Through the hand of Dany Wambire, writer and editor of Fundza, based in the city of Beira, we went through the “Memórias do Idai” (“Memories of Idai”) collection. This collection is mainly composed of new and young authors from different parts of the country. It is through the voices of these creators that we relive one of the greatest tragedies of our time, cyclone Idai, which ravaged the central part of Mozambique roughly a year and a half ago.
I invite everyone to read the 26 stories in this collection, because nothing remains if it isn’t converted into a story. Reality only begins to be real when it comes to us through fiction. And we, here in Mozambique, think that only those who were heroes are entitled to have a past, but heroes are all of us who wake up every day and face problems and difficulties. Many of these heroes that we have aren’t alive anymore. They are on street signs, but if we ask who they are, no one knows them. They can only stay alive if they become stories that can seduce us, which we can be enamored with. And certainly with these initiatives by young people like Dany Wambire and the writers who embraced this project, the extreme events of climate change will become more important and attract our attention.
MEMORIES OF IDAI “THE RAIN WAS DEAD”
EXCERPTS
DONA ABRISTA AND THE COMMISSIONER BROTHER Francisco Raposo “Saliva, mouth, sweat, desire, fear, pleasure, movements, man and woman, inside. Wind, rain, trees, falls, screams, escapes and destruction, outside. Inside, the cyclone spins were done by the woman, and outside, only deep breaths of snakes could be heard in the nest. Everything else was silent. Everything was deaf. Until the beams and the metal sheets flew, until a wall collapsed over them, crushing them, until death united them forever.”
I ARRIVED ARRIVING Ruina Carim
“(…) I opened my eyes and sucked the remaining energies from my being, as the juice of an orange is sucked. Congratulations, it was dawn.
– Mommy, wake up, mommy!
– We have to clean that wound.
I sat down. Had the film ended? I didn’t even watched the credits, where it says: “directed by so-and-so with the support of so-and-so.” But, certainly, the people of Beira had been the protagonists. When we left the house, my husband held the kid around his neck, the neighbor’s roof had lost its shape, around it was an ocean of melancholic people, with empty eyes, grumbling stomachs, and bare feet, treading water that reached their knees.”
THE FIRE OF WATER AND THE WEIGHT OF HUNGER Otildo Guido
“The rain was dead. Lying on the floor of our house. Khunda’s few books weighed a little more. Khunda believed that rain was a wicked poet adding some liquid verses to the finished poems of our favorite poets.
I believed that it was a matter of the paper having too much water. Nothing gave us the mood to argue.
The radio, the only treasure Dad had managed to save from the cold fire of rain, told us of the whites who fed the dead. My father didn’t care about anything that came from overseas.
“They are the ones with the factories,” he said in a hoarse voice.
“Why doesn’t it rain and flood in their land like it does here?”, I asked.
“You don’t know what rain is to this day, Dudú?” “I do know. Rains are letters sent by the clouds.”
“Damn – Dad hit the table – the more you study, the more stupid you become – and called my mother, who was away from the kitchen, where we slept, cooked and dreamed.”
Illustration: Walter Zand
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