To Whom It May Concern...

What do I have to tell of my life? Common is a word too true to define it. I’ve made it to no television, no newspaper headline, not even to the front of a classroom. The first and last occasion I’d been the center of attention was at my naming ceremony, and even that, I shared with another. 

I came to life in the coldest winters my town weathered. The well’s water was cold enough to end the life of a live crab but it was what my mother had to bathe us with every morning. Firewood was too expensive to waste daily, according to my father. My father, a lazy man who looked for every reason to not go to the bush for wood. Or for sheep grazing. He liked spending his time at the bantaba, where he could tell stories to the young boys while they brewed him attaya, where he feels relevant while his wife and those of the other men - most who go fetch firewood and graze their sheep - spend their days at the gardens. They catered for the rice, wheat and vegetables that nourished us. 

My mother’s harvest slowed when my sister and I came to life. Two was too many to cater for when you had a husband like my father. Two was too heavy when you had a body as little as my mother’s. Two was too expensive when you lived in a poor, suffering town. Two required two much time. So we became one. We became only me. 

One is less than two and easier to manage. Easier to feed, easier to raise. It is also easier to neglect. I crawled alone on the garden sands where ants introduced themselves to my bare legs. My frequent cries at the slightest inconvenience irritated my mother enough to stop taking me with her once I was able to go without the juice that came from her breast. I stayed behind with Papa. At first, I joined him at the bantana and listened to his stories like the other boys. Then I began house chores that took the entire day to finish. Incomprehensible, how a house so small for a family that small had so much housework. 

I fetched water from the well everyday, went fishing with the other men every now and then - whatever we were able to catch, I was at liberty to take some pieces home. In the evenings, between the time that the sun burned the sand and when it gleamed over the trees, I played with the other girls. We played the game where we counted for a little while while Aminata hid and then we tried to find her; we played the game where I and Mariama stood with elastic rope on our knees, then our waist, then our chests, while Ndella hopped on and about; we played the game where we threw a ball in the air with a song and ran away from the person in charge of it. We played many, many games but our favorite was the one where we could pretend to be mothers. We liked mothering the dolls we made from sticks and leaves from the banana tree. We liked cooking in the pots of tin milk that we had only on occasions, liked the practice of braiding on corn covers and voted on who was the finest braider. We also liked each other. When seeds began forming on our chest, we showed each other first. In fact, we didn’t show anyone until they made themselves evidently visible. For many of us, that was when we began to be stripped off the little innocence we kept for ourselves.  We woke up one morning and suddenly our clothings became too small for our bodies - changes we did not even notice. 

Would she have had the same changes as I? When the seeds started coming, would she have rushed to Yaboye as I had initially thought to do? Or would she have run to father? Would she have had a better, nicer relationship with them both? Perhaps her hair would run down past the neck, just where mine stopped and Ndella and the other girls would beg to braid it. Perhaps I would have liked to braid it myself. Maybe, if she grew up alongside me, I would have been saved from the many incidents that left me with a body full of scars and marks with vivid memories of which caused which.

My mother said it was the water of the well that took her life; surprised I survived it. Perhaps it was then that it started. The survival. It became the only constant thing in my life. Surviving one ordeal after the other. 

I survived the beatings of my mother that left marks against my skin whenever she hit it with her sharp hands or the sticks from the coconut trees just behind the house. I survived the cow that, had it not been for the shouting of cousin Ndella, would have taken my bum for play. Survived the many falls off the mango and avocado trees, the heavy waves that surprised us in the sea, the weather that when it came hot, it did so cruelly, and when it came cold, it did so mercilessly. I survived my father, who visited a part of me I did not even know existed until he came into it every day that my mother took longer to return from the gardens. Who was evidently oblivious to the discomfort it brought his daughter but made her swear to not speak of it to anyone. ‘Especially not Yaboye.’ When the rain that brought down trees and took off roofs came, it took with it, everyone in the household but me. 

A friend of the devil. That’s what the neighbors called me. Said it was not enough that I took away my sister and my parents, but I also had to take away people who did me no harm. When the second rain that drowned babies and infants in their sleep came, it took me with it. Out of the town and into another. I woke up a whole new being. 

Still, the survival continued. Except this time it came with apologies and begging and forgiving and oftentimes, with twice as much kindness. 

Kombo was the name of the new region I found myself in. Filled with roads I’d only seen exactly four times in my home town and people more than two times the size of my entire town. In the nights, there were these lights that lit up more than candlesticks and did not melt in whatever ball it was that was holding them. The cars in this region were bigger, nicer, and countless.

I doubted if Uncle Kebba knew what he was doing when he left Kartong for Serrekunda. There was no quiet even in the night in this town. No gardens to fend at, no sea to fish at, not even an alkalo to whom you could go to when delicate matters arise. Everyone came from a family, yes but everyone was also on their own. Except for the boys and girls who wore clothes that looked the same in the early hours of the day, everything else was an individual experience. There was no community, no unionism in Serrekunda.  

He requested that his wife take me in as her own, but Aunty Ida and her children took the difference of the shapes of our bodies, the tones of our skins, and the gap in our intelligence and ages too heavily. On my very first night, they argued within themselves on whose bed I was to sleep. Cousin Mariatou insisted that Cousin Aisha was already sleeping with her and couldn't accommodate another body. Cousin Mariama swore she would not sleep all night if she was to lay next to a stranger. Cousin Babu begged her to let me sleep with her but the girl refused. The girl, a little one with hair nearly as long as mine and eyes as white as the clouds, fierce in her speaking tone and manipulative at an age so young. Much, very much younger than I. In the end, I was to sleep in Cousin Mariama’s room but not on her mattress. I slept on the floor just behind the door. And if Uncle Kebba asked, I was sleeping with Mariama. They did not even know they did not need to tell me this. I’d long learnt how to keep secrets.

The bending barely strained my back but it strained it alright. I bent in the morning and evening, sweeping the entire compound - even the area of the other tenants. bent to mop the main house even though the other tenants offered to lend me the mop that had a stick tall enough for me to stand and still mop - Aunty Ida said she did not like the act of borrowing. Bent to cut the firewoods she brought from the market into smaller pieces - for the sake of it lasting longer. Bent to wash the clothes. Bent to wash the toilet we squatted at to pee and poop. I bent so much my back became so accustomed to it that when I stood straight for too long, it ached. 

I did not leave the compound except for when I went just outside the gate to bend down and sweep it. I knew nothing of the very market our house was built in except for the shops that sold sewing materials - and even that was because it was right opposite our house. Every morning when I stood at the gate before lowering my back, I’d see people rushing into the marketplace. Some women had babies on their backs and small baskets in their hands. Some had plastic bags and others had only their wallets. The men often walked with wheelbarrows in front of them - most of the time carrying nothing and rarely, very rarely, carrying heavy bags of food items. They elude me also. 

During my first Tobaski in Serrekunda, we all went to the tailoring shop together. A fabric of the sky’s blue and the sun’s orange — decorated in a flower’s shape — across it was given to me. The other girls had a fabric of only mustard, the earth’s brown and the sea’s blue. Then there was the book filled with women - and some men - dressed in so many different kinds of fabric and different styles to it. 

‘Can I sew this style?’ I asked Cousin Mariatou.

‘It’s not very nice. Find another’

Oh, we spent a good amount of our afternoon with those books. In the end, it was Cousin Mariama who requested for the style that Cousin Mariatou didn’t really find nice. The tailor however, did not think it a good choice. 

‘A big person can’t sew this. It’s a very nice style but the bottom molds to your shape and it will look better on slim girls.’ 

Though if you asked me, the top part was very forgiving. It would have hidden her rolls and tummy. But of course, I did not say. 

When we began our walk back to the house, I rushed back to the tailor to collect the clip that often held the short part of my hair with the longer part and did not forget to change my style to the one I initially wanted before I rushed back to join them. Trouble could meet me later but by then, at least I’d have what I wanted. But the arrival and wearing of that dress inspired the arrival and wearing of another. This one brought an end to my stay with Uncle Kebba and Aunty Ida and began my stay in another. 

At least I went with some form of celebration, dressed in white even though I no longer had the purity of a virgin. Tapha was his name; and he did not remind me of my father.

The years went by quickly after that. I bore no children but I had a son for some while. I took care of him and raised him as my own. I would frequently forget he did not come out of me and not once did he remind me of it. I carried him on my back when I went to the market, bought him toys with whatever change I managed from the fish money Tapha gave me every morning, learnt sewing to tailor his too frequently ripped clothes, ensured his baths were warm when the cold season came, bought him ice cream when the ice cream man pressed his signaling horn from the junction, encouraged Tapha to enroll him at a school, and one time (I had not known that I was going to do this) kissed him with an ‘I love you’. For weeks after that, I found myself often reminiscing about the act. By then, I’d known just about enough of life to live a decent one, but I had not known what it was to love. 

So yes, I’d treated him as my own and loved him as such. He became the very reason for my existence. Well, until his mother came for him at the loss of the other twin boy. I had not even known he too was a twin.

In the effort of mending my broken heart, I indulged myself in commercial affairs. I bought crackers from the shop market vendors and fried them. I packed them in small plastic bags and sold them to the children in the neighborhood for D1 each. Some days they finished, some days they didn’t. But the downside of selling crackers was that if they did not sell out, I could not sell them the next day. They lost their freshness and I never really figured how the children could tell, but they could tell which was from the day before. Still I sold what I could to earn what God would bless me with.

God. In speaking of God, I think He had been what He could to me. From childhood, I knew of a superior being. One who governed the sea and the earth, the wind and the rain. I believed it was He who called for the heavy rain that took away what little I had and landed me in Serrekunda. He was equally responsible for the things that happened to me, and those around me, before and after that event. I was never able to curate a relationship with Him. The events He filled my life with took too much of my time, too much of my energy, to take time to mend a relationship with Him. Already, my relationships were soul wrecking, I had no desire whatsoever to find myself in another. Did I go on my knees and bow to him almost everyday? Yes, yes I did. But tell me to tell you what I said to him and I’d tell you how to fly a plane.

Yet when Tapha’s van was hit by a truck (that left him with a burn he would go to grave with) along the Westfield highway on his way home one evening, it was almost as though He came to life. As though He had been so busy with the affairs of the wind and the sea and everything in between but suddenly remembered that ‘hey, I have human creatures too’.

Miraculously, there was a man much older than Tapha, perhaps nearly as old as my age combined with Tapha’s, who wanted to ‘help’ following the news of the accident. Pleased, he said he was, that there was no death because Tapha was driving home with no passenger; pleased, he said, that he managed to leave the van before it lit the street of Westfield. His name was Almameh. Do you believe in miracles? I think you should. They are real. God does not sleep after all.

The years that followed, we went from renting a small one bedroom apartment in the pits of Banjul to owning a small house in Kotu. It had a living room, 2 bedrooms, one bathroom, a dining area, a very small kitchen (which I could barely cook in so Tapha built a bigger one in the little backyard it came with) and a small veranda space. Nothing big but we did not need big anyway. Tapha was a husband so gentle I sought a conversation with God to thank Him for such a gift. Every month, his taxi came back with a trunk full of firewood and every other month, it came with sacks of charcoal. Not a night went by where he did not ask how my day went. The many scars on my body, he treated as traditional marks.

Almameh’s wife, Fatou - a kind, well spoken and admirable woman - taught me things I did not know existed. The essence of incense in my house, the ideal choice of fabrics, ideal colors for my skin color, the trick around sitting (who would have thought that even the way a woman sat informed people of her character), the many different ways I could make breakfast, how the freshly baked morning bread from the corner shop did not necessarily have to be served as it came. She taught me, also, the language of English. English — what reason did I have to learn the language? I was not going to go sit in one of those offices, or read on GRTS television where young girls speak it without struggles; maybe if my son had still been mine, I would have at least wanted to learn for him. Still, despite my many objections, she insisted that I learn the foreign language. She said, along the extremely long journey, ‘what a quick learner you are!’ Indeed, after thirty six years of life, what a quick learner I was. 

We buried Tapha the year after I started working as a secretary to a manager at a company here in Banjul. My God, my heart still aches at the memory. Peacefully, in his sleep, with his hand on my back. My life, my heart,  was suddenly in shambles. My God, I knew nothing of love, it seemed, except that it had the shape and look of Tapha. Would I have even known that I loved him if he did not die before me?

Yet, where I come from, women who lose their husbands mourn him for a period of four months. I sat on the floor of the living room where he and I used to lay and watch ESMERANDA and DA COR DO PECADO on GRTS every other night. This time I was alone with a veil and a plate in front of me. People came and shared their condolences. People came and ate what was provided. People came and dropped notes on the plate. People came and weeped against their clothes. People came and told me to be strong. Forty days later, people came and asked if I would marry again.

What God did not give me with Tapha, he gave me with his brother, Amadou, after merely a year. Now a third wife, I cooked less and gained the experience of solitary living. Well, that was until I arched my back on the table of a labor room and brought forth a new life. God, once again, had proven His mercies to me.

Because he had no affair than to lay with me, he let me name the child. Little Tapha. I’d wished it was Tapha’s first, then I wished it was a girl. I wanted a little girl. Someone I could love in all the ways there was to love a girl child. Someone I could teach all the things life had to teach me because it did not bless me with someone to do the teachings, someone I could hold and play with, someone to lay on my lap while I tell her stories of good tidings. Maybe someone who could join me in the kitchen and keep me company. Someone who could pick out the bones of the smoked fish for me, dice and pound my onions, fetch me water when my body gets sore from climbing the stairs of my office. Perhaps someone I could have named Fatou for all the kindness she was kind enough to share with me. Or maybe, just maybe, the twin sister whose hand I never got to hold. Someone who could fully reap the fruits of my suffering. I wanted to witness a girl, my girl, live a life of right, of safety, of ease. 

But one must take what life gives you. Is that not what my entire life has been? Taking what life gave me by my hand and embracing it no matter how much its heat burned my palm or its cold pierced it. At thirty-nine, I had a dream for the first time in my life. And old as many said I was, I set out for it.

Still, I do not have much to tell of my life except this. They might say it is a sad one. I refute it. Grace, it seems, is not given by birth or by wealth. But rather, earned and learned. I possess so little of what lies within this world - vast isn’t it? And I? Who am I in it? A being so little against it. Yet I possess, in me, a little bit of miracle. The power — or is it a curse? — of a vivid memory, the gift of light in the heart, the depth of curiosity still instilled in me, the desire for wellness, for clarity. I still possess the gift of gratitude and some grace of womanhood. What I lived, unkind as it might seem, was merely an experience for a higher power. I do not belong in this realm. And I will tell you this to remember, my name is Zainab, and I am no friend of the devil.