Pieces of Silver

Introduction

1 **** t is at last a bright Saturday morning after a long, wet week. On a day like this, with no children at home to worry about, I ought to stay in bed until nine, wake up to cook my favourite meal, sit on the sofa with both legs placed on the table beside a bowl of popcorn, watching Gardeners on my big TV screen. Instead I woke up at six, jumped in and out of the bathroom, ate a sandwich my driver bought for me from the bakery across the street and let myself be driven to my office. Here I am, sitting in the office at 8:45 to listen to people tell the stories of events that had recently led to bloodshed, grief, anger and sore feelings of revenge. In moments like these I feel thankful to Jerome for validating my suggestion to come over to my new post alone for a few months before bringing the kids along later. By the time Lea and Bitu come over to live with me permanently and begin the second term in their new school, I must have found my footing and fallen to a more or less routine administrative work. Most workers feel that their jobs are the most strenuous. Mine is sonar. My elder sister is amongst the many people to tell me that in my job, I am like a cockroach trapped in a henhouse, running around in circles, looking for a heap of sawdust to hide its head. I tell her that she is wrong. I never hide my head from any beak. ‘Of course you won’t admit it,’ Charlotte Mukudi had declared on one of those occasions when I had tried to convince her that I was up to the challenges of my job. ‘I accept that you are smart. But that is not enough for a D.O Lady. You lack that coarse skin that pricks. You are too smooth to mingle with the fleece of this life with proboscis hardened by avarice.’ ‘Shasha, are you saying this because I am a woman?’ I had asked her, expecting her to deny it. I 2 ‘Partly yes, and partly no,’ she said. ‘You are too courageous, I must admit. Too dangerously courageous. Not good for a woman. An administrator or not.’ ‘Do you believe in miracles?’ I had asked her. ‘Of course, I do.’ She looked apprehensive. ‘But it depends on who is performing the magic.’ I nodded. I wouldn’t agree less after our childhood together. ‘Do you remember the story of the blind man who shouted out to Jesus saying “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”?’ I asked. ‘Mark ten forty seven,’ Charlotte replied. ‘We acted it one Harvest Thanksgiving with Pondo playing the part of Bartimaeus. You don’t expect me to forget that. What with that?’ ‘Have you tried to imagine what would have become of Bartimaeus if he had heeded to the reprimands of the men around him and shut his mouth as he was ordered to do?’ I asked. She shook her head, doubt flooding her face. ‘He would have died a blind man,’ I told her. Charlotte wasn’t very sure she understood my drift. ‘How does this relate to what you are doing?’ she asked. ‘We all are Bartimaeus,’ I told her. ‘We all have our part of shouting to do if we want to claim our healing. My breakthrough might have been triggered by that broken spoke in your famous wheel of fortune. But just as blind Bartimaeus, knowing the limitations blindness imposed on him, refused to succumb to the unproductive dictates of the majority, I too will shout my case and give others the opportunity to shout theirs too. It is the least we can do.’ ‘If everyone has to shout who then will pay heed?’Charlotte asked. I didn’t answer directly. I instead put forth the question, ‘Do you know that amongst the men who demanded that the blind man shuts his mouth, there were lepers, victims of 3 sexual violence, barren women, epileptic patients, children abandoned to the streets, men in dire need of redemption?’ She didn’t respond. And I didn’t go on to push my view any further than I had done. I let her be. It isn’t my strong point to hold an argument of this kind with my sister in a...