The Arts Forum

Aug 31, 2008 Features / Columnists, The Arts Forum

The Arts Journal Volume 4 Numbers 1 & 2 (2008), in press, pays homage to Sheik Sadeek. This forthcoming issue of the Journal is devoted to articles that critically examine the social history, literature, visual arts and culture of Indian Guyanese since they first landed on these shores from the Indian sub-continent 170 years ago.

More than that, this issue begins to write back the lost writers, artists and artisans into the mainstream tradition of Guyana and the Caribbean and so to retrieve some of the neglected and unacknowledged treasures of art before they are totally lost.

Volume 4 Numbers 1 & 2 dovetails with Volume 3 Numbers 1 & 2 (2007) which offers fresh perspectives on the Abolition of The Trans-Atlantic Trade in captive Africans in the 200th year since the Abolition Bill took effect.

Today, we bring for your reading pleasure, the remainder of the short story (we carried the first part last Sunday) 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.

After a breakfast of roast plantain and roast salted codfish Sattie left in search of anything – just anything.
At around two she returned and found Raj fretting like the noon sun on drizzled pitch.
“What is wrong, Mama?”

With hands akimbo and a defiant posture of her plump self, Raj rolled her dark eyes pitifully and said: “What wrong already wrong. Sun like fire, only two cupful water lef’, an’ the damn cow dead-dead! So no milk!”

“Ranee dead?” Sattie screamed and ran through the hot sage and grass to where Ranee lay under the jamoon tree. She threw herself on Ranee’s face and cried loudly.

“Me been come get little bit milk when me see she just been deading. Me guess was rackklesnake, then me see the bitch cosy-up in that dry monkey-apple root so me hoots get away.”

“You getaway!? Why did you not kill it?” in tears Sattie asked as she looked closely at the root.

“You happy or what? Like you want it give me a dose? Me warn you an’ you daddy, rackklesnake go kill from right to left, but not me. Me shouting out from Black Bush like labba.

Me young, an’ me know about life, so me can’t see why me must bake meself like dry fish on zinc sheet in this oven behind Almighty back.”

That afternoon, and the next day, Sattie dug Ranee’s grave while she kept a cocked eye for the rattler.

The big godlike sun was westerning in all its furious vermillion and gold glory when Ram tooted the big red tractor as it came to a noisy jerky stop. Sattie jumped on, hugged and kissed her father. Then she sobbed: “Ranee dead, Papa.”

Ram took the shock silently. He did not ask how, for somehow he knew.
“Rattlesnake,” she said.
“Tomorrow we go bury she.”
“Me dig she grave already, Papa.”
“What of you mama?”

“Fretting more than usual…because the barrel empty.” She passed her tongue over her parched lips as Ram swallowed thick saliva.

“Me was bringing a cider bottle full. It fall and break about three miles back. Early morning me will go Main Road with the barrel. Sit good and hold tight and let me drive you home.”

They looked at the thatched hut in the distance of the darkening savannah as Ram revved the engine and let it go rearing and bucking across burnt patches, ridges, bumps and brushes.

Early, in the morning, Sattie saw her father off. Then she washed herself in the briney bottom of the canal as she thought of how wonderful it would be to own a combine-harvesting machine, like the one Jube said he had paid the down-payment on and which will come from England in time when Black Bush become their dream: a golden sea of paddy shimmering from blue end to blue end.
“Where the hell you going with a whole pint corn, Sattie?”

“To plant, so when rain come pouring–down they will be ready, Mama, dry and ready.”
“Must be for the birds to full them craw.”

After planting Sattie relaxed on her back under a rustling coconut palm and pitied a couple blue-sackies panting on a hanging dead frond against the dancing heat. Then, she heard the distant bleating of a motor-cycle.

“Jube,” she smiled. “Surveying seems like a nice job. Anything adventurous is nice. But, think of him…wants to own everything: a tractor…like ours, harvester, and then…me,” she frowned.
The cycle stopped. The sackies flew in their quest for water. She awaited his call.
“Miss Ram!”
Again he called.

Raj slowly emerged from the hut and shouted back, “What the hell you want! She Mama dying-out for something to wet she throat, an’ you say you love the gal. Don’t say you can’t put one cool beer in you pocket and so bring it.”

Jube had just crossed the two bamboos, now lashed together with two stout monkey-pumps beside them, and was hurrying across the grass and sage.

He stopped, and realizing Sattie was nowhere around, took a deep breath and delivered the shocker: “Me come to tell you, Ram dead!”

It came to Sattie clearly, with a certain vagueness that suggests doubts. She felt as though the whole savannah was on fire.

Raj swallowed thick choking saliva and asked: “You like make fun with big woman, or what?” When Jube did not answer, and his expression was clear as he neared her, she managed, her words barely audible, “How it . . . happen?”

“At Main Road. He pulled off from two kids running after a ball. He ended in the trench, pinned. When we got him out he . . . well . . .”

“Sattie, that coconut tree. Me not know what she will do now…you say…she papa dead.”
He was beside her. She was not crying. Her eyes were on the dancing ghouls in the distance.

“Jube, I heard. Tell me, tell me, Jube, say all this is a bad dream, and that we’ll wake and…”
“It’s not a dream, Sattie. It’s real like…like this drought.”

“No, Jube, it’s a dream!” she suddenly turned, grabbed and shook him and pounded his chest with knotted fists. “Papa just can’t die now.

Not now I tell you, not now!” she broke, crying convulsively against his shoulder. Then she moved away, her eyes on the horizon, beyond the hut.

“Mama will go back to living with the labour-union man that drives a big car. Me, …” “See them heavy clouds over there.”

She turned, looked hard at him as though to make certain it was not Ram who was speaking.

He rested one hand on her shoulder and with the other removed the hair from her face as Ram had done. “They’re not lifting and passing, and the humidity…so thick one can cut it. And…and, Sattie, you… you’re not alone.” END.

The Arts Forum Inc would like to contact the relatives of Sheik Sadeek.