The Mango Tree is Gone

In the middle of the village stood the mango tree.

It was not the tallest tree, nor the oldest. It was not sacred in the way shrines are sacred — no one poured libations to it, no one named their child after its roots. But it was there, and it was enough.

It had been there before the current chief was born, before the council wore matching wrappers, before there was a gate at the end of the road pretending to be a boundary. No one remembered planting it. It had no plaque. It simply stood — bending in wind, humming with flies, fruiting without permission.

Children learnt balance by climbing its branches. Lovers carved initials into its bark and lied about eternity beneath its shade. The goats, the dust, the silence of the midday sun — all of it seemed to revolve around the tree. No one claimed ownership. Why would they? It belonged the way air belongs. Its fruit was sweet, free, and abundant. No one sold it. No one fenced it. No one had to beg.

Then one day, the man came.

He arrived with a caravan of boys and broad-chested words. He had left the village many years before, travelled to distant lands where mango trees had price tags and fences and guards. He returned different — fat in the face, slow in the eyes, wearing cloth so white it dared not touch the ground. They called him “visionary.” They called him “son of the soil.” They clapped when he opened his mouth, even before the words came out.

He pointed to the mango tree and said it was in danger. He said people were abusing it. That it needed “regulation,” “order,” “a sustainable model.” He said the tree was a gift, but gifts must be protected. That the village had taken too much, for too long, without giving back.

No one quite understood what he meant. Still, they nodded. Some out of fear, some out of confusion, most out of habit.

And so, the tree was removed.

Not cut down — uprooted. A spectacle. Ropes tied to its trunk, chants to “preserve our future,” boys dancing as though reburying the bones of a great ancestor. The tree was hauled across the village, out of the square, past the shrines and the silent huts, into the man’s compound — a hilltop enclave with thick walls, strange trees from other lands, and a gate that spoke only to the invited.

He planted it in his courtyard. Hired guards. Called it The People’s Tree.

When the fruit began to ripen again, he announced his generosity: ten percent of the harvest would be returned to the village every year. The first year, he sent baskets. The second year, sacks. By the third year, only a few crates arrived, each one stamped with his face.

The villagers, hungry and tired, clapped. They danced. They praised him in proverbs. They named a day after him. “He didn’t have to give us anything,” they said, while chewing what was once theirs. “He is kind.”

The village square remained empty. Dust gathered where shade once stretched. A shrine was built where the roots had been, and it was said that only the man could speak to the spirit of the tree now.

Children no longer climbed. They queued.

The elders adjusted their stories. “He saved the tree,” they said. “It would’ve died without him.” The women repeated these tales to their sons while pounding yam, to their daughters while braiding hair. “One day,” they said, “you too must do something for the village — like him.”

And so the theft became tradition.

Some protested. Not many. A handful of old men, their teeth rotting and voices shaking, muttered beneath the sun about how things used to be. They were ignored. A few younger ones, bold but naive, shouted in the square, calling for the tree’s return. They were beaten, or made examples of, or given jobs so they would shut up and forget.

Eventually, those who still spoke of the old tree were treated as mad. People laughed when they walked past. Children threw pebbles at them. “Do you think the tree was ever yours?” they’d ask. “What did you ever do for the tree?”

They became warnings. Ghosts, still breathing.

And the man? He grew older, fatter. His children inherited the tree. They added walls. They sold the fruit at a price. They sold the seeds. They claimed to have created a new species of mango — faster-growing, sweeter, “more modern.” They wrote songs about their father’s generosity. They told the story of how he “gave mangoes to the people.”

None of them remembered the shade.

And the people? They queued. They clapped. They recited new histories written on the back of mango crates. They called it progress.

And those who still remembered?

They sat in the sun, mocked, scorned, and silent.

They waited.

Not for a saviour. Not for the tree to return.

But for the day someone would finally say — without fear, without hope — it was stolen.

And that would be enough.