The Last King of Scotland (1998)

by Giles Foden

  Yes, I am Idi Amin at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. I am Idi as Prince Charlie, carousing smoothly under these high roofs. A few nights of pleasure. His round back massive as the Rock. I am Idi Amin as Cumberland the persecutor, swordflashing silver in his hand.

  I am running. I am running away from the lights with their smell of blood. I am Idi running on the track at Meadowbank. You should know that I can run 100 yards in 9.8 seconds. I am Idi pressed hard against the metal starting gates at Musselburgh. I am riding a horse called African Pard and I will make all the running. Because I am running. I am Idi running with lion and elephant in the Botanic Gardens. I stumble on melons as I pass. Agave and araucaria, canna Hikes and the heavy, sticky petals of angel trumpets catch at my face and hands. I put them up. I put them up because I am Idi Amin boxing at the Sparta Club in McDonald Road. I am Idi Amin sparring with Kenny Buchanan.

  You must know that in boxing, when the referee is against you, the only thing to do is to win by knockout.

  Now I am running across Waverley Bridge. The light is in front of me but goes away with every panting step. I am Idi stepping across the Union Canal. What are those rocks? Those rocks are crocs. I am Idi at the Tron Kirk, and I am Idi spitting on the cobbled Heart of Midlothian in front of St Giles. No, I’m not: I am Idi watching himself at the Film-house in Lothian Road- I am a real bit-part, a gun-happy mercenary in the film Zenga. Or I am Idi at Murrayfield. You should know that pushing is very hard, and that with my speed and way of getting the ball, when you tackle me you should harm yourself.

  I am Idi at Dalmeny, I am Idi at Comely Bank. I am Idi at Dalkeith, I am Idi at Corstorphine. I’m Idi at Marchmont, Merchiston and Muirhouse. I am Idi at Juniper Green. I am Idi down in the schemes, walking among the poor, and I am Idi at Morningside. I wish I was somewhere else. I wish I was somewhere else because I am somewhere else. I am walking along the corridor between his bedroom and those other rooms…

  ∗

  For that is how it was. Along with the rest of the crowd, slipping in with the looters and the sightseers, I had tumbled from chamber to chamber in the presidential residence at Nakasero. I’d had to press myself against the wall as they’d brought the furniture down the stairs: dressers, wardrobes, a rocking chair. I had seen the portrait of Lumumba go by at an angle, the martyr’s face bisecting a chandelier and a rack of guns in the space beyond the staircase. I had seen cameras and sports equipment, including a whole multigym, dismantled piece by piece, come down the stairs. I had seen telex machines and telephones, night-vision binoculars and Racal two-way radios. I had seen rhino and kudu horns and rugs made from the skins of ocelots and jackals. I had seen bottles of specially made whisky with Amin’s face on them. I had seen trays of pellet-shooting pens. I had seen attache cases with tape recorders inside. I had seen 240 suits and uniforms on wide-shouldered hangers, and I had seen a large boxful of exploding paperback books.

  All these things, as the wananchi rushed out noisily with their new belongings, I had seen come down the stairs.

  And then I had climbed them. I had gone into his bedroom. Evidently one of the first places they had lighted on, it looked as if there had been a fight in there. The water-bed had been punctured, there was water everywhere. Nearly everything else had been lifted, fingered or ransacked, including the chests of drawers. The vanity unit was gone, the television was gone, the escritoire was gone. And now all was quiet, except for the shouts and whoops from other rooms.

  While I was in there, the curtains blew out of the window suddenly, where the pane had been smashed. The fabric was whipped out by the wind as I watched. It made me think of Gottfried Lessing in his car when the RPG hit it: as they ignite, RPGs create a vacuum in their local atmosphere. The air would have been sucked out of his lungs.

  One of the few things left untouched was the bookshelf with the long run of the Proceedings of the Law Society of Uganda. It gleamed gold and red, gold and red and irresistible. Suddenly alone, I looked around furtively. Two men passed by the doorway, struggling with a rolled-up carpet. I saw them behind me in the mirror. And then I was alone again, and I pressed the book door and it opened with a neat click. And so I crossed the threshold and was standing again in another part of my history.

  39

  I pushed the door closed behind me and walked down the steps. Now I was in the damp passageway and the smell of electricity was in my nostrils. The strip lights were flicking on and off. I stood there for a moment, unsure whether to go back or forward.

  I walked on. The tunnel smelt mustier than before. I could hear, farther down it, the indistinct sound of a voice talking. I walked in the direction of the voice, the slap of my feet loud on the concrete.

  Reaching the entrance to the chamber, I hesitated – and then went in. The place was deserted, so far as I could see, and there was now no noise except for the intermittent hiss of radio static from the banks of communications equipment in the glass booth. There were no operators inside, just a pair of headphones hanging on the back of a chair. Then I saw, reflected back from one of the alcoves in the glass wall, an appalling sight.

  On a wooden table in the alcove stood a brown earthenware plate. Next to it lay a bag of rough wool. On the plate stood, or sat, a severed head. Its neurovascular bundles were clearly visible, gleaming where they trailed over the edge of the plate. The hair was frosty with ice.

  In a chair behind the table sat Idi Amin. He was wearing a large British admiral’s hat. Its tricorn shape made a strange shadow theatre on the wall behind. His jowls were heavier than normal and the skin under his eyes was grey and baggy. He was holding a small staff- a swagger stick.

  I stood there, unseen in my surgical gown behind the partition, and as I stood there the voice I had heard in the corridor came again. It was Idi’s, and he was addressing the head.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “I know now I have spent much time worshipping false things. That I should have to make my confession here in this place. In your faith. Though I must stress again that I love all three religions in Uganda: Catholic, Moslem and Protestant. But that is the problem here in Africa today. Everything is broken up completely. Even in the ordinary brain in my head. There, it is true that the soldiers come at me again and again. They come at me, they come at me in my dreams and in my waking times, and they do bad deeds too much.

  “That is why I had to hurt you. That is why I had to chop off your head. That is also why we had to kill Mr Lion and Mr Elephant for food in Mweya and Paraa. And expel Jesus from Uganda as a whole. Because the danger – the danger of hunger, and the danger of guns, and the danger of ill health – it is there all times. Danger…Even when you think it is a good gift put into your hands, it can be a danger poison. I say to the muzungus – bring me a banana, and they say, “Yes, boss,” and they bring it and it is not good. It is rotten. So I am getting angry. That is why there are bodies. I say, “Burn them thoroughly,” but still it is not good. Ah, I tell you: it was not always this way, but always it was hard. That is why I had to be in charge completely in Uganda…”

  He looked into the distance with a large, numb smile on his face. He pushed up the tricorn hat and shifted in his chair. The movement allowed the silhouette of the head to fall on the plaster behind him.

  “You see, I come from a very poor family. I want to tell you this. From where I came, my father had no money. I am to work digging and some people give me money for food. And then I studied hard. But then I was taken by force into the army and I was in Kenya during the Second World War and Mau Mau. After I fetched to Burma with the Scottish regiment and I had gone through difficulties, I got the rank of lance-corporal – and up till now when I became general and President. It has been a long struggle and it is because it has been a struggle that I am what I am.”

  I remembered Idi’s impassive countenance at the moment I had seen the knife go into Waziri. I remembered Angol-Steve, the rope grasping his neck to death, his ragged shins.

  Idi continued, hitting his boot with
the swagger stick as he spoke: “Yet I am not so bad. People keep saying I am Hitler. Why do they keep on Hitler? The Hitler problem is now past tense. The war from Hitler is a different war from today. I know things, though. I know that the Israelis tried to poison the waters of the Nile to be killing me. That is one reason why people are fighting towards me: because I know many things. In no book are these things written except in my head. When I hear the voice, it is the voice of the god speaking and I know that it speaks the truth and is meaningful and I must follow it. The same voice comes to all great leaders. If you were to follow General de Gaulle, who is a great leader, and Napoleon, who is a great leader, and Mao Tse-Tung, who is a great leader – you would hear this same voice.

  “It is true that sometimes I mishear it – I know I have done bad – but I am still fighting for people all over the world and in Britain and her Empire especially. If it wasn’t for the British press, my reputation would be different. They were inventing anything about me. They reported any rumour. Things were done in my name, without my knowledge, and I was blamed for them. Soldiers are soldiers, and I could not go to the ministries all of the time. I didn’t know what to do. I was taught to fight. That is all. If I am a naughty boy, it is because I am a simple soldier. And because I have been abandoned, kicked at and trampled on.”

  I thought of Gugu, his chest opening up in front of me, and then of the other kidogo, the one at Mulago. At that instant Idi stood up suddenly, and started pacing round the chamber with the staff under his arm.

  “Do you miss Kampala,” he said then, turning back to the head, “up in that heaven of yours? I know that I shall miss it, when I have to go. Because Kampala is a city I love too much. And I know that it loves me: I feel greatly the warmth it feels for me. Believe me, I am greatly moved when the people cheer me. As for the aggressors, I don’t care who is going to raise trouble: I am going to deal with him very squarely…”

  He pulled the chair round and sat on it once again, putting the staff on the table next to the plate.

  “Yes, and I know that very soon I will escape from here. Alive. Because, as I have said, my dreams always come true. And I know that someone will foot it here swiftly to help me…”

  I felt a deadly weight hanging around my neck.

  And then he said: “Yes, I know many things. For example, I know that you are there, Doctor Nicholas, and that you have been listening to me for the duration of this time. You see, there is a mirror on this side of the room also. Why don’t you come and join us?”

  My voice stuck in my throat. I raised a hand before my eyes.

  “Do not be foolish. You are my very special doctor. Come here.”

  I felt my foot go forward. There was, indeed, a mirror.

  “You muzungu are never as clever as you think you are,” said Idi.

  I saw myself moving in the mirror. The one he had been watching me in. And now he was in front of me. The tricorn at a jaunty angle on his head. On the table, on the plate: the other head.

  I stood there, face to face with him now, and shaking. Like a driver at the wheel, he spun round the plate. At once I recognized the grisly visage as that of the Archbishop of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Boga-Za’ire, the very one who had married him.

  “You didn’t expect that, did you?” he said. “In truth I am sorry for it. It was done without my permission. It was one of those times. They brought me the head in this and I was very angry. It had been frozen.”

  He held up the wool bag. It was heavy with blood and melt-water.

  “Anyway,” he said, “that was before.”

  He looked at himself in the mirror. “But tell me, why did you come back here?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but only a dry croak came out.

  “I know, it is because you love me. Unlike many people, you do not think I am a foolish muntu and a savage man who eats babies. You are too intelligent to think that.”

  Again, I was speechless.

  “Let me tell you the truth about that, Doctor Nicholas. While I was a sergeant in the English army and my mission was to infiltrate the Mau Mau organization in Kenya, Uganda and in the Belgian Congo, I was captured by cannibals of a Mau Mau tribe and I was forced to eat flesh with other English soldiers. We risked death if we refused. We ate human meat only in order to accomplish our military mission, which I consider now as heroic. It was the English fault, you see. If they had not come to Africa, where we did not want them, and pushed us off our lands, there would have been no Mau Mau. If there had been no Mau Mau, I would not have been fighting Mau Mau. Therefore I would not have eaten human flesh. Do you follow?”

  “Yes,” I gasped, finally. “But…you know there are soldiers outside, and crowds of people. They will kill you.”

  “They love me really,” he said. “They have forgotten. They will remember. Because I am like a father to them. There is a part of me in every one of those people. In Uganda and worldwide. Completely. Otherwise, how could they have supported me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They wanted to be me, to live in me, because they did not want to be themselves.”

  “Maybe…they were just afraid of you and the soldiers,” I ventured.

  “That is also true,” he said, thoughtfully. “But they did want to be me also, or they wanted something from me. The foreigners more than any. The Americans and the Soviets, the French and the English, the Israelis and Saudi Arabians, the Pakistanis and the Indians and the Bangladeshis and the Koreans. And the East Germans. All were my friend. Only the West Germans did not help me. Yes, nearly all the world was my friend – militarily, diplomatically, economically. Like many were buying coffee from Uganda – especially the United States, where they like coffee very much and bought half of all our coffee. They were our top trading partner. Or they sold me guns and aeroplanes or other things. Britain, Israel, America – all of them helped me train the State Research Bureau, who, as you know, have their headquarters next door. By the way, I am sorry that you had to stay there. But I had to teach you a lesson. Please, sit down.”

  I did as he said. My mind was in turmoil.

  He continued, “You can relax now. All that is over. A new era has begun. I do not mind leaving now. I have had all a man could ask for. It is only natural that things should change. You can’t overtake time.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I have many friends worldwide. Colonel Gaddafi has offered me the hand of his daughter in marriage.”

  “How will you get out?”

  He picked up the staff and gesticulated with it as he spoke. “I have two planes standing by at Nakasongola air base, a Lockheed Hercules C-130 cargo plane and my Gulfstream executive jet. They can take me anywhere I want in the world.”

  “But how will you get out of the city? It’s swarming with Tanza-nians. How will you get out of the Lodge?”

  “Doctor Nicholas, you know that I am the best commando in the world, and also a master of disguise.”

  “You won’t get out. It’s impossible. Why didn’t you go earlier?”

  “You heard me. I was thinking. Thinking and praying. Now I need you to help me!”

  He snapped the staff in two, seemingly effortlessly.

  I jumped at the sharp noise.

  “Please.” His voice was suddenly quieter, weaker in timbre. “I beg of you.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I have a plan. There is an exit out of here through the State Research Bureau, as you know. But that will be guarded. I have seen them through the spyhole in the wall. They are taking bodies from there even now. They are putting them into bags. You can look if you want.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to look.”

  “Doctor Nicholas,” he said. “You are a good man. Let me tell you a secret. There is also a tunnel that comes out by the road to Entebbe. I had it put in for just such an occasion as this. I would very much like for you to go there with a vehicle. The exit is by the envi poster. Do you know whe
re I mean?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but why should I help you?”

  “Because I ask it of you. Because you are good.”

  Idi was a man of enormous bulk, but his countenance could on occasion display a certain delicacy. It did so now. This wasn’t Idi the ranter, he of the knitted brow and grinding teeth, the hand hitting the desk with heavy dunts. This was something else.

  He came round and leaned over me. “Please help me,” he said again, leaning closer. I could feel his breath in my ear. His voice was slow this time, like dripping honey.

  My head spun. The softness of his voice had awakened in me an emotion I could hardly begin to understand. I felt dizzy and yet my thoughts were as clear as fresh spring water. My imagination was feverishly vivid in that long moment, yet my powers of analysis and application remained intense. I knew that I had been in a reprobate condition for some time because of my closeness to him and now – having been mired in cowardice and indecision for so many months – I was presented with an opportunity to overturn that. Not by handing him over to the Tanzanians (though I noticed that there was a submachine-gun leaning against the wall beside him), but another way.

  The emotion I felt for him was pity, and I knew that the way out of the darkness into which I had allowed myself to fall was to help him. There it was. The path of my departure was free.

  “All right,” I said. “I will.”

  40

  Well, I suppose I must confess it now. I failed even in that questionable resolution. You have heard the most important part of my tale, and I will not detain you long with the details of my escape from Uganda and subsequent events.

  I did manage to obtain a vehicle. Colonel Kuchasa was still outside Nakasero when I emerged. I persuaded him we needed a Land Rover at the hospital for medical reasons – to transfer some wounded Tanzanian soldiers. I told him we didn’t have enough beds. And then I drove to where Idi had said the exit was. It was dark by the time I arrived, but the moon was high and full and even without the headlights on I could read the ridiculous ditty on the poster.