Love and Obstacles

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It was a perfect African night, straight out of Conrad: the air was pasty and still with humidity; the night smelled of burnt flesh and fecundity; the darkness outside was spacious and uncarvable. I felt malarial, though it was probably just travel fatigue. I envisioned millions of millipedes gathering on the ceiling over my bed, not to mention a fleet of bats flapping ravenously in the trees under my window. The most troubling was the ceaseless roll of drums: the sonorous, ponderous thudding hovering around me. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer, I could not tell.

I was sixteen, of the age when fear aroused inspiration, so I turned on the light, dug up a brand-new moleskin journal from my suitcase — the drums still summoning the vast forces of darkness — and wrote on the first page

Kinshasa 7.7.1983 only to hear my parents’ bedroom door violently open, Tata cursing and stomping away. I leapt out of bed — Sestra, startled, started whimpering — and ran after Tata, who had already flipped on the lights in the living room. I bumped into Mama cradling her worrisome bosom in her arms. All the lights were on now; a gang of moths fluttered hopelessly inside a light fixture; there were cries and screams; cymbals crashed all around us. It was terrifying.

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