Must Read: BLACK MARIA (A Tale of Two Thieves) - Season 1 - Episode 9

7 years ago

Must Read: BLACK MARIA (A Tale of Two Thieves) - Season 1 - Episode 9

Gently came the soft hand that tapped the poor boy; even the kindly tap sent him a mildly painful s£nsat!on on his bruised skin. He slowly opened his eye to behold a strange environment. He was in a neat room, and the first thing that caught his eyes was the poster on the wall; it was the picture of The Last Supper. There was Jesus Christ sitting between some men. From the picture, it was evident that the men were dinning, as the big table bore different dishes and goblets. The image on the wall momentarily caused a rumble in his stomach. He suddenly felt a pang of hunger. He looked round the neat room; the walls were painted blue and the ceiling white. A checkered carpet covered the floor and he discovered that he was lying on a large bed that would have comfortably slept four people; the covering of the bed was white, the blanket, too. Beside the bed was a small table bearing syringes and drugs.

He wanted to rise but he was too weak to lift himself. As he tried to fathom what had happened to him, an old man stepped into the room. The man was clad in a white cloak that draped from his neck right to his feet and the hair on his head was both greying and receding, at alarming rates. He was old enough to be the boy's grandfather; the grandfather he never knew. The man who fathered Peter's father had died long before Peter was born.

The old man smiled when Peter opened his eyes.

"You're finally awake!" The man beamed.

Black asked, "Where am I?"

"You have been unconscious for three days."

"Where am I?" The boy asked again.

"I found you three days ago at the entrance of the door, you were bloody and unconscious. What happened to you?"

Black looked at the man suspiciously; he had grown to become wary of strangers because they always seemed to reward him with nothing but pains. A part of him was expecting the strange man to unleash on him a vicious slap; he had reflexively steeled his body for the attack but the slap did not come. His eyes caught the poster again and he said aloud:

"I'm hungry."

"Yes, you should be. You have been on drips since the past three days." The man went out of the room and returned with plates of steaming pounded yam and stew. The boy sat up and ate the food voraciously; he ate like an animal, he could not recall having eaten the food in all his life. He was barely swallowing a morsel before sticking another into his mouth. As Black dined pitifully, the priest watched the boy's ravaged body. The child had grown very thin from starvation, his body was bruised and swollen; there was a long line of wound on his back. The injury could have come only from a very sharp weapon.

Seeing this boy, the priest recalled the holocaust of the Civil War he had experienced twelve years earlier. He recalled meeting one particular child during the time; the child, just about six years old, had been so thin with starvation that everybody wondered how he still remained alive and managed to trek to the refugee camp where cups of milk offered the malnutritioned infants. He recalled hearing the sordid story of that child. The boy, on hearing that food was being distributed in a neighbouring village many kilometres away, had left his own village and trekked naked through the forests and swamps for half a day. The child's will to live had moved everyone to tears as they listened to the little kid; his story had planted optimism in the minds of many of the war victims who had given up on life. While the child was walking through the forest, an unkindness of ravens, a murder of crows, an exhaltation of larks and a pack of vultures had accompanied him. After some times, the birds became bored with his journey and had flown to other parts to find more interesting activities, but the vultures remained stedfast; they were interested in picking out the thin filaments of flesh covering his bones. The little boy knew that he dared not rest or the vultures would immediately pounce on him; they could eat him up while he was still alive, so he had to continue remaining mobile and upright. As he trekked in the hot afternoon sun, some of the vultures had also chosen to follow him on foot; they were eagerly waiting for him to collapse so that they could have a new meal. But the boy didn't give them that pleasure; he trekked without respite to the food camp. The little boy was determined to live, against all odds.

The tortured body of Black pulled at the priest's heartstring as much as the Biafra boy's story has done twelve years earlier. He felt as if the situation was a replay of circumstances. The compassion he had had for that child of over a decade earlier was now being directed towards this current one. After listening to the Biafra boy's story, the priest didn't know what became of the child after praying for all the children. He didn't know if the boy still remained alive thereafter or he had finally surrendered his soul to a better one in the afterlife. The priest had made a grave mistake for leaving that boy there in the camp, for he later learnt that depraved soldiers had stormed the camp and massacred the innocent famished civilians. The priest, on hearing the news of the genocide from the little transistor radio he owned, had broken and wept like a child. He should have taken the boy with him when he was leaving. He should have borne the responsibilty of protecting the child. But he didn't. He had left instead; he had rejected the boy. This was 1980; if he had taken care of the boy, the child would be eighteen years now, for the boy was only six years old when he had walked nak*d and dirty into the food camp.