Abyssinian Chronicles (50 page)

Here and there, in gutters, alleys, roadsides, doorways, both stale and fresh corpses oozed red-yellow fluid, faces rigid, mouths battered by untold secrets. I saw neat wounds caused by very sharp objects; I saw independent body parts liberated by bombs, heavy objects and bullets; I saw blobs of flesh and bits of bone and large patches of blood shaped like the world’s lakes and continents.

Through the relentless heat, the sun-sharpened fetid stenches of decomposing flesh, garbage and emotion, I somehow made it to the taxi park, the orifice from which all the mayhem seemed to gush with apocalyptic ruthlessness. Bullets, like giant popcorn, exploded as the outnumbered liberators tried to appear to be doing something about the chaos without actually tarnishing their good image and reducing the immense credit they had amassed with the people. I now and then caught a snatch of their singsong Kiswahili as they endeavored to break up fights.

I stood on the rim of the bowl. I felt overwhelmed and afraid for my safety. The earthquakes I had dreamed of when I first came to the city, and Grandpa’s predicted national explosions, seemed to be rocking the bowl from all sides. A mighty stench from the notorious Owino Market bearing the putrescence, the intoxications and delusions, of both past and present blew over the taxi park and stirred more madness and confusion. The gawky skeletons of architectural decrepitude that formed the gap-toothed city skyline seemed to tilt and fall over like uprooted teeth, the roots obscenely exposed. The grime-laden windows, the rust-streaked roofs and the dust-caked walls seemed to mix and gush down the hill like discolored gore pouring out of rotting body cavities. The filthy Nakivubo River seemed to be running with blood and tears and refuse that rained down from the mosque, the Catholic and the Protestant cathedrals, the high and low courts and the residences of dislodged army generals.

I was prodded by passersby and found myself descending the steps into the center of the bowl, where there were hardly any vans. It was open court there, with privatized justice and insane retribution on offer. Two very tall, very dark men dressed in the paraphernalia of the
State Research Bureau—platform shoes, bell-bottom trousers and reflective sunglasses—stared at the jury from behind silver goggles. Somebody flipped them off, calling for respect of court as the goggles got crushed.

“I know you. You were a member of the State Research. You took my father away from me. You and your colleagues bashed his head and dumped him in Namanve Forest. Do you remember that?” a large woman shouted.

“Kill them, kill them, kiiill theeem,” the crowd roared avidly.

“Amin is gone. You and your friends are going to pay the price,” someone hollered.

“Pay, pay, paaaay.” The word was passed round.

The verdict was unanimous. The Bureau, a mountain of killings and torturings on its doorstep, was not a name to generate mercy, even among the levelheaded. The most lethal weapon at this time of chaos was to accuse somebody of collaboration with the Bureau or with some other Aminist security agency. “Guilty” platformed feet were swiftly swept off the asphalt, with hard objects meeting the pair midair and striking with the vengeance of three thousand and ten days of woe. By the time the two men hit the ground, they were half-dead. The circle, like a giant sphincter, closed to a fleshy dot, and the duo were flattened like the chapatis the Indians had introduced here.

“The bastards did not even beg for mercy,” somebody said as he went past me. With the tension dissipated, I squeezed my way to another spot.

Portraits of Amin, defaced but discernible, lay stamped into the asphalt. Effigies with limbs torn off smoldered pungently in gasoline bonfires. Near the spot where I first saw a live birth, a crowd of onlookers was watching smoke rise from piles of tires. I could faintly make out four human figures, constricted and twisted in death. The story was that they had been caught trying to get into a van. They had denied being Amin’s henchmen, but on examination showed telltale shoulder weals caused by rifle straps. They were almost instantly necklaced with tires and set alight.

My attention, and the attention of almost everyone in the bowl, was attracted by the blaring of a bullhorn. The man with the horn was being followed by a group of emaciated, ragged, ecstatic, skeletal men
and women, freshly vomited from the torture chambers on Nakasero Hill, just beyond the High Court. The skeletons were dancing and waving twigs as measly tears ran down from their protruding eyes. They were cheered as they marched through the bowl. Vendors, impressed by their escape, gave them buns, drinks, anything they had, free of charge. Others gave them money for the fare home. Many of these people were dazed, staring glassily as though they could not believe their luck. They walked as though they were still shackled and intoxicated by the stink of incarceration, and the vomit, the blood, the excreta and the violence of torture chambers and detention centers. They walked with the full weight of freedom on their shoulders, and for some it seemed too much to bear.

It suddenly struck me: Where was Grandpa? Was he lying wounded in a pit, a building, a bush, waiting for someone to hear his cries for help? So far, his sons had failed to locate him, or even to meet anyone who had a clue as to his whereabouts. They had been to morgues, hospital wards, makeshift refugee centers, military barracks and the homes of relatives, all in vain. They had hardly rested in the past week, and seemed totally at a loss as to what to do next. Aunt Lwandeka had asked her National Reform Movement colleagues to look for Grandpa, but they had not returned any news.

With the sharp stink of burning rubber in my nostrils, mad curiosity in my head, rifle shots and joyous shouts in my ear, I pushed my way through the crowd. I went past charred remains and mutilated effigies and headed for the cathedrals. I was going to check at the Catholic Cathedral of Lubaga and, if necessary, at the Protestant Cathedral of Namirembe. It was hot and humid, and the heat stuck to the skin like a layer of ointment.

Near the edge of the bowl, another court was in session. Tribal facial scars were on trial: diamond-shaped scars, vertical slashes, horizontal scars and swollen dotted scars on foreheads, temples and cheeks had betrayed their northern owners. Anyone seen with the same was a potential suspect. Three women with vertical slashes on their cheeks were in the dock, tried by a group of ragged boys young enough to be their adolescent sons. The crowd was savoring this delegation of judicial powers to these dregs of society with the demeanor of a boss watching his minions exact revenge.

The boys, heads lice-tormented, groins crab-infested, brains glue-crazed, eyes aglow with that rare total power occasioned only by war, chanted, “Witches, witches.”

“Witches … burn them, witches … fry them, witches … fuck them …”

The accused, red eyes popping, nostrils dilating and faces warping with deathly vacillation—that terrible indecision between humility and disdain, supplication and condescension, frowning and fawning—mumbled and jabbered, appealing to emotions hardened by the last three thousand and ten days of wrath.

The ragged kids, as if commanded by an infallible leader, closed in on the trio. They ripped soaked fabrics, razored open cesarean scars, invaded stretch-marked territories, laid waste anything in their path. The flashing of metal and the snapping of bone rose above the animal grunts as life struggled with death. I did not wait for the final outcome.

The Catholic cathedral, perched high on the hill like a new Golgotha piled with skulls and bones, was strewn with people without destination, people awaiting overdue redemption like forgotten goods. Many had come from as far away as fifty kilometers, fleeing advancing Tanzanian forces and discomfited Amin troops. To these people the archbishop was a hero, and the sins of the clergy were merely the inevitable fleas on a useful dog. These survivors had neither the maniacal look of the Crusaders nor the defiant visage of the martyrs: they were scared, unsure, hesitant. It was as if they believed that war had only taken a break and would return as soon as they left for home. I went all over the compound in search of Grandpa and checked the list in the administration office. In vain. I left the cathedral, with its phallic towers, the cook fires, the bawling children and lost adults, and headed for the Protestant cathedral. It was a wild-goose chase. I could hardly focus on anything now. I seemed to be as dazed as the skeletal people I had seen at the bowl, and as hypnotized as a drugged mouse. As I was leaving I stepped on somebody’s clothes, spread out in the grass to dry, and heard angry voices calling me to stop. I just strode on.

The headquarters of the Muslim Supreme Council, the place I associated with Dr. Ssali’s conversion, was crawling with Muslim refugees. Anybody who feared reprisals stayed here, under the mighty shield of the great edifice. I thought I saw Lusanani among the unveiled
women. I followed a woman and whistled at her, sure that it was Lusanani. A strange woman turned round, startled. I apologized. I should have known that Hajj Gimbi, expert reader of the times, had moved his family to the rural area where few people knew him and were unlikely to cause him trouble. I saw quite a few anxious faces here. There was genuine fear of a backlash against Muslims among these people. They had seen what had happened to some of their colleagues who had been accused of harboring Aminist sympathies. But their leaders exuded the confidence that nobody would dare assault them here at the giant mosque. As I left I felt a big sense of failure: I had not located Grandpa.

Evening was approaching. The sun had gone down quickly on the day’s mayhem, and order had crept back.

The city looked empty, as most people had hurried home to beat roadblocks, the curfew and henchmen searching for victims under the cover of darkness. Everyone knew that the first weeks after the war were more dangerous than the last weeks of the war itself, and acted accordingly.

I was exhausted, crazed by the day’s failures. I wished it were all a dream and I could blow life back into the corpses and make Grandpa hear my voice. As in Grandma’s case, reality had its own harsh, unbendable plans that did not respond to the urging of even the most powerful minds. I was so famished I thought I was feeling the hunger of the dead and of those far away whose crops had been destroyed in the war. I knew that I could not bear all the sufferings of the last three thousand and ten days of Amin’s rule. I was even reluctant to take stock of the damage: Grandma dead, Grandpa disappeared, Aunt Lwandeka threatened and tortured, Aunt Kasawo gang-raped … and I was afraid it was not over yet.

I found myself walking along the corsetted banks of Nakivubo River, the hunger and thirst I felt turning the filthy water into a crystal-clear waterfall. I kept on walking toward Owino Market, remembering my fantasy of seeing Padlock working there. I saw vultures and marabou storks lazing on the garbage dumps, sated, ready to leave after another successful day at the office. The market was built in two sections, one with cement stalls, one with makeshift ones where commerce spilled onto the pavements. It was like walking through a sooty ghost town. There was a side road that came down from the
cathedrals and cut right across the slums and the market. I walked toward it. People hurried past me like ghosts, unnoticed. Then I saw a woman turn and hold her nose, but she did not spit. I knew there was a corpse nearby, because one never spat at a dead person.

I had in fact bypassed four bodies lying in the shadow of the market office building. The power of the stench made me feel as if the roof of my nose had been ripped off. Two corpses were lying faceup; one was facedown; the fourth was headless. I was the only onlooker; others just hurried by. The woman who had held her nose had disappeared. I did not recognize any of the dead. I was about to walk back to the taxi park before it was too late, when I was struck by the familiar look of one dead man’s bloodied brogue. I had brushed that shoe many times and wiped the polish off with a piece of white cloth. I knew where the cracks were and how carefully they had been repaired. I bent down to look more closely, the stench almost knocking me back. The man lying facedown was Grandpa! My bladder voided itself, releasing a few drops. Suddenly I was no longer hungry or thirsty. I was just dazed and groggy. Why had Serenity and Kawayida not looked here? Had they looked and failed to recognize their own father?

I somehow made the journey home. Aunt Lwandeka went to her NRM colleagues, got a jeep and moved the body to the morgue for immediate attention. She then drove to Serenity’s suburb. The two brothers were lying in bed, exhausted by yet another day’s futile search. They were relieved because the search had ended, but angry that they hadn’t discovered Grandpa’s body sooner.

The clan gathered at Grandpa’s house. The last time there was a crowd like this was at Serenity’s wedding. Aunt Nakatu had become older and fatter, though unmarked by her recent tribulations. Hajj Ali looked distinguished in a white tunic and a gold-threaded Muslim hat. Baby Sulaiman, their only child, was already attending primary school. Aunt Tiida and Dr. Ssali could not get over the loss of their beloved Peugeot. Amin’s army officers had commandeered it, over Tiida’s protests that theirs was a Muslim family which should be exempt from such aggression. The car had broken down one hundred and fifty kilometers from the city. Dr. Ssali’s mechanic found it in a roadside ditch with the engine blown up. Tiida told the sad story over and over again. I saw Uncle Kawayida’s wife for the first time in years. She looked tall and
majestic, exuding the energy of well-being. If it had not been for her thick lower jaw and large feet, she would have been the most beautiful woman there. She had come driving their second van, and was proud to oblige the mourners. Uncle Kawayida did all the driving now, but for some reason, his wife kept the keys, which kept getting lost. At one time, all people seemed to do was to look for the keys. Uncle Kawayida’s wife liked the game. She kept finding the keys and feigning surprise.

Grandpa’s body arrived two days later because of the intensive work that had to be done on it. Grief apart, I felt proud of the man. He was one of the few people I knew who had practiced what he preached. I felt proud that he had taken those beatings, and the stabbing, and the bullet in his leg. He had lived in a self-chosen political battlefield, and had died in it. I now associated Independence Day, the 1966 State of Emergency and Amin’s fall with him. To me, he was an encyclopedia of our political history, and without his dissertations and my efforts to regurgitate them, I would have been a political ignoramus. He had pursued his political ambitions and paid the price. He had made the predictions of national explosions and died in one. He had led the life of a rebel, speaking his mind even if it meant suffering for it. He had been an island of outspokenness in a sea of conformism. Whatever others said about him, I did not mind.