A Study of African Short Story
A Study of Two African Short Stories: “The Garden of Evil” by William Saidi and “The Wicked Tongue” by Mohammed Moulessehoul The stories incorporated in the book, Hot Days Long Nights, which also comprises the two stories to be studied, relate different scenarios and pictures of the African continent. They are compact and precise, giving the readers an insight to the customary laws and traditions of its people. Some of them depict the painful collective memory of wars, while the others narrate the story of an individual or the encounter between different people, even on the level of the colonized and the colonizer. At the same time, every story is pervaded with a sense of pain and longing, a justification of Chinua Achebe’s assertion in the foreword of the book: “The common factor in all the stories is a pervasive atmosphere of pain and life’s injustice”.[i] “The Garden of Evil” narrates the story of Mwanza, a gardener in a white man’s house. What is worth mentioning in this story is the link that Mwanza has with the garden. He imagines himself to be a royal when he works in the garden among the plants and vegetables. The garden is also referred to as his “kingdom, his own little garden of Eden”.[ii] In the world of Mwanza, this little patch in the Parker household becomes the only space where he can exercise his liberty. It becomes a ground of power and equation whereby Mwanza can converse freely with and to the plants. The garden provides an anesthetic sensation for Old Mwanza; it becomes a transitory paradise where the evils and commotions of the real world are forgotten, even though for a short while. Moreover, the connotation that can be derived from the garden is that it symbolizes ‘land’ and the native’s attachment to it. Postcolonial criticism has often cited the intimate connection the native has with nature especially when it comes to land. Incidentally, the writer of this particular story William Saidi is a native of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
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