from The Bells of Amersfoort
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 May 2019
Lights rise simultaneously on the first and second worlds. TAMI and LUTHANDO are discovered in the middle of their correspondence.
LUHANDO: We are free, Tami, we are free. After almost four hundred years we are free. The burden of humiliation has been removed from our shoulders. We are now able to walk straight; our bodies are no longer bent forwards. We are no longer crouching. We walk straight and tall and our bodies are strong, fed with the milk of freedom. Is that not what you and I fought for, Tami? Now we have got it. Come back, Tami. Come back.
TAMI: Dear Luthando, it has been many months since I heard from you. Seasons of swallows have come and gone. Hope has blossomed and wilted. The demons continue to eat my insides. I am a seeker, Luthando. I have always been a seeker. Perhaps that is why I am here. I am a seeker, but I do not know what I seek.
LUTHANDO: How will you know when you find it?
TAMI: When I find it I will not seek anymore. And the demons that are eating me shall disappear from my life. But your silence will kill me long before then.
LUTHANDO: It is difficult, Tami. I am sorry I have been silent. But things have not been easy. While you are battling with what you refer to as your demons … the demons I don't understand … we here have been having our own battles. It is not easy to be free after nearly four hundred years. We do not know how to deal with this freedom yet. We still need to be taught how to be free. You should be here, Tami. We should be fumbling together. We should be discovering together how to be free.
TAMI: I am coming, Luthando. Give me time. I have kept my promises to you. I have kept myself for you.
LUTHANDO: I do not believe you have kept the promises. We promised each other that we would heal the wounded earth. Even though we eat the fruits of freedom, the earth is not healed yet. The damage is too deep to be healed by a stroke of the pen.
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