The Overshadowing

After witnessing a horrific scene on the streets one begins to wonder about the backstory. Who were the people involved at the scene and what led them to that moment they shared together? Also what about the relatives and loved ones who were not at the scene but who were involved in the lives of those who were there? Were their hopes and prayers somehow present in the drama? Could there be a thread between those caught up in the drama and those absent but nevertheless loving, shaping and hoping? After seeing these events unfold on the streets of New Cross one day I needed to know the backstory –  so I made it up.

Photo by Jason Ng on Unsplash

Nobody really knew where the plastic garden chair had come from. Had it been there all week or just a few hours? The streets of New Cross were littered with all kind of debris so it was the kind of thing that went unnoticed. Afterwards everyone agreed it must have been dumped by the bus stop for a reason, perhaps left for Kadeejah to use that morning. Of course Granny Gifty didn’t know about the chair, she didn’t know what had happened that morning and how so nearly her grandson Kwame had been overtaken by the dark overshadowing.

Granny Gifty of course knew, and had seen for herself, the darkness and the overshadowing. Many years ago, back in Northern Nigeria, when the rebels came to burn her village, she had smelt that deadly dark bird and seen, over the burning huts, the shadows of its wings. As a small girl she had witnessed the raw rage that bird brings in the lives of angry men.

Maybe that is why Granny Gifty prayed so much. Each morning she would read her bible and pray against that evil bird. Mainly she prayed that her only Grandson would never know the hatred and death she herself had witnessed so many years back. Granny Gifty knew of another kind of bird, her mother called it the Holy Paraclete. From the early days she was told stories of the Holy Spirit as a bird hovering over creation, resting on the believer, implanting the fruit of kindness and bestowing gifts of strange tongues and healing. So it was to this bird, over the years, Granny Gifty interceded when she prayed for Kwame.

Kadeejah had also seen the shadow of the dark bird. She had smelt the terrible stench of its wind against her face in the Kenyan refugee camps and heard it in the screams of others during the rare but frenzied tribal killings. She heard those screams again that morning and once again she recognised the wind of those wings over New Cross as she waited for the 42 bus to take her to Lewisham market.

The Old Kent Road was particularly congested that day – traffic was slow, so while those passing by in cars and vans could not feel the wind but they certainly could sense the dark wings overhead and could see very clearly the terrible madness being unfolding on the pavement.

Fourteen year old boys are not adults. They are tall and thin, they may have deeper voices, but they are not men. They swap football cards, boast, laugh, are sometimes disrespectful, they run, play and often make mischief, but surely they should not be old enough to know that deadly bird. Surely they are not cursed with sufficent ‘adulthood’ to be so terribly consumed with hate and blind frenzy. But Kwame was. He was so overwhelmed by that terrible bird and overshadowed by its rage.

Photo by Alek Burley on Unsplash

The women across the road spilled out the shop, not to see what was happening but to comprehend the evil being played out in someone so young. It was these African women who began the screaming holding their hands over their ears, pulling at their hair they screamed and wailed for the lost innocence of childhood and a youth possessed by such destruction. The tall Somali women standing alongside Kadeejah at the bus stop, so used to clipping the ears of teenage sons and knowing the warmth of their hugs, took up the kilio wailing of death.

Like a Sparrow Hawk in pursuit of a small bird Kwame chased after the boy. Dogging this way and that the boy swiftly ran in circles perhaps remembering his childhood games of chase. But the terrible shock for the boy and those looking on – this was not a game nor teenage larking. These were children’s bodies in school uniform, but the drama was being enacted by a gross inhumanity because, held upright in Kwame’s right hand, was a long double edged knife. Even in the overshadowing we could see the blade glistening in the sunlight, gleaming and illuminated even in the darkness of the bird.

There was something awesome and attractive maybe captivating about the knife and the way it was being held. Perhaps it was almost sexual, a powerful phallus wheedled by one who was only just beginning to know privately its overwhelming power and none of its destructiveness. The boys were too quick for the women who now wailed for lost childhood and for their sons who were becoming strangers, women fearing their sons becoming headlines of yet another youth stabbing. Such beauty, vitality and promise draining away quickly quickly under the madness of that bird’s shadow.

It was then that the boy tripped, falling to the floor. Kwame was upon him in a terrible rage desperate to be satisfied. He turned the boy over onto his back and was now sitting on the boys stomach ensuring the boy could see the blade and his own most certain end. The knife would pass between the boys school tie and his white shirt, ironed that morning perhaps by his mother or father or brother; red on white on Black.

Kwame lifted the blade above his head. None of us knew, not the women, not the car drivers what had led to such a frenzy, maybe a curse, maybe loyalty or disloyalty. But we knew that dark bird was present and was overwhelming and overshadowing Kwame for such sickening evil. It was at the last minute when serious injury if not death was inevitable that something happened. Even Kadeejah was unable to explain it, but many others, if they really knew, would point to the prayers of Granny Gifty.

There is a sisterhood between women which for ever is needed to cover and heal the sins of broken brotherhood. There was a sisterhood on the Old Kent Road between the prayers of Granny Gifty and Kadeejah. For it was then, when the knife was raised that Kadeejah picked up the plastic chair and charged at young Kwame. She jabbed and again jabbed at him with the chair as he lifted the knife and she jabbed him again and again until he lost his balance. It was sufficient for the boy to take his chance. Quickly he got to his feet and ran – we don’t know where.

Kwame, now exhausted, also got to this feet the knife hanging down in his hand, the power of the bird had somehow been punctured. The death, stench and chaos of the bird was beginning to abate. The women emboldened by sister Kadeejah were closing in on Kwame facing down evil but instinctively at the same time creating a circle of healing.

Photo by Danie Franco on Unsplash

Granny Gifty was never told about her grandson and the dark overshadowing on the Old Kent Road. She will never meet Kadeejah or know how her prayers to the Holy Paraclete were answered through a brave Somalian refugee and how these all saved two boys from destruction.