1800s

The battle took place on the farms of the coastal settlement, and when it ended, the blood of the native warriors soaked the only sustenance left for the aged, wives, and children.

When the explosions of the gunfire stopped, all who could walk left their huts and narrowly dug hideouts covered with banana leaves to see whether their sons had won the fight against the men from beyond the sea. They saw the leaking bodies of their husbands, children and kin, and they began to wail for the dead although they knew they, the living, deserved more tears.

              Many who resisted were cut down and their blood also fed to the soil. Those who were too hopeful to die stretched their hands out for the chains and were loaded onto the waiting ships. They gagged them when the ship set sail, for the songs they chanted were more haunting than their nightmares of sirens. 

              The victors claimed the land as their own, buried their dead far from their mortal enemies, and built a port on the remains of the warriors they did not fear. 

This victory wasn’t spoken of much, for it was a massacre and the inland kings were to be notified of any lands or people they took. They felled the trees, buried the people beneath them, and squashed all traces of clay structures. 

First came a simple ground of sand which they walked on and went about. Then the sun got too hot, and they made thatched canopies as the natives did; then a house or two came along. Some left, and others came, and no one spoke of the dead lying under them. Some wanted the truth forgotten, others didn’t know the truth at all.

              Slavery was outlawed years later, and the land was abandoned. Some nearby natives resettled on it, grew a small community and lived there for a while. But when a new form of dominion was established, that land was snatched from natives again because of its beauty and high ground, and used to start construction of Mallowberry Avenue.

1920s

Mallowberry Avenue was where the wealthiest of them lived. A community tailored to fit any neighbourhood of high society, ornamented and cultured in Western influence. The high land of the estate was curtained and closed from the plainness of the rest of the colony. 

The houses themselves were built in Victorian style, and exquisitely planned to fall in line with the last inch of where hedges and gardens began. An occasional red or violet flower popped out among the green bushes, but other than that, the colour of everything was white.

The trees were lanky, dull, lazy and high-reaching. None of them bore fruits. They existed only for beauty. The whole estate was fenced and set apart from the fishing villages and settlements littered as far from it as the law allowed. Like heaven on a mount, it stood as a crown embellished, and as a symbol of power and greatness. 

The only struggle the residents knew was the anxiety to keep natives as far as possible from the community in the form of regulations and designated slums far away from the estate.

The Mallowberry Clubhouse hosted celebrations on the white sand beach and ornate ballroom, where white laces and decadent stones adorned beautiful women. Automobiles of the day challenged one another in speed and style, and the finest luxuries of the time were put in the open. Polo and tennis matches, horse races, beach parties, society balls- a piece of Europe lived there. 

The natives didn’t understand this pleasure living- all they had known all their lives was suffering and hard work. And there was nothing to do about it. There was a lot to think and a lot to say, but nothing to do about how these foreign people were served and pampered with everything their rough hands provided.

The servers at the clubhouse wore white, served creamed potatoes, white fish and cream on white cake. They were taught to provide impeccable service and prevent any stain in their delivery.

The workers in the houses served in the same way. It was baffling that a single person’s meal could be served on as many as seven plates at a sitting. The glasses for each person were just as many, and the chores for each worker, just as substantial.

The diamonds from the Mines of A-, which belonged not on the necks of the wives of the natives, cradled the porcelain necks of the wives of Mallowberry. 

The community was nourished by the colony. From the materials to make the glassware that contained crisp French champagne, and oysters from the baskets of native fishermen. The meat, fresh greens, butter, cheese and milk were delivered every day. At some point in time, almost every native around worked for the community in some way.

              Beneath those white mansions were basements serving as servant quarters, laundry rooms or kitchens. Natives who had the fortune of working in these mansions slept in the compacted servant quarters and worked to keep the glory of the community. The rich and White were fed from the underground kitchen so they wouldn’t have to smell the process of cooking food. Their clothes were washed and pressed down there, then arranged in their wardrobes upstairs before they missed them. 

All workers who didn’t live in the community left through a route that led to the beach, so they wouldn’t be seen walking about the pristine streets. At dawn, the streets were kept by them, but before the day broke, they were not to be seen on it. 

The Mallowberry Church was the most perfect little building which stood at the centre of the estate. On Sundays, all families left their mansions and went to worship. Although the families were out, it was the busiest day because dinners or lunches or garden parties were held and much preparation had to be done.  

In the church, the priest preached prosperity and the sin of pride, charity and the sin of idolatry. Yet, Mallowbery flourished, and the rest of the colony was denied prosperity.

1950s- 1960s

              When E.D Branson and the rest led the colony to independence and changed everything, the wealthy white people left in a hurry and abandoned everything. They say when independence was declared, residents of Mallowberry took the servants’ route to escape the mob at the gates. The natives looted whatever they could carry. They say for the first few days of independence, fishwives wore silk and went about their chores. The men wore suits to mend fishing nets and children played with expensive artifacts.

Natives walked the streets of Mallowberry freely for the first time, lay on the grass, and slept on the expensive furniture. 

              Rains, fog, intense sunlight and winds from the sea soon changed the estate. The colony’s funds could no longer be used to keep its walls and streets like the White people did. 

It crumbled and decayed, fell apart after its desertion. No longer was it the glory of the colony- just a symbol of a painful past. 

              A few years later, the new government started to make plans to revive the estate. It was set to cost millions, and the people protested against it. Unemployment and inflation were high, and the government was rebuilding a source of extravagance? This angered the people and reminded them of the colonial torture. That estate had eaten the blood of every native just to stay white. It had taken so much work just to clean and keep, all for people who treated them like animals- people who received their services but wouldn’t dwell with them or see them as equally human.

Halfway through the project, the government was overthrown, and the people rejoiced. 

The military rule lasted five years. By the time it was over, the people had suffered so much that they didn’t care about who they were voting for. 

              The new president did a slightly better job, and the hunger decreased. A few prosperous years came, and at the end of the sixties, Yara was born in Germany. Her father, James, heard the country he had left during the violent military rule was doing better, and he began to think of coming back to see it.

1970s

There came a period when the Western culture began to spread in the country. People went to see moving pictures and had weddings like the white women had in their films. News anchors wore lipsticks and abandoned their headgear; children wore tights and sun hats. So when a developer came to renovate Mallowberry, it was met with no resistance. The new generation hardly remembered its history, and even if they did, they wished they could see its glory one more time. It was just sitting there in the capital’s view- about fifty depleting homes absorbing the sea’s salty air.

The American developer rebuilt the community with more millions than the first renovation had cost, and in four years, the estate regained its resplendence. 

The natives who had once worked there were mostly old. They looked up again at the estate from the beaches- it looked once more like the unattainable life. Even when it was abandoned and crumbling, it still looked unreachable.

              The houses began to sell, and soon people began to work there again. Most of the owners, like Yara’s parents, were wealthy people relocating from Europe or America, others were native businessmen or elites who bought the houses to spite its cursed history. 

Soon, the estate became just like people one knows who have the same name and behave the same way. The old rules fell into place. The new owners did about the same thing- went to the clubhouse to play tennis or golf, had garden parties, ate white things and were cared for by the surrounding natives.

Yara’s mother, Emilia, who was German and had immigrated to her husband’s homeland, chose the house, ignoring her husband’s accounts of the history behind it. She liked that it reminded her of home, and it wasn’t as carelessly built as most of the communities in the country. Yara’s father took no offence. 

 Emilia didn’t bother herself with things she hadn’t been a part of. If she dealt with anything painful, it was because she caused or was a part of it, so she said, “That time is no more. Look at Germany. We all can’t be guilty forever. It won’t solve anything to remember what is gone.” 

James didn’t stop telling Yara stories of Mallowberry. He told her about the Barlowes, the Arthurs, the Cromwells. White families who had founded and lived in the estate over a century ago. When they went to the clubhouse on Sundays after mass, he spent a bit of time telling her about this white man or that white man in a photograph holding a cigar. 

Those who lived there after the Great War had lived most lavishly. Most old photographs of weddings and portraits had survived and left a portal into that extravagant time. Hiding in corners, manning tables and all the time folding themselves to be as invisible as possible were native servants. Sometimes, the photograph captured them only in a blur, so that it was debatable whether they had been there or were only one with the air.

Yara could see James wanted to be happy in this strange place, and he wanted to be unhappy that he felt more at home in Germany than in his homeland. “I’m doing this for you, my sweet girl.” He would say to the young girl’s curious face. “But if we live in Mallowberry, you won’t learn anything about your father’s homeland. And that is why we are here anyway.” 

              Yara, although quite young, noticed James spoke of the colony’s past more painfully than Germany’s, and she paid attention to the way Emelia wanted badly to forget the two histories. “I like it here, Da.” Yara would tell him. “I like the Beach of Scraps.”

              The servants’ route now led to the Beach of Scraps. It was the dumping grounds of decayed metal and old equipment. And just like the old days, the residents did not take the servants’ route; only workers who lived around the estate walked that path.

              James would take Yara out sometimes to the capital, and that’s when she saw those who lived in another world completely. Eight-year-olds selling dusty bananas, women in rags sitting in corners holding children. Men who were not enjoying the sun as the family did by lounging under it in the lawn.

Then there were government buildings and residences which were beautiful. However, there was none like Mallowberry. Emelia came along sometimes. She was as quiet as Yara was when they saw sad things.

              Emelia wasn’t very hard on the servants, but she did insist on things being tidy. Soon, she became miserable and complained that she couldn’t yell at the maid or gardener because she felt she was being racist. She would wait for James to come home, then tell him to yell at them. Sometimes, she left them little notes with instructions, although most of them couldn’t read.

She found most of the staff annoying. The gardener, for instance, would give Emelia histories she didn’t care for. “My father used to work here. My mother was a cook there. My uncle was here when… I was a young boy when…” Emelia folded her arms and turned the colour of rage. 

              The gardener liked to dig up old things from strange corners of the house and display his findings proudly. He would say, “Yara, come and see an old wooden horse for boys a little shorter than you are. Can you believe it? So many years ago, a White merchant’s son played on it.”

              Emelia, when she saw Yara with anything of that sort, would take it from her immediately and tell the little girl that dead people owned these things, and their spirits remained in them.

              “Dead people own this house, Ma.” Yara was usually genuinely confused. “Are their spirits in them?”

              Emelia would look at her daughter in silence, then walk away without scolding the gardener or Yara. That was James’ job.

              Then a can of worms was squashed open when Emelia knocked the sealed basement down to build a pottery studio. James folded his arms and looked down the stairway which once led to the servants’ quarters.  

Together, the couple descended into the darkness below. Circles of illumination from the flashlight highlighted rusty metals, folds of beddings, thickened layers of dust, dungeons of cobwebs.

              When they went back upstairs, they didn’t speak of what they saw. They resealed and put a carpet over the floor and told Yara not to walk that hall. So of course the little girl did. She went down the stairs also and came out changed and quieter. 

              While James worked at The University of G-, Yara schooled in Mallowberry Basic School. Those who knew of the history sang the old school anthem differently. But most children didn’t realise or understand that some years ago, people of their skin couldn't sing the school anthem.

Yara found the praises of the school’s greatness undeserving, and she refused to sing it. If she wasn’t worth singing it years ago, then she refused to be worth singing it now. 

She became unhappy as well. Burdened by the knowledge of Mallowberry and burdened by how most students did not care about this knowledge and how the school vaguely taught it.

              Years into living there, everything became a little different. Emelia could hardly keep a maid or worker. Almost every month, there was a new person cooking or doing the laundry. She was frustrated with paying them more, and James became worried about the politics in the country. He listened to the radio intently and took diligent notes. He tore articles from newspapers and recorded television broadcasts. 

              Dinner was always quiet, things got dirty quickly, and Emelia announced one day that she wanted to paint the house a different colour. “No more white. It costs too much to maintain.”

But later, she was told that she couldn’t. The house had to be white- it was in the contract of sale- “...to keep the glory of the estate.”, it said. Mallowberry had to always remain white.

Not getting her way meant even more unhappiness, and soon, she left the dirt in the house to grow.

1980s

When Yara had long stopped playing on the streets and was shut in her room, always thinking about popular songs and boy bands, the government was overthrown. This time, people protested, burning things and looting. There were strikes in government offices and schools. Emelia and James stayed home, and so did all the residents. Most residents didn’t go outside the gates of the estate for days. 

The workers stopped coming to work at houses, and even the main gates were unmanned. The smoke from protests could be seen from the top floor of houses.

The surface of pools was dusted with ash; the smell of burnt car tyres made everyone nauseous.

              Weeks of strikes and demonstrations left the streets of the estate unkempt. The worst was the balls of garbage that rested on the threshold of every house. From Yara’s house to the gates and behind, bins and sacks of rubbish remained for weeks. There was no one to dispose of it, and there was nowhere to put them.

Slowly, it decayed, and the worms feasted. Brown sticky liquid from the garbage lined the streets and produced a choking, foul smell. The smell of dead things, rotten food stuck onto fabric furnishings. 

              Then the water stopped flowing, and the electric lights also went dark. It was so quiet that one could hear the waves from the sea. Yara had nightmares of people coming to tear the house down. She could see their loud, vivid hate and pain. In the same way, she was haunted by the ghosts in the basements. She could hear them choking in the darkness. 

The club house closed down first, then after, it was looted. When it was reported that looters took shits in the pool and pulled down every bottle of imported alcohol on the shelves, people began to escape their mansions. With alcohol soaking every surface of the floor, white tablecloths and wooden tables, the fire was easy to light. The fire ate the glorious white building and burped black smoke deep into the sky.

Emelia packed a bag for each of them, and they drove through what looked like a war zone to the airport. Dead bodies lay on the street. Bullet holes gave Yara trypophobia. They spent most of their money on the cost of the flight. Only Yara looked down when they were lifted into the air to Germany.

The garbage still sat on every threshold for a long time until the white walls faded to the colour of sand. Once more, the façade was torn away, the secrets sank in deeper, and Mallowberry’s curse lay in wait for another generation.