* * *
—
My husband couldn’t recall how many days it took to arrive at the coast; he had stopped counting after Day Two, deciding it best to be mindless of how far he was from the only world he knew. When he finally entered the coastal village of the European men’s departure, everything about it was like his birth village except for one thing: the smell of its air. It was distinct, a scent he couldn’t describe to me because, he said, it wasn’t sweet, not exactly, it wasn’t delicious in the way a pot of stewed chicken smells, but he could taste it and swallow it. It was an entirely new sort of pleasure for his tongue, this air the ocean was directing his way. He’d inhaled it, savored it, eyes closed, over and over.
He ran to the beach as soon as he was done helping the masters get settled in the village head’s hut. The horizon was the first thing he noticed, its curve and expanse. “How can I describe it?” he asked me. “How can I help you conjure such an enormity?” Looking at it, he was suddenly aware that he was a mere speck in life’s infinite wonders. He realized he was everything and nothing. He sat down on the sand, open-mouthed, slack-armed. He remained on that beach for hours, while the village’s children swam in front of him, splashing water against each other. He was still there when fishermen began returning with their catch. Some of the fishermen looked at him on the sand with his mouth agape and laughed—they’d seen the likes of him before, one of those from the hinterland who had never seen blueness without end. That evening, he saw the sun enthroned at the horizon. He watched it bow before the earth. When he touched his cheek, there was water on it; that was the only time he ever cried as a man.
He slept on that beach for two weeks, while the other guide slid into the bed of a husbandless woman with whom he had an arrangement （the masters left on the third day; the boat that took them brought new masters, four Europeans who wanted to stay in the village for a while）。 Some of the men from the village offered my husband space in their huts, but he thanked them and said no—he’d soon be returning to sleep in huts for the rest of his life, but he would never again sleep on a beach once he left. In the evenings, he took beach strolls and bought dinner from women selling freshly caught grilled fish marinated in salt, pepper, ginger, and garlic; covered with sliced red onions; served with fried ripe plantains and a peppery dipping sauce. After the descent of darkness on full-moon nights, when the villagers came out to the beach to sing and dance, he helped the men beat their drums. For the first time in over twenty years of life, he was happy. But he knew that he couldn’t remain in that village: a man belongs with his people, among those who share his ancestors, not with strangers, no matter how beautiful their land.
* * *
I REMEMBER STILL, WHEN I was a little girl, a day when two Europeans and their interpreter came to Kosawa. They came to tell us about their Spirit. They said their Spirit would bring us out of the darkness we didn’t know we were living in. We would see the light.
The men were covered in mosquito bites and sweating, though it was a cool day, no sun in sight. One of them was old enough to be a grandfather, and yet there he was in our midst, saying he couldn’t die until he’d told us the truth. We later found out that this man had been traveling across villages since he was young, convinced he’d someday meet fertile hearts on which the seeds of his words would germinate and grow. He hoped that the fruits born of those seeds would in turn travel far in our part of the world, causing all spirits to bow in surrender to his Spirit.
We gathered in the village square to hear them talk, not because we cared to but because our woja at the time believed all European men had guns—why risk being killed if we could simply lend them our ears for an hour? Their interpreter, a young man from the third of the five sister-villages, began the meeting with a song. Clapping his hands, he sang with his eyes lifted to the sky about someone who once walked on water, a man who had twelve friends who followed him everywhere—the song made no sense. When he was done singing, the European men delivered a message of how we would live a better life after we died if we turned our backs on our Spirit and chose their Spirit. “You have no ancestors waiting for you in the next world,” they said to us. “Your ancestors are burning in a fire—do you want to join them there?” They did not tell us why their Spirit would throw us in a fire when we hadn’t done anything to offend it. We wondered, as we listened to them, why their Spirit was so bitter and irrational. If we closed our eyes and said some words in prayer, the men said, their Spirit would become our Spirit. After we died, instead of joining our ancestors in the fire and burning with them for an everlasting night, we would spend our afterlives in a place where there was no night, just one glorious morning, a place where the roads were straight and shiny, and the gardens had the most beautiful flowers. Everyone loved each other there, and a choir in shiny white robes never stopped singing.