Sankofa(23)

“I don’t believe this,” Adrian says.

“What?”

“I think I was present at this lecture. Listen.”


“Yesterday, I heard Margery Perham lecturing on decolonization in West Africa at the Royal African Society. There were a few other Africans in attendance and afterwards they clustered around her. She is a collector of African students, Thomas tells me. Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Danquah, Appiah: she knew them all when they were ambitious young men in London and, even now, can call the state house in Accra and ask for a favor. I don’t care for the Margery Perhams of this world. My maternal great-grandfather was a sheikh who walked from Togo to Mecca and, on the way home, stopped in Segu and never left. It is he who should be lecturing here, explaining West Africa to these obroni. I said this to Thomas and he replied, ‘Finally. You are waking up.’”



“I was there,” he says. “I was in the room. Incredible. And who knew Thomas Phiri was so important to Francis.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Well, Thomas was rather a second-rate fellow. Pompous, a bit of a hanger-on really, but I suppose Francis, as a newcomer to our circle, wouldn’t have been able to tell.”

“Your circle?” I ask.

“Yes, the British left. Socialists. A few Communists.”

“Who else was important to him? Did he have any lovers?”

“Lovers?” He is puzzled by the question. As if I have asked for Francis’s shoe size. “I wouldn’t know about that. I doubt it. He was a very buttoned-up fellow in England. Although, you never know. He was handsome.”

Adrian returns to the diary and I return to my novel, set in an arid place, dotted with dry bushes and thirsty cattle. Time passes until I look up and see the sun is setting. Adrian has not moved. There is no camera. Perhaps there never was. All he wanted was to work at his desk.

“I’m sorry to stop you but I must catch the train back to London. Will you take photographs of what’s left?” I say.

“To be honest, I hate those things. You take the pictures and then work out how to get them onto your laptop, before finally opening the thing up and discovering you can’t read the fine print no matter how much you zoom in. You could spend the night, if you wish. I’ll have finished by tomorrow morning. I’m just about halfway.”

“I don’t have any nightclothes,” I say.

“There are spares.”

I do not want to disappoint him after his excess hospitality, but I have not planned to spend the night in Edinburgh. My deliberation is obvious.

“I’m sorry, I got carried away. Reading Francis’s diary has reminded me of my first time in Bamana. Nineteen seventy-eight. I traveled alone for the most part when I was outside the capital. Sleeping in strangers’ homes was the norm. I would ride till evening and stop when I saw huts. Every night I thought my luck would run out and the villagers would leave me out in the bush . . . but it never happened. There was always room for one more.”

“I’ll go tomorrow morning,” I say.

“No, please. You mustn’t do anything you don’t feel comfortable with.”

“I’m very comfortable sitting here with Bessie Head.”

Adrian makes dinner. The kitchen is warm, heated by underfloor pipes. His pots and pans hang on the wall, copper finish, gleaming like parts of a gamelan. He works from scratch, filleting the fish, peeling the potatoes, dicing the vegetables. It is like watching a cookery show. He moves around with practiced ease, using sharp tools and chatting at the same time. Steam rises and fogs the windows. Oil sizzles when the plaice is laid in the pan, skin down. I offer to help. He shrugs me away.

“Tell me about your life in London,” he says.

“I live alone. I have a daughter who is very busy with her work. My husband and I are separated. Is there a Mrs. Bennett?”

“She died last year.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. “Have you been back to Bamana since you wrote the book?”

“Just once. In 1984 Francis invited me to be part of a government-sponsored arts festival. Music, dancing, culture, literature—everything and nothing. I hardly saw him. There were too many rings of bureaucracy by then. Bear in mind, on my first visit, I stayed with him and his wife whenever I was in the capital.”

We eat at the kitchen table. The fish flakes. The sauce has depth of flavor. We talk of the mundane, the weather in Edinburgh, the annual festival that brings a crush of people.

“I regret my book,” he says, when we are almost done. “It came from an honest place. You should have read the press around Bamana. Some of the African countries that gained independence in the sixties were already faltering, and so the media was just waiting for Bamana to fall apart. How long before the military topples Adjei? How long before he loots the place? And so I decided to travel there and prove them wrong. I really believed I was documenting the first hundred days of something truly remarkable. An African miracle. I wrote that book in 1978. By 1984, when I returned, I had already changed my mind.” It is a long speech given with almost no pause, but he is a professor, used to delivering lectures.

“What made you change your mind?” I ask.

“Well, the murder of the Kinnakro Five was still four years away. You know of them?”