Migrations: Salt Stories

JULIANE OKOT BITEK

Ash to salt

Salt to land

Land to sea

Sea to sky

Sky to story

Story to land

Land to threshold Threshold to step & back & back & back

On this land

& in time

What else will stave off the demons?

Salt1 to land2 to sea3 to sky4 to story5 to land6 to threshold7 to step8.

1. Ash to Salt

Having been locked to land & free to home, we discover ways to salt from ash. Also, salt licks; also, salt panning—what did we need the sea for? Never bound by the ocean until the slavers came down the Nile & marked us in chains, us terrorized, us enraged, us subdued, faces drawn, waiting, waiting, waiting, yet still here, still here, still.

I can draw you a map.

Then emissaries of the sorcerer-queen arrived, bearing gifts, as they do. Show us your chief, your queen, your warriors, we demanded. We will not speak only with mercenaries, we said. Or we will not hold court with you.

They showed us the image of the sorcerer-queen on glass. They showed us the king in the barrel, the king in the bible & the king in the bounty. & they went home to draw lines that mapped us differently.

To make salt from ash is to live within your means. To make salt from ash is to live inside a story, to draw your own maps. This story is our means. I can point out the stars & show you where it started.

2. Salt to Land

This is land to salt, to cement bags & rusting tin walls, I tell you. This is land to salt to shanties, to shanty towns, to tears, to sweat-stained handkerchiefs, walking down the street in Nairobi. Land to salt, to blood, to red dust. Land to map stories. Land to salt stories—we never made it across the road. We were bound by mehndi patterns like maps of the places we’d been—round, round, round, giddy & far too young to be looking for love. At the end of the day, children still laughing, children still playing, chasing the train that races through Kibera:

Come city9, come county10, come towns11, come boundaries12, red roads13, rust rails14

Go train, go train, go, take our dreams with you

We might never cross the street

We may never arrive

3. Land to Sea

At Mombasa, tales arrive in sacks on the backs of men that off-load sacks, unload tears; off-load sacks, unload memory; off-load sacks, unload craters, unload boxes, unload bales, unload paper. Off-load sacks, unload the tallest of lies in crystal form, all bubble-wrapped & precious, on the way to prestigious museums abroad. Upload, upload, upload, horns, fantasy, white sand.

Land to sea bones

Land to sea salt

Land to sea flesh

Cries of excitement & heartbreak Shanties, shanties

Tell me again where you come from

& I’ll draw you a map to the salt lines beyond borders that lead to my home

4. Sea to Sky15

The thing that was there is the thing itself which is this: there was a story, itself the thing and that’s all there is.

Two shadows walk with me, hand in hand, our feet in step. Do they know, these shadows, that they are the thing that is the thing itself that is this? There’s always warmth between us. We’re the thing that was already the thing that is this story. & now we know that the orbit of stars does not depend on this love or any other. We hurtle to nothing, crash or implode & the sky remains an illusion & a fact.

5. Sky to Story

We landed with nothing, into nothing & onto nothing. We came to nothing spaces, with nothing people, speaking nothing words, doing nothing things, looking at us with nothing in their eyes. Us, with stories at hand, memories still unpacked in envelopes, photo albums, skin that had yet to tingle when the sun was right—where was it we found ourselves again? What was this place whose stories we could not yet hear?

We spoke into our own mouths16, taking, eating, doing this in memory of us17 as we’d learned to do in church. We swallowed our words like bodies & blood18, looked up at sunsets with pinked hues, moons with rust rings that reminded us of salt.

These days we ghost lines. We ghost the lines on Wednesdays. We line up, we line up, we line up. We snake around the block waiting for a turn. & then we turn, & then we turn, & then we turn & turn & turn & we’re gone home. Hello sensual smoke, I’ve been waiting for you. Hello, glory, I’m not going back. I’m not going back. I’m home now & I hope not to return to this place of nothing people with empty eyes. Goodbye, goodbye again. Goodbye, for real this time.

6. Story to Land

So then, let’s not lie today. Let’s not lie. These are snake plants. These are air-cleaning plants. These are air-cleaning plants bounds in pots & sold at the grocery store, the gardening centre, the hardware store. These plants will clean the air in your house & in your bedroom.

But snake plants are also sold pots along the road to Kabalagala in Kampala. A local graduate cannot compete with globalization & a history of colonialism & the gift of free trade & the uselessness of the arts diploma with the edges brown & worn & will never open any doors but can do with cleaner air & these plants will clean that air, too. These plants will clean the air polluted by traffic, by stale stories, by lies & nightmares of never-ending documents that require signatures. Snake plants will clean the air, bound in pots made elsewhere, locked in stories to benefit the market. Snake plants will set you free. Tell me again, about the need for clean air & I’ll trace the road to you where we’re going.

7. Land to Threshold

Here, where our skins meet, where our stories clash or sometimes come together in the gentlest & sweetest ways, tell me a story19. Where we are now, people have always been.

So let’s not lie that these migrations, that these are the only beginnings, that these are the ones, the only ones that matter. Tell me a story about the origin of this land & I’ll trace my way back through salt lines, to where ours began.

8. & back & back & back

So now we’ve resorted to drawing daisies. A circle, a loop back, a loop back, always touching the circle then moving away & back home. We draw circles. Loop at the elbows20, loop21 at the elbows. We’re dancing, we’re dancing again.