Rain
200 rainless days in the city I still call home. A friend writes these words to me. What does it mean? Birds drop out of the sky, she and her daughter are witness to this cruel sight. I have never seen a bird fall dead from the sky. Bees, yes, once when the local authorities enthusiastically experimented with a new anti mosquito chemical spray. But birds…it seems all the popular stories about dystopia are only imitating reality. We are already there.
If only we writers of poems and pompous prose could send entreaties up to the skies. If words were prayers, we would perhaps influence the universe. If the Gods don’t exist, we could still seed the clouds with our rhymes, send our words cascading into the dry river beds and bring them back to life. Our most powerful words we would send deep into the parched earth, and replenish it with our tears. If only.
To live alongside the bluest of blue oceans in a parched land is the greatest of sorrows. It is a graceless desert, hopeless and with no oasis in sight. It is only when the storms gather out at sea and make their thundering way toward land that we reverse our cold anger at the ocean. It is only then that we remember it is our cradle, our nursery and our eternal spring.
My children will not allow themselves to imagine my childhood. Days when the water was a murky green, and if we were lucky, with no worms in it. It always smelt of decay. You had to steel yourself to bathe in it. Heat like a wall and no way to cool yourself. Electricity cuts and drought are closely related soul sappers. It seemed that we lived this existence for years. No running water, except for one early morning hour, when the taps would reluctantly allow a trickle. Always hot, the electricity failing until it was easier to just lie still and let the moisture gather under your body.
I should remember the drought. The awful day when our garden well ran dry and my mother was angry at no one in particular. The week our plants died because the ground was parched of all remaining moisture and there was no water to spare for the garden. The summer my brain switched off the thirst impulse because much worse than thirst was swallowing the dank water.
But instead, the brain miraculously placates all those memories. Here instead is a clear memory of a morning after the rains arrived. It had been drizzling. Finally, the air was cool enough to walk in. We visited the plant nursery and bought a potted plant for a favourite aunt. We strolled along in that light drizzle, laughing at the sheer delight of the raindrops, a happy company. We called out to our friend as we neared his first floor house. Come down, we shouted. See what we bought for your mom. Shhh, he hushed us. My dad died last night. Our voices caught in our throats. The rain continued to fall gently on us as we stared up at our friend. It rained all that day and night.