Skin
Sabir Ahmed

 


" We are not enemies, but friends.
We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our
 nature. "



Chapter 1
“You don’t have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to an intelligent Human being”
(Malcolm X 1964)



The sex happening in the next dormitory made it difficult for Kaplan to sleep. He looked at his clock that read 2.05a.m. The motel room was in shadow. Late night’s light was muted by the dirty Venetian blinds. The thump of downtown traffic outside made a lazy counterpoint to the murmur of the radio. He flipped to his other side trying to avoid the noise and to get some sleep. The couple in the next room lay naked besides each other, the woman’s hands already exploring him with the expertise of old familiarity. The mans excitement increased quickly. He heard her murmur approval as she saw his hardness. Two fingers slid along his thighs and walked mockingly through the maze of hair at his crotch. The moans soon reached orgasm. Kaplan listens to them fuck for a second, ‘Come on baby. Come give it all to me.’ Slowly he fell asleep.
   
   The scream came from the house behind me, I turned around. My older sister and one of the kitchen girls were standing on the front of the house. ‘Miles! ‘Miles!’ my sister screamed her arms waving. A moment later I heard her footsteps behind me and before I could turn around she had scooped me up in her arms and was running back towards the house.
My mama was at the doorway; she hissed ‘The wine cellar’. We pushed through the doorway. The kitchen girl took me from my sister and began to hurry through the house to the pantry off the kitchen. Behind us I heard the click of the heavy bolt on the front door. The pantry door open and we clattered down the cellar steps. The other servants were there already, their faces dark and frightened in the shadows cast by the small candles burning on top of a flour barrel.
  A moment later my sister came down, and there were tears running down her cheeks. She ran over to me and put her arms around my neck and pulled my head down her chest. One of the servant girls suddenly began to cry hysterically. ‘Shut up! Mother hissed. ‘Do you want them to hear us? Do you want to get us all killed?’ the girl shut up. I held my breath and tried to listen. The footsteps seemed to be coming towards the kitchen. My mother turned to me. ‘Papa will be here in a little while. But we must be quiet until he comes. I nodded. I turned to look at my sister. She was sobbing under her breath now. I could see that she was frightened but there was no real reason for her to cry. I reached out for her hands. ‘No need to cry appah,’ I whispered. ‘ I am here.’
  The candle went out, I tried to see in the dark but all I could do was listen to the sounds of their laughter. ‘Mama, I can’t see,’ I said. I felt a hand press across my mouth. There was a creak of a door, and now they were in the pantry. The cellar door rattled. I could hear their voices more clearly.
  ‘The chicks must be hiding down here,’ one of them said, and there was a sound of laughter. ‘Whites fuck black,’ another crowed. There was a kick at the door, I could felt my sister shiver. One of the maids fell to her knees and began to pray hysterically as there was another crash from above. Los bandoleros!’ One of the maids screamed. ‘They will kill us!’
  The door sprang open, as a stream of light came tumbling down. Some men came down the stairs. There were three that I could see. The others were behind, so all I could see were their legs. The first man saw the oldest servant girl. ‘This impudent nigger ought to be horsewhipped and run out of town’. Another said, there are others. ‘Bastarda!’ said the old servant through her teeth. The man straightened up and the shotgun exploded against the old servants head. I could see the old servant girl stagger back against the wall opposite the steps. She seemed to hang there suspended for a moment, and then began slowly to slide down the wall. The side of her face and neck was completely gone. There was nothing but raw red mass of flesh and bone. My mother screamed and ran towards her. Almost without effort the man seemed to reserve thee muscle in his hand and punched my mother across the head as she ran past him. She collapsed suddenly, falling across the old servant’s body with a curiously crumpled look on her face.
‘Mama!’ I started to run towards her but my sister’s fingers were like brick and I couldn’t move. ‘Mama!’ I screamed again.

  The servant girl who had been praying fainted. My sister’s voice came from behind me. It suddenly sounded older and more full bodied than I had ever heard it. ‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘Take what you will and go.’ The man stared at her for a momento. His eyes were black and they shone like coal.
  ‘This one is mine,’ he said casually. ‘You are welcome to the others.’ The leader turned. His broad body blocked the rest of the room. ‘Get rid of the boy,’ he said quietly, ‘or I will kill him.’ My sister began to push me away. I turned to look at her face. It was dull and glazed. Her eyes seemed to have no life in them. ‘No! ‘No!’ I screamed. ‘Go behind the boxes in the corner and do not look,’ she said. It wasn’t her voice. It was a stranger’s voice, cold and distant. One I had never heard before. ‘No!’ the sharp sting of her slap ran down my cheek, ‘Miles! Do as I say!’
  It wasn’t pain. It was a note of authority in her voice. I began to cry. ‘Go!’ Rubbing my eyes, I turned away and huddled down behind the boxes. I was still crying. I put my hands against my ears, as I heard my sister crying and screaming.
Professor Kaplan (Miles) jumped out of his nightmare, sweating like a stallion. He noticed that he had been crying in his sleep and had wet his pantalones. He looked at his watch, it read 3:58am. Moving the wet sheets away, he got up and went to the bathroom to wash his face. After washing his face, and regaining his breath, he looked at the mirror. His eyes seem to be red and sour; his face glazed and distressed, and his lip beaten by himself during his nightmare. He heard the poem his sister used to recite to him as a child in his mind; ‘Born on a Sunday in the kingdom of Ashante. Sole on Monday into slavery. Ran away on Tuesday cause she burin free. Loses a foot on Wednesday when they cateé she. Worked all Thursday till her head gray. Dropped on Friday where they Burneo she. Free on Saturday in a new centuria.’
 Kaplan entered the room again. He saw the Quran his mother had given to him as a child. He broke down and fell onto his knees towards the Quran besides his bed. Sulking his eyes out, he cried out in desperation,
‘ÊÚÇæÏ ÅÓÑÇÆíá ÝÑÖ ÇáÚÞæÈÇÊ ÇáÔÇãáÉ ÖÏ ÇáÝáÓØíäííä¡ ßÇäÊ ÞÏ ÑÝÚÊåÇ Ýí’ ãäÊÕÝ’
‘Oh Allah, help me overcome this pain, help me forget my past, please Allah, please,’
 ‘ÃßÊæÈÑ ÇáÊÒÇãÇ ÈÇÊÝÇÞ áæÞÝ ÅØáÇÞ ÇáäÇÑ Êã ÇáÊæÕá Åáíå Ýí ãäÊÌÚ ÔÑã ÇáÔíÎ ÇáãÕÑí.

I deal with the past that perpetually haunts me every night. This haunting, not only stalks me in the spirit, but also in my flesh. The simple reason being that those involved never leave their past, it only becomes part of who are. The truth does not escape. Each trauma hides and runs from the brutality of slavery, yet it cannot escape its nature.
Old mama, who was only ever known as mama-dot, was an indentured field labourer from South Africa. She was relaxing as she did every evening after work, rocking herself in the wooden swings that hung from a coconut tree at the back of the estate barracks. Only the squeaks of the night birds and the muffled croaking of the cockroaches in some distant marsh broke the night silence.
 Her eyes were closed but as usual she was not asleep. The old women kept she awake by worrying about the future of her only child. She had three other children all of which were in paradise know-heaven. The last thing mama-dot remembered was a carriage arriving towards the village to take us away and be sold. Mama-dot ran off with her children into a little woodshed right outside her house to kill them because she had been caught as a fugitive. She made up her mind that they would not suffer the way that she had and it was better for them to die. She succeeded. She succeeded in killing two. She hit them on the head with a shovel. Screams and painful murmurs echoed out of the wooden door. When the white folks opened the shed house, all they saw was shattered of blood, on the floor. My eldest brother lay on the floor blood purring out of his jugular. My little sister bleeding to death, but still sucking on mama-dots breast. ‘They are in paradise now, they are in peace,’ repeated mama-dot, with no sense of remorse. A lock of tear fell down the white folks cheeks. He spat at mama-dot, ‘Animals, you’re all animals!’
The woman that killed her children is my mother. She loved her children so much; they were the best part of her and she would not see them suffer because of their skin color. She would not see them hurt. She would rather kill them, have them die.
When the town heard that my sister was raped and carries life in her womb because of it, the black sisters’ gather around at mama-dots front gate to cast my sister out of mama-dots house. Mama-dot opened the door holding her daughters hand intensely. The women started chanting in a force of voodoo, as they saw my sister nude, her pregnant stomach exposing her sins. She hears wings. Little hummingbirds stick needles beaks through her head, the sweat from the heath, stained onto her pregnant stomach. She flies, yes; she flies into the well and is now in peace.


cHAPTER 2

The sound of Pakistani’s arguing in their room echoed in the hall, ‘Chalo, chalo, ye tumara hukni hai. They were a group of Pakistani immigrants who had made their way from the boarder of America under ship cargo. The sound of Tupac blasted out from their other room. Kaplan walked into his apartment. The night was hot and sultry. Though the windows of the apartment were wide open and the muslin curtains looped back, not a breath of air was stirring.

‘I waited and watched for fourteen years. I saw them come and go in my dream. They killed my family or had them killed; it comes to the same either way. You don’t believe what I say, you want details. Well you can’t get them from me. My family and me were there, at the wrong town and the wrong time. My mother was sacrifing her own children because of the fear of them being sold; nothing was done to prevent this until the last minute. Because my father was trying to save his family! Saving his family, he didn’t give too shits about his life. And some white fucking drug dealer who was fucking all the black sisters who still collects a fucking welfare check killed him.’

The heavy scent of magnolia, overpowering even the strong smell of weed in the room, suggested death, sorrow and tears. Kaplan sat on the bed, head in his hands, his pale shoulders shuddering conclusively. A lock of tears fell over his long thin finger. He shivered with apprehension.

I want to tell you about the end of humanity, the degeneration of mankind, and the death of martin Luther the King. I’ve got somewhere between forty-five minutes and two hours, until I get ready for my late night shifts.
 At the moment I am smoking on my half burnt cigarette. My women is, fast asleep, she went out life a glowing light, must be because of that energy she lost. I’ve only puffed once at it, and already it has come to an end. I can’t risk getting addicted to smoking; it’s bloody expensive in this country. One packed of cigarette cost a days meal. My name is Miles Kaplan. At the moment I’m teaching political science at the university of Michigan; here I am nothing more than a nigger. Came along into this world in 1961 in a colored family with a alcoholic father, a depressed mother more and my older sister, the rest of my siblings are in heaven-so they say. But nothing left but a sorry mistake like me. I see white folks looking at me, speaking behind my back and laughing in front of me. But provoking a fight is the best nature in me.

After my eldest sister’s death, mama-dot was the only person I had in the world. Father died of bad drinking habits; sometimes I think it was for the best. After mama-dot died I covered her with a white quilt and sat besides her coffin for three whole hours, looking at the cheap box she lay in; burying my sorrows. I used to be able to see the grazed land from the window, cows yarning the fields, but no more. Now there is nothing but empty land, looking like dark rectangles of creep paper cut out by a child, and the pointless moon. Our parents had no reason to expect anything other than what they got, five children. My father made a history in South Africa by becoming a successful farmer when he was eighteen. Four years later, he got involved for the second time-my mother. His first girlfriend impregnated by him, was hung; some White folk got the best of her, who the fuck knows? My mother, mama-dot left school at the age of eleven, got involved with the wrong people and ended up pregnant with my sister at the age of fifteen, one year later in the next five years, she had five kids, the only one that survives today is I.

 

 

Copyright © 2001 Sabir Ahmed
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"