DESTITUTE OF FATE AND OTHER SHORT STORIES

                             2
         IN THE FACE OF HUNGER

A gust swept through the heath, through the unending vast, empty plains of Hatma, covering the whole area and the air above in a thick, heavy cloud of twisting dust. The brown threads of dirt swirled as they trundled across the emptiness, after the wind. Aside from a few scrubs and small, elfin and unhealthy trees scattered about, there was not much vegetation here. Homes were a rarity, sparse and scattered on the plains that stretched into the very periphery of the miraged horizon. A few pallid and sickly cows gnawed at the hardly leafy scrubs, with some attempting to reach the leaves on the trees. Others,yet, lay on the ground, having given up entirely on finding food and silently waited for their peaceful demise.

In one particular compound, one that was a little too flung from its nearest neighbours, was a mud house, with a woman shaded on its front, eyes distant in troubled muse. She looked bony and unhealthy, sick almost. Her cheek bones showed vividly, as if trying to crawl out of her dry, lean skin while the distant eyes were sunken, dull and watery. Her clavicle showed, running outwards from her sternum and projecting from the shoulders of her bony arms. Lain next to her, on a rugged blanket, were two of her children. One was a girl, about eight while the other was a boy of about five. Both faired no differently from their mother. Their faces showed bleak query as they rested next to their only hope of surviving this cruel harsh world. At the far end of the compound, a mongerel dozed away the hot afternoon, too weak to move. A wound cut across its side, pus and blood having coalesced there to form a red mess,only pleasing to the flies that darted on it as they pleased. This was the result of the previous day's encounter with a furious mother cow after it had attempted to prey on the cow's weak calf. The mother had launched towards him with fury and duíg a vicious horn onto the dog's side. Its weak,watery and tired eyes spoke of not just hunger but sickness. And it showed in the dry, stiff and faded fur. Already, some of it had fallen off, leaving ugly patches of the grey skin underneath.

The woman shook her head in despair. She just could not get what had come to be. It was usually bad, but it had never gotten to this level of bleakness. With no husband to help her out,and with all her cattle dead,she had to figure out how to fend for the children. She had no idea where he had gone. Infact,no woman in the village had any idea where the men had gone. Sometime back,they had come together and claimed that they were going to look for food. They had then left the village. It was long ago, she remembered, too long ago infact that now they had essentially given up on them ever coming back. Maybe they had been held up but were certainly on their way back; or maybe they had found a better life beyond Hatma and had decided to go for good; or worse still, maybe the harsh conditions had gotten the better of them and their bodies had been feasted upon by rowdy scavengers. Either way, the men were gone for sure and coming back was a mystery which she wasn't detective enough to sink into.  The younger child, the boy, let out a frail wail, disrupting the mother's train of thoughts.
     "Mamaa, njaa,"he whimpered, his voice trailing off as a cry took over. The girl backed her brother, slapping the mother's wrist continuously in a solemn plea. The mother looked down at them, at their pain and a tear fell from her eye. Not even water to quench their thirst. She held their hands and shook her head, just about holding herself together.

She nostalgically took herself back to the last time her family had had food. Some relief food had been sent their way from the admin. Hatma had sprung to life that day, for it had been the first time that they were seeing food in its satisfying glory since the onset of this devastating drought and famine a while back. Their always unavailable, busy mp had been strangely free that day, and who was he to let this platform to gain political mileage pass by. He thumped his chest and proclaimed his workmanship in his raspy and heavily-accented voice. He had yet to show face after that. Women and children displayed their best smiles that day as the men stood with assumed and exaggerated authority on the side of the queue. But the food had run out fast, like a drop of water to quench thirst. The news was that the admin was cash-strapped and that more food would come their way as soon as money was available. If it served her memory right, which it did, it was during this time that she heard over the radio that the mps would be getting a payrise. Now whether that payrise would be in raindrops, tea leaves or philosophical thinkings, she did not know. Cash-strapped indeed. Her radio now lay in some corner in the house, gathering dust, the battery having long given up ghost or whatever it is batteries give up when they die. Indeed it had been a long time back. So long she had even lost track of time. It could have been a few days back. Or it could have been a few weeks back. Hell, maybe it could have been months ago. It was really difficult to keep track of this time on an empty stomach. Plus days tend to be longer when one is malaised. But she was almost certain that the admin people had had their payrise by now. It always happened. But now she had nothing to feed her children, who seemed to have run out of tears and were just staring at her, perhaps thinking of how uncaring their mother was turning out to be.

She looked around the compound. Firewood was at the far end, to the right of the compound, waiting to be fired to life to heat that rare meal. At the gate, the mongerel kept dozing off, thoroughly beaten on this one. She looked back at her children.
      "Papa will come with food," she said feebly, trying to pump some hope into their fallen wheels of optimism," maybe tomorrow or the day after or maybe next week. Hold on, sawa? hold on." She wondered if she believed it herself. She didn't and she knew they disbelieved her too. She was hopeless and she couldn't give them hope she had lost a while back. Their yellow, pallid eyes stared fixedly at the unblemished blue blankness that was the sky. The gods had lost their humanity too. The boy had his dry, cracked lips wide open, flies buzzing over the exposed flesh. The girl had closed her eyes, breathing heavily with laboured heaves.

The woman reached her trembling hands down her side and pulled herself to her feet. She dragged herself to the firewoods. Her stomach gave a sharp protest. She clatched it and pressed hard. It lurched and roared. A sharp searing pain shot through her midsection. She winced, bowed forward and pressed her stomach harder. She grit her teeth and closed her eyes tightly. The pain ebbed. She stood upright and went her way. The piles of dry wood seemed to hold up to her in anticipation, for it had been days since any of them had been called to duty. So eager were they that when she reached for one and pulled it out, others followed suit and tumbled out of place, scattering on the ground next to her. She gave the large branch a nasty look, the bark dried on it and breaking off in scaly pieces. Then she turned and began making her way back to her two children, the branch dragging faithfully behind her. Wisps of dust rose behind it before scattering over her head. They watched her approach, none showing much emotion but for the frown that signified their pain. She walked up and stood over them. Her lanky frame made her dominance more pronounced. The branch in hand added on a layer of threat. The girl shut her eyes and contorted in a sob. The boy was already drenched in tears. A tear made its way down the mother's face. She gave a deep exhale and shuffled herself into the house.

The room was barely windowed, with the lights streaming in from the tiny, round opening and the open door just about grasping the even recessed parts of the single room. On the floor directly under the small opening, shrouded in a shoal and a fusty, faded blanket was a baby, wheezing audibly in her troubled sleep. She was in no better condition than her siblings outside. Her body was gaunt and sallow and extremely tiny. Her features showed sharply for a child her age. Infact in this condition, her actual age was indeterminate, an open secret only the mother knew. The mother looked at her daughter. First indifferently. Then with some vestiges of concern. Then tenderly. She began shedding tears, her face folded in a scowl as she raised the branch high above her head. Tears which now rolled freely down her cheeks found their way to the ground as readied to bring the stick down. Then the baby stirred and opened its eyes. Immediately, it looked up and saw its mother's face and there spread a tender,genuine smile that could thaw even a heart that aspired to be Hitler. The mother whimpered and let the stick tumble from her hand. She knelt down, picked up the little one and cuddled it on her shoulder, her face drenched in tears and mucus as she rocked her baby. The baby remained upbeat, humming lowly behind the mother's shoulder, oblivious to the danger that had been about to be unleashed on her head.

The mother rose to her feet, picked up the branch and stepped out. The heat of the scorching sun seemed to have gone up by a few degrees. It roasted every thing directly on the route of its furious bars and the mirage on the distance seemed like a large mass of clear water, rippling in the distance in reverential silence. She put the baby next to her siblings and then stood over them. Once again the baby broke the chains that had cletched on her heart with another innocent smile. The older girl sobbed in silence, eyes glued to her mother. The boy looked on in resignation. Those wan faces head started to drain away the tiny bits of life still beating within their hopeless
bodies.

Then she looked up and sighed. One step. Two step. Branch dragging faithfull behind her. Her feet barely lifted off the ground and this left a trail of dust in her wake.

The dog looked at her as she approached. He couldn't help himself. He trembled lightly and the flies on the wound on its side scattered in a flurry with an incessant, heavy buzzing before converging again. He gave approaching woman a look of pity. The woman now stood over him. He knew what he had to do it seems for he lay his head submissively on the hot, dry cracked earth and gave a low whimper, a resigned look in his watered eyes. With all the might she could gather, the woman raised the branch high over her head and brought it fown with a hissing force on the dog's head, crushing it into a bloody splatter. There. The last resort. Today they were sorted. Tomorrow could only get better.

                  

                         The end