Mohamed Yasin, Contributor

That Saturday morning, after Aunt Sadika had put her black shoes on, an African man came to visit her. He was tall, smartly dressed in a white shirt and black trousers with seams appearing sharp enough to slice one's fingers. His shoes shone like a policeman's, and he didn't appear sick or troubled to me at all. Waiting on him outside was a black car. It didn't look like any ordinary car.

Aunt Sadika left with him. She told two early-bird clients to come back on Monday since she wasn't sure what time she would be back. She rested on Sundays.

The man looked back at me and flashed white teeth in a smooth, clean-shaven face. Biceps bulged through his short-sleeved shirt. He reminded me of a Zulu warrior in the movie Zulu. I had seen him somewhere before, and it wasn't in a movie. He wasn't the Prime Minister either. Everyone knew what the Prime Minister looked like. His picture was in every government building and every school in the land.

Less than one month after Aunt Sadika went on her trip, it was announced that the Prime Minister had legalised the practice of obeah.

'Imagine that," My father sounded exasperated. 'Obeah is now legal! I wonder what jiggery-pokery those idiots will legalise next. This country gone, done for ...'

I had an eerie feeling my Aunt had visited the Prime Minister, and had had something to do with obeah becoming lawful.

'I telling you again,' Mother said. 'Sakika cured the Prime Minister or he would be dead by now ... And look how he made obeah legal ...'

'Don't be an imbecile!' Father raised his voice. Mother was barely literate, and my father had lived in London.

Father started panting and coughing. He panted and coughed more often of late. Mother and I knew that after he sat down for a while he would be okay.

'Okay, Okay, H, I sorry, I won't mention it again ... But his bodyguard told neighbour Scyl. She and the guard is family ...'

Something struck me like a lightning bolt. Neighbour Scyl's son, Boosoo, and I were buddy pals. We played road cricket, played cards for coins, swam in the village canal, stole yellow mangoes from neighbours' trees, and visited each other's home frequently. At his house I consumed the most delicious tripe cook-up rice, and he enjoyed spicy chicken or fish curry at my home.

I rarely intervened in exchanges between my mother and father. If I did, it was mostly to support my father. I can't really explain it, but I felt sorry for him. In his yellowing black-and-white soldier photos, he looked so young, athletic and dashing. Now he was pot-bellied, irascible, and bitter at times. And he wasn't even quite 50. But I knew he loved us and wanted the best for his three boys. Maybe he thought he was an underachiever or a complete failure or something. I can't really say.

I wanted to stay out of this argument, too, but I couldn't hold back my tongue.

'Dad,' I said. 'I saw the bodyguard man at Auntie Sadika, and I know I had seen him before at neighbour Scyl.'

My father stared hard at me, then exclaimed, 'Oh, my God ... She ... she did a terrible thing. That man is a devil .... He destroyed the country ... He ... He had people killed ...'

My father suffered a massive heart attack at 53. I had to go out to work. Mother died two years later; she succumbed to emphysema. My mother must have developed the disease from second-hand smoking.

Aunt Sadika and Uncle Azeez helped financially with my brothers and me. At 22, I married an American girl, and three years later, migrated to the States.

The Prime Minister lived at least a dozen years after his bodyguard visited Aunt Sadika. During that time the country suffered a tsunami of political turmoil, ineptitude and economic failures. Many families were shattered as people fled the country by whatever means they could. Few, if any, retained a sense of national pride. The Prime Minister said, 'Let them go and get as white as the snow ...'

After 15 years in New York City I returned home. I had failed to get as white as snow - not that I ever tried. All I ever yearned for was the broiling sunshine of my boyhood, especially the 'August holidays', as school vacations were called after the British had departed; 'summer' was out.

I visited Uncle Azeez and Aunt Sadika. Uncle Azeez was never a smoker, but he had become an alcoholic, though not the pathetic type. He was pleasant and charming. He still had his Morris Oxford, though it now seemed like a rattletrap. A sturdy-looking woman helped around the house and yard.

Aunt Sadika no longer practised her art. She was confined to a wheelchair, and she didn't recognise me, no matter how hard I tried to jog her memory. I felt sad about that. I suppose she just hadn't the power to heal herself.

On a hunch I mentioned the late Prime Minister's name. Her head snapped forward like an animal that had suddenly sniffed prey.

Course, I can't be certain if my Aunt ever had contact with the Prime Minister, much less to 'cure' him. Common folks in the country never knew for sure what the Prime Minister had died from. Some claimed he expired from lung cancer because he was a prodigious consumer of fat Cuban cigars.

I can see nothing wrong with the Prime Minister's legitimisation of obeah. Obeah represented the vestigial survival and tenacity of African religion in the Caribbean, despite the slave owners' systematic attempts to wipe out African culture. I think it was a courageous act to reinforce the idea that 'massa day was done', and people like Aunt Sadika could practise their beliefs. Indeed, in some ways the Prime Minister had tried to inculcate in his people national pride and self-reliance.

But his execution of political policies, well, that's a different bre ... .

Did Aunt Sadika care about that? I guess it's too late to ask the obeah woman.

- Mohamed Yasin