The Sacred And The Profane - Rabbi Desiree R. Ntolo (best books to read all time txt) 📗

THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE


DÉSIRÉE NTOLO


© Désirée Ntolo


PART ONE
THE ENCOUNTER


CHAPTER ONE

MY FRIENDS IN THE SKY
The academic year 1973-1974 had come. And like all the other students I was back in Yaounde, the Capital of Cameroon, for the new school year. I lived with my maternal uncle and it was not a very easy or pleasant life. And after a very upsetting and depressing first Trimester, I could not wait for the Christmas holidays to come, so that I might go back home to my grand-mother.
And that December, after my end of term exams on the eleventh, I went back home early to my village. On the twelfth, I packed my trunk early in the morning and left. People were quite surprised to see me when I arrived later that afternoon, for all expected their children to arrive by the twentieth at the earliest.
To all enquiries I replied that I had just wanted to get out of the city. My grandmother was of course very happy to see me, but she too was quite surprised to see me arriving so early, and she set about trying to find out the reason. She was convinced that there was something seriously wrong with me.
But I finally convinced her that there was nothing to worry about. But she had brought me up and she knew me better than most people, and sometimes better than I even knew myself. And was there something wrong! I was four months pregnant.
At eleven o’clock in the evening, I stepped outside to enjoy the beautiful sound of silence, as I could only feel it in my village where cars rarely passed, and most people went to bed at eight o’clock in the evening.
The moon was on its second quarter; soon it would be full. And standing there, I thought about my ‘Friends In The Sky’, those who had been there nearly all my life, appearing in their silent, rounded, light-filled ‘flying things’ most of the times at nights, sometimes during the day, when I was alone at the farms.
I remembered a few years back, when they had made an exception and had appeared while I was with my grandmother. And for once I had been determined to ensure that someone else saw them with me. So I had called her and pointed at the silver-coloured object, and I had told her that I had seen such objects a lot of times.
Amazingly she had not appeared as surprised as I had thought she would be. Instead, she looked at it for a while, shading her eyes against the glare of the sun with one hand, the other one placed on her hip, and she had quietly nodded. Then she had muttered:
‘Yes, I know. I remember there were one just like that in the sky, behind our house the day before you were born, then right above our house the day you were born; and for five more days after your birth. We saw it, Solomon and I’… And this evening, I virtually felt a kind of urge to see them. I had the feeling of something missing somewhere in me.
I took the antelope skin that had been in the family for generations, lay it in the courtyard and installed myself on it. I lay on my back and scanned the skies, trying to identify the different star groups as my grandfather used to show me when I was little.
Dear, dear Grandfather Solomon, he had died of cancer and in great pain in 1968. Things had so suddenly changed for me, soon after his death. Finished my spoilt and pampered life style…
And I had been suddenly thrown into the stark reality of hatred, jealousies, calumnies and criticism, without forgetting hunger. And the humiliation of a near-slavish but nevertheless necessary obligation to live with people who did not want me to be with them. I missed him so much…
After twenty minutes of uselessly gazing at the skies, I reasoned that my ‘friends’ in the flying object had also abandoned me. Now that I was older, they had tired of showing up. I wondered who they were, though I was convinced that they could only be those famous ‘Elyonin’ whom my grandfather had told me about so many times in my childhood. Without noticing it, I realized that I had been crying as I thought about him.
As I finally decided to go to bed somewhat disappointed, I looked one last time at the stars, and suddenly one of them began to move very slowly towards the West, growing bigger and bigger as it moved. I immediately realized that this was no star, for it came closer and stopped about a kilometer and half in the sky above me and switched on a rainbow of lights.
My heart began to beat very rapidly, and I stood up, overjoyed, staring at the beautiful object in delight; and suddenly all my sadness left me. They had come! My friends were there! They had not forgotten me!
For fifteen minutes I looked, marveling at the stunning object. There had never been any doubt in my mind that there were living beings inside those objects. For though they never made a sound, they always switched lights on and off, changing their colours of the lights, and always flying away after a while.
Our village is very far from the departmental city, and the objects could never be mistaken for airplanes, even though we sometimes saw airplanes passing very high up in the distance. Airplanes made a lot of noise and they were very recognizable by their shapes. And they passed once every week.
My ‘flying objects’ on the contrary were very different, very unusual, and quite round-shaped; like upside-down bowls. They always had lights flashing on the tops and bottoms of them. And unlike the planes, they were never afraid to come closer to the village, and they could fly straight up when they went away, not horizontally like the airplanes.
After fifteen minutes the object’s lights changed, becoming brighter, and it shot straight up, disappearing within seconds in the heavens.
I waited a little while, hoping that they would come back, and then as I saw nothing but the myriad of twinkling stars, I finally picked up the antelope skin and went back indoors. I went to bed many thoughts swirling in my mind, each fighting to come to the forefront… And I fell asleep.
A SHINING SILVER-COLOURED THING IN THE SKY
Morning broke, and I went into the kitchen as usual for the traditional breakfast. And of course my grandmother tried to question me again, determined to know the secret that she was sure I was hiding. But I gave nothing away, and after a while she finally gave up questioning me.
After breakfast we got ready to go the farm. This was the time for weeding the groundnuts. I loved those moments with my grandmother. It was always a pleasure for me to tread the same weedy trails, meeting people on the way and stopping every time for a little chat before continuing. We knew all of them and everyone knew us too. We only had to hear a voice to know whose villager it belonged to.
I knew that forest like the inside of my own pockets. I knew every tree, every turning, every field and cocoa plantation and I knew exactly to whom each belonged... This was my domain where I most loved to be…
We arrived at the groundnut farm. And as usual we downed our baskets and tools to give God yet another “thank You for having led us safely to the farm, and for the protection You will give us all the rest of the day, till You return us home in safety later in the evening. Amen”
I did not mind a single bit. I loved my grandmother dearly and I loved her pure heart; and I never got tired of hearing her pray. The prayer finished, we set to work weeding the groundnuts…
Later that afternoon at fifteen and a half hours as she usually did, my grandmother left me alone to go to another one of our farms’ to collect all the vegetables she needed for dinner that night. But not before having ordered me to continue working, and lecturing me about my laziness and reluctance of course.
All our actions at the farms had developed into a form of ritual that had never varied over the years:
We arrived at the farm and we prayed, then we worked. We posed for half an hour at midday to eat and drink. Then back to work, until half past three, when my grandmother would leave me alone to disappear for an hour and return with a large basket full of different vegetables… We never did things differently…
As soon as she turned her back to go, I put down my hoe and sat myself down under a cassava shrub to dream or sing…
One thing that I loved to do when I had the time was to explore the endless ‘cyberspace of my mind’ as I called it. In there took place many adventures in which I was both the heroine and the villain, the queen and the slave, the bully and the victim, the evil witch and the good fairy, the good doer and the evil one, the ruler and the subject, the princess and the maid. But always I ended up the winner, for in the beautiful and wonderful world of my mind, I controlled my destiny to suit me, and there never was any real harm or defeat, not only for me and those I loved but to my enemies as well…
And When I did not dream, I sang. I had this repertoire of hundreds of songs that I sang over and over again to myself. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of solitude that I could get.
Chewing on a sugar cane I turned on my side, leant on one elbow and began to think about my Grammar School friend Philomene. Then throwing back my head to swallow the sweet juices, I saw one of the silver-coloured and shining flying things, so close that I choked on the sugar juice in surprise. I coughed violently, my eyes watering, trying to get the juice out of my windpipe, while looking up at the silver object.
When I finally stopped coughing I stood up and for the first time looked properly at it. And I realized that it did not really look like a turned down bowl. It was more like a bell, flat but just a little bit rounded at the bottom. It was so close that I could clearly see the gold-coloured sign that was painted on the bottom and the side of it. It looked like a Star of David.
It came even closer and I could hear a very low humming sound coming from it. It had a flashing white light on its top, and a red one at its bottom. The bottom light was placed right in the middle of the large golden Star of David painted on it.
As it came closer, I sat back, leaning on both my elbows, and a little frightened. Then suddenly something opened on the side of the otherwise windowless ‘silver bell’. It was a window, for I could see shadows moving behind it. It was dark inside with just a bit of light.
I thought to myself that whoever was inside had dimmed the lights because they did not want me to see them. As I looked, a very thin white