Sisters and brothers
Over the course of two years I attended nearly one hundred events in Harare where I intently listened to the incisive words of poets, fiction writers, spoken word artists, musiciansartistes if you like. My ears and my mind soaked in poignant ideas thoughtfully assembled into analysis. I felt the ways these engagements facilitate deeper understandings of both the beauty and pain which is Zimbabwe.
There was also something else that caught my ear. Once performers have microphone in hand, so often they are all about their sisters and brothers. And in all the possible combinations. Women thank their brothers for supporting them. Men praise the work of their sisters. To express gratitude in these ways perhaps signals a sense of camaraderie, belief in the power of collective voice. In fact, comrade was used almost as often as brother or sister. My comrade, my sister, your words make me think.
Sister and brother usage also extends beyond opening salutations. Often a piece is dedicated to a brother or a sister. This is for my brothers out there in the diaspora who want to come home. This is for my sisters struggling to get by. The dedication again speaks to a connection. To say I understand what challenges you face, my brother, my sister. And I want my work, and what I say, to be part of what helps to overcome these challenges together.
Proceeding into the work, sisters and brothers are again everywhere. Words trace and piece together what brothers and sisters experience. Hardships, aspirations, successes, and a life course bound up in so much. To lay bare the unfolding stories, ideas and individual experiences are made known by presenting sisters and brothers in dialogue. Sometimes the conversation is to question the actions of another. My comrade, my brother, I am a sister who sees the hypocrisy of your ways. Other times, the conversation is to reflect and inform. My comrade, my sister, I am a brother seeking freedom.
What I find interesting is that these are references to brothers and sisters who are simultaneously factual and fictional. Or more there’s a play with words leading to emotive loss being expressed. The sister and brother and the hardships they experience exist (fact). Space free of suffering for the brother and sister does not (fiction). It might seem that I’m reading too deeply into common speak, use of brother and sister. I mean is there anything significant in how often people say: Hey, how are you? But no. I think there is something much deeper going on with all the factual and fictional brothers and sisters floating around in the intellectual and creative airwaves.
I was telling someone the other day that collective organizing is untenable in Zimbabwe. So what choice is there, but the individual. To be one. And to focus on them. A brother. A sister. Each one a factual marker of the challenges so many individual people actually experience. Each one continually thanked, referenced, and written about. Each one central to expressing the hope that facts become fictions. A yearning for factual markers to not represent spaces of suffering. Spaces which today are largely fictional. It’s a factual/fictional play on words expressing an extreme sense of loss of what used to be. A time where one didn’t have to speak of their sisters and brothers in pain. A time where the collective had more voice and more power. An attempt to commandeer words (brother and sister) in an effort to turn reality around. To hope for and make suffering, not factual, but rather fictional.
Ok maybe this sounds like a wacky line of thought. But listen carefully, not only to how much brother and sister are used, but also consider what emotions are going on when used.