Dear Editor,
I would wait until he cruised by me on his old bicycle, with his half bag of rice, sugar or flour perfectly balanced on the handlebar, before shouting at the top of my little voice, “Reuben!” He would use his foot, and the surface of the street to brake abruptly. By the time he looked back menacingly and attempted to dismount. I would have already done a Usain Bolt.
Mr Reuben had a grocery shop in Canvas City where I grew up. I didn’t know why I had to say a polite good morning or good afternoon, always addressing him as Mr Reuben, when he would always grunt a reply of “Wat yuh want?” He never returned the salutation.
That is the way it was with older folks. You had to be polite and address them as Mr, Mrs or Miss.
They didn’t have to like you, answer you or even look at you. Failing to extend the one-sided courtesy would inevitably end up in two beatings – one from the aggrieved and another from your guardians, when a complaint would have been subsequently lodged.
One afteroon after school, as I was sat outside the Anderson’s yard with my friend Delmark, I saw Mr Reuben riding up the street. I didn’t realise he had spotted me. As he rode past, I shouted, “Rue…” and before I could say, ‘ben,’ he had already dropped the bike and was in pursuit of me with surprising agility. The Anderson’s yard was a sort of slope, comprising old tree roots, half buried broken bottles, wood with nails everywhere, and logs operating as makeshift bridges over several shallow ponds or waterways in a very big area that had about three or four houses.
I knew how to navigate that yard well. I ended up losing one side of my shoes and received a deep gash to my foot.
Reuben never caught me. Ethel did. It was the year the soca song, ‘Ethel,’ came out. Ethel lived in a big house in the vicinity where the New Silvercity Secondary is now located. Whenever I saw her in the yard doing her laundry or sweeping, I would stop, do a little wine and start singing in a tantalizing way, “Ethel, oh lawd, music playing. Come do sumthing… mek we wine and shake we waist.”
Ethel would just laugh every time and say, “A gon ketch yuh, lil Austin, a gon ketch yuh. Just wait til ah ketch yuh.” She always referred to me, using my father’s surname. She caught me and I received a sound beating. I cried for a long time.
Aeri Aesop was the strangest character I had come across while growing up. He sold buttons, needles, clips and safety pins from a little tray strapped to the back of a very old bicycle.
He was a very tall man, with a weather-beaten face and dressed like someone from the ’60s era.
He never combed his hair and wore a small Kangol hat which was old and patchy. I suspected he made his own clothes. But Aesop was a polite man and always gave me a nod. He lived in a half-built house and people said he was really a mad man.
Strangely, I had sensed a dignified air about Aeri Aesop. I dismissed it like anyone else would, who judged a person by their appearance or because they were different from what we saw as normal.
Years later, Aesop spoke to me. He stopped and said, “I thought that was an objective article of yours, published in today’s Stabroek News.” He was referring to my first letter written against President Jadgeo that had to do with the socially and economically stagnating situation at Linden.
Truth is, I did not even know the man knew my name. Then he told me his name. It took a while to register to sink in. Realization came in the forms of shock and surprise.
I stared at him for a while, feeling like a mad man, and asked, “The same Aesop who contributes articles to the letters sections of our newspapers on politics?” He looked at me sympathetically and nodded in the affirmative.
Aesop was once PPP. He told me about Jagan and the PPP. He was a fighter alongside Jagan against Burnham’s dictatorship. He told me the PPP had sent him to the USSR, and his eyes lit up when he recounted his first dance with a tall beautiful white woman and how he had excitedly fallen in love with her.
Aesop was a fountain of knowledge. He knew Walter Rodney personally and had firsthand knowledge of that period. He was not an insignificant observer. He was a part of that struggle.
Aeri Aesop died in 2011 and some of the biggest politicians in Guyana paid tribute to him.
The PPP tried to claim him as one of them. He had been sidelinded by the PPP a long time ago. The PPP did not need people with a mind of their own who held closely to universal principles that would make our society a just one.
When we finished our conversation, I shook his hand and said, “I have so much respect for you, Mr Aesop. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with me.” He looked at me and said, “You can call me Aesop. Or Aeri Aesop will do.”
He was more than a pins and needles man. He was more than our ignorance; my ignorance.
While we judged him and saw him as mad, he was captivating the Guyanese public with
brilliant political opinions, etc, via our nation’s newspapers.
The young people of Linden must begin to look in places to find their today’s Aesops. They must not judge every book by its cover. The covers that appear attractive may have the entire story hidden about the stagnation of their communities.
Yours faithfully,
Norman Browne
