The Dialogue Series- Part 2

 

Sins of the Father

It was late in the afternoon on a warm Tuesday in Msogwaba. My friend and I have spent the last few hours of day-light playing the game of Chess while drinking red wine in whisky glasses under the mango tree in front of his veranda. The lighting was getting poorer by the minute and his outside lights were not sufficient for lighting our table; plus, we were also tired of beating each other in this mind game and just wanted to enjoy the wine for now.

“Put that away before I change my mind and decide to continue mentally torturing you.” He said while switching off the Chess Clock.

“I will take mental torture over emotional torture any day.”

“That is because men were not meant to be emotional. Be Physical and intellectual, emotions break the best of us. You become emotional, you lose control of yourself and your life.”

“But we are emotional beings like all human beings, are we not?”

“We may be, but it does not mean we always have to entertain our emotions. We need to get them under the control of reason, make sense of them before entertaining them. Like sexual urges; we are also sexual beings but it doesn’t mean we must entertain all sexual feelings or urges now, does it?”

“I know. But I meant emotions that are necessary for thriving personal relationships; like love, care and compassion”

“Translate those into physical and intellectual terms. You feel it? Then make sense of it and figure out a way to physically act it out or perform it without compromising yourself. You do not let any of these feelings make you do things that compromise your safety, your sanity or your resources unless it is for someone you are responsible for. See? Keep it within reason.”

“You say these things so lightly but there are people who ended up dead or imprisoned just because of simple emotions such as jealousy for instance. And I am not talking the usual ‘envy’ type of jealousy people normally misuses the term Jealousy for. I mean the possessive type that men feel whenever they see another man with their wife or girlfriend even.”

“That is for silly boys. No man can allow himself to be a victim of such silly emotions”

“But the sad truth is bearded boys with big fully grown bodies are walking among us. You know I was attacked just last week while sitting at this Chillas spot next to the main road?”

“Really? Who would attack you? You are the most none-threatening man I know. Even your muscles are not scary, it’s obvious to anyone that looks at you that these are merely for aesthetics. What happened?”

“I was sitting with the owner playing chess, then the next thing a couple of his friends come over and sit on the table next to ours. At the end of the game, the tenth one this patzer lost, he moves over to join them.  I figured it was because they had cold beer while I was drinking wine. He didn’t appreciate the taste and the temperature. I had to stop him from adding ice a few times. Who dilutes fine red wine just for the sake of temperature?”

“Only uneducated idiots, but who am I to judge. Get to the part where you get attacked, please.”

Yes, so after the owner leaves the seat, these two ladies pull over in a black polo. They ask to join me at the table, I allow them. Then they start talking to me, asking if I could teach them Chess. I tell them it would be futile and a waste of my and their time at that point; chess needs directed and intentional commitment to learn. Just from that response they concluded that I am all sorts of negative things. They said I thought I was better than them because I was drinking wine. Ok. “

“As if you have your name on the bottle of the wine! What better? As if you are getting that wine for free! Better? As if you get paid to drink wine! Better?But do go on…”

“Better because I chose my alcohol based on personal health benefits. So yes, better!”

“That’s a good one.”

“So the next thing I hear this one guy from the two sitting with the owner, speaking offensively to the one girl sitting next to me. I look at her face and find that she is not fazed; as if  she is used to dealing with idiots like these. But still I somehow wonder why no one is saying anything. Why is the owner not calling his friend to order? He seemed to be enjoying it because he was laughing and continued drinking the instigator’s beer.”

“Do they not sell beer at Chillas?”

“They do”

“Then why was the owner drinking other people’s beer?”

“Oh, their beer was warm, that’s why they even allowed people to bring their own. It was a busy hot day and they are a very small establishment”

“I see. Proceed with the story”

“Yes, so the next thing I hear this guy shouting at me for a response. I raise my head to look at him to repeat what he was asking me because I didn’t get it the first few times. There was music playing and I did not expect him to speak to me. He repeats angrily, asks if I know the girl sitting next to me. I look at the girl, she smiles. I think to myself, an opportunity to redeem myself in her eyes, ok. So I respond ‘yes, I do know her.’ He then asks if I know where she stays. I look at her again for a signal, she’s friendly, so I say ‘yes I do’. Now the guy asks if I can tell him where she stays because she does not want to tell him. I laugh at that remark. He gets obviously annoyed and asks me not to laugh at him. I tell him, ‘my brother I cannot do that unless she allows me. If she wants you to know where she stays she can tell you herself’.

“I thought the guy was not coming to me when he got up and rushed to my direction. I just didn’t expect him to. It didn’t make sense how quick the situation had escalated. Next thing I feel someone pulling me by my t-shirt. I struggle and my t shirt rips to pieces. I get up to look, I see same guy holding the pieces of my shirt. He throws them down and comes at me with fists rolled up saying ‘I want to fuck you up’. I look at him. Sized him up and immediately decided I could handle him so I charged towards him with my fists rolled up to meet him half way. He stopped. Reached for his back pocket and pulled out a 3-star (knife). After he opened it I realized it was no longer a fair fight, so I called the owner to intervene and stop this madness. He just called out the guy’s name without moving from his chair. I realized then that I was all alone here so I fled the scene before it could become a criminal scene.”

“Damn! You did a smart thing to run; it really makes you look like a coward, but it was the smartest decision you could make. How drunk was the owner at that point for him to allow this madness?”

“Stupid drunk! Rendered catatonic by alcohol. It’s never a good idea to mix”

“You know I thought your story was on jealousy, but the stupid emotion I see here is that of alcohol induced sensitivity. I want to say drunk men, but I do not want to offend the ideal men so I will put it this way; drunk males are sensitive to disrespect. Drunk males are controlled by their emotions and feelings. Once they feel something when they are drunk, they do not take the necessary steps  to  assess if it is worth reacting to.”

“I hear you, but my story was not finished. My fleeing was not just to get away to safety. I too felt disrespected and did not want to allow another man to disrespect me and get away with it. I had gone to call for reinforcements and when I returned looking for the guy, he was gone. They said he left with the girl he had been speaking to. Apparently she was his girlfriend. He had to kick her around first before getting her in the car to leave. He somehow suspected that his girlfriend and I had known each other from before there. That’s why he was asking me all these silly questions. Jealousy!”

 

“You know it is sad that you nearly got stabbed for something you knew nothing about. Now imagine the possibility that something like that happens every weekend in our communities.”

“Sins of the father, man! It would have been poetic justice somehow. I would have found a way to make peace with it. I am making peace with the trauma from it as we speak. I deserved it!”

“You are losing me now. What are you talking about? What did your father do?”

“I am told that when I was two, my father stabbed and killed a man he suspected to be having an affair with my mother. My mother says she was not having an affair with the man. So there is a chance that there is a man who once died for something he did not do. Hence I am citing the poetic justice that this would have been. My father did the time for it though. Got rehabilitated, I believe.”

“That is not your load man, you are carrying too much already. Let go of that. Your father is alive to carry his sins and pay for them, not you. You have your own life to live. Your own mistakes to learn from.”

“But do you realize how much we become like our fathers as we grow older?”

“We are following the same genetic codes as our fathers, so yes! If you have the same genes as your father, you are likely going to look and possibly even think and act like him the older you grow.”

“That worries me a lot to be honest. I often fear I will make the same mistakes. In fact, I may have started making the same mistakes as him.”

“If you are immersed in the same environment as your father and have access to the same limited resources as him, then you are likely to make the same mistakes. But your father grew up at a different time, under different circumstances. Even the culture your father grew up under is significantly different from the one you grew up under. Your parents grew up under apartheid South Africa. A whole different regime than the democracy you grew up in. Stop feeling and start thinking! I told you these emotions will be the end of you. Now you are feeling unwarranted fear! Even I would say hope, though an emotion too, is better than fear. I will repeat for your benefit; Physical and intellectual, that’s all that matters out here. Everything else is meant to confuse you.”

“Why do you intentionally leave out the spiritual part of existence?”

“Because just like the emotional, it is personal and subjective. I can lie and say I feel a certain emotion just as easily as I can lie and say I am deeply spiritual. The truth is it does not matter what I say, what matters is what reasonable thoughts are derived from the spiritual and emotional and the actions that follow; Intellectual to physical! The proof is in the pudding my dear friend!”

“I hear you sir! It’s getting late, I must get home. Thanks for the beatings my good sir, I promise to return the favour in our next meeting.”

“Keep dreaming. Be safe in these streets my friend. Go well.”