Tales

TALES

The extraordinary story of Zawadi (episode three)

"we got there in time and we just have to be happy about it"

25-09-2022 by Claudia Peli

In previous days they had seen some old men, worn out by sun, wind and salt, repairing their large nets in the shade of palm trees. Edward had taken photographs and was enchanted by their craftsmanship.
Then Giorgia had called him.
"Love look over there!"
She had pointed out to him a man walking on the shoreline, bent under the weight of something he was carrying over his head.
It looked like a mattress. Only when he had been close enough to them had they realised that it was a huge sailfish they had just caught.
"How wonderful! Have you ever seen anything like it?"
The man walked past them and Giorgia smelled the strong, unique scent of the beast glistening deep blue.
She almost wanted to reach out a hand to brush its tail, but restrained herself out of modesty. Edward immortalised it like this: beautiful and curious.
They had dreamt of a holiday in Kenya for years.
They had saved money month by month, making a few sacrifices and cuts here and there. 
It was their tenth year of marriage and they had given themselves two weeks in Africa to celebrate. And who knows, maybe down there in the fertile land of their ancestors, where it all began, a miracle might have happened: who knows if this trip would have given them a long-awaited son who had not yet arrived.
A shooting star twinkled in the sky, and the wish they secretly expressed in their hearts was the same.
They hugged each other tightly.
Giorgia caressed her belly.
The next day under the canopy of mabati were a man and a woman crouched beside a bucket.
In the bucket there was a human life, in the belly there was nothing.
At last the downpour seemed to calm down, a few slivers of blue could already be seen filtering through the clouds.
The wind from the south had started to blow again and was carrying away the bad weather, as the low sky began to rise.
Giorgia's jaw was clenched and her eyes glazed over.
She hadn't said anything else, just shook her head from time to time.
Edward kept his arm around her shoulders and pulled her damp hair away from her cheeks.
They heard light footsteps behind them: they were little boys staring at them curiously.
Edward jumped up and pointed at the bucket, they laughed and ran away.
As if it were a game.
"Maybe no one knows. Let's take it over there to the huts, let them see it too."
Edward grabbed the bucket with both hands and lifted it; more flies buzzed up.
"Ew!" Giorgia blurted out, chasing them away.
The villagers gathered around the two wazungu, whose bodies were wet with rain and whose faces were different from before.
They were no longer smiling, their eyes had dark shadows in them.
Perhaps they had angered the spirits of the canopy?
Giorgia signalled to someone to come closer.
"Come, look here, did you know?"
She wanted to pull them by the arms because they were reticent.
Those who looked inside the bucket shrugged their shoulders and took a step back.
Edward asked whose son he was, no one answered, not even the women crouched there in the mud.
She then said to him: "Let's take him to a doctor, can't you see he is dying?"
He curled his lips and looked around indecisively.
"But what if his mother comes back and doesn't find him?" He whispered to her.
"Take a good look at him, he doesn't have a mother anymore, not even a goat would leave her baby like that!"
He already stank of death, but she took him in her arms and brushed his cheek with her cool, smooth forehead.
Then he said yes, that it was the right thing to do.
He saw the compassion and love in his wife's eyes and knew he could not back down.
"It's a little girl Edward, look ..."
She felt like crying and leaned forward a little to show him.
He took off his shirt and remained shirtless.
"Come on, let's wrap it in here. Give it to me, take it easy."
They made a bundle of it, the baby squirmed and wailed, Giorgia said she was in pain and, turning to the people, growled:
"Shame on you!"
I wonder if anyone understood her language.
A girl stepped forward in the small crowd, she understood the white man's language.
"She is not of our tribe. Someone abandoned her here, but she is not one of us the mother. She is from outside."
A cub that does not belong to the herd. Abandoned to the human pity of an individual or collective indifference.
Depends on the mood of the guardian spirits.
"Let's take her to the hospital. They don't want to know about saving her."
The villagers didn't say anything when the two wazungu loaded her into the taxi; I was just a stray anyway, no one would miss me, they already had too many children to feed and care for without having an extra one that they didn't even know where she came from. The children took to playing with the rag ball, the men to telling their stories, the women to shaking the rain off the rooftops. And everyone else pulled the lice off themselves.
The empty bucket remained on the path.
A frog bumped into it and knocked it over. When everyone had moved away, an old woman came and picked it up and carried it back to the hut.
The taxi driver looked at the creature in the bundle and said he knew a good doctor who had a private clinic and treated wazungu, it was best to take the little one there.
They nodded, they did not know the town or the hospitals. They had to trust them.
Her eyes were closed, her fists clenched.
She must have been hungry and cold for several hours.
The doctor was a young Indian man, his eyes bright and his forehead high. When Giorgia put the little girl in his arms he asked her where they had found her.
"A few kilometres from here, in the forest."
"I see."
He recounted that sometimes unfortunately it happened: some girls would go to relieve themselves in the bush, then hide their babies in a hole under the ground. Or they would abandon them under the plants.
"Why?"
"Because they often cannot take care of them. Maybe this baby's mother was a prostitute or a drug addict. Maybe she didn't even want it."
It was a chilling explanation; Giorgia's belly closed in a painful cramp.
Edward placed his warm hand on the nape of her neck.
The doctor examined the child and did not speak.
They sat on a bench, hand in hand.
She wanted to ask him a thousand questions: How many days old is she? What is wrong with her? Is it serious? Will he get better, right doctor?
But she bit her lip and kept quiet and let him do his work.
Then he washed his hands and called the nurse.
They spoke in their own language; the woman nodded, took the child with her and disappeared behind a curtain.
Flowing water was heard and a wail as soft as a breath.
"I don't know if she will make it. She needs to be well cared for, we'll take care of her."
Husband and wife looked at each other.
"Then we will leave her here with you doctor?" Giorgia asked hesitantly.
"Of course. Did you perhaps want to take her to the hotel?"
She shook her head, but perhaps in her gut that was exactly what she wanted.
"Come back tomorrow morning. See how she spends the night, if she survives."
Goosebumps came to her as she heard the last words. Of course she had to survive! They had found her to save her, not to watch her die!
But she kept her thoughts to herself.
They made their way back to the hotel and threw themselves into a long, hot shower. Then they curled up against each other on the sofa on the terrace.
"You haven't eaten anything all day."
"Neither have you."
"I'm not hungry."
"Neither am I."
Long minutes passed in silence.
It had started drizzling again, they felt the dampness on their skin, between their fingers.
The beach was deserted. The palm fronds swayed in the wind.
The sea was the same grey colour as the sky.
"Ew." She said.
He knew what she was referring to.
"It happens with us too, you know. We read it often in the newspapers: children thrown in dumpsters, in rivers ... it happens everywhere."
Children thrown to nothing.
Blood and heart repudiated.
"How disgusting." She repeated and laid her head on his lap.
He thought it wasn't fair at all: she wanted a child more than anything else in the world and a woman had just thrown hers away like rubbish. It was absurd.
"I don't like this world, not one bit, you know?"
"Neither do I Giorgia mia, let's do something to improve it? A small thing, eh?"
"Yes my love." And she hugged his knees.
They slept until darkness came.
A few stars began to twinkle.
They heard music announcing dinner being served in the restaurant, but they did not feel like getting dressed and going down to the hall with everyone else and telling what had happened in the forest that morning.
They wanted to keep that raw and precious experience to themselves and not turn it into a topic of mealtime conversation. They had fruit and rice brought to the room and watched TV until late.
"What if we hadn't found her?"
"I thought of that too."
"The villagers wouldn't have done anything, did you see? They hadn't even noticed her."
"Maybe one of the kids would have found her and taken her home."
"And then what?"
"I don't know Giorgia. I don't know. How am I supposed to know what goes on in these people's heads?"
She sighed, then said bitterly that if it hadn't stopped raining they would never have gone into the forest in the morning.
"Now please stop. We found it, we got there in time and we just have to be happy about it. OK?"

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