COMING SOON IS EXEGESIS OF DESPOTISM (POETRY)
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Chapter Thirteen
Poetry: Carcass Valley
BOOKS
The novel tackles inherent 'elegances' and challenges of multiculturalism. It is a story of two ten-year olds, a South-Sudanese-Canadian and Caucasian-Canadian.
(For my daugter Atet K. Garang)
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Chapter Thirteen
Ayen always believed her children were good. She wasn’t wrong. She wasn’t right either. They saw the world differently, radically, and fearlessly. For that, they weren’t good children. When an officer knocked on their door that day, she knew something was wrong. But the world was too big for her to place the niche of that wrong.
“Neighbors complain about excessive noise here. We’d appreciate if you could keep it down.”
The lady officer had sounded overly polite and professional as her partner, a man, looked on. Ayen was too hurt to say a word. She peered arrogantly and fixedly at the lady officer. Seeing the fiery eyes being aimed at her, the lady said: “good night, ma’am” and walked way.
But it wasn’t to be the end of such mysterious visits from orders’ humans.
She always had this thought that whatever happens in life has a purpose. She isn’t alone; many people have the same belief too. The proof of it is, perhaps, an idler’s quest. Believing it works for the majority. The orders’ humans visited again a day later.
As Ayen and her daughter approached the door, two officers came. Adut looked at the officers, ignored them and entered the living room.
“What’s happening officer… sir? I hope I didn’t blow anything.” Ayen found herself stuttering, staring in awe and still holding the door open.
The officer looked less serious, his partner even laughing.
A parking ticket? Noise complaint again?
The officer sighed and looked at his partner; his dark blue bullet-proof overcoat exaggerating the light blue shirt inside. For Ayen, the first time an officer stood by her door was a call for help that later ended badly. That was a genuine call though. The second time was an utter absurdity.
It isn't worth my thoughts.
Ayen fell out with Kuot before Adut was born and they separated. Kuot was, then, deranged by alcohol. The young man had learned so much so he never called nor visited, but when he heard of baby Adut’s birth, the doorbell to Ayen’s door chimed.
It was freaky. Ayen had stared surprised than frightened. But the young man had come to have his heart warmed. He knew the task was straight uphill, though.
My own blood and flesh should be named after my late mother.
That was what Kuot wanted: simple and hearty.
However, Ayen had her own heart-warming thoughts and plans. She’d suffered more than enough and the arrival of Adut was symbolic to her. It had a cleansing significance.
“Adut!” She’d beamed happily when the ultra-sound revealed it was a girl. Her grand-mother, Adut, had been her prototype. Naming Adut after her was a consolation after such a trying and traumatic past.
“Ma’am, do you know this kid? I’m sorry! My name’s Fox, this is my partner, Ronnie,” the officer asked showing Ayen a color picture. Ayen woke up from her brief entry into the past and looked at the photo. The photo showed a deep black woman holding a white kid’s hand. The woman’s face wasn’t visible. The boy – of about eight – had a brown hair and little, long, bend-forward Caucasoid nose. His brown t-shirt had a big black butterfly drawn on his chest. The boy had a shirt, with tiny brown boxes fussed all over it, hanging on his shoulder. The boy’s pupils appeared scary red. His face was wrinkled with sadness.
“Yes,” Ayen finally said after scanning the picture, slowly. The officer held onto the photo.
“Good. Is that you in the picture?”
Chol came to the door. He suddenly stopped at the sight of police.
Police? What did mum do?
“I don’t know what this is about officer. Can you fill me in?” Ayen mechanically asked.
“I don’t know either ma’am. What we need to know is whether that’s you.”
Ayen hesitated, her blood starting to boil, anger neurons gathering and rushing to her head for orders.
“Unless you tell me what’s happening officer… I’d ask you to leave my house.”
“Unless you tell us what we want ma’am, you could be going a long way.”
“Accused, you mean?” Chol found himself saying.
They stared strangely at Chol then nodded.
“Dude, this happens to us everyday on the streets, so you can…”
Ayen raised her hand and Chol faithfully stopped.
“I hope you’ll answer the question ma’am.”
“You don’t expect me to give answers to questions I don’t understand, do you?”
“Don’t pretend not to know what we’re saying.”
Ayen’s bitterness surged. She stared at the officers. Why me?
“Your son said…let me assume he’s your son…”
“Of course he is!”
“Well then…I mean good,” the second officer said with a sigh and hesitated. “He said it happens to you everyday. Are you shown this photo everyday or was that something else?”
Chol tried to push his way forward but Ayen barricaded him with an arm across his chest.
“You guys came to me, so speak to me.”
“We never came to you, we came for information about you, and if we find that information from someone else, we’ll be happy,” he paused and continued. “Your son said something that might relate to what we’re saying.’ A moment passed as they all stared.
“Look ma’am,” the first officer said,” I know you have so many thoughts going through your mind right now. You might think of things you see on TV and relate them to us…”
“Anyway, whatever we say about ourselves, in relation to us might not be of interest to you. Who we are is an organ in your brain.”
Chol was overflowing with anger, but Ayen was fixed solidly on his way.
She grabbed the picture and looked at the officers one by one.
“Without knowing what this is all about, let me say this. I’m a school teacher and that means I deal with children. That, I assume you guys know. Second, I wear suits to school. Again, you might be true to assume that the woman in the picture is me. I wear the same type of suit.”
She took a long pause as the officers stared silently at her.
“What doesn’t click even to someone of my little brain is this: the face of the woman has been blurred, she wears stockings, and beneath the suit, she has a long sleeved shirt or pull-over, I presume.
“In the second picture, all I can see is a woman’s back and….”
“Now you’ve become a lawyer, eh?”
Chol couldn’t take it any longer. He pushed his way towards the officers.
“I bet you know what it means to assault an officer.”
Chol stopped in front of them as his mum struggled to steady herself.
“You could have knocked her head onto the wall, mummy’s boy.”
Chol fumed, but what could he do? They had the law with them, for them and about them. In essence, they were the law. Restraint was all that was needed, nothing more, and nothing less. Chol was smart enough to know that the officers played with words to lure people into wrong-doing for wrong justification. These officers had not broken any law, but they were breaking his heart; something no law protected.
“If you don’t mind officers, then leave my family alone. If you want anything then take me to the station. Don’t bring this before my family. I hope you have children and none of you would want such a thing in front of children.”
Ayen spoke with subdued voice that exaggerated her emotions.
One of the officers found the words too sharp to contain. They were the truth. He had two beautiful daughters. Sympathy spiraled through his veins.
“I’m sorry ma’am. I too….”
“You’re surely sorry,” the other less compromising officer said. “Here mummy’s little boy is about to cry.”
Chol felt a black sheet over his face. He couldn’t see anything: the pain, the emotion, the helplessness, the sorrow, all woven into a neat artistry. Everything he saw blinded him. He felt like a blind man who’d been hit by someone he couldn’t see. Yet luck serviced him selflessly to clear his opponent with a divine blow.
Except from the book preface
"Be it bad or good, life always has something for you to reflect on however boring The collection of poems in the Carcass Valley spans a wide range of topics: from plight as a result of war, love, despair, defiance, hope, loss, bracing life and all elements of cosmic repulsiveness. With the life I lived through since I was three, much of the work entails what it is like to be a child on the move; a child who tries to find meanings for himself where no one helps him get answers, a child who tries to be something when that something escapes him… but still tries day and night to frisk for it.
.....
It is a collection that everyone would feel touched and informed by. Lastly, the poems have a lot on my reflection on the loss of one man (my father) who taught me to see the struggle in life as blessing than otherwise. The point of meeting of my experience and abstract ideas don’t miss out."
Before Pay Cheques
Sprawled on the couch three hours before
The real scene of the night, like a hipster
Basking in silly lustre, it was the night’s
invention and concealment to recount.
You’d think I was doing math if you’d seen
That dazzle of a calculator in hand,
Thinking I was at algebra to marks, but
I was a step of cheque away from paupers
Circles, the sleepless nights at the plant,
The fading optimism and Rhodesian relegation,
I had counted days, to cross the river
Safe and loud, yet dreams plunge and shredded
Me into myriads of tatters, the grip of scholarly
Weaponry weakened, the sharpness of the brain
Slowed, the trickle and twinkle of my last
Words still had John say:
‘You’ll make it thro’ riches gate!’