Per Contra Fiction Fall 2007: Petina Gappah

From "The Annexe Shuffle"

"Emily sees Ezekiel shake his arms and hands around his head. This can only mean that the mosquitoes are back. Ezekiel is haunted by the buzzing of a thousand phantom mosquitoes. They fly close to his ear; it is always the same ear, the right ear. He swipes at them, but this only increases their agitation. He longs to hit one, just one, and see the satisfying streak of blood across the wall. Sometimes he slaps a hand against one, again, again, but he hits nothing but the wall, and more often, himself.

He has to be bandaged often, Ezekiel.

In between the buzzing mosquitoes, Ezekiel says that he hears other sounds: shouting men dressed as soldiers, the dry crackle of the straw on burning huts, screaming children, crying women. More frequent and disturbing than that is this, the high intermittent buzz of the thousand mosquitoes. To keep their noise out of his head, Ezekiel sings a song that Emily remembers from Sunday School:

‘Father Abraham, please send Lazarus

To rescue me, I am burning in this fire.

Yuwi maiwe yuwi,Yuwi maiwe yuwi.

Please send Lazarus, to rescue me

I am dying in this heat.’

And when he screams ‘Abraham, Abraham’ at least twenty times, the mosquitoes are still.

His shouting puts him in conflict with Sister Emilia. She raps him sharply on the head with her knuckles. He stops screaming, and whispers ‘Abraham, Abraham’ near the window close to where Emily stands. She sees him trembling, and instinctively, puts a hand on his shoulder. They stand in silence looking out at Second Street Extension, at the embassy houses of Belgravia and the golf course across the road. Through the metal grille and the mesh wire, through the reinforced windows that separate them from the outside, they can see small figures on the eighteenth green." - Click Here to Read Full Story

Per Contra Fiction Fall 2007.