Beautiful

"You used to see some hope, Teacher."
"That was such a long time ago."
"Not so long a time. Six years?"
"But in my mind the time is buried under centuries now. True, I used to see a lot of hope. I saw men tear down the veils behind which the truth had been hidden. But then, the same men, which when they have power in their hands at last, began to find the veils useful. They made many more. Life has not changed. Only some people have been growing, becoming different, that is all. After a youth spent fighting the white man, why should not the president discover as he grows older that his real desire has been to be like the white governor himself, to live above all blackness in the big old slave castle? And the men around him, why not? What stops them sending their loved children to kindergartens in Europe? And if the little men around the big men can send their children to new international schools, why not? That is all anyone here ever struggles for: to be nearer the white man. All this shouting against the white man was not hate. It was love. Twisted, but love all the same. Just look around you and you will see it even now. Especially now."
"I have looked, Teacher," said the man.
"I only wish I could speak with your contempt for what goes on. But I do not know whether it is envy that makes me hate what I see. I am not even sure that I hate it, Teacher."
"It should depend on what that person wants himself, no?"
"But, Teacher, what can I want? How can I look at Oyo and say I hate long shining cars? How can I come back to the children and despise international schools? And then Koomson comes, and the family sees Jesus Christ in him. How can I ever feel like a human being?"
"Yes. Life gets very hard when veranda boys are building palaces in a matter of months. If you come near people here they will ask you, what about you? Where is your house? Where have you left your car? What do you bring in your hand for the loved ones? Nothing? Then let us keep quiet and not get close to people. People will make you very sad that you do not have a house to make onlookers stumble with looking, or a car to make every walker know that a big man and his concubine have just passed. Let us keep quiet and watch."
The rain has not been much, and it has made scarcely any noise, but outside, the little gutters by the roadside had swift little streams in them now, brushing toward the sea, and the air was misty, as if the rainwater had not fallen, but remains suspended, gathering heaviness.
"Teacher," said the man, "you know it is impossible for me to watch things that go on and say nothing. I have my family. I am in the middle."
"Will you let yourself be destroyed first, then?"
"I don’t know. When I speak of Koomson my wife looks at the children and I can see how sorry she feels for herself."
"You will have to leave her to enjoy her own sorrow. Unless you are eager to destroy yourself to feed her desires. O you brave married man. In the end you have to see the redness of her gums. If it frightens you, you don’t get married at all. You run away like a coward, like me. But you are brave. You have chosen to fight her. And the whole society is behind her."
"It’s been a very soft rain," the man said after a pause.
"Yes," his friend said. Then, "I am sorry I have been unable to give you what you need."
"What is that?"
"Strength, I suppose."
The man laughed weakly. "Don’t worry," he said. "You know what you’re about. And you understand. That’s enough for me."
"You are kind," said the other. I know my life is empty, one thing yours is not. Now all I do is read books of other places and other times, listen to the music of South Africa and the Congo and the Afro-Americans. And often I remember Maanan and the bitterness and the emptiness of life rise up in me. That is all."
Near the place of the prostitutes there were little puddles left by the gentle rain, some beginning to flow, looking for gutters. Occasionally the naked bulbs of street lamps shed a little light on holes in the back walls of bathrooms filled with strands from communal sponges cemented with the green moss and old suds killed with dirt and sweat so long ago, and the water still trickling out.

(The beautyful ones are not yet born - Ayi Kwei Armah)

(NB: The unusual spelling of the above title is consistently ‘corrected’ by readers and editors. It is from an inscription on the back of a Ghanian taxi-bus which Armah chose to indicate his sardonic vision of the state and society of his country just before, during and after the reign of Kwame Nkrumah)