My editor burst into the room beaming with an idea which he thought would make
our readers jump for joy. He could barely speak and his big green eyes were
glittering with excitement . I looked up from my desk, wearing my Tuesday
sweatpants, I raised my eyebrows waiting unenthusiastically for an explanation.
He said “Africa,people love to hear about that kind of stuff!” . The number of
questions that rushed into my head at the time was astronomical, but I settled
for one “What stuff?”. He gave me a look which seemed to question my mental
capacity “ You know African stuff, the stuff you see on T.V.?” I was still
bewildered. He sighed and said “ Just write about Africa”. He walked out and
left me unable to decipher my feelings. As with any writing assignment I tried
to think of it critically but I failed. How could I write about her when all
this world knew of her was extremes. They either saw her as wild, untamed and
exotic, or fragile and ignorant with death looming at the tip of her tongue and
danger at the tips of her calloused fingers. I sighed, feeling frustrated and
outraged that he expected me to write about Africa on demand. I stared outside
my window, disappointed to see that winter reared its pale white head in the
outskirts of Toronto. I tried to focus and begged my pen to take control,
pleading with the Nubian blood flowing through my veins to replace the ink of
my pen and write her history and the history of the generations she bore before
me, but nothing came. I glanced at my fingers and found myself clutching my pen
with a grip so firm it drained the brown dye from my skin, as if somehow
expecting the strength of my fists to push all that I felt for her onto the
fine white paper before me. I was frightened for a moment and stared at my
hands until the dark color returned to them. I collected my thoughts and began
the 90 minute drive to Kitchener, hoping it would clear my mind. My hopes soon
faded as it grew colder and I saw rising mounds of snow resting on the banks of
the highway, I closed my eyes and tried to picture the Nile, but nostalgia
rushed over me and I struggled to stop myself from choking on my sorrow. As
soon as I entered my parents home in kitchener ;Africa engulfed me like lazy
waves strolling in from the red sea to embrace the sands of Port Sudan, Asmara
and Djibouti. The smell of sandal wood incense, African food heavy with flavor
and a warm earthy aroma tugged at my heart strings, my mother in her jilbab
took me in her arms. I smiled at her knowing that every bit of her was Africa,
even when she was dressed in western clothes she bore Cairo in her head,
Khartoum at her heart, Asmara and Adis at her sides and Kampala at the souls of
her well traveled feet. I walked in a trance like state searching for a pen, I
found one and a tissue box which I turned upside down and began to write
Africa. She came to me like some forgotten dream, in all her beautiful colors.
She was not frail, nor dangerous and certainly not ignorant, she had a green
cloth wrapped around her hair which she had braided into a thousand branches of
neem trees. In her eyes she carried the wisdom of a thousand civilizations, and
in her bosom, behind pale blue cotton and heavy swinging breasts she carried
the heart of humanity which she gave birth to, beneath the shade of a tree in
Juba, where the nile rushed from the heart of Uganda solely to meet her feet.
In her womb she carried dark, fertile earth which nurtured all her children.
Her hands were worn but gentle, strong, yet tired. Strapped to her back in soft
cotton material was a child, sick frail, born with an ailment he can never beat
alone, some would say hopeless and as a good as dead, but not her , she carried
him and sheltered him from the hot sun of the Sahara. On her left foot , the
remains of a shackle bruised her ankles, it looks as if she’d ripped off the
chain but the brace of colonialism still remained tightly wrapped around her
covering the meeting place where her leg like Kilimanjaro met the earth
which was her feet. Such sweet sorrow was her boundless smile which stretched
from the Atlantic to the warm waters of the Indian ocean, engulfing with in it
a thousand tongues. She spoke like rain, and sang like cool mornings and when
she wept the wind would hum her cry. She struggeled to keep her tears from
falling , so she flooded the nile with them, the zambize, tugela, lomami,
mbini, tana, niger and countless other rivers with her sorrow and the blood
which gave her and her children life. Her skin, tones of ebony, chestnut, gold,
the brown of tree bark and the amber of honey, and the color of the red sand
which rushed up to meet the sky when the small feet of children tread upon it.
It was all that and more , soft and smooth, so dark and yet so bright so
beautiful, young and old at the same instant, and no matter which of the
thousand shades she displayed, she was always black. She stood before me in a
twilight trapped between history and memory, distant and so far removed yet
within me wherever my black feet take me. Still in my trance like state, I
stared at the Kleenex box, realizing that I had long ran out of room and taken
to writing on the skin of my arms, I smiled. I knew at that instant no matter
how much snow there was, this home, the one which my mother and father worked
for all their lives, standing on their African feet, loving with their African
hearts and working with their black hands built, although it stood long before
they saw it, they had built it with everything Africa gave them. Regardless of
what furniture was in it, what food was being cooked, it would always smell
like molah and bokhoor and it would always be a cocoon containing my Africa
within its bright yellow walls. Some will read this and say that this is not
Africa, but this is her, as I have come to know her, she is mine and I am hers.