Only weeks before I had stood in the State House, a daily witness to the workings of power; now I stood outside the walls of All Saints, powerless.
“I watched the Christians sing with gusto and I wondered why they were so obsessed with Satan when they had just narrowly escaped a bloody Sunday. Where was the outrage at what had just happened? My perplexity turned to amazement when I saw the dancing youth darting after a cat. The crowd watching the songfest seemed equally astonished and started to disperse.
“It was then that I saw my ex-workmates, Njoya and Kahiga, moving away. Apparently they had been part of the crowd of onlookers. I was happy to see them and I hastened toward them. I told them that as soon as I got a tip that the Wizard of the Crow was in the environs of the cathedral, I had gone to look for them, just as we had agreed to do on the day we parted, only to be told that they had already left for the church. I saw them cast quick glances at each other; then they told me that they had actually talked to the wizard in the homeless shelter but he had revealed nothing. What were they now going to do? I asked them, hoping, I must admit, that they would ask me to join them to discuss the extraordinary happenings of the day. They muttered something about everything being iffy and quickly excused themselves, citing other commitments. Their behavior struck me as a little odd, as if they were withholding information from me, and I thought that maybe… had they betrayed the Wizard of the Crow by revealing his whereabouts to his enemies?
“For a few days I wandered from place to place to see if I could somehow catch a glimpse of the Limping Witch, the wizard’s other incarnation. Why? I don’t really know; it wasn’t only about the secret of growing money. Something else drove me. I thought that if I bumped into the Wizard of the Crow in his other form, he might tell me something that would enable me to hear clearly this thing that I felt forming in my heart…”
13
Nyawlra was engrossed in the activities of the People’s Assembly, the brainchild of their movement, when news reached her that the Wizard of the Crow had surrendered to the agents of the regime outside All Saints. She felt as if she had been hit on the head with a club. Since their escape she had not found a safe moment for them to meet, but she had thought that as long as he was in the church basement under the care of Maritha and Mariko, that moment would come. But now this? Had he given up hope, or what? She felt worse when later she got news from Maritha that not even Vinjinia knew where they had taken him. Have they disappeared him the way they did Machokali?
She and the other cadres of the movement put their heads together for an appropriate response, but they could not immediately think of anything to thwart the Ruler’s triumph. Helpless, she sought, as usual, solace in work, burying herself even more deeply in the day-to-day details of the People’s Assembly. But to what end, all these activities? The movement had not started the queues; it had simply inserted its ideas into what were, initially, spontaneous demonstrations and given them a united purpose in a march to Parliament, rallying around the call for the return of their collective voice. Would they be able to sustain the assembly without a clear, attainable goal? What if the recapture of the wizard signaled the beginnings of a more heightened and determined assault on the assembly?
They came up with a short-term solution, which was also a response to the recapture of the wizard.
Their activities would climax in a day of self-renewal during which the people would call for the dictator to move or be moved and renew their vows to step up efforts to steer the country along a different path. They settled on a date and named it the Day of National Rebirth or Self-Renewal, announcing it by word of mouth and in thousands of leaflets. They also called for a one-day general strike and festivities throughout the country to mark and celebrate the day. A joyous revolution, they hoped.
14
Even the police who ushered the Wizard of the Crow to the Ruler’s chamber in the State House knelt down and automatically crossed themselves before retreating to the door. The captive did not follow suit, but nothing in his last encounter with the Ruler could have prepared him for the scene.
The ceiling, painted white, blue, and gray, gave an impression of a sky with sun, moon, and stars. The walls and the canvas covering the Ruler’s tummy and extending outward to the walls and down to the carpet were painted green, yellow, and orange, a realistic rendering of an undulating earth. A staircase spiraled from the carpet and disappeared in a mist that also enveloped the head of the seated figure. The lamps that lit the stairs and the mist generated by a hidden smoking machine had turned the Ruler into a righteous deity looking down from the sky in judgment over a sinful earth.
The Ruler was pleased with the impact of the illusion on those who came to see him. Kaniürü’s wiles had not only helped him nab the wizard but also changed a thing of shame and weakness into one of power and glory. Here was a good example of committed art. He rewarded the artist by allowing him to stay with him as he questioned the captive. I need your counsel, he had told Kaniürü, who, seemingly believing in his own illusion, now stood by the bottom rung, a big key in his left hand and a pitchfork in the other, guardian at the gates of Heaven and Hell. The deity explained, in a conciliatory tone, that the wizard, now that his voice had come back, would go before the assembly at the grounds of Parliament and the courts and confess to putting the daemons of queuing into the people. The Ruler even cited as evidence the fact that the Wizard of the Crow had gone to Tajirika’s place disguised as a job seeker only for queues to have sprung up the day after. He must also tell the public that he had gone to America at the behest of the late Machokali to strike the Ruler dead. When the sorcery failed, the wizard and the late minister came up with the baseless rumor that the Ruler was pregnant. He must remove the daemons of queuing, cleanse the crowd of defiance against the State, and then fill their minds with wholesome ideas. If people dispersed peacefully, the Ruler would let him live, a fully licensed sorcerer, the Ruler’s Permanent Personal Afrochiatrist, and his adviser on the mind of the nation, the capture of fugitives like Nyawlra, and a couple of other things about which he would speak to him in private. “I will let you think it over for one night,” the Ruler offered graciously.
When confronted for an answer the following day, the Wizard of the Crow said that his powers did not lie.
It was not a question of what he wanted or not, the Ruler now said in a menacing voice. He would have to do whatever was expected of him.
Kaniürü intervened: “That is what the English call an ultimatum.”
“Yes, an ultimatum,” the Ruler echoed.
Dictators thrive on fear, reflected the Wizard of the Crow. They loved to see their subjects quake and make desperate pleas for mercy and forgiveness. If the dictator intended to kill him, he would do it anyway, no matter what the Wizard of the Crow said. Even an animal taken to the slaughterhouse offers resistance, the wizard said to himself.
The standoff-the same question, the same answer-went on for some time, with Kaniürü adding to the tension with sarcasm geared to deepen the wizard’s frustration while fueling the Ruler’s anger.
The dictator gave the wizard one last chance to come up with an acceptable answer, underlining his determination to extract compliance by having the Wizard of the Crow thrown into the temple of human bones.
By the dawn of the third day, the wizard had made a decision. It was better to die in the public view of the living than to die out of sight in the temple of human bones.
“When do I appear before the People’s Assembly?” the Wizard of the Crow asked.
15
Nyawlra and the other cadres of the movement kept their ears glued to the national radio to hear the latest and gauge the State’s response to their call for a general strike and the day for the rebirth of the nation. The radio was the dictator’s mouthpiece, but listening to it was not always in vain. Through a scrutiny of the regime’s own sources, they had, in the past, learned many things and acted on them, at times leading the dictator to believe that t
he movement had informants inside the State House.
But this time they felt completely baffled by the thinking and the plans of the dictator. They strained their ears the better to make out what the radio was saying. The radio first talked about the Ruler’s birthday and reminded people that this was the real occasion for national celebrations. It also reminded the nation that the Ruler himself had yet to choose the most appropriate date. They should stay tuned. They did not have long to wait.
What? they asked, turning to one another in disbelief at what the radio had just said, almost as if they had not quite heard the words. The official celebrations fell on the day that the Movement for the Voice of the People had selected and advertised as the Day of National Self-Renewal. The date and the day of the climax of the People’s Assembly had been turned into this year’s official celebration of the Ruler’s birthday, reminiscent of those others that had given rise to Marching to Heaven. Their call for a one-day general strike to mark the day lost the power of threat with the government’s declaring the day a public holiday. What should the movement now do to scuttle the regime’s plans and rescue the Day of National Self-Renewalr
They had hardly started to recover from the blow when they suffered yet another shock. The radio announced that the Wizard of the Crow would make a public confession to the People’s Assembly on that day.
They debated moving the Day of National Self-Renewal to another date. But they had already announced the day. If they chose another date, would this not signify a victory for the dictator and embolden him to strike more psychological and even physical blows against the assembly? No, they resolved after much passion, they would keep the date and outperform the dictator’s own performance. But what were they going to do about the Wizard of the Crow?
16
“When I heard the radio say that the Wizard of the Crow would be addressing the People’s Assembly,” A.G. was to recount, “my head spun, amazed once more by the Wizard of the Crow. Only the other day he was being dragged in handcuffs. And now this! Even more baffling was the government’s invitation to all citizens to join the People’s Assembly. But wasn’t it just yesterday that the police were violently breaking up queues? Was it not only the other day that the Buler himself had threatened to mow down the People’s Assembly with armored cars? Now he was ordering his police to arrest anyone who interfered with the great assembly. I was a little bit concerned, especially with so many conflicting stories floating in the air…”
Those of you who were there in those days can remember how the war of rumors intensified day by day. Was the assembly a government-engineered show or a genuine People’s Assembly? The principal vehicles for the claims and counterclaims were the state radio, nicknamed the Dictator’s Mouthpiece, and the people’s word of mouth, nicknamed the Bush Telegraph. When the Mouthpiece talked about the dictator’s birthday, the Telegraph talked about the dictator’s day of giving birth. When the Mouthpiece claimed that the man who had manufactured the lies about male pregnancy had agreed to make a confession before the People’s Assembly, the Telegraph countered with the claim that the Buler had agreed to confess his pregnancy before the entire assembly.
By then, even those who may have been hesitant about going to the assembly had changed their minds. They had to be there to see, hear, and find out for themselves where lay the truth between the conflicting claims of the Mouthpiece and the Telegraph. Then the
Mouthpiece came up with startling news that on the assembly day the Wizard of the Crow was going to reveal Nyawlra’s whereabouts by using a mirror.
“Well, true! Haki ya Mungu! I also found myself walking to, well, where else? The People’s Assembly.”
17
News of the prospective use of the divining mirror by the Wizard of the Crow reached Sikiokuu in his place of house arrest; he sought an audience with the Ruler urgently and was brought to him by night.
In his days as minister, Sikiokuu used to kneel before the Ruler, but it was more a sycophantic gesture than an act that came from the heart. But now, faced with a scene he could never have imagined, a moon- and starlit sky in the chamber, he fell on his knees, tears flowing down his cheeks for all his sins. The Ruler spoke to him gently: Sikiokuu, rise up and unburden yourself to me.
But he remained on his knees as he reminded His Holiness about the mirrors he, Sikiokuu, had once ordered from abroad. These had not been contaminated by anyone domiciled in Aburlria. They were pure mirrors. The Ruler should have the sorcerer use these mirrors for the best results, certainly for the location of Nyawlra. The Ruler looked a bit puzzled but was impressed by Sikiokuu’s knowledge of the origins of the imported mirrors, with names like Asakusa in Japan and Venini in Italy sounding genuinely foreign and hence authenticating the claims of the kneeling supplicant.
“Thank you, Sikiokuu, for showing that even under house arrest you are still mindful of your duty to your Lord. I will never forget your devotion. Is there anything else that you wish to tell me?”
“Nothing much. You have already granted me that which I most wanted, your audience. Were I to die today, I would go to my grave in peace, knowing that you know that I had faithfully taken the necessary steps to secure Nyawlra in handcuffs as you had ordered me to do. Your Holy Excellency, I am a sinner…”
“I know,” said the Ruler, as if trying to silence him.
But he was not. The Ruler, like many other opponents of the Wizard of the Crow, had always wanted to secure for himself all the sorcerer’s knowledge and powers, without the sorcerer’s irritating, embarrassing, and even threatening presence. An idea on how to achieve this had just possessed him. He would have the Wizard of the Crow kidnapped immediately after the confessions and brought to the State House in secrecy. Whether he disappeared him after securing a cure and the secret of growing dollars or after appropriating all his powers; or retained him under lock and key in the State House, using him as the need arose, only the Ruler would be in the know. Whichever, he would have a permanent spirit in the house as his adviser on matters. And who was better placed to carry out the kidnap mission than a sinner who was deeply desirous of forgiveness? Somebody like… like… Sikiokuu? Why not?
“Everyone is a sinner,” the Ruler now told the ex-minister. “But the sinner must show by his deeds that he is ripe for salvation. Sikiokuu, do you want to be saved?”
Sikiokuu was too overwhelmed to speak. He just nodded and tugged at his earlobes.
“I didn’t hear you,” the Ruler said.
“Yes, my Lord and Master. Just use my mirrors and you have a slave to your needs for life.”
The Ruler assured him about the mirrors, but Sikiokuu would still have to prove himself with a task. The task was simple; the test lay in how well it was carried out.
“Have you ever kidnapped a person?” the Ruler asked him.
“Not me, personally. But using my men…”
“I am not asking you to use your hands. Your mind. A mastermind!”
A helicopter spewing Burls above the crowd would be the signal. Timing was important. Sikiokuu’s team was to act on the wizard the second the crowd started scrambling for the falling bills. But only Sikiokuu alone was to bring the prize to him by night.
In keeping with his new policy of taking matters into his hands, the Ruler was going to direct the entire drama of the birthday celebration from his haven at the State House, with only he alone knowing the entire script, the actors their allotted lines only. So he did not tell Sikiokuu that the money was newly manufactured for the purpose of confusing the crowd or that he had asked Kaniürü to provide an undercover escort for the wizard. Tajirika knew about the bills-it was part of his fiscal plan-but not about the details of other plans. And definitely, he was not going to tell Kaniürü about the kidnap plans or the helicopters dropping money from the sky.
Sikiokuu went back to life under house arrest, elated at being entrusted with the secret mission. He would soon be back in favor. But he could not help the thought that the Ruler had som
ehow stolen ideas that he himself used to entertain.
18
Furyk, Clarkwell, two cameramen, an electrician, a sound engineer, and the production manager of Clem &Din arrived in Eldares that very morning. Since his childhood, the electrician had heard so much about darkest Africa that, despite the images of new cities of steel and concrete he had seen on television, he still assumed that the continent was dark night and day and had bought goggles with night vision. Dr. Wilfred Kaboca, who met them at the airport in a chauffeur-driven vehicle, did not take them to their hotel but straight to the State House. He is getting worse by the hour, Kaboca explained.
The team set about their work as if people floating in the air was a common sight. And what they did not understand, like the simulation of Heaven in the Ruler’s chamber, they assumed to be an oddity peculiar to African rulers. They did, however, ask that the smoke machine be switched off.
Aided by Clarkwell and Kaboca, Furyk went about the usual preliminaries with the same results: nothing amiss. What was noticeably different between now and that other time in New York was not the expansion, although this had increased tenfold, but the lightness of the body. A puzzled Furyk said that he would later place some calls to Harvard to talk about this phenomenon with some physicists. Or e-mail them, suggested Clarkwell, who had brought his handheld computer. This prompted Kaboca to take Furyk aside and ask him if they had brought a sonograph machine. Ooops! Furyk said, he did not remember to bring it, but that did not much matter, because a simple blood test was enough to help determine if the expansion had mutated into a pregnancy.
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