These Letters End in Tears 1st Edition
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Fortheoneslivinginhiding. Youarenotalone.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Acknowledgments
Contents
I1can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t running from something. A lot of the times it’s this town I’m running from, afraid that I will become rooted in filth in a part of Cameroon where nothing and no one ever gets out. I fear that this town will turn me into something I’m not. Ordinary. A creature existing for the mere purpose of surviving.
I knew from an early age I was different. My daydreams were unwonted. My prince would walk down the aisle only to turn into a princess as he reached me. The audience, previously cheerful, would shake their heads disapprovingly and walk out. But I was dazzled by the shape-shifter before me. These were deviant fantasies, something that had to be kept a secret, something that would go away if I just focused on thinking normal thoughts. That’s when I started to wear masks. I had one for every occasion. But the mask I wore the most was “unproblematic,” “obedient,” “well-behaved.” I even let my mother pick out a personality for me: wear this, walk like this, people will talk. I lived in perpetual fear of becoming a disappointment.
I would have kept living this way, resigned to a life in hiding had I not met you, Fatima. I’d not imagined that everything could go from drab to vibrant in just a matter of seconds, or that my chest could flutter as if it were full of a million butterflies. It was August 2002, the day I first laid eyes on you. It was one of those gray days when heavy clouds hover over earth from dusk to dawn without releasing a drop of rain. It seemed the torrential storms of July had
drained the skies of moisture, leaving August with a permanent frown and no tears to shed.
I had grown accustomed to carrying around this feeling of emptiness inside me, an infinite hollow waiting to be filled. I woke up with that feeling, carried it with me all day, and took it to bed. Life felt monotonous; going to and from school, sitting through lectures only to repeat the routine the next day. It felt as if there were two beings living inside me; one was content with the boredom and the other was constantly on the lookout for something thrilling. When I tried to silence her, sticking to my routine and the life my mother laid out for me, she made us sad for days. I persevered in spite of being at odds with myself, hoping that someday soon, something worth living for would come along.
We were down by Ayaba stream, on that barren patch of land you and your friends called a football field; a rectangular plot between a maize farm and an eroded compound that used to be a school. I think of that day as if it happened only yesterday. It was the moment when my universe took a definite form, the moment when the two voices in my head quieted down and my wandering self found what it’d been searching for. You were wearing that ugly jersey you loved—the faded blue one with holes in the left shoulder —sprinting after a football with a herd of gangly boys on your tail. You were lightning and the boys were the clouds chasing after you, never to touch you. You were exquisite, a being torn between softness and hardness. You were just like I’d imagined.
I think that day I was wearing my striped jumpsuit, the one with toggles at the waist and a breast pocket. You loved that dress. You said it gave me an hourglass figure. And you would walk behind me just so you could stare at my bum, even though you knew it made me uncomfortable. You had a playful spirit, Fati. I hope life hasn’t stolen that from you. The dress is frayed now, just like that blue jersey, but I’ve kept it. I pull it out every now and again and press my face to the fabric just to remind myself that our time together wasn’t conjured by my imagination.
Time seemed to freeze when I saw you that first day, Fati. The dark clouds parted ever so slightly and a single ray of sunshine
touched you. I felt everything in and around me come to life. I felt awakened in ways I could not articulate.
You did not see me at first, so I just stood there and watched. Your team, grim-faced, every single one of you, was huddled in defense next to the bamboo goalpost, which was stuck deep into the ground and missing a net. You were so focused, as if your next breath depended on keeping the ball from going through the goal frame. And even though you were the only female on the court, you seemed unperturbed, utterly at ease with your surroundings. I admired that about you, the way you asserted yourself, like the entire world was yours for the taking, regardless of what other people thought.
Standing there mesmerized by you, I did not see the ball flying off court and in my direction. Fate must have played a hand in the events that followed: the ball landed at my feet, bringing you to me. Suddenly you were within arm’s reach, handsome and beautiful all at once, lean muscles on a mesomorph body, with flawless dark skin like palm kernel shells, just one shade darker than mine, glistening with sweat. Your eyebrows each had a slit in them. The most enthralling thing about your body was your chest, flat as a boy’s. I would find out later that you wore binders to smush your breasts because you were dysphoric about them. Up close, I saw how unique your eyes were: a shade of brown like upturned soil with a ring of starry gold around the pupils. They seemed to see right through my mask, and I found that disarming.
You smiled, raking your gaze from my head to my toes, lingering on my mouth and chest for too long. I fidgeted, looking down at my feet. And yet I felt an intense pull toward you. Something about your aura felt familiar, like I already knew you.
With a slight tilt of the head, you urged me to pass the ball, even though you could reach for it yourself. I probably looked stupid gawking. But how could I not stare, Fati, when you bewitched me with your gaze and those lips . . . God! Your lips: pinkish brown and perfectly proportioned, the upper one darker than the lower. They curved upward in an asymmetrical line when you smiled, and then
the dimples on both cheeks would deepen. I learned in time that your lips were as sinful in action as they were to look at.
I tried to get my feet to move, to pass the ball, but they wouldn’t budge. You moved one step closer and my heart skipped a bit. I caught a whiff of sweat mixed with rose oil when you stooped for the ball; it was an intoxicating scent. You oozed charm with every move, Fati. Your teammates were calling out behind us, eager to continue the game, but you just stood there, ignoring their calls, shifting the ball from one hand to the other, refusing to release my gaze.
Then you winked at me and I knew I’d been missing a vital piece for years. Cliché as it sounds, I knew I’d found the one. That my life would never be the same. And yet you were back to the field before I could articulate a coherent sentence. It was probably for the best, because if I had said anything then, I’m sure I would have embarrassed myself.
But you, Fati, as I would come to know, were a tease. You knew the effect you had on me and you toyed with it. I lingered until the match was over, until I was one of the few people left in the arena. I wanted you to notice me, but you refused to look my way, refused to make eye contact. It was almost as if you were going out of your way to ignore me. I wasn’t bold like you. I couldn’t just walk up and demand your attention. People like us learn to read the signs as best as we can, but there’s always the fear of misreading the room, of approaching the wrong person and being outed.
I was a wreck for weeks after that, did you know, Fati? I thought of you day and night, always on the lookout, hoping to catch a glimpse of you in a crowd. I returned to the football field almost daily, but you never showed up. By the end of two blurry months, I was certain I had dreamed you up.
“Miss Too-Cute-to-Kick-a-Football” was the first thing you said when I saw you again three months later. I had all but given up hope by then. But like I said, we were fated to be together, and the universe was always going to find a way. Who would have thought, when I woke up to my neighbors arguing, that the day would end with me seeing you again?
They were at it again, my best friend Nkeh and her boyfriend, squabbling and bickering like they did most mornings, making me regret my decision to rent a room next door. I knew better than to try blocking the sound by burying my head under a pillow. Nkeh was my favorite person in the world, but she could be a handful, always dragging me into trouble, and I’d learned never to play the pacifier. You did not like her, and you loved everyone, Fati.
But the quarrel that morning wasn’t between Nkeh and her boyfriend. When I pushed my squeaky red metal door open, a quibbling crowd was gathering in the courtyard to discuss what happened the night prior: Nkeh’s room had been broken into and most of her belongings had been carted away. She’d not been in her room—probably out with her good-for-nothing boyfriend—and I had been sound asleep and not heard a thing. I heard one of my neighbors say, “Someone was seen on the Southside this morning selling a radio the same mark as Nkeh’s. We should go there now, o, catch the thief before they rob us blind.” This was the incident that led a group of vexed Eastsiders to the Southside, hunting for a thief.
For some peculiar reason, the university had maintained a reputation for barefaced segregation ever since its founding. An inheritance of our colonial past, the school was German-built, with multiple hulking structures sitting on a broad green bed in the purlieus of Bamenda, a style that seemed light-years ahead of its time. The highborn undergrads dominated the Westside; the middle class, the East; and the plebeian, the South. I thought it was for the best, as the tensions among these three classes were always high. The upper crust, I believed, were a stuck-up bunch and plebs, as we sometimes called them, were angry and thieving. The middle class was a mix of both.
Things like that happened often—conflicts between the three groups. We could not go long periods without engaging in brawls. The fights were especially ugly in the dry season, which was no surprise, with the sweltering sun altering people’s moods. I dreaded tagging along, but I had no choice. Nkeh would never let me hear the end of it. As I crossed the veranda and joined the group, I think I saw an accusatory glint in her eyes, as if to say this should not
have happened with me asleep next door. But you could never tell with Nkeh.
The Southside dorm blocks were identical to ours, two lofty buildings painted chiffon white like every other structure in the school, with sawtooth roofs facing each other. But the place was in a poor state compared to the Eastside. The walls were stained with seasons of rough handling and neglect, and the quad was littered with papers. Music blasted down from several floors up and the balcony railings were heaving with clothes hung to dry, even though the school disapproved of these habits. But it was no surprise: the rules did not always apply to the disorderly Southside lot. As soon as we arrived, the Southsiders abandoned their weekend pursuits and converged in the yard, outnumbering us. Some of them, the girls mostly, observed the dispute from the balconies, yelling obscenities down at us.
I was eager for the thieving bastard to be exposed so I could go back to the brimming basket of laundry awaiting me in my room. The taps in the middle-class dorms only ran from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. four times a week, and the clotheslines would be filled by the time I got back. I would have to lay my wet clothes out on the lawn to dry —something I hated doing as the grass was usually crawling with weaver ants and my arms were still covered in bites from the last time I resorted to this method. I could not press the clothes either for fear of increasing my already-inflated electricity bill.
But Fati, I’m sure you’re familiar with that saying, the one about how man plans and God laughs, because God was definitely smirking at my worries that morning.
The quarrel was at its zenith, Southsiders making a stand that they knew nothing about a burglary and Eastsiders contending that they knew who the burglar was. The threat of suspension was the only thing keeping the spat from turning into a full-out brawl. My eyes drifted from the commotion, and suddenly there you were, an unexpected presence in the crowd, reeling me in from across space. I forgot how to breathe while my heart danced. It was just like that first day, only this time, I was also self-conscious about how I looked. My afro was a disaster: uncombed and disheveled, with curly
strands sticking out every which way on top of my head. The kabaI wore had a scoop neckline with a ragged hem just above the ankle, green like an avocado. It was a gift from my late grandmother— boring and dowdy like its bestower, but precious to me—and my feet were stuffed in a pair of well-worn flip-flops. Instinctively, I reached up and tried to smooth my hair, but the stubborn strands never could follow instructions.
You, Fati, instead of balking at how unkempt I looked, gave me that secret smile of yours and I just about melted from embarrassment. I had searched for you for months and you waited until I looked at my worst to show up? Seriously, Fati.
I tried to make myself smaller, to fade into the crowd—anything to escape your smoldering stare, but you wouldn’t let me. Your gaze was firm and unyielding. And then you did what no one had ever done in the history of the University of Mankon. You forgot you were a Southsider, and that I was an Eastsider, and that we were not supposed to mesh. You crossed the line: an invisible, infinitesimal line carved into our school’s foundation and esteemed by our ancestors for generations prior. You violated the terms of war just so you could stand next to me.
I can still hear your voice, sonorous and sleek like ilung,saying, “Miss Too-Cute-to-Kick-a-Football,” and now, after the years have gone by, warmth still slinks into my heart at the memory of you speaking to me for the first time. You sounded just as handsome as you looked, soothing and dreamy. You were quite tall, just as tall as me, and had this larger-than-life personality exuded with so little effort. The only blemish on your face was a small scar below your lips, but I would discover other imperfections later: thin, ropey scars on your lower back, mellowed into a smooth and shiny shade darker than your skin tone, left there by your brother.
Moments later, your friends had followed you across the line and were asking you who I was. “She’s my wife,” you responded.
I thought you were crazy, saying something like that for your friends to hear, for onlookers to hear. A quick denial sprang to my tongue, but never made it past my lips. Your pals chuckled at your declaration, but I don’t think they believed you meant it. Or if they
did believe you, they didn’t seem to mind. Your friends had to know about your sexual orientation, the way you carried yourself like one of them.
If I’m being honest, I was flattered by your statement. If you knew who I was, it meant you noticed me that first day, that you too had been looking for me, and that I hadn’t misread the signs.
I didn’t realize you’d spoken again until you gave my arm a poke.
“I’m Fatima,” you said. “What’s your name?”
My eyes lifted to meet yours, and I was stricken once again by their beauty. They were darker than I remembered, and the unusual rings of gold around the pupils seemed to sparkle even brighter than on that first day. Gorgeous, I thought. Though I didn’t think you looked like a Fatima. With your khaki shorts and black wife-beater tank, I thought you looked more like an Alex. You were Muslim. Your name implied as much, but having little exposure to Islamic culture at the time, I couldn’t come up with a proper masculine Muslim name for you.
Back then, when I heard the word Muslim, I thought of softspoken women in hijabs, with elegantly henna-tattooed wrists and lily-stained fingernails. Two of these women I knew sold kuru-kuru down by Hospital Road and one of them had a docile daughter named Fatima. You were none of these things; your hair was buzzed to the scalp, and you walked and behaved with the arrogance of a kaffir—a term you later told me was used by Muslims to describe an unbeliever. You broke my stereotypes of Muslim women and I will never again think that all of them are soft-spoken hijabis. You intrigued me in every sense of the word.
But I eventually learned that you were living a double life, Fati. That there were two of you inside one body: the Fati from a very Muslim home expected to uphold the traditions; and the Fati who, at her core, could be described as a restless baby bird looking for ways out of her nest even before she could fly. School was the only place where this Fati could shed her false skin.
Sometimes I wonder, Fati, how our story would have ended if we were normal people. I wonder what would have become of our love if your brother hadn’t caught us kissing at Boyzies almost three years after we’d been together.
It was my fault. I am to blame for the way things turned out. If I hadn’t forced you to take me out that night, we would still be together. But in my defense, Fati, I was tired of hiding. I was furious at the world for turning us into cockroaches, only comfortable in dark places. I wanted to hold your hand in public, to show you off to my friends. I wanted to kiss you at break time when we sat on the lawn with classmates and ate banana cake from the canteen, and I wanted to fall asleep on your shoulder at the library when the words on the pages of my books started to blur together and I could not focus anymore. I wanted to snuggle up to you in places other than a darkened corner at Boyzies, to join all the other young couples as they slow-danced to Brenda Fassie’s “Weekend Special” on the dorm balconies during festive nights. Instead, we slept wrapped in each other’s arms to the sound of that song.
I still listen to Brenda even now. Her melodies takes me back to Boyzies, back to the only bar in Bamenda that looked the other way when two girls walked hand in hand. Single people occupied the front of the bar and couples typically sat in the back, where wooden tables were pushed so close together and the lights were so dim you could hardly make out the person from the next table. The room
smelled of beer, cigarettes, and, if it was the weekend, the sweat of a teeming young crowd.
From the outside, the place looked like any normal bar with a tattered red sign on the door. I believe the proprietor, a chatty old fellow named Sunny, intended to create an atmosphere that to an outside eye looked unsuspicious, orthodox, lacking gayness. To that end, there was no dancing before midnight. The bar is gone now, shut down after the police raid that left many of our kind injured or incarcerated.
I wish I’d listened to you more, Fati. You often said that the world did not understand people like us or why we feel the way we do, which was why it was a bad idea to express our love in public. I, on the other hand, tended to forget reality. Deep down I knew the risks, but being with you made me careless. Your love made me not want to hide behind masks anymore. I wanted the things normal people have, things like the approving smiles of strangers when we were out on a date, followed by my girlfriend’s remarks at how perfect our relationship was in contrast to theirs. I was naive to believe that the world could bend for us, that our love was powerful enough to alter minds. Your view of the world was more cynical. You’d been accused of lesbianism your whole life based off your androgynous exterior, which taught you to be more cautious. I had no such experience having never been caught, or even suspected. I wish I’d let your wisdom guide us.
You had an exam to study for, I recall, and I’d come over that evening to spend the weekend with you. I should have let you stay home like you wanted. Your whole family, especially your brother, had chipped in on rent so you could stay on campus and study civil engineering. With dents, holes, and scratches left on the wall by previous tenants, it was nothing fancy. One of the slats in the louvers had been replaced with a wood panel that let in cold air at night. Till this day, every time I sniff rose oil, I’m transported back to
that room, small but comfortable, our little love shack, hot in the dry season and cold in the rainy season.
A single light bulb dangled over your sparse furnishings: a thin mattress atop a plastic rug in one corner, a doorless wardrobe, and a transistor radio that was always on. My Nokia 3410, a recent gift from my father, was charging at the foot of the bed. Everyone we knew was clamoring to get a cell phone. Overnight we had gone from letters to text messages—life made simple. You didn’t have one yet, so we took turns trying to make sense of mine. I should have stayed there that night, under warm covers that smelled deliciously like you, playing Snake, listening to Brenda Fassie on your Walkman, or reexamining my dog-eared copy of Nora Roberts’s Lawless while you pored over year-three geomechanics texts on a wooden table by the door. You might have cuddled up to me afterward, too tired to spoon, and to make up for this the next day, you would have used your meager allowance to gift me a bangle or some other trinket you could not afford. Pride wouldn’t let you accept a portion of my allowance, which wasn’t much, but still more than yours. Or, perhaps you would have joined me in bed saying, “Seriously, Bessem, how are you the smartest student in your class when you spend all your time reading romance novels? Every week I see you with a different one. I’ve never seen you read a real book.”
“This is a real book,” I would have said, clutching said book to my chest as if to keep it from harm. I’d spent most of my life defending my love for romance novels. In my dorm room and at home, there were heaps and heaps of secondhand copies of Johanna Lindsey and Julie Garwood and every single book ever written by Nora Roberts, purchased at suspiciously low prices from the unlicensed book vendors on Commercial Avenue. In secondary school, these books, banned by the school for sexually explicit content, were smuggled into the campus in a secret compartment inside my duffel bag and only taken out when the teachers or prefects were out of sight. My school mother, same as my real mother, would say to me, “Stop filling your head with all this white man love nonsense. Don’t you know that women who read too much end up not getting married?”
I tried to get you to fall in love with novels, Fati, but you always fell asleep after the first page. “Me, I prefer textbooks, o, or biographies of famous people, like that one about Michael Jackson. Or Idi Amin,” you’d say. “A friend lent me a copy of Pablo Escobar’s biography the other day. I can’t wait for this exam to be over so I can read it!”
At times I think it was your fault too, Fati. You should have denied me when I kept nagging you to take me out. You should have said no and meant it, but you never could, not when it came to me.
Oh, Fati, that was the night we were forced to grow up. Me mostly.
It was a slow weekend at Boyzies. There were just a few people perched on the barstools, all of them men, each nursing a beer. The music was low, the interior snug, and we were the only ones in the back. A song came on, slow and hypnotic, and you put your arms around my waist, pulling me close. We were both tipsy. You took my lips in a greedy kiss and my response was just as ravenous. It didn’t matter that we had been dating for years or that we had kissed a hundred times before—each time our lips met, it felt like I was unfolding into you, becoming one with you. One minute we were lost in our own little world, completely surrendered to one another, and the next we were being roughly hauled out of the bar by a group of outraged men.
You had warned me before that your brother was a harsh, unaccommodating man, and silly me, I thought you were exaggerating because in my book, big brothers were supposed to protect little sisters even if they teased them ceaselessly. I saw firsthand what you meant when Mahamadou stormed into Boyzies with his cronies and dragged you out by the collar and me by the hair when I tried to get in the way. The night was wet and slippery, with mist hanging in the air like a thin lace veil. He stood back, a strapping young man, severe-looking and barrel-chested, impervious to our cries, and let his boys push and knock us around in the drizzling rain.
I could never recall how long the beating went on, how many blows I suffered. I only remember the stinging pain from being booted by faceless men, and the taste of copper in my mouth. I felt myself watching from afar, watching myself and then you, both of us muddied and helpless on the ground, hunched up, your hand reaching for mine, only to be repeatedly swatted away by someone. A crowd had gathered in front of the bar and I could not tell if their interest was born of pity or elation.
Someone intervened; Sunny’s bartender, I think, and then Sunny’s neighbor, an elderly man who sold cigarettes next door. The ringing in my ears drowned out their voices, which sounded tiny and far away, but I swear they were urging Mahamadou to let us go with a warning. But he refused. We were soon in a taxi, moving across town at a dizzying speed toward the police station, with Mahamadou between us in the back seat. I don’t remember anything from that ride, only the sinking feeling that we were in this predicament because of me. You were hurt because I wasn’t content staying in with you. Sometimes I think I’m just as responsible for what happened that night as your brother, and the thought makes me cry even now, wishing I’d done better, wishing I’d been more careful, more protective of you.
That cell was filthy. It was a narrow room in the back of the station, enclosed with a door of rusted, flaking bars. The pitted concrete walls were caked with eons of dirt and grease and carvedout words, shadows of those who’d been there. I could not bring myself to investigate the stains on the floor, but the place stank of old urine and mildew. There was only one object in the room: a black bucket left in a corner. I could hear coughing and muttering from the next cell and voices farther down the hallway. The officers made us strip down to our underwear and asked us to sleep on the cold, hard floor. “Both of you, stay on opposite sides of the room or I will come in there and cause more damage,” said one of the officers on duty, a gaunt-looking woman with a vacant face. She turned the key in the lock, our mud-caked clothing clutched in her left hand, and left us for the night with nothing to shield our bodies from the freezing cold. The room was plunged into darkness as soon as her
footsteps faded down the hall. We sought and clung to each other in the dark. “I’m sorry I got you into this mess, Bessem,” you said, your arms tightening around me.
“What do you mean? None of this is your fault.”
“It is. I’m the reason we’re in this cell.” And then you proceeded to tell me the most horrifying story. “This is not the first time something like this has happened. When I was fourteen, my brother kept me locked in our room for a week. I’d brought shame on the family by involving myself in a sex scandal at school. He did it again when I was sixteen. But now almost everyone in the community knows I’m gay, in fact I’ve become popular for it over the years. This time I guess he decided to teach me a lesson publicly, to prove to his friends that he does not support my lifestyle.”
I held you closer.
The next morning new officers, three men and a woman, took us out back and doused us with a pail of cloudy, ice-cold water, then flogged us with a belt. The sound of leather licking your already bruised flesh was sickening. At first, you held the pain in your face, lips, and hands quaking, but it eventually burst free in a sob. I tried to avert my gaze, but the woman with bad breath held my face in her hands, forcing me to keep looking, and slapped me around on the head for crying. “Look at her very well. This is what happens when you decide to become a lesbian,” she said to me, her tone dripping with disdain. You had it worse than me, Fati, because you were trying to play the hero, stepping in front of me whenever it was my turn to meet the belt. The officers despised that. One of them, the older one with sunburned skin and dark knuckles, seized the belt from his colleague and came down hard on you.
My parents came for me later that day. I learned afterward that you spent a week in that cell, alone, before anyone came for you. When I’d refused to leave the waiting room unless it was with you, Dad picked me up kicking and screaming, carried me outside, and locked me in his old Benz until he was through processing my papers inside. It was quiet as he pulled out of the police station and headed over the bridge toward Veterinary Junction. Seated in the back, I resigned myself to sobbing in a ball after my pleas to get you out fell
on deaf ears. Dad wouldn’t say a word and Mum only glanced at me with sad eyes. It felt as if someone was squeezing my heart tighter the farther away we got from that station.
I never saw you again. I never even got a chance to say goodbye. But I kept seeing your face as the car, with its grating engine noises, wove us through the many streets it took to get across town and onto the Bambui road. During our last moment together, I was wiping blood from a cut on your lower lip with my fingers, Fati. The officers had given us our clothes back, and we were on the floor inside the cell, a gust of fresh air coming in through a tiny window above us. The inflamed welts on your back and arms were turning an ugly dark color, and it scared me how pale you looked. You cradled your abdomen as if to hold it in and complained about how difficult it was to breathe, though you tried to smile through it for my sake.
Heavy footsteps echoed as the officer with foul breath and beady eyes came toward our cell. She asked me, but not you, to follow her. If I’d known it would be the last time I ever saw you, I would have barred myself inside that cell with you and refused to leave. I would have held you close and refused to let go, even if it got me into more trouble. I would have made you promise you’d always find your way back to me.
What I know of you following that day, Fati, is hearsay, stories from friends and from asking around. Some say you were sentenced to prison, but I’ve checked and there’s no record of your imprisonment anywhere. Others say you left the country, but where to? I’ve heard stories suggesting that your parents arranged for you to marry a stranger and that you ran away before anything was finalized. A man once told me you’d been exiled from the Muslim community—is that even possible? I fear which one of these stories is true, Fati. I’ve imagined every possible scenario and none brings me peace of mind.
It’s been thirteen years and I keep coming back to this place in search of you. I’ve kept the creeping grass from engulfing your favorite tree stump, the one nestled inside a grove of eucalyptus trees on Station Hill. You once said the stump reminded you of an
elephant’s foot: creature-like with its black, gnarly toes distending outward, as if to walk down the hill. The eucalypti are much taller now, almost stealing the view of the town below, but from the right angle you can still catch an eyeful. The town is not what it used to be either. More people have moved here, more fancy structures are taking up space on the valley, and there are countless snaky paths linking them all together. You would not recognize it if you saw it.
I come here to write to you. I’ve written hundreds of letters that have never been sent, because where would I even send them? I come because you once said this was your favorite place in the world, the greenery, and the dizzying rays of the late afternoon sun seeping through a canopy of trees overhead. You loved the calm away from urban ruckus, and, best of all, the sweet, innocuous smell of nature. What makes this place even more perfect is that when I’m here, bittersweet as the memory is, I can see, from a distance, the spot where we first met—though now it is private property undergoing construction. Soon a tall building will spring up in the place where the football field used to be, erased like everything else, erased like us.
Sometimes I pretend you’re lying right next to me on a blanket, our backs against the remains of a mango tree and hands entwined in my lap, and I’m telling you about some funny incident that occurred in your absence while the sun keeps us warm and content.
“You will not believe what happened after Mom and Dad brought me home from the police station,” I would say. And your response would be, “What happened?”
“There was a pastor waiting, and the minute I entered the house he started speaking in tongues and hitting me over the head with a Bible.”
You would say, “You are not being serious,” with laughter in your voice. And I would proceed to tell you all about how the pastor prayed for me until I got dizzy and then passed out from being hit over the head repeatedly with a tome. And how he mistook this as a sign of my deliverance and rejoiced with my family.
“Did it work?” you would inquire, after a long pause, with sarcasm in your voice, and my comeback would be a ludicrous stare
and something like, “If it worked, would I still be here with you?” And then we would both dissolve into laughter loud enough to scare the birds away.
We laughed a lot, you and me, Fati. Loud peals that climbed from the backs of our throats and reached into the high heavens. Away from the ravenous eyes of the world, our love was purity, a safe space, the only place we could truly let go and be ourselves. Every worry, every concern, became less severe when you held me in your arms on that hill. We had our first fight there although I can’t remember it in detail. It must have been about something trivial, overshadowed by our second fight. It was several months after we’d started seeing each other and we were in my room. I was on the bed and you were on the floor. My memory is a bit fuzzy on what we were doing exactly, but I plucked a dress from my wardrobe and casually asked you to try it on. “It will look great on you.”
“It will not!” was your response, horror-stricken at the very sight of the dress.
“Why not? You never wear anything pretty, like other girls.”
As usual, you were attired in ripped denims and a T-shirt designed to fit a boy. “Do you have a problem with the way I look and dress, Ngala Bessem?” you said, and I knew immediately I was in trouble because you never called me by my full name unless I’d done something to upset you.
You had an arsenal of affectionate names for me, Fati, and you jumped to a new one as soon as I got used to being called something else. It irked me and I think that’s why you did it. It could be ya amar one day and ma moitié the next, depending on your mood, but the one name you never called me by was Bess, like everyone else. Out of all the pet names you gave me, I think I liked Bessem from the Southwest Province the most, not because it was romantic but because it reminded me of the first day we met, when you tried to get me to stop being shy by provoking me with a negative comment about my tribe.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, coming toward you because I saw that your face was clouded over with anger. “I just mean you don’t have to dress like a boy all the time.”
You stood, doing that thing you did when you were mad: snorting in disbelief while shaking your head and biting the corner of your quivering lip. “I thought you loved me as I am.”
“I do. I’m just saying . . .”
“You’ve said enough.” You walked to the door. “Last week you were trying to get me to stop wearing binders because you thought I looked more beautiful with my breasts showing, even though I’ve told you I hate having breasts. This week, you’re trying to get me to wear a pretty dress when you know it’s not my style.”
“Fati . . .”
“I get enough of this nonsense at home. I don’t need it from my girlfriend!” You walked out and slammed the door and I did not see you for a week.
I’ve had years to think about what you said to me that day, Fati. You were happy with who you were. Not many people can say that about themselves. And now, more than ever, I understand that stifling one’s true self only brings misery. I’ve learned that to truly love someone is to step back and let them bloom, and that is how you made me feel. I’ve also learned that masculinity does not belong to men, the same way femininity does not belong to women. It’s innate which side a person leans toward. I regret that I did not always make you feel like you were perfect, because in my eyes, you were.
There is so much I want to tell you, Fati. Like how I completed my PhD in economic sciences and now teach as an associate professor at the same faculty. I get decent pay, and from that alone we could relocate to Yaoundé. It’s a big city and no one would recognize us there. We could live happily ever after, like we dreamed all those years ago. We could get a place of our own and when anyone asks, we could say we are just friends. You wanted a twobedroom flat with a large balcony where you could plant roses, preferably on the outskirts of town, because you hated loud noises. You loved pets but I was terrified of them, so we decided no pets. Later, when we had enough money to build a house, you were going to build me a gazebo in our front yard. The only thing we hadn’t figured out about living together was who would prepare the meals
because at the time we were both terrible at cooking. But I am much better at it now.
Where are you, Fati? Why haven’t you reached out? Why did you leave me here, all alone in this place where no one gets me? We have smartphones now and the internet at our fingertips. All you have to do is look me up, because Lord knows I’ve made myself easy to find. But you—it’s like you fell off the face of the earth. On Facebook, I’ve browsed through the friend-lists of people who knew you, or might have known you, but your name doesn’t come up anywhere, no tags or mentions either. Maybe the rumors are true after all; you ran away and you’re never coming back.
Each of these letters ends in tears, Fati. Years and years have gone by and I’m still stuck in my memories of you, stuck in this place between misery and sweet recollection. Unable to move forward. Jamal has told me to move on, to find someone new. “It’s been years, Bess. You can’t keep living like this,” he has said. I am human, after all. I’ve tried to heed his advice. I’ve tried to leave my memories of you behind, to make new ones with other people. But everyone else is just a way to pass the time until you come back. Besides, Jamal doesn’t know you like I do. He wasn’t there on our wedding day. He didn’t witness the vows we made, promising ourselves to each other for life. You would never leave without saying goodbye, Fati.
If by some chance you happen on these letters, know that I waited for you. And if you don’t find me, it is not because I stopped waiting. It would be that my body simply surrendered one day from the pain of losing you. It would be that one day I found myself standing on the edge of Station Hill, and unable to stop myself, I ended up dead at the bottom.
Something strange happened the other day, Fati. I ran into Alimatou, your friend from uni. I was at the market combing the vegetable stalls looking for fresh pumpkin leaves when I saw her. The air hung thick with the smell of produce waste decaying along the passages and the rushed steps of people bumping past one another in every direction, their grocery bags heaving with whatever they could find last minute. People were stocking up. A weeklong lockdown had been announced after a fiveyear-old girl was shot dead on her way to school that morning. Protests demanding justice for her could be heard from a mile away.
As I maneuvered hastily past rows of stalls, the vendors—most of them overworked middle-aged women—attempted to charm me with endearments like “mum, baby, fine girl.” I finally stopped by the woman selling my favorite brand of curry powder, a big, chatty woman with an unusual habit of speaking to me in English instead of the Pidgin English common among people in her trade. As she scooped curry with a measuring spoon into a small plastic bag, she said, “They have started killing little children now. What a shame.” She shook her head; she had deep, worried lines on her face. “And I hear that the soldier who shot the girl is Francophone. He was beaten to death, you know, by Anglophones at the scene. As an Anglophone, I want to say thank God, but as a Christian, I knows better. Terrible.”
I nodded but did not say a word. We all know there are spies lurking in every corner, listening in on conversations, scouring for
separatist supporters, police hauling scapegoats off to detention, never to be seen again. You never know if your neighbor is a member of the military disguised as a civilian. The vendor was rummaging around for change in her knockoff Puma waist pouch when I looked over at the next stall and saw Alimatou. I squinted at her, shocked.
She was haggling with a vendor over the price of something while supporting a large shopping bag between her legs, wet patches under her armpits. She looked older, rounder than I remember, but I’m sure it was her. With her was a boy of about eight, chubby and teary-eyed. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was her son. It’d been thirteen years since I last saw her.
She looked sideways, suddenly, as if she could feel my eyes on her. And when our eyes locked, she froze, looking uncertain before taking off in the opposite direction, quick as a squirrel, ignoring the calls of the vendor she’d left hanging. I called out to her too, but she kept going, pulling her boy along. My own change forgotten, I went after her, shoving and pushing at the throng of bodies and sidestepping loaded wheelbarrows trundled by young boys in ragged clothing, but it was impossible to get anywhere in the congestion. She was gone by the time I turned a corner onto the next path.
I had woken up that morning feeling drained of life as usual, my mind stuffed with sadness. It’s April, and the rains have just started to pour after four long months. You used to make fun of me at the start of rainy seasons when I snuck out to my dorm balcony, eager for that heady whiff of air that permeates when rain meets dust—the smell that makes people want to eat earth. I still eat Calabar chalk when I’m stressed, you know. You used to go on and on about this for days. “Oh, it’s not good for you, oh, it will give you appendicitis, oh, it will drain your blood.” Years later, I’ve investigated this strange addiction of mine and found that the urge to eat earth is actually caused by anemia. I take iron supplements for it now.
The raindrops would beat down on the roof while we lay naked in bed, entwined and fully sated by lovemaking. I used to notice blue skies and immaculate green pastures when it rained, Fati, and how the soil went from red to dark brown after. These days I don’t pay
much attention. Cherishing nature feels like such an unpleasant task. The energy it takes to gaze at the world and go, “Damn, God is creative” has left me. I go to sleep at night, wake up in the morning, go through the motions of the day, and then I go back to sleep. My life has gone back to the way it was before I met you, only this time I know exactly what it is I’m missing. There’s no tomorrow for me, just the past and this infinite waiting.
But all that changed when I saw Alimatou. For the first time in forever, a bop inside my chest surged through me like a life force. I still felt it on the drive home, while I was chopping and seasoning pumpkin leaves, and even as I sat down at the dinner table alone in my apartment with a bottle of Merlot, which I managed not to finish in one sitting.
To think I used to throw a tantrum whenever you and Alimatou hung out together is laughable now. But could you blame me, Fati? You had all that magnetic masculine energy about you, and even though she was just one pair of sneakers short of being a stud herself, she was pretty, and still seemed like the type of girl you would date.
“She’s just a friend. My best friend,” you once said. It was at the end of the first semester of our third year in uni, and we had just returned from a classmate’s mind-numbing black-and-white party. We were in my room and I was fuming because you had danced with Alimatou, leaving me alone in a corner. All you needed to do to get me into a fit of rage, Fati, was take one look at another girl in my presence.
“You’re the only girl I want, Bessem.” You walked over to me standing by the wardrobe, unbuttoning your five-hundred-francs suit jacket, the one you wore to the party. I turned away, still not ready to give up sulking. You hugged me from behind, using your weight to keep me from wiggling out of your grasp. Resting your chin on my shoulder you whispered, “Look at all these gorgeous curves you have, and this beautiful face.” You kissed my cheek, a loud smack against my skin. “And the boys, I see them, vying for your attention everywhere I turn. I should be the one jealous and sometimes, I
swear, I’m tempted to chain you to my bed, keep you all to myself. You really think I would do anything to mess this up? Uhm, wife?”
You kept talking, calling me wife, which you knew I liked, purring into my ear as you tickled my sides. Your words went straight to my head, like saccharine poetry, and ripped out the jealousy. Even now, when I let myself dream, really dream, I can feel your fingers kneading away my worries, calling forth my deepest, most vulnerable desires, stoking up the passion until I am floating. You would always guide me back to earth feeling safe and wanted.
All that aside, Fati, you were an incredibly attractive person. Once, you came by my faculty lounge looking like a snack in stylish sweatpants, a black muscle singlet, and a baseball cap worn backward. I think you stopped by to return a book I’d left at your place, and I remember taking a deep breath when you walked in, willing my heart to stop hammering. As usual my fingers itched to touch you but could not. Out in public it always felt like I was starving and you were a treat dangling before me, just out of reach. You would move close, your shoulder brushing against mine swiftly as if by accident, then giddiness would swarm my stomach. Those little touches were the language we spoke in public.
As you walked down the hall that day and disappeared around a corner, I overheard a couple of my classmates whispering about you. “Who is that?” one of them asked. “She’s hot in a really confusing sort of way.”
“Don’t you have a boyfriend?” one of the others asked before a third added, “Haba, this one that you’ve started admiring girls, don’t tell us you’re a lesbian now. Because I want nothing to do with lesbians, o. I don’t want the devil to possess me.” The first girl, of course, defended herself by saying she’d only been appreciating God’s handiwork and they all laughed it off. This was just one of many instances I’d witnessed; most straight girls I knew were confused by their own sexuality in your presence.
Alimatou, in my mind, was the bigger threat. Unlike those girls who admired you from a distance, the two of you were joined at the hip. I only felt slightly relieved when I saw her kissing the vice chancellor’s chauffeur on National Day. He wasn’t right for her—a
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other nations 5,800,767 tons. Between 1855 and 1860 over 1,300,000 American tons in excess of the country’s needs were employed by foreigners in trades with which we had no legitimate connection save as carriers. In 1851 our registered steamships had grown from the 16,000 tons of 1848 to 63,920 tons—almost equal to the 65,920 tons of England, and in 1855 this had increased to 115,000 tons and reached a maximum, for in 1862 we had 1,000 tons less. In 1855 we built 388 vessels, in 1856 306 vessels and in 1880 26 vessels—all for the foreign trade. The total tonnage which entered our ports in 1856 from abroad amounted to 4,464,038, of which American built ships constituted 3,194,375 tons, and all others but 1,259,762 tons. In 1880 there entered from abroad 15,240,534 tons, of which 3,128,374 tons were American and 12,112,000 were foreign —that is, in a ratio of seventy-five to twenty-five, or actually 65,901 tons less than when we were twenty-four years younger as a nation. The grain fleet sailing last year from the port of New York numbered 2,897 vessels, of which 1,822 were sailing vessels carrying 59,822,033 bushels, and 1,075 were steamers laden with 42,426,533 bushels, and among all these there were but seventy-four American sailing vessels and not one American steamer.
“While this poison of decay has been eating into our vitals the possibilities of the country in nearly every other industry have reached a plane of development beyond the dreams of the most enthusiastic theorizers. We have spread out in every direction and the promise of the future beggars imaginations attuned even to the key of our present and past development. We have a timber area of 560,000,000 acres, and across our Canadian border there are 900,000,000 more acres; in coal and iron production we are approaching the Old World.
1842. 1879. Coal Tons. Tons.
Great Britain 35,000,000 135,000,000
United States 2,000,000 60,000,000
Iron
Great Britain 2,250,000 6,300,000
United States 564,000 2,742,000
During these thirty-seven years the relative increase has been in coal 300 to 2,900 per cent., in iron 200 to 400 per cent., and all in our favor. But this is not enough, for England, with a coal area less than either Pennsylvania or Kentucky, has coaling stations in every part of the world and our steamers cannot reach our California ports without the consent of the English producers. Even if electricity takes the place of steam it must be many years before the coal demand will cease, and to-day, of the 36,000,000 tons of coal required by the steamers of the world, three-fourths of it is obtained from Great Britain.
“It is unnecessary to wire-draw statistics, but it may, as a last word, be interesting to show, with all our development, the nationality and increase of tonnage entering our ports since 1856:—
Country. Increase. Decrease.
England
6,977,163
Germany 922,903
Norway and Sweden 1,214,008
Italy
France
Spain
Austria
Belgium
596,907
208,412
164,683
226,277
204,872
Russia 104,009
United States
65,901
“This,” writes Lindsay, “is surely not decadence, but defeat in a far nobler conflict than the wars for maritime supremacy between Rome and Carthage, consisting as it did in the struggle between the skill and industry of the people of two great nations.”
We have thus quoted the facts gathered from a source which has been endorsed by the higher naval authorities. Some reader will probably ask, “What relation have these facts to American politics?” We answer that the remedies proposed constitute political questions on which the great parties are very apt to divide. They have thus divided in the past, and parties have turned “about face” on similar questions. Just now the Democratic party inclines to “free ships” and hostility to subsidies—while the Republican party as a rule favors subsidies. Lieutenant Kelley summarized his proposed remedies in the two words: “free ships.”
Mr. Blaine would solve the problem by bounties, for this purpose enacting a general law that should ignore individuals and enforce a policy. His scheme provides that any man or company of men who will build in an American yard, with American material, by American mechanics, a steamship of 3,000 tons and sail her from any port of the United States to any foreign port, he or they shall receive for a monthly line a mail allowance of $25 per mile per annum for the sailing distance between the two ports; for a semi-monthly line $45 per mile, and for a weekly line $75 per mile. Should the steamer exceed three thousand tons, a small advance on these rates might be allowed; if less, a corresponding reduction, keeping three thousand as the average and standard. Other reformers propose a bounty to be given by the Government to the shipbuilder, so as to make the price of an American vessel the same as that of a foreign bought, equal, but presumably cheaper, ship.
Mr. Blaine represents the growing Republican view, but the actual party views can only be ascertained when bills covering the subject come up for consideration.