PROMISES UNFULFILLED

She had been there through the dark and tough times and just as the mist clears in the morning, I had run away from her. I couldn’t bear to say a proper goodbye; I had silently listened to her sobs throughout the night. But duty had called and I had sworn an oath, my heart bled at the sight of leaving her. What could a man really do?

We all have choices to make in this world, and every decision we make in life catches up to us one way or the other. I wasn’t blind to what awaited me when I decided to join the army. I knew a day would come when I had to go off with chances of coming back as slim as a thread. What I didn’t think about then was the pain I had to go through when parting with my dear beloved and lovely beautiful wife. I know I would take it all back if I could, I would go back to fishing even if it meant catching a single fish per week. I would gladly do it at the expense of remaining with her as I had promised after setting our differences apart. 

Back then she had asked me timidly whether I would ever get fed up of her after a few years of staying together. And back then I had answered her half-heartedly that I wouldn’t ever think of doing such a thing while in my head I thought ‘once I get accepted into the army why else would I want to be stuck with you’. I had never confessed this to her, not because I loved keeping secrets from her but because she would still remain with me knowing my intentions had not been good to her. I guess my pride took over; I didn’t want to taint my image in her eyes now that I truly and whole-heartedly loved her. 

She had been an orphan working as a hand maid to the most known rude and filthy miser in town. And that miser was none other than my father. I would go fishing every morning in my small Jon boat on the waters of the Nile and come back in the night sometimes lucky but most times unlucky. If it wasn’t a Nile perch then it was either silver fish or nothing. And the only happy times were when the Nile perch was as big as my hand otherwise everyone else would drink soup as my father ate the small fish all by himself. Then came the day when the truth secretly surfaced to my father. Her father had been a chief and she had been born as a bastard in a small chiefdom back in the village. Her mum had fled away with her when they wanted to sacrifice her to their gods. They claimed that the spirits of death were haunting her father and had to be waded off by sacrificing someone who had the chiefs’ blood in their veins. And her name had been the first and only one on the list deeming her most unwanted and invaluable to her father. When my father incidentally found out this, the miser that he was also proved to be greedy and probably too ambitious for his own good.

So this one day I come back home with a Nile perch even bigger than my hand and everyone is too happy or probably pretending to be telling me it’s a sign of good luck. No sibling amongst the three I had ever interfered in the others’ matters, all of us cared about our own survivals and my mum had apparently withdrawn from all the life around her. I thanked them chirpily thinking these were disguised blessings for my future. When I saw her flat and starved figure in a slim blue nylon transparent dress for the first time looking at me with tear stained eyes, I wondered why someone who wore rugs everyday suddenly had to wear a clean dress. And when I saw the priest, I still wondered whose burial had taken place. But when my father told me to go closer, I started doubting my ignorance and when he finally whispered a long summon in my ears about what I had to do, I don’t even think I tried to blink an eyelash . I always knew this old rude dirty miser in the disguise of a father thought of me as another mouth to feed but I didn’t know to what extent I was supposed to please him. 

So I stood taller than before with my mouth set up in a hard grim line to say I would take her because the whisper did not only possess words but it was laced with threats of violence and death. I knew he was very capable of killing me, he had tried once already. Who was I to not fear death; I still had to bear children with a very beautiful woman who I would search for after dumping her when this ‘ceremony’ was concluded. She cried throughout the whole ‘ceremony’ in the house and by the ‘ceremony’ I mean the priest making us say our vows and then going away and my father making us walk out of his home as if we were walking down the aisle telling us to go and multiply in the village. He even promised to visit soon and his face was set in a hard deadly scorn screaming good riddance. I would never forget that face in my entire life.

I took her to my one and only seven year old small Jon boat where I expected to at least provide for us shelter and some warmth. The boat was safely tied to a palm tree by the shore in the open. I could have left her immediately we stepped out of the misers’ home but I would rather mate with an animal than leave a woman unguarded and alone in that late darkness. The whisper had also instructed us to go back to her village since the chiefdom did not have any heir after all of them being killed by the ‘spirit of death’. But that could wait till tomorrow or even never, who would want to go back to a village in which evil spirits lurked around however miserable their lives were. 

That night had been the biggest challenge and a turning point for me. As she lay wide awake on one side of the boat her back cradled by wood and I on the other side folding my legs painfully, the chilly winds of the night blew against us and thoughts swirled above us. Everyone trapped in their own pyramid of thoughts; I made the gravest mistake of all to think that my life would become purposeful if I joined the army. The bride I had been given had been the least of my worries that night, I had to think about my future because I would leave her anytime actually by sunrise everyone would go their way. When the sun cast its’ yellow and golden glow over the water, I threw my legs over the boat just as a fisherman would cast their nets in the sea and set off to register for recruiting in the army. I had seen many of my friends join and take pride in becoming a soldier, scolding me for being less of a man. I would rather fight and protect lives of people I didn’t know and die as a hero than waste my life away.

When night fall arrived, I came back to my boat to think and rest for the night. Long had I forgotten about her existence just the same way I had completely cleared my head of any memories of the filthy miser. Her upper lip twitched a little, just a little and I didn’t know how to interpret it just the same way I hadn’t expected to find her there. In the corner of the boat on the side where I had rested was soup in a gourd, I hadn’t uttered a single word to her and the same applied to her. I grabbed the gourd not daring to ask for the source of the soup nor its owner. I had just realised how hungry I’d been the whole day. I hoped it was obvious that I had provided for her shelter the day before and she was returning the favour. She climbed on the boat afterwards and immediately closed her eyes, either in an attempt to avoid any sort of communication which would obviously be telling her to go look for her own place or maybe she was too tired. I wouldn’t know what she had been doing the whole day after all she had put soup on the boat. That night, my worries were not all self-centred. I started worrying about what I would do for the woman beside me. What if she refused to leave my side, I had to find a way to tell her that she was a free person, free to do whatever she wanted. 

When the sun rose with all its glory the following day, I saw something I hadn’t seen the day before. Some distance from the shore, stood a shelter three quarters as tall as me being built out of grass and sticks in the open air and guess who was busy thatching away the grass to the already tied sticks. My newlywed bride was making a house either for us or for herself, I wouldn’t know for sure. And I totally didn’t know what to make out of this, I stared long enough but she was too consumed with what she was doing to the extent of not even sparing me a glance. Was each one of us supposed to fulfil our duties, probably she was doing that. After half an hour of serious thought, I pushed the small boat into the water and sailed away to fulfil my duty of bringing food. By afternoon, I hadn’t succeeded. The waters were empty and by nightfall there was still nothing. I stalled for a while on the waters ashamed that I was going back with nothing and consoled myself that this wouldn’t be the first time for such a thing to happen and besides that why would I be ashamed in front of a woman I barely knew. So I set back to shore and found her waiting with a gourd in her hands under the tree to which I always tied my boat. After pulling it ashore, she handed me the gourd silently, climbed onto the boat and immediately closed her eyes. I was now beginning to find myself in a rather speechless and trapped situation. The next day, I would do whatever it took to bring back fish but still came back with nothing and I would come back to soup prepared for me. It went on for a week and I couldn’t take the shame or hold it in any longer. I opened my mouth and asked her for the first time where she found the soup from. She cast her eyes down and told me she went to beg at doorsteps every day. The silence stretched on meaningfully and after ages she told me that our house was ready to be slept in. That night she slept in the house and I slept in the boat with the cold lake breeze swishing around me. The next day I caught a big Nile perch and transferred into our house.

It hadn’t been love at first sight because all the time she stayed at the misers’ home I saw her but had zero affection towards her. And I hadn’t loved her from the start, in fact the only feeling I came closest to having for her back then was pity and sadness and most probably revenge after she had been raped by an ex-convict who was hiding from the police. It had happened in the evening in our grass thatched house while I was away trying to catch the rarely existent fish. I came back bursting with pride and happiness after succeeding only to find her sprawled on the ground unconscious, I had cradled her in my arms and rubbed garlic under her nose, armpits and feet. I didn’t know where to exactly rub it but I tried to recall some women blubbering in my panicked state. Luckily, she really did wake up after some time though I didn’t know which combination of garlic and body part had done the magic. I promised her I would combat for her the evil man who did that to her and even promised to stay with her when she inquired if I would leave her. It was the talk of a friend, we had become friends. Although after that incident she grew apart from me, I instead grew closer to her. I wanted to know how she was feeling all the time and even sang to her some of the songs I had heard other fishermen sing while fishing. She didn’t laugh that much but still she smiled a radiant smile, an amused smile or a rather sad smile sometimes. 

Then the day came when I finally received my letter accepting me for the army, it had taken close to five months. I was so happy and she rejoiced with me with a sad smile tugging at her lips. When I probed her to talk she had been worried that I was going to leave her by the shores all by herself, something I hadn’t thought about. So I promised her to always come back and check on her. After a mere week of staying in the barracks, life wasn’t the same again. I do admit that I missed her every single day. In the morning when we were hurriedly woken up to start our daily training, I missed her. And even in the evenings when I put my head to slumber, I thought of all bad things that might happen to her. It was really messing with my mind so I approached the commander and admitted to be newly wedded; though soldiers on training weren’t supposed to be living with families on the barracks I was granted the permission and also given a small tent for me and my wife. 

She looked wrecked and very miserable when I came to get her from the shore, she cried for hours while hitting my chest with painful little punches and what else could a man do rather than kiss her to stop her from hurting. Life became too sweet after that, and I mean so very much sweet. I got two subtle warnings after which I was supposed to be sucked and sent to another department meaning I wouldn’t become a soldier but I would still remain in the barracks doing other duties. I’d been told that I lacked the focus of a soldier and would end up dead at the start of a war. Did they seriously expect me to be focused and not have my head wound up in some fantasy to divulge in after training. But then that was a blow, a wakeup call for my future path, if I failed now I would hate whatever and whoever made me to in the future. And I didn’t want to hate her; actually I didn’t think I was capable of ever hating her.

And then boom. We had finished our training and were being dispatched off to different war zones that were in need of more soldiers. That’s when it hit me, all this time I had been avoiding even the smallest hint of thinking about it. My returning was a probability. I no longer thought joining the army would make my life purposeful. Instead I was leaving the purpose of my life to go away into foreign lands to die. I cursed the day I was born or even the day I ever made that decision. I wasn’t the tiniest bit ready to say any goodbyes to her. I was totally doomed and wrecked, when men always said ‘duty calls’, I hadn’t realised that it was a sacrifice. I was suffocating and felt like someone cracking the hard coconut shell which was my heart. Finally it was cracked and I could feel the shell falling apart into many tiny pieces when we climbed on the helicopter. I fixedly looked at her beautiful face trying to capture all the details for as long as I would live. And then I watched her tiny beautiful figure till I could see only a black spot on the ground. Then after that I might as well have blacked out who knows or rather who cares, she had left me. Or is it I who had left her.