DECEPTION (II)
(contd.)
For some unconscious reason I couldn’t sleep – just traversing series of fits and starts. Suddenly, I heard a faint howl in the distance. At first I put it down to territorial clamor by some male beast. But it soon it got closer, deafening. It sounded like a hyena’s, but hyenas, I knew, wouldn’t habituate in such forest country.
I crept up the mat and turned off the lantern, and opened the oval window, slowly, without a creak. To my horror, I made out the figure of a man squatting on Tsuami’s parents’ grave.
The darkness wouldn’t let me see more. What would any reasonable person be doing on a grave? I was sure I wasn’t watching a ghost. I tried to see what time it was but remembered I had the lantern turned off. I needed to know what that man was doing howling on peoples’ grave at that time of the night, not that grave-howling was acceptable at anytime of the day – I needed to know, for all I cared. I have always had a problem with my curiosity.
As I groped for the door, a thought crossed my mind to call on Tsuami’s attention but it was too late. I was out in the open before I could consider the thought. I must have been ten feet or so from this strange character in just shorts, from what I could make out in the darkness. It was one of those nights when the moon didn’t show an iota of interest till the after-hours, but the stars were to make up. He stopped howling, probably surprised or even shocked I came up on him. His face was still a shadow but I made out he had a black ragged top, sort of worn-out at the shoulders, and the shorts were not covering much at the crotch, and his hair was so long and kinky, it could have been a wig.
All these, I gathered to my trepidation.
I felt the need to explode into a mad race. But I have never had a problem with courage either. I managed to draw my voice from the depth it was fast sinking.
“Who are you?”
I saw his eyes widen, by what emotion I couldn’t decipher, but when he spoke it was cataclysmic.
“You are a fool!” he spat at me.
The rest was reflex. I knew I was back in the house in record time, feeling like a heap of grass, worthless. I made for Tsuami’s room; didn’t bother to knock, and barged in. The strange man was howling again. Tsuami laid face-up in the slightly dim room when I pushed. I squatted over him. Overwhelmed by debilitation, I sat on the floor - deeply wounded inside.
“Do I look like a fool?” I poured out on Tsuami, not minding if he was awake or not. I knew that was not a logical question too, but I was really wounded inside.
Tsuami laughed silently, “jotto, you talk to Aghazi?” his voice croaky from sleep. He waited for me to confirm, but I didn’t, “Aghazi – he think he the only wise person,” he continued, “call everyone fool. Him is not well,” he finalized in a lowered voice, as if he feared someone might be listening.
“If he is mad, you should know better than let him sit on your parents’ grave and howl like a hyena, Tsuami,” I said in exasperation.
“We call no people mad in Kizi, jotto. They person, they live. Space enough for all man here. Jotto, you worry? Aghazi, someday fine,” he concluded.
There was something about his pidgin.
But the man’s commonness touched me. I then listened with difficulty to his narration of Aghazi’s history. The young Aghazi had come to Kizi less than a year ago, he said. Everyone knew he was not well when he started calling all and sundry fools, and went to live in a hole like a rabbit – a hole which he dug with his bare hands by the river-side and since then his condition had worsened.
After all that, I went back to my room, but I still could not sleep. No one had ever called me a fool in my life, or made me run like that; not even a mad man should. And like a constipation, that insult refused to be digested.
I tried to indulge in Tsuami’s common spirit, I returned to the window and tried to make out gestures that would evoke my pity for Aghazi, and perhaps help me reach that higher realm of the human spirit where forgiveness is found, but that was hard to come by, I only saw an incorrigible, howling waste of a man.
Then I wished I had just stood there, at the window, and tried to comprehend him rather than make that infamous move. In mourning my crushed ego, I went through the story of my life a million times in minutes, and finally settled with self recrimination; why did I even accept coming here anyway?
But just then something unusual transpired, the mad man suddenly stopped howling and frantically reached for his shorts and came up with something, I squinted harder. God, he had a mobile phone, perhaps a satellite phone because Kizi was a dead-end, my phone had received no signal fifty miles from Kizi.
His face was partially illuminated by the screen light, I saw nothing lunatic about it at all, and there was no discordance in the speech he muttered into the phone, just that I could not make them out word for word. What would a lunatic be doing with a satellite phone in such a jungle? Even in the city, only a handful of people had them. Then it occurred to me, like Ed.
Who would be calling a sick-man like Aghazi?
Suddenly he stood up and started howling again as he made out of sight.
Curiosity had always made me insensitive to other thoughts. I knew I would be on his trail in no time, and I was.
* * *
For some unconscious reason I couldn’t sleep – just traversing series of fits and starts. Suddenly, I heard a faint howl in the distance. At first I put it down to territorial clamor by some male beast. But it soon it got closer, deafening. It sounded like a hyena’s, but hyenas, I knew, wouldn’t habituate in such forest country.
I crept up the mat and turned off the lantern, and opened the oval window, slowly, without a creak. To my horror, I made out the figure of a man squatting on Tsuami’s parents’ grave.
The darkness wouldn’t let me see more. What would any reasonable person be doing on a grave? I was sure I wasn’t watching a ghost. I tried to see what time it was but remembered I had the lantern turned off. I needed to know what that man was doing howling on peoples’ grave at that time of the night, not that grave-howling was acceptable at anytime of the day – I needed to know, for all I cared. I have always had a problem with my curiosity.
As I groped for the door, a thought crossed my mind to call on Tsuami’s attention but it was too late. I was out in the open before I could consider the thought. I must have been ten feet or so from this strange character in just shorts, from what I could make out in the darkness. It was one of those nights when the moon didn’t show an iota of interest till the after-hours, but the stars were to make up. He stopped howling, probably surprised or even shocked I came up on him. His face was still a shadow but I made out he had a black ragged top, sort of worn-out at the shoulders, and the shorts were not covering much at the crotch, and his hair was so long and kinky, it could have been a wig.
All these, I gathered to my trepidation.
I felt the need to explode into a mad race. But I have never had a problem with courage either. I managed to draw my voice from the depth it was fast sinking.
“Who are you?”
I saw his eyes widen, by what emotion I couldn’t decipher, but when he spoke it was cataclysmic.
“You are a fool!” he spat at me.
The rest was reflex. I knew I was back in the house in record time, feeling like a heap of grass, worthless. I made for Tsuami’s room; didn’t bother to knock, and barged in. The strange man was howling again. Tsuami laid face-up in the slightly dim room when I pushed. I squatted over him. Overwhelmed by debilitation, I sat on the floor - deeply wounded inside.
“Do I look like a fool?” I poured out on Tsuami, not minding if he was awake or not. I knew that was not a logical question too, but I was really wounded inside.
Tsuami laughed silently, “jotto, you talk to Aghazi?” his voice croaky from sleep. He waited for me to confirm, but I didn’t, “Aghazi – he think he the only wise person,” he continued, “call everyone fool. Him is not well,” he finalized in a lowered voice, as if he feared someone might be listening.
“If he is mad, you should know better than let him sit on your parents’ grave and howl like a hyena, Tsuami,” I said in exasperation.
“We call no people mad in Kizi, jotto. They person, they live. Space enough for all man here. Jotto, you worry? Aghazi, someday fine,” he concluded.
There was something about his pidgin.
But the man’s commonness touched me. I then listened with difficulty to his narration of Aghazi’s history. The young Aghazi had come to Kizi less than a year ago, he said. Everyone knew he was not well when he started calling all and sundry fools, and went to live in a hole like a rabbit – a hole which he dug with his bare hands by the river-side and since then his condition had worsened.
After all that, I went back to my room, but I still could not sleep. No one had ever called me a fool in my life, or made me run like that; not even a mad man should. And like a constipation, that insult refused to be digested.
I tried to indulge in Tsuami’s common spirit, I returned to the window and tried to make out gestures that would evoke my pity for Aghazi, and perhaps help me reach that higher realm of the human spirit where forgiveness is found, but that was hard to come by, I only saw an incorrigible, howling waste of a man.
Then I wished I had just stood there, at the window, and tried to comprehend him rather than make that infamous move. In mourning my crushed ego, I went through the story of my life a million times in minutes, and finally settled with self recrimination; why did I even accept coming here anyway?
But just then something unusual transpired, the mad man suddenly stopped howling and frantically reached for his shorts and came up with something, I squinted harder. God, he had a mobile phone, perhaps a satellite phone because Kizi was a dead-end, my phone had received no signal fifty miles from Kizi.
His face was partially illuminated by the screen light, I saw nothing lunatic about it at all, and there was no discordance in the speech he muttered into the phone, just that I could not make them out word for word. What would a lunatic be doing with a satellite phone in such a jungle? Even in the city, only a handful of people had them. Then it occurred to me, like Ed.
Who would be calling a sick-man like Aghazi?
Suddenly he stood up and started howling again as he made out of sight.
Curiosity had always made me insensitive to other thoughts. I knew I would be on his trail in no time, and I was.
* * *
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