Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  When he heard the word queuing issue from the mouth of the special envoy, the Ruler felt upbraided, criticized for being unable to control his own people, so he cut the man short with ironic laughter. He then said that the government had already apologized for the inconveniences the foreign press had suffered. He had issued a stern warning to his citizens that Western journalists must never again be made to suffer even the slightest inconvenience. But a quid pro quo was in order. Queuing, as an expression of order, organization, and discipline, was a very Western idea, and they should be mindful that they were now in Aburlria, Africa, where people are guided more by emotion than by reason, and therefore to scramble for things is “what comes easily” to Aburlrians. “Your ambassador,” the Ruler said, “should have told you that we are a people of hearts big with warmth and not of heads swollen with ideas, and that is why we love dancing and opening our houses to guests. But a guest observes the rules of hospitality laid down by the host. So when in Aburiria, do as the Aburlrians do.”

  He went on to reassure them that as far as unauthorized queues were concerned, they should not worry or doubt his ability to bring them to a halt. He paused and sent for the heads of the military and the police. He wanted them to outline to his visitors the measures that he had asked them to carry out in order to teach unauthorized processions, particularly of women, lessons they would never forget. But the Buler did not give them a chance to speak—he just continued. He reminded the ambassador and the special envoy of what he did when he assumed the presidency of the country. America seems to have forgotten how, in the early days of the cold war, he had crushed the Communist insurgency in Aburiria.

  “You heard me laugh, and you may have wondered why,” he went on. “I was bemused by the short memory of a superpower.”

  The Buler was proud of having eliminated seven thousand and seven hundred citizens in just seven days for posing a threat to the stability through protests in the major cities demanding social change. He would take this opportunity, he said, to renew old friendships and earn their trust by showing that he had not forgotten how to use strong-arm tactics against dissidents.

  “What I did before against Communists, I can do again against terrorists!” he said slowly and deliberately, and then turned to the heads of the army and the police.

  “Yes,” the head of the military said, “we are waiting for this ragtag army, first reported to us by a motorcycle rider, to reach the capital. Then we shall encircle it with the armored cars and the latest guns you sold to us some time ago—old, but against unarmed civilians, still lethal—”

  “A national massacre. To be televised. Live,” added the head of the police with unmistakable pride.

  “You have heard from the horses’ own mouths,” the Buler said, turning toward the special envoy and Ambassador Gemstone. “Everything is under control,” he added. “Have no fear of those who threaten your interests and ours, for gunfire awaits them.”

  The envoy cleared his throat and said: “You have actually touched on one of the issues that our president wanted me to discuss with you. The West and the civilized world are eternally grateful to you for your role in our victory over the evil empire. We are now embarking on a new mission of forging a global order. That is why I am now visiting all our friends to tell them to move in step with the world. To everything its season, says the preacher. There was a time when slavery was good. It did its work, and when it finished creating capital, it withered and died a natural death. Colonialism was good. It spread industrial culture of shared resources and markets. But to revive colonialism would now be an error. There was a time when the cold war dictated our every calculation in domestic and international relations. It is over. We are in the post—cold war era, and our calculations are affected by the laws and needs of globalization. The history of capital can be summed up in one phrase: in search of freedom. Freedom to expand, and now it has a chance at the entire globe for its theater. It needs a democratic space to move as its own logic demands. So I have been sent to urge you to start thinking about turning your country into a democracy. Who knows? Maybe with your blessings, some of your ministers might even want to form opposition parties.”

  “No, no,” the ministers hastened to say, almost in unison. “We in Aburlria know only One Truth, One Party, One Country, One Leader, One God.”

  “Your views and ours are not too far apart,” the envoy explained. “Let me make our position clear. We cannot build a global economy under the old politics of the cold war. What we are saying is this: many parties, one aim—a free and stable world where our money can move across borders without barriers erected by the misguided nationalism of the outmoded nation-state. The goal is to free up the resources and energies of the globe. All your countries and peoples will benefit.”

  The Ruler was angry at being lectured in front of his ministers. He had invited them so that they could hear for themselves a special envoy delivering an apology, and instead of I am sorry they were hearing him being reprimanded and ordered about. He tried to control his anger, genuinely puzzled at how his relationship with Washington, London, Berlin, and Paris had so soured as to compel them to dispatch a special envoy to chastise him in front of his cabinet. In the days of the cold war, they used to shower him with praises for dispatching thousands of his own people to eternal silence. And now, even after he had assured them that he was ready to repeat what he had done for them, they were lecturing him about restraint and the new global order! He now stood on injured dignity. He had to show his ministers that he was not afraid of the special envoy, even if he was an emissary of the West.

  “Mr. Special Envoy, I want you to know that our country is independent, and we cannot allow ourselves to take orders from the West all the time. We have said good-bye to colonialism and left it on the dunghills of twentieth-century history. I want to remind you that we are in Africa, and we, too, have our African forms of governance. The democracy that is suitable for America and Europe is not necessarily suitable for Africa. In our country we have a saying that one does not build his home according to the needs of his neighbor. We don’t try to keep up with the Joneses, as you Americans would say.”

  “We are your friends,” the envoy replied, “and friends deepen their friendship by speaking openly to one another.”

  “Then let’s agree to disagree,” the Ruler said, and then he asked, with a touch of impatience, if that was all that had brought him to Aburlria.

  The special envoy said that he indeed had another message but he was afraid that it was only for the Ruler’s ears, as he glanced nervously at the ministers.

  The Ruler would have preferred that the apology be delivered in front of his ministers. The imminent apology would ameliorate the humiliation he had suffered in America before them. But still his face lit up because the ministers would now see that his relationship with America was still close enough to warrant a message that could only be delivered to him privately by a special emissary of the most powerful presidency in the world.

  The ministers left the room. The envoy did not waste time with polite preliminaries.

  “As I said a few minutes ago, friends are friends because they can speak to one another freely. And that is why my president sent me, because he and other leaders of the West are concerned about reports concerning your health and condition—you know, uh, some thoughts are difficult to put into words. Your Excellency, I am sure you know what I am talking about: the rumor that has prompted international media to descend on your country. We have also heard that you are thinking of building or growing a money-making plant to produce dollars and other Western currencies. I am sure you know that any unauthorized printing and circulation of dollars is not only a crime in international law but would destabilize ours and the global economy, and the West would not tolerate that. We do not believe any of it, of course, and I shall not dignify the rumors by asking you if they are true. But there are a few other things not in doubt. There is your publicly stated intention to put up a kind of lat
ter-day Tower of Babel, what you call Marching to Heaven. So your friends in the West are asking you this: Have you, Your Mighty Excellency, ever thought of taking it easy? I mean, like taking a rest—a vacation or something? I think it was your ancestors who said that age needs to pass on the torch of wisdom to youth. You have youthful ministers who love you and share your vision. They said as much in front of us. We are wondering, and I was told to stress that this is only a suggestion from friends, why you don’t take things easy and cede the presidency to one of these young men so they can relieve you of the daily stress? Your ancestors said something about a stone of ages and wisdom. You could become an elder statesman dispensing advice born of long experience.’’

  If the envoy had been a citizen of Aburlria, he would have faced a firing squad on the spot. The Buler understood only too well what they were telling him: that he was senile and no longer fit to govern. Their position puzzled him because it was riddled with obvious contradictions. Here they were cautioning him against the use of force only to tell him minutes afterward that he is unable to exercise power! How can they tell him not to unleash the army on his own people and then accuse him of being too senile to do it? He felt like throwing them out of his presence but fought to keep his composure, wondering which of his ministers they had in mind as a successor.

  The envoy thought that the Buler was softening and was giving his proposal serious consideration, so he hastened to make it more attractive.

  “Thank you for even considering what I have said. You are very wise, Your Excellency, and the West will make sure that you retire with all your wealth and that of your family and friends completely intact. We can even help it to multiply. And also, we can make sure that your successor passes a law to ensure that you are never brought to court on charges involving any of your actions during your tenure as the head of the state. And of course if you feel that you have to move to another country, that, too, can be arranged.”

  “I should say thank you,” the Ruler sighed, “for you have spoken the truth. We rulers are vain, and we never realize when age has knocked at the door and lodged snugly within us,” he continued in a weary voice. “But believe me, I have often thought of getting rid of this burden of leadership so I can have time to enjoy my grandchildren. The problem is in really knowing which of the young men around me I should trust to steer the nation in the right direction.”

  The special envoy was pleased with the response, and he casually mentioned the name of Machokali as an example.

  “He made quite an impression during your last visit to Washington. He is young and seems quick on his feet. He is devoted to your philosophy. He reasons more than he emotes, and we in the West can certainly do business with him. But this is just the opinion of your friends—of course it is entirely up to you to pick and groom your successor.”

  The Ruler remained calm on the surface, for within he felt like hurling his club at them. Could these people have had a hand in his malady, his bodily expansion? Maybe they had put something in his food, probably during that prayer breakfast in Washington, so as to undermine his standing with the allegation of male pregnancy?

  “Friends Tell Each Other the Truth is my motto,” said the Ruler, chuckling. “But I am sure you don’t expect an answer on the spot. I will certainly think about the matter. Please, convey my best wishes and gratitude to your president, and assure him that I am hale and hearty.”

  The special envoy and Ambassador Gemstone left feeling that they had done a good job in conveying the warnings, threats, and wishes with candor, and they appreciated the way the Ruler had reacted, with even a touch of humor.

  But the Ruler thought otherwise. For a moment he missed the cold war, when he could play one side against the other. But now? There was only one superpower and it knew only how to be wooed, not how to woo. Or could he have misread the envoy’s intent?

  That night he went over the entire conversation and certain coincidences began to strike him as odd, especially the envoy’s reference to pregnancy and age, though he had peppered it with African sayings. A coincidence? The Americans, Machokali, and the Wizard of the Crow in league together? He broke into mirthless laughter. This is Aburiria, not America, and I will have the last laugh, he said in English. He knew that in Aburiria there was only one ruler, and his name was the Ruler of Aburiria. America might have helped install him in power, but this was no longer the twentieth century; now he was his own man and he would not let America tell him when to retire.

  With that clarity of vision, he calmed down.

  He would demand that his Western-anointed successor, Machokali, bring him the Wizard of the Crow alive forthwith. The need to appropriate his sorcerous powers had never been greater.

  SECTION III

  1

  Nobody knew whether he had returned to Aburfria or not, and nothing generated so much controversy as the subject of his escape from America. But had the Wizard of the Crow escaped or just disappeared? Even A.G. was at a loss, for when he reached the point in the narrative at which he told how they had gone to the New York airport and he had had no clue as to the whereabouts of the Wizard of the Crow, he would pause and relive the pain and grief he felt at the time. His grief was infectious, and his listeners would get quiet and look at one another as if asking, What can we do to revive his spirits? And they would buy him a beer or two, just to wet your throat, man, and urge him on, tell us more. Those who heard him would later go home and pass the evening telling the stories about a drunk who claimed to have been in America when the Wizard of the Crow disappeared, as a prelude to their own legends of the wizard. Every listener would thus become a teller of tales, insisting on his own authority. Some swore by whatever was most sacred to them that they knew for sure that the Wizard of the Crow had been detained by American immigration authorities for not possessing a valid visa. They had put him on a plane that had taken him to Peru by mistake, and the Peruvian authorities had refused to allow him to enter their country because of course he did not have a visa, and they in turn had put him on another plane that took him to New Zealand, where he met the same hard luck, and so on, hither and thither, from plane back to plane, and that is how he became so worldly, because though not allowed to set foot anywhere he ended up visiting everywhere, from Mozambique to Mongolia, Kazakhstan to Cameroon, Tanzania to Tasmania, Hawaii to

  Hong Kong, India to Iceland, Kenya to Korea; a person without a home, a citizen of the world. Others said no; there was no truth to this story of his moving from country to country, and they claimed that American immigration authorities had simply jailed him because he had no papers to say who he was or where he came from, and he remains imprisoned there to this very day as a terrorist suspect or else killed in the streets of New York by the Mafia for refusing to tell them the secret of growing money on trees.

  Yes, it is true that he is still in America, others would say, but not in jail, unless you consider schools and colleges to be prisons. The man had simply enrolled in a school of sorcery, and he was working his way to a PhD in comparative sorcery, ancient and modern, and, really, what is there to entice him back here? Aburlria of crooked roads, robberies, runaway viruses of death, hospitals without medicine, rampant unemployment without relief, daily insecurity, epidemic alcoholism? Yes, an Aburlria whose leaders had murdered hope? He should stay in America and acquire the sorcery that invented the fax and the Internet and e-mail and night vision and labs that grow human organs and even clone whole animals and humans, the magic of objects that propel themselves to war and other worlds, the sorcery by which the dollar rules the world! Amen, some would say, and even this would sometimes generate more arguments among them: Why do you say amen? Amen to what?

  The different versions of the Wizard of the Crow in America would vie with one another for dominance, but all were united in their common attempt to explain why, despite the posters of the Wizard of the Crow all over the country, he could not be found. Where in Aburlria, they asked, could the man have hidden himself so as t
o elude the Ruler’s ubiquitous eyes, ears, noses, legs, and hands?

  Okay, okay, a few would scream, let’s not have too many cooks dipping their spoons in the broth. Let’s hear the stories, one after the other, but we urge the tellers to know that too much salt makes food difficult to swallow.

  The problem in deciding if there was any truth to any of the rumors lay in the fact that the original source of most of them was A.C. himself. And even when the stories differed, A.C. would swear that all of them were true, arguing that just as an ocean feeds on different rivers with sources in diverse hills and mountains, allowing one to talk of streams, rivers, seas, and oceans though in each case one is talking about water, it was the same with narratives.

  This would revive all their interest and quest for certainty: What happened? people would ask, all eyes on A.G.

  2

  When Kamltl, the Wizard of the Crow, came back to Aburiria from America, he wanted to go straight home and be with Nyawlra. He was homesick and felt as if he had been away for years. Still, he could not help recalling the nightmare that had become his life even before he had left for America. He had been arrested, forced to share a prison cell with Tajirika, released from prison, and put on a plane for the USA, where he had been unable to rejoin the Ruler’s entourage. And in New York he had seen and experienced things that he had never dreamed. Now that I am back, he asked himself, will I be able to resume my life and not be drawn into the mess of the Ruler and his ilk? Will the Sikiokuus and the Machokalis leave me alone? He just wanted to be with Nyawlra and continue to heal those in need. That was the vision that Kamltl had in mind as he rode a bus from the airport to the center of Eldares, where he took a matatu to Santalucia.