“Believe when I tell you that wishing is like rubbing sand paper on your skin. Rubbing it so hard for so long that your bleeding is cold and relieves your sore flesh. Believe when I tell you that shame bursts like grapefruit pulp in your mouth when you try to swallow it. And bitterness lingers on your teeth, digging through the dirt to find peace on your nerves. Believe when I tell you don’t trust, and don’t move your eyelids at the sight of happiness. You don’t know it yet but it has the power of a cloud of yellow locusts travelling on the Harmattan. And it will rain on you like loud fire drops. And you won’t hear a thing. And you will burn.”
When you live with a sand storm, you cannot move when he roars. You cannot drop the metal plate you just washed. You cannot act as if you understand what he means to say. You cannot turn around to get more soap from the cupboard, because turning around would mean you are not listening. And you have to listen. You have to listen like a prey, for you are a prey. You have to hear every footstep that brings the storm closer to you. You have to control your breathing so that you can hear, and for that you need to make sure your heart is not beating at your chest. It makes a lot of noise when your heart beats at your chest. Think about a song. Not a happy song for that might make you smile, and smiling would be disrespecting the angry sand storm. Think about a slow song. Something your deaf mother would whisper just a little too loud so that it woke you up everyday at dawn as she pounded the millet. Warm dawns when the sun is high up way too early. When the soft dune sand on the yard has been cleaned of dried mango leaves, goat excrement, orange peels and peanut shells. Warm dawns when the chicken is busy digging out worms, the turkey parades and the dog does not want to leave the cool concrete bench just yet. Think about a slow song and keep washing the dishes. Wash every plate twice, and every utensil three times. Wash the dishes as long as you can, and when you are asked if you get it, nod. Do not try to make sense of anything you nod at, because you might be lost thinking instead of listening. You are just a prey and the sand storm is always over you ready to swallow you. Believe that his anger can bruise you deep – thousands of capillaries waiting to burst like grapefruit pulp, red and ready. Believe that his hands have the power to crush your bones. Believe that you are alone. That only the sand storm knows your fate: if it swallows you and you die, or if it gets in your eyes and you are hurt.
Remember, sand storms don’t last forever. They may rise and grow and threaten, but sometimes they don’t destroy. Sometimes they become calm and lay on the couch. They switch on the TV and start snoring. At that point you may stop washing the dishes. You may go to the bathroom and brush your teeth, wear your faded olive green nightgown in hope that it would keep the sand storm away at night. You may walk up to your room and tuck your head under the heavy knitted rabaal cloth that your mother gave you as wedding present. She had chosen red, yellow and orange cotton strands– colors that remind you how much you loved to make mud houses. Always remember to keep listening. You will feel a hand reaching to the belt of the gown. Or touching your waist to find the belt. The hand will put you on your back and open the nightgown. The sand storm will once again be over you. This time it will drop on you rhythmically, as it breathes in life and breathes out a fog made of dust that will blind you for a moment. You may close your fists then so tight it should hurt more than the sand storm between your thighs. It helps if you have nails. Then think of a happy and busy place – something loud enough to cover the laments of the sand storm. Think about the fish market where you tied your skirt high above your knees, and tied your slippers together with a nylon cord that you then tied to your basket. You ran in the fern green sea and placed yourself between two fishermen. You put your basket over your head, grabbed onto the net and pulled with them. When it was the season for white groupers, in early march, the net would be very heavy, and everyone spent almost an hour pulling it out. When the moving fish hit the shore, sparkling grey and blue and agony, flicking head-up-head-down as if asking for the sun’s mercy, all the children rushed with their baskets and filled them – one more week to go before the next fleet arrives. And the songs! How can you forget the songs of the children on the way back to town:
“Believe that when the old man sees the fleet, he forgets his cane and runs alongside the children. Because life is like the sea – sometimes generous, sometimes angry. It can be full and give up its white groupers. It can curse you and let you starve. So run, child, run! Before the old man gets there first.”
Sand storms don’t last forever. They bring with them all the sand the Sahara wants to get rid off. You are that house on top of the hill. The house on the way of the storm catching the burden of sand with your hands open, palms faced up, and fingers curled. The house that saves the peace of the village further down the hill. When the storm is done, don’t bother closing the nightgown. Keep listening. Hear the storm settling and spreading on the bed quietly. Feel the mass of sand drop in a thud. Feel it breathe. In… Out… In… Out… You have once loved it. You have once laid on it and made sand angels – spreading your legs and arms carelessly and laughing. Back then, the songs your grandfather sang to your grandmother played in your head every time he walked by you. The first time, he only turned his eyes your direction when he was right by your shoulder line. You didn’t want to smile but your raised cheeks won over your stubborn pride. He was supposed to greet you first, and when he did, you hummed those songs. At night, he sat on your front yard to sip tea with your brothers. When they were too sleepy to care, he grabbed your hand and you’d both run to the highest point on the coast line – the one with the thinnest sand; the one that sucked you in and made a shelter around you. He walked the tip of his fingers between your braids: warm skin on cold scalp as the wind from the ocean blamed you for being out so late. The night was always blue like the bruises the songs talked about. When your grandfather sang to your grandmother, he sang about warmth and bruises, waiting and time-travelling, breathing yet suffocating, growing with someone else. You understood the warmth part, and hummed it along until he wished to hear the song. So you sang to him, and sang it all, with the bruises and the suffocating.
“Songs are prophecies, yes, they tell the future my love. Yet if you have heard it, someone else has felt it and sang it years ago. What I am telling you isn’t new to you, you have heard it. What it does to you, I hope, makes the difference. I am told to let you grow roots in my past to find what I wish you never found. Whatever it is, you are meant to accept. Tell me you will. Tell me you will so we can find and hide in earth cracks when a sand storm rises.”
You didn’t understand the songs so you chose to cut his roots. You chose to hide from him the man with the sun spots on his forehead. You were just a child then, singing and making sand angels in the air on your way to school. When the man asked you if you wanted some of the okra soup he had in his house, you open your hands, palms faced up and fingers curled. You chose to hide from him that when you ran to your mother, all she did was cry and scrape the crusted blood off your thighs with her nails and cold water. When you were clean she told you to never talk about it again. She wrapped your hands in hers and said a prayer to bring fertility upon you some day. Later, you realized mothers’ prayers can remain unattended. So when the truth hit you both, more blood swamped your hope: you could not give him a child. Bloodstain after bloodstain on the carpet, on the bed sheets, on the seat of the car, your storm had dried up. Blood stain after blood stain you had long started to fade. Think about any song now. Like the one playing on the radio that day when after seven weeks, the blood gushed out on the car seat. It was sunny and the windows were down. There was not enough wind to blow the flies out of the car. So they gathered around the little puddles of life under your skirt. Sticky ponds of what you stopped naming after the fifth one. He smelled it. He smelled it and stopped the car. The silence made a buzzing noise. The buzzing noise just before the sand storm. The buzzing noise when birds start flying south; shopkeepers pack their displays in; fish smokers put out the fire and cover the fish. The storm was coming at you, you could hear it in the way he breathed. In… Out… In…. Out. He turned to look at the car seat and the pale blue skirt, dark blue at parts now. In a second he had both his hands around your neck. Dust filled your lungs and you choked on the mud in your mouth. He held tighter and all became blurry - like when the sun shines so bright, everything seems to tremble. He kept on holding and you could not hear what he said about trying again, not giving up. You tried to tell him about the man with sun spots, that it might not be your fault that you can’t give him children. He let go of your neck and told you again about trying, never giving up. When you got home, he threw you on the floor and tried again, not giving up. He kept on trying everyday since. He did not mind the pools of blood around the house, iron-scenting your lives.
Get up and walk to the kitchen now. It’s pointless trying to wonder once more if you should have noticed he often held your hand so tight your bones cracked when he was nervous. It’s pointless trying to figure out whether he really meant ‘playing’ when his hand fell too hard on your shoulder as laughed at a joke. Find the knife you have washed three times twice this evening. While you make your way to the room, let your heart beat at your chest and let the storm hear you come towards him. He sees that you shake so he slaps the knife out of your hand. He reaches for your neck, and you fit it in his hands comfortably. When he squeezes, you can feel the dust in your lungs again. Finally, the smell of rotten iron is replaced with that of dry earth. You let the mud fill your mouth and even open it to let more in. The roars are replaced by a soothing song. Something that your grandfather would sing while putting shea leaves on a sore wound.
“Believe that pain is wiser and wise giving up to. It teaches patience so be ready to learn when it hurts. Believe that no one can push for its destiny. If it is said you shall perish today, you will. But if it is said you shall rise and jump on fertile plains, get up and run to it.”
Your feet are not touching the ground anymore. You can now open your arms and legs to make sand angels again, finally. Maybe where you are going, the little ponds of life still have names, and sun-spotted men don’t swallow them away. Maybe they will make sand angels with you too.