We are pilgrims on a warpath
To battle Satan and his worshippers
They strode with hope and confidence that other young men and women would answer their clarion call to war and join them in their hunt for Satan.
13
The Soldiers of Christ did not at first know exactly where or how to begin their hunt for Satan.
Tourists, beggars, and prostitutes dogged one another in the streets during the day and met again in the evenings outside seven-star hotels, as if these shrines of luxury belonged equally to the rich, the tourist, the beggar, and the prostitute, the major difference being that at night the rich, the tourist, and prostitute stayed in while the beggar found himself out in the open, enduring rain or cold. But as soon as dawn broke they all reconnected.
Every beggar knew one or two words of English, German, Japanese, Italian, and French, though Kiswahili dominated their speech. Help the poor. Saidia Maskini. Bakheesh. There were a few who played music on homemade guitars and drums, while others performed comic sketches that now and then lured a coin or two from an amused tourist. They tried to station themselves on streets most frequented by tourists, resulting in a lot of pushing and shoving for advantage.
Sometimes the police raided the beggars, but just for show, for Aburlria’s prisons were already full. Most beggars would have been quite happy to be jailed for the meal and a bed. The government also had to be mindful not to upset tourism by sweeping too many beggars off the streets. Pictures of beggars or wild animals were what many tourists sent back home as proof of having been in Africa. In Aburlria, wild animals were becoming rare because of dwindling forests and poaching, and tourist pictures of beggars or children with kwashior-kor and flies massing around their runny noses and sore eyes were prized for their authenticity. If there were no beggars in the streets, tourists might start doubting whether Aburlria was an authentic African country.
The Soldiers of Christ took stock of the situation. What kind of places was Satan likely to haunt? In what guise? He is full of tricks, for, as they would remind themselves, was he, Lucifer, not born before even the world came to be? If he could turn himself into a snake and crawl through the walls of the Garden of Eden under God’s surveillance, what was to prevent him now from assuming the form of a human, another animal, or even a stone? Why were Maritha and Mariko unable to name the objects of their desire? Because it was Satan himself who appeared to them in different guises. Maybe Satan had now disguised himself as a tourist, a prostitute, a beggar, or any of the hundreds milling the streets, or …
“Look,” one of the soldiers shouted, pointing a finger at something across the street, a sculpture of the Ruler on horseback. The Soldiers of Christ quickly read his mind, for the bronze sculpture reminded them of the not so distant spectacle of the Devil worshipper riding a donkey in imitation of Christ, an act of sacrilege for sure. But why did the vision appear to them at this moment? In their hour of need? They recalled that God had forbidden the Children of Israel to make graven images. Why? Because Satan could easily hide in a sculpted image. Inspecting the sculptures of the Ruler was no easy task, as they soon found out. The Ruler’s monuments were all over every street in Eldares.
There he is on a horse in full flight and on others cantering. Here he is standing on a pedestal with hands raised in a gesture of benediction over passersby There the commander in chief in military garb, a sword raised as if inspecting a guard of honor, and on another as if leading a charge. Here he is, the great teacher in a university cap and gown. There the thoughtful ruler in a moody pose.
They did not find Satan among the sculptures. They looked inside high-rise and low-rise buildings, side by side with shacks made of discarded cardboard and sheets of plastic. Italian, Chinese, Indian, and Greek restaurants faced kiosks serving soul food of collard greens and ugali. From the big restaurants issued the smell of sizzling steaks; from the sidewalks came the smell of cracking corn and hazelnuts on charcoal.
Results were not good. Like the wise men from the East who encountered numerous difficulties on their way to see the infant in the manger, the Soldiers of Christ endured many hardships in their search for Satan inside the many buildings of Eldares. In some bars they were met with derisive laughter, and once some drunks threw orange peels at their faces. In the seven-star hotels they were often thrown out and eventually banned as nauseating to guests. And outside, in the streets, where sleek Mercedes-Benzes, donkey carts, and hand-pulled carriages competed for space and the right of way in pot-holed roads, the sun and dust were not anymore merciful; not to speak of the police who sometimes chased them, suspecting them of being beggars, and tourists who ran after them with cameras, taking them to be holy beggars. They were often hungry and thirsty and tired, and the stench in the streets of Eldares did not improve matters.
Those were the days when instead of being lined with trees the streets of Eldares were lined on either side with mountains of garbage. Some shop owners paid private garbage collectors to clear access to their premises, so that here and there, particularly in the central business zone, there were some clean patches. In many other streets there was nothing but flies, worms, and the stench of rot.
Was this stench part of Satan’s arsenal with which to drive us away? they wondered. For all we know he could be hiding in the garbage hills, laughing at us even as we look for him among people, buildings, and the sculptures of the Ruler? No, he is not going to stink us out of our search, they said defiantly.
But no matter how brave they felt, the more they talked about the wiles of Satan, the more they came to realize that fighting with someone they could not actually see with their own eyes was not easy. In these low moments, they would remind themselves that they were Soldiers of Christ, and as the Bible says, they had to fight the good fight. Happy are they who suffer for my sake. Revived by such thoughts, they would hold their crosses aloft with renewed vigor and sing themselves hoarse.
This place amazes me
At the cross
Because there is joy after sorrow
At the cross
One Friday afternoon in the outskirts of Santamaria as they were feeling good about themselves, three men ran toward them shouting in pure terror, Satan! Satan! They hid behind the banner of the Soldiers of Christ. Please help us … Satan is after us …
The soldiers, who had been singing and speaking in tongues, were struck by the irony of the situation. When they were thinking only of Satan, they did not find him. But now, at the height of joy and consciousness of Grace Abounding, when they were thinking only of Jesus, they heard news of Satan.
“What are you talking about?” they asked in unison.
“Satan … he is giving us hell! Help us!”
“Where is he?” asked the Soldiers of Christ excitedly, though still baffled and a little frightened by this dramatic turn of events.
Perhaps battling Satan in the spirit was less daunting than facing him in the flesh … but this was their moment and they were not about to shun the call.
14
He was tired, hungry, and thirsty and felt beaten down by the sun. He wanted to climb to the top, when suddenly he felt very weak in the knees and collapsed at the foot of the mountain of garbage. He could not tell whether he was in a temporary coma or a deep sleep, but when a slight breeze blew it lifted him out of himself to the sky, where he now floated. He could still see his own body lying on the ground and the mountain of garbage, where children and dogs fought over signs of meat on white bones. The body needs a rest from you and you need a rest from the body, he heard himself saying to himself. He decided to let his body lie there in the sun, and, free of the body, he wandered Aburiria—why leave the exploration and enjoyment of our country to tourists? he said with a chuckle to himself—comparing the conditions in the different towns and regions of the country.
This is really funny, he said to himself when he saw that he looked like a bird and floated like a bird; he enjoyed the rush of cold air against his wings. He now
recalled a Christian song he had once heard:
I. will fly and leave this earth
I will float in the sky and witness
Wonders never seen before
Being done with the earth below
He started to sing but because he could not open his beak as wide as his mouth what came out was a whistling reminiscent of the song of the birds he had listened to in the mornings in the wilderness.
From his vantage point, he had a bird’s-eye view of the northern, southern, eastern, western, and central regions of Aburiria. The landscape ranged from the coastal plains to the region of the great lakes; to the arid bushlands in the east; to the central highlands and northern mountains. People differed as much in the languages they spoke as in the clothes they wore and how they eked out a living. Some fished, others herded cattle and goats, and others worked on the land, but everywhere, particularly in towns, the contours of life were the same as those of Eldares. Everywhere people were hungry, thirsty, and in rags. In most towns, shelters made out of cardboard, scrap metal, old tires, and plastic were home to hundreds of children and adults. He found it ironic that, as in Eldares, these shacks stood side by side with mansions of tile, stone, glass, and concrete. Similarly, in the environs of cities and towns huge plantations of coffee, tea, cocoa, cotton, sisal, and rubber shared borders with exhausted strips of land cultivated by peasants. Cows with udders full with milk grazed on lush lands as scrawny others ambled on thorny and stony grounds.
So I am not alone, he heard himself say to his bird self. Maybe he should abandon his human form and remain a bird, floating effortlessly in the sky, bathing in the fresh air of Skyland, but then he started sneezing as a whiff of gases from the factories below reached him. Is there no place on earth or in the sky where a person might escape this poison? A bit confused, he thought that before making any decision about the form in which he would lead the rest of his life he should return to his body lying in the sun to recover and review the shocks of the day. But what if his body had been completely scorched by the sun? At the thought he flapped his wings and hurried back to Eldares.
He arrived not a minute too early. A rotation truck full of garbage had just pulled up at the foot of the trash mountain. He was about to reenter his body but he held himself in check and floated a bit longer to see what they would do with his shell.
The driver and two men got out and looked at the body for a few seconds. Then one of them bent, put his ear to the chest, and proclaimed the body dead, provoking an exchange as to what they should do with the corpse. They did not want to call the police; it would take the cops a whole day to come, and they had work to do. In any case they did not want to get caught up in endless court proceedings. There was always the possibility that they might be accused of murder and end up in prison or have their heads chopped off or lose a lot of money to bribe their way out. But to leave the body there might result in as much.
The corpse was in a somewhat threadbare suit. Was there money in the pocket? At the thought, all fears about touching the body disappeared and the three searched frantically but found nothing. No money. They noticed that the corpse still clutched a bag on which it partially lay. It had to contain something important for its owner to cling to it so tenaciously through his death throes. The three read one another’s minds and unceremoniously they quickly turned the body over and searched the bag. They were so sure that the bag was full of money that they became very angry at the corpse when they found it held nothing but rags; one of them started cursing the corpse as if it were alive. You stupid liar. I am sure these rags are your real clothes and the suit you have on is stolen property. Have you no shame, stealing other people’s clothes? And you did not even have the good sense to steal a suit less worn out; at least we could have taken that.
They were about to go when they suddenly realized that their fingerprints were all over the body. They could not leave the corpse there and decided to bury the evidence of their involvement. Dead men do not speak, especially if they and their bags are buried in a rubbish dump. So many were dying of hunger or illness, not to mention the ones in despair who took their own lives, that the police would have no reason to search for yet another corpse amid the stench.
Maybe I should let them bury my body, he told himself, or rather his bird self: What use am I in Aburlria? The body is a prison for the soul. Why shouldn’t I cut off the chains that now tie me to it, let the body and the soul say good-bye to each other? That way my soul shall be free to roam across land and all over this sky. Yes, to go wherever it wishes without the endless restraining demands of the body: I am thirsty, I want water to drink; I am hungry, I want food to eat; I am naked, I need some clothes; I am out in the rain, I need some shelter; I am ill, I must find a doctor. I must catch a bus but I have no money. I must pay school fees, taxes … isn’t it simpler to let everything go?
But when he saw the men actually lift him, or rather his body, and throw it onto the pile of rubbish in the back of the lorry headed for the dump, he heard a voice from within cry out that the body was the temple of God and the soul had no right to cut loose its connection to the world before it had completed its sojourn on earth. I am human, I am a human being, a soul, and not a piece of garbage, no matter how poor and ragged I look, and I deserve respect, he heard himself say time and again as he descended to and repossessed his body.
The stench, which hit his nostrils, was so strong that it made him sneeze even as he tried to sit up. He started removing garbage from his face. About to get into the passenger side of the lorry, two of the men heard the sneeze. They each stood fixed to the ground. The driver also froze, his hands on the door, one leg on the rung and the other still on the ground. What was that? he asked. But his men did not answer. Having gone to peer at the body risen from the dead, they just ran away. The driver also fled the lorry after his friends, beseeching them not to leave him to the mercy of the Devil. But the word Devil only served to spur them on; the three were now screaming out Satan! in different pitches. Not until they saw a group of young men and women with crosses and a banner on which was written the words SOLDIERS OF CHRIST did they stop to compose themselves and ask for help …
15
The three garbage collectors were trembling as they told their tale of how they had found a dead body and were about to bury it in the dumpsite when it came to life, or rather rose from the dead, and started chasing them around the vehicle, trying to ensnare them, all the while threatening to put them into the huge bag he carried and take them home to his evil angels in Devil Land. And was that not the site of the everlasting fire, the garbage collectors asked, and the Soldiers of Christ said yes. The collectors could not recall how they managed to escape from the Devil’s grasp, but when they saw their chance, they seized it and fled.
It was a story of sadness and terror and relief—oh, what a narrow escape—and even before they were done with the tale one of them was saying that there would be no more garbage collection for him; all three agreed that they would never again touch a body, no matter how dead it appeared to be. The dead were truly deadly.
“Don’t worry” the Soldiers of Christ told them, nodding their heads knowingly to show that they were well aware of all the wiles of Satan. “It was Jesus calling on you to leave these earthly brooms behind and become cleaners of the hearts of men,” they assured them as they now broke into a hymn.
The Lord told the fishermen to follow him
And leave their fishing nets behind
He told them he would take them to Heaven …
The hymn and the singing made the Soldiers of Christ feel courage course through their veins, and a couple started weeping with bravery, eager to go to war immediately.
The garbage collectors said thank you and they allowed that they now felt safe being, as they were, in the company of believers; but when asked to take the soldiers to the scene of their recent woe and narrow escape, they at first refused and agreed to do so only when they were told that they could hide behi
nd the banner and that the soldiers would guard them with crosses on every side. The Devil lives in terror of the cross, the soldiers assured them. Didn’t he stop chasing them the moment he saw them heading toward the cross? And they sang, At the cross, at the cross where I found the Lord ….
And so behind the safety of the banner and the cross, the three men were able to point to a lone figure walking toward the center of the city. They were able to confirm that it was the Devil himself because they recognized the bag he carried. And now they said very firmly that they would not take another step in the direction of the Devil. They hurried to get back into their truck before Satan changed his mind and came back to collect them.
With their crosses and Bibles held out in front the way Bishop Tireless had done at All Saints, the Soldiers of Christ followed the figure from a safe distance, for as they said they must not be fools who tread even where angels fear to tread. They must keep in mind that Satan had been a leading angel before he was banished from Heaven for plotting a rebellion against God. A being who had almost pulled off a palace coup against God was not to be taken lightly. But they kept their eyes on him, for with Jesus leading them they were bound to succeed in containing the Devil. As one of them pointed out, Satan had succeeded in misleading so many angels to join him in his coup attempt because Jesus Christ was then not born.
What happened next, however, only went to confirm their fears about the devilish wiles of the figure before them. Even today the Soldiers of Christ swear that they never once took their eyes off him, but still they cannot explain how the figure disappeared right in front of their watchful eyes. All they know is that when they reached the street they, too, had seen the figure enter, they met so many people with similar bags that they could not tell who was whom among the hundreds pushing and shoving one another for the right of way. The Devil had vanished.
Wizard of the Crow Page 5