At Nightfall, Algeria Awakes, and: The Coming and Going of Cyprian Ikeme, and: Slogans on the Wall, and: The Woodcarver's Song to a Tree

5 TREITEL MARGOT TREITEL AT NIGHTFALL, ALGERIA AWAKES Cars return to the cities, rebels creep toward villages, military posts set their traps. A shot rings out, spreading through the silence of the valley. Jules Roy, La guerre d'Algerie Later the 'eat' hissed out, unclean. You're forced to say 'thank you.' Does she understand? And scrub raspberries in the sink, examine each one for signs of bruise or age. Half are thrown out, the other half choked down. There are still stretches of barbed wire to slip through. A pheasant falls in a field, a dog carries the pheasant in his teeth. If you join women on the front porch they teach you three short phrases everyone laughs at after dinner. Now there is only distance. The old woman walks to the mailbox. She lives alone on a small farm with a few chickens, that leaning barn. What is the life in the next house really like? When she disappears at last the barn comes down and a young couple is out clearing the yard of trash, painting the house white and the shutters green. If you walk down the clogged banks of the creek, there's hardly a trickle. But you have been warned to stay away. The war in Algeria! We savor poverty these days and wish to lay our lives down with our words and be oppressed but simple. 6 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW THE COMING AND GOING OF CYPRIAN IKEME "If you don't know where you are going to, you should at least know where you are coming from." an Ibo proverb Old friends wash each other's clothes and tell each other's secrets. Did you die somewhere in Biafra waiting to win the football pools? Will you win the pools and, as you promised, suddenly appear at our doorstep, bringing gifts? The war runs across the living room, blurred faces pulled offa train outside Kano, the backs of soldiers moving in the bush, closeups of the dead. It is never you. A boy sets himself on fire in the U.N. Plaza. High up through plate glass windows a flat toy scene stirs a mere handful ofeyewitnesses. The war goes on, the hunger, commentary, high moral outrage on the innocence of victims. You could be a king now, or a survivor. That might be you at the door now stranded, empty-handed. We'd have done more for you if we dared than leave old clothes, a clock, a catsup bottle. 7 TREITEL SLOGANS ON THE WALL France = Generous and Strong FLN = Poverty and Crime If I look into the lives of children now before me— sleeping easy, bored, pressing the dull pencil into blue lined paper— how glad I am if one resists and I am forced to take a knife out of a hand, lay my hand on, insist on quiet. They don't live the way we do. Even so fresh initials lie in wood and hallways fill with the simple scrawl—go home, go home— that spreads out to the sidewalk, spills over in the street. 'Figuiers we called them, because they liked to sit in the shade of fig trees. Then bicots. Now ratons, little rats. And we were thepied noir, colons, filling the whole countryside with orange groves and vineyards.' 8 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW THE WOODCARVER'S SONG TO A TREE Tree, eat this chicken. Let me carve you into a mask. When I bring my adze down here and here I'm preparing a mouth and eyes. Don't let the knife cut me. When I drive the chisel like this I make two holes. Let me look through your eyes. Let me breathe and speak to the spirits. I slice offmy hair and string it on your face. I give you my clothes, my body, my feet. Let me dance and make the earth hot. Let me get a good price for you. Remember, I work at a dying art. ...