NYAH

The African sun was high in the sky but it was cool under the shade of the Eucalyptus trees. The house was quiet, all the morning chores were done. Nyah had washed all the pots and pans, fed her baby brother some gruel, cleaned the rooms and washed all the clothes. It was time to rest. She mostly took the afternoon break in a hammock under the trees. The sound of birds singing and crickets chirping was like a lullaby as she drifted in and out of sleep. Sometimes she liked singing to the soft rhythm of the hammock rocking gently in the wind.

 Nyah’s voice was thick and melodious and carried all the way across to the river, which was on the other side of the maize fields. Her singing would make passers by smile and remind them of home and sitting around in circles in moonlight with the soft glow of dying embers in the middle, laughing and joking and having a good time.

The sun was going down, she woke up with a start when she heard the baby crying. The wind had stopped, the baby was covered in sweat. She quickly took him to where the water was stored. Pouring a few cans of water over him. Soon the baby was cooing and laughing and ready for his evening meal. She lit the fire, boiled some sweet potatoes, mashed one for the baby had two herself and kept the rest for her father.

Her father was a vegetable farmer and had his own patch near the maize fields. Today was market day for him, she was hoping he would bring back some nice candy and clothes for the baby. The baby had outgrown most of his old clothes.

She was eleven years old. Her mother had died a few years earlier, when the baby was born. The father had trained her well and now she was doing a good job of looking after the baby and goats and chicken they had.

Sometimes she missed not going to school.  The dad asked the Belgian nuns to help her. They would come over twice a week to teach her to read and write and do some maths. The Belgian nuns lived in a convent on the hill which could be seen from quite far away as all the walls were whitewashed and glowed when the sun was up. 

In the evenings when it was much cooler, all her friends would run down to the river. They loved splashing about in the water, making funny faces in the sand with sticks and playing hide and seek behind the trees. Her friends would bring her pictures from magazines and cards they had made at school. She stored all of these in her school bag which she kept under the bed.

Her friends started going home one by one as the smell of the evening meal drifted in with the wind. She went to pick up her little brother where he had been playing in the sand and then she heard the faint sound of her father’s motorbike in the distance. 

She ran back as fast as she could, her father was talking to the neighbour and taking off all the plastic carrier bags he had tied around the bike. He was offering the neighbour some of the candy he got from the market. Nyah was annoyed, she wanted to get her hands on the candy before anyone else. The father smiled when he saw her frowning and handed the brown paper bag with the rest of the candy to her. He picked up the baby and started playing with him throwing him high up in the air. The baby loved this game and came down with torrents of laughter and giggling.

The house was made of big slabs of stone and a thatched roof. Nyah and the dad would cover it with a coat of mud every six months so it wouldn’t heat up in the hot summer sun. The father threw some water over the mud walls to cool them down and the aroma of wet earth filled Nyah’s lungs. She loved that smell of wet earth. It always reminded her of her mother, the faint smell of her body next to hers, her voice singing her to sleep. Most nights she didn’t miss that voice and was too tired to remember anything, but some nights the mother’s memory would creep up all on its own and then she would lie awake staring at the stars or the shadows of the trees moving on the wall for a long time.

She couldn’t remember what time it was when her father came into pick up the baby and motioned her with his finger to be silent. She seemed confused for a while. The lantern had gone out and everything seemed dark. Then she heard the terrible screaming and gun shots and machine gun fire in the background. The baby started crying, the father quickly put a milk bottle in his mouth to silence him. Her heart was pounding, she didn’t know what was happening except that she could feel waves of fear in the air around her.

 As the three of them crept out of the house, they tried staying near walls and hedges to creep out of the village streets unseen. Nyah wondered where they were going? As they crossed the maize  fields she realised her father was headed for the whitewashed church on the hill. It had high walls and strong doors and was safer than any other building in the village. It was difficult to say if it took half an hour to get there or several hours. Time seemed to be going really slow. Every now and then the gun shots and machine gun fire would erupt again startling Nyah and the baby.  Some other people hiding behind a clump of trees joined them as they reached the foot of the hill.

They all looked scared, eyes wide with fear, all senses alert, listening for the smallest of sounds. The next part 0f the journey was the most difficult, they had lost the cover of trees and  the  small shrubs and bushes  were not enough to hide them. They doubled up and crawled next to the ground and finally made it to the back wall of the church compound. The big wooden door that usually remained shut was slightly open and all seven eight of them slunk in as quietly as they could.

The nuns took the baby away and the rest of them climbed a winding staircase up to the rafters to a small room where a lot of other people were sitting hunched next to a wall. At some point one of the nuns brought some water in a small can and they all had a few sips each.

They sound of machine guns had stopped. All seemed silent for several hours. Nyah relaxed and stretched her legs out straight. All her senses had been frozen with fear. Now some sensation was coming back and she realised how wonderful the normal sounds of the night sounded. A chorus of crickets of different sizes and shapes chirping away, the occasional hooting of an owl. The constant sound of the river swirling around rocks. She must have dozed off at some point , when she woke up with a start her mind still disoriented from sleep, people around her were screaming. She saw the glint of machete’s , men dressed in uniforms and bandana’s on their faces dragging people downstairs. She tried to hide behind the big earthen jars in the corner but was soon found. The man held her by the arm and kicked her with his boots to make her stand up straight.  Poked the machete in her back and made a rough movement with his head telling her to walk ahead. Three other girls were also being dragged into the woods by the men with machete’s. As they stripped her of her clothes and threw her on the ground , she screamed in pain , the  girl next to her also screamed and  the glint of a machete’s blue steel silenced her. She passed out from the pain and didn’t know how long she had been lying in the clump of trees at the foot of the hills. The other girls lying around her weren’t breathing at all . She had several machete cuts on her arms legs and shoulders. When she tried to move, another scream of pain erupted from her mouth as her shoulder seemed dislocated. 

She passed out again before the vans with white peace keepers found her lying in a heap. They were going round the village looking for survivors, they didn’t find any. They would have left her dead but her dislocated shoulder saved her life as the pain was making her groan. The next few days or weeks were all a daze to her. She had no clear re collection of time. She was in a hospital with a lot of white people. Her arms and legs were bandaged and she felt terrible pain every time she tried to move. How long had she been there, was it days, weeks or months, time had lost all relevance.

Eventually they shifted her to another building where a lot of French nuns and pretty French volunteers looked after her. Her wounds had mostly healed. The pretty French volunteers told her that she was the lucky one . Out of several African girls a rich French gentleman had chosen her and agreed to take her back to France with him. Nyah looked at her bulging tummy where the baby from the machete night was growing. ‘’Its OK,’’ the pretty volunteer laughed ‘’We will keep the baby when he comes’’.

The French gentleman would come often and bring her presents. The nuns would arrange for both of them to sit in the back veranda. The kind French gentleman looked quite old and Nyah didn’t know how to address him. The flowery dress or new slippers he brought her were nice but Nyah was not sure what she was supposed to do in return. The small packets of dark chocolate he brought tasted bitter and Nyah didn’t like them but was too scared to refuse anything he brought. Then one day he told her she had been chosen to become his wife. She stayed silent, there was no feeling of either happiness or sadness inside her. It would just be another place she will move to. That is all she thought.

She had gotten used to the kindness and care of the volunteers. After her mother they were the first women she felt safe with. The  thought of leaving them made her cry , the haze started lifting  and with it came the pain, she would go into the garden to hide  the tears that wouldn’t stop even when she tried really hard. The pretty French volunteers would scold her ‘’ This is very bad for baby, very bad ’’

Finally she was ready to depart with the kind French gentleman. She looked at the tiny brown baby that was her’s but she couldn’t feel anything for him. He didn’t feel a part of her just as all the events since the night of the machete attacks didn’t feel real. She had blocked all pain on the other side and the little brown baby seemed a part of the world she had blocked.  She was married to the kind French man in the little chapel before she left. She was dressed in a beautiful white dress and had flowers in her hair. The pretty French volunteers gave her a lot of presents for her new home in France.

As they landed at Charles de Gaulle everything felt different . The airport was bigger than any building she had ever seen before. There were walls made entirely of glass and the marble floor was so shiny she could almost see her face in it. She held on to the rail as they went up the escalator. It was all a bit dizzying but after a long time, she felt a faint ripple of life surfacing from the gloom of the past three years.

 Their house in the suburbs took her breath away.It was a large rambling house surrounded on three sides by maple , beech and oak trees . The cream coloured outer walls were covered with Wisteria and Calcifer vines going up and down . The tiles on the roof were blueish grey. The grounds around the house were full of feathery light green grass. Jacques her husband , the rich French gentleman  escorted her inside to a low hall with dark brown rafters and light brown tables and chairs. She had already fallen in love with the house as soon as her feet touched the wooden floor.

To her the next few days felt like living in fairyland. She loved cooking in the modern kitchen and baking bread in the oven which came out smelling like heaven in just a few minutes. This was a big improvement to the coal powered oven in Rwanda which took ages to bake bread, along with all the smoke that went into people’s eyes. Jacques had taught her to use the grill and she was proud of how she prepared the fish to exact perfection just as Jacques liked it.

Jacques was an art dealer and had to travel to other cities to get good deals. Then her periods of isolation began. She would sit by the large box sash windows looking out in the garden where leaves were turning yellow and falling off trees.

The days felt very long. It took 30 minutes to clean the house and less than 20 minutes to prepare her food and then she had nothing to do. In the emptiness fears and shadows of the past began creeping up. Jacques had forbidden her to leave the house when he was not around as her French was not very good and she didn’t know her way around. The house she had fallen in love with now started feeling like a prison. She was wondering if she was feeling  exceptionally low and often dizzy because of Jacques’s long absences or because she was actually ill.

She had to see the doctor as soon as Jacques came home, she decided. She had felt nauseated and had dizzy spells once too often. She didn’t feel safe on her own.

Jacques looked tired when he came back and wasn’t too happy about her nagging him to see a doctor. ‘’I have to know’’ she said excitedly ‘’ what if I am pregnant, it felt like this ………..’’ she left the sentence trailing, not wanting to remember the other time.

The doctor took a long time examining her and looked a bit confused and concerned. ‘’ I will have to take a blood test and vaginal discharge samples ‘’ she said in the end. ‘’I will also have to test your husband’’ The following weeks were like a nightmare. The doctor informed her that she had acquired an STD from her husband, who seemed at a more advanced and severe stage. 

‘’But’’ ……..’’how can that be ‘’ he only knows me and I did not have an STD before coming to France ‘’ Nyah said her voice cracking. The doctor looked at her from behind her reading glasses. ‘’ Girl I’ve known Jacques since he was a young man…….’’ She smiled at Nyah as if recalling some colourful past ‘’ don’t be fooled by him, the kind of women he loves most ………no strings attached kind,’’ She made a wild gesture of tossing her blond hair around. Whatever the doctor was implying was loud and clear. Nyah felt a cold sweat breaking out on her neck. ‘’Am I going to die’’ ? she asked in a trembling voice. ‘’The women in Africa who got this disease usually died’’ she said getting up to leave. ‘’you won’t die but won’t have any kids and may feel generally ill for a while’’ Nyah seemed in deep thought as she took the prescription. ‘’ Will it help if I left Jacques’’ she asked the doctor. ‘’No,’’ the doctor said firmly ‘’the medicine will help’’

She went home and packed all her clothes in the suitcase that the French volunteers had given her in Rwanda as a present. She didn’t want to touch or take anything belonging to Jacques. She could feel germs crawling all over the house and everything made her feel sick.

Jacques was quite drunk when he came home and couldn’t care less what torment Nyah was going through.

‘’ I need some money’’ she said trying not to raise her voice ‘’

‘’ Why ‘’ he said still at the bottle and flipping through TV channels’’. She stayed silent which made him angry  ‘’where is my dinner bitch’’ he threw the empty bottle on the floor. The sound of crashing glass scared her ‘’ I …. I have to go’’ she said stammering ‘’I can’t live here anymore, you have made me ill …….and I might die’’

He got up swaying a little ‘’ How do you know it wasn’t those Yahoos who raped you’’ he was coming closer as if to hit her. She ran to the door ‘’ That’s right run away, do that you African scum’’ he picked another alcohol bottle from the kitchen cabinet. ‘’ Let’s see who  wants a useless whore like you’’.

She walked to the bus station and went to a pawn shop in the city. Sold all the small gold bits and pieces she had. Her mother’s gold chain. Her wedding ring, the earing’s that were a present from the French volunteers. She still didn’t have enough money even halfway to Rwanda.

She sat at the bus station all night staring at the other people coming in and out wondering what to do. Two African men with scruffy faces came and sat next to her’’ she could smell weed on their breath and tried to get up. One of the two men put his foot on her suitcase ‘’Where are you going sister’’ he winked at her ‘’ I have a place for you to stay‘’ the other one said ‘’ you’ve been here all night , I’ve been watching you’’.

She dragged her suitcase outside and got on the first bus that stopped  at the terminal without seeing where it was going.

It was nearly daybreak when she dragged her footsteps back to Jacques’s house. He was lying sprawled on the sofa when she came in. His vomit from excessive drinking all over the living room carpet.

He opened his eyes ‘’ Why have you returned bitch’’ he snarled at her ‘’ you are not welcome here, go back to your stinking Africans’’

She took off her coat ‘’ I am sorry Jacques’’ she said slowly. ‘’I have nowhere to go’’

She put on her work apron and knelt down to clean the vomit from the carpet. Jacques held her by the hair and pulled her head back

‘’Will you run away again bitch’’ he asked her in an angry voice.

‘’No sir ‘’ she said slowly ‘’ it will never happen again’’. Her tears  falling onto the carpet and making dark stains where they fell. Jacques had gone off into another drunken stupor and noticed nothing.