•
Kirabo was mopping the sitting-room floor when she heard Tom’s new car, a Honda Accord, in the car park outside their house. She threw the mop into the basin and ran to the balcony. Tom was out of the car, hurrying towards the alleyway. She ran through the living room and the foyer, shot into the back yard and under the clotheslines, and opened the gate. Tom rushed past her. “Abi, where are you? Abi?” Aunt Abi was in the kitchen. “Calamity has fallen back home. Kabuye, the surgeon, was taken.”
Aunt Abi clapped and sat down on the kitchen step, then exhaled. There was something final about the word “taken.” You did not ask why, or how or by whom. Neither Tom nor Aunt Abi noticed that Kirabo was trembling.
Tom sat on the same step and whispered, “Apparently, a car stopped outside Ssozi’s shop. Four men stepped out and asked for directions to Kabuye’s house but Ssozi’s heart told him not to give them the directions. Along came Father. Ssozi asked him whether he had ever heard of a surgeon called Kabuye. Father laughed, ‘In this dry Nattetta? Aah, you will only find peasants like us. Try going back to Bukolooto or Kayunga. That is where all the rich live.’ When the men had gone, Ssozi sent a boy, quick-quick, on a bicycle to Kabuye’s house to warn him. But just as the boy got to the house the car arrived. Someone dumb, a child probably, had given them the right directions.”
Aunt Abi clapped and propped her chin with her hand, a mourning stance.
“Unfortunately, Kabuye was home. He has been gone since yesterday. Father and Ssozi are hiding in the bush, in case the men come for them too.”
“We have to go home.” Aunt Abi made to stand up.
“That is the thing. Father says we should stay here. They could come after us too.”
But for Kirabo, it was not Miiro living in the bush or the possibility that the men could come for Tom that was on her mind; it was Sio. Had he been at home when it happened? She could not imagine the pain of seeing your father brutalised. The prevalent disappearance and murders of fathers, often middle class and educated, was the one phenomenon boarding school protected you from. Even when your own was taken, life at St. Theresa’s, with all its busy-busy, distracted from the pain. You were not at home to see life disintegrate around your family. In the beginning, girls had been collected to be with their families when their fathers disappeared. But lately, Sister Ambrose had put a stop to it. When a mother came to school to say that her husband had disappeared, Sister Ambrose asked if they had a body. Or whether they were going on the run. If they were not, she told the mother to go back home. There was no need to bring pain to a girl if she was not going to bury her father. And so girls were given more time, up to the end of the term, before they discovered they had been orphaned. Sometimes, when a family went on the run, Sister Ambrose kept the girl in her house during term breaks. Then, when the family found a haven, they rang to ask the school to put her on a plane or Akamba bus. When a girl came back from term break and whispered, “My father disappeared,” everyone kept quiet, and some girls avoided her completely, in fear because there were girls in the school related to the people in power, with dads or brothers in the army. Such girls wore flashy clothes, expensive shoes, and were brought to school in huge cars with blacked-out windows or in army jeeps. It did not matter that these girls had never threatened anyone; everyone feared them regardless. Mostly, they kept to themselves. So the only form of sympathy the orphaned girls got was in stares and girls sharing stuff with them because everyone knew they did not bring enough pocket money or snacks any more. At the end of term, the girls who came from the same village would offer them a lift home in their parents’ cars. In any case, most did not return to St. Theresa’s after the holiday. But still no one mentioned the word abduction.
•
Kirabo had to see Sio. Because of the increased insecurity in the country, travel outside the city had become hazardous. There were many security checks, roadblocks manned by the army, where sometimes passengers were detained, but Kirabo was resolved. Unfortunately, there was a notorious roadblock outside the Namanve woods on the way to Mukono. Everyone knew Namanve was not just a dumping ground for corpses, it was killing fields. Word had it that once at that roadblock, two soldiers fought over a woman from a car they had detained, and to settle the argument they had shot her so both would lose her. In the beginning, when women were pulled from buses or taxis, the drivers would steer the vehicle a little further away from the roadblock and wait until the soldiers finished with her so she could be taken home, but then one driver was shot for saying he would wait.
Even so, Kirabo planned to see Sio. She had to console him. Can you imagine his pain? Besides, the following April, in 1979, he would be doing his A levels.
A week later was Atim’s birthday. She rang her, told her about Sio’s father, and asked for a sleepover after her birthday party. Atim’s father was a renowned gynaecologist. They lived in Summit View in Upper Kololo, an exclusive residential area. Aunt Abi let her go for the sleepover because Kirabo was making the right kind of friends. As far as Aunt Abi was concerned, going to St. Theresa’s was not just about getting good grades; it was about getting into the right circles as well.
Kirabo turned up early for Atim’s party. At one o’clock, she changed into her school uniform, threw a jacket on top, and put on a cap to conceal her face. She explained to a worried Atim, “I’m sure Sio has moved on, but he is an only child, and losing a parent is not the same when you are an only child. He has no one to share his grief with.”
Atim did not pretend to believe a word Kirabo said. She tried to reason with her about the dangers of making such a journey, but Kirabo was firm. She planned to catch the Guy bus, praying that it was still operational. If she met anyone she knew on it, she would give them a message for her grandparents and take a taxi instead.
At the security check in the Namanve woods, all of the passengers filed out. Male passengers queued up on the left while women queued to the right of the door. Everyone held out their identity cards and opened their bags. Two soldiers got on the bus to check underneath the seats. Kirabo had stuffed her transport money into her knickers. Army men did not walk past money. Because she wore her school uniform, she was waved back on to the bus with a “Mutoto wa shule.” Now her only worry was not finding Sio at home, something she had not thought about before she set off. She would have to look for a taxi to take her back to Nazigo and catch another taxi to Kampala. The chances would be slim of slipping out of Nazigo unseen.
When the bus drove past the churches in Nattetta, then the dispensary and the reverend’s house, she ducked below the windows. Next was Widow Diba’s house. A little while longer and they arrived at the junction near Miiro’s. Kirabo resisted the urge to take a peek. She imagined Ssozi’s shop, the koparativu stowa, the huge muvule tree, Nsuuta’s house. When the bus began to ascend Bugiri Hill, Kirabo sat up. It felt like betrayal.
•
The wooden gate on Sio’s home hung open, neglected and limp. The house had lost that vibrant, healthy look Kirabo had associated with Sio. When she was young, there were some houses, like Giibwa’s, that were malnourished. Miiro’s was just the right health. Sio’s home was an upper-middle-class house which would not have looked out of place in Kololo, Nakasero, or Bugoloobi. But now the swing near the hedge was rusty. How she had longed to swing on it! As she got to the house, she prayed that all the mourners and soothers had gone. It had been two weeks since Dr. Kabuye’s abduction. People did not hang about in such cases.
No one came out to meet her.
She walked to the side of the house and peered into the back yard. There was a large aluminium water tank. A double-storeyed pen for Zungu chickens. A matooke plantation. She had imagined Kabuye’s home to be too British to have such traditional structures. Somehow it took away the remnants of Sio’s foreignness. Just then a woman, not Sio’s mother, emerged from the side door. Sio’s mother was so pale you saw the blue of her veins. This woman was dark, but she was not a villager. She smiled. “A
re you looking for someone?” She spoke Luganda.
“Sio.”
A look of I should have known came into her eyes. Then she saw Kirabo’s school uniform. “Which school is this?” She lifted the left flap of Kirabo’s jacket to glance at the school emblem. “St. Theresa’s?”
First came recognition and then respect. St. Theresa’s had that effect on people. You said you were at St. Theresa’s and people presumed you were clever, hard-working, and rich. The woman called, “Sio? Sio. Sio ono?” When no reply came, she said, “Come with me. He must be in his bedroom. Go to the front door, I will open it for you.”
It was a metal and glass panel door. As Kirabo looked around, the curtains were yanked back. Sio stood there. Confusion crossed his face but was soon replaced by realisation, and eventually shock. He was skinny, taller, older, and sported a little goatee like a proper man. He took in Kirabo’s school uniform—back-to-school shoes, scholar’s socks, skirt, and blouse—and then he looked at her face. He made a gesture with his hands of What is this?
Kirabo gestured back: I heard.
That was when he remembered to open the lock. He disappeared, and the white lining of the curtains fell back. They parted again, and he opened several locks behind the door. Finally, he opened a padlock on a huge chain around the metal grilles and the double doors opened.
“Kirabo.” He stared at her, his face inscrutable.
She smiled.
He looked her up and down again, then motioned for her to show him the school emblem. She did.
“You are at St. Theresa’s.”
She nodded.
“St. Theresa’s girls are haughty.”
“SMACK boys are bean weevils.”
He laughed.
“Are you not going to invite your friend in?”
Sio looked back at the woman, then he started, as if this idea had just occurred to him. He smiled shamefacedly and hurried back to the living room, picking cushions from one settee and dropping them on to another, beating the sofas as if they were dusty, arranging the coffee table. “Come in, come in. We have not cleaned in a long time.” But the woman looked at him as if to protest: I have been cleaning.
The sitting room was littered with pictures of him at various stages of childhood. The ones taken in Britain were in Kodachrome, the frames posh; the ones taken in Afro Studio were black and white. The difference between the plump boy in the pictures and the skinny Sio standing before her, forgetting to greet her, was incredible.
“Did you come on that bus?” the woman asked. “I heard it stop.”
“Yes.”
Kirabo was beginning to worry about Sio’s lack of speech. Perhaps he had a new girlfriend. She said, “I heard my father talking about what happened, so I came to check on you.”
“Oh,” the woman clapped and sat down. Just like that, tears started to flow. Sio sat down on the same settee as the woman. He leaned his head on a fist while the other hand fell to the floor and picked at the carpet. Still he said nothing. Finally, the woman lifted her head and blew her nose into a handkerchief. She savaged her nose, dried the tears with a flap of her busuuti, and stood up. “Thank you for coming, child, you are a good friend.” She walked out.
“I don’t know what to say.” Sio stood up and came over to where Kirabo sat. He reached for both her hands and sat with her. Then he let go of one of her hands to wipe away his tears. “I didn’t know what to say when I saw you. And you were dressed in uniform, your eyes hidden. I thought you had forgotten us.”
“I don’t know your address.”
“You know I am still at St. Mary’s.”
“I was not sure.” Then she whispered, “Where is your mother?”
Shadows returned to his eyes. “She is safe; she is back with her people in Dar.”
“Your mother is Tanzanian?” Then realisation: “Is that why they came for your dad?”
Sio nodded.
“But she is so light-skinned.”
“She is Chagga. They can be pale.”
“Oh. All along, I thought she was mixed blood, that your father met her in Britain.”
“The men came for Mum, not Dad, claiming she was a Tanzanian spy. But she left when our troops invaded Kagera in Tanzania. All the Tanzanians left. Dad—stupid Dad—stayed: ‘I am Ugandan, they will not touch me, they need me at the hospital, there are just a handful of surgeons …’” Sio took a breath. “They came during daytime, I swear, they came in clear daylight. They parked their car right there.” He stood up and pointed through the window. “There, near the hedge.” Kirabo stood up and stared at the hedge as if the car was still parked there. “Dad was washing the Minor. When he saw them, he ran into the house and locked the door. Stupid, really, he should have run outside, but in here, he was trapped. They shot through the lock, right here, see?”
Kirabo looked at the bullet holes.
“Were you at home?”
“Of course; we had our holidays two Fridays ago. Dad shouted, ‘Run, Sio.’ I told him, ‘You run—they never take children.’ He was stupid like that. We ran upstairs, and he helped me through the hole leading into the ceiling but did not come up with me. He said if they found us together, they would take us both. I begged and begged him to climb into the ceiling, but he ran out.” He twisted his lips to lock in the tears. Then he looked at her. “Did you know we have drums?”
“No.”
He grabbed her hand. “Come.” And they ran through the dining room to a long dark corridor and up the stairs. They burst into a study room with a table and a set of Ganda musical instruments—drums, harps, ntongoli, a xylophone, two pairs of nsaasi rattles, and two drumsticks resting on the mpuunyi drum. “Dad ran to this room and sounded the drum like they do in traditional alarm—gwanga mujje, gwanga mujje, gwanga mujje—and residents emerged out of the bushes everywhere with clubs, pangas, and hoes because most of them were in their gardens at the time. When the men saw the villagers, they shot in the air to shoo them away, and the villagers slipped back into the bushes.”
“Where were you then?”
“In the ceiling. It was my aunt who told me. She is Dad’s sister. She had come to look after us during the holidays after Mum left.”
Kirabo stared.
“The men came upstairs and grabbed Dad. They shouted, ‘Where is she? Where is she?’ in Swahili. It was stupid Swahili; Ugandans can’t speak proper Swahili. Dad speaks fluently, but it is Tanzanian Swahili, which of course sank him. He should have stuck to English. He begged, said he was just a harmless doctor, that his wife had run away, wa? They dragged him downstairs. I could hear them hitting him already. If his wife was not a spy, why had she run away? Why was he hiding? Outside, he called out to the villagers, ‘It is me, Kabuye the doctor, they are taking me.’ I heard the car boot bang. Then the car doors. They drove away.”
Now Kirabo thought of Tom and shivered.
“When they arrived in Nattetta at Ssozi’s shop, they stopped. They opened the boot and people saw Dad being pulled out like a sack of potatoes, can you imagine?” Kirabo shook her head. “Even then he called, ‘It is me, Dr. Kabuye, they are taking me!’ The men walked, casual as you like, to Ssozi’s shop, and his son, who was in the shop, disappeared. They picked a sisal rope, the ones he hangs on the door, and tied Dad’s hands, then his legs, and he fell down in the dust as the world looked on like this”—Sio opened his eyes wide to show exactly how the world had looked on. He took a breath and turned to the window. He twisted his lips and shrugged in resignation. “They threw him back into the boot and ahhhhh …” His hand made a motion of driving away. He stared through the window.
After a stretched silence Kirabo sighed, “My grandfather has been sleeping in the bush ever since, because when the men first came looking for your father he and Ssozi gave them the wrong directions.”
“I heard. Have you been to your grandfather’s?”
Kirabo shook her head and explained how she had avoided being seen in Nattetta.
“You
cannot go back to Kampala now; curfew will start in an hour.”
Before Kirabo could discuss it, Sio called his aunt. He told her how Kirabo had left home under false pretences, how it was too late to return to the city. He talked to her as if she was not a grown-up and unreasonable.
“Of course she can sleep here tonight,” the aunt smiled.
That evening, after Kirabo rang Atim to tell her she was spending the night in Nattetta, she and Sio could not stop talking about the past two years. They talked as if they had always talked easily, as if her visiting him and spending the night at his house was right, as if Nattetta had had no right to tongue-tie them in the first place. Before supper, Sio took her to the bathroom, gave her a towel, and lent her a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He prepared for her to sleep in one of the spare bedrooms upstairs. However, after supper, as Kirabo got into bed, Sio’s aunt came to her bedroom. She was wearing that scandalised, angry expression of grown-ups that said If you children think you are going to have sex in this house while I sleep, think again.
“You”—she pointed at Kirabo—“you are sleeping in my bedroom. Come.”
Kirabo jumped out of bed and the woman escorted her to the other end of the corridor. Kirabo was dying to see the look on Sio’s face, but with all the sucking of teeth and muttering his aunt was doing, she dared not look back. In the woman’s bedroom, Kirabo slid on to the mattress laid out on the floor below the woman’s bed and hid her face under the blanket. Sex had not even crossed her mind.
A Girl is a Body of Water Page 19