Remote Control

The narrative now switches to an extended flashback, which will comprise the majority of the novella.

Before becoming Sankofa, the girl is born with the name Fatima. As a child, Fatima spends her time sitting in the yard with her grandfather and looking up at the constellations. She names one “Sankofa,” as it looks like a Sankofa bird. She draws the pictures she sees in the stars and writes the words in the dirt, earning her the nickname “Starwriter” from her grandfather.

One day, when she is four years old, Fatima is in her favorite shea tree looking down at her pictures when a meteor shower starts. One falls from the sky and lands in her yard. She picks it up, thinking how it looks like a green seed. It burns her, so she drops it onto the ground. It quickly falls into the soil, disappearing below the surface.

A year later, suffering from malaria, Fatima sits in the same tree. She enjoys the breeze up there as well as a fox that lives there, having recently escaped from the local zoo. Beneath her, in the same spot the meteor fell, the earth begins to shake. A tree root comes through the ground, pushing with it a small wooden box. When Fatima opens it, she finds a seed inside. It begins to glow green, releasing a swirl of mist which enters her body. It cures her malaria, and she never gets it again. From that point forward, Fatima keeps the box and the seed in her room, cherishing them.

The next year, Fatima is in the tree when she sees an SUV pull up to her home. Two men get out, one dressed in white with an eye patch and the other in a black suit. She recognizes the man in the black suit as a politician from TV. She thinks the other looks like a bodyguard. The men enter her home.

A few moments later, the man in white speaks to her from the ground. He offers her goat meat if she will come out of the tree to talk to him. He mentions the box she found in the ground. When Fatima refuses to come down, the man responds angrily. He insists that LifeGen Corporation will pay a lot of money for things related to “aliens,” so he needs it for his boss, Parliament Member Kusi, and his campaign. He takes a small device out of his pocket. It begins to beep as he enters the house.

Fatima waits in the tree for several more minutes. When she goes inside, Kusi has her box in his hand and is laughing with her father. After Kusi leaves, her father tells her that he was able to sell her box for a lot of money. He promises to buy Fatima a dress and her brother, Fenuku, a new drone. Fatima is upset about her box but pacified by how the money will change their lives.

That night, Fatima is woken up by the sound of people talking. She finds her father outside with his friend, Kwesi. Kwesi tells him that Kusi was robbed in his SUV. They believe his bodyguard, the man in white, took everything that he had. Fatima knows that the man now has her seed.

A year later, Fatima is seven years old. She sits in the same shea tree by her home. When she is overwhelmed by heat and dizziness, she climbs from the tree and seeks out Fenuku. He confirms that her skin is glowing green, something that happens each time she feels the heat. Fenuku has her pick up a wasp. When Fatima squeezes it in her hand, it stings her, causing her to glow a brighter green that even she can see.

Fatima’s father comes outside on his way to the mosque. He tells Fatima and Fenuku to go into the market. As they walk, Fatima thinks of how badly she wants to leave her hometown of Wulugu and travel the world. She thinks of Accra, which is 300 miles away, and how their town only has one road full of potholes.

When they get to the road, Fenuku runs across it. Fatima is daydreaming, so she falls behind. Fenuku yells to her, and Fatima tries to cross during a gap in the traffic. She stumbles in a pothole and falls, then is struck by a car. Overwhelmed by pain, Fatima feels the burning from the green light overtake her. When she opens her eyes, she sees that everyone around her is “asleep.” Her hair has been burned off. She stands up, seeing her brother on the ground, his face turned away from her. In that moment, she realizes that she no longer remembers her own name, despite remembering everything else about her life and family.

The girl walks home. She stops by the mosque and sees that everyone there, including her father, is asleep. When she gets home, her mother is asleep, too. She runs through the house, ending up in her brother’s room. There she finds bird figurines that he likes to carve. She picks up a Sankofa bird, touches it, then drops it to the floor when she gets a sliver. Its neck breaks, and she cries.



The girl goes downstairs and eats the meal that her mother had prepared. She then goes to sleep. When she wakes up in the morning, everyone in town is still sleeping.

Three days later, the girl leaves Wulugu. She has realized that everyone in town was not sleeping, but dead. Flies and maggots began landing on the bodies all over town. When she would see them around her mother, she would often grow angry, then begin to glow, the flies dropping dead around her. She finally took a handful of belongings like the broken Sankofa bird, her book on mythology, a jar of shea butter, and one of her mother’s wigs, then left town. 

As she begins to walk, she tells herself that she is “like Hermes.” She promises to find the seed that was stolen from her.