and the two men, face to face, dancers, spin, spin, spin, guns in their hands
like shɛgburɛ:
soldier + madman, in the middle of a street, on a cardboard stage:
they are not silent, but there are no ears close enough to hear the prayers
falling from their lips.
gunshot/thunder/drum.
watch the trajectory, through air and haze, of a bullet that does not spill
blood, but cuts open a body into a revelation of flowers, red, unnamed,
unroses, blossoms under the sun.
where on the dɛbul mask do we put the mouth, the beginning,
of a tragedy?
does a bullet only start its motion
at the pull of a trigger?
or from its conception, factory of its genesis…does it, there and then, not
begin toward all hearts it will crack,
shatter,
bleed?
the mouth, the beginning, where? maybe, the hand of no-one and its silver-
beaked pen twisting blue signatures onto paper?
or the god who said:
let there be GUNS?
the mouth, the beginning, like a grave, might also be dug out of
kadiatu jongopi,
the woman who lost her shɛgburɛ:
single mother. six-year-old twin boys asleep beside her. she wakes earlier
than usual, dawn trembling around her, four a.m. breakfast, lunch, eggs
sizzling in oil, plantain, yawn. she wakes her twins with kisses. she helps them
wash up. get ready for the school day. eat. goodbye. i love you. she drops the
boys at school, and finds her way to the bank, to protect, to keep us safe,
secure, gun on her shoulder. everything she does, she does for her sons; their
father, in the usa, has abandoned them, silent. she wants to give her boys all
the world, to help them float better than her [...] at the gates of the bank, still
thinking about her sons, about her life and the plights dealt her, she feels her
eyes giving up, dots in the darkness. she has slept while on duty before, brief
shut-eye. it is okay. this is sierra leone, crazy things happen all the time but
nothing like—like newborn gravity, a force snatches her gun from her hands.
eyes open. an entrance and an exit. fear becomes lead in her veins. what do i
do? what do i do? whatdoidowhatdoidowhat? i can’t die, i can’t leave them.
she thinks of herself as a child, how every step of her life has summed up to
this moment. girl + poverty + resilience + heartbreak + corruption + failures +
sons + love + want for a better life = madman points a gun at her face. she
trembles, like dawn. she prays to a higher power: and, maybe, the higher
power is god, or is it this city by the atlantic ocean? and her tears fall like
meteors. don’t sh—
or the big-bang is to blame…how it expelled all atoms toward this
time of catastrophe.
the dancer, the madman, takes the stage. he wears a mask carved from
wood, polished, painted, he has the widest grin etched; shɛgburɛ (gun)
in his hand.
gunshot/thunder/drum.
could the madman, too, be the place of the mouth, the beginning,
of tragedy?
or could it be others we cannot see, others our stage cannot hold?
and there are mouths all the way down…a thousand beginnings, a thousand
mouths on the
dɛbul mask of tragedy.
hear an infinite chorus (ocean),
answering.
the soldier, three cardboard streets from the cardboard bank, catches the
gunshot and jolts to a pause. the screams of a cardboard city still familiar with
war. thunder. nothing in the wind, nothing in the sun, foretold the turn the
soldier’s day is about to take. drum.
watch him run toward a wound, an epicentre of violence, a place everyone
else flees. there’s trouble...there’s trouble in town…crowds fighting for
entrance into cardboard telecom offices, shelter in cardboard banks, in
cardboard houses, cardboard churches.
no one knows the root
of the gunshots,
we hide.
but not the soldier,
the sojaman without a name.
the dancers meet at the centre.
cardboard: lightfoot boston/gloucester street.
two lone figures on a stage.
they do not touch. their choreography, fleeting, taught to them by chance.
they dance apart, swirl, arms cleave the wind, footwork more delicate than
daffodils in moonlight, sway, mirror images, soldier + madman, guns, given,
taken, their bodies, the same poles of magnets, their bodies, spinning in each
other’s orbit—dazzling—celestial—
luk am, di kresman, na gɔn i ol so, na go i de go so. wetin de go ɔn na dis
kɔntri ba? aw i gɛt gɔn? da uslɛs sojaman timap de wach am.
the madman, a new mask: waterfall raffia fronds, veiling.
as the soldier stares at his partner, he struggles to control his breath and his
thoughts. in those seconds between twitch of muscles, birth of bullet, and
flowers in the sun, he finds himself thinking of everything else
but the dance.
he does not think of his shɛgburɛ,
the beads that quiver on its bone.
the soldier thinks of love:
a room filled with sunlight, sunlight, sunlight, so much light that, on the
bed, the blue blanket dotted with stars glowed like a true sky with endless
constellations. motes drift the idle air. marion is in the soldier’s hold, instead
of a gun; they are both half-naked and tangled. marion, the love of his life. he
cannot tell if the scene is a wish, dream or distant memory. he kisses her
forehead. she whispers something in return, but he cannot hear her voice,
stolen. here, on the stage, he wants to go back to the room of light, to go back
to his civil engineer, almost done with school, to this girl he hopes to marry on
some december day, have kids with, a house, a home, they were planning he
meet her parents soon, us against the world, kiss me—
gunshot/thunder/drum.
watch the trajectory of the bullet that does not spill blood but spills petals,
unroses in the sun. know the bullet, too, is a dancer, propelling.
we will say the soldier should have shot his leg and disarmed the madman.
we will say the soldier should have used his tongue, his words, his gods, to
cajole psychosis out of a mind ablaze. we will say the soldier must have been
hungry, stomach agape, for slaughter. we will say the soldier is not to be
blamed, he has only done what he knows to do; the system, blame it on the
country, we have seen it all not long before, pademba road prison, makeni,
august 10. we will say, have you ever stood in front of a gun, lady, the muzzle,
an exit and an entrance? we will say, top of our lungs, the madman did not
deserve to die, whatever his story, fish out of the ocean. we will say so much.
we will all be wrong. we will all be right. the soldier will be both a hero hated
and a hero loved, living legend, dance on. we will not see the shiver on his lips
when he takes the shot. we will not see the tears in his young eyes. and
we will not see him run, leave the stage, at the end of his dance, run to marion and
cry, i killed a man, i killed a man, he was going to shoot me down, he was
going to shoot everyone, he shot the security at the bank, she is at 34, you
should have seen her sons, what would they have done if she had died, all her
sacrifices would have been in vain, i was so scared, you know, i am still
scared, i could only think of you, i killed a man, can you love a murderer, i am
a soldier, a military officer, should i feel this way, i did my job, hold me,
marion, in the light, you are the only one i have. we will only see the dance—
and there are no layerless people on the stage, yet at the groans of tragedy, like
rivers always tend to the sea, we often tend to forget.
gunshot/thunder/drum.
see the madman,
the kresman with a thousand faces.
still on the stage. alone. overhead: cardboard clouds, like fish gills in the
sky. his dance is haunting, lonely, his movements subtle, fluid. where the
bullet has pierced his heart, vivid red flowers, angels exiled from heaven,
the descent of unroses.
the mask on his head changes endlessly, form to form, carving to carving,
which is to say, the madman has no face, yet has all the faces found in the land
that we love. he lifts his hands, as though in prayer to a god or to a city:
choose. we do not see his mouth,
but loud, hysteric voices flow, water-like, out his throat.
and they say:
a voice the shape of a blossom. a voice the scent of a bullet. it is the
universe saying we make the familiar strange. the shɛgburɛ is a gun is weapon
is a musical instrument. yesterday, i saw a yellow-chested bird, and i could not
wait to die, so i would be born again with flight (free). flowers, like blood.
woman on her knees, handed me a rifle, like sara. no one cares for her story,
but they care for her sin, look at how they eat. i was rich, i lost it all, i lost the
world, and so i lost my mind. you are wrong. that is not my story. you are
right. it is. what does that mean? everything you say, freetown, i become. i am
innocent. i am guilty. i am a musician. i am a fish. wan, tu, oba the brij. is this
city a god of chaos? this is not a story about motivations—why steal a gun,
why comb your hair? i am you. i, too, am a dreamer. i, too, am a believer. i,
too, have a path, you know? i, too, have a mother. i, too, am a sinner, a fool. i,
too, am a god, a city, a prayer. the tongue forgets it is dead, and sings in
present tense. where did it all go wrong? blem di kɔntri. blem di ful mun. i
went to college. i started a business. you and i, we are prisoners to the same
ten thousand things. lost in the hustle and bustle of this city, hustle and bustle.
the apocalypse of a man. a dance that ends in fire. a city that withholds
lullabies. does anyone ever talk of the perpetual grief from living here? i never
smoked kush, mi nɔto nonɛntiti, and that is the truth. i will pay for my evil;
even if the body does not know itself, even if the body once cried to be saved.
i hear all your voices. have you heard all of mine? i have nothing to say, does
that say enough? how long do you think the audience will remember us? our
evanescent existence. so intimate we danced, yet remained strangers. soldier,
what is your name? do you know mine? will a madman know the ripper if on a
sweltering day he came? an exchange of gunfire, like kissing. i have a son. i
have a daughter. no, i don’t. life replays in your head when you are dying. i
am cold. whose life is this? the sum of choices. you criminal. you comedian.
all you ever do, i will do. all i ever do, you will do. all the places you die, i
will die. all the places i die, you will die. what is my diagnosis? the total
eclipse of the mind. i am also the drummer. you are also the drummer. there is
no music. don’t you understand?
we listen, listen, listen.
the madman screams.
yet he makes no sense to us, and when he asks that we hold his hand in the
darkness, we run, audience of fear on cardboard streets,
and watch him die alone:
who prays for him, that the yellow-chested birds stay free?
who weeps for him?
he bows, deeply; arms, stretched eagle-wings, signalling the end of the
dance. honey, drawn from the bone. bullets & blossoms. the madman fades
away. cardboard: lightfoot boston/gloucester street.
silent, still.
empty.
we all go home, laughing, anaesthesia, amnesia.
the god of chaos builds and raises
its next stage.
we wait, in ephemeral telem.
END
About the Author:
Victor Forna is a Sierra Leonean writer based in his country’s capital city, Freetown. His works have been published in Apex Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Strange Horizons and elsewhere. His stories have been shortlisted for both the Short Story Day Africa and Isele Prizes. He is an alumnus of the 2022 AKO Caine Prize Writing Workshop and was a finalist for the 2024 Nommo Awards for best short story.
Isele Magazine 
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