In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Elisa
  • Sylvie Kandé (bio)
    Translated by Luke Heston Sandford

so she mother asked me so where do you seeold women around me watch out for your eyesmy son watch out they’re not young eyes anymore

—N.X. Ebony, Déjà vu

I’m told that war is stalking the land there too, its machine guns firing blindly at rebel shadows, its boots trampling down the tender shoots of the rice fields.

“You wouldn’t recognize things any more,” they say, as if I’d ever really known the place. “The northern road is cut off for weeks at a time, and the bridge over the river is under constant guard. People are afraid to farm these days.”

I think of Aunt Nina, driven from her field by both age and fear. After having settled for so little, Nina must now get by on even less, her hunger quelled by the mere smell of food, tipsy on the morning dew. I can see her sitting in the yard, slowly massaging the weathered skin of her ankles. Her strength has surely faded from years of toil in muddy fields, bowing and scraping to an obese sun. Have the years also weighed upon her lively smile, the one that crimped the lines around her eyes? Perhaps Aunt Nina clings to a foam mattress that swells with moisture at night, only to crumble in the heat of the day. Her strength permitting, she crooks her arm, rests her neck in the palm of her hand, and asks a child to fetch her a mouthful of fresh well water from a large earthenware jar. They tell me she is growing so weak I am afraid to write. Besides, she would feel duty-bound to reply and ask the members of the household to come up with paper, with time to write out her words, with stamps—whose cost was so prohibitive even before the war began.

“I must write my daughter a letter, she is so lonely, so far away,” she would say in her quavering voice, but her persistent entreaties would be ignored. If I were to visit Aunt Nina, our eyes would speak without accompaniment or obstacle. Our pleasure in those quiet moments would at times be interrupted by meddlesome intruders translating her serene delight into French, together with her words of welcome and concern for those close to me. Left to ourselves again, we would lock gazes as before, with Aunt Nina speaking my full name aloud, stroking my hands. Feeling soothed, I would at last be ready to lay down my burdens and drop my guard, only to realize that, in my absence, the tiny pale spots on her wrists had grown into monstrous corollas, leaving her fingers translucent and frail. For she would never stand for clinics, with their frenzied bustle of white smocks; nor could she afford long lists of [End Page 646] hard-to-find medication or herbal remedies; instead she would favor the counsel of time and the predictability of its prescriptions. After a few days, I would make my farewells after leaving some contribution—yet much too modest given my wealthy corner of the world; and for once, with war lying in ambush on the borders of her land, Nina would not offer me the customary sack of sweet rice—from her very own field—as a provision for my journey.

So I neither write nor visit, as if to forestall ancient memories or new occasions for grief. Yet I know that Nina sends me her blessings through relatives who are about to leave the place, thoughtful blessings that go unaccountably missing along the way.

One day I was bold enough to ask about my aunt’s Christian name, for Nina was obviously a nickname her neighbors had given her. I found out she had been born on the sixth day of January and, as local custom dictated, had been named Epiphany in consideration of the Church calendar. There were also a number of Innocents, Jeanne d’Arcs and Toussaints in the area; other names, such as Blaise, Josephine and Marthe, had a smoother, slightly quaint ring to them. Given names like T...

Share