Excerpt: Umar Turaki’s SUCH A BEAUTIFUL THING TO BEHOLD

By Umar Turaki

DUNKA

The Grey-ridden neighbor, Nana Ritdirnen, licked her lips and parted them to continue speaking. Dunka sat on the floor at her feet, his whole spirit leaning in so he could hear her when she spoke. His body, however, he held back. Hope was an easier burden to carry if you did not put your all into it.

They were in her bedroom. She sat on a white plastic chair with flimsy arms that folded like paper if you put too much weight on them. The name he was waiting to hear was like a secret too heavy to leave her tongue. Nana Ritdirnen’s eyes were already black and void, like two holes inside her head. Her strength had all but failed, and Dunka was certain she was blind, even if she would not admit it. Rit, his sister and Nana Ritdirnen’s namesake, would bring her what tiny meals they could spare and help her clean. Nana Ritdirnen was the closest thing they had to a mother, as she had liked to remind them back when she could still walk from her front door, across their backyard, past their father’s sky-blue pickup truck and the place where their mother was buried, and into the kitchen. Once inside, she would call out the names of the children and wait for them to emerge from their rooms. If she came with some food, she would place it on the countertop and order them to get to eating. If she had nothing, she would ask them if they needed anything before turning around and going back home. It had taken several months for the Grey to reduce her to this point, where she had just enough strength to migrate between her bed and the white chair, and barely enough to speak a string of words.

“Fifteen Goma Street. Pagak, but they call her Matyin,” Nana Ritdirnen said at last. There it was. The name and address of the woman who lived in the next village. The woman who might save Dunka and his siblings from the Grey. Nana Ritdirnen had stressed might, saying there was nothing to lose in trying. As though reading his mind, she added, “It’s too late for you and me. But if she can help the others, it will be a good thing.”

Back in his room, Dunka studied his eyes in the knife-size sliver that was all that remained of his father’s mirror. He had first seen the Grey lodged in them two days ago. There had been more relief for him than fear at that moment, because he had been waiting for it, but the waiting had been its own kind of terror. He looked around his room. It had been his father’s room first. He was seeing the objects in the room, but at the same time not seeing them; his gaze had been rendered a monochromatic silver by the Grey. The Grey did that: it stole the color from your eyes as it killed you quietly. He stared at the toneless room with its profusion of belongings—clothes, a handful of schoolbooks, furniture, the paper ceiling—failing to differentiate between what had been his father’s and what had always been his, and how the two had become one. With the Grey now inside him, nothing mattered any longer. Not even Nana Ritdirnen’s words and the fleeting hope they had puffed into him.

He took a long walk in no particular direction, paying little attention to his surroundings. It had rained about four weeks ago, and that initial single rainfall had been so brief that it had barely soaked the ground and had failed to make the fields come alive. When the rain ended, he had stood by the flame tree near the house, gazing toward the five-kilometer stretch of wilderness that lay between their village, Pilam, and the next village, Pishang, wondering how long it would take to see green fields again. That had been before he’d gotten the Grey, before he had lost all hope of ever seeing color again. Now everything was drab and leaden like those old black-and-white films that had sometimes aired on television in the afternoons when their lives had been normal and they’d had electricity. He grew tired of walking and circled his way back home, collapsing on his bed and falling asleep.

He was roused by Rit. The frozen look on her face made him sit up, even though his body felt like a deadweight. Ashen sunlight was splashed everywhere.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s Nana.”

He found the older woman dead in her chair. The knife she had used to cut her wrist was still in her hand. The arm with the slashed wrist hung outside the chair, letting her blood fall to the ground. Rit stood by the door, crying.

“Go back to the house,” Dunka said, not turning to look at her.

After she left, he stood there and watched Nana Ritdirnen for a long time, breathing the silence in and out. He carried her to the mouth of the grave that had been dug for her husband a year before, after he had gone missing, after they had searched and searched the surrounding area, after Uncle Golshak had left to look for him among the hills and also never returned. Dunka’s father had dug it alone, telling them he was still strong, even though they could see how the Grey crouched over him like a black storm waiting to break.

Dunka retrieved an old, faded wrapper from Nana Ritdirnen’s room and covered her with it. He laid her in the hole and filled it with the hard, caked earth. Then he sat in the living room, tired all the way through, and waited for Panmun to come in.

If there was going to be any righting of things, if they were all going to learn to live together as a household, then he needed her, as the second born, to be aligned with him. As a united front, they could convince Panshak to not be away so much without saying where he went. Rit was already doing more than her fair share of things, and how old was she? Barely fifteen? He could not remember. It was time for him and Panmun to take the weight off her shoulders. Apparently, Nana Ritdirnen had to die for him to see that much. And he needed Panmun’s cooperation.

He waited several hours, eventually falling asleep on the sofa. When his sister stumbled in, her dreadlocks wild from wind and abandon, he awoke.

“Panmun, sit down,” he said.

Panmun gave him an acidic look, but he kept going.

“Nana Ritdirnen is dead. I buried her this morning.”

Panmun sank into the closest seat. She bent her head and began to cry. Dunka listened to her sobs for a while before moving closer and placing one hand on her shoulder. Panmun shook it off without looking up. Dunka wondered if any of his siblings had noticed the Grey in his eyes over the last two days. No one had said anything. Were they pretending to not have seen it because acknowledging its presence would mean accepting that he was going to die? Or did they just not care?

“Nana and Baba aren’t here anymore. We have to take care of each other.”

Panmun looked up. Her eyes were enflamed with rage.

“They’ve been dead for six months. Did you just notice?”

The words stung, but Dunka remained straight-faced.

“If I hadn’t met Zumji,” Panmun continued, “we would have all starved to death.”

Dunka tried to contain his growing frustration as she spoke. He forced himself to be still, to not betray any emotion.

“And you, you just sit there and wait for food to come. You’ve never done anything except sit and wait for food to come. You’re actually the most useless person in this house. Even Panshak goes out there and tries to bring something home. But you . . .”

The rage welling up inside him did not wait for her to finish. It pushed him aside and raised his arm as though it were attached to a string. His hand fell, aiming for Panmun’s cheek, but she moved her head just out of reach. She leapt to her feet and stood her ground, staring at him with her red, red eyes. She did not seem like his sister just then; she looked like a ferocious, indeterminate creature, bristling and ready to inflict damage.

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Umar Turaki‘s writing has been shortlisted for the Miles Morland Scholarship, longlisted for the Short Story Day Africa Prize, and has won the AFREADA Photo-Story Competition. Umar’s short films have screened in numerous festivals, and his work in television both as a writer and director has been broadcast on various stations in Nigeria.  Umar lives in Kelowna, British Columbia with his wife and daughter, where he is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at UBC Okanangan.

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