Mama Adwoa stood among the charred remains of what was once her fabric shop in Kantamanto Market, her fingers black with soot as she sifted through the debris. Twenty-three years of business reduced to ash in mere hours. The air still carried the acrid smell of burnt cloth and melted plastic, a scent she knew would haunt her dreams for months to come.
“We can build it again,” her son Kwame said. He sounded hopeful, like young people often do. “We can make it even better than before.”
Mama Adwoa was quiet for a while. She was looking at her old burned account book. The pages were curling up from the heat. This book had the names of all the people who still needed to pay her for cloth. These were market women who would buy cloth and promise to pay later, when they had money from their crops or when their children sent money from far away. Mama Adwoa had always trusted them without asking for anything in return.
“Some things can’t come back after they burn, my son,” she said softly. “The trust we built over many years, the friendships we made by helping each other. These things are hard to get back.”
She found a piece of traditional cloth that was only burned a little at the edges. The patterns on it made her remember her first day at the market. Back then, she had started with just six yards of cloth and big dreams, just like her mother had.
“Yes, we will build again,” she said, “but it won’t be the same. In the old market, your grandmother taught me to measure cloth with my arms instead of a ruler because people trusted us. That market is gone now. The new one might be strong, but it will be different.”
Kwame stopped smiling as he watched his mother put the piece of cloth in her pocket. He began to understand that his mother was right. Some things, once lost, stay lost, and it’s important to remember that.
Around them, other shop owners were cleaning up. They moved slowly, looking both sad and determined. The market would open again, but it would be different, not like a magical bird coming back to life, but like something new, carrying the memory of what happened.
