Dressed in black, a dry leopard tail in his hand, the man entered Kasawo’s room. He ordered her to undress, wrap a black sheet around her and follow him. It was past midnight. The compound was quite dark except for lights here and there in the sleeping rooms. They entered a banana grove and ended up behind a massive tree that loomed like a diabolical tower of terror. There was a cave under the tree, inside which were three basins full of cold water. Incantations poured into the air as water from the three basins dripped down Kasawo’s shivering body. Bits of herb stuck in her hair and on her body.
Back in her room, the man motioned her to spread a mat which was leaning against the wall on the floor and lie on it. In twenty years Kasawo had not lain down for punishment. It felt strange. Seven strokes of a dry bamboo cane found their mark. Confused, and in strange pain, she was led back to the cave. She bathed again. The water felt very cold, and she could not stop the tears which came with the quivers. The black clothes gave the man the arcane dimensions of a ghoul and made her feel both afraid and reassured. A man born to wield power. A man born to exorcise demons and conquer women.
On their way back, Kasawo became more convinced that God and the Devil were two sides of the same coin. They even used the same methodology in combatting opposition. So many years ago, when she had just met Pangaman, her mother had taken her to the parish priest under the pretext that they were going to buy rosaries. Kasawo was afraid of the white man. She became more afraid when her mother reported to him that she was fornicating with a man, drinking alcohol and treating her father with insolence. Her mother asked the priest to exorcise the demons tormenting her. The priest stood up and said very many Latin words. The expression on his face was deathly. He did not seem to see her or her mother. He finally reached for a cane and beat her. But not even he could beat Pangaman out of her.
The second time round, her mother took her to the mother superior of the parish convent. The nun listened in dead silence, a very sad and terrifying expression on her stern face. She looked at Kasawo for a long time, at the end of which she asked both mother and daughter to kneel. She led the rosary and the litany of the Virgin Mary. She dismissed the mother and asked Kasawo to stay behind. She locked the door and pocketed the key. She drew all the curtains and ordered her to strip. Kasawo did so woodenly. The nun asked her to lie on her back. She took a leather belt and whipped her twelve times between her legs. Kasawo cried out. She had never tasted such pain before. “Think about the nails your sins are driving into Jesus’ wounds and keep quiet,” the nun commanded. “Aren’t you ashamed of the pain your behavior is causing Our Lord?” The nun did not ask her not to tell her mother. She knew that the girl wouldn’t. The nun administered the same treatment every day at the same time for a week. It did not work. Soon after that, Kasawo eloped with Pangaman.
Back in her room, seven hard bamboo strokes found their mark again. The man ordered her to go to bed. She was bothered by the repetitions in her life, and especially by her inability to squeeze some usable wisdom out of them. Her thoughts could not coagulate. They flapped around like frog spawn in a swamp. The ordeals and the tears, however, had a very soporific effect.
Kasawo woke up late the following afternoon. The red tiles of the Vicar’s residence peeped at her from her window with the seductiveness of a sweet fading fire. She was overwhelmed by the noise of activity in the compound, and she wondered how she had slept through it. As night dropped like a dark veil she went to the kiosk to buy some food. Moths had appeared. They circled the lamps in dizzying yellow arcs. She sat on her bed and ate. She retrieved a moth’s wing from her mouth. She spat and threw away the food.
As Kasawo waited for the man to arrive, she thought about how the therapy worked. She had told him everything about the attack and much about her life. It seemed that he had picked out salient elements and used them to make her relive her pain and move on. It hurt more than she had expected, but she felt it was all for the better. Now more than ever, she wished she were more educated and thus able to tie the different strands of her life together. She remembered confessions in the cupboard-like confessional. At the beginning, she really believed that the white priest was Jesus, and she quaked with holy terror, not daring to tell a single lie. But gradually it had struck her that if the priest was indeed Jesus of Nazareth, then he surely did not need to be told anything. She started telling him small lies and omitting little details. “Jesus” swallowed it hook, line and sinker! The terror went away, and she started smelling the man’s tobacco breath. From then on, she stopped saying prayers of contrition. The Vicar knew better. He guided his clients through the rituals. He is a Catholic, Kasawo thought; he must have fooled the priests himself. Send a thief to catch a thief, her primary school headmaster used to say.
His massive frame filled the doorway. He beckoned her to follow him to the cave, where she took the same long, cold bath. She had never shivered so in all her life. Her teeth rattled badly as she walked back to her room for the final installment of lashes. He administered them and turned her over. The cold hand of the wind pushed inside her and shook the very marrow of her bones. She was so cold that she started feeling a dull heat building inside her. She closed her eyes and succumbed to the convoluted meanderings of her mind. She was awakened by the fire of his latex-sheathed penetration. He rubbed the stretched membrane of her rejuvenating self with the hellfire of her worst pains. He reminded her of the professional brutality of bone-setters who broke badly set bones in order to correct the mistakes. Her mind worked on and off between bitten-back screams and tears as she tried to hold on. She thought of Pangaman, of her fear, hatred and even love of him. She thought of her father, of the parish priest who had beaten her, of the nun who had whipped her, and of Amin’s soldiers, and of her violators. Her face was wet with tears. He asked her if she was crying. She felt shame over it, but she could not lie to the ultimate confessor and admitted that she was. He laughed. She felt relieved.
Back at the cave, she was ordered to fill a bucket with water. He sprinkled herbs in it and ordered her to carry it on her head. This time they headed for the road. They stopped in the junction. She eyed the three arms of the road with trepidation. She prayed that it would remain empty, desolate, dead. He ordered her to strip and bathe while saying the following words: “I leave the world’s rapes here. I leave the world’s ill luck here. I leave every evil here. Let the winds carry it all to the ends of the earth.” He stood at a distance, and she could hear him mumbling. They walked toward the compound in silence. She was glad that part was over. Her body was still burning, but she felt calm. She did not care whether another seven lashes were awaiting her. She had broken a psychological barrier. She felt invincible, fearless, ready for anything.
At the door he stood aside and let her enter. He stood in the doorway and watched her shiver, the black cloth tight on her steaming body. He seemed wreathed in priestly isolation. “It is over, girl,” he said in a thick voice. He stood there as if waiting to be thanked. She found herself on her knees, thanking him as though she weren’t going to pay him.
The Kasawo that rose from her knees was a woman full of a fresh fire and a blazing, peppery zeal. She dominated all conversation during her visit to us. Aunt Lwandeka looked cowed by her. Kasawo was not my favorite political analyst, but I agreed with her that the departure of the Tanzanians was good for all parties. She swore that the exiled dictator Obote was about to return. This greatly disturbed me, for all along I had been holding that as an abstract possibility. Aunt Lwandeka did not like the news either. It made her sacrifices in fighting Amin look futile. She angrily responded with the view that a guerrilla war would break out as a result.
“Governments are there to fight guerrillas,” Kasawo said smugly. I kept thinking about those words long after her departure.
Within a few months, most roadblocks were gone and most Tanzanians were back home. A new army was being formed. The curfew now started at eleven o’clock and ended at five in the morning. There was much talk a
bout elections, democracy and development: the magic trinity.
I was feeling inviolable once more. I had survived the dark days without a body scratch. I was going to the university to study law. I never bothered the few female liberators who were manning the last of the roadblocks. They did not seem to notice me either. I kept slipping past them as though by magic. Within three weeks they would be gone, I had heard on the news. Every other evening, I visited a friend, a fellow student who was living on his own. We enjoyed weighty discussions, especially about politics and women and power. Sometimes I took him a little liquor, which loosened his tongue, and he talked as if the world were coming to an end. We both felt that we could change the world. We talked as though we were in parliament or in some national forum where our words turned into law.
One evening, I was stopped by a voice emanating from the front of an old factory building where surprise roadblocks were sometimes staged. There had been no roadblocks there or in the suburb as a whole for the last five days. I stopped in my tracks and saw two bricks on the shoulder of the road. Sometimes they used a car tire or an oil drum, anything. I was very apprehensive: these people could be up to no good at this hour. To make matters worse, I had neither money nor a watch to bribe them with. Three uniformed women came toward me with rifles casually held, muzzles down. Each rifle had three magazines held together with rubber bands; each woman had ninety bullets with her. What I saw next made my lower lip fall: I thought I recognized the large girl as one from Ndere Primary School whom I had told that she would birth a limbless creature.… It seemed logical that she had joined the army to avoid the risk of having such a child. When had she crossed the border to join the guerrillas? When had she recognized me? Had she been stalking me? How long had she waited for this moment? How many men had she shot in my stead? I could not tear my eyes from her. I wanted to make sure that it was her. I tried to look under her cap. Had she changed so little over the years?
I was given little chance to complete my investigations. The Infernal Trinity mistook my questioning look for ogling. But who in their right senses would dare ogle three women armed with two hundred and seventy high-velocity bullets? I was accused of disrespect, disregard for military procedure, subversive activity and more. I was dazed by a sense of impending doom. Shtudent? Yes. Amin shtudent, he-he-heee. In the meantime, I looked around for a drunkard, any passerby, who could distract the Trinity with his arrival. This was the road that had eaten the northerners: How come it was so dead now? I was ordered to produce my identity card. I had never been asked to show my card at any roadblock before, and I wasn’t carrying it. I explained my predicament and volunteered to take them home if they deemed it necessary.
“You sow uss to do worrk?” one who had so far said nothing burst out. I turned to address her. At that moment, a whooshing sound and a kaleidoscope of hellish colors exploded. I felt my knees go. In fact, by then I was already on the ground, my back in the gravel. I had not been knocked down like this in years. I looked groggily at the night sky. I could hardly move. I wasn’t feeling any pain except for a heavy, dull pulse in my head. The women looked very big from where I was. I was vaguely aware of how afraid I was of getting disfigured by the muzzles or the butts of those rifles.
I was half-dragged, half-carried into the old factory. I tried to think about my first day at the seminary and the jerk-offs in the middle of the night. I tried to think about my campaigns against Fr. Mindi and Fr. Lageau, and the way the night watchman had surprised me. I remembered the two corpses Cane had shown us. Grandpa had lain like this, I thought, looking at those terrible muzzles and large-toothed boots. I was slapped a few times into a reasonable wakefulness. At about the same time, the air was invaded by the mustiness of dirty underwear and dirty bodies. Pigs, I thought. No. Hyenas. When had these hyenas had their last proper bath? A week, a fortnight, a month ago? I kept my mind on the worst possible scenarios just to get through the ordeal and not to vomit into their genitalia. I kept thinking that these women had raped other men before. I was sure the men had kept quiet about it. I was also going to keep my mouth shut. This was a secret never to tell, even inside a torture chamber. In the meantime, I collected some grim statistics: the ordeal lasted approximately twenty minutes before I was thrown out of the building. My face got ridden two hundred and twenty times. My penis got pulled very roughly some forty times. My balls were kneaded very violently twenty times. My skin got ripped thirty times. I ejaculated once. I ended up with a broken nose and a lump on the temple. I nursed sore ribs for a fortnight.
I spent that fateful night at my friend’s house. The next morning, I told Aunt Lwandeka that I had been attacked by thieves. A nation of moaners? No, I never moaned. It could have been worse, I kept saying. How ironic that Kasawo had left not long ago! For a day or so, I kept thinking that Kasawo had brought her bad luck to our house and left it on my shoulders. Nonsense. The only pattern I could discern was that I had become another statistic in our family history. I too had been violated, and my tormentors had escaped unscathed.
A week after the attack, roadblocks were removed from all roads.
In the space of a year, we had three caretaker governments, the first lasting just over two months. The exiled dictator returned. He contested and won the elections. There was disagreement among the foreign observers as to whether the elections had been rigged. The innocents, who believed that the observers had the power to tell one political tree to plant itself in the sea and one political hill to move to another location, got slaughtered. Amin had proved such innocence to be fatal; the hopefuls should have known better. Guerrilla war broke out. Aunt Lwandeka’s National Reform Movement was among the first fighting groups to join.
The hurricane-lamp-and-moths syndrome had started all over again: all that luminescence, all that death.
BOOK SIX
TRIANGULAR REVELATIONS
THE FIRST TIME I stood at the top of Makerere University Hill, with Mulago Hospital reclining in front of me and two cathedrals and a mosque piercing the deep blue horizon in the background, Grandpa’s old lawyerly dreams boiled inside me. I felt I had stepped onto holy ground. Grandpa’s spirit seemed to have been transported, transformed and spread over this hill to drive a new generation of knowledge seekers to the limit. A son at university was the culmination of many a family’s dreams of a better future. I could feel general expectation rising from the ground, swelling like the city’s seven hills and willing every candidate to get in through the narrow gate of elitist education. The university’s main hall, breathing the supercilious airs of grandeur, intimated entry into a secluded fraternity. I could feel myself grow wings to fly into the rarefied ranks of those chosen to reach great heights. These were the eighties: the burdens of the seventies were behind us, so it seemed. You felt that the worst was over and that shrewd individuals could at last stretch their arms and pluck the fruits of a progressive future. I surveyed the hill again. I waited for clues to my future with bated breath.
Makerere University had emerged from the seventies bearing the motley scars of a survivor: during the last decade, it had neither advanced nor expanded. The days when it was sacred ground were long gone, alive only in memories of alumni like my laconic literature teacher at the seminary. In his capacity as the chancellor, President Idi Amin had done his best to stamp his authority on the institution. On several occasions, the army was dispatched to quell campus riots and opposition. One vice chancellor, an Obote supporter, had not survived: he disappeared in the aftermath of the abortive 1972 invasion. Many lecturers had fled, and the dim economic prospects of the eighties had not enticed them back. Those who stayed saw their status and earnings plummet, the former eroded by the low esteem education suffered in the seventies, the latter by inflation. Now many lecturers held jobs outside the university in order to make ends meet. Scarcity of scholastic and other materials plagued the campus. A culture of corruption had set in at the top: political appointees did their best to enrich themselves while their benefactors s
till held the reins of power. But all these factors had not diminished the zeal with which students did their best to make the most of a bad situation.
By the time I joined this highest institution of learning, the pressure on its capacity was asphyxiating. The residential houses had swollen, burst and overflowed into the puny annexes where six students shared a room. Top A-levels alone did not guarantee one a place in the most coveted faculties. Over the years, competition had risen to a murderous level. Political influence and bribery moved things faster, but you had to know whom to contact, and that did not always guarantee positive results either. Like the majority of hopefuls, I could only count on the gods and on the selection committee’s favor. Both let me down.
The radio had summoned thousands of us to the campus, and we swarmed the main hall like locusts, perusing endless selection lists. My heart went to my mouth as my eyes combed the coveted Law List. Historical precedent paralyzed my limbs: the first lawyer in the family! It was not to be. My name was not on the list. There was, of course, the lame recourse of the damned: appeal. It did not work: so many explanations, so many justifications, so many technicalities.
My first reaction was to consider giving up education altogether. And do what then? I was kidding myself. I had to keep sharpening my intellect. I was finally dumped in the social sciences section, that no-man’s-land between the real sciences and the humanities.
Abyssinian Chronicles Page 42