Dear,
I have found another malignant name to add to the long list of things they have called you: Zeru Zeru (ghost). This one is Tanzanian and I think it reads better than Àfia Òwò (white person in Ibibio) or Àfin (I have forgotten the meaning of this Yoruba one now). You know what I am going to say. You know I’ll say that you should look ahead and ignore them. There is no guarantee that they’ll stop if you turn your eye the other way, but pretending that they do not exist can do wonders for your soul.
The first time I saw your skin glow, we had just come back from school and you were crying all over again. It was not an Instagram thing at the time – there was no golden sunshine (just your hair) and there was no misleading filter. Your skin glowed because whenever you cry, the pink emerges all over. That day it was more intense though; the pink was sharper, brighter, almost bioluminescent. Your veins were more visible too and I couldn’t see the hazel in your eyes because they had turned red. You were crying because your teacher had hit you. You said it was something about not turning in your homework on time.
Do you remember how Mummy reacted?
“Is that teacher blind?” she asked.
She had been sitting when we came in but now she was up and examining the purple welts on your back. Each time you winced at her touch, her voice reached for the ceiling and her hands swiped at the air.
“Can she not see that your skin is special?” She screamed the question, angling her head as though her voice—now hoarse from sobbing—could cut through our wooden door and maybe pierce the teacher’s eardrums, wherever she was.
I won’t lie, I struggled to keep myself from rolling my eyes. I received lashings at school every other day but Mum had never threatened to deal with the teacher. Her goal was to always spare you discomfort. To my displeasure, you were the only child in our household who was exempted from housework – Mummy granting you the solace of the indoors.
Many times, I catch myself doing that thing strangers do: watching you, observing your movements. I do not watch with a sneer like they do, with lips turned downwards or upwards at the sides. I do not watch in anticipation of telling an insensitive joke – the reason most strangers stare, in search of one-liners about your quirks and gestures. As for me, I only watch you in awe, in wonder. I’m often mesmerized by your eccentric beauty. I’ve told you that if I had shiny golden hair like yours I would never hide it under a hat. I’ve told you that I would flaunt my locks and never marry them with those synthetic attachments you get at the salon. And if I had your eyes, your hazel eyes, I would take more close-up selfies and show them off in my stories. If I had your eyes, my dear, I would model for Vogue.
Other times I am more fascinated by your skin. Your skin… It’s a brilliant, china-like patina that hides many of your scars; those scars you don’t like to talk about, those scars that have made you distrustful of anyone who isn’t in your bloodline. I understand. I mean, you’ve hidden your scars quite well. Even before the purple welts from that teacher’s cane, you had endured subtle jabs from anyone who didn’t understand you. I think the lacerations started to form when you got your report card in primary school, maybe class two: “…she has trouble with seeing the whiteboard…”. I remember Dad’s face, the way his eyes chose to see trouble, how he shifted in his chair and let the report card down on the table. The pain began to form when he took you to the optometrist and you got your first pair of glasses. You know the one; that one with the long rope and rubber temples. Yes. It was then that you began to wear your problems, giving yourself up to vulnerability. It backfired. When you shared your pain, whether it was your discomfort with harsh sunlight or the fact that you couldn’t see the board well, you were met with ridicule. You began to retreat, and every time you folded yourself in, a crease would form and another strand of you would break.
I have come to notice your aversion to the outdoors and the people there. It’s partly because you’re an introvert and partly because you are scared of those wolves who relish the sight of your downward gaze and unsteady eyes. Those devious monsters who thrive on euphemistic virulence. They love the kind of toxicity delivered in the likeness of a shared joke but that bears something more sinister. Their jests are like a cut one gets from a rusty nail – it hurts a little and seems like a superficial injury until, “hey, tetanus!”
Their jokes are what the teachers at your school waved away and called “play”. Every time you struggled to read the faint notes on the board, they laughed, pointed. Theirs was a low, arrhythmic laughter that echoed from every corner and proved that everyone was on board with causing you pain. They teased when you asked the teacher for more time to write down stuff. They laughed and you cried.
It was always those rich, spoilt kids. Remember that one who taunted you and asked to wear your glasses? He didn’t actually need them, of course – just a young boy running out of comedic material, who grabbed at your lens case.
Years have gone by since the welts, since you began to stomach the pain of bullying and now you have developed your own resistance. I think it’s the inevitable exposure to the outdoors, necessitated by our time in the university that has given you this strength. Wherever we go, I see them – mostly older men lounging in front of their stores, engulfed in a thick miasma of boredom.
It’s like they sit around and say to each other, “today’s so boring… Oh wait, here comes this fair girl. Why don’t we ridicule her to spice things up?” They speak their sarcasm in a not too loud, not too quiet voice that’s meant to sing in your memories and bore a hole through your heart. When you do not pay them any mind, they repeat their foolishness in a louder tone. This time, they point at you and highlight your sun burns. I notice your face and try to lighten it up with distracting banter or a muttered “sorry.” In those moments, I feel the heat too. I want to shout back at them and say something derogatory but…
Then there’s the sunshine. Sometimes it shines so bright I want to ask you to stay home or caution you to cover yourself up in super long sweatshirts and a fez cap. These days, it’s such a marvelous thing to hear you say you’re “going out.” You, who used to love the indoors so much, too much. And back then, it wasn’t even about protecting your skin, it was more about avoiding the people outside. I still wish to see you lounge in the sunset without squinting. I want to be able to share sibling gossip under our coconut tree. I want us to waka all over the city.
I have noticed, when we go out together these days, how much of a comedian you have turned into.
“Ah! Wahala,” you said once.
“What?”
“Don’t you see this woman here?”
I turned and—I know you’re smiling now—there was a woman with green, long synthetic eyelashes.
“If she blinks fast enough we will disappear from here!”
I looked at you. You maintained a poker face while I struggled to stifle my laughter. It was only when we were out of earshot that you let out a cackle.
I love walking around with you. There is a pleasure that comes with knowing my sister is the fairest of them all, the only one with naturally golden hair on the street, and that I get to walk with her. It’s one of the reasons why I beg you to come out for tech events and book festivals. I am proud of you. I understand your reasons for saying no sometimes. I understand all you have been through – the bullying in secondary school, the awkward stares in church, the emotionally unintelligent relatives at family functions. Heck, I’m not even as fair as you are but they’ve called me “White” and “Afin” too. I wonder why people have a penchant for creating divisions based on the superficial. It’s not just for us, my dear. Even people on the other end of the spectrum are targets, often called names like “Blackie” and “Polish”. These bullies find a way to make those ones remain in the dark. The sad part is that many of them do not know they are causing deep hurt, that they are pushing people through a funnel of depression and low self esteem, a funnel that they will never emerge from whole. I understand this and it is why I choose to ignore those bullies, why I tell you to look the other way.
You know, the whole thing gives me a novel perspective on the word “oppression”. Often, it carries images of bended knees, a battle for emancipation, loaded magazines, tax hikes and all that. But it can also be something smaller: a subtle phobia for anyone who’s different, unusual.
As I went down the rabbit hole of Zeru Zeru, I became frightened by the stories I read. It wasn’t the type of fright marked by recoil and widened eyes. It was a curious kind, a yearning for more knowledge on the matter, a yearning that eventually segued into nausea and invariably, fear. For a long time my observations about the matter had been localized; I had only known of persecutions from our immediate environment, from friends, neighbours, schoolmates, insensitive family members. It was a new feeling to see and know that this sort of discrimination was alive somewhere else.
They think our albino brothers and sisters in Tanzania possess magical powers. They think your skin is imbued with something extraordinary and so, they come up with diabolic posses that hunt down, persecute and eliminate. It is a sad thing. Infuriating. With every webpage I came across, every harrowing interview I had to endure, it became more concrete in my mind, the objectification—tokenization even—of that which is different or not understood. I won’t lie, every time I watched another interview, I felt a tug at my heart. I was afraid for you. I struggled to keep myself from imagining that someone could one day see you in the street and have the bright idea that you were their ticket to the magical. I wondered whether anything could, by any means, happen to you too.
I had wanted to write something like this earlier, something about how your skin is only a fraction of your essence. Look at you now. You’re the one with all the bright ideas, you’re the one that cooks up a storm in the kitchen. And, my dear, if I were to put an end to all the folly happening in the world, I would drag you onto a big stage and tell everyone, “Look, this is my sister. She’s amazing.”
And truly, you are. Beneath your tough exterior, I believe you are one of the simplest people I know. You find joy in going about the house whistling. It is you who comes to my bedroom window, coaxing me into laughter over something you saw on Facebook. It is you who got me my second birthday cake ever – my name in blue cursive icing. You are constantly chasing the joy that this world refuses to give, and every time you find it, you share it with those around you.
Love, it is you who has shown me that so much is possible, if you have the skin for it. I watch as you manage projects on your laptop, creating designs and growing your career. I believe that is a statement, a bold declaration to this harsh world that you are capable of excelling.
I agree with a fraction of the flawed notions from Tanzania. You are magic.
Eduek Moses is a Nigerian creative writer and neo journalist. His words have appeared in African Writer Magazine, Conscio Magazine, Erato Magazine, Kalahari Review, and elsewhere. He was longlisted for the 2024 DKA short story writing competition. He has just completed his B.A in Communication Arts.