They walk into the shack.
‘Did you have enough to eat at the meeting?’
‘I am fine, Noria. The way you women cooked that cabbage, it tasted just like meat.’
‘Perhaps we should take a walk in the garden before we sleep. It is beautiful to walk among the flowers with you, Toloki.’
‘Yes, let us walk in the garden.’
However, they do not walk in the garden. They stare at the pictures on the wall, but are unable to evoke the enchantment. They concentrate very hard, without success. Noria bursts out crying, and apologises to Toloki. She says it is all her fault. Her mind is full of too many things that are not pleasant. Toloki is certain that these are the first real tears he has seen from Noria. At the funeral on Christmas Day she did break down into sobs, but he did not see her tears. There were too many people around her. But now, with his own hands, he is wiping her tears away. He is overwhelmed by sadness, and his own eyes fill with tears as well.
‘Don’t worry, Noria. We’ll surely walk in the garden tomorrow.’
‘It is not that, Toloki. I know that as long as you are here, you will transport us to the garden, and we shall be happy again. It is just that I feel so betrayed!’
She tells him that the local street committee had promised her that the leaders would publicly make a statement at the meeting, apologising for the death of her son, and reprimanding those who were responsible for it. Instead, they called her privately, and added insult to injury by saying that her child, who was only five years old, was not completely blameless.
‘Who killed your son, Noria?’
‘The Young Tigers.’
‘And they burnt down your shack?’
‘No one knows who burnt my shack down. It must be the same people who killed my son. Maybe to intimidate me. . to keep me quiet. . or to silence me forever.’
‘Keep you quiet? Is it a secret then, that the Young Tigers are responsible? Don’t the people know?’
Noria explains that the people know very well. The whole country knows. At least, those people who read newspapers since the story was featured prominently, with all the gory pictures. The kind of silence that everyone is demanding from her is that she should not condemn the perpetrators in any public forum, as this would give ammunition to the enemy. Now she sees that what they really want is that she, like the rest of the community, should accept her child’s guilt, and take it that he received what he deserved. If she keeps quiet, the whole scandal will quietly die, and no one will point fingers and say, ‘You see, they say they are fighting for freedom, yet they are no different from the tribal chief and his followers. They commit atrocities as well.’
Noria, however, refuses to be silenced, and tells Toloki that she will fight to the end to see that justice is done. She has kept quiet all these days because she believed that when the national leaders came, they would address the matter openly and with fairness, instead of sweeping it under the carpet.
‘They have treated you like this, yet you continue to work for them.’
‘I am not working for them, but for my people.’
‘I don’t read newspapers, so I do not know how your son died. But I am prepared to fight with you, Noria.’
Vutha’s second death. It all started with the last massacre experienced by the residents of the settlement. Perhaps we should say that it actually began with his involvement in what we call the struggle. At the age of five, Vutha was already a veteran of many political demonstrations. He was an expert at dancing the freedom dance, and at chanting the names of the leaders who must be revered, and of the sell-outs who must be destroyed. He could recite the Liberation Code and the Declaration of the People’s Rights. Of course, he did not understand a single word, since it was all in English. He mispronounced most of the words, too. He also knew all the songs. Even when he was playing with mud in the streets, or with wire cars with the other children, he could be heard singing about freedom, and about the heroic deeds of the armed wing of the people’s movement. He, of course, was not displaying any particular precociousness in this regard. All the children of the settlement, even those younger than Vutha, were (and still are) well-versed in these matters.
Noria was very proud of her son’s political involvement. She also was very active in demonstrations. She and her friend, ’Malehlohonolo, never missed a single demonstration. Even though ’Malehlohonolo was a washerwoman in the city, she would arrange her schedule around demonstrations and other political activities in the settlement. For her, the struggle came first.
When ’Malehlohonolo went to work in the city, she left her four-year-old daughter, Danisa, with Noria. Danisa played together with Vutha in the mud. They built mud houses, in which they baked mud pies.
They sang freedom songs, and danced the freedom dance. Sometimes Vutha, who was a year older than Danisa, would bully and slap her. She would cry and go to report to Auntie Noria. Auntie Noria would be angry with Vutha, and she would spank him.
‘Vutha, you don’t know how to play with other children. I’ll beat you until your buttocks are sour.’
After the spanking, Vutha would run away crying. He would then throw stones at the shack, while singing a freedom song with the message that his mother was a sell-out who should be destroyed along with the tribal chief. Noria would then chase after him. He knew from experience that he could not outrun his mother. She would catch him and spank him again. At first he would fight back, and bite his mother, while yelling for the whole world to hear that his mother was killing him. But when Noria did not stop, he would beg for forgiveness, and promise that he would never do it again, that he would be a good boy. Danisa would also be screaming at the same time, ‘Auntie Noria! Please forgive The Second, I know he won’t beat me up again’. She would try to bite Noria’s hand in order to save Vutha.
‘The Second is my brother! Please don’t kill him, Auntie Noria!’
After a few minutes they would all forget about the incident, and would be happily singing again. Noria would give them the sugared soft porridge that ’Malehlohonolo left for them in the morning when she went to work.
Although Noria was proud that her son was a political activist, she worried whenever there were demonstrations. Vutha was always in the forefront of the stone throwers. Soldiers and police sometimes came in armoured vehicles to confront the demonstrators. Vutha and his comrades would throw stones at the armoured vehicles. The soldiers, challenged by the full might of deadly five-year-olds armed with arsenals of stones, would open fire. In many cases, children died in these clashes. Noria always warned her son about fighting wars with the soldiers. It was one thing to demonstrate and sing freedom songs and dance the freedom dance. But to face soldiers who were armed with machine guns was much too dangerous. She didn’t want to lose her son for the second time, and she told him so.
‘But mama, I am a cadre. I am a freedom fighter.’
‘It is a good thing to be a cadre, my child. But when the soldiers come, you must not be in the front. Let the older boys, the Young Tigers, be in the frontline.’
‘I am not a coward, mama. I am a Young Tiger too.’
The Young Tigers form the youth wing of the political movement. The core group is usually made up of youths, both male and female, in their late teens and early twenties. However, there are some peripheral members who are much older, sometimes even in their thirties. Younger activists of Vutha’s age generally regard themselves as Young Tigers too.
The Young Tigers always praised Vutha for the strength of his throw. They said that if a stone from his hand hit a policeman, or a soldier, or a hostel vigilante on the head, he would surely fall down. Vutha was proud of this praise that came from older and battle-scarred cadres. It established him as a hero among his peers. Sometimes it went to his head, hence his practising his stone-throwing skills at Noria’s shack whenever she punished him for being a bad boy.