He said that he had made a lot of money because he had done something different: where others had rushed into retail business, he had cut his own path. He added that in order to succeed, one had to make one’s own way. I wanted to ask for advice in love matters. I wanted to know more about his escapades with the sisters of his wife. I wanted to know his views on polygamy. I looked for the right words which would accommodate both titillation and the real quest for knowledge, but failed to find them. All this was good distraction for both of us. Looking for a way to pose questions about sex, I asked him about his mother. He said that he was happy that she was looking after Grandpa. But where was Grandpa now?
Serenity arrived: it was evident that he was expecting the worst, as though a monster had leapt out of his favorite book to torment him by kidnapping first his father, then his wife and children. I had not seen him in a long time, but it felt as if we had parted only yesterday. The two men set off almost immediately. They rode round the city on a Kawasaki motorcycle Uncle Kawayida had borrowed from a friend. He still dared not use his van for fear that the liberators might impound it for military purposes.
I was immobilized for days. I felt like a stone on a riverbed: events eddied all round me. I had to look after the children because Aunt was busy meeting her National Reform Movement colleagues and, I suspected, the brigadier too. There was a loose coalition of exiles which was going to form a provisional government before the elections. Aunt was very optimistic, saying that the National Reform Movement was going to play a big role in the coalition. I asked her whether she wanted to get into politics. She said that she wanted financial help from the NRM in order to launch her own business. She obviously still treasured her independence. Rumors, however, had it that the coalition was a front for the return of Obote, who had spent all the years of Amin’s rule in Tanzania. Aunt said that the rumors were wrong: Obote could never come back. He had had his chance, and the exiles would block his return. I was not convinced. Aunt did not want to go into objective analysis. She seemed to believe that all the Tanzanians had come to do was to help Ugandans get rid of Amin. But who was going to pay for the war? Uganda, of course. Who would guarantee the payment? I was thinking about the Versailles Treaty of 1919, made to guarantee that Germany paid war indemnity. Was Uganda going to make a treaty with Tanzania, or was the return of Obote going to be the guarantee of payment? Aunt did not want her optimism sullied by such callous speculation. I sensed that the “snek” woman was annoyed by the theories of somebody who had not been part of the struggle, somebody who had never been threatened with torture and death. She had her faith in the National Reform Movement, and in the brigadier, whose picture was still under her mattress. Who was I to make her doubt her instincts? What if she knew something I did not? I backed off. I might even have been bothering her just to forget Grandpa’s disappearance.
At about the same time came the news that Aunt Kasawo, survivor of a life-and-death chase many years ago, had been attacked by uniformed men—a popular euphemism for Amin’s thugs. I speculated wildly, and the event distracted me from the search for Grandpa for a while. The attack had occurred not long before the fall of the city, which meant that Amin’s men had already left her area. I had a hunch that it was our liberators who had attacked her. If it had been Amin’s men, I reasoned, the news bearer would have said so, since Amin was gone and there was freedom of speech. The euphemism pointed to the reluctance of the public to believe that the liberators were also capable of these acts, especially now, as the euphoria was still high. This time, though, I knew that I would get the details soon. I already had my theory; I was just waiting for confirmation. Locally, I had heard rumors about liberators “begging” women to service them, and on occasion using force to get what they wanted.
Three thousand and ten days of oppression, murder, mysterious disappearances, kidnappings and torture-chamber excesses had to erupt from the dungeons of memory into the sunlit streets. Euphoria, like every other drug, had worn off, and withdrawal symptoms like ravenous hunger and vengeance made people look around for scapegoats. Post-liberation food shortages did not help the situation, and the corny radio promises now sounded spurious, insulting.
The sudden, unbelievable absence of the tyrant and the convenient reluctance of our liberators to assert their authority, lest they be associated with the men they had ousted, increased the power vacuum gathering force in the land and empowered the masses in the worst way possible. Suddenly everyone, if they were forceful enough, could become inquisitor, judge and executioner. Far away in the villages, houses belonging to northerners and to some Muslims had gone up in flames. A crowd had swooped onto the home of Aunt Nakatu and her husband, Hajj Ali, accused them of being Amin supporters and asked them to come out lest their house be burned down and their coffee trees cut. Hajj Ali came out of the house, confronted the crowd, explained his position and asked them why they were turning against him. Luckily, the voice of reason triumphed. The elders in the group persuaded the hotheads to relent. Hajj Ali sacrificed two goats to the crowd. Others were not so lucky. They were driven from the villages, their houses burned, their goats and chicken slaughtered. In the village, the youths of the dubious wealth marched to the barracks and looted it clean.
Closer to home, I opened my eyes and thought I was dreaming. The majestic greedy road, which had eaten the fleeing northerners and Amin’s henchmen, was clogged with people bearing the weight of fridges, squeaky beds, greasy motor parts, new and used tires, rusty and new iron sheets, slabs of clear and stained glass, hissing sofas, bales of cloth, boxes of medicines, cartons of laboratory mercury, gigantic office typewriters, hairy sacks of rice, sugar and salt, greasy tins of cooking and motor oil and more. Men with bare torsos were pushing thirsty cars and vans and motorcycles, some with crushed tires, creaking under mammoth loads. Full-scale looting was on: the first purgative phase.
Here and there, people crushed by ill-gotten loads sprawled in the roadside grass, panting, heaving, perspiring, farting and begging for water in razor-sharp, staccato gasps. Next to the gaspers, smartly dressed hustlers with bulging neck veins haggled with prospective buyers, eager to make quick sales and return to the city for more booty before the liberators put a stop to the looting bonanza. The liberators, bunched in little groups or spread out at ineffectual roadblocks, watched with cynical smiles as government property trickled or flooded past their posts. There was a perverse logic to the bonanza: since these people were the current non-existent government, they were just taking home what belonged to them, property formerly used to oppress them. As long as they were busy, they could give the liberators no trouble. There was also the issue of cooperation: allowed to loot, even the worst elements could be relied upon to report the remnants of Amin’s henchmen who, the liberators feared, might hit them from the back.
It seemed as if troublemakers knew that this would be the last time soldiers with loaded guns would look on as shops and government offices were emptied. As a result, they grabbed this chance with both hands.
The shock waves of liberation were ripping through the city. Banner-carriers, with caustic words flying and flapping in the toxic air, marched, declaring support for the yet-to-come coalition government. They hurled abuse at Idi Amin, and demanded food, essential commodities, peace and democracy. Flag-wavers, bellies growling with hunger or looted rotten foods, demanded capitalism, free education, better housing and Amin’s trial. Students, balled fists punching the air, circled the city in long, multi-colored lines, a cacophony of hopes, dreams and demands cascading from peeling, parched lips. Criminals, eyes needle-sharp, limbs snake-nimble, prowled, seeking to get whatever they could in the confusion. Traders, red-eyed and loudmouthed, demanded an immediate stop to the looting and a return of the looted goods or compensation from the government.
Buildings hit during the skirmishes smoldered morosely, pouring thick columns of toxic smoke into the saturated atmosphere. Shop fronts battered by trucks and tractors gaped sadly like desecrated tombs. L
akes of glass shards, not unlike greenish-blue frozen water, flooded pavements, trailing into gutters and splashing into roads. Trails of sugar, salt, fertilizer, oil, forlornly advertised the routes chosen by the more vigorous looters. The sky was filled with flying paper, which the ghostly winds coming off the dead and the dying twisted in the air as though teasing onlookers with classified and unclassified information.
Here and there, in gutters, alleys, roadsides, doorways, both stale and fresh corpses oozed red-yellow fluid, faces rigid, mouths battered by untold secrets. I saw neat wounds caused by very sharp objects; I saw independent body parts liberated by bombs, heavy objects and bullets; I saw blobs of flesh and bits of bone and large patches of blood shaped like the world’s lakes and continents.
Through the relentless heat, the sun-sharpened fetid stenches of decomposing flesh, garbage and emotion, I somehow made it to the taxi park, the orifice from which all the mayhem seemed to gush with apocalyptic ruthlessness. Bullets, like giant popcorn, exploded as the outnumbered liberators tried to appear to be doing something about the chaos without actually tarnishing their good image and reducing the immense credit they had amassed with the people. I now and then caught a snatch of their singsong Kiswahili as they endeavored to break up fights.
I stood on the rim of the bowl. I felt overwhelmed and afraid for my safety. The earthquakes I had dreamed of when I first came to the city, and Grandpa’s predicted national explosions, seemed to be rocking the bowl from all sides. A mighty stench from the notorious Owino Market bearing the putrescence, the intoxications and delusions, of both past and present blew over the taxi park and stirred more madness and confusion. The gawky skeletons of architectural decrepitude that formed the gap-toothed city skyline seemed to tilt and fall over like uprooted teeth, the roots obscenely exposed. The grime-laden windows, the rust-streaked roofs and the dust-caked walls seemed to mix and gush down the hill like discolored gore pouring out of rotting body cavities. The filthy Nakivubo River seemed to be running with blood and tears and refuse that rained down from the mosque, the Catholic and the Protestant cathedrals, the high and low courts and the residences of dislodged army generals.
I was prodded by passersby and found myself descending the steps into the center of the bowl, where there were hardly any vans. It was open court there, with privatized justice and insane retribution on offer. Two very tall, very dark men dressed in the paraphernalia of the State Research Bureau—platform shoes, bell-bottom trousers and reflective sunglasses—stared at the jury from behind silver goggles. Somebody flipped them off, calling for respect of court as the goggles got crushed.
“I know you. You were a member of the State Research. You took my father away from me. You and your colleagues bashed his head and dumped him in Namanve Forest. Do you remember that?” a large woman shouted.
“Kill them, kill them, kiiill theeem,” the crowd roared avidly.
“Amin is gone. You and your friends are going to pay the price,” someone hollered.
“Pay, pay, paaaay.” The word was passed round.
The verdict was unanimous. The Bureau, a mountain of killings and torturings on its doorstep, was not a name to generate mercy, even among the levelheaded. The most lethal weapon at this time of chaos was to accuse somebody of collaboration with the Bureau or with some other Aminist security agency. “Guilty” platformed feet were swiftly swept off the asphalt, with hard objects meeting the pair midair and striking with the vengeance of three thousand and ten days of woe. By the time the two men hit the ground, they were half-dead. The circle, like a giant sphincter, closed to a fleshy dot, and the duo were flattened like the chapatis the Indians had introduced here.
“The bastards did not even beg for mercy,” somebody said as he went past me. With the tension dissipated, I squeezed my way to another spot.
Portraits of Amin, defaced but discernible, lay stamped into the asphalt. Effigies with limbs torn off smoldered pungently in gasoline bonfires. Near the spot where I first saw a live birth, a crowd of onlookers was watching smoke rise from piles of tires. I could faintly make out four human figures, constricted and twisted in death. The story was that they had been caught trying to get into a van. They had denied being Amin’s henchmen, but on examination showed telltale shoulder weals caused by rifle straps. They were almost instantly necklaced with tires and set alight.
My attention, and the attention of almost everyone in the bowl, was attracted by the blaring of a bullhorn. The man with the horn was being followed by a group of emaciated, ragged, ecstatic, skeletal men and women, freshly vomited from the torture chambers on Nakasero Hill, just beyond the High Court. The skeletons were dancing and waving twigs as measly tears ran down from their protruding eyes. They were cheered as they marched through the bowl. Vendors, impressed by their escape, gave them buns, drinks, anything they had, free of charge. Others gave them money for the fare home. Many of these people were dazed, staring glassily as though they could not believe their luck. They walked as though they were still shackled and intoxicated by the stink of incarceration, and the vomit, the blood, the excreta and the violence of torture chambers and detention centers. They walked with the full weight of freedom on their shoulders, and for some it seemed too much to bear.
It suddenly struck me: Where was Grandpa? Was he lying wounded in a pit, a building, a bush, waiting for someone to hear his cries for help? So far, his sons had failed to locate him, or even to meet anyone who had a clue as to his whereabouts. They had been to morgues, hospital wards, makeshift refugee centers, military barracks and the homes of relatives, all in vain. They had hardly rested in the past week, and seemed totally at a loss as to what to do next. Aunt Lwandeka had asked her National Reform Movement colleagues to look for Grandpa, but they had not returned any news.
With the sharp stink of burning rubber in my nostrils, mad curiosity in my head, rifle shots and joyous shouts in my ear, I pushed my way through the crowd. I went past charred remains and mutilated effigies and headed for the cathedrals. I was going to check at the Catholic Cathedral of Lubaga and, if necessary, at the Protestant Cathedral of Namirembe. It was hot and humid, and the heat stuck to the skin like a layer of ointment.
Near the edge of the bowl, another court was in session. Tribal facial scars were on trial: diamond-shaped scars, vertical slashes, horizontal scars and swollen dotted scars on foreheads, temples and cheeks had betrayed their northern owners. Anyone seen with the same was a potential suspect. Three women with vertical slashes on their cheeks were in the dock, tried by a group of ragged boys young enough to be their adolescent sons. The crowd was savoring this delegation of judicial powers to these dregs of society with the demeanor of a boss watching his minions exact revenge.
The boys, heads lice-tormented, groins crab-infested, brains glue-crazed, eyes aglow with that rare total power occasioned only by war, chanted, “Witches, witches.”
“Witches … burn them, witches … fry them, witches … fuck them …”
The accused, red eyes popping, nostrils dilating and faces warping with deathly vacillation—that terrible indecision between humility and disdain, supplication and condescension, frowning and fawning—mumbled and jabbered, appealing to emotions hardened by the last three thousand and ten days of wrath.
The ragged kids, as if commanded by an infallible leader, closed in on the trio. They ripped soaked fabrics, razored open cesarean scars, invaded stretch-marked territories, laid waste anything in their path. The flashing of metal and the snapping of bone rose above the animal grunts as life struggled with death. I did not wait for the final outcome.
The Catholic cathedral, perched high on the hill like a new Golgotha piled with skulls and bones, was strewn with people without destination, people awaiting overdue redemption like forgotten goods. Many had come from as far away as fifty kilometers, fleeing advancing Tanzanian forces and discomfited Amin troops. To these people the archbishop was a hero, and the sins of the clergy were merely the inevitable fleas on a useful dog. T
hese survivors had neither the maniacal look of the Crusaders nor the defiant visage of the martyrs: they were scared, unsure, hesitant. It was as if they believed that war had only taken a break and would return as soon as they left for home. I went all over the compound in search of Grandpa and checked the list in the administration office. In vain. I left the cathedral, with its phallic towers, the cook fires, the bawling children and lost adults, and headed for the Protestant cathedral. It was a wild-goose chase. I could hardly focus on anything now. I seemed to be as dazed as the skeletal people I had seen at the bowl, and as hypnotized as a drugged mouse. As I was leaving I stepped on somebody’s clothes, spread out in the grass to dry, and heard angry voices calling me to stop. I just strode on.
The headquarters of the Muslim Supreme Council, the place I associated with Dr. Ssali’s conversion, was crawling with Muslim refugees. Anybody who feared reprisals stayed here, under the mighty shield of the great edifice. I thought I saw Lusanani among the unveiled women. I followed a woman and whistled at her, sure that it was Lusanani. A strange woman turned round, startled. I apologized. I should have known that Hajj Gimbi, expert reader of the times, had moved his family to the rural area where few people knew him and were unlikely to cause him trouble. I saw quite a few anxious faces here. There was genuine fear of a backlash against Muslims among these people. They had seen what had happened to some of their colleagues who had been accused of harboring Aminist sympathies. But their leaders exuded the confidence that nobody would dare assault them here at the giant mosque. As I left I felt a big sense of failure: I had not located Grandpa.
Abyssinian Chronicles Page 38