Read African Quilt : 24 Modern African Stories (9781101617441) for Free Online Page B

grey now. They must have shone prettily once, under a sun far away. If they blew her away now, where would she fly and fall? A window that looked out at the hostile sky. She shivered in spite of the wool she was wearing, layers of clothes. Hell is not only blazing fire, a part of it is freezing cold, torturous ice and snow. In Scotland’s winter you have a glimpse of this unseen world, feel the breath of it in your bones.
    There was a bench and she sat down. There was no one here on this floor. She was alone with sketches of jungle animals, words on the wall. A diplomat away from home, in Ethiopia in 1903: Asafa’s country long before Asafa was born.
It is difficult to imagine anything more satisfactory or better worth taking part in than a lion drive. We rode back to camp feeling very well indeed. Archie was quite right when he said that this was the first time since we have started that we have really been in Africa—the real Africa of jungle inhabited only by game, and plains where herds of antelope meet your eye in every direction.
    â€œShadiya, don’t cry.” He still pronounced her name wrongly because she had not told him how to say it properly.
    He sat next to her on the bench, the blur of his navy jacket blocking the guns, the wall-length pattern of antelope herds. She should explain that she cried easily, there was no need for the alarm on his face. His awkward voice: “Why are ye crying?”
    He didn’t know, he didn’t understand. He was all wrong, not a substitute . . .
    â€œThey are telling lies in this museum,” she said. “Don’t believe them. It’s all wrong. It’s not jungles and antelopes, it’s people. We have things like computers and cars. We have 7UP in Africa, and some people, a few people, have bathrooms with golden taps . . . I shouldn’t be here with you. You shouldn’t talk to me . . .”
    He said, “Museums change, I can change . . .”
    He didn’t know it was a steep path she had no strength for. He didn’t understand. Many things, years and landscapes, gulfs. If she had been strong she would have explained, and not tired of explaining. She would have patiently taught him another language, letters curved like the epsilon and gamma he knew from mathematics. She would have shown him that words could be read from right to left. If she had not been small in the museum, if she had been really strong, she would have made his trip to Mecca real, not only in a book.

C HINUA A CHEBE
    Chinua Achebe was born in 1930 in Ogidi, Nigeria, to an Igbo-speaking Christian family and learned English at the age of eight. He was educated at Government College, Umuahia, and the University College of Ibadan, where he was among the first graduates to earn a bachelor’s degree. He was employed at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation from 1954 until 1966, where he created and directed the Voice of Nigeria. Later he became a senior research fellow at the Institute of African Studies at Nsukka, and then a professor of literature at the University of Nigeria. He has also taught at UCLA, the University of Connecticut, the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, and other Nigerian universities; he taught for many years at Bard College, and he is currently teaching at Brown University. He is a prolific author, writing in a multiplicity of genres, including poetry, essays, short stories, and novels. He is best known for his first novel,
Things Fall Apart
(1958), widely considered one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century and translated into more than forty-five languages. Among his many other notable works are
No Longer at Ease
(1960),
A Man of His People
(1966),
Anthills on the Savannah
(1988),
The Voter
(1994), and
Home and Exile
(2000).
    Â 
    Civil Peace
    (1972)
    J onathan Iwegbu counted himself extraordinarily lucky. “Happy survival!” meant so much more to him than just