The Whip Fetchers

(This story was first published in New Contrast South African Literary Journal 203, Volume 51, Spring 2023. Editor: Sihle Ntuli)

In the duksi, the Quranic school, the sand was dark with the ink that seeped in, the ink with which we used to write on our wooden planks. ‘If you memorize before the ink is dry, you’ll never forget it,’ the teacher would say. He spoke with an intimidating accent. He was rumoured to be from Jigjiga, Ethiopia. His tongue was as sharp as his whip. He called us ‘bandit’ when we didn’t behave well. He wore his sarong at knee-length. He smoothed his beard and pinched our ears. 

It was a Sunday morning. 

We sat in the cool open air, forming a circle around the teacher who sat on a stool in the middle, our planks extending out in front of our crossed legs, the sky a little misty for now, sparrows chirping on the lone mathenge tree that stood on the edge of the thorn fence. Children who did not wash their faces before arriving had the evidence of dried drool on their cheeks. My closest friend Ilka and I sat next to each other and Mohamed sat on my other side. When the teacher was not looking, I chewed the edge of my baggy orange t-shirt. I sucked my arm until it became red, until I thought I saw blood coming out but would be disappointed when it didn’t. It amazed me how my skin could change colour just by sucking. I liked to taste the saltiness of my skin. I would stare dreamily at one particular girl, Ilka’s elder sister, at the birthmarks that freckled her face and her cute mouth, the way she would block the teacher’s whip by throwing up her hijab. 

Ilka and I would place our planks on which we would write in the same place on the wall, a rope holding them together. We shared ink which we prepared together using the black paste of dry cell batteries and added dried saps of a tree to make the ink darker. Before going home, we hid our ink in the trees behind the duksi. When he recited, Ilka placed his palm around his left ear and recited into it, the veins on his neck popped as he screamed, and it looked like a lizard was crawling under his skin. I placed my palm around my ear too, just like he did, and I loved how loud my voice was, how clear and near, how nice and full it sounded. When the man with the cart often passed by the duski, I watched how he walked with a slump, his chest flat and almost invisible, I started to walk like him. I wanted to be invisible, perhaps I was afraid of being incompetent, or embarrassing myself. So I absorbed and mirrored the behaviour of others. The other boys seemed to know things, had done more things, knew more people. Mohamed knew about cars. Ilka knew everything. I was clever, and helped other kids learn. But I felt inadequate in how I moved in the world. There is a certain brutality that only children are capable of. They made fun of you, and this could hurt you. Kids didn’t care about feelings. This was the way they know how to move in the world. Eat others up before they eat you was the philosophy. 

When we got tired of reciting or lost our voices and the teacher was not looking, Ilka, Mohamed and I chatted. When we talked, we didn’t lean into each other, but continued sitting straight, miming a recitation but actually talking. When the teacher caught us, we went back to reciting loudly as though nothing had happened, like we had never stopped. Sometimes the teacher caught us talking. The whip cracked in our direction and it snapped on my arm before it recoiled. Tears streamed down my cheeks. My arm became red and I scratched until it became a wound.

At 9.30, the teacher excused some of us boys, as he did two Sunday mornings each month, and sent us to the bush to fetch whips for him. These whips were used on us. The audacity of the teacher was remarkable. Remarkable too was how we were aggressively stupid as children. The dubious errand made us happy. It was our pleasure to help the man discipline us properly. We competed to find the biggest and the best whips and went through a lot of trouble to get them. We also viewed it as an adventure and figured we were the chosen, capable few. And we thought our effort would make the teacher treat us differently, spare us when we got in trouble or got stuck on a verse. We were never spared. 

We filed out, smiling, looking down on those who remained. (You had to be at least twelve years old and male to qualify.) A few young boys moved to join us, but the teacher shook his head, and they sulked. It was like the young boys in the stories of past people who wanted to go battle but were considered too young. When you are a child, being chosen over other children was the ultimate prize. Nothing is more painful for a child than to be excluded. 

We walked excitedly, the eight of us, through the narrow paths out of the neighbourhood, plucking leaves off trees, kicking plastic bottles. A few people walked the streets, trucks stopped to deliver groceries outside shops whose doors embraced the morning light. The thatched stalls where men gathered were now dead but would be lively in the evening, and music from cassette tapes would fill the air as they talked and drank spiced tea and chewed the green leaves of a stimulant. 

We arrived at the technical training college, sneaked through the fence and walked past the long rows of classrooms and dormitories and staff quarters beneath the symphony of neem trees and acacia. Hills and valleys appeared. My blood pumped. The cool morning was freeing. Nothing made me happier than being in the open fields, away from the duksi and our parents and our petty neighbours who kept an eye on us, ready to set us straight on our parent’s behalf. We climbed the tallest hill. Roofs glittered behind us, and on the horizon in front, giant palm trees stood sombre. 

 ‘I have an idea.’ Ilka said. Ilka was always restless, always reckless and had terrible ideas. He was the one who would suggest we chase and hang from the speeding trucks that ferried sand for construction, would back out at the last minute and roll on the ground with laughter when the driver braked and threw us off. Now, Ilka grinned and said, ‘Let’s jump.’ 

The valley below was far. The huddles we built with sticks next to the duksi and jumped over was child’s play compared to this. Ilka ran back and leaped. He flew down. A moment later, he grinned from below, gathering a handful of sand. ‘Who is man enough to go next?’ he shouted. We looked at each other and looked down again. 

Abdirizak, the eldest boy and our de facto leader, stepped up. ‘I’ve been doing this with my eyes closed before you were born,’ he said, looking bored, brushing his teeth with a twig and flashed a chipped tooth. He jumped with expert grace. Others flew downhill after him.. Soon only two of us remained, another boy and I. Our brows puckered. Those who jumped shouted ‘Cowards’ at us. The word made me feel small, exposed, nauseous. My armpits tingled with sweat. Finally, I stepped forward. I felt a rush of blood as my feet left the cliff. In the air my arms flailed. The cheers of others became muted in my ears. Something happens to your insides when the ground is no longer under your feet. A heavy hollowness pushes up your chest like vomit, and something simultaneously sinks in the gut; it’s a moment of ceasing to exist, of time stopping, the absolute silence of the awareness of the nearness of death. A visceral yearning for the only cure, your feet touching the ground, takes over. My feet finally made contact. The impact was like needles up my feet and spine. I gritted my teeth. I exhaled. More tingling in the armpits. I managed a smile. The other boy refused to jump. We exited the valley. Mohamed walked ahead of us, walked as though he was falling face-forward and I resisted the urge to pull him back to be straight. 

We arrived at the other side of the college. At the slaughterhouse. A white multi-story building stood alone in the open landscape. Around it were all kinds of trappings that could excite children. We climbed the tall steel water tank with the tenuous ladder. We ran along the slanting walls of the cement dug out, the speed of our bodies the only thing keeping us from falling in. We examined the strange, heavy metal objects protruding from the ground, and as we climbed them, considered what they may have been: old farm equipment? Weapons from a war in the past? Mohamed perched on one of these like a car and made engine noises. He was obsessed with cars (his father drove a Land Rover for work) and he knew more about carburetors and clutches than the verses of the Quran. 

Marabou storks lay dead beneath the power lines that electrocuted them. Others floated in the sky like drifting black leaves. The earth was dark. A herd of dogs hung around, disinterested in the old bones lying among the shrubs, eying fresh meat. Small star-shaped thorns sneaked into my sandals and I walked slowly. The other boys trampled on the thorns and maintained their pace. Ilka and I tried to lure some dogs. We whistled to them but they ran away. 

A man pulled the leash around a camel’s neck, its hind legs tied. The concrete floor was wet with thick blood. The camel slipped awkwardly and fell to its knees. The men looked small next to the camel. I imagined myself near the camel, slipping and being crushed under its hooves. I tried to look away, but the sight pulled me: death is compulsive: it likes to be witnessed. The leash was pulled backward with force, exposing the camel’s long neck. Its large eyes flashed and it let out a throaty, ugly yell. Butchery men in white overalls strolled the ground, pointing with their staff. They drank tea and ate doughnuts. A sharp knife pierced the camel’s neck and sliced its throat from one side to the other. Blood gushed. Another deathly yell. The camel convulsed for a long minute. Eyes blinked one last time, as two other men turned it over and cut it open. They loaded the meat onto carts and pick-ups. The large, powerful animal was no more. The strangeness and callousness of death boggled my mind. The speeding bus from Mandera blared past and shook the ground and left a cloud of yellow dust in its wake. 

We exited the slaughterhouse. 

‘I’ll get the best whips.’ Mohamed said. 

Mohamed and Abdirizak argued who was the best whip fetcher. Mohamed flipped a middle finger at Abdirizak who we all knew was the best whip fetcher.

During the rainy season when the trees were full and grass was green and insects flourished, Ilka and I would hunt beetles, but they were hard to catch and to see. We jumped up and down and our eyes lit up when we caught a big one with sturdy green wings, and it was yellowish orange under its wings and we marvelled at how it shined and its colour changed from green to yellow to blue to purple in the light, and we loved how poised it looked. We tied a thread to its legs and flew it like a kite. We made slings and hunted birds. Everything was a thing to be captured, to be played with. Being busy doing something was one way to be cool and interesting and it was the only thing that calmed our restless minds. Doing things with my hands and body was the one thing that made me feel competent and whole. Perhaps we also did these things so other kids could accept us too. 

There were no beetles to catch now. We were walking amidst a sea of acacia trees and some palm trees. Dead branches and leaves crackled beneath our feet. The paths disappeared, so we made our way through the thickness, branches stabbed our sides and faces, and birds landed softly on the treetops. The acacia, my favourite tree, looked old, majestic, proud, regal, tough. The strong wind couldn’t sway its stiff branches. I liked the way it whistled. We came to the entrance of a big farm. We quickened our steps. The soil was dark red. It had been a long time since it rained. Occasionally we passed a farmer heading to the market and leading a donkey cart carrying bananas and watermelons, or a charcoal burner hacking away at a tree deep among the thorny trees. The bush promised secrets. The earthy scent of the soil near the river mixed with the smoky burning of charcoal made us giddy with anticipation and a little nauseated. The sun was now nearing the middle of the sky.

To fetch the best whips, you had to climb the tallest trees, and not just any tree, the mareer tree. The best branches were usually at the top. The branches at the top were smoother and more sinewy, just like the teacher liked whereas the branches nearest to the ground tended to be big branches and therefore not suitable for whipping children. The mareer tree was ideal too because it did not have thorns, and it grew upright and had a sturdy trunk and was therefore easy to climb. 

The best and tallest mareer trees grew in this area we have arrived at. We climbed a tree that stood delicately at the river’s edge. We climb higher and higher, seeking the best branches. Looking down, I could see the water of the wide river. The brown water glittered in the sun. I looked up. 

Abdirizak and Mohamed were perched at the highest branches. 

I heard a snap. I quickly looked up. A branch gave in under Abdirizak’s weight. He swooshed past me, almost knocking me off, screaming, arms trying to reach for the nearest branch. I held on tight to two branches but they swayed in the wind. My heart stopped. For a few seconds. Then beat as though it wanted to shake itself off of my chest. I heard a loud splash. We looked at each other. We climbed down, carefully. The water was silent, flowing smoothly to the soft current. In the blinding light of the afternoon, it looked like a molten mirror. There was no sign of Abdirizak. I recalled stories of how crocodiles used their sharp strong tails to slap in prey. A feeling in my body. Or rather I became unaware of my body, something floating in the water without a body. I thought of Abdirizak not surfacing. We didn’t have time to strip so we went in with our clothes on. Mohamed and two other boys dived inside. I didn’t know how to swim in deep waters so I stayed close to the edge where the water was knee-deep. 

Something jumped out of the water.

Water splashed all over me. Hit my chest, splashed into my eyes, blinding me before I could turn and see what it was. I froze. I thought of a crocodile’s tail swerving for me. I thought my body shivered. I was pulled in by the current. I waited for something to strike. The water reached up to my chin. I swallowed a mouthful. Something touched my leg and I jerked it back. I tried to wipe the water off my eyes. Someone screamed. I made to swim to the shore. Then cleared the water off my eyes. I looked back and saw beneath the blinding midday light someone swimming. I thought I had laughter. The face looked like Abdirizak’s. I gasped with relief. We got out of the river and lay on our backs under the tree where our whips gathered, far enough from a crocodile’s tail, brown water dripping from our bodies. I asked Abdirizak if he was okay. He rolled on the ground and was still in a fit of laughter. I could not tell if it was water running down his cheeks or it was laughing tears. ‘Yes,’ he stammered after a while, nodding his head. 

At noon when the sun was overhead, we gathered our whips. We cut sisal leaves and made ropes that we tied around the bundle of sticks, from the bottom to the top, forming a cone shape out of the whips. We tied a long rope to both ends and slung the bundle on our shoulders, like a gun. We walked home proudly. Mohamed and Ilka size each other’s bundle up. But Abdirizak had the biggest bundle. ‘I told you mine is bigger,’ Mohamed said. Ilka mentioned Mohamed’s mother again. But they were too tired for a fight. Hot water dripped slowly from my ears. My eyes hurt. In the sun, the ground looked watery, felt like walking on hot charcoal. We were happy but tired.