A Developing Country
by
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When the batter struck out to end the game, Hinda turned to Jake with tears in her eyes and buried her head in his chest. She wiped her face, then hurried to the field to hug her son and his team mates.
Driving from the ballgame to the Port, Hinda pointed out a fish farm and a plant that was producing energy from algae. When they approached a huge nuclear power plant,she said,“More than half our electricity comes from atomic energy and windmills.”
“Never, after any of my matches, did anyone from my family hug me.” Jake said. “I was born here. I was hoping to find some family or people who knew them.”
“Did you check our archives offices?” she asked.
“They couldn’t help me. Said there were elderly people who might,” said Jake. “I’m sure your husband would have been proud of your son today.”
“No,” said Hinda. “At Medical school, when he was far from his family and friends, he could deal with my being too black. He let everyone know he was a fourth generation American. When I told him I was pregnant, he wouldn’t see me anymore. Marriage was out of the question. Proud of an African son?” She shook her head no.
“Ashamed is bad, but could you imagine parents giving away their son?” asked Jake.
Hinda saw the torment in Jake’s demeanor. “Rape has become a weapon of war,” she began. “When a wife was made pregnant by force, by a stranger, many men had to make a painful decision. Must I continue to work to feed the child of another man? Can I even live with a woman who mothered that child? Jake, you cannot begin to imagine your parents’ agony with that decision.”
“Maybe there was no rape,” said Jake.
“And maybe they saved your life. You could never have had the success you’ve enjoyed if you had grown up here.”
“So I should thank them for giving me away?” asked Jake.
“Just not judge them,” said Hinda.
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About the Book
“It was the chaotic political life of contemporary America coming alive again in fiction but more meaningfully, and with a moral center.”
Emeritus University Professor Michael Zimmerman
“An African utopia? Not really.”
“What then is the attraction?” asked a boy in the back.
“Living day and night without fear of violence, an honor system that has to be experienced. I love the friendliness, the energy, the optimism. It reminds me of small town America in the sixties.”
“I assume most of the people are black,” said a boy on the aisle. “How are they different from us?”
Joshua was helping Ruth put on her coat when she asked him,”How are they different?”
Joshua hesitated to criticize his wife’s admirers, but then said, “America’s young people are more cynical than the people there. You’re too smart to be fooled, probably because you never believed in anything in the first place. You say our justice system is racist. Our economy perpetuates privilege. Our institutions are tools of the power elite. Our founders were hypocrites. Would you agree they are different, if every person of color in Bessedelya will tell you that they love their country?”
“Maybe they don’t have a memory of the injustices and humiliations we suffered,” said a voice in the back. “When I look in the mirror, I see a man with the wrong color. I know I won’t be treated the same as you.”
“They definitely see themselves differently than you do,” Joshua said. “They love their blackness. Although everyone there is taught Africa’s terrible history,they don’t look back in anger. They are not still shackled to the past.”
About the Author
B David Peck was born in 1937, graduated Columbia in 1959 and raised his family in Virginia. He was appointed by five different Virginia governors to serve on boards of various state agencies and Institutions including an historic black college.