1. The Creation

When I was a small child, I was always told that the first wheel my grandfather saw was on an airplane.

At that time, a great war was being fought. It stretched over unimaginable distances and it touched our home and passed on. The airplane belonged to the tribe called the “Americans” and all the airplanes that we see today as they pass high overhead belong to them as well.

Today it is difficult to imagine the island as it was when the Americans were here. They took away with them nearly all of what they brought and even the giant stone slabs they laid for the airplanes have mostly been torn up to make way for crops or to build houses in our villages.

In some ways it is easier to think of the island as it was before the Americans came because there are still some parts of it that have not changed. Places too difficult to plough, where the forest grows uncontrolled and wild animals remain in the jungle. And you will see that these areas now have a significance to some of our people that far outweighs the space that they occupy.

The arrival of the Americans and their leaving are what created the island we know today. That and Our Granny. I need to explain, of course, that Our Granny is not literally our grandmother, the mother of one of our parents, although there are people on the island who claim that, for them, She was their actual grandmother, or at least the grandmother of one of their parents.

Our Granny was already a mother of adult children when the Americans came to us. It was She who learned to speak their language and decided who would work with them and who would learn from them. In the end, Our Granny was responsible for the decision to keep The Tractor on the island. One can only wonder, today, at how a woman who had never left her home could have managed the contact with a culture so foreign and imposing.

I have a photograph from that time. It lies on my table as I write, its edges charred by the fire, and it shows a lone American soldier surrounded by a group of women from our island. Their breasts are bare and they wear traditional paint on their faces. One of them might be Our Granny as She was on that day, it is not possible to say which. They range in age. Some are young girls; some look as if they are already old. There are three women of about forty years old, smiling and one must presume that, if Our Granny is shown in the photograph, She is one of those.

What we do know is that one of her sons was old enough to be the first of our men to learn to operate The Tractor. We know that when the Americans came and wanted help to clear the jungle and make the field for the airplanes, the men hid in the forest. It was Our Granny who first spoke to the Americans, who brought the men out of the forest to clear the airfield and who decided to learn their ways.

At this point, I know that you will be asking how I know all this. As a reader of this story you certainly wish to know whether what I am telling you is true or not. And here, I am afraid that I have to disappoint you. If, by truth, you mean something that correlates with objective external reality, then what I tell you in this account is certainly not all true.

Much of what I tell you comes from people’s memories of events that happened long ago. Some of them have a clear point of view that influences their recollections. Some of it is pure fantasy. The stories I have collected contradict each other so, almost by definition, some must be untrue. And yet each story, no matter how improbable, represents the truth for someone. Each story has its own consistency.

You should avoid the conclusion that because, somewhere along the line, the facts are wrong, the story is not true. Each story has a part of the truth and, adding these parts together, they somehow add up to a truth that goes beyond the facts; a truth that is deeper than the individual components.

That is the bargain that I make with you. I undertake to produce the best approximation to truth that I can. I will try to give you the means of finding your own truth in the stories I have collected. Beyond that you are on your own.

But I digress. The Americans came to our island. They found a place inhabited by hunter gatherers, living in the stone age, on the edge of extinction. To them, we were a ‘primitive’ people. Our women had never discovered the brassiere. Our men had never cultivated a crop or domesticated an animal. We had never found a use for the wheel. One woman, Our Granny, understood that the Americans had found a way to control their environment and She carried the rest of our people along with her and led them to the future.

How did She make contact with them? It is said that sex played a part in this. We have traditions of hospitality to strangers. After hundreds, perhaps thousands of years of isolation on remote islands, the view that bringing foreign fathers to island children was part of the recipe for survival. Certainly She had a child fathered while the Americans lived among us and he was different from the rest of the islanders. But his story comes later.

All that everyone agrees about is that Our Granny was the catalyst, that She was the one person who made it all happen. She was the first person to recognise that the Americans were human beings. The other thing that we have are the stories that we were told by our parents.

When the Americans first came nobody could tell what they were. They did not look like people. They were covered all over with a strange green colour and they came out of the sea in canoes that no one paddled. They had two legs but their bodies were distorted by boxes and lumps. Their heads were a different shape and their faces were a different color. They did not look like any person we had seen before.

They began to attack the trees and to set fire to the forest. No one had ever seen anything like that before either. Trees that had been in their places since before the oldest islander could remember were suddenly brought down by the onslaught. Our people could not believe that a tree that was as thick as three men could be defeated in a day.

The noise that they made was like nothing ever heard before. Thundering roars from engines and the sound of blows struck against the wood. The men hid in the forest and watched as the trees were hacked down like vines. Our Granny also watched. She saw that at least one of the Americans was a dark color like her. She thought that he looked like a human and when She saw that his face was like a person and not the strange shape it had been in the beginning, She realised that he was not a strange animal or another species.

Granny was the first person to speak to the Americans. She was wise and She saw that the power to bring the trees to the ground came from the axes and saws that the Americans had. That was her understanding.

So, after some time, She stopped hiding in the bushes and She went close to them and watched them and they did not harm her. They gave her food and She brought her sons and, eventually, her family to the Americans. They helped the Americans to move the trees and to bring the first airplanes to the island.

That is what the old people say.

They also say that Our Granny found an American hanging in a tree. They say that She was not afraid of the Americans because She was alone in the forest and She heard a voice and there was a man hanging in a tree. He had come down from the sky and he had ropes that, they say, still tied him to it. He was trapped in the tree but Our Granny cut the ropes and he fell from the sky and She helped him. He had been injured in the sky but She save his life. That is why She was not afraid of the Americans.

They say that Our Granny understood that the power of the Americans lay in axes and saws and that She saw they could change the land. Before the Americans, people would burn some forest and plant some vines. Our Granny knew that we would be able to plant fields with crops. That is what our parents told us. That She spoke to the Americans and knew all their ways from the beginning.

Others say that She lived with the Americans and that they made a field for the airplanes. Only when She saw that the American made gardens and learned how they planted vegetables did She understand the power of The Tractor. She brought the women to work in the fields with the Americans and She saw that The Tractor could do the work of a hundred of them. She had a black American lover and he taught her to plant aubergines and sweet potatoes and corn. He told her that The Tractor could turn the forest into food.

No one knows for certain what Our Granny knew. No one knows when She knew it. She saw that The Tractor was what gave the Americans power over the jungle. She persuaded her black lover to teach her son to operate The Tractor. She hid The Tractor in the jungle when the Americans left. Her lover left The Tractor when the Americans went away. And The Books that explained how the Tractor could be maintained and fed, with the pictures of The Tractor and how the plough and the generator and the blades could work with The Tractor.

Granny found the men who could learn from the Americans. She asked her lover to teach her sons to operate The Tractor and to understand The Books – at least the beginning of the Books. All began with Our Granny. She made us what we are. She allowed The Tractor to stay on the island to save us from hunger. And when we are no longer hungry, they say, The Tractor will go. Our Granny told us that The Tractor would be with us for a short time.

So the wise ones say.