Still, I behaved as if I were living on the thatched roof of a mud hut, moving gingerly to avoid falling through. For his part, Uncle Usama acted as if all were well, as if he had forgotten everything. One afternoon he even bought some biyan-tankwa and pinkaso for me and Hafiz—something he rarely did. On another occasion, he asked Auntie Asibi to make us some fried eggs for breakfast, which she sandwiched between slices of the precious bread I had bought the night before.
Uncle continued to act so nicely that even the pupils at the madrassa agreed that a change of some kind had occurred. He actually went a whole month without whipping a student. He took to wearing his white djellabah more often than the red, black, and brown ones. (Each color signified a different level of his mental and emotional state. Days when Uncle wore red were called “danger days”: a simple mispronunciation during a recitation could draw six or more lashes on a pupil’s back.) Every kid in the compound, myself included, enjoyed the freedom that came with Uncle’s sudden change of character. We hoped and prayed that Uncle Usama had truly turned over a new leaf.
It was during this momentous period of détente that Hafiz and I felt emboldened to ask Uncle Usama for permission to go swimming at the University Pool at Tech. To our wondrous surprise, he granted it. He even gave us lorry fare and a little extra money to buy Fanta and biscuits at the pool’s refreshment center. For the first time, my heart didn’t speed up as I stood in front of Uncle; I didn’t have the persistent feeling that I had done something wrong. I felt an entirely new self-confidence.
For the two hours we spent at the pool, I kept an eye on the giant clock atop the refreshment center. The pool usually closed at five, and at four-thirty the lifeguards started making their calls for “last swim.” I wanted to beat the crowd that swarmed the Ayigya lorry station after the pool closed. More important, I needed to make sure that we made it home before six o’clock, so as not to miss the Maghrib prayers. It was a struggle to get Hafiz out of the water, but he eventually joined me in the dressing room. We quickly rinsed ourselves, dressed, and headed for the lorry station.
As Hafiz and I approached the compound, we saw Uncle Usama standing by the side entrance, his hands folded behind his back. I guessed that it was about a quarter to six, a good thirty minutes before the muezzin’s call to Maghrib prayers. With a pompous air, I waved to my friends, some of whom were clearly jealous of my newfound freedom. Hafiz walked behind me at a slower pace, and he, too, waved at our friends. I felt like a big boy, a hero, even, because Uncle had trusted me to take care of Hafiz, and allowed us to travel all the way to Tech and back on our own. When we were about three feet from the entrance, I prepared myself to go down on my knees to greet Uncle in the traditional manner. But as I leaned forward I felt a violent blow on the back of my head and neck. I fell face first to the ground, but quickly got up so that I could greet Uncle. It was then that I realized what had happened—that I had been struck by Zorro’s baranzu. Uncle’s hands, it became clear, had been behind his back in order to hide the bullwhip. Hafiz, terrified of his father, had probably sensed what was going to happen, which was why he’d walked so slowly as we neared the compound. He bolted as soon as the whip hit my head. I didn’t see Hafiz for a week.
Uncle followed the first blow with even more vicious ones, and each crack of the whip sounded like thunder in my ears. The sixth or seventh blow sent me crashing to the ground again, but Uncle did not stop. I wailed for help, even though I knew no one would dare come to my rescue. The only people he listened to were the compound’s three grandmothers, Kaka Sati being one of them, and the old women were in their inner chambers, getting ready for Maghrib prayers—which led me to believe that his attack at this particular time was calculated. Then I felt something that I had never felt during Uncle’s previous beatings: instead of being fearful, I was fuming with anger. “This is not fair,” I heard myself say. I stopped screaming and begging for mercy. I lay flat on my back and spread my arms as if I had fainted. I had thought of doing this before—feigning a collapse or a seizure, in the hope that it would scare off Uncle and perhaps keep him from beating me again. I don’t really know what convinced me to perform such a stunt, because it could have ended really badly. But I was angry, and, on one level, I truly wished to die at Uncle’s hands that evening, to leave him with the mental and spiritual torment of having killed a human being. Death would treat me better than he did, I thought, as another blow caught me on the chest, tearing my cotton shirt and slicing open my skin. “Laa ilaha illa llah”—I recited the Kalma-shahada. I had visions of myself in the Abrahamic lyceum situated in the special section of Heaven reserved for Muslims who died before puberty. I imagined all the fun I would have there with Munsulu, a cousin who had been crushed to death after a football match at the Kumasi Sports Stadium.
Uncle suddenly stopped. He walked away as if nothing had happened, didn’t even bother to turn around and verify if I had truly fainted. I closed my eyes and stayed where I was. After a while I heard voices around me; the kids I had walked past moments ago were crowded around me, whispering to one another.
I don’t recall how long it took, but eventually I lifted myself up to a sitting position. I was bathed in the street’s pervasive red dust. A cut on my cheek was still bleeding, and my shirt was streaked with blood from the cuts on my arms, neck, and back. I felt weak, yet I made an effort and stood up. A friend handed me the blue Adidas duffelbag that contained my swimming gear, which had gone flying when I was hit by the first blow. In my pounding head I kept asking, “But why? He gave us permission to go? What did we do wrong?”
Every eye was directed at me as I entered the compound. I did a quick scan of the courtyard for signs of Mother, but she was not on our veranda and not in the communal kitchen shed. I found her pacing back and forth in the living room, sobbing. When I walked in, she wrapped her arms around me, then pulled away to inspect me. She was alarmed when she saw the cut on my forehead. “Sit here,” she said, pointing at the blue artificial-leather couch. She ran outside and returned moments later with a bowl of warm water. She soaked a towel in the water, squeezed out some of the liquid, then, using an antiseptic, cleaned the blood and dust from my face, chest, and back. She put on a few bandages, gave me a fresh shirt and shorts to wear, and carried out the water and the towel.
My head felt very light, and my vision seemed to be flickering. A tall, lanky, old man appeared and started speaking to me. I sensed that he was Mother’s father, the imam, who had died long ago, when I was only three or four years old. Grandfather Imam smiled and held my hands and asked me to walk with him. He took me to visit Munsulu, who seemed happy, though where he was didn’t resemble the Abrahamic lyceum. It was, instead, a vast, misty void that appeared to have no gravitational force—we floated around like fish in the depths of the ocean. Grandfather suddenly vanished, Munsulu, too, and I felt Mother’s hands on my chest. I sat upright on the couch.
“Why are you crying?” Mother asked.
“Grandfather Imam,” I said, wiping the tears that were rolling down my cheeks. “Where is he?”
Mother’s eyes were wide with fright. She placed the palm of her right hand over my mouth and whispered, “Please keep quiet.” She lifted my weak body and walked about the room in a circular motion, the way mallams do to dispel evil jinns. She wept as she did so, then suddenly put me back on the couch and dashed out of the room.
The next thing I knew, half a dozen women were standing over me, including Kaka Sati. One woman said that an evil spirit had been on the loose the past three days, stealing children’s souls, and that my mother was lucky the bad spirits had accosted me while I was in the compound. “We would’ve been wailing on the streets searching for him right now,” the woman continued. A couple of the women blamed my situation on the heat, while others thought I was playing a trick of some sort on my mother, to avoid going to school the next day. Though the welts on my forehead and arms were visible to the women, none of them seemed to attribute my condition to the trouncing I’d received from Uncle Usama. They were perhaps being cautious not to meddle in my family’s affairs. And, besides, who dared to criticize Uncle Usama?
I wanted the women to leave me alone with Mother, who was still absent from the room. I wished Father were around, so that I could ask him if, like everyone else on Zongo Street, he was afraid of Uncle Usama. I badly needed to know why Father wouldn’t ask him to stop beating me.
An aunt barged into the room with a smelly paste that looked like a mixture of sawdust, ground myrrh, and incense oil. She began to rub the greasy stuff on my face and body, and very soon the sharp scent of the potion took over the room. Moments after that, Mother walked in with a bowl of dry-fish pepper soup, which she had apparently been preparing all this time. The soup was boiling hot, and its fragrant, spicy aroma instantly restored my spirits.
“What did you rub on him?” Mother said when she noticed my oily face. She pushed a couple of the women aside and moved closer to me. “Please let me feed him before they kill him,” she lamented, her voice tinged with rage. The women were taken aback by Mother’s behavior—not so much because of what she had said but because of the anger with which she said it. This was unusual for her. “If I don’t make a stand and fight back they will kill my son for me,” she sobbed, and held the soup bowl to my face. The women backed away and filed out of the room. Only Kaka Sati stayed behind. I had never seen such a look on Mother’s face, and, while one side of me enjoyed her protection, the other just wanted to see her be her affable self.
“Give him some A.P.C. and rub some Mentholatum on his body afterward,” Grandmother finally said to Mother, who simply nodded and continued to feed me. I realized that Grandmother’s suggestion was the closest anyone had come to admitting that I had been hurt by the beating, that my state wasn’t the fault of any jinn or spirit. A little while later, Kaka Sati quietly left the room. Mother heaved a deep sigh when she heard the door close. “You will soon feel better, you hear?” she whispered, wiping the now dry concoction from my face with the end of her wrapper. That night was the most peaceful I had enjoyed in my young life. I was happy that I didn’t have to see Uncle Usama’s face, though I wondered who would get him his bread.
For a whole week after the beating, Mother refused to let me step beyond our quarters. She informed my teacher that I was sick. She said the same thing to Uncle Usama, so he didn’t expect me to get his bread or show up for my Arabic lessons. I was visited by many cousins and friends, who kept me company in our sitting room. It was a jolly time for me, that week, as I did what I most enjoyed doing: I reread all my storybooks, including “Nchanga and Enoma” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” Mother made all my favorite dishes: palm-nut soup with lamb, fried plantain and beans, and stewed taliya, the heavenly handmade spaghetti, which I shared with the boys and girls who came to visit with me. I asked about Hafiz, and was told that he had decamped to Asawasi, where his maternal grandmother lived, and that no one had seen him since the evening of the beating. How Hafiz had made it to Asawasi, a suburb six miles out of the city, all by himself, nobody knew.
On the sixth day of my confinement, word came to me that Hafiz’s grandmother had travelled on foot all the way from Asawasi to plead in person on her grandson’s behalf. The old woman knew that unless she showed up Uncle Usama would not withdraw his vow to give his son as many lashes as he had given me. My informants, whom I bribed with the special foods at my disposal, told me that Uncle Usama had sworn in front of the class at the madrassa that, no matter who came to plead, Hafiz, too, would receive his lashes. Uncle had even sworn to whip Hafiz’s corpse if he died before receiving his punishment. But Mother didn’t believe any of his declarations. She said of him, “Don’t mind that liar. He’s saying all that just to mask his shame. You wait and see, that useless man is not going to touch the boy.”
She must be really mad to call him useless in front of me, I thought. I was angry, too, but my anger wasn’t directed at Uncle, as there was nothing I or anybody could do to stop him from whipping me whenever he was in a bad mood. I was instead angry with Father for being gone all the time and allowing this to happen. I felt bitter that Hafiz had not suffered as I had, yet I didn’t want the poor kid to be beaten. Already, Uncle’s violent tendencies had turned my cousin into a nervous and subdued child. He stammered and was easily frightened by noises. The kids at school made fun of him. They called him Mad Hafiz, and joked that he was paranoid, or that he saw apparitions. At the time, I didn’t really know what paranoid meant, but I suspected that it wasn’t a good thing to become.
One day, when Hafiz was seven and I was nine, he had suddenly started talking to himself and to invisible people who seemed to be in his company. Kaka Sati explained to me that jinns were bothering Hafiz and “toying with his mind.” While playing with friends, Hafiz would curse and threaten to slap or kick other kids that only he could see. Two days after Hafiz’s first paranoid episode, Uncle Usama prepared a special rubutu for him to drink and to wash his body with. He also created a powerful talisman inscribed with all the ninety-nine names of Allah. The talisman, sewn in crocodile skin, was given to Hafiz to carry on his body at all times, to help drive away the bad jinns. But, in my own mind, I questioned whether any jinn was truly following Hafiz; I had a feeling that his behavior was a direct result of his constant state of anxiety caused by Uncle’s explosive temper. The only good thing about the episode was that Hafiz himself wasn’t aware that his schoolmates were mocking him; he seemed to be in a world all his own. Ultimately, whether it was paranoia or jinns, everyone in the family was happy that Uncle Usama’s potion and talisman were able to cure Hafiz and bring him back to us. Ever since that time, I had been protective of Hafiz, and prayed that nothing like that would happen to him again.
On the seventh day of my joyful incarceration, Hafiz came to our living quarters during his school lunch break. He told me the story of his gallant escape—how he had walked all the way to his grandmother’s house. Hafiz even tried to convince me that Uncle had sent four strong boys after him, “to capture me and bring me to justice, but none of them was any match for my blazing speed.” I knew he was exaggerating. But I focussed on another piece of news that he delivered before he went back to school. He informed me that Uncle Usama was out of town on a business trip to Accra, and wouldn’t be back until late that evening. I wasn’t sure whether to believe him, because everybody knew that Uncle Usama had no business of any kind away from the madrassa. And, on top of that, Uncle hated travelling, and would go years at a time without leaving Kumasi.
But I was so delighted by the news of Uncle’s trip that I promptly decided to end my imprisonment. And, by Allah, it felt good to be outside. That evening we played all kinds of games in the front yard. For the first time any of us could remember, we played in a carefree manner, as children are supposed to. And we were so engrossed in our games that we didn’t even notice when adults started gathering in the front yard. The women walked in a hurried, distracted manner, some without their veils, pacing back and forth in front of the compound. The crowd grew so large that it resembled a durbar. We noticed the grave looks on the faces of some of the people, and also the secretive manner in which they whispered to one another. Then we heard the sharp, shrill wailing of a woman, crying, reciting in a singsong manner, “Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un. Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un.” Knowing what those phrases meant, I froze, and so did every kid around me. The sad and piercing voice of the funeral crier continued, reciting the phrases over and over, and very soon the cries of women and children filled the night air.