IRA MATH­UR

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On the eve of the 33rd re­mem­brance of the at­tempt­ed coup, I know the late Raoul Pan­tin would want to be re­mem­bered not as a bro­ken man suf­fer­ing from PTSD as a hostage of in­sur­gents, but as a war­rior.

When I reached out to Man­disa Pan­tin, daugh­ter of the late great jour­nal­ist, ed­i­tor, play­wright and po­et Raoul Pan­tin for per­mis­sion to use an ex­tract from Days of Wrath, his de­tailed ac­count of the at­tempt­ed coup in 1990. I did not ex­pect her to say she had a greater trea­sure—his un­pub­lished mem­oirs, and a book of po­ems il­lus­trat­ed with her paint­ings.

Here are some ex­tracts of a man whose writ­ing re­veals what he loved—Trinidad, jour­nal­ism, lit­er­a­ture, democ­ra­cy, world pol­i­tics—a man who was al­ways plac­ing our new world is­lands in the con­text of the world and, by do­ing so, re­fus­ing to let our small is­lands de­fine our big sense of pos­si­bil­i­ty, re­fus­ing to let our past wounds from al­low­ing us all to be war­riors.

Ex­cerpts from Raoul Pan­tin’s un­pub­lished mem­oir com­plet­ed around the time of his death in 2015:

“Michael X be­came Ab­dul Ma­lik, a rad­i­cal Black Mus­lim, who once de­scribed him­self as ‘the most fa­mous black man in the world’.

“In this new per­sona, he re­turned to Trinidad in the ear­ly 1970s to rent a large house on spa­cious grounds on the out­skirts of Ari­ma, an east­ern Trinidad dis­trict, with his wife, De­siree, and chil­dren.

“It was there that I would first in­ter­view Ab­dul Ma­lik who, dur­ing an­oth­er en­counter at his Ari­ma res­i­dence, would in­tro­duce me to a very fa­mous vis­it­ing cou­ple and then friends of his —John Lennon, of the fa­mous Bea­t­les, and his Japan­ese wife, Yoko Ono.

“John Lennon, who didn’t have much to say in an in­ter­view I did with him that morn­ing, struck me as a pale and ema­ci­at­ed young man who looked as though he could do with some good Trinidad sun­shine and food.

“His equal­ly non-ver­bose wife, Yoko Ono, sat qui­et­ly by his side dur­ing this in­ter­view.

“That same morn­ing, I wit­nessed Lennon write a cheque, no doubt for a sub­stan­tial sum of mon­ey, and hand it to Ma­lik, a con­tri­bu­tion, I as­sumed, to Ma­lik’s cause, what­ev­er that might be.

“At that Ma­lik house­hold, I was al­so to meet one of his Lon­don side­kicks, Steve Yeates, who would drown mys­te­ri­ous­ly a few weeks lat­er while on a sea­side ex­cur­sion with Ma­lik and his fam­i­ly.

“Un­known to me at the time, it was Steve Yeates who had de­liv­ered the fa­tal cut­lass chop to the neck of Gale Ann Ben­son, an­oth­er Lon­don vis­i­tor who had come to Trinidad in the com­pa­ny of an Amer­i­can Black Mus­lim by the name of Hakim Ja­mal and who had grown friend­ly with Ma­lik while in Trinidad.

“Fol­low­ing Ben­son’s gory mur­der, she was buried in Ma­lik’s back­yard where an­oth­er young man, Joseph Sker­rit, for­mer­ly from Bel­mont, al­so mur­dered by Ma­lik, lay buried.

“A few days af­ter Ben­son’s mur­der, then un­known to me or the po­lice, Ma­lik con­tact­ed me to sug­gest I do an­oth­er in­ter­view with him. I had no prob­lem with this. Ma­lik was a fa­mous man and, there­fore, news­wor­thy.

“I cer­tain­ly didn’t know he was a cold-blood­ed mur­der­er who had al­ready plant­ed two bod­ies in his back­yard.

“He came to meet me in style at the Trinidad Ex­press, where I was then em­ployed, in a large chauf­feur-dri­ven car and drove me to the Pel­i­can Inn on the out­skirts of Port-of-Spain.

“Sit­ting out on the bal­cony up­stairs that Inn—and climb­ing the stairs Ma­lik had ob­served how dirty the floor­ing was and said he if was run­ning the place, he wouldn’t tol­er­ate that—I asked Ma­lik if he had some­thing spe­cif­ic he want­ed to say in this in­ter­view. He smiled and said, no.

“In fact, he thought I was such a good jour­nal­ist that I could make up what­ev­er ques­tions I liked and al­so fill in the an­swers on my own since I knew him so well.

“When I said I couldn’t do this, that it was against the ethics of my pro­fes­sion, he shrugged and said: “How do you think I be­came fa­mous in Eng­land if I couldn’t get Eng­lish jour­nal­ists to do things like that for me?” On that last en­counter, Ma­lik was ac­com­pa­nied by a cou­ple young men who had al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in Ben­son’s and Sker­rit’s mur­ders.

“Sub­se­quent­ly, I would al­ways shud­der with re­vul­sion when I thought of my­self sit­ting com­fort­ably up­stairs at the Pel­i­can Inn in the com­pa­ny of three mur­der­ers.

“Steve Yeates’ drown­ing was fol­lowed a few days lat­er by a mys­te­ri­ous fire that con­sumed the house where Ma­lik lived with his fam­i­ly. Again he tele­phoned me to voice great dis­tress at these de­vel­op­ments, but my own sus­pi­cions were aroused by then.

“First, Steve Yeates drowns, and now your house burns down. What’s go­ing on, Michael?” I could nev­er bring my­self to use any of his as­sumed names.

“He said he was as puz­zled as I was by these de­vel­op­ments but sud­den­ly took off for Guyana just be­fore the po­lice, search­ing the grounds of that Ari­ma res­i­dence, had dis­cov­ered the buried bod­ies of both Gale Ann Ben­son and Joseph Sker­rit.

“Ma­lik would even­tu­al­ly be ap­pre­hend­ed by the po­lice, asleep in a Guyanese man’s camp deep in the Guyana in­te­ri­or. He was re­port­ed­ly try­ing to make his way to Brazil. He would be flown back to Trinidad in hand­cuffs, tried, found guilty of mur­der, sen­tenced to death, and hanged.

“On the day he was to be ex­e­cut­ed, I got a call from the Lon­don Evening Stan­dard, for which I had filed the oc­ca­sion­al sto­ry from Trinidad, ask­ing me to fol­low up and file a sto­ry on Ma­lik’s demise.

“A pris­ons of­fi­cer told me that Ma­lik had gone meek­ly to the gal­lows, “his body stiff­ened as though in a trance.” This was the sto­ry I lat­er filed for the “Evening Stan­dard”.”—End of ex­cerpt

• Con­tin­ues on page 32

Ex­cerpt from col­lect­ed po­ems ‘Jour­ney’. Art­work by Mendisa Pan­tin.

CH­AGUARA­MAS

Chag

Is mine;

Every yard

Of wild scrub Every inch

Of blaz­ing red Rock face

Every lulled bay Every hill Em­bla­zoned Pink, gold, green And

Oh yes

I know

It’s oc­cu­pied now By an­oth­er army But

About things That are yours You can wait

Be easy

Take

Your own

Long

Cool

Sweet

Time

JU­LY TO JU­LY

Christ­mas and parang Car­ni­val and pan Crick­et to foot­ball Pooti­gal to wa­ter­mel­on Gris gris to boil corn Tonk­abean to chen­nett through

Kite fly­ing

In­to

June’s end

Be­gin­ning

With be­wil­der­ment

Is by

The shift

Of these sea­sons

Now see we

Cy­cling

Ju­ly to Ju­ly again

EDEN

We can­not re­turn to Eden.

This sky must

first turn stone

The sea emp­ty it­self in­to desert Dry as bone

Hills stripped naked of green Our laugh­ter turns tears

For in­no­cence is once.

BURN­ING SPEAR

Un­der­stand,

War­riors do not bend their knees Be­fore vic­tors in bat­tle.

No.

They nurse their wounds

Go back to camp

Study the cam­paign

Walk for miles

Across sa­van­nahs

Up steep hill­sides

Bathe in the ocean’s roar­ing break­ers

Ab­sorb na­ture’s gift.

Un­til face set against a ris­ing sun They take up the burn­ing spear and shield

Clothed in the an­gry li­on skin

To do bat­tle again.

And Again!

Ex­cerpt from Days of Wrath on the at­tempt­ed Coup of 1990:

“I fought to con­trol the tears, feel­ing sor­ry for my­self and for Trinidad, the place I had grown up in and known or thought I had known and loved…I was over­whelmed by it all, fear­ful that this beau­ti­ful is­land, this ex­tra­or­di­nary coun­try of great in­tel­lec­tu­als, po­ets, artists and every­day peo­ple, had been as­sault­ed, bru­talised, soiled – like the TTT build­ing, which, sev­en days ago, had been just a nor­mal place to work.”

The late Raoul Pan­tin at­tend­ed Fa­ti­ma Col­lege and grad­u­at­ed in jour­nal­ism from the Thom­son Foun­da­tion in Cardiff. He wrote the screen­play for the 1974 Trinida­di­an cult film Bim ( Di­rect­ed by Hugh A. Robert­son and star­ring for­mer politi­cian Ralph Maraj), a col­lec­tion of po­ems ( Jour­ney), two plays ( Hat­uey and Ra­dio Re­pub­lic 555) and four non-fic­tion books, in­clud­ing his un­pub­lished mem­oir, “Black Pow­er Day,” ex­plor­ing the Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion in 1970, The Trinidad Ex­press Sto­ry, and Days of Wrath: The 1990 Coup in T&T, his first-hand ac­count of the 1990 Ja­maat al Mus­limeen coup.

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