Response To Short Stories [class on Jan. 16]

The Birds of God
This story is a story of faith and sacrifice. Timba is a fisherman who has only been but a fisherman his whole life. He sees a bird flying high and asks for the bird to fall and the bird falls. He claims it to be holy, and though he and his family is starving he doesn't allow them to eat the bird. In the end a drought that had plagued the tribe is only lifted after the sad death of Timba, who had given himself to save the others from the wrath of god for killing the holy birds. I find it interesting that Timba thought the best way to honor the Holy birds was to keep them in a cage.

The Man
Is a story of a man, who under the cover of silence, kills a dictator who has brought horrible poverty over a nation. Though he is beaten and shot he does not tell his secret and is killed randomly as a threat to the village that they must give up "the man". Of course, the man dies with his secret and a new dictator takes the place of the first, but must live in fear that "the man" will kill him like he did his predecessor . I find it interesting that the tyrant in the story takes the freedom of a whole nation, though he does not have any freedom himself due to his fear of being killed.


Government By Magic Spell
An interesting story about a girl named Halima that is convinced that she has a jinni (like a genie) in a tribe where jinnis are considered holy. She becomes a star of her village and considered a healer, and eventually makes her way up to a government like position in her land. She claims her jinni demands a slaughter house on the shore and a centralized water system. By doing this she controls everyones life in the town because everyone needs water, and sharks had taken over the shores so no one could leave. This story is the darker side of The Birds of Gods because in that story the person of faith is condoned though Timba only wanted the best for his people, while in this story Halima seems to manipulate the people by claiming this twisted 'spirituality'.

A Night Out
This story is about a, drunken man named Mika and a sad loving woman called Mama Tumaini. Mama Tumaini's son is very sick, and perhaps that is the reason she needed the money Mika gave her, I assume, for the sex they had the night before, and for the guilt of discovering that Mama Tumaini's son had died overnight. Mika was only stuck in the dreary town because of a lack of gas for the transportation system. Mika leaves abruptly without telling Mama Tumaini about her son. This story I found to be really sad. I guess not so much for her child dieing, because he was deathly ill, but because of the pain Mama Tumaini must go through after this story ended.

Road Block
This story is about a man known only as "the storyteller' and a man named Bona. Bona is a cowboy like crooked cop-like fellow who works with a restful partner at a road block. The storyteller is smuggling whiskey and has to go through the road block. Though the storyteller's dad was a famous story teller who would exchange his stories for a good meal, the storyteller did not gets this quality in his genes. So he is unable to convince Bona that the whiskey is 'cough medicine' and in the end Bona takes one of the boxes of whiskey and lets the storyteller go through the roadblock. I like the danger aspect and suspense of this story, though the ending felt like it let me down. I enjoy the imagery of Bona with his missing two front teeth and cowboy boots!