Queued Up Faces
Queued Up Faces

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—1—
It was a sad, miserable, and ponderous evening when Flora saw silhouettes of lined up ravens and the sky was full of the birds. Suddenly, she heard the strong rhythmic beats of Hipco’s music coming from somewhere and she felt waves of severe throbbing pain rising in her head, sliding downwards her back.
“Ebola!” She terrified. “What… Mmm…me too?”
Those were the sweltering days of early August, and it appeared as if ire of nature fulminated over Liberia. The alarming number of deaths at Redemption Hospital and in the private clinics had paralyzed the government, and Flora, like all other Liberians, was chaotic. In their Sunday sermons they announced that Ebola was a family disease, but hardly anyone believed it. People were so disgusted with their corrupt government that they suspected presence of Ebola despite watching and reading about its deadly devastation. The government had affixed posters everywhere clearly stating that Ebola was real, but no one was willing to believe. They believed that Ebola was actually non-existent and it was government’s new ploy. But a huge death toll was claiming that Ebola was a reality. And then a huge wave of panic rapidly spread in Monrovia that even to a minor illness people though it was not any ordinary disease but Ebola. And in that atmosphere of terror, aggravated by Philip’s sudden death and David’s mysterious ailment, no one was ready to endorse Flora’s skepticism. How could the Austin family accept that it wasn’t something very serious and grim? How could people at Capitol Hill trust her words? But she still remained unyielding in her assertion and wrangled with everybody to prove herself true. “No, no, it wasn’t Ebola,” she declared confidently. “My adversaries have poisoned Philip and David.”
David had somehow found a place in Capitol Hill house, but when all the relatives with whom he shared his room died one after the other, set off the Austin family frenzied. David’s presence was now unbearable for them. The neighbors also insisted that he be moved somewhere else from Capitol Hill. Flora’s obduracy suffered a major setback. Under extreme pressure, she sent David to Crown Hill, and she herself came to live in that swampy land with mangroves. And what could she do? She didn’t want to die. If she died, what would happen to the Austin family? But David…. She let out a cold sigh when David’s image flashed. She fretted over the disaster that had befallen in the blink of an eye. What David had done? Why did he get overly consumed by Philip’s illness and inflicted the malady on himself? She had forbidden him time and again from meeting Philip, but he refused to listen to her, and went away to take care of his dying father, exposing himself to contact the disease in return. Obsessed with his passion to repay the debt of his father’s love and affection, he himself was now going to lose his life. Enduring the cruel irony of fate, Flora felt pain throbbing not only in her head, but all over her body.
Hounded by an incessant restlessness, she walked to the window and looked out. But what she saw outside terribly shocked her. Granny Rebecca was strolling in the courtyard. She had probably just taken a bath; water droplets were dripping from her wet hair. “Granny…Is she here?” She stunned. “But how is it possible?” She forgot her pain. But granny was there right in front of her, looking at her while sauntering.
Wavering images of the evening flashed before Flora’s eyes when she had seen granny Rebecca first time. It was the same bloodiest evening of 1990 when dead body of the President Samuel Doe was hanging in the lawn of the Executive Mansion. Those were the first days of Liberia’s civil war. Granny Rebecca was strolling quietly in the same way in her Capitol Hill house, looking quite unruffled by the appalling happenings. It looked like she had just taken a shower. Water droplets were dripping from her wet hair.
Five decades ago, when the colonial government of Spain needed farmhands to grow cocoa in Guinea, Liberia provided them with workers who returned home without any wages after the job finished. At that time the League of Nations had termed this act as slavery. Granny Rebecca was among those who raised their voices against the oppressed laborers. She was the grandmother of Flora’s mother and was popular as Granny Rebecca — the owner of Austin Rubber Factory, a high status lady in Monrovia, mysteriously disappeared one day without leaving a trace and was never seen again during these years, but now when Flora looked through her bedroom window, she found her standing outside. Flora was dizzy. Was that an illusion? Or just a hallucination? She muttered quietly.
From that day on, she saw Granny Rebecca time and again. The entire house at Capitol Hill belonged to her. The big yard, the enormous rooms, and the hallways, all were hers. Flora felt her Granny’s spirit haunting the everywhere in the house; quiet, glum and pensive as she wanted to say something but couldn’t.
A nameless terror — an unfamiliar fear, which she had always vainly tried to free herself out all her life — seized Flora. She hadn’t enough courage at that old age of hers to quell those fears. It had left her utterly upset incapacitating her from protesting or picking up a fight with anyone. That’s why, she left David at Crown Hill and ran away from there. Flora wondered why Granny Rebecca was then pursuing her, long after her sudden disappearance.
—2—
The Sun rose high from behind the mangrove trees, and Flora felt like it was slowly descending into her… so hot, so fierce. She felt that her entire body was set on fire. She had not slept for the past several nights. And it seemed to her that she had never slept at all, and might have forgotten how to sleep. Now, it seemed to her that she had gone through an identity crisis and had lost her self-awareness. An overpowering feeling took roots in her that she did not exist and was a nonentity, she was not Flore. “Am I not Flora?” She asked herself. “Is it true that I’m not?” But she was Flora, indeed. And she could not hide that truth. She gasped. The agony plaguing her life for the past fourteen years had settled in her eyes.
Ugh! That devastating civil war… the ethnic conflicts… those apathetic governments and corrupt politicians, and those greedy people, fighting over and dying to seize the natural resources of Liberia? The chaos, the bloodshed, the persecuted and tyrannized queued up faces — pallid, rugged, and falling apart. She felt as if everything had just happened right then — just a moment ago.
Just then suddenly her mobile phone rang, breaking her train of thoughts. She screamed, mistaking it to be an explosion nearby. She could not understand for a moment what had happened but gradually she composed herself. When she received the call, she found that the news was indeed explosive. David was dead. Ebola had killed four people from three generations of Austin family up till now. Flora could not stand and collapsed helplessly.
The Austin family had been falling apart. It was crumbling. She could see many faces who were lined up, not knowing who would get lost and when. Suddenly, she felt the sun running through her veins, turning her into a whirlwind of fire. She succumbed to jitters and became victim of heebie-jeebies. Minutes passed like ages. And finally, when she regained her consciousness, the grief of losing her loved ones was so intense that it jolted her like an earthquake.
“Oh! My child! My family,” she screamed hysterically.
“What should I do, my God?” She clenched her fists.
She had managed to look after all of them so well in the face of adversities that even the fourteen years of civil war could not harm them. She was under the delusion that the Austin family was getting stronger every day. They all held themselves together, hand in hand, facing life’s vicissitudes with a smile, immersed in their own happy world.
But the dreadful Ebola, the spiteful heralder of doom, had beset the families. As fast one of them got close to the other as soon it died. Ugh!! What a tragedy it was, that had struck the families Liberia which were once a complete institution, trussing up whole community in a strong bond. But now they were breaking away, disintegrating, vanishing.
The attack of Ebola was more dangerous than the civil war. Oh God, she began to crumble again, wandering in unknown directions. Suddenly, nostalgia and melancholy swooped over her. Her eyes filled with the stream of heartache, and while crying bitterly she saw Granny Rebecca standing next to her. She was humming softly a folk song.
‘Banuwa… Banuwa,
Banuwa yoo,
Ala…no,
Nehi…nio…la…no,
Nehnia, la…no
[Don’t cry, don’t cry,
Pretty girl, don’t cry,
Your father off at the village,
Your mother out for a while,
Your brother down by the river,
No need to sit and cry.]
Flora was amazed to see her singing. How could she sing at all? She forgot her cry.
—3—
The full moon was shining marvelously in the sky with all its splendor and charms, but Flora was surrounded by darkness, and her eyes were radiant like those of a cat in lightless nights. Sitting in a chair by the window, she was stared into distant space with the impression as though she was an insane. Sleep had deserted her eyes for the past several nights. And she felt that she had never slept. She had forgotten what is called sleep. It would have been better if she had forgotten her past, but it was still wakeful inside her. She remembered every bit of it as if everything had just happened.
In the Second Liberian Civil War — the clash between the LURD* and the forces of President Charles Taylor — the six hundred thousand queued up people were martyred. Two million people were injured and bathed in their own bloods instigated by anti-government warlords like Joshua Milton Blahyi, the evangelical preacher, who slaughtered innocent children and declared openly that he was saving them from getting killed by bullets. An eerie belief in superstitions that led soldiers to mutilate and cut their foes into pieces, masticated their hearts to gather the immense strength. Flora recalled all those extremities of brutality that both LURD and Charles Taylor showed when they used child-soldiers. Ah, those children were the future of Liberia, and they pillaged and killed.
—1—
It was a sad, miserable, and ponderous evening when Flora saw silhouettes of lined up ravens and the sky was full of the birds. Suddenly, she heard the strong rhythmic beats of Hipco’s music coming from somewhere and she felt waves of severe throbbing pain rising in her head, sliding downwards her back.
“Ebola!” She terrified. “What… Mmm…me too?”
Those were the sweltering days of early August, and it appeared as if ire of nature fulminated over Liberia. The alarming number of deaths at Redemption Hospital and in the private clinics had paralyzed the government, and Flora, like all other Liberians, was chaotic. In their Sunday sermons they announced that Ebola was a family disease, but hardly anyone believed it. People were so disgusted with their corrupt government that they suspected presence of Ebola despite watching and reading about its deadly devastation. The government had affixed posters everywhere clearly stating that Ebola was real, but no one was willing to believe. They believed that Ebola was actually non-existent and it was government’s new ploy. But a huge death toll was claiming that Ebola was a reality. And then a huge wave of panic rapidly spread in Monrovia that even to a minor illness people though it was not any ordinary disease but Ebola. And in that atmosphere of terror, aggravated by Philip’s sudden death and David’s mysterious ailment, no one was ready to endorse Flora’s skepticism. How could the Austin family accept that it wasn’t something very serious and grim? How could people at Capitol Hill trust her words? But she still remained unyielding in her assertion and wrangled with everybody to prove herself true. “No, no, it wasn’t Ebola,” she declared confidently. “My adversaries have poisoned Philip and David.”
David had somehow found a place in Capitol Hill house, but when all the relatives with whom he shared his room died one after the other, set off the Austin family frenzied. David’s presence was now unbearable for them. The neighbors also insisted that he be moved somewhere else from Capitol Hill. Flora’s obduracy suffered a major setback. Under extreme pressure, she sent David to Crown Hill, and she herself came to live in that swampy land with mangroves. And what could she do? She didn’t want to die. If she died, what would happen to the Austin family? But David…. She let out a cold sigh when David’s image flashed. She fretted over the disaster that had befallen in the blink of an eye. What David had done? Why did he get overly consumed by Philip’s illness and inflicted the malady on himself? She had forbidden him time and again from meeting Philip, but he refused to listen to her, and went away to take care of his dying father, exposing himself to contact the disease in return. Obsessed with his passion to repay the debt of his father’s love and affection, he himself was now going to lose his life. Enduring the cruel irony of fate, Flora felt pain throbbing not only in her head, but all over her body.
Hounded by an incessant restlessness, she walked to the window and looked out. But what she saw outside terribly shocked her. Granny Rebecca was strolling in the courtyard. She had probably just taken a bath; water droplets were dripping from her wet hair. “Granny…Is she here?” She stunned. “But how is it possible?” She forgot her pain. But granny was there right in front of her, looking at her while sauntering.
Wavering images of the evening flashed before Flora’s eyes when she had seen granny Rebecca first time. It was the same bloodiest evening of 1990 when dead body of the President Samuel Doe was hanging in the lawn of the Executive Mansion. Those were the first days of Liberia’s civil war. Granny Rebecca was strolling quietly in the same way in her Capitol Hill house, looking quite unruffled by the appalling happenings. It looked like she had just taken a shower. Water droplets were dripping from her wet hair.
Five decades ago, when the colonial government of Spain needed farmhands to grow cocoa in Guinea, Liberia provided them with workers who returned home without any wages after the job finished. At that time the League of Nations had termed this act as slavery. Granny Rebecca was among those who raised their voices against the oppressed laborers. She was the grandmother of Flora’s mother and was popular as Granny Rebecca — the owner of Austin Rubber Factory, a high status lady in Monrovia, mysteriously disappeared one day without leaving a trace and was never seen again during these years, but now when Flora looked through her bedroom window, she found her standing outside. Flora was dizzy. Was that an illusion? Or just a hallucination? She muttered quietly.
From that day on, she saw Granny Rebecca time and again. The entire house at Capitol Hill belonged to her. The big yard, the enormous rooms, and the hallways, all were hers. Flora felt her Granny’s spirit haunting the everywhere in the house; quiet, glum and pensive as she wanted to say something but couldn’t.
A nameless terror — an unfamiliar fear, which she had always vainly tried to free herself out all her life — seized Flora. She hadn’t enough courage at that old age of hers to quell those fears. It had left her utterly upset incapacitating her from protesting or picking up a fight with anyone. That’s why, she left David at Crown Hill and ran away from there. Flora wondered why Granny Rebecca was then pursuing her, long after her sudden disappearance.
—2—
The Sun rose high from behind the mangrove trees, and Flora felt like it was slowly descending into her… so hot, so fierce. She felt that her entire body was set on fire. She had not slept for the past several nights. And it seemed to her that she had never slept at all, and might have forgotten how to sleep. Now, it seemed to her that she had gone through an identity crisis and had lost her self-awareness. An overpowering feeling took roots in her that she did not exist and was a nonentity, she was not Flore. “Am I not Flora?” She asked herself. “Is it true that I’m not?” But she was Flora, indeed. And she could not hide that truth. She gasped. The agony plaguing her life for the past fourteen years had settled in her eyes.
Ugh! That devastating civil war… the ethnic conflicts… those apathetic governments and corrupt politicians, and those greedy people, fighting over and dying to seize the natural resources of Liberia? The chaos, the bloodshed, the persecuted and tyrannized queued up faces — pallid, rugged, and falling apart. She felt as if everything had just happened right then — just a moment ago.
Just then suddenly her mobile phone rang, breaking her train of thoughts. She screamed, mistaking it to be an explosion nearby. She could not understand for a moment what had happened but gradually she composed herself. When she received the call, she found that the news was indeed explosive. David was dead. Ebola had killed four people from three generations of Austin family up till now. Flora could not stand and collapsed helplessly.
The Austin family had been falling apart. It was crumbling. She could see many faces who were lined up, not knowing who would get lost and when. Suddenly, she felt the sun running through her veins, turning her into a whirlwind of fire. She succumbed to jitters and became victim of heebie-jeebies. Minutes passed like ages. And finally, when she regained her consciousness, the grief of losing her loved ones was so intense that it jolted her like an earthquake.
“Oh! My child! My family,” she screamed hysterically.
“What should I do, my God?” She clenched her fists.
She had managed to look after all of them so well in the face of adversities that even the fourteen years of civil war could not harm them. She was under the delusion that the Austin family was getting stronger every day. They all held themselves together, hand in hand, facing life’s vicissitudes with a smile, immersed in their own happy world.
But the dreadful Ebola, the spiteful heralder of doom, had beset the families. As fast one of them got close to the other as soon it died. Ugh!! What a tragedy it was, that had struck the families Liberia which were once a complete institution, trussing up whole community in a strong bond. But now they were breaking away, disintegrating, vanishing.
The attack of Ebola was more dangerous than the civil war. Oh God, she began to crumble again, wandering in unknown directions. Suddenly, nostalgia and melancholy swooped over her. Her eyes filled with the stream of heartache, and while crying bitterly she saw Granny Rebecca standing next to her. She was humming softly a folk song.
‘Banuwa… Banuwa,
Banuwa yoo,
Ala…no,
Nehi…nio…la…no,
Nehnia, la…no
[Don’t cry, don’t cry,
Pretty girl, don’t cry,
Your father off at the village,
Your mother out for a while,
Your brother down by the river,
No need to sit and cry.]
Flora was amazed to see her singing. How could she sing at all? She forgot her cry.
—3—
The full moon was shining marvelously in the sky with all its splendor and charms, but Flora was surrounded by darkness, and her eyes were radiant like those of a cat in lightless nights. Sitting in a chair by the window, she was stared into distant space with the impression as though she was an insane. Sleep had deserted her eyes for the past several nights. And she felt that she had never slept. She had forgotten what is called sleep. It would have been better if she had forgotten her past, but it was still wakeful inside her. She remembered every bit of it as if everything had just happened.
In the Second Liberian Civil War — the clash between the LURD* and the forces of President Charles Taylor — the six hundred thousand queued up people were martyred. Two million people were injured and bathed in their own bloods instigated by anti-government warlords like Joshua Milton Blahyi, the evangelical preacher, who slaughtered innocent children and declared openly that he was saving them from getting killed by bullets. An eerie belief in superstitions that led soldiers to mutilate and cut their foes into pieces, masticated their hearts to gather the immense strength. Flora recalled all those extremities of brutality that both LURD and Charles Taylor showed when they used child-soldiers. Ah, those children were the future of Liberia, and they pillaged and killed.

In that atmosphere of fear and terror there were several days when she fell disoriented and crumbled, and her mind wandered aimlessly, flying in all directions. She wished to escape to the strange islands and disappear like Granny Rebecca. But it was Philip who always impeded her way. Philip, Ah! The thought of Philip evoked a painful sigh out of her heart. She loved Philip but could never have had a happy matrimonial life with him. They came so perilously close to each other that they drifted apart forever. One day, Philip vanished into thin air leaving her alone with David. Ugh! The way many a things ensue in life, no one can find an explanation for them. She got up restlessly.
The full moon looked very beautiful in the sky, scattering its light all around. What she grasped? She saw Granny Rebecca strolling in the moonlit courtyard, and first time in her life Flora wished to ask her what made her disappear. But why did she always look depressed? She ran towards the courtyard, grappling with darkness and shoring herself up, but the continuous ringing of her mobile phone fettered her legs. It was Uncle Joseph calling from the other end, “Hello, Flora! Where are you? Your son David’s body is decaying at Crown Hill, and its reek is creeping into the neighbors’ houses. It’s a pity that our government is not able to dispose of these rotten dead bodies. Now we are waiting for you to come and perform David’s last rites.”
The cellular phone fell down from her hand. She started wobbling. But what was that? Granny Rebecca stood in front of her, quiet as ever, sad, and pensive as if she wanted to say something, wanted to do something, to return to the world of the living. The expression of sadness on her face was so deep that Flora felt as if something was happening inside her, breaking her into pieces, dividing her into two parts, exhorting her to choose between the eternal questions to be or not to be. She could not decide which one of the parts was dominating her being and what was she going to do. Her prolonged and unbearable suffering had made her unable to think what she was doing and where she was leaving for.
****
*Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy. An anti-Taylor rebel group.
….
(Translated from Urdu by Prof Syed Sarwar Hussain)
In that atmosphere of fear and terror there were several days when she fell disoriented and crumbled, and her mind wandered aimlessly, flying in all directions. She wished to escape to the strange islands and disappear like Granny Rebecca. But it was Philip who always impeded her way. Philip, Ah! The thought of Philip evoked a painful sigh out of her heart. She loved Philip but could never have had a happy matrimonial life with him. They came so perilously close to each other that they drifted apart forever. One day, Philip vanished into thin air leaving her alone with David. Ugh! The way many a things ensue in life, no one can find an explanation for them. She got up restlessly.
The full moon looked very beautiful in the sky, scattering its light all around. What she grasped? She saw Granny Rebecca strolling in the moonlit courtyard, and first time in her life Flora wished to ask her what made her disappear. But why did she always look depressed? She ran towards the courtyard, grappling with darkness and shoring herself up, but the continuous ringing of her mobile phone fettered her legs. It was Uncle Joseph calling from the other end, “Hello, Flora! Where are you? Your son David’s body is decaying at Crown Hill, and its reek is creeping into the neighbors’ houses. It’s a pity that our government is not able to dispose of these rotten dead bodies. Now we are waiting for you to come and perform David’s last rites.”
The cellular phone fell down from her hand. She started wobbling. But what was that? Granny Rebecca stood in front of her, quiet as ever, sad, and pensive as if she wanted to say something, wanted to do something, to return to the world of the living. The expression of sadness on her face was so deep that Flora felt as if something was happening inside her, breaking her into pieces, dividing her into two parts, exhorting her to choose between the eternal questions to be or not to be. She could not decide which one of the parts was dominating her being and what was she going to do. Her prolonged and unbearable suffering had made her unable to think what she was doing and where she was leaving for.
****
*Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy. An anti-Taylor rebel group.
….
(Translated from Urdu by Prof Syed Sarwar Hussain)
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Salma Sanam is one of those women writers from South India who have made their mark in the Urdu Fiction. Belonging to Bangalore, the District of Karnataka, India, she was born as Syeda Salma Bano and is a lecturer of Zoology. In 1990, she wrote her first short story, “𝘙𝘰𝘴𝘩𝘯𝘪” (The Light). Her collections of short stories include: “𝘛𝘰𝘰𝘳 𝘗𝘦𝘳 𝘎𝘢𝘺𝘢 𝘏𝘶𝘢 𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘬𝘩𝘴” (The visitor of Mount Sinai), “𝘗𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘫𝘩𝘢𝘳 𝘒𝘦 𝘓𝘰𝘨” (The Autumnal People), “𝘗𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘷𝘪 𝘚𝘢𝘮𝘵” (The Fifth Direction), and “𝘘𝘢𝘵𝘢𝘢𝘳 𝘔𝘦𝘪𝘯 𝘒𝘩𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘺 𝘊𝘩𝘦𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘺” (Queued Up Faces). She is also the recipient of many national and international awards for her fiction.
View all postsSyed Sarwar Hussain, born On September 13, 1955, In India, is an Associate Professor at the Department of Linguistics; Translation Studies, College of Languages and Translation, King Saud University, Riyadh. Dr. Hussain has been teaching English for the past forty years, sixteen of them in India, and the rest in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He has published eight books and latest published books are “The Scattered Leaves and ‘Dreams in Moonless Night”. While “My Meandering Muse”, his Anthology of English short stories, “The Blue Beak Embers” are slated for publication soon.
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Salma Sanam has shown her deep observation on the cruelities, supression n aftereffects of the civil war. I think the epidemic Ebola has a significant n symbolic meaning in the story.