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When people smile we need to attach the correct interpretation to their smiles, for without doubt smiles are often laden with meanings that we would do well to know and to monitor

David Mungoshi Shelling the Nuts
Everybody loves a smile, especially when the smile is a warm and inviting one. There are, of course, different types of smiles from all kinds of people who “smile” for a variety of reasons ranging from joy and camaraderie to sheer malice and malevolence. In other words, when people smile we need to attach the correct interpretation to their smiles, for without doubt smiles are often laden with meanings that we would do well to know and to monitor.

Our people say the tooth is an idiot, it smiles on all and sundry, including those people we care very little about. Even the imperious Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s play of the same name makes a similar observation when describing Cassius to Brutus. Caesar says: Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous. Caesar notes that even when Cassius smiles, he does so as if to smile is demeaning. Cassius, according to Caesar, smiles as if he mocked himself

For allowing his soul to be so moved as to make him smile. My dear departed father used to talk about people so famished, both physically and metaphorically, that when they smiled you could almost literally see their hearts dancing. He said some of these people in reality could only smile in their hearts and that they behaved as if it was a sin to smile.

But smile we must, nevertheless, and smile we will because there are things that demand that we do smile. In the face of such things, we are like hapless moths fatally attracted to candle light. And the things that light up one’s face make it easier to understand what the blues pianist Champion Jack Dupree had in mind when he spoke these enigmatic words: To think of the things we go through for nothing in the world. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Makes you rue the time you waste on the many useless things that you do without ever stopping to think why you are doing them. Think of the many boundaries and barriers we enact in our lives. All for what? Think of all those poor American boys who fight its dirty wars around the world. In my mind’s eye I see them marching off to Iraq to fight in the Second Gulf War, truly believing George W Bush’s shock and awe quip.

Imagine their dismay and disorientation when American missiles are diverted into the desert where they do no harm. Need we ask then about the Gulf syndrome? If those American soldiers could have heard him, my uncle sitting in the shade of an avocado tree deep in the village could have told them just how foolhardy it was to go to places you are not likely to find your mother in. If you do, there is always no one to console and comfort you in your moments of aching and painful remorse. It is in such times that we discover the plain truth that we should never have left home in the first place. Among the Ngunis, they describe such situations in very graphic terms: Okwami okwezandla, ngabe okwenyawo ngabe ngiyakubaleka (These troubles of mine walk on their hands; if they had come to my feet I would have run away.) Things are seldom this bad!

Enough of that now. The sombre reflections were meant to help us see the other side of things, so that we can better appreciate the genuine smile when we see it. As for me, there are many things that make me smile when I look back into my life and when I walk around everywhere. Our paternal grandmother, Old Japi in Charles Mungoshi’s “Waiting for the Rain”, was a very entertaining character. The mournful voice of her old age was deceptive in that going by it you could never have known the inner strength inside the person.

In her younger days, she was so strong that when the river was flooded, she braved the current and helped people get across — men and women alike. And in those days she never got aboard any kind of vehicle, preferring instead to use ezikaAdamu (to walk). In those days there were jackals, hyenas and lions everywhere, but she would go wherever she wanted to go, only stopping to start a fire for the night and rest her weary feet under the stars. It mattered very little to her that the hyenas would laugh all night from nearby villages, no doubt after feasting on a goat or two.

When I first went to boarding school, Old Japi looked me over critically when I went to sit her in her smoky hut where she was roasting shelled groundnuts. She gave me a thorough run-over with her eyes and asked me if the people at the school cooked enough food for us. Was I getting enough to eat, she wanted to know. Some days are diamonds, someone sang. How so very true that is. One of my younger sisters was a lively little thing in her younger days, always singing and always dancing. It didn’t matter where she was, Patuma would dance, sometimes to a song in her head. One day, Old Japi, our delectable grandmother, saw her in one of her dancing moments and rebuked her saying, “ Dance on Patuma, dance. They haven’t seen you yet. You go on and dance now.”

In one fell swoop, grandmother had taught Patuma a lesson about what dance could do. I sometimes wondered what Grandmother Japi was like when she was a small girl. Girls at that age can be so direct and fearsome. They know how to say the things they want to say and actually do so with a lot of relish. Not so very long ago, a small girl and her mother walked past me where I stood at the gate. The little girl looked at me with undisguised curiosity and interest. Then she made her move.

“You there,” she said with some aggression. “Wouldn’t you like to marry me?” I was too stunned to respond. Seeing my confusion, she continued, “I would like you to marry me at Sunday school next week.” I took the little girl’s words as a compliment and assured her that as soon as she told her priest I would come over and marry her. The transformation on her face was almost miraculous. I have seldom seen such a radiant and unaffected smile. In her parting shot, she said I was not to worry about cake, the garments and the rings. Everything was being provided, she said. One day, long ago now, I was at a wedding with friends when a little Miss came over to our group where she singled me out.

In no uncertain terms, she told me for all to hear that I was her man and that she was not going to allow me to talk to other women. She must have been five or six years of age! I could not help the smile. What had she seen in me I wondered, the little boy inside the man perhaps? Today’s little girls are somewhat more precocious than the little girls of my time. No girl who was a tomboy could have escaped ridicule in my time. In fact, there was a rhyme that we recited whenever we felt that a girl was coming on too fast, that she wanted to play house when she really ought to have been thinking about innocuous sweet nothings.

Travelling on a luxury coach from Harare to Gweru one morning, I shared the seat with a delightful little girl in frills and laces, who was soon chatting away twenty to the dozen as if we had been friends in another life. The girl’s grandmother tried to stop her talking so much to a perfect stranger; she would have none of it. Lest you begin to imagine that little boys are a dull lot, let me bring a smile to your face with a story about a crying boy who could have raised the dead with his ceaseless bawling. The things he cried for were pitiful: his tennis ball or an ice cream.

On one particular day, the trigger for his customary crying was the apparent absence of the mother who was doing her laundry somewhere outside. “Mama . . . !!!” he droned on and on endlessly until his grandmother began to feel that something was amiss. She made the mistake of trying to quieten the aggrieved boy. His venom could have made anyone shrivel inside.

“Shut up, grandmother,” he said in a very belligerent voice. It’s my mother I want, not you!” After the tirade against his grandmother, he quickly reverted to his habitual crying. If you look deep into yourself, you will recognise some of these small people in you. Everyone is small at some time and we all make memories for the people around us. David Mungoshi is a writer, social commentator, editor and retired teacher.