I grew up in paradise, though I only learned this when I went to study in London and, on a passing bus, saw an ad inviting me to travel to an untouched land where all troubles could be forgotten. With a start I recognised the outline of the mountain rising above a palm-fringed white sand beach. I had never seen it from that angle, as the photo was taken from the west, and they had Photoshopped out the ever-present wisp of smoke, but I had seen its eastern slopes all my life. It was one of the two peaks that make up my island, and the little town in which I was born is cradled between them.
We had beaches too, as our town was at the point where once a year the currents brought a tide of blood-red worms onto the white sand. That had been an annual festival once, in honour of the lady who wept tears of blood for her dead mother and each tear turned into a seaworm. But for decades the currents have brought only floods of plastic bottles and chocolate wrappers, and I have only seen the seaworm tide once in my life.
On one day, shortly after an unusually high tide, I accompanied by grandmother on her early morning walk along the beach, over sand that she insisted saved her joints from arthritis. As usual, she strode ahead, straight-backed and uncompromising, barely aware if I followed. I skipped behind her, over shells and glistening pebbles strewn on the still-moist sand. As the sun rose over the water, promising fierce heat to come, I paused to flip over a damp bit of coconut shell with the stick I held, then leapt back in terror.
I immediately felt foolish, because it was only a hermit crab waving indignant red legs at the ravaging of its home. I glanced up to make sure my grandmother hadn’t seen me start and righted the crab. The coconut shell limped away. As it did, I suddenly realised that there was movement all around me. Every shell and bottlecap was moving, slowly dragged by tiny red legs, the beach was alive around me and I hadn’t known it. I stood enthralled until a crab crawled over my toe, then ran on to catch up with my grandmother. She was nearly at the far end so I had to run hard, knowing that she would not turn to see if I followed, nor turn back if I were left behind.
#
I was never told the source of my grandmother’s sorrow, but she had been a sad woman as long as I could remember. Even in her wedding photograph her plainness was accentuated by deep grooves at the sides of her mouth, and though taken only a few years after independence when photographs were still black and white, the grey cast of her swollen eyes showed that they were reddened with tears.
The photograph of her with her first surviving child, my mother, was no happier. It was a studio photograph, taken against a backdrop painted to show an elaborate European-style drawing room and hung with real velvet curtains to create the illusion of depth. She sat on a low stool, dressed in stiff, lustrous silk. The person who had done her makeup had tried to fill in the grooves on her face with foundation and powder, but you could see them even in the black and white photo, like the outlines of prehistoric cities that run through our fields in times of drought.
My grandmother sat at right angles. Her knees jutted out, tenting her sarong, and the thin elbows stood out sharply from her body. Her hands met before her, the long, thin fingers curled to support my mother, barely a toddler, in her lap. Even when I was little, I had thought that baby looked uncomfortable, and couldn’t blame my mother for not putting up a copy of the photo in our own house. My grandmother’s dark eyes stared directly into the camera and she did not smile.
Next to her in the photo stood my grandfather. He is long dead; I remember him as a warm, soft presence. Gentle-fingered and with a deep, serene laugh, he brought peace to us. In the afternoons, when it was fiercely hot outside, my brother and I would play in his cool, dark room. Sometimes he would play with us, lowering his plump body onto the stone floor. More often he would lean back and smoke his bidi, watching us play.
In the photo, though, my grandfather was still young and not soft. He looked stern, as people often did in those days. Unsmiling of course, even though he must have been delighted with his firstborn child whom he loved beyond reason even after the younger four were born. He was dressed in a government sarong, for he was a mid-level functionary then; by the time he retired he was the district commissioner. At his side hung his ceremonial machete, its silver hilt worked in the family’s insignia. The machete hung on a wall of his house until he died, the blade notched and stained with disuse, and when he finally died it disappeared and I never saw it again.
#
The machete was not the only relic of my childhood that vanished upon my grandfather’s death. Consumed, perhaps, by an immediate grief that reared over her sadness like a tsunami wave, my grandmother had returned from the funeral feast, sent away the hired mourners and dismissed all her servants and visitors, and then walked about the house tearing down every reminder of forty years of married life. The machete disappeared. The photos were torn up and flung to the floor; the sarongs her husband had brought from the capital were thrown out of a window onto the roof of the chicken coop. The casket of loose pearls, a handful given her at the birth of each child, followed, and for weeks afterwards the entire neighbourhood kept a close eye on the refuse from the chicken coop.
Even the marital bed was dismantled. My grandmother was a frail woman, whose elbows had only thinned and sharpened with age, so she was unable to throw it out of the window as she no doubt wished. Instead she tore off the hangings and tossed them down the stairs. She took a knife and slashed the thin cotton-filled mattress, leaving only the ropes strung on the wooden frame. Then she set fire to the bed.
The smell of smoke alerted the servants who broke into the house and rescued my grandmother before she choked to death. Her widow’s grief touched those around her, and her sister-in-law, who had inherited her own mother’s dislike of my grandfather’s bride, embraced her many times and wept loudly.
A final reminder that she was widowed remained. My grandfather’s tomb, built in the porch as is customary in our district, was monumental, covered in imported marble and inset with a portrait of the occupant etched upon a large brass plate.
#
‘Why is she so sad?’ I asked my mother on returning from the beach where I had seen the hermit crabs. This was a few years before my grandfather died, when I was only seven and prone to asking questions.
‘Why do you ask, did you see her crying?’ my mother said and muttered to herself, ‘I told her, not in front of the children….’
‘No,’ I said, but was unable to explain how I knew, except that my grandmother’s sadness had enveloped her like a cloud as long as I could remember.
Not that the sadness stopped her from living. Though she was not one to show tenderness, least of all to her children or grandchildren, my grandmother was widely known as a refuge for those in need. With money, connections and force of will, she built schools and clinics in the district’s most impoverished villages. She rammed through government initiatives to vaccinate children, to provide contraceptives and to train local girls as midwives. Where there was resistance she destroyed it. Where government allocations were inadequate she supplemented them with her own funds and shamed the district chiefs into opening their pockets. Their reward was to be invited to one of her dreary dinner parties, an ordeal that was held to confer great prestige.
#
When I was a little older my younger brother was just big enough to be an annoyance. I hid from him in a storeroom, behind an ancient unused refrigerator, and found a dusty brown envelope stuck in its coils. I pulled it out gingerly and opened it. Half a photograph fell out. It had been a picture of a man, the sort used for identity cards. There was even the smudged marking of a stamp, so perhaps it had in fact come from an identity card. It was ripped in half across the face so the upper half was missing. All that remained was a chin, a mouth and what might be a thin, thready moustache.
I picked up the envelope to replace the photo and then realised there was something else inside. But the scrap of discoloured fabric didn’t look like anything in particular so I stuffed it into my pocket and forgot about it. I don’t know what happened to it. The photo I left on the floor.
Later, my grandmother had one of the inexplicable cleaning frenzies that women in my family often seem subject to, and the storeroom was emptied and swept out. The fridge, the envelope and photograph all were gone the next time I looked.
#
‘Your grandfather was her second husband,’ my mother explained to me shortly after the funeral. ‘The first one died and your grandfather who had always loved her asked her to marry him.’
‘Is that why she is sad, because he also died?’ I asked, trying to imagine a man even my beloved grandfather could not console her for. I had started reading romantic novels and the thought of my grandmother being part of not one but two doomed romances was profoundly exciting, if also unlikely.
‘Where is his tomb?’ I asked, since the first husband was clearly not buried in the porch. But my mother said she didn’t know.
#
Three weeks after my tenth birthday, there was an attempted coup d’état. Although ours was a small town, the headquarters of a minor district, it hosted a colonial-era army garrison so tanks rolled through the market square. For several days the streets of the town were nearly empty of people other than soldiers. The last coup had been when I was too young to remember but the adults recalled it well and my mother had, on hearing the first rumours, filled barrels with water and ordered a week’s provisions. My grandfather, who was still alive then, had gone into work; being a government employee he could not afford to risk any suspicious actions, or to behave as though things were not as usual. But my grandmother disappeared into an inner room and was not seen by anyone till it was announced that the coup had been thwarted.
Six soldiers from the nearby garrison were executed and all the townspeople were ordered to attend. Mother strongly disapproved of executions and even more of taking children to watch them, but of course she had no choice. After the last coup attempt one woman, the eldest sister of one of my mother’s class fellows, had clapped her hand over her son’s eyes at the critical moment. She had been spotted and taken in for questioning. Soon after her husband had left to work abroad and the son was brought up by distant relatives in another district. So my brother and I went with her, with instructions whispered in our ears to keep our eyes fixed on a point just above the execution.
As the wife of the district commissioner my grandmother had a prominent place in the dignitaries’ pavilion. She arrived dressed with her usual accuracy in sombre yet sumptuous attire, and followed by servants carrying platters of sweets to distribute after the execution. Since the pavilion was at a right angle to where I sat with my brother, I could see the side of her face. Her cheek glittered in the sunlight with tears or with makeup or both. Through the corner of my eye I watched her instead of the execution. Her expression remained unchanged as six shots rang out, each followed by a dull thump as the prisoner fell forward. Then she reached to one side to pluck a sweetmeat from the platter. She held it out before her in salute and popped it into her mouth.
When I looked back towards the centre of the green the six men were lying on their stomachs. Their heads were covered by dark sacking on which the blood did not show. The executioner, a major who had attended one of my grandmother’s dinner parties, stood at attention as the bodies were collected by orderlies and taken away in wheelbarrows. My brother, who had disobeyed my mother and watched the whole thing, said it had been a disappointing show.
#
The second coup I lived to see, the third one in my lifetime, was successful. It was commemorated ever after as a national holiday, Unity Day. By now my grandfather was dead, which was fortunate as many government officers who served under the old regime, even the retired ones, were put on trial. There were no executions this time but some men, young and old, disappeared. A guard was posted outside my grandmother’s house and any visitors were questioned and sometimes turned away. My mother and I were allowed inside. I had not wanted to go, being fourteen and more interested in my friends than in sad old people, but my mother insisted I come along.
I had not visited my grandmother since the new year so I was surprised to see the changes in the house. It had been cleared out after her husband’s death, of course, but now even the walls inside had been painted different colours, and the purposes of the rooms had been changed. What was once the dining room was now a sitting room that took in a greenish light filtered through the banana plants outside the window. The old sitting room was now the bedroom, though inconveniently downstairs from the only bathroom. The upstairs bedrooms were boarded up. But the tomb outside remained as it had been, kept scrupulously clean and with a fresh-lit lamp burning fragrant oils underneath a studio portrait of my grandfather.
‘I wish you would move in with me,’ my mother was saying to my grandmother. ‘You have changed the house completely, but it would be better to leave it behind you. Things are different now, it will be possible for you to leave here.’
My grandmother shook her head. ‘This is my life,’ she said. ‘I can’t leave my life now.’ She looked small and shrivelled against the cheerfully painted walls, and the green-tinted sunlight vanished into the lines of her face without illuminating them.
For once it was my mother who looked on the verge of crying. ‘Am I not your daughter?’ she said. At the time I didn’t hear it but in later years I replayed that scene in my mind and heard the emphasis on your. Sometimes I added in a word unsaid: ‘Am I not your daughter also?’
‘I won’t leave your father’s tomb,’ my grandmother replied. ‘Besides, this is my house now.’ With uncharacteristic affection she reached out and stroked my mother’s hair with her witch’s fingers, bare skin and nail stretched over sharp bone.
#
Another thing happened that week: while digging the foundations for an extension to the girls’ secondary school, a mass grave was found. It was quite an old one, maybe from the fighting after independence, and all us girls collected to watch as it was uncovered. A few times teachers or the workmen tried to makes us leave but the macabre thought of having played hopscotch over those bodies kept us coming back. There was no smell, nothing beyond must, and the bodies themselves were mostly bones and tattered clothing, some matted bunches of hair. A couple of girls felt ill but for most of us it felt too removed, impossible that these people had once lived. The commander of the garrison was called over, as was the district commissioner. Both were recently appointed to their posts, as their predecessors had been supporters of the previous government and had vanished. They stood over the opened grave, looking helpless. Another attempt was made to shoo us away, but we soon returned. This was the most exciting thing that had ever happened in our lives.
Eventually it was determined that the men and women in the grave were martyrs. It was unfortunate that the grave had been discovered after the coup; a few weeks earlier and the bodies would have belonged to traitors and could be disposed of without a fuss. But under the circumstances it was agreed that a funeral would be held, with a military escort and a procession through the town. The martyrs would be reburied in the market square and a monument would be raised above them, funded by the district chiefs.
#
The arrangements were well underway when my grandmother heard of them. This was shocking in itself, as when my grandfather was alive she would have been consulted on any matter of importance in the district. As it happened, though, she found out only when the guard posted outside her house told her he would not be replaced at the end of his watch as she was not deemed to be a threat and anyway his company would be drilling for the funeral.
‘What funeral?’ my grandmother asked.
Within twenty minutes of the guard’s departure, my grandmother arrived at the office of the new district commissioner. She listened in silence as he explained. The tea boy, who was my brother’s playmate, watched in interest from the corner. He told us later that my grandmother’s expression remained unchanged, but a silent rivulet of tears ran down the grooves in her cheeks, and the district commissioner curled up like paper scorched by invisible flames.
When he had finished, the tea boy recounted, my grandmother said only ‘I shan’t attend the funeral.’
The district commissioner straightened up, in relief, the tea boy thought, but she was not finished. ‘Put this in the grave,’ she said and took a silver-hilted machete out of her bag.
The district commissioner took it and, without saying a word, locked it in his desk drawer.
#
When I was sixteen, my grandmother died. She was found twisted up at the bottom of the stairs, stiff as a mannequin, as though she had fallen in the night. My mother cried, saying ‘I should have insisted she come to live with me.’
I was patient and loving with my mother, as I was old enough now to have lost some of my self-absorption and could see how hard and necessary it was to grieve someone like her mother.
She had told my mother many times that she wished to be buried in an unmarked grave but her sons, gathering from the distant cities where they worked, agreed that this would not be appropriate, they would not want anyone to think they were not proud of her. Instead the children came to a compromise that satisfied no one: they buried her next to my grandfather but in a far more modest tomb, in tile rather than marble, and with no name or portrait, only her status as my grandfather’s wife. My youngest uncle, who was a banker in Canada, bought out his siblings’ shares in the house, planning to visit annually so his children would not forget their roots.
#
The seaworm tide came one final time a year after my grandmother died. All our extended family was there then as we had decided to take the opening of the martyrs’ monument as an opportunity to honour our ancestors and gathered for a dawn breakfast in the porch of what was now my uncle’s house. My mother confided to me afterwards that with both parents dead it was as though the hand that had shaded her was gone and her head was bare under the sun. And certainly, when word came of the seaworm tide, I noted her stricken, uncertain face. Now the eldest of the family, she would be expected to guide the younger ones through the rites. But, as she later said to me, she had never even seen a seaworm.
When we arrived at the beach there were others already there, among them men and women of my grandmother’s generation who had been children when the seaworm tide last came and who remembered what to do. With gratitude, my mother watched them closely and followed their lead and we all followed her in turn.
We waded out into the sea in the grey dawn, amongst plastic bags and yellowing bottles and, between them, millions of intensely red threadlike creatures that we fished out in handfuls. I shuddered at the squirming between my fingers but managed to gather enough to fill a small basket. As the sun rose higher the worms disappeared but for those left stranded on the sand like streaks of blood.
Following the old people’s instructions we roasted the worms over smouldering coconut husks and took them home to eat in the porch beside our ancestors. Some of those who lived in America or Europe scrunched their noses at this addition to breakfast. They had hung back at the beach as well, disgusted equally by the trash and the seaworms.
It was the last time the seaworms were to sweep ashore, at least alive. The following year, I heard that for several days the tide brought masses of dead worms, stinking the beach and covering it with rotting sludge. That was the end of the seaworms. Some years later I attended a presentation by a marine scientist who confirmed that they had left our shores forever.
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The martyrs’ monument eventually became a tourist attraction; it was made by a local sculptor who became very famous and exhibited internationally. Our town came to represent the terrors that followed after independence as well as the reconciliation that was possible. A museum was established. The descendants of the men who were killed began visiting from all over the country, coming every year on Unity Day. Old women came too, the ones who had survived that terrible time. They were treated with honour as they too had suffered, but also with circumspection as they included those who had remarried, some even their husbands’ killers. Over the years their numbers dwindled but the martyrs were never forgotten.