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The English-speaking world
If only Papa hadn’t danced
1 Before you read
by Patricia McCormick
3
© Silke Bachmann
Look at the picture. Think about where the people are, who they could be, what their relationship is and
what will happen next. Make some notes. Then discuss your ideas in a group.
Now read the story. Some important new words are explained at the bottom of the page.
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But who could blame him? When the results
of the presidential election were tacked up on
the polling station1 doors, a lot of people
danced and sang in the streets – none of them
more joyfully than Papa. Finally the Old Man
had lost. The Old Man, who’d ruled2 the coun­
try since Papa was a baby, had been beaten fair
and square. The man who robbed3 from the
poor to make himself rich was finished.
But not everyone in the village danced that
night. The rich men, the ones made fat by the
Old Man, stood in the shadows and watched.
The next day, when Papa and his friends
gathered around the radio, they heard that the
election results had been a mistake. There
would have to be a recount4. Papa spat in the
dust and said it was a lie. A week passed, then
another – while the Old Man stayed in his
grand house in the capital. While his men
were supposedly counting the ballots5 again.
Papa and his friends grumbled among them­
selves, but not loud enough for anyone else to
hear.
Then one night we awoke to the hot breath6
of fire. The corn patch7 just outside our hut
was ablaze8. We jumped from our beds and
ran to the field to beat down the flames with
branches. But it was no good. Our entire crop9
was gone.
At dawn Papa sought out10 the police. They
came to our home, looked at our field with
eyes of stone and told us to empty the house of
all we owned.
‘Take what you can,’ one of the policemen
said. ‘They will be back tonight. This time they
will torch11 your house.’
‘They?’ I asked Papa when the policemen
had left. ‘Who are they?’
Papa sighed and shook his head. ‘Our neigh­
bours and tribesmen,’ he said. ‘People we have
known our whole lives. People whose bellies
have been filled by the Old Man.’
Mama clucked her tongue at Papa. ‘Everyone
saw you celebrating,’ she said. ‘They know you
voted against the Old Man and now we will
pay for it.’ She looked out and saw the smoul­
dering12 remains13 of our neighbours’ fields.
The crops of those who’d danced with Papa
were in ashes. The others were as lush and
green as they’d been the day before.
And so we packed our things – the few we
had, the fewer we could carry – into a few
bundles and an old cardboard suitcase. I put
my bundle on my head, took one last look at
1 polling station [1p48l9N ste9Sn] Wahllokal 2 (to) rule (be)herrschen 3 (to) rob (-bb-) [rqb] rauben 4 recount [1ri.ka8nt] Nachzählung
5 ballot [1bäl4t] Stimme, Stimmzettel 6 breath [breT] Atem 7 patch [pätS] (kleines) Feld, Beet 8 ablaze [41ble9z] in Flammen 9 crop [krqp]
Ernte 10 (to) seek sb. out, sought, sought [si.k, s0.t] an jn. herantreten 11 (to) torch [t0.tS] anzünden 12 smouldering [1sm48ld4r9N]
schwelend 13 remains [r91me9nz] Überreste
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The English-speaking world
our home, then turned to face our future.
‘Where will we go?’ I asked Papa.
‘We will walk until we find a friendly place
where we can stay,’ he said. ‘When it is safe,
when the recount is finished, when the right­
ful president takes office1, then we will return
home.’
As we came to the centre of the village, we
met up with other families like ours. The
fathers hung their heads, the mothers looked
only at the dirt beneath their feet and the
children tugged2 listlessly at their parents’
hands. ‘Why?’ they asked. ‘Why must we leave
home?’ The parents did not dare3 to answer
– in case4 ‘they’ were listening.
The world beyond the village was new and
strange – a vast plain5 of parched6 grass and
shimmering heat. We walked by night,
through bushes alive with the sounds of
frenzied insects, and slept by day under the
scanty shade of the acacia tree. We walked and
walked and walked.
At last we came upon a settlement. From a
distance it bloomed up from the earth like a
flower. We saw, shimmering on the horizon,
what we thought was our safe place, the place
where we would rest until we could go home.
But as we drew near, we saw that the village
looked just like ours. One house was nothing
but a smouldering heap7, the one next door
untouched.
And so we walked on and on, each village
the same.
We gathered news as we walked. ‘The Old
Man is still in power,’ said people who joined
our dusty procession. ‘He won’t give up with­
out a fight,’ they added.
I asked Papa about the man who had won
the election. ‘He won’t give up without a fight
either,’ Papa told me. The next day on the
radio we heard that he had fled the country.
That night, there was just one tiny strip8 of
dried meat left. Mama cut it three ways and
handed each of us a piece. Papa shook his
head.
‘Give mine to the child,’ he said. ‘I’m a
tough old bird. I can make do.’
The next morning, when we awoke, we
found corn to eat. Corn and biscuits and a bit
of fruit. But Papa wouldn’t touch a thing. He
turned away and whispered to Mama, ‘I was a
fool to hope for change. And now I am a thief.
Now I’m no better than the Old Man.’
In the afternoon we came upon a great river.
Wide and sluggish9, it looked as hot and
steamy as we were. I knew from my studies
that we had come to the edge of our country.
On the other side of the river was a free coun­
try, a land of cities and farms, a nation where
the people had voted for a president who had
spent years in jail fighting for justice.
Mama knelt in the shallows and splashed
water on her face. But as I knelt down next to
her, I saw that she was trying to cover her
tears.
‘This is our homeland,’ she said. ‘No one
wants us over there.’ She gestured to the
tawny hills across the river.
It was then that I saw the long metal fence
which uncoiled, like a snake, all along the
riverbank10 on the other side. The fence was
tall and crowned with rings of wire11: wire
with teeth that could slice12 the clothes from
your back, the skin from your bones. In the
distance I saw a man in an orange jumpsuit
patching13 a hole at the bottom of the fence – a
spot where some lucky person must have
slipped through the night before. His tools
were at his feet, a pistol in his belt14.
Papa came over and said I was needed.
There was a sign, he said, that he needed me
to read. He brought me to a spot where
someone had hand-painted a warning:
beware15 of crocodiles.
That night, we hid in the bushes until the
sky was black. We would wade across at mid­
night, when the man in the orange jumpsuit
had gone home and when the crocodiles, we
hoped, would be sound asleep.
When it was time to go, I walked straight
towards the river, knowing my nerve would fail
if I faltered16 for even a moment. But Papa
stopped me at the water’s edge.
1 (to) take office sein Amt antreten 2 (to) tug (-gg-) [tcg] ziehen 3 (to) dare (es) wagen, sich trauen 4 in case für den Fall, dass 5 plain [ple9n]
Ebene 6 parched [p2.tSt] ausgetrocknet, verdorrt 7 heap [hi.p] Haufen 8 a tiny strip [1ta9ni] ein winziger Streifen 9 sluggish [1slcg9S] träge
10 riverbank Flussufer 11 wire [1wa94] Draht 12 (to) slice [sla9s] schneiden 13 (to) patch [pätS] flicken 14 belt [belt] Gürtel 15 beware of …
[b91we4] Vorsicht vor … 16 (to) falter [1f0.lt4] zögern, zaudern
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‘Wait here,’ he said. And then he scooped
Mama up into his arms and waded silently
into the darkness.
It seemed a lifetime until he returned. He
didn’t say a word, just lifted me up onto his
shoulders and strode into the water. Every stick
I saw was a crocodile. Under every rock, every
ripple17 in the water, was a pair of ferocious
jaws18. When we reached the other side, I leapt
from his shoulders and kissed the sand.
Once more Papa stepped into the river – this
time to fetch our suitcase. Surely our luck
wouldn’t hold again … I watched his back
disappear into the dark and thought how
much I loved that broad back; how it shoul­
dered all our woes19, and now all our hopes.
Finally Papa emerged20 from the darkness
with all our worldly possessions balanced on
his head.
Then we got down on our hands and knees
and crawled along the base of the fence, like
scorpions looking for a place to dig21. But the
sand was unyielding and the fence invin­
cible22. Everywhere our fingers scrabbled23 for
a weakness, someone – the man in the orange
jumpsuit, most likely – had mended it with
links of chain held tight with wire.
The sky overhead had begun to brighten and
the horizon was edged with pink. Soon it
would be light24 and we’d be trapped between
the waking crocodiles and the man with the
gun in his belt.
We came to a spot in the fence where a thorn
bush grew on the other side. Papa said we
would have to dig here: no time to keep look­
ing. Perhaps the roots of the bush had loos­
ened the sand, he said. If not, at least we could
hide behind the bush, if only for a while.
And so all three of us dug – Mama in the
middle and Papa and I on either side – our
hands clawing furiously at the earth. I’d only
made a few inches of progress when the sky
turned red. It would be dawn in less than an
hour. I redoubled my effort25, working the
outer edge of the bush where the soil was a bit
looser. Soon I’d dug a hole barely big enough
for a man’s foot. I lifted my head to call out to
Papa to come and see my work – and saw the
man in the orange jumpsuit striding towards
us.
Mama wailed26 piteously, then plucked at her
hem where she’d hidden the tiny bit of money
we had. She knelt in the sand, her arms out­
stretched, our few coins in her upturned
palms27.
But the man shook his head. He placed his
hand on the belt that held his gun.
‘Take me,’ Papa begged him. ‘Spare28 the
woman and the girl.’
Again the man shook his head. Then he
reached into his pocket and took out a giant
cutting tool. With one mighty snap he
severed29 the links where the fence had been
patched. He yanked30 on the fence so hard it
cried out in protest, and peeled it back as if it
were made of cloth.
‘Hurry,’ he said. ‘Once the light comes, I will
have to go back to patrolling.’
We didn’t fully comprehend31 what he was
saying, but we didn’t wait.
‘You go first,’ Papa said to me. ‘I want you to
be the first in our family to taste freedom.’
I scrambled through the fence, stood next to
the man in the orange jumpsuit and looked
back at our homeland as the sun began to turn
its fields to gold.
‘You will miss it for a long time,’ the man
said to me. ‘I still do.’
I stared up at him.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I outran32 the Old Man long
ago.’
Mama crawled through and kissed the man’s
boots. He simply helped her to her feet.
‘Quickly now,’ he said, once Papa had made
it through. ‘Walk, as fast as you can, until you
see a house with white flowers out front. Go
round to the back and tell them Robert sent
you. They will feed you and hide you until
night. Then they will send you to the next safe
house, which will send you to the next, and the
next – until finally you are in the city and can
be swallowed up33 by all the people there.’
17 ripple [1r9pl] Kräuseln, kleine Welle 18 ferocious jaws [f4!r48S4s 1d70.z] furchteinflößende Kiefer 19 woes (pl) [w48z] Sorgen 20 (to) emerge
[i1m3.d7] auftauchen aus 21 (to) dig, dug, dug [d9g, dcg] graben 22 invincible [9n1v9ns4bl] unbesiegbar 23 (to) scrabble hier: wühlen 24 light
hell 25 effort [1ef4t] Bemühungen 26 (to) wail [we9l] jammern, heulen 27 palm [p2.m] Handfläche 28 (to) spare [spe4] verschonen
29 (to) sever [1sev4] durchtrennen 30 (to) yank [jäNk] reißen, ziehen 31 (to) comprehend [!kqmpr91hend] verstehen 32 (to) outrun sb. jm.
davonlaufen/entkommen 33 (to) swallow up [1swql48 cp] verschlingen
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‘How do we know we can trust these people?’ Mama asked.
‘They are our countrymen,’ he said. ‘You will find many of us here. Now go!’
We did as he instructed, and found the house with the white flowers just as the morning sun broke through the clouds.
A woman there brought us inside, gave us water and meat and led us to mats where we could rest. It had been so
long since I’d slept on anything other than bare, open ground that I fell asleep at once.
I awoke sometime later and saw that Papa’s mat was empty. I stood and wandered outside. The sun was setting, so
all I could see was his silhouette against the deepening sky.
He raised his arms to the heavens and started to hum. And then I saw Papa dance.
Comprehension questions:
1. Why did Papa cross the river more than once? What were the dangers?
2.
The family intended to dig underneath the fence and crawl through while it was still dark. What hindrances did
they face?
3.
What did you think was going to happen when the man patrolling the fence approached the family?
4.
Why did Mama offer the man in the orange jumpsuit the little bit of money that they had?
5.
Why and how did the man in the orange jumpsuit help the family?
6. How can dancing celebrate human freedom?
Plot structure
Setting:
Protagonist:
Antagonist:
Major conflict:
Climax:
Resolution:
Human Rights:
In the story, which articles of the UDHR are granted for the characters? Which ones are violated?
Granted
Violated