Beah, Ishmael. Radiance of Tomorrow.
Toronto: Viking, 2014
How
much hate does it take to make chopping off a child's hands with a
machete acceptable, even honourable? How callous does a company need
to be to feel blasé
about ruining the water supply of an indigenous village in order to
establish a profitable mine?
How forgiving does one need to be in
order to go on living after the atrocities against one's people and
family have marched in endless progress up to the very borders of
hell?
Ishmael
Beah's second novel (A Long Way Gone
was the earlier one) doesn't purport to answer such questions; it
simply tells the story of a people trying with whatever resources
they can scrounge together to survive in a Sierra Leone ravaged by
brutal civil war and the savaging of their country by multi-national
mining interests. Not a political novel, it paints a portrait of a
people caught in the ravages of the turmoil that is Western Africa in
troubled times, bringing matters down to the intimate, the personal,
the what-it's-like-to-live-it level.
The poignant
opening scene has bedraggled survivors straggling back “home”after
the civil war, a conflict that decimated and scattered their
community. Led by a few returning elders, the survivors gradually
rebuild a life as normal as they can with few resources and the
constant haunting of the horrors they've all been through. One family
now lives next door to a former child soldier who, under orders,
inflicted on them the violent amputation of four out of their six
hands.
At the centre of
Beah's story, Bockarie and his family are followed through a series
of transitions not of their devising. Bockarie is a teacher and as
the village reestablishes a school, his occupation seems secured. But
civil war and turmoil provide breeding ground for corruption as
persons struggle to survive with all their confidence in the humanity
of “the system” destroyed. Even fellow villagers can exercise
fraud as a coping habit, teachers' salaries can be siphoned off by
management and eventually the only option might be to work for the
hated mining company—or starve.
Ishmael Beah
sometimes writes a bit like Grandma Moses or William Kurelak paint.
Particularly in the dialogue, the local patois is allowed to live as
found, giving the scenes of encounter a homespun, naive-like quality
(as art, that is).
“Good morning. Was sleep generous to you and your family? Has the
world greeted you kindly this morning . . . ?” the children
repeated to everyone they encountered (39).
But naivete is a concept only to those who consider themselves
sophisticated in comparison to someone else. The wisdom of Beah's
characters may not be the wisdom of science, knowledge and
first-world sophistication, but what shines through it all is the
wisdom of the ages, the deep, universal wisdom borne by story and the
passing on of time-tested lore. It is about respect for the guidance
of one's elders, a concept foreign to much of Western society. It's
about obedience to inherited knowledge and humility and patience in
the face of tribulation.
It's about a wisdom that Western culture has
largely dismissed as naive, unnecessary.
Not that this wisdom isn't severely tested, even to those who live
inside it. In a world in which profitability and economic growth
provide the yardsticks by which all human endeavour is measured, even
Mama Kadie's gentle wisdom may end up trampled into dust.
I
am North American. I've never been to Africa. But as a
“sophisticated” North American I know that my
roots—anthropologically—are in
Africa. But I also live alongside an aboriginal population whose
culture was largely destroyed by the collaboration of Christian
churches and economic interests, and the horror of “manifest
destiny” thinking. Radiance of Tomorrow
provided me with another window of insight into mine and West
African's place in the world, mine and my aboriginal neighbours'
relative placement on the planet.
The
title, Radiance of Tomorrow, is
an expression of hope from an elder:
“'We must live in the radiance of tomorrow, as our ancestors have
suggested in their tales. For what is yet to come tomorrow has
possibilities, and we must think of it, the simplest glimpse of that
possibility of goodness. That will be our strength. That has always
been our strength. This is all I wanted to say.' [Mama Kadie] turned
away form the crowd (167).”
It's
what Christians call faith, or possibly hope . . . or both.