THE ARTS FORUM

Aug 24, 2008 Features / Columnists, The Arts Forum

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Sheik Sadeek (1921-1987) was one of the pioneers who contributed to the emergence of imaginative prose writing in Guyana.

He was a master storyteller and master of the short story form. His “The Diamond Seekers” won the Caribia Magazine Prize in 1949 and launched him on a prolific writing career.

Sadeek won many prizes for his self-published efforts that include the Song of the Sugar Canes (1959 National Gold Medal Winning Novel) and Bundarie Boy (1961 National Gold Medal Winning Novel), in addition to several collections of short stories and pieces of drama.

Today, we bring for your reading pleasure, a short story (which will be carried in two parts) entitled “Black Bush” from Sadeek’s collection Windswept and Other Stories. Written in 1967, “Black Bush” won a prize in the Demerara Bauxite Company 50th Anniversary Play writing Competition and was produced by the Theatre Guild on Radio Demerara in 1967.

The beauty of Sadeek’s works lies in their simplicity; they are at once evocative of the haunting Guyanese landscape and its natural life as well as the poignant struggle for survival.

They are rich in the linguistic nuances of the Indian Guyanese peasantry from which Sadeek traces his origins.

BLACK BUSH by Sheik Sadeek

Mid-September morning, around 3: a.m. The cow-cart lumbered on into Black Bush, where the bush is not black, but the savannah land is – somewhat.

“Papa, if we have far more to go I will walk, poor Ranee is sure weary,” Sattie managed to ease her legs from their cramped position.

Raj gave a long suck-teeth as she brushed sandflies with her long black hair. “You over-mark stupid. You alone go walk so rattlesnake can give you passport to hell,” she said.

“See them clouds up there,” Ram ventured again, and took a bite on the coconut-cassava bread.
“Not again, Ram. This drought will go a long time more.”

“Mama, Papa know about drought, and rain,” Sattie watched the huge blotches of clouds lifting, and drifting overhead. “According to geography . . .”

“You an’ you book. Firs’ time we used to get season, now with them atomic bombs an’ people going up to the moon playing with Almighty work we ain’t have season.”
“Oh, yes, we have! And . . .”
“Sattie, don’t argue with you mama.”
“Alright, Papa. But, Papa . . . “
“Setting fire to fury ain’t nice, Sattie.”
“Me know, Papa,” she passed her father the rum-bottle of black coffee.

The cart rolled on with the usual joggle-knockle into the savannah of sagebush and beezie-beezie reeds and razor-grass. Everything was dry and itchy: the occasional clapping of the rope rein on Ranee’s back, the brittle jabbing of their scant belongings against them, even the night wind.

“Whoa, Ranee,” Ram took a couple of deep breaths, slipped off the shaft and stood in line with the stout greenheart picket the young East Indian land-surveyor, Jubelall, had shown him the week before.

He and the young man had had a long talk on going into rice cultivation scientifically and mechanically.
“Raj, Sattie, we in the heart of thirty-one thousand acres drained and irrigated maiden rice-land.”

“An’ maybe thirty-one hundred thousand rackklesnake, an’ only the Almighty know how much alligatah an’ camoodie an” . . . “

“Mama, you talking about rattlesnake and alligatah like is hell you talking about! Sure, this place has snakes and all the rest, but if you read history you will know that the early Americans had all them vermins and red-Indians too! And you know what the red-indians were, Mama? People that used to raid whole settlements and kill even the youngest baby.

They used to skin you head and keep the skin as souvenir. Did those settlers turn back? No! they moved on and explored the country, so that today America can be the godfather of young nations.”
“Sattie!”

“Papa, we have to stand up and face the challenge of our future. My grandparents were indentured immigrants, nevertheless pioneers.

The conditions under which they worked were inhuman, semi-slaves they were, yet they decided to remain, Papa, I am of them.

The Government has invested over sixteen million in this project, are we going to let a few snakes and lizards scare us? Black Bush is here to stay . . . and we are going to stay with it. Someday, we’ll be envied like the cattle-kings of the Rupununi.

Whole seventeen and a half acres is all ours. Mama, can’t you feel something wonderful is a-bubbling deep inside you?” she jumped off the cart, kissed Ranee’s cheek and walked a few yards ahead.

“Fifteen acres rice, two and a half homestead,” Ram said, more to the savannah silhouette against the near rising sun, “where we will grow plantain and banana, yam and . . . “
“Sweet potatoes and greens, and . . . “ Sattie was adding.
“Them things don’t grow in dust!”
“Mama, you going on like God go never let rain fall again.”
“Not before sta’vation kill we an’ we bone turn like cotton.”
“You ever hear anyone dead from starvation in Guyana?”

“We go be the firs’, unless we eat the tractah [that] you daddy sell we house an’ land, an’ even you gold bracelet, to buy.”

“I’m proud of it, Mama.” She moved over to her father and passed her arm around his. “We have plenty land, and a tractor; we will build a nice house, eh, Papa?”

“With bamboo and longjohn, and beezie, and palm-leaves,” Ram added. He unyoked Ranee as she munched dry sour-grass. Raj got off and stood aside somewhat unconcerned.
The day broke hot.

The sun of blinding nickle came up from beyond the almost transparent mirage-like wall of tall cabbage palms and bluish-grey smoke that rose from ignited pegasse and beezie.

Clumps of creaking and screeching bamboos and palms, solitary mango and guava, with roots in the parched cracked earth and brittle limbs like skeleton claws, stood barely within discerning distances of each other.

A scraggy sun-browned heron croaked hoarsely as it alighted between Ram and the cow, listlessly it went under her belly – dull, impassive eyes looking for ticks.

The thirty-foot canal that separated them from their land was bridged by two stout bamboos Ram had put across the week before. He and Sattie crossed easily, but Raj would not even attempt. “The lowest amount me will cross on is ‘bout six.”

“Six!” Ram exploded, “man does drive across tractah on six long-john this size, and you ain’t no bleddy tractah!”

She crossed on the back of Ranee. It was around ten o’clock, and the blistering sun was about overhead, when long before there was no more sweat in Sattie to snake down her back and breasts to be daubed by the khaki shirt.

They lunched on plain rotie and roast salted and dried gilbacca fish under their tent of bamboo and flour-sack bed sheets, and as she took some water from the five-gallon wine-barrel, Sattie said, “Papa, the trench water salt like . . . “

“Salt ‘til it bitter like quinine!” Raj added harshly as she stirred sugar into a cupful of water to wash down rotie and fish.

For six long days father and daughter cut bamboos, longjohns and fronds, assisted Ranee hauling them, and built a camp they were proud of. The barrel was low and they had not come across any wet waterhole.

This fatigue was easy for the robust canecutter, but not for his soft daughter who had sucked her breakfast from the teats of Ranee, and never even fetched firewood.

Now, her shoulder-length black hair was matted with dust and sweat, her fair face sun-burnt, soft smooth shoulders and arms sore, the inside of her firm full legs, in the stiffish dungarie pants, were bruised and burning as from the scraping of a razor, her freshness, as of a lamb in a spring pasture, was singeing under Black Bush sun.

Yet, as she dozed in her hammock in the later afternoon haze her frame of mind framed ahead: she was waving high in the branches and blossoms of the longjohns, and it was cool, and she wasn’t afraid. She knew the longjohns have taproots that they send deep down where there is always moisture.

And then, the whole savannah was cool and young in heavy drizzles, and the longjohn flowers was a shower of gold, and tender-green was replacing the bright yellow leaves of pepal and cack-a-doodle.

And there were clear liquid calls of fire-red grass-birds and pimpim-churie to their mates, while green life was peeping – even from the joints of dried bramble. And the clouds were crawling, and banking to burst and drown the savannah – with life.

Next morning. Three hours walk through the savannah and on the high, asphalted road, and Ram caught the before-daybreak bus on the main road for Georgetown some eighty miles away.

“Me will get in town on the eleven o’clock train, so me will be back tomorrow . . . ‘fore dark though.” He had brushed back the hair from over Shanti’s eyes and drank the black tea she had given him in the already perspiring ‘foreday morn.

(To be continued next week)

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