A Kind of Tomorrow (Excerpt)

1

Oh, gods! Oh, dear gods! We had forgotten!

We had chosen to leave these stones unturned!

And now here we stand, at the anus of civilization,

Gazing over bitter abyss!

We licked old wounds,

Even as new ones were hewn into our flesh.

Even as our bowels were ripped from our bodies,

We wagged our tongues and bared grinning teeth.

We let them win! These ghosts of our history!

And now here we stand, at the anus of civilization,

Gazing over bitter abyss!

***

Sometimes his memories were like a newborn's, fleeting and unsure. But other times, when the world fell still and the deafening noise stopped, the past was like a picture held up before him. He remembered how things used to be, before it all went to hell. He remembered the green fields, the moist air and the hails of the neighbors. He remembered the songs sung and the tales told by moonlight. He remembered the leaves brushing against his fingers, as he ventured through the forest in search of dry wood. He remembered greeting elders on the way home, in a language he could not now even utter.

Finari knew these memories were not his. He was not nearly old enough to recall the days of his forefathers as if they were his own. Yet he remembered the sound of the cockcrow, as he raised his hands before a rising sun. He remembered the days of festivity and the nights of somber ritual. He remembered the rains that brought the harvest, and the droughts that filled the heart with fear of an uncertain future. He remembered it all. He remembered everything. But how he had these memories, he did not know.

His dreams stopped being dreams a long time ago, fickle fragments of an impossible existence never seen for what it is until one awakens. When he closed his eyes now, it was not dreams that graced his sleep, nor nightmares that awakened him in a cold sweat. No, he was haunted instead by memories of a time not his own, of days he knew he had not lived, tragedies he knew he had not suffered. Yet they were as vivid as the breath he drew, and as painful as any pain he had ever felt.

And always, always, he was brought back to reality, to this strange life he never understood. He was brought back to the cracks on his apartment wall, to the trails of brown on his ceiling, and the sounds of smoke-spewing vehicles whizzing past his window. He was brought back to the specter of a starving continent, to the streets paved with rubbish, and a people too broken to hope. Perhaps one day, he would understand what these memories meant. Perhaps one day, the fear, anger, and confusion that neither love, nor faith, nor substance could keep at bay would be nothing more than memories themselves. Perhaps one day, these images of a glory drowned in fire, blood and oppression would cease to haunt the halls of his mind like angry phantoms. Perhaps one day, it would all make sense.

But that day was not today.

***

"Baba," said Amina. The word seemed to have come out of its own accord.

Her father paused his scribbling, and her heart sank. Had she interrupted him? Wait, of course she had! But had she annoyed him? Maybe. Should she just leave, go back to pretending like everything was okay, like she was just a stupid little girl who didn't know change when she saw it? But when he turned around, to her surprise, there was a smile on his face. It was the sort of sad, tired smile that parents of the more nurturing sort have on their face when they realize that the borrowed time on which their sudden lapse in devotion to their offspring has been living has finally run out.