This fruit, balata, is milky like caimate and has the sweetness of sapodilla but it’s small. It seems like a work in progress, and if it wasn’t for the unyielding outer skin and the gum that sticks to your lips afterwards, it would have been one of the most perfect fruit known to man, or at least one of the most perfect in Trinidad. I think it was really meant for the small birds, their beaks could easily manoeuvre the hard exterior to reach to the milky insides. In his hands though… all grace was lost. His large fingers intruded, his mouth too eager for the fleeting sweetness and his nose overwhelmed him with memory. I always preferred not to watch.

 “Allah protected me so I could tell the truth.” [TT Mirror, pg.3, 8/9/95]

It was 1995 when we moved to St. Augustine after “they” shot up the car and he had to jump over the University fence to get to safety. After they tried to kill him our whole life changed. He kept the car in the garage for a long time. Holes the size of balata seeds speckled the Mazda Coupe and I used to count them over and over… twenty-three, twenty-three, twenty…. I tried not to think about which one was the hole left by the bullet that killed Aziz’s father…. I heard the story a million times… how Muhammad was almost in that car too, how I could have lost my brother that night but didn’t, how my father was so cruel for running out and leaving his wife in the car, how Aziz’s father died and there was no justice.

“Aziz’s white turban was on the backseat of the car yesterday morning. There were thick clots of blood in it, suggesting he was shot in the head.” [Daily Express, pg.1, 1/9/95]

The house at Upper St. John’s Road, St. Augustine was supposed to be our ‘dream house’. It was certainly bigger than anywhere we had ever lived before but there was always an out-of-placeness about that place. I often wondered who in their right mind would build such a grand house among shacks. It was beautiful though, and we made the most of it, for a number of years until all our lives took us in different directions. Me to Cuba, not to return for the better part of a decade. When I did come back home, the house was a mere shell of what it used to be, as time and neglect had had their way.

“I told him to stay down. Say whatever Surahs you could remember.”[Daily Express, pg.1, 1/9/95]

Recently, I took the children to the bathing spot a few miles up from the house. I hadn’t been there in years and I still don’t know what made me decide to go. We parked the car and I called to Ms. Mary who lives on the hill on the opposite side. Her windows were open and I could hear the television or perhaps the radio but she did not answer.

It had rained all morning and as we walked along the damp trail, I pointed out to them the familiar and the mostly unfamiliar. They walked ahead of me and I deliberately left a short distance between us to allow the forest to frame them, I imagined that it was me in that picture, walking ahead of me twenty years ago. I wished in those moments that I could have held my own hand and tell my younger self that everything was not going to be alright but that I would be alright. At the waterhole, it was already getting dark and the water was very cold but I still went in. When my feet touched the bottom, a bed of dead leaves became disturbed and coloured the water black. I saw my whole life in the darkness and it was as if time stood still for a few moments to allow me to breathe… to inhale the present and exhale the hurt.

“I am unarmed and unhurt, remember that, I am unarmed and unhurt. [TT Mirror, pg.3, 8/9/95]

You see, it’s a pain that you don’t know is there until something makes you aware of it, and then you realize that you have been bearing it for a long time. I always thought I looked clumsy eating my balata too… but now I don’t hide anymore.

The truth is that perhaps there are no truths. It’s just like this fruit. There is no right or wrong way to eat it. It will not satisfy your hunger, but it is precisely this scarcity of flesh that makes it so appealing. Each morsel begs another and another and another… like memories that trigger other memories. Smells that trigger memories that beg of life explanations where there are none. Truths where there are none.

“This is a quandary. There are more questions than answers.” [Daily Express, pg.1, 1/9/95]

After Twenty-Three years of this mysterious shooting and murder, where one boy lost his father and a girl almost lost hers. All I can do is write about it in the hope that those who were hurt know that their pain is not forgotten. And those who feel loss know that the reward for their patience and endurance is with Allah (swt).

Nimah Muwakil… searching for the truth.