Free Black Gold of the Sun by Ekow Eshun Page B

a child’s, that I failed to notice the real effects of the coup until it was too late. I couldn’t have done anything to stop them, of course. But it might have given me the chance to reflect that when it comes, change rarely takes the form you expect.
    That summer my parents didn’t throw a party.
    In the attic the supplies of duty-free whisky and brandy ran dry. The sweep of a torch revealed only the broken Scalextric sets and radio-controlled helicopters of Christmases past. My heart still beat a secret rhythm for Penelope and Eurydice, but we hardly had any visitors to the house any more.
    Yet for a while it seemed we were too far from its epicentre to feel the coup’s tremors. My father disappeared into the Volvo every morning. My mother made jollof rice and chicken stew. On Sundays, Kodwo, Esi and I sprawled on their bed, eating toast and reading the newspapers, the radio tuned to the World Service for news about Ghana. From round the globe I heard reports of natural disastersand threatening noises made to the west by Mr Brezhnev. There was nothing from Ghana, though. Squashed between my parents while our neighbours washed their cars outside, it felt as if there could be no safer place on earth.
    It was round then the disappearances started. I noticed it first with the wood-panelled Sony Betamax recorder. My father had heaved it home in the primitive dawn of domestic video manufacture and it had remained with us for years, defeating all attempts to make it record, until, overtaken by the march of VHS, it had been retired to an ornamental position beneath a doily in the living room. Without explanation the Betamax vanished one day, leaving behind nothing but a pale rectangle on the sideboard. Its departure was followed by the industrial-sized Nikon camera with which, crouched behind a tripod, my dad used to corral Esi, Kodwo and me into posing for him while we whinnied like foals. From the garage my mother’s shipping trunks went missing. Even the signet ring my father had always worn on his left hand disappeared.
    They’d made up their mind and we were going back to Ghana, I decided, ferreting through their dressing table for an Achimota school prospectus or other signs of imminent departure. For all the discomforts of school, I’d grown used to Queensbury. I knew the way through the maze of alleyways that ran behind our house and why it was a good idea to avoid the chip shop on Roe Green Lane, haunt of the neighbourhood skinheads. I liked the wild raspberries that grew in Harold Trescothick’s back garden and thegiant jars of acid drops and lemon sherbets arrayed behind the counter at Stanford’s, the corner shop.
    For a week I expected to hear that we’d be following the Betamax abroad. My parents said nothing, though. It was as if they were waiting for a sign. By Sunday, with still no word, I started to relax. Stretched out on my parents’ bed reading the football scores I’d missed most of the World Service report until my father turned up the volume. Afrifa, Acheampong and Akuffo had been found guilty, said the newscaster. Their sentence would be death by firing squad. Far from bringing order to Ghana, Rawlings had proved to be just another tyrant. My mother looked at my father.
    â€˜We can’t go home,’ she said. ‘When they start killing people this is too much.’
    It may have been that they were waiting until that verdict to make up their minds. Yet somehow I doubt it. If I could have looked beyond my appetite for wild raspberries and lemon sherbets I might have realized they’d already made their decision. The possessions disappearing from our house weren’t being shipped to Ghana, but jettisoned to make room for our new life.
    It was only then that we began feeling the impact of the coup. As an employee of the previous regime it was too dangerous for my father to return home. But staying meant the surrender of all his official ties with