Now, waiting for the departure of the next plane, barely two days ahead, I am determined to use the time remaining and search, among the trees growing in gardens, in public squares, along the roadside, for the island’s most handsome lafouche (the common name for the banyan in Mauritius). My quest had already begun on the day a particularly violent cyclone sent a blast that felled the one that once dominated Port-Louis. It used to stand at the end of Labourdonnais Street at the foot of Signal Mountain, a veritable colossus, would about with creepers that sometimes intertwined, multiplying into secondary growths the instant they touch the earth. The tree became my flagship.

(…) that fateful day of January, an awful wind uprooted my Flagship Lafouche. I saw it, a pitiful wreck, thrown on its side in the middle of a fearsome swirl of thunder, lightning, wind and mud. I saw it as I was often to see it again in my dreams, during nights when sleep was disturbed by despair, despair waiting to remind me as soon as I awoke, that in a country flayed by war, children are murdered by hunger, by fire, by steel. The inhuman condition, stuff of my nightmares.

I spent most of the time, I had left before returning to Paris pursuing this quest of many years. And I found what I sought. With Gorah, a taxi driver I’ve known for more than thirty years, firmist of my friends, now, we started exploring all the suburbs of the capital (…). We continued towards the south, finding nothing surprising by nightfall.

The next day, a little short of time, we headed north very early in the morning. Around midday we say it, suddenly, standing on the top of a gentle incline as if wanting to make it easy for us to spot it just there, on the left at the edge of the road, rearing up in unshamed lafouchian pride. Gorah got out of the car and ran to the tree. What if it escaped us, vanished? I was riveted to the edge of the ditch, not just surprised but transported. I felt as though I had been plunged into the Indian Ocean, near Poste de Flacq, not far from La Source where I was born. I felt strange ferns, nameless algae surging up and down my body. No, not ferns, not algae, but those creepers. Strong supple lafouche tendrils everywhere. I was contained, enclosed in my tree. Enfolded in its roots, in its sap, in its bark, but as by a gentle hand, not by a fist. The lafouche possessed me and I was the willing prisoner who ever lived.

The miracle of it made me thirsty. I went nearer to the tree to lay my hand flat up it: a gesture I often find myself making in response to some secret ritual inherited with the triple Creole bloodlines of my mixed European, African and Indian heritage… I really needed a large mouthful of cool water. I left, Gorah to his own devices for a while and climbed up the mound that backed on to the tree. From there I could see a woman working in a little vegetable garden on the edge of a vast field of sugar cane, stretching to the horizon. She was wearing a pale linen blouse and multicoloured skirt with lots of yellow. She was of that undeterminate age that usually characterizes women obliged to labour long and hard in all weathers. She lifted her head, and smiled, greeting me in Hindi: “Namaste”. There was sweetness in her voice and in her movements. A real sweetness. Our greeting were uttered simultaneously, and a little embarrassed I asked her if I might drink at the tap in the middle of the orchard. Smiling more widely, she came nearer and invited me to her home. I followed her to her little straw house, surrounded by a wall of dried mud and cow pat half its height.

She led me in, pushing open a plank door, the only access to a biggish single room, with a window opening in the opposite wall. On the brown floor also brushed with dried cattle dung, beside a metal stove, an aluminium kettle and three or four simple ustensils, stood a low, single bed made of loose planks covered with a very thin mattress over which an Indian cotton cloth was draped. At the head of the bed was a large, red satin cushion. On the floor, two raffia mats added a touch of brightness to the extremely tidy room. However, what drew the eye irresistibly was the television set, placed at an angle on a chest painted in broken white (…) My hostess’s smile broadnened. She took a lota made of pale beaten copper and emptied water for me into a tall white metal goblet that echoed as she poured.

( …) As I listened to her, I savoured the sweetness of her speech. After a while I came back to the presence of the television set. She gave me a happy grin and confided that she had already had it for three years, since winning it in a raffle during a great charity fête held in the Pamplemousses’ Garden. She had even seen me, once on the screen. They were showing a film based on a long poem I had witten in Creole: Ki koté lamer? (Which side is the sea?) she had really liked the story of that man who had been away from his island for long years and then come back to seek and find the sea. She remembered the end of the story: the moment when the young boy playing me as a child was running with me (the adult) and I dropped my bag and all my papers as I reached the beach. Emotion filled my whole being. I had soughts a single tree, a lafouche, my flagship, and I had now found the whole ocean. With that, I understood the strange complicity of the woman’s grin. She had recognized me immediately. Was it the smilling witchcraft of chance? Magic? A bit shaken, I took her hand in both of mine and asked her name.

“Kala”, she answered.

I repeated her name over and over again in my head. But the surprises weren’t finished yet. On the threshold of the house, as I took my leave, she confided the most disconcerting fact I had never heard from the mouth of someone born and having lived their whole life on such an island. After telling me she often took the bus, and that many of her journeys passed right alongside the shore, she said she had never actually touched the sea. “One day”, she said in conclusion, recovering her smile, “I’d like to get off the bus, go down the beach and plunge my bare feet into the midday sand and then let the sea bathe my feet for a long, long time …”

Was it the smiling witchcraft of chance? Magic? A bit shaken, I took her hand in both of mine and asked her name 'Kala', she answered;"

Edouard J. MAUNICK