The Healer

When my uncle and I arrived at the compound, we were stunned by the chaos that stared us in the face. The entire compound looked ravaged as if a troop of elephants had just passed through for breakfast. My uncle later said that what we saw had reminded him of the year when, as a young boy, the locusts had invaded our village. Had the people not been protected by their ancestors following the coming of these “leeches-with-wings” (my uncle has a way with words), who had pleaded on their behalf to appease the village gods, they would all have died of starvation. The locusts had picked their crops bare of all their leaves. The devastation could be seen throughout the vast expanse of hills and valleys. But the gods had been kind to them, for in their timely benevolence, they had unleashed the rainfall that had helped revive some of the plants. That was how they had been able to survive the-year-of-the-leeches-with-wings.

The compound we had just walked into, that was once bustling with life, looked desolate, and there was pandemonium everywhere. The houses, the huts, everything: the whole compound had been burnt to ashes. Trickles of smoke could be seen rising from some of the mounds of earth. Men, women, children were scurrying around the area like incubating hens that hurriedly search for food before rushing back to nestle their eggs. Voices could be heard everywhere. The forest around was very much alive. The noise sounded like the din you normally hear only in our open air village markets (as opposed to city markets where city-folk are much too civilised to scream at the top of their heads for long hours). We could hear relatives calling out to their loved ones, pushing through the crowds, hoping to find them before they bolted off into the forest, like some already had. I was appalled by the look on the faces of the “mental cases.” Some of them were sitting on the ground, apparently not aware of what was happening. Some were picking up the earth and rubbing it on their bodies, decorating themselves, making patterns as if they were building huts. Some were scavenging for food in the debris. I did not have the time to think or observe all that was going on. My uncle and I were pushing through throngs of people, shouting my aunt’s name at the top of our voices.

I spotted her, leaning against a tree, a young sapling that could barely hold her weight. I shouted her name and broke into a run, my uncle close behind me. I embraced her but she did not respond to my touch. She did not gather me in her arms as she was wont to do. My hands dropped to my sides as I looked up into her face. I could not believe that this woman staring at me as if I were an imperceptible evening shadow was my beloved aunt. I might as well have been staring at a total stranger (or rather, she must have taken me for a total stranger). I kept on scrutinising her face, inspecting the lines for those signs that only I knew. Not a single twitch of a muscle. I felt as if my eyes were drilling holes through her body, through her head, no, through her eyes. There were no shadows. I was hoping to recognise those shadows that only I saw. But there was nothing. It was empty, totally empty, nothing. All I remember now are the tears, hot little streams rolling down my cheeks as my uncle gently took my aunt in his arms and led the way back home. It would take her six months to tell me (in confidence) what had happened that day. Till today, I still think that what she told me barely scratched the surface of the whole story, a story that no one will ever know in its entirety, for only one person knew and could tell the stories, but he is in no condition or position to do so. Even if he...