“The Africans” (PDF)

ACT 1: THE ARRIVAL

Inside of car driving on dusty road at increasing speed. The driver, searching through static for a radio signal, stumbles on a channel.

Voice on radio: …next year may come to claim the pride of place as a watershed event of the global cry of the oppressed—again wielding the force of Western depoliticization and dehistoricization of other historical emblems of radical resistance. Think about it: Che Guevara is already dead in the jungles of Bolivia, Frantz Fanon died of leukemia in a Washington hospital, Nelson Mandela is imprisoned on Robben Island, and of course, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah was deposed in a military coup. Biafra is still engulfed by a civil war. And CIA-sponsored military juntas are running amok in Latin America. Martin Luther King could very well be assassinated in Memphis just like Malcom X was killed in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom. But perhaps the most striking incident of all in 1968 could be…

Hamisi: He loves to hear the sound of his own voice! [Laughing.]

Radio stops, and car noises continue.

Narrator: Hamisi had left home in his car at the end of the first day of Eid. It had been hectically joyous with the feasts of Mombasa. But Hamisi was in a hurry to get back to Nairobi, where he was starting a new job as the editor in chief of BBC East Africa, so he had decided to travel at night.

Car noises continue.

Narrator: As Hamisi approached a village with a rest stop, he remembered he had promised his family he would stop for a cup of tea. But by now Hamisi was more impatient than ever.

Watch alarm goes off.

Hamisi: [Yawns.] Aaah, it’s teatime! I should stop [yawning]. No! No, I should push it. If I don’t keep rolling, I’m gonna get home late. I would be too sleepy on my first day—No! Let’s see what this German engine can do.

Car accelerates. Narrator: Hamisi had a way of quickly dismissing any doubts. So he did not stop to rest and instead carried on. It was about seven miles from that village when something started to go wrong with his car.

A popping sound, followed by leaking air.

Hamisi: Allah! Not a puncture please!

Narrator: With the car still in motion, Hamisi opened his door slightly to peep out into the moonlight. Was it a puncture? There was a sharp jolt from his intuition.

Hamisi: Watch out! [Echoes.]

Narrator: Hamisi turned to look ahead. His car had veered into the middle of the road, and coming directly at him was a dazzling light. Allah! Was it a train?

As Hamisi tried to regain control of the car, his door was thrown wide open. The train seemed to be tilting. Hamisi’s car was taking a sharp swerve. To his horror, Hamisi suddenly found himself somersaulting through the air.

Hamisi: [Screaming.]

Narrator: There was a big crash. Hamisi saw the moon falling. Or was it the massive light of the train? God! It was both—the moon, half covered by the shadow of the train engine—both falling towards him from the skies.

Hamisi: [Screaming.]

Eerie electronic music begins.

Narrator: He gave a loud shout and tried to roll away from them. But there seemed to be thousands of chains now pinning him down. He stretched out his arm to push away the moon and the huge engine falling towards him. Then there was a blinding flash as if the moon had exploded into a

2 thousand pieces. Then that ghastly pain in his head as total darkness engulfed him. But was it the moon? Was it a train? Or was it his car? Eerie electronic music continues.

Poet: Watchman for the watchword at Heavensgate; out of the depths my cry: give ear and hearken…

The stars have departed, the sky in monocle surveys the worldunder.

The stars have departed, and I—where am I?

Eerie music continues in background.

Narrator: Hamisi dragged himself up from the ground. He was dazed and confused. That one-eyed monster which had suddenly appeared from nowhere and descended upon him had just as readily disappeared into thin air. Hamisi could barely stand as he tried to comprehend the nature of his new environment.

Abiranja: Ah ha! There you are, Hamisi.

Narrator: Bewildered, Hamisi turned round to see where the voice had come from. He saw two figures approaching him, neither of whom looked in the least familiar. They, too—though clearly fellow Africans—had this confusing appearance of both newness and timelessness. But they were not old. If their clothing was anything to go by, they must have been the same age for at least a thousand years. They both wore curious smiles.

Abiranja: My name is Abiranja. This is Salisha. We’ve been expecting you. [Echoes.]

Hamisi: Huh? What? Where am I? German engine… the light… teatime… Aaaaah! [Screaming.]

Salisha: It’s okay!

Hamisi: Don’t! Don’t come near me! Don’t come near me!

Salisha: There, there.

Hamisi: [Groans.] I should have… I should have stopped the car! My sister is gonna be angry! My job! I am gonna be late for my job! My car must be ruined! The stupid radio distracted me!

Abiranja: Fret not, Hamisi. All will be explained. Come. Come on. You can just stay here.

Hamisi: Here? I don’t have time for this. I start a new job tomorrow. Where is my car? My…

Abiranja: Everything will be clear at your new home. It’s getting dark.

Hamisi: I’m not going anywhere with you! [Begins to sob.]

Abiranja and Salisha begin whistling a lullaby.

Hamisi: [Crying.] How do you know that song? I haven’t heard it since I was…

Abiranja: …a mere boy on your mother’s lap.

Hamisi: Yeah, she would sing me to sleep when I refused to go to bed. It worked every time. I was such a hard-headed boy.

Salisha: We know. There is a lot that we know. Come with us now. We promise you that your questions will be answered.

Whistling continues, now accompanied by instruments, while Hamisi continues to cry.

Narrator: Hamisi followed the pair as night fell.

Abiranja: You must still be worrying about all of this: why this place looks so unfamiliar to you,

4 how you came to be here, and why your surroundings wear a veil of strange timelessness. In fact, the explanation is quite simple, but I suggest that you wait to hear it until after you’ve had food and rest.

Whistling stops, but instruments continue to play the melody of lullaby softly.

Hamisi: Anyway, I can hardly think. My head is killing me.

Narrator: Hamisi allows himself to be cradled as he did in his mother’s warm embrace. He drifts off into a peaceful slumber. He sleeps for hours, days, mere seconds—for in this realm, time no longer bows to the constraints of linear measurements. It is infinite and all-knowing. It is formless and fully fleshed, for Hamisi is in After-Africa.

Narrator: He wakes to catch the eye of Salisha, who watches over him dutifully. Locked in her gaze, Hamisi recognizes the strange and familiar entity before him.

Salisha: Ah, you had a good rest.

Hamisi: Well, I didn’t think I would, but I actually did.

Salisha: I am delighted to hear.

Hamisi: It’s strange though. Where exactly did you say you were from?

Salisha: Where I am is where I belong.

Hamisi: I could have sworn that… No, no way, it cannot be.

Background melody fades out.

Narrator: Yes. Yes. Yes! Hamisi remembered that extraordinary night, seemingly a lifetime ago. It started unassumingly as a literary night at the BBC Africa Service in London, where Hamisi was working. His versatility had made his voice become well known across the globe.

That week Hamisi was tasked with interviewing Miss Aisha Bemedi, a Nigerian literary critic, about a new collection of poems by Christopher Okigbo, whom some critics were already proclaiming to be the most gifted poet in the English language to have come out of Africa.

Aisha herself was the only Northern Nigerian of any gender to have an MA in English, and Hamisi was quite flattered to be interviewing her.

And when she turned up at Bush House, Hamisi emerged a minute later with one of his captivating smiles, an arm extended out in a warm welcome.

Voice on radio: You are tuned to the General Overseas Service, BBC. [Echoes.]

Hamisi: Miss Bemedi, I am delighted you could come.

Salisha (now as Bemedi): I am an admirer of Okigbo’s work.

Hamisi: What is Okigbo like? Have you met him?

Salisha: Well, Okigbo took a degree in classics at Ibadan University, where I also studied. And like myself, he has published in the Transition and Black Orpheus magazines.

Hamisi: You know, all along I had expected that politics would be interfering in my interview with you, Miss Bemedi. At home in Kenya, we follow news about your country which reports that there are political parties organized on the basis of regional and tribal affiliations. Would you mind if I briefly explain to the listeners the current Nigerian political situation?

Salisha: No, please go ahead.

Hamisi: Oh, in all honesty, I was hoping that you would object, because I am obviously not most suitably placed to summarize the complex situation of an entire nation that is not even my own.

Salisha: Hmm. The heart of the matter is: Nigerian political life is organized on the basis of regional and tribal lines. But in any case, politics should not be allowed to interfere with aesthetic evaluations. To disparage Okigbo’s poetry because he is an Igbo poet is a crude political intrusion. At the same time, to praise Okigbo’s poetry mainly because he is an African poet is equally inadmissible.

It is not just in Nigeria, but politics invades into realms which should otherwise remain nonpolitical. Enthusiasm for weak African writers simply because they are African is itself an invasion by politics into aesthetics.

Hamisi: Well, perhaps then, Miss Bemedi, you will find me rather negative in my judgements of Okigbo, for I personally find that he plays with word pictures and word sounds without bothering to achieve any particular depth of poetic meaning. Okigbo has an undeniable gift for wordplay, but that is not a sign of a gift for poetry.

Salisha: [Chuckles.] I see no distinction between the two. Poetry depends on a highly developed sense of evocative wordplay.

Narrator: And so the conversation continued: claim and rebuttal, assertion and rejoinder. And before they knew it, the red light that signaled the risk of an overextended interview began to flicker. The program director in the adjoining soundproof room had two fingers raised.

Hamisi: Thank you very much, Miss Bemedi, for a stimulating defense of one of Africa’s leading poetic talents. We now pass on the remaining debate to you, listeners at home. You have been listening to an evaluation of the latest collection of Okigbo’s poems—a discussion between Miss Aisha Bemedi, the Nigerian literary critic, and me, your interviewer here at Bush House, BBC London.

With beeping tones, the on-air recording stops.

Salisha: Ah [sighing].

Hamisi: Pfew. That was intense.

Salisha: A live microphone is no joke, oh.

Hamisi: Mm hmm. I could use a stiff drink. What are your plans for the evening? Would you like to join me for a quick dinner, perhaps?

Salisha: Hmm. I’m going to my German class in Notting Hill. But, um, I have to eat at some point.

Ambient sounds of a restaurant—illegible talking, cutlery touching plates, glasses clanking.

Hamisi: Cheers to a wondrous conversation today. To many more to come!

Hamisi and Salisha clink their glasses.

Hamisi: Have you visited East Africa?

Salisha: [Laughing.]

Hamisi: Trust me. The poetry culture there is quite extraordinary.

Salisha: Oh.

Hamisi: Lamu, for instance, has had an impact on much of the classical poetry of the entire Swahili culture. You could almost say their dialect is the language of languages, like translation. Utenzi Wa Mwana Kupona, Inkishafi. Magnificent writing! So vibrant.

Salisha: Well, I am Hausa so naturally I am biased. But It’s been said that Swahili is a language of liberation. I will give you that point this time.

Hamisi: Ha! You are the first Nigerian woman to concede anything.

Salisha: Hmm? Who said I conceded anything yet?

Hamisi: Oh, it’s still rather early. In fact, I have a few copies of these. Would it be strange to invite you to my flat to look at some of the collections? I have both printed translations and handwritten manuscripts. You… you would be amazed.

Salisha: It is a nice idea, but like I said, I have a German class. Also [laughs] you said you live in Ealing Broadway. It is quite far, especially at this time of night, even for so good a cause as yours.

Narrator: But as they left the restaurant to return to the underground station and go to their next destination, Salisha reconsidered.

Footsteps and sounds of underground train.

Keys turn and door opens.

Hamisi: Please. Come in. Come in.

Salisha: It’s nearly half past ten. I will not stay too long.

Light percussion music begins.

Hamisi: Let me help you with your coat. Please take a seat. May I offer you some wine? Cider? Gin tonic?

Salisha: You should know better.

Hamisi: I notice you are a good Muslim in every way.

Salisha: No, not in every way! After all, if I was, I would not be going out to dinner with strange men and visiting them in their flats at this hour of the night! But no, I do not drink.

Hamisi: Coffee it is then.

Both laugh. The water kettle turns on, and Salisha begins paging through books. Light percussion music continues.

Salisha: Wow, it’s in Arabic! But I can’t even read it in Kiswahili. It’s completely different from how we read it in Hausa.

Hamisi: But just look at this poet! Ali Rajabu! Look at his handwriting. There is obscurity in his lines, but it is a different kind of equivocation from that which we find in Okigbo, hmm, right?

“the only way to go through the marble archway to the catatonic pingpong of the evanescent halo”

Can there ever be a “right meaning” to such a passage?

Percussion music builds as Salisha speaks.

Salisha: Poets have no obligation to tell us how to feel. It’s not up to them to impose an interpretation of their own verse. Poetry is not a constitution debated by legalistic minds as to the meaning of this word or that one. The business of the poet is not to tell but to stimulate. The question of “right” and “wrong” meaning does not therefore arise. That has no ground here. I strongly disagree with you there.

Percussion continues to build and are joined by wind instruments.

Hamisi: Fine. Fine. Fine. At least let me read you this poem from Pate. It’s about a lover stealing his way into the thatched quadrangle of an aristocratic house.

Salisha: Oooh, unevenly yoked. How romantic and original.

Hamisi: “A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch And blue spurt of a lighted match, And a voice less loud thro’ its joys and fears, Than the two hearts beating each to each!”

Song becomes louder, with stronger drums.

Hamisi: May I have a dance?

Narrator: Yes. Some poems were intended to be danced: a fusion of movement, word, mind, and body.

Song continues. Salisha and Hamisi breathe heavily to the rhythm.

Song fades, and the earlier eerie background music begins to play again, signaling a return to After-Africa.

Hamisi: Why did you walk out of my life like that? Did I mean so little to you then? What about now?

Salisha (again as Salisha): That night…

Hamisi: I thought we had connection.

Salisha: That night, you were asleep by my side. You were naked, and so was I.

Hamisi: Yes, it was what you wanted, right?

Salisha: Like you, I had dozed off for a while. But I had woken up. I could no longer bear lying next to you. You, who, in just one evening, managed to carve your way into the innermost chambers of my being. How could a medium so public as a broadcast should have resulted in an experience as private as this bed? Who were you? What were you? I needed to know.

As we had entered into your flat earlier that evening, I had noticed many things. I had to find out something about you before I looked you in the eye when you woke up. I went to your desk, and what I saw made me want to leave.

Hamisi: What did you see? Was it a letter? Who was it addressed to? I don’t even know what I did to upset you!

Salisha: I left your life. I got dressed as quickly as possible and I picked up my handbag. I knew my hair was a mess as I left. I walked out into the early morning chill of that small London street. I never thought I would see you again. And here you are now.

Hamisi: Yes, here I am. So tell me, Aisha Bemedi, why do you now bear the name of Salisha? Please tell me!

Knocks at door.

Salisha: Abiranja, welcome back. You look worried.

Abiranja: I just got back from the Council of the Ages. I have some news: Christopher Okigbo has been killed in the Nigerian Civil War and has just arrived. The Elders have arrested him on a high charge.

Hamisi: What! An arrest! Here, in After-Africa? What am I even doing here? I want to go back. Can you please bring me back where you found me? I will forever be a good person.

Abiranja laughs affectionately, as music plays briefly then fades.

Poet: For he was a shrub among the poplars, Needing more roots More sap to grow to sunlight, Thirsting for sunlight, A low growth among the forest.

Into the soul The selves extended their branches, Into the moments of each living hour, Feeling for audience

Straining thin among the echoes;

And out of the solitude Voice and soul with selves unite, Riding the echoes,

Horsemen of the apocalypse;

And crowned with one self The name displays its foliage, Hanging low

A green cloud above the forest.

Hamisi: Did you hear that voice? Am I really the only one who heard that poem?

Ambient amniotic soundscape begins.

Salisha: Say you do something wrong. That injustice causes a cosmic imbalance in the universe. Whether that is in your lifetime or in the afterlife, what is taken must be returned. The Elders rectify that imbalance. The moral arc of our universe is long, but it bends towards justice. What’s taken must be returned.

Hamisi: Honestly, you are really full of riddles here. Where does the arrest of Christopher Okigbo fit into all of this?

Abiranja: Every upheaval in Africa has its repercussions here. If one of the accused is from another continent, then After-Africa sends a special intercontinental demand of arrest. We have a system of extradition, repatriation, and interjurisdictional arrests. Cecil Rhodes, for example, was extradited from After-Europe, and he stood trial in After-Africa for offenses committed upon Africa in the Herebefore. Warren Hastings was demanded by After-Asia for trial.

Hamisi: So that’s the least they could do?!

Abiranja: Well, sometimes, royals, presidents, and generals are more incidental as causes behind major events than journalists and historians in the Herebefore have often assumed. Other times, the trial is not of the actual culprit but an examination of a given condition or historical time as a whole.

Hamisi: Aha.

Abiranja: Anyway, the Nigerian Civil War has shaken Africa at least as profoundly as the Congo troubles did a few years ago on the death of Patrice Lumumba. Thousands of Africans have again been forced to trek on the high road to infinity.

Salisha: It is morning now.

Hamisi: I wonder, why it is that so many of the old habits of the Herebefore still persist in the Hereafter? I mean, why are doors and windows necessary here? Why are streetlights needed? Why indeed is there day and night? But what bothers me the most is that I expected to be greeted by my parents and my ancestors, instead of you and Abiranja.

Salisha: We are your family now.

Hamisi: And yet you left me! And you won’t even tell me why. Am I your guest or your captive?

Salisha: Let’s go for a walk.

Narrator: Hamisi followed Salisha begrudgingly. And as it turned out, vision was no longer the primary sense. Rather, centuries of flesh, millennia of cultures, and sediments of landscapes impressed themselves upon Hamisi’s senses in their smell and their sound and much less so in their physical presence. Salisha’s tour was a multisensory time travel.

Hamisi: [Groans.] Can we stop please? I think I am getting motion sickness.

Narrator: Salisha then took Hamisi to the sea. Children were playing in the sand, and elderly people were sitting on those shadowy benches of primordial solidity. Was the sea the Atlantic? The Indian Ocean? The Mediterranean? Oh, Africa, bounded by three oceans, a unitary island on a trinity of water.

Amniotic soundscape continues.

Hamisi: I’m wondering, just in case I can’t go back, is there an initiation into the life here, comparable to what I experienced as I was initiated into the wonders of the waters?

I swallowed a lot of saltwater in Mombasa. My older playmates forced me to fend for myself. The terror and humiliation, again and again, as I desperately tried to float.

Salisha: Sooner or later, when we come here, we are called upon to pass the boundary. Death, in many of our societies, you will remember, is merely one more ceremonial transition. Death is not an interruption but a continuation. And so here you are, Hamisi.

Hamisi: Hmm. I should not agree with you. Surely, my death has been an interruption? Yet all the same, here I am, with you again, you with whom I worked and with whom I enjoyed a single intimate night of passion in the Herebefore. Still, should death not have been the last rite of

14 passage? What, Salisha, is the stage after death? When will I have to undergo this particular ceremony?

Salisha: For all you know, you may be actually undergoing it right now.

Amniotic soundscape continues. Winds blow, and sounds of animals and insects begin to play in background.

Narrator: And so, Hamisi and Salisha spent the day at the sea. On their way back home, Hamisi understood that the landscape was not really rural but neither was it like a city. In Salisha’s company, Hamisi could render any animal, any plant, any tree, any bird that his own imagination recalled. But Hamisi’s recall was not a projection of what Hamisi had known in the Herebefore. But what was it? Perhaps After-Africa was not an amalgam of totality but a resolution of intense particularity. Perhaps After-Africa was a space-time of an infinite sensual texture, a networked webs of intermittence, cyclic rhythms that are in synch but out of phase, beyond what can be seen or imagined.

Hamisi: Wait. I recognize this street. We’re almost back home! But what is that building over there? Even for the expansive standards of After-Africa, I don’t know how to describe it.

Isn’t that Abiranja walking towards us? Is he waving at us? Maybe we should hurry.

Abiranja: Hamisi, the Immortal Council has important news that you will want to hear as quickly as possible.

Remember that Christopher Okigbo, the poet, arrived in After-Africa. He was killed in the Nigerian Civil War. Well, as it turns out, his death is an emergency of continental dimensions, and Okigbo is to stand trial. Okigbo died on the battlefield, fighting for Biafra, seeking secession from the Nigerian state, which itself was newly independent from the British Empire.

Hamisi: Does After-Africa regard secession as a crime?

Abiranja: Pan-Africanism and its imperative of oneness is bound to feature in Okigbo’s trial. But that is not the main charge. Rather, he is to be charged with offenses of putting society before art.

Hamisi: The charge sounds bizarre—certainly esoteric.

Abiranja: Still, the prosecution is going to suggest that Okigbo had no right to consider himself an Igbo patriot first and an African artist only second. The prosecution will claim that no artist has the right to carry patriotism to the extent of destroying their creative potential. For the prosecution, Biafra was transient to Okigbo’s inner being, whereas the role of a poet, as he was, carries the seeds of immortality.

Hamisi: Is this a problem of ethics or aesthetics? In fact, could you tell me why it is that, ever since I was gathered up from the railway tracks, I keep hearing these echoes of poetry?

At first I did not understand it, but later I recognized it as Christopher Okigbo’s. And now you are telling me that not only has Okigbo died but he is also to stand trial! Why am I at the heart of Okigbo’s drama?

At least now please explain where I come into it. How am I connected to the trial of Christopher Okigbo?

Abiranja: You, Hamisi, have been elected to defend Christopher Okigbo before the Elders against the charges in question.

Hamisi: Me? Defend Christopher Okigbo? But I hardly know the man! I don’t even understand the charges in spite of what you have said! I’m not familiar with the system of trial and defense… Elected to defend Okigbo? By whom?

Abiranja: The Elders in their wisdom have selected you to be Counsel for Salvation. Back on Earth, some would call it “counsel for the defense.” It is extremely unusual for a new arrival in After-Africa to be entrusted with such a momentous job.

Hamisi: Please. Tell the Elders that I don’t want anything to do with this.

Abiranja: You should take it as a compliment. You could become a future Elder if things go well. But, if you make a mess of the brief, certain unpleasant consequences might follow.

Hamisi: Well, suppose I accept the challenge, who is going to be Counsel for Damnation? How much time do I have?

Abiranja: You have a single week in which to prepare your case.

Hamisi: Hey! A single week!

Abiranja: We cannot tell you much more. We cannot give you more advice on how to set about this enterprise. It would be too easy if you were simply to be briefed by your hosts. Hamisi, you are on your own.

Narrator: Indeed, Hamisi felt all alone and abandoned. Where should he start? Whom should he speak to? He was in an angry denial, for he was still mourning his own death. But from the first moment he had arrived here, he knew his fate was sealed. He knew that he could not refuse his new task.

Hamisi: But a single week! They are killing me...

Amniotic soundscape continues.

Narrator: But time in this universe defies all measures found on Earth, his former home. Therefore, Hamisi didn’t know how long a week really was. In fact, ever since Salisha’s tour, Hamisi had started to feel as if he was in a force field resembling a haze of an indefinite sky tuned to the color of his own shifting thoughts.

Indistinguishable voices begin talking in background.

His developing thoughts were gradually decoupling the borders between the distant concreteness of his previous life and the new time marked by color fields pulsating at the periphery of his perception.

Background voices fade.

Poet: Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere. Nor any drop to drink.

Distant voice in background: “I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.”

Hamisi: People, people, everywhere—not a single ear to listen.

Distant voice in background: “My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

Hamisi: But why not? Is this a signal for action?

Distant voice in background: “I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young…”

Voice continues but fades and becomes increasingly inaudible.

Narrator: Hamisi had not had any legal training in After-Africa, and he was only slightly acquainted with judicial processes in the Herebefore.

Hamisi: It seems like I am becoming a journalist all over again.

Narrator: Hamisi soon learnt about the Grand Stadium, which was, in fact, the immense building he had seen during his walk with Salisha.

Cacophony of voices builds in background.

The Grand Stadium was also the store of The Bureau of information: a galactic nervous system where substantial biographical data on every person who had ever lived or died was available.

Cacophony of voices continues to build and overlap in background, with certain speakers and phrases becoming briefly audible: “to me, this place captures…” “the essence of paradox of

Africa…” “the geography of my birth…” “you’re walking in the most central of all the continents of the world…” “Africa is…” “not far from here, the equator cuts the…”

Narrator: From there, Hamisi sought advice from eminent residents of After-Africa.

Cacophony of voices: “traversed by the equator in quite that manner…” “to pursue one of those…” “sitting next to her…”

Hamisi: Langston Hughes! It is a pleasure to meet you. I have just read An African Treasury, which you edited. I particularly liked Tom Mboya’s text, my fellow Kenyan.

Narrator: But the living were also consulted.

Cacophony of voices: “James Baldwin wrote for the New York Times…” “the poems of Langston Hughes…” “by saying he is not the first Negro to find the war between the…”

Voices continue in background but become increasingly inaudible.

Narrator: Malcom X’s mentor, Vicki Garvin, and Frances Baard in South Africa.

Hamisi: Still, the death of poet Christopher Okigbo—that’s the heart of the matter.

Cacophony of voices continues to build.

Hamisi: What an irony! The last time I read Okigbo was during that night, when I was debating against his poetry with Salisha. What would be the best way of defending this artist?

Cacophony of voices slowly fades out.