Women Writing Zimbabwe

Tichafataona Sleeps

Tichafataona Sleeps Blessing Musariri I AM LISTENING FOR THE sound of stealthy footsteps, but the house is silent. The bed is empty beside me as it has been for the past three years since Cornelius woke up one morning and with heaviness layering every word, told me he was leaving and wouldn’t be back. ‘I can’t cope anymore, Eustina. I must go, otherwise I’ll never leave this bed again. It’s all I can do to keep breathing.’ There was nothing I could say. I felt the same way, but I couldn’t go. *** When my brother first returned from the war, he slept for three days. On the fourth day he awoke with a hunger so huge it threatened to swallow us, along with platefuls of sadza and stew. He filled his stomach with the chickens my mother killed but his hunger never left him. It burned holes in his eyes and made his body shake, so that he couldn’t sleep. The war had imprisoned him. ‘When we die, we will have seen many things,’ Tichafataona. Great things, we hoped, but that was not to be. I can’t remember the last time I slept through the night. I’d just weaned my youngest child when Tichafa came to live with us, bringing his pain and sleeplessness with him. There was nowhere I could send him, our parents had died and there was no one for us in the rural areas anymore . An uncle had taken over the homestead but with a family of six, there was no room for a grown man haunted by nightmares in daylight. Besides, being his closest living relative, I owed Tichafa my life. It was the least I could do to help him find the semblance of another. It was in 1976, when I made my brief foray into war. Fired up by the revolutionary zeal of the comrades after a pungwe, I volunteered for training in Mozambique. I didn’t tell my mother or father because I knew 57 they would try to dissuade me. A month into training, our camp was attacked by enemy scouts. We’d been drilled on what to do and where to go in such case, but I was young and frightened and soon lost the will to keep running. I crawled under some bushes and waited for death or discovery, convinced that either one would find me soon. Time passed as I lay on the hard earth, drifting in and out of conciousness, believing I was beyond fear until I heard thrashing in the undergrowth and the sound of feet and heavy breathing. My heart began to knock hard against my ribs, as if trying to drum loudly enough to sound the alert. Saliva tasted metallic in my mouth. Worn brown boots stopped at my feet and an AK parted the foliage that concealed me. If it was my enemy, I decided to look him in the eye and I turned my gaze upwards. There is no way to explain the unpalatable mixture of fear, confusion and relief. Tichafa’s practical voice came to me from far far away. ‘Eustina! What are you doing here? You must return home.’ What an unbelievable coincidence – or had my brother searched to find me, knowing of my parents’ distress? It seemed just a dream on the way to limbo. Of all the hundreds of people moving around in the secret underground of the African veld that my brother would be the one person to find me. We waited for the cover of night and set off for home, staying out of the path of others moving furtively though the same savannah – there was no clear way of telling friend from foe. Every sound made my heart leap as if it wanted to escape and I feared that every stop would be our last. I would not let Tichafa out of my sight to forage for food, so we ate what we could muster or we didn’t eat at all. I grew weak and sometimes Tichafa carried me even though I sensed that he too was almost faint from hunger. It took us a week to reach the border safely and the journey home became a dream from which I awakened to the sight of my mother’s grief. My father had been caught in crossfire whilst searching to discover my whereabouts. Tichafa had carried me back to safety and there I stayed until I...