by Ernest Alanki
Photo by pupsy27
I was told from very early on that when man was made every one of us was placed in an oven to bake. The black man rose into a browned and sometimes charred cake, the white man a cake overbaked that it turned white as ash.
Like my father, mother and sister, I was that sometimes charred cake. The browned neighbour next door was my second father, his wife my other mother. This man’s son was also my father’s responsibility, the son to whom I became a brother.
Each night I stood in the open yard, at the back of my father’s compound. There I pondered the remarkable depth of the universe and the great mystery of how the white crescent moon could be full of so much beauty.
This moon’s optimism defeated the cynicism of the dark heavens, and made the night sky shimmer with laughter. I heard sweet voices in faceless places ― faceless places that sang musical sonnets, to which my young heart danced a boy’s dreams.
When I could read, I read many passages about great civilizations ― chapters upon chapters about the ash men and women and their children who lived beyond the great divide ― people with eyes so fair mine were unfathomable black chasms.
Their hair redder than my own blood ― this blood that poured from my veins as I ran through the thorns in the forest in search of the fruit, passion. These human eyes so clear, it was the blue river to which I went, and from which I returned with a pail full for bath.
What a strange world to be peopled with humans whose skin shone like the golden sun? These thoughts became a load of uneasiness, for nothing was more beautiful than everything I already knew ― the browned men and women and charred ones to whom I was a child.
One day, in the middle of night soldiers came. They wore their colours beautiful as mine, and bore their eyes dark as mine in their heads, and spoke in tongues that I understood all too well. Amongst them were the sons of our neighbours ― my one-time brothers.
But now, their machetes swished through the air and chopped my mother’s head ― the woman they used to call mother. Their young steely hands brought my father squirming in his blood and he died in a red river of faeces ― this same man they used to call father.
Whips slashed my skin, and boots cracked my shins. Punches dislodged a tooth and I became aware of a new reality of neighbourliness and kinship. I smelled dust when I fell to the bare ground. When I got up, I began to fight a war and played with guns for toys.
I shot and killed people when I was told to; it was my life or theirs. I smoked and drank hard liquor as I was asked. One needle after another blended my blood with drugs ― to which I lost many days of sanity to insanity.
Then one day, I found myself high up in the air, looking down at clouds that seemed like beds of cotton. These soft, inviting folds went this way and ran and disappeared that way. They reminded me of the angelic stars I used to watch twinkle beyond my father’s backyard.
We came down through these clouds and found an array of magnificent buildings that speckled the land. How I wondered at the expanse as we raced along green grass fields. This reverie became even more profound as I saw an ash man, then another and another.
Too soon, I became a browned boy in a land of ash men. Ash men became my new next door neighbours, from whose treasure trove I now went for a drink ― betrayed by the ones I used to call brother and father ― who lied in saying there exist two kinds of humans.
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Ernest Alanki holds a PhD in microbiology and has published several peer-reviewed scientific papers under a different name. He finds the challenge of switching between science (dull) and literary (brilliant) writing intriguing. He is currently a researcher at the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, University of Windsor, Canada.
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