Death before Dishonour
Above Dzorwulu, the sky becomes thick with bats. I was running when I first saw the flock overhead, black and winged like birds. If I had not heard the story, I would have imagined them crows.
The chief came from a village north of Accra, wounded or ill. I do not know which. He came in bad health and he did not return. The bats followed overhead as he was carried to 37 Hospital. They could not spot his body carried out in a Hearst. They remained and painted the roof of the building with white feces. Military police brought rifles, aimed into the trees and shot the flock as it scattered. The bats returned each morning. Eventually, patients whined about the racket. An animal shelter wrote to the state and spoke to a newspaper. The bats were allowed to stay.
I don’t know if it is the memory of the bullets that scatters them north as the sun deepens, a copper blossom in the sky. I wonder if they search the space between the sinking warmth and the early risen moon. In the dry season, the spheres sit together through the afternoon like sisters. A reminder of the poles. Of polarity. Of change.
It was not chance that I looked up and saw their flight from the east towards the hills of Aburi. I had been looking down, following my breath as I ran the back streets near my home. Three young boys stopped me. One had lowered himself into the open sewer to play. Another was following. The third waited near the curb, his nose pointed to the sky. I stopped to scold them, to coax them from the green sewage. As they withdrew to the roadside, they lifted their faces to the flock. My eyes followed and I remembered Jihad’s words.
“It’s true,” he said. “It is not just a story.” I scoffed and set my mouth to my bottle. Embarrassed for the part of myself that believed him. Embarrassed for the part of myself that didn’t. The dog began barking. Someone suggested we swim. We swam. Ate barracuda. Watched as the night came black as the river. We were far from the city. I looked for the trail of his story, but the sky was flightless. Maybe it was strange that I expected to see the story materialize over the lake. Not more absurd, though, than our presence on the island.
Karla had run over the hot sand, a barracuda swinging from her left hand. She had helped pull in the nets, and the villagers had given her a share of the catch. It was her broad smile that made the two men laugh and invite us to the island. I bit my lip when one introduced himself as Jihad. We piled into a white boat and headed across the estuary.
It was not their home, we realized after we arrived. It belonged to a man whose name wasn’t given. He wore shorts and a blue t-shit, screened with petals and the avowal “Death before Dishonour”. He did not say much, but smiled and welcomed us. After lunch he went for siesta. I asked Jihad what he did for a living and he laughed, paused, then mentioned something about a factory.
There was gin. It got late. We stayed to watch football. Italians arrived with prosciutto. We stayed and ate dinner. There was rum. Imported vodka. A shower that ran with fresh water. A brick pizza oven. A drawer filled with cartons of cigarettes. Air conditioning in empty rooms. Thick green grass. Jet skis. We were fascinated.
It was after midnight when we drove back over the water to our camp. A few glass lanterns still sat on the tables, flinching in the wind. I slept heavy with meat and alcohol, barely noticing the rustle at the foot of the bed. In the morning, I found my bag of apples gnawed by rodents. The sand floor of my cabin was tracked with claws. But the morning glowed through spaces in the palm leaf walls, as if I sat inside a basket in a city of light. The ocean sang in my right ear. The current of the Volta river swam in my left. Held in the soft gravity between them, I could barely breathe for fear I would slip from the center of those winds.
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