Excerpted from the novel, Remembrance
Lily Mabura
Lily Mabura
Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife.
―The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
―The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Ayana lived in the midst of the great Washington-Idaho Palouse Prairie with Peter Gersky, who was a school principal, and Marilyn Gersky, who was the principal’s wife. In certain ways she was like Dorothy, Ayana thought. One major difference, however, was that she knew where she was from and Dorothy did not. Where had Dorothy been before she came to live with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em? Ayana read and reread The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but there was no answer to be found in there. Perhaps the whole world was like this: filled with people who knew where they had come from and those who did not know where they had come from. It was the same way in The Refugee House: some people there knew where they were from, while others did not or chose to forget.
The Refugee House sat on the edge of a wheat farm on Airport Road. It was a red double-storey converted barn with white windows and a gray gambrel roof with a pair of attic windows peeking out from each side. A brick chimney made its way through the roof and on top of it was a wrought iron weathercock that creaked and cried in the wind like an abandoned baby. The house was surrounded by a lawn infested with smooth brome grass that grew profusely in the spring and in the summer. On the north end of the lawn was a pocket of evergreen bull pines, which broke winter winds blowing across the Palouse from Canada. But for the trees, the house was surrounded by a low fence of rusty grain binder wheels with snowflake-patterned spokes.
The Refugee House was a halfway house, between coming from Africa and arriving in America, and nobody was expected to stay there for long. When one person left, another one took their place, bringing in fresh memories of Kakuma and Dadaab and other such places.
Nothing has changed in Kakuma, some would say, except for the food rations. Each time we got a little less of the maize and the beans and the salt.
We stayed in Dadaab with hardly enough water to drink and no rain for months on end, others would say. And when the rains finally came, they flushed us out of our plastic-tarpaulin-covered twig tents and damaged all the grain in the UNHCR warehouse.
Time is a great storyteller, but when it came to the stories Ayana heard of Kakuma and Dadaab, it was always the same old same.
Rukiah Suleiman, who worked for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, managed the house. She was an Ethiopian-Somali who had lost her husband during the Ogaden War in 1977. She had a prosthetic leg, courtesy of a landmine, but you could never tell as she was always moving up and down the house seeing to things. She welcomed each newcomer that Mrs. Admon picked from the Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport and brought to her with a kiss on each cheek and a deep hug. She showed them to their room and helped them unpack after years of living out of their worn out suitcases and cloth bags. She showed them how to use the shower, mixing the cold water and the hot water, and how not to feel appalled or frightened by the sight of all that water going down the drain. In Kakuma and Dadaab thousands of people had shared one water point and often queued for an entire day to fill their quota of jerry cans. So they at first hesitated at sight of this extravagance and like King Solomon asked: “Is there anything that thou hast seen under the heavens that is better than water?” This is what Solomon had asked Makeda as she quenched her thirst from his jug. There is nothing more precious under the heavens, Rukiah Suleiman would acknowledge while pushing them into the shower despite their instinctual yearning for the economy of a wet washcloth.
She showed them how to use the microwave and the dishwasher and the gas oven. She showed them how to use the washing machine and the dryer. She taught those who were old enough how to drive and then took them down to the DMV to get their licenses. When winter came around in the Palouse she bought them waterproofed boots with good traction. She taught them how to dress in layers and then urged them out so they could learn how to walk on snow and not be afraid of it. See, she would say, even with my bad leg I can manage. And I am an old woman! This is how she sometimes shamed them into action. Rukiah Suleiman taught them all these things in The Refugee House, while Mrs. Admon tried to place them.
Before Mrs. Admon placed Ayana with Principal Gersky and Marilyn, Ayana had had a yellow attic room in The Refugee House. Sometimes she would stand at the window in her room and look out into the vastness of the Palouse. Her eyes would follow airplane vapor trails in the blue sky for hours on end. When these continuous vapor trails began to evaporate and break apart, they looked like hoof prints belonging to wild Galla horses that had thundered across a mountain pass and out into the plains. The Galla horse may be light in stature and unimpressive to the eye with its rosette-patterned coat whose rough hairs grow out in all manner of directions. But those in the know will tell you that it is an agile and willing conqueror of the steep mountains and the hot plains. They will tell you to ignore its ridiculous moustache and watch for the endurance in its legs and its stamina under the sun. The Galla horse is not a fighting horse, her father used to say, but it will take you to the battle and hold you up in the battlefield. It was there in the Battle of Adwa and in the Battle of Wayna Daga and in other battles before that down to the ancient cavalries.
Run and do not stop running, my little Galla horse, Ayana’s father had told her before he died.
While living in The Refugee House, Ayana Kosrof listened deep down within herself and discovered that like the wild Galla horse―with nostrils flared and bleeding against the racing wind, unshod hooves pounding and pounding the earth, and green eyes unwavering―she was still running and did not know how to stop. When Principal Gersky and Marilyn came to pick her up and Mrs. Admon and Rukiah Suleiman waved goodbye from the front porch, Ayana thought: they look, Abba, but do not see that I am a galloper.
The Refugee House sat on the edge of a wheat farm on Airport Road. It was a red double-storey converted barn with white windows and a gray gambrel roof with a pair of attic windows peeking out from each side. A brick chimney made its way through the roof and on top of it was a wrought iron weathercock that creaked and cried in the wind like an abandoned baby. The house was surrounded by a lawn infested with smooth brome grass that grew profusely in the spring and in the summer. On the north end of the lawn was a pocket of evergreen bull pines, which broke winter winds blowing across the Palouse from Canada. But for the trees, the house was surrounded by a low fence of rusty grain binder wheels with snowflake-patterned spokes.
The Refugee House was a halfway house, between coming from Africa and arriving in America, and nobody was expected to stay there for long. When one person left, another one took their place, bringing in fresh memories of Kakuma and Dadaab and other such places.
Nothing has changed in Kakuma, some would say, except for the food rations. Each time we got a little less of the maize and the beans and the salt.
We stayed in Dadaab with hardly enough water to drink and no rain for months on end, others would say. And when the rains finally came, they flushed us out of our plastic-tarpaulin-covered twig tents and damaged all the grain in the UNHCR warehouse.
Time is a great storyteller, but when it came to the stories Ayana heard of Kakuma and Dadaab, it was always the same old same.
Rukiah Suleiman, who worked for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, managed the house. She was an Ethiopian-Somali who had lost her husband during the Ogaden War in 1977. She had a prosthetic leg, courtesy of a landmine, but you could never tell as she was always moving up and down the house seeing to things. She welcomed each newcomer that Mrs. Admon picked from the Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport and brought to her with a kiss on each cheek and a deep hug. She showed them to their room and helped them unpack after years of living out of their worn out suitcases and cloth bags. She showed them how to use the shower, mixing the cold water and the hot water, and how not to feel appalled or frightened by the sight of all that water going down the drain. In Kakuma and Dadaab thousands of people had shared one water point and often queued for an entire day to fill their quota of jerry cans. So they at first hesitated at sight of this extravagance and like King Solomon asked: “Is there anything that thou hast seen under the heavens that is better than water?” This is what Solomon had asked Makeda as she quenched her thirst from his jug. There is nothing more precious under the heavens, Rukiah Suleiman would acknowledge while pushing them into the shower despite their instinctual yearning for the economy of a wet washcloth.
She showed them how to use the microwave and the dishwasher and the gas oven. She showed them how to use the washing machine and the dryer. She taught those who were old enough how to drive and then took them down to the DMV to get their licenses. When winter came around in the Palouse she bought them waterproofed boots with good traction. She taught them how to dress in layers and then urged them out so they could learn how to walk on snow and not be afraid of it. See, she would say, even with my bad leg I can manage. And I am an old woman! This is how she sometimes shamed them into action. Rukiah Suleiman taught them all these things in The Refugee House, while Mrs. Admon tried to place them.
Before Mrs. Admon placed Ayana with Principal Gersky and Marilyn, Ayana had had a yellow attic room in The Refugee House. Sometimes she would stand at the window in her room and look out into the vastness of the Palouse. Her eyes would follow airplane vapor trails in the blue sky for hours on end. When these continuous vapor trails began to evaporate and break apart, they looked like hoof prints belonging to wild Galla horses that had thundered across a mountain pass and out into the plains. The Galla horse may be light in stature and unimpressive to the eye with its rosette-patterned coat whose rough hairs grow out in all manner of directions. But those in the know will tell you that it is an agile and willing conqueror of the steep mountains and the hot plains. They will tell you to ignore its ridiculous moustache and watch for the endurance in its legs and its stamina under the sun. The Galla horse is not a fighting horse, her father used to say, but it will take you to the battle and hold you up in the battlefield. It was there in the Battle of Adwa and in the Battle of Wayna Daga and in other battles before that down to the ancient cavalries.
Run and do not stop running, my little Galla horse, Ayana’s father had told her before he died.
While living in The Refugee House, Ayana Kosrof listened deep down within herself and discovered that like the wild Galla horse―with nostrils flared and bleeding against the racing wind, unshod hooves pounding and pounding the earth, and green eyes unwavering―she was still running and did not know how to stop. When Principal Gersky and Marilyn came to pick her up and Mrs. Admon and Rukiah Suleiman waved goodbye from the front porch, Ayana thought: they look, Abba, but do not see that I am a galloper.
Sorrow is like rice in the store; if a basketful is removed every day, it will come to an end at last.
―African Proverb
―African Proverb
Ayana knew that Principal Gersky was a man with a sharp, discerning eye even before he had cornered her to ask if she was pregnant when she failed to pencil in sanitary towels on the family grocery list. It was necessary in his line of work. His school had two hundred teenagers and he knew them all by name. He had met with each one of them in his office and made sure the school kept meticulous records. He prided himself on seeing oncoming trouble and heading it off in the student population. Some students claimed he could literally sense trouble, like it was some kind of pheromone. A living, mobile shit-detector, that’s what the students called him.
Details were important to Principal Gersky. He was keen on minutiae: how his students walked; how they smelled; what they ate; where they skateboarded; if they tucked in their shirts or not. He appeared in virtually all extra-curricular activities: the wrestling meets, the football games, the swimming competitions, and even accompanied the school’s only competitive chess player to New York once. He did all this and expected nothing less from everyone else.
Ayana had a nickname for him: Gran Malik, it meant “the left-handed King.”
Even Birhane Desta, she was sure, would have approved of the nickname for Principal Gersky was like that sixteenth-century Oromo Malik Ambar, who as an administrator and strategist was without equal in his time. Malik Ambar who was once enslaved, but eventually became regent minister of India’s Deccan; Malik Ambar who kept good government, built waterworks, punished highway robbers, and poured molten lead down the throat of anyone who got drunk in his army camp; Malik Ambar who kept the invading Mughals out of Deccan so consistently that the mighty Emperor Jahangir was reduced to raving of him as “that disastrous man” … “Ambar of dark fate.”
Thus was Principal Gersky, as methodical as Malik Ambar. He woke up at exactly four o’clock each morning, all year round. Ayana would often hear him moving around from her room in the basement; his footsteps precise and purposeful even in his waking hour. He would switch on the coffee machine and while that was going, would head into the bathroom. It was always a quick shower and Ayana frequently heard Marilyn complain to him about the way he seemed to sweep aside all her bath products. He was Spartan in terms of what he needed in there: a bar of soap and water. Marilyn’s hair conditioners, bath salts and such merely seemed to get in his way during that ten-minute cold water routine. He had an electric shaver with which he made a close trim of his grizzled beard before sitting down for his breakfast.
Principal Gersky loved having patties for breakfast. He usually made these the night before and would microwave them in the morning. He would scour the fridge for leftovers and emerge with a bit of meatloaf, leftover salad, a slice of banana bread, half a tomato, or an open can of tuna. All these and a thoroughly beaten egg or two would be molded into thin patties, which he would fry on the stove while Marilyn read a book or watched TV. Sometimes he would hum a little, the fish slice in his hand, the patties sizzling on the stove. Ayana thought that such moments were the happiest in Principal Gersky’s life.
At fifty-two, his arduous lifestyle had left its mark on his face and thinned his hair. He had packed on some flesh in his midriff, but not enough to dent his fine figure when in a well-cut suit. In late spring and summer, he would mow the lawn once a week; in the fall he would rake the grass as often as was needed to clear out Maple leaves; and in the winter he would come home and head straight for his exercise machine. He would pedal fast, with a somewhat painful grunt intermittently escaping his lips, but would not stop till an hour was over. Every Sunday morning, before they went for Mass, he would measure his blood pressure. And every Sunday evening, before they went to bed, he would call up his kids and ask how they were doing. He would do this even though he knew how they were doing from Marilyn’s more frequent conversations with them. Principal Gersky preached good parenting because he considered himself a good parent.
He was all about setting examples worth emulating. His high-gabled white house with an American flag on the front porch sprawled across a street corner lot with its bay windows projecting one of the grandest real estate images in Pullman. It looked like it belonged to a man worth his salt, all the way from its roof coping to the manicured lawn. Principal Gersky called it Meliora (Latin for “Always Better”).
She remembered the first time he called her into his office at school. She had no idea that he would one day want to be her foster father and thought that his office looked rather too humble for the imposing man who occupied it. He had a small library on one wall and before it stood an oak desk with a computer. Against the other wall were two couches and a coffee table. These faced a tall window with a view of the school’s quad. It was the thing she liked best in his office—this view of green lawn, cherry blossoms, magnolia, and adjacent building walls lined with purple-flowered clematis.
Principal Gersky’s office was quiet, orderly and well-lit.
It was everything The Refugee House – with its assortment of occupants from Ethiopia, the Sudan, and Somalia – was not.
Sitting in Principal Gersky’s office, right opposite him on the white-and-yellow striped antique couch, Ayana could not help but feel that she carried with her the chaotic spirit of The Refugee House with its eternal smell of baking dura bread in her hair. The Refugee House, located in the outskirts of Pullman, was a halfway house, a house between coming from Africa and arriving in America. From The Refugee House, those like Ayana looked out the window and saw how the sun rose, the new angle that the rays seemed to take, and taught their eyes how to bend with the sun so they would not tear when outside in this borderland between Washington and Idaho.
With the dawn of each new day the occupants of this house tried to shake off the ghosts of home, which rode their backs like a lioness rides a gazelle―with all her claws and teeth. The occupants of The Refugee House slept and hoped that when they awoke, some of their sorrows, which had followed them from their war-torn homelands, would be left on their pillows like old hair. When they bathed, they hoped that some of their sorrows, nursed with tears that had long gone dry in the northern Kenya refugee camps of Kakuma and Dadaab, would go the way of the scum. All these things they did while trying to accept the fact that the only dependable thing they had known in their previous lives, the sun, after all, was not dependable. Just because the sun is shining, it does not mean it is warm: this was a proverb of The Refugee House for those coming from Africa and arriving in America. This was the nature of The Refugee House and all those who lived in it: utter undependability.
Ayana was sure Principal Gersky could sense this about her for he said: “Someone needs to keep a close eye on you, Ayana Kosrof.”
She had looked at him and thought: I shall call you Gran Malik.
“I have some books that my own children used to read,” he had continued. “I’d like you to choose from them.”
The books were stacked on the coffee table between them. Without moving, she tilted her head and read their titles from the spines. She picked Fables of Aesop.
“Ayana,” Principal Gersky had said, “Aesop is a wonderful choice, but you need to begin thinking differently. Like an American. What Aesop wrote of the hare and the tortoise, and other such animals, you already know. Trust me.”
He had reached for the pile himself and picked The Wizard of Oz.
Details were important to Principal Gersky. He was keen on minutiae: how his students walked; how they smelled; what they ate; where they skateboarded; if they tucked in their shirts or not. He appeared in virtually all extra-curricular activities: the wrestling meets, the football games, the swimming competitions, and even accompanied the school’s only competitive chess player to New York once. He did all this and expected nothing less from everyone else.
Ayana had a nickname for him: Gran Malik, it meant “the left-handed King.”
Even Birhane Desta, she was sure, would have approved of the nickname for Principal Gersky was like that sixteenth-century Oromo Malik Ambar, who as an administrator and strategist was without equal in his time. Malik Ambar who was once enslaved, but eventually became regent minister of India’s Deccan; Malik Ambar who kept good government, built waterworks, punished highway robbers, and poured molten lead down the throat of anyone who got drunk in his army camp; Malik Ambar who kept the invading Mughals out of Deccan so consistently that the mighty Emperor Jahangir was reduced to raving of him as “that disastrous man” … “Ambar of dark fate.”
Thus was Principal Gersky, as methodical as Malik Ambar. He woke up at exactly four o’clock each morning, all year round. Ayana would often hear him moving around from her room in the basement; his footsteps precise and purposeful even in his waking hour. He would switch on the coffee machine and while that was going, would head into the bathroom. It was always a quick shower and Ayana frequently heard Marilyn complain to him about the way he seemed to sweep aside all her bath products. He was Spartan in terms of what he needed in there: a bar of soap and water. Marilyn’s hair conditioners, bath salts and such merely seemed to get in his way during that ten-minute cold water routine. He had an electric shaver with which he made a close trim of his grizzled beard before sitting down for his breakfast.
Principal Gersky loved having patties for breakfast. He usually made these the night before and would microwave them in the morning. He would scour the fridge for leftovers and emerge with a bit of meatloaf, leftover salad, a slice of banana bread, half a tomato, or an open can of tuna. All these and a thoroughly beaten egg or two would be molded into thin patties, which he would fry on the stove while Marilyn read a book or watched TV. Sometimes he would hum a little, the fish slice in his hand, the patties sizzling on the stove. Ayana thought that such moments were the happiest in Principal Gersky’s life.
At fifty-two, his arduous lifestyle had left its mark on his face and thinned his hair. He had packed on some flesh in his midriff, but not enough to dent his fine figure when in a well-cut suit. In late spring and summer, he would mow the lawn once a week; in the fall he would rake the grass as often as was needed to clear out Maple leaves; and in the winter he would come home and head straight for his exercise machine. He would pedal fast, with a somewhat painful grunt intermittently escaping his lips, but would not stop till an hour was over. Every Sunday morning, before they went for Mass, he would measure his blood pressure. And every Sunday evening, before they went to bed, he would call up his kids and ask how they were doing. He would do this even though he knew how they were doing from Marilyn’s more frequent conversations with them. Principal Gersky preached good parenting because he considered himself a good parent.
He was all about setting examples worth emulating. His high-gabled white house with an American flag on the front porch sprawled across a street corner lot with its bay windows projecting one of the grandest real estate images in Pullman. It looked like it belonged to a man worth his salt, all the way from its roof coping to the manicured lawn. Principal Gersky called it Meliora (Latin for “Always Better”).
She remembered the first time he called her into his office at school. She had no idea that he would one day want to be her foster father and thought that his office looked rather too humble for the imposing man who occupied it. He had a small library on one wall and before it stood an oak desk with a computer. Against the other wall were two couches and a coffee table. These faced a tall window with a view of the school’s quad. It was the thing she liked best in his office—this view of green lawn, cherry blossoms, magnolia, and adjacent building walls lined with purple-flowered clematis.
Principal Gersky’s office was quiet, orderly and well-lit.
It was everything The Refugee House – with its assortment of occupants from Ethiopia, the Sudan, and Somalia – was not.
Sitting in Principal Gersky’s office, right opposite him on the white-and-yellow striped antique couch, Ayana could not help but feel that she carried with her the chaotic spirit of The Refugee House with its eternal smell of baking dura bread in her hair. The Refugee House, located in the outskirts of Pullman, was a halfway house, a house between coming from Africa and arriving in America. From The Refugee House, those like Ayana looked out the window and saw how the sun rose, the new angle that the rays seemed to take, and taught their eyes how to bend with the sun so they would not tear when outside in this borderland between Washington and Idaho.
With the dawn of each new day the occupants of this house tried to shake off the ghosts of home, which rode their backs like a lioness rides a gazelle―with all her claws and teeth. The occupants of The Refugee House slept and hoped that when they awoke, some of their sorrows, which had followed them from their war-torn homelands, would be left on their pillows like old hair. When they bathed, they hoped that some of their sorrows, nursed with tears that had long gone dry in the northern Kenya refugee camps of Kakuma and Dadaab, would go the way of the scum. All these things they did while trying to accept the fact that the only dependable thing they had known in their previous lives, the sun, after all, was not dependable. Just because the sun is shining, it does not mean it is warm: this was a proverb of The Refugee House for those coming from Africa and arriving in America. This was the nature of The Refugee House and all those who lived in it: utter undependability.
Ayana was sure Principal Gersky could sense this about her for he said: “Someone needs to keep a close eye on you, Ayana Kosrof.”
She had looked at him and thought: I shall call you Gran Malik.
“I have some books that my own children used to read,” he had continued. “I’d like you to choose from them.”
The books were stacked on the coffee table between them. Without moving, she tilted her head and read their titles from the spines. She picked Fables of Aesop.
“Ayana,” Principal Gersky had said, “Aesop is a wonderful choice, but you need to begin thinking differently. Like an American. What Aesop wrote of the hare and the tortoise, and other such animals, you already know. Trust me.”
He had reached for the pile himself and picked The Wizard of Oz.
Lily Mabura is a fiction and children's author. Her literary awards include the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature; Kenya's National Book Week Literary Award; and the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award. Her short story "How Shall We Kill the Bishop?" was shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize for African Writing. Mabura’s publications include a first novel titled The Pretoria Conspiracy and four children’s books: Oma, Saleh Kanta and the Cavaliers, Seth the Silly Gorilla, and Ali the Little Sultan. Her latest book is a collection of short stories titled How Shall We Kill the Bishop and Other Stories (African Writers Series, Heinemann-Pearson, 2012). Short fiction by Mabura has appeared in PRISM international (Univ. of British Columbia, Canada), Wasafiri (Routledge - UK), Callaloo (Johns Hopkins UP), the 2007 Fish Anthology (Ireland), and Love on the Road 2015 anthology (Liberties Press, Dublin, Ireland).