The voice says.

  “I’m coming now, uncle.” I reply, my voice dragging into the morning air.

  “We wake up early in this part of the world.” The old man reminds.

Not just in this part of the world, old man. Everywhere we wake up early to chase our dreams.

I cough slightly. “I will be ready in a minute, uncle.”

A minute later, I am ready. The battle is imminent. I come out of my hiding hole. Everyone is there, waiting for me. They are all wearing traditional garb. Uncle John extends his wrinkled hands at me, and gestures with a smile.

   “It is time, son. It is time...”

***END***