Zimbabwean writer in international anthology

Scotland-based Zimbabwean writer Tendai Huchu features in an international short story anthology "Love on the Road 2015: Twelve More Stories of Love and Travel" (2015, Liberties Press, Dublin) with his story titled "The Queue".Edited by Sam Trauman and Lois Kapila, "Love on the Road 2015" contains twelve short stories by authors drawn from countries such as Australia, Ireland, Kenya, Malawi, New Zealand, the UK, America and Zimbabwe.

In a press release, the publisher described "Love on the Road 2015" as an 'explorative and unpredictable collection where you become absorbed in the many facets of love - the good, the bad, and the endearing'.

It is also said the twelve authors have won or been nominated for prizes and awards such as the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Pushcart Prize and Kenya's National Book Week Literary Award. As for Huchu, his short story "The Intervention" was last year shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing and appears in the Caine Prize anthology "The Gonjon Pin and Other Stories" (2014, AmaBooks), which makes him rub shoulders with winners.

True, after reading this anthology, I realised that the stories are not only about the general theme of love and travel but also have some other specific themes, implied or stated, rendered from very unusual and interesting perspectives. Lane Ashfeldt, author of "Salt Water", rightly observes in his blurb to this anthology that it contains tales "that let you travel while standing still".

However, I was interested in Tendai Huchu.

Huchu's short story "The Queue" in this latest anthology prompted me to look again into his other short story published in the anthology "Writing Lives" (2014, Weaver Press, Harare) titled "The Life After". I compared his stories and got hooked in trying to find out why Huchu sets his stories and part of them in a queue. Why a queue?

In their different contexts these two stories draw very metaphoric meanings of a 'queue' to emphasise waiting, expectation, test of patience, or 'the unknown' at the front of a queue.

How many times have we stood in a queue and took for granted our feelings about the 'waiting'? Much seem to happen more than just 'waiting'! There is some fearsome authority in front of the queues like the guard in the story "The Queue" and "St Peters", the gatekeeper in the story "The Life After". These two characters determine who gets what or who passes through the 'gate', which leaves us to wonder whether people have any control over their destinies.

"The Queue", set in the mining town of Bindura, is a captivating story in which the lead character Tinotenda is standing in a queue to the Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) during the hardest era of 2008/9 when queues were visible in front of stores, fuel stations and banks. Commodities such as food, cash and fuel were in very short supply. During this period, one could easily stand in the wrong queue and therefore there was a lot of asking to be done before one identified the right queue. In times of such hardship people see or expect to see in each other those deep traces of sadness. However, Sithabile, a critical character in "The Queue", sees otherwise.

While Tinotenda, a teacher possibly intending to withdraw his salary from the POSB, views the many queues around him as a mark of something wrong with the economy, Sithabile who is in the same queue with him blasts those who think queues are an inconvenience.

Unlike Tinotenda and other characters whose tempers are high and impatient because of the situation, Sithabile is far removed from or has overly accepted the reality of thinking about queues in negative economic terms. She is an adamant moralist and optimist in the middle of a broken world - boutiques selling pirated cassettes instead of women's clothes and jewellery, the GG Café with 'doors open, shelves empty' and queues all over the town. She sees opportunities where others see self-pity.

"What people don't understand is the true meaning of queues. They think queues are an inconvenience. A waste of time. But are they? Think of where we would be right now if there was no queue. We'd all be in the post office, scrambling, punching, scratching - survival of the fittest. No, queues are the height of civilisation. The last line of defence against chaos," Sithabile tells Tinotenda.

But is her judgment misplaced?

In the story "The Life After", the narrator has just died but he very well remembers the story of his desperate earthly life.

There is a time when the dead souls, upon arriving in another celestial world, join a queue that is moving towards St. Peters, the gatekeeper. In Biblical terms, St. Peters was one of Christ's disciples now regarded by Catholics as the Vicar of Christ on earth and first Pope.

To apply Sithabile's words (in the story "The Queue") to the situation in "The Life After", what would happen if there is no queuing in the holding place for dead souls as they await their final fate? Would there be scrambling, punching, scratching among dead souls to get to St Peters, the gatekeeper?

While "The Queue" is a humorous take on the realities of economic strife, "The Life After" has a serious, subjective tone maybe because it tackles fear of what lies beyond death. Huchu puts the right word in the right place, building an amazing flowing language altogether. How the writer injects into the main story the 'dead' narrator's excursion into his past life as a backstory without disturbing the current scenes in" The Life After" speaks of nothing but outstanding skill in short story writing.

No doubt that Huchu's latest short story "The Queue" made it into "Love on the Road 2015" collection because of the author's skill in juxtaposing concepts and perceptions, intellect and feeling. "The Queue" ends with a certain promise of love. The reader is left hanging.

The other eleven authors featured in "Love on the Road 2015" are Marlene Olin, Shirley Fergenson, Nod Ghosh, Catherine McNamara, Stanley Kenani, Barry Reddin, Tendayi Bloom, Lily Mabura, Jackie Davis Martin, Alice Bingner and Gregory Wolos.

Tendai Huchu has published two novels titled "The Hairdresser of Harare" and "The Maestro", "The Magistrate" and "The Mathematician". Both novels have confirmed his exceptional imagination. "The Hairdresser of Harare" has so far been translated into German, French and Italian. His non-fiction works and other short stories have also appeared in different local and international journals and anthologies.