Sayid caught himself suddenly and smiled. “Of course, I have not even one wife, so I shouldn’t carry on so. Where
there is no experience, I believe the wise man is silent.”
“Achebe?” I asked.
Sayid laughed and clutched my hand. “No, Barry. That one was only me.”
It was dark by the time we finished dinner, and, after thanking Salina and Kezia for the food, we followed Billy
outside onto a narrow footpath. Walking under a full moon, we soon came to a smaller house where the shadows of
moths fluttered against a yellow window. Billy knocked on the door, and a short man with a scar along his forehead
answered, his lips smiling but his eyes darting around like those of a man about to be struck. Behind him sat another
man, tall, very thin, dressed in white and with a wispy goatee and mustache that made him look like an Indian sadhu.
Together, the two men began shaking our hands feverishly, speaking to me in broken English.
“Your nephew!” the white-haired man said, pointing to himself.
The short one laughed and said, “His hair is white, but he calls you uncle! Ha-ha. You like this English? Come.”
They led us to a wooden table set with an unlabeled bottle of clear liquid and three glasses. The white-haired man held
up the bottle, then carefully poured what looked like a couple of shots into each glass. “This is better than whiskey,
Barry,” Billy said as he lifted his glass. “It makes a man very potent.” He threw the drink down his throat, and Roy and
I followed suit. I felt my chest explode, raining down shrapnel into my stomach. The glasses were refilled, but Sayid
took a pass, so the short man held the extra drink in front of my eyes, his face distorted through the glass.
“More?”
“Not right now,” I said, suppressing a cough. “Thanks.”
“You may perhaps have something for me?” the white-haired man said. “T-shirt maybe? Shoes?”
“I’m sorry...I left everything back in Alego.”
The short man kept smiling as if he hadn’t understood and again offered me a drink. This time Billy pushed the man’s
hand away.
“Leave him be!” Billy shouted. “We can drink more later. First we should see our grandfather.”
The two men led us into a small back room. There, in front of a kerosene lamp, sat what looked like the oldest man I
had ever seen. His hair was snow-white, his skin like parchment. He was motionless, his eyes closed, his fleshless arms
propped on the armrests of his chair. I thought perhaps he was asleep, but when Billy stepped forward the old man’s
head tilted in our direction, and I saw a mirror image of the face I’d seen yesterday in Alego, in the faded photograph
on Granny’s wall.
Billy explained who was there, and the old man nodded and began to speak in a low, quaking voice that seemed to rise
out of a chamber beneath the floor.
“He says that he is glad you have come,” Roy translated. “He was your grandfather’s brother. He wishes you well.”
I said that I was happy to see him, and the old man nodded again.
“He says that many young men have been lost to...the white man’s country. He says his own son is in America and
has not come home for many years. Such men are like ghosts, he says. When they die, no one will be there to mourn
them. No ancestors will be there to welcome them. So...he says it is good that you have returned.”
barré
(Barré)
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