The Devil that Danced on the Water Read online

  Praise for

  The Devil That Danced on the Water:

  “In this heartbreaking memoir of Forna's quest to find the truth about her father, she outlines the grim prospects of a poor and largely illiterate populace that still suffers the legacies of colonial exploitation, the misguided concept of ‘benign dictatorship,’ and a brutal civil war.”

  —Emily Mead, Entertainment Weekly

  “Reminiscent of Jung Chang's acclaimed Wild Swans . . . Forna provides a peek into the black hole of time, giving a view of so much of Africa that is mythical, ephemeral and intangible. . . . Egregious episodes of political genocide and everyday barbarism—all met with a resounding global disregard—are interwoven through Forna's fond childhood memories. . . . [The Devil That Danced on the Water is] the story not only of Africa's political turmoil but also of its promise and potential.”

  —Charlotte Moore, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Forna capably fills in the events of Sierra Leone's complex and confusing history. . . . When Forna loses herself in the bittersweet memories of her childhood, her descriptions dance on the page. . . . By sharing the travails of her vivid journey, she casts light into the darkness of Sierra Leone's history.”

  —Heather Hewett, The Christian Science Monitor

  “Riveting . . . Memoir seems to soft a word for Aminatta Forna's The Devil That Danced on the Water. . . . The intimacy of a child's domestic world contrasts acutely with the looming political backdrop. . . . Mohamed Sorie Forna was the kind of young man upon whom a society's hopes are built.”

  —Eve MacSweeney, Vogue

  “Poignant . . . Stunning . . . Amazing . . . What isn't hard is to feel her deep sense of disappointment about what happened to her father and her country.”

  —Steve Galpern, The Rocky Mountain News

  “Riveting [and] fascinating . . . As Forna gleans bits of truth from a mass of lies . . . her father gains new definition, and the story gains new power.”

  —Jay Goldin, Ft. Worth Star-Telegram

  “Forna's stunning memoir is both a tribute to her brave father and an important look at the sad state of politics in Sierra Leone.”

  —Kristine Huntley, Booklist

  “More gripping than a political thriller . . . The Devil That Danced on the Water is Aminatta Foraa's attempt to make coherent a personal fate inextricably tied to the fate of a nation.”

  —Julie Brickman, San Diego Union-Tribune

  “An evocative, disturbing mixture of memoir and investigative reporting . . . [Forna's] re-creation of the country she knew as a child and the father she idolized is deft and moving.”

  —Sarah Goodyear, Time Out New York

  “[A] moving account . . . A vivid history of [Forna's] years as a child moving back and forth between Africa and the UK, borne on the shifting wind of her father's changing status in Sierra Leone politics.”

  —K. A. Dilday, New York Sun

  “An exposé as gripping as it is devastating.”

  —Vicki Cameron, East Bay Express

  “Harrowing . . . Forna writes with a compelling mix of distance and anguish, intent on explaining her father's death and reclaiming his memory. Lush descriptions of her idyllic childhood provide eerie counterpoint to chilling depictions of the hell Sierra Leone had become upon her return in recent years. . . . Reminiscent of Isabelle Allende's House of Spirits, Forna's work is a powerfully and elegantly written mix of complex history, riveting memoir and damning exposé.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “An important work . . . More than a tale of vindication, this book is filled with powerful descriptions and moving details. . . . Highly recommended.”

  —A.O. Edmonds, Library Journal

  “An extraordinary and gripping story . . . Forna's book glows with compassion. A modern classic, of which her courageous father would have been proud.”

  —Peter Godwin, author of Mukiwa

  “An engrossing account of pain, love and discovery that had the capacity not only to make me understand but also to move me to tears.”

  —Gillian Slovo, author of Every Secret Thing

  “A searing indictment of African tyranny mingled with bittersweet childhood memories.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “I had tears in my eyes almost the whole way through, although it is the least sentimental of books. . . . Forna manages, quite brilliantly, to evoke not only all the honor and pity that is in her family's story, but its beauty and tenderness too.”

  —Katie Hickman, author of Daughters of Britannia

  “This is a book of quite extraordinary power and beauty. Aminatta Forna has excavated not only her memory but the hidden recesses of the heart.”

  —Fergal Keane

  “Impossible to forget . . . An obsessive, driven, refreshing book about Africa, despotism and exile. It is also a beautifully drawn portrait of childhood. . . . A memorial teeming with life, anger, love.”

  —Christopher Hope, The Independent

  “Devastating . . . [Forna] writes so well. . . . Her book deserves to go on the shelf next to Malan's [My Traitor's Heart]. It is excellent.”

  —Aidan Hartley, The Literary Review

  “Remarkable . . . Extraordinary . . . In writing this book [Forna] has acted her part well. She has lifted out of herself the emotional and cultural world of her childhood and represented it in scenes of startling beauty and tragedy. Few books merit being called courageous; this one does.”

  —Rachel Cusk, The Evening Standard

  “Gives a more personal framework for understanding the horror of the 1990s in the linked wars of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea . . . [Forna's] interviews with broken men are extremely moving, and tell everything of the world that vanished with her father.”

  —Victoria Brittain, The Guardian

  “[A] moving, impressive account . . . [Forna's] harrowing description of her struggle in adulthood to establish the truth of [her father's] death makes enormously compelling and painful reading.”

  —Alex Clark, Sunday Times (London)

  “[An] engaging memoir . . . It can also be read as a detective story. . . . The observations have an appropriate strangeness and wonder, and there are moments of humor. . . . An impressive contribution to the literature of post-colonial Africa.”

  —Jason Cowley, Times (London)

  THE DEVIL THAT

  DANCED ON THE WATER

  By the same author

  Mother of All Myths

  How Society Moulds and Constrains Mothers

  The Devil That

  Danced on the Water

  A Daughter's Quest

  AMINATTA FORNA

  GROVE PRESS

  New York

  Copyright © 2002 by Aminatta Forna

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011.

  First published in Great Britain in 2002 by HarperCollins Publishers, Hammersmith, London, England

  Author photograph and photograph of river scene © Simon Westcott

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Forna, Aminatta.

  The devil that danced on the water : a daughter’
s quest / Aminatta Forna.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-8021-4048-7

  eISBN 978-0-8021-9195-3

  1. Forna, Aminatta—Childhood and youth. 2. Forna, Mohamed. 3. Sierra Leone—Politics and government—1961–4. Sierra Leone—Biography. I. Title.

  CT2448.F67 A3 2003

  966.404'092—dc21

  [B]2002028292

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  154 West 14th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  For My Father

  Honour and shame from no condition rise;

  Act well your part: there all the honour lies.

  From An Essay on Man, Alexander Pope (1733)

  Acknowledgements

  This book is dedicated to the memory of my father.

  From the outset Yabome Kanu, my step-mother, has given me her absolute trust. I would like to thank her for this and for many things, not least the great help she has been in my endeavour. Above all I am grateful to her for the courage she has displayed and has inspired in me.

  My cousin Morlai Forna acted as my researcher in Sierra Leone. I am especially indebted to him for his tireless efforts. The extraordinary story of my family's past came to me through the collective memory of my uncles and aunts. I am grateful to them and the whole Forna family for this and other kindnesses.

  My very belated thanks to Dr Alfred and Murietta Olu Williams for helping my family when it was dangerous and difficult to do so, also to Brian and Mary Quinn who were good friends to us during those years. Santigi Kamara has never wavered even through the worst of times.

  Any opinions expressed in this book are entirely my own. I would, however, like to thank the following people for agreeing to be interviewed and for sharing with me their recollections of that period of Sierra Leone's history, details of the era and in some instances vital eyewitness accounts and personal testimonies: Shineh Bash Taqi, Professor Hamid Bash Taqi, Amy Bash Taqi, George Burne, Bianca Benjamin, Nuhad Courban, Mohammed Deen, Professor Cyril Foray, Dr Bernard Frazer, Professor John and Sheila Hargreaves, Frank Jalloh, Dr Ulrich Jones, Dauoda Kamara, Dr John and Rena Karefa Smart, Berthan Macauley, Karl and Hildegard Münch, Alhaji Lami Sidique, Jenkins Smith, Alfred Brima Sesay, Tejan Savage, Abdul R.Turay, Dr Mohammed Turay, Major General Tarawali, the late Sir Banja Tejan Sie, Janet Thorpe, Susan Toft, Adelaide Whest. A great many other people took my telephone calls, answered my letters and requests for information. I am grateful to them all. My thanks also to Brian Forsyth, Marion Hall, Ken Hepburn, Jean l'Anson, Annette Main for sharing their memories of the time my family spent in Scotland.

  I owe a debt of gratitude to the late Dr Jim Funna of the World Bank, also to Dr Günter Conrad, Dr Evangelos Calamitis, formerly of the IMF and Elkaneh Coker for their invaluable contribution to my understanding of the country's economic history.

  For documents and details relating to my father's trial in 1975 I am obliged to Eke Halloway and Serry Kamal. Abu Kanu, Bai Bai Kamara, Unfa Mansaray, Albert Tot Thomas, Sorie Dawo and Pa Issa Jalloh shared with me their own experiences of that episode. I am grateful to them for their willingness to revisit the past on my behalf, also to Saidu Brima.

  In Freetown I was the grateful recipient of much moral support and practical assistance from Sayo Kanu, Joy Samake and Alex Kamara. David Jordan at the BBC helped me towards becoming an author in the early days. During the long months of writing my dear friend Michael May sustained me with daily calls to buoy the spirits, and the occasional evening of jazz. Gillian Slovo and Ken Wiwa kindly read early chapters and provided me with comments and their encouragement. My thanks go to all of them.

  David Godwin is a remarkable agent whose energy and enthusiasm made everything happen. At HarperCollins my very special thanks go to Michael Fishwick for his spirited support of the project, and to Lucinda McNeile for her confidence and keen judgement.

  My mother Maureen Campbell White spent many hours with me to share her own compelling story. I am immensely grateful to her and to my late grandfather Robert Christison, who will always be in my thoughts.

  There have been times when writing this book has been more than usually difficult. My sister Memuna Forna has provided a bedrock of loyalty and support as well as the benefit of an acute mind. She has my heartfelt thanks. And finally, thank you to my husband Simon Westcott – as always.

  Book One

  1

  In the early morning he stands in the doorway of his hut and listens for the distant rumble. The cool air bears the earthy scent of promised rain. From the veranda above I can see the plume of red dust rising in the lorry's wake long before the man with the pickaxe who waits below me hears the engine. I am ten years old. It is 30 July 1974. I am watching a dust devil heading for my home. It writhes as it chases the driver around the rocky lanes, towering above the truck, forcing the vehicle away from the main routes, past the tumble of houses towards the edge of the precipice where we live. Now I can hear its roar begin; at first low and deep it rises to a shrieking cacophony. And suddenly, silence. The driver swings out of the cab down below. Behind him the devil slumps to the ground and waits.

  I watch the driver speak briefly to the waiting man, who nods in return. The driver climbs back into his cab. The man with the pickaxe moves to within a few feet of his hut and gestures with his right hand. The driver manoeuvres his vehicle forward and back, until it is almost up against the shack. The massive hulk of the truck might easily crush the flimsy panbody of rusting corrugated iron, wooden slats and cardboard. The roof is held down with old tyres. Twelve people live in there, my stepmother tells me. I wonder if they are inside now, while all this is going on. Finally the driver pushes a lever and the load of rocks slides to the ground, freeing a mighty dust devil which spins up above the heads of all of us: the mother devil.

  When the truck is gone the man and I contemplate the mountain of rocks. He leans over and picks one up. In his hand it is about the size of a melon; the surface is pitted and full of holes and it looks like a red moon rock. He positions it with care upon the edge of a boulder protruding from the ground. Then he lifts his iron-handled pick and, with the practised grace of a tennis player about to serve an ace, he swings the tool in an arc up behind his back, over his shoulder and down, lunging at the heart of the rock. It shatters, pleasingly, into half a dozen pieces. He glances briefly up at me and nods; I wave back a small acknowledgement. Then he selects another rock and repeats the same, perfect action.

  The plateau where he stands is just at the point where the level ground gives way to the steep sides of the valley. There are no more houses, just a dense, green mat of tangled vegetation crossed with narrow paths of bare, red earth leading to and from the stream on the valley bed. I am forbidden by my father to go anywhere near the water. Farther up the valley a slaughterhouse built directly above the narrow channel pours effluent directly into it. The slaughterhouse attracts vultures, who wait out the time between meals on the roof of our house. I often do go down to the stream alone because I can't equate the joys of playing with the glittering, cool water with the invisible danger. Neither can the family in the panbody, who carry water from the stream to wash their pots and cook their rice.

  On the opposite side of the stream, halfway up the valley, stands a wooden shed. Empty by day, it serves as an illicit drinking den at night where men and women from the low-cost houses gather and drink omole, a twice-distilled palm wine so strong, I'd been told, that it could rob a man of his sight. The fermented liquid had to be strained of dead flies and live maggots before it was considered fit to drink. On the weekends the drinkers become revellers and turn up the music until it reverberates across the slopes and drowns the night-time sounds. Every Friday night the clamour of the frog colonies at the water's edge, the nocturnal serenades of stray dogs and the constant clatter of the crickets give way to the rhythms of Carl Douglas singing,
‘Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting’ again and again, until the early hours of the morning.

  In our house, we love it. We learn the words and improvise dance routines. My cousin Morlai scrunches his eyes into oriental slits, spins on his heels, kicks and punches the air. He is in his twenties and wears a slim-fit, patterned purple nylon shirt and matching flares with patch pockets. The girls Esther and Musu, also our cousins, laugh as though they are fit to burst. Afterwards Morlai and Santigi (who is not our cousin but lives with us all the same) leave to go out on the town. As they depart we tease them from the same veranda I watch from now. They take turns at wearing a pair of cheap sunglasses and disappear from view enfolded into the unblemished blackness of the night. In the morning there will be stories of bars and bravado.

  Against the metronome of cracking rocks I can hear car horns and the poda podas on Kissy Bye-Pass Road revving their engines as they prepare to take the workers into the city. High above the motors come the sing-song sopranos of the boys who lean out of the back door to call the routes: ‘Kiss-ssy, mountain cut, savage street, motor road.’ I can imagine the people pressing forward, cramming their bodies into every available space on board, the fetid odour, the heat. The latecomers climb onto the roof, or hang on the back step.

  Poda poda: ‘hither and thither’ the words mean. Rival teams of minibuses, covered in painted slogans and boasting the names of their owners, flying through town all day long. From here they weave their way through the tight alleys of the East End into the downtown area, where the office workers drop down and disappear into a grid of low-rise office blocks and old colonial government buildings. Some buses go up Circular Road and past the cemetery, beyond whose walls thick tropical climbers coil round the gothic gravestones as though they'd like to drag them back into the very graves they mark.