Gravel Heart(59)

As one exalted His Excellency the President argued, the one-party state was an authentically African concept, a continuation of the traditional practice of rule by consensus – that is, since he was the President, everybody was bound to agree with him anyway, so what was the point of having another party? Another Excellency, who wrote poetry in his spare time from guiding the state, suggested that it was logical for all citizens to prefer a one-party state. Rather than introduce contention and fitna with an opposition outfit, a one-party state encouraged dialogue and bonding between the people, freeing the spirit for that uniquely African civility of communal unity and obedience that was the envy of the world. His Excellency the Poet was fond of obedience and thought it a virtue of great value.

For similar reasons, only one Youth League was permitted, and one of its most important recent initiatives was a schools debating competition to get more young people involved in party-sponsored activities, to give them a sense of national unity and responsibility and to stimulate their rhetorical and intellectual skills in the service of the people. My school and Saida’s were paired in a debating contest, and the two of us were selected for our respective teams. As I told you, I was inclined to freeze when I became tense, which I did when I had to address several people at once, and my headmaster put me forward for the debating contest because he thought it would do me good, get me over the psychological barrier, unblock me. There’s nothing wrong with you, he told me. It’s all in the mind. I’ve heard you chattering away like a fisherman on hashish. The headmaster was known for his anarchic practical jokes, which he used in place of punishment. Not everybody found them funny but we preferred them to abuse and the cane and laughed along with them to keep the peace. So even as he encouraged me to defy my disability, he was already grinning at his own joke. I think he despised my quiet ways and wanted to see me hopping around a little more. And even if it doesn’t work, the headmaster told me, and you stand there with your mouth shut as if you had swallowed a whole bun in one bite, the sight will cheer up the Youth Leaguers and you will have done good. Go on, off you go. Give them hell.

The debate was held in the Youth League offices, the rambling, three-storeyed building near the market we went past today that is now a collection of small shops and money lenders and stores. Before the revolution it was the headquarters of the other party, and in those days it was a buzzing, crowded building, covered with flags and banners, people coming and going or pausing outside to catch the latest gossip.

At the time of the debate, when it was the Youth League headquarters, it was sparsely furnished and empty, a parody of its old self, almost derelict. It was part of the government’s revenge against its defeated rivals, to turn some of their venerable sites into ruins. I had been in it a few times before to play games of coram with Yusuf, a school friend whose father was a big man in the government. He was a good friend and will appear again in what I have to tell you but I don’t expect you knew him. Yusuf and I played in the games room on the ground floor, which also contained a table-tennis table and a broken-down fan on a stand. I had never been to any other room there or to any of the other floors. Later I found out that Saida was entering the building for the first time, and doing so nervously. The Youth League had a reputation for intolerance and enjoyed humiliating its victims. Its rages were at times random and unexpected. Worse than that, this was the party which had murdered her father and she usually kept her distance from all its activities. I think she expected to see smears of blood on the walls and the gloating faces of her father’s killers whose names she knew.

The debate itself was entirely unmemorable: the venue was a room on the second floor and the only people there were the chair, the four organisers and the four debaters, two from the boys’ school and two from the girls’. Most of what I remembered later concerned Saida. I had seen her in the streets a few times without knowing who she was, just a pretty girl in a cream-coloured mtandio veil, which was the fashion then. But sitting in that debating room with her I could see she was beautiful, and that was the moment for me. When it was my turn to make a contribution to the debate … I was the second speaker and only had to talk for one minute … I saw her waiting for me to speak with her head bent to one side like this, as if making fun of someone participating in an intellectual conversation. I felt slightly mocked but I knew it was meant as a joke so I tilted my head towards her, acknowledging her interest, waiting for my tongue to unglue itself from the roof of my mouth. To my relief, the words began to stumble out of my lips and continued to do so for the required length of time. I threw in an expansive gesture towards the audience of eight as I felt myself coasting along on the tide of drivel and added a small bow towards the chair as I came to a close. Saida liked that, I could see. Her eyes had a bright spark in them, amused by my airs, so I added an additional flourish with dead-pan passion, just to make her smile. That is how it started for us, those little gestures and smiles during that absurd debate. The organisers split the vote precisely between the two teams so no one won and no one lost, in the enviable spirit of communal unity. Afterwards we four debaters walked together for a while, laughing at the comedy we had participated in, before heading for our separate destinations, but by then I knew Saida’s name.

I looked out for her after that, I thought about her every day, I became obsessed. When I saw her she was often with school friends, still in their uniforms, and sometimes as I cycled past she gave me a restrained little wave. The other girls saw and laughed. I did not know what to do, or even whether I should do anything or just wait to see what would happen next. I don’t know what it is like for young people today but we were brought up thinking that to address a respectable young woman who was not a relative was to insult her. It was not something people spoke about, how to go about it. I had seen young men in the cinema meeting girls, smiling at them with teeth gleaming, riding in open-topped cars with them and even kissing them, but I had not seen anyone I knew doing that. I thought I would just wait and see what happened next. I came up with several schemes but I did not have the nerve to carry them out. They were all silly anyway. In time I came to know that her grandmother made sesame bread for sale, and in desperation I thought I should go there and try to catch sight of Saida and perhaps speak with her, just like any other customer, but I could not make myself do it. It would be too obvious and perhaps she would not like it.