Zabeth Quotes in A Bend in the River
It was as a lycée boy that Ferdinand came to the shop. He wore the regulation white shirt and short white trousers. It was a simple but distinctive costume; and—though the short trousers were a little absurd on someone so big—the costume was important both to Ferdinand and to Zabeth. Zabeth lived a purely African life; for her only Africa was real. But for Ferdinand she wished something else. I saw no contradiction; it seemed to me natural that someone like Zabeth, living such a hard life, should want something better for her son. This better life lay outside the timeless ways of village and river. It lay in education and the acquiring of new skills; and for Zabeth, as for many Africans of her generation, education was something only foreigners could give.
She didn’t see the photograph as a photograph; she didn’t interpret distance and perspective. She was concerned with the actual space occupied in the printed picture by different figures […] only the visiting foreigners were given equal space with the President. With local people the President was always presented as a towering figure… “He is killing those men, Salim. They are screaming inside, and he knows they’re screaming. And you know, Salim, that isn’t a fetish he’s got there. It’s nothing… that’s nothing… He’s got a man, and this man goes ahead of him wherever he goes. This man jumps out of the car before the car stops and everything that is bad for the President follows this man and leaves the President free… The man who jumps out and gets lost in the crowd is white.”
Zabeth Quotes in A Bend in the River
It was as a lycée boy that Ferdinand came to the shop. He wore the regulation white shirt and short white trousers. It was a simple but distinctive costume; and—though the short trousers were a little absurd on someone so big—the costume was important both to Ferdinand and to Zabeth. Zabeth lived a purely African life; for her only Africa was real. But for Ferdinand she wished something else. I saw no contradiction; it seemed to me natural that someone like Zabeth, living such a hard life, should want something better for her son. This better life lay outside the timeless ways of village and river. It lay in education and the acquiring of new skills; and for Zabeth, as for many Africans of her generation, education was something only foreigners could give.
She didn’t see the photograph as a photograph; she didn’t interpret distance and perspective. She was concerned with the actual space occupied in the printed picture by different figures […] only the visiting foreigners were given equal space with the President. With local people the President was always presented as a towering figure… “He is killing those men, Salim. They are screaming inside, and he knows they’re screaming. And you know, Salim, that isn’t a fetish he’s got there. It’s nothing… that’s nothing… He’s got a man, and this man goes ahead of him wherever he goes. This man jumps out of the car before the car stops and everything that is bad for the President follows this man and leaves the President free… The man who jumps out and gets lost in the crowd is white.”