Written piece
Mohee/Welcome
Eugene Quao
Ghana
About this piece
A juxtaposition of old, tired and possibly withering life against the endless promise of a new one.
A child has just been born thirty metres away in the theatre. Weeks after my 33rd birthday, while I toil away at a book I’ve been working on for years.
25 years after we moved from my favourite neighbourhood, when I sulked inside the truck, watching community 4 fade into the distance in the mirror, seeing the boys continue the unending game of football without me, a child has just been born.
A child has just been born two decades since I sat in my primary classroom, daydreaming through the open window, convinced I was going to marry my first love, blindsided by my teacher’s stealthy approach with the cane meant to steer my attention back into the classroom.
20 years after Ghana’s inaugural World Cup, where Gyan, Muntari, and Essien made us dream, until Brazil dumped us out of the tournament, a child has just been born.
A child has just been born two years after I wished my life ended, when the woman I love inexplicably took her final breath, and her passing cast a permanent shade over my existence, where guilt follows every laugh, and everything good seems to be behind me. I yearn, every day, for a voice I can no longer hear, for a presence that I will never feel again, for a return to my favourite memory where she is alive, and I am beside her, laughing.
A child has just been born to happy parents in the vicinity of a stranger. A stranger who confers a silent prayer on them. That long into their adulthood, long after I’m gone, they find the luck that eluded me, effortlessly evade the traps I fell into, and pass the tests that I failed.
A child has just been born, and a man makes a wish.
Mohee.