Two Generations of African men and boys, New Orleans, August, 2005
Crisp, that was a way to describe the point guard’s passes.
Without breaking a stride and completely ‘no-look’, speedy Felton flipped one over his head to the trailing player. He didn’t worry that his defender had a tryout with the pro’s and he wasn’t concerned about being a hoop hero. Sometimes he would ‘dish’ after breaking down his man at the top of the key. It was if his stutter step and fast as a flash basketball handling was a gift. And a couple of times it was. The present, for me, meant an easy two points.
His energy, even over the telephone, was not so much infectious as it was youth’s eternal coming of age cry. At twenty-four, Rafik spent a lot of time tagging along like a fourteen year old. Poetry oozed from this creative wisp of a manchild. Yet his pure emotive strength, clear illumination forged in The Badlands of Philadelphia held little sway with many 1980s peers. Unexpectedly elected Big Brother, my pride and wingspan took him in.
Whether scowling or smiling,- it was often hard to tell- Brother Yusef told life’s lessons straight to everyone in his raspy voice. From 1950s US UpSouth tomato picking youth to urban street survivor and international tradesman, once you were in his orbit, his counsel was imposed. One had to cope with staccato educational pointers on business about to take place, angles on how to deal with a woman or man’s personality and seeing what you should have seen just ten minutes ago.
I could hear the drop from three flights up. Of all the prison letters, one was literally hot and heavy. The eight full pages of breathless longhand of a 60’s activist soldier were dashed off from upstate New York’s halls of injustice: Comstock, Sing Sing and Dannemora. Hopping down the steps to the ground floor, I would retrieve the post. Threaded in between dense rhetoric lines were messages to stay the course, don’t let the pressure crush me. And thanks for remembering that he had made his contribution. It was a definite fact that he wouldn’t see the other side of the fence for half a century, if at all.
In these days that I am in exile, ten thousand miles away from America’s shores, I am sustained by Brothers I have long ago known. Through memory and the ocean of the past I recall what we shared.
29 December 2007
From Exile,
Bankole
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