The Old Hunter

To the Hadza of East Africa.

One of my abiding memories is of, when I worked in a music store a day when and old man stood on the street corner. His black hair was tinged with white. His shirt hung from his shoulders like a dog wearing a human’s clothes. When he shifted his feet, they seemed cumbersome inside the shoes, as if made from blocks of wood.

He was on the street corner when I arrived for work, but it was raining, and I barely noticed him. As I worked, the morning sun dried his clothes. When I went for lunch, he had not moved.

He stared down the street, almost unblinkingly. When I returned for the afternoon, I thought I saw tears in his eyes.

It wasn’t until the evening that I plucked up the courage to speak to him. A colleague advised me against it, when I confided my intentions in him. He said the man was probably a nutter escaped from the looney bin.

He hadn’t left the corner all day. I took a deep breath before walking up to him.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“No,” he replied.

“Oh,” I said. I turned to go, but he asked a question, still staring down the street.

“Did you see this place before the town?”

“No I didn’t.”

“I was born here. There was a tree where that coffee shop is now. When a mother was going to give birth, she would wait inside a hollow in the tree. All of my brothers and sister were born in that tree.

“There used to be a rock behind that shop over there. We used to play games on it when we were children, and for target practice when we learnt to use the bow.

“There was a cave under that tower,” he said, pointing to the spire of the town hall that rose above the skyline. “When I came of age, to be a hunter, my father and my uncle took me into it, to add my palm to the generations of hunters who were my ancestors.”

He paused and fingered a set of faded and worn beads around his neck. I could see definite tears welling up in his eyes. He took a long deep breath, and I unwittingly did the same, enthralled by this man’s story.

“Just here, where we stand, there was a very rare bush. My daughter-in-law is in the hospital. She is dying and there is no cure for the disease. But the leaves of the bush that stood here, they would have cured her. My son will be without his wife; and my grandson without a mother; because no-one listened when I said they should not build here.

“My world was here, among the trees, animals and birds. I was given a house, but it is not my home. I have tried to live in your world, but it is difficult. Where I belong was destroyed when the bulldozers came.”

“I am so sorry,” I said, lamely.

The man didn’t answer. He stared down the street, lost in his past.