The Tale of the Evil African Drum

Kifkef began:

"When I was about seven years old, I came close to destroying the world. But be fair. It was an easy mistake to make and you must remember that I was very young, after all.

It was Eid and my entire extended family was gathered for the holidays at my grandparent's house in Marrakesh. My grandmother had made me eat so much cous-cous that I dreaded the prospect of fitting in dessert. So I sneaked away into my grandparent’s bedroom to see if I could find something to smoke. I knew my family wouldn’t approve of this - it was thought better for a boy to wait until the age of ten before taking up tobacco.

And what was more I have always had a nose for secrets - their scent lingers in the air like an exquisite perfume that I must possess. As i approached their bedroom my nostrils sparked ablaze as I sensed the presence of something big that my grandparents chose to keep hidden from the world.

I slipped into the shadows of their bedroom and saw to my surprise that they still shared the same bed. I wondered whether they had the courage to look at one another without clothes on. My eyes became a little more used to the darkness and I saw in the far corner the source of the mystery.

I crept closer and rippled with excitement as before my trembling hands rested a full size, leather-bound African drum made of solid hard wood. I had only been allowed near smaller tabouka drums before and longed to play something as majestic as this.

I raised my palm to sound my triumph and demonstrate my natural rhythm. But at that moment my grandfather stormed in on me and shouted ferociously:

"Stop. Don't touch that drum."

In a single moment I had turned from private detective to a burglar caught in the act. My grandfather leapt across the carpets and pulled me out of reach of the jembe before I could even patter a beat. He set me down and struck a match to light an old gas lamp.

Once he had set the drum safely down to his side he looked up and saw the tearful shock in my eyes. He hesitated for a moment and then decided that it was only fair to explain the whole story to me. He took out a pipe and soon I could no longer see him for all the musty tobacco fog in the air. Only his voice came clear to me:

"Boy, you have no idea of what you almost did. Now listen. During the war, I was in Algeria, working for the British army scouting in the savannah for the approaching German army. It was rumoured that they had a terrible secret weapon. Entire villages had been found demolished - burnt to the ground with not a body left alive or a building intact. Yet as far as British intelligence knew, German aircraft could not possibly have reached that far - And why would they bother destorying small settlements of no military importance?"

My grandfather leant in to see if I was following the tale. Clearly it was over my head but I was a good listener and it seemed he needed to tell the story for his own peace of mind. He lit his pipe and continued:

"Well, one day I was lying on top of a dune, my body covered in sand to escape detection whilst I scanned the land below with my binoculars for signs of enemy activity. Suddenly I caught sight of one lone figure walking in from the jungle to the South. The stranger was carrying something on his back covered by a blanket. He walked over the ridges and across a shallow river to reach the village of Alawa, just a mile from where I watched.

The traveller strode into the centre of the village and everyone gathered around at once to view the starnge new arrival. Then he pulled off the cover to reveal this very same drum. Delighted for this oportunity to break the monotony of the day, a general cry went about that he should play and the villagers gathered around him for the performance.

But from the moment he touched the leather skin, the sand about my face started to swirl. At the first resonance of bass, a rumbling answered on an all-too-near horizon and black clouds came rushing in from the North. As his rhythm picked up the winds also increased until they were howling in whirlwind fury around the whole village, uprooting plants and filling the air with dust. His fingertips and palms pattered a sinister rattle that I heard clearly even from my distant lookout.

The dread in the air rose to an unbearable tension until it climaxed with a clap of lightning cracking through the air, a deafening bolt of thunder on its heels. At the blast three huts caught fire and the Earth cracked open. Everyone began to run in mortal panic with no idea of which way to go.

The storm punished them with unrelenting fury and I heard on the wind the terrible cries of those electrocuted by lightning or swallowed up by the ground. Only the drummer seemed to exist within an oasis of safety amid the tempest. And he was so entranced that he gave no sign of noticing the slaughter going on around him around him.

Well, I could not just lie there while the innocent fell like flies. I hoisted my rifle onto my shoulder and fired at the drummer without a second thought. My bullet was guided by Allah for it took the man through the middle of the neck and he fell back dead.

With the halt of the rhythm, the winds also abruptly faded. The black clouds hesitated a moment and then parted to allow the blue sky through. I ran all the way to the village but the damage had already been done. There was little left but ashes. The epic tribulation had left no one alive. Only the drum remained upright and amazingly it had not received even a single scratch.

I was duty bound to deliver up the thing to my superiors but I hesitated to do so. After all, I knew nothing about the thing. How could I pass on something so dangerous to others who might fail to understand its terrible potential? So instead I buried it in the sand, leaving coded markers so that I could locate it again. The following month I squeezed out a week's leave from one of my commanders and got a lift in a jeep down there to pick it up.

Now, in my childhood in Mauritania, there had been an old boatman who claimed to know the story of everything merely by looking at it. Much to the disapproval of my mother, I used to spend as many hours as I could with him, dragging out all of his old stories. I had no reason to suspect he might still be alive but where my reason failed, I allowed my intuition to steer me.

I took a military plane to a small airstrip and borrowed a friend's motorbike to head off to the village of my youth, the drum strapped on behind me. To my amazement, the old rogue was still there. I found him sitting by the lake, chewing narcotic leaf with the acompanying lime running down his cheeks. He was made almost entirely out of wrinkles now and he seemed not in the least surprised or interested to see me.

He was much more curious about what I had brought. He smelt the danger long before I removed the blanket around the drum and he called in debts from several spirits to come and protect him.

He took the drum into his hands very carefully and with great distrust. He shuddered at the touch of the wood. He held it in his hands for a few minutes and then reset it on the ground with a look of intense pain on his face. With a trembling voice, he announced that this was the most evil thing he had ever come across and asked how I had found it. He nodded grimly as I related the story. It confirmed all his worst guesses.

When I had finished he told me that the wood of the drum came from a tree he had thought long instinct: The Ahakaladah, the most evil of any tree ever to grow on the planet. It was jealous of all creatures that walk free in the world and desired nothing except their suffering

My old mentor guessed that some shaman must have listened too closely to its creeping whispers and been seduced to its cruel will. He then told me that the leather of the drum was made from the skin of an alligator that toys with its prey like a cat, just for the pleasure of hearing the screams. But far more dreadful, he told me, was what was contained inside.

Somehow, the shaman who had built the drum had set a trap so that the spirit of a thunderstorm was lured inside. Then he must have strapped the leather on and captured it within the drum. Thus each time it is played its rhythms sound a distress call to summon the thunder and lightning of other skies.

But these cousins of the storm are unable to spring it free for the leather is bound with potent charms that protect both the player and the instrument. And so the frustrated liberators unleash their terrible destruction all around the drum, bewildered and furious at their impotency to harm it. Furthermore, anyone who has set pulse to this drum is forever enslaved to play it. The man that I shot was innocent, a mere pawn in an ancient evil scheme.

-So why not just release the imprisoned spirit now? I cried, withdrawing my jack knife. But the old boatman stiffened in terror and pronounced that could never be - For the imprisoned storm is so furious that it has sworn to level the entire world if it ever escapes.

-Then will you not take it? I implored, never wanting to see the thing again.

-You've got to be kidding. He told me and rowed away.

Since that time I have kept it as safe as I can and only in my old age am I becoming a little forgetful.”

My grandfather finished speaking and remembered where he was. He smiled as he realised that I was too young for such a complicated tale, though in fact the words set deep inside me. I did understand, however, that I had almost done something terrible and wanted to forget about it as quickly as possible. He led me down from the bedroom and we agreed to keep what had happened a secret.

Probably I'd have remembered the story at all, if it was not for some news that came to me just a few months ago. The house of my grandparents was burgled and what do you think? The evil African drum was stolen. As usual the police were only interested in baksheesh and there was no hope of catching the men who did it.

Since that time I have never managed to sleep the same. Whenever I hear a storm in the distance, my heart fears the worst."

Chapter 19