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Back No Sweetness Here: and Other Stories Save as PDF
Chapters (15)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Everything Counts
  5. For Whom Things Did Not Change
  6. In the Cutting of a Drink
  7. The Message
  8. Certain Winds from the South
  9. No Sweetness Here
  10. A Gift from Somewhere
  11. Two Sisters
  12. The Late Bud
  13. Something to Talk About on the Way to the Funeral
  14. Other Versions
  15. Afterword

After the funeral, I went to the House of Mourning as one should do after a burial. No one was supposed to weep again for the rest of the day. I sat there listening to visitors who had come from the neighbouring villages.

‘This is certainly sad, and it is most strange. School has become like business; those who found it earlier for their children are eating more than the children themselves. To have a schoolboy snatched away like this is unbearable indeed,’ one woman said.

‘Ah, do not speak,’ his father’s youngest sister broke in. ‘We have lost a treasure.’

‘My daughter,’ said the grandmother again, ‘Kwesi is gone, gone for ever to our forefathers. And what can we do?’

‘What can we do indeed? When flour is scattered in the sand, who can sift it? But this is the saddest I’ve heard, that he was his mother’s only one.’

‘Is that so?’ another visitor cried. ‘I always thought she had other children. What does one do, when one’s only water-pot breaks?’ she whispered. The question was left hanging in the air. No one dared say anything more.

I went out. I never knew how I got there, but I saw myself approaching Maami Ama’s hut. As usual, the door was open. I entered the outer room. She was not there. Only sheep and goats from the village were busy munching at the cassava and the yams. I looked into the inner chamber. She was there. Still clad in the cloth she had worn to the divorce proceedings, she was not sitting, standing or lying down. She was kneeling, and like one drowning who catches at a straw, she was clutching Kwesi’s books and school uniform to her breast. ‘Maami Ama, Maami Ama,’ I called out to her. She did not move. I left her alone. Having driven the sheep and goats away, I went out, shutting the door behind me. ‘I must go home now,’ I spoke to myself once more. The sun was sinking behind the coconut palm. I looked at my watch. It was six o’clock; but this time. I did not run.

A Gift from Somewhere

A Gift from Somewhere

The Mallam had been to the village once. A long time ago. A long time ago, he had come to do these parts with Ahmadu. That had been his first time. He did not remember what had actually happened except that Ahmadu had died one night during the trip. Allah, the things that can happen to us in our exile and wanderings!