Burn My Heart

by Beverley Naidoo

  ‘There’s no one who is a patch on Josiah or Mercy.’

  ‘You will just have to train them up, then,’ Father replied tetchily.

  ‘You know I still can’t believe that Mercy and Josiah really are Mau Mau.’ Mother had already said this so many times it was like a refrain. ‘It just doesn’t seem like them.’

  ‘Like it or not, that’s Frank’s information. Every – single – worker – here – took – that – damn – oath!’ Father’s hand drumming the table made the willow-pattern china cups rattle on their saucers. ‘Once they’ve taken the oath they can’t be relied on.’

  Mother was silent.

  ‘At least Frank is not sending them to a detention camp – like our renegade Kamau!’

  ‘But I can’t imagine what they’ll do in the reserve –’

  ‘That’s not our problem,’ Father interrupted. ‘We are not questioning Frank’s judgement on this. His advice was clear. Don’t take anyone back! Now I’ve got an entire new labour force to see to.’ With that, Father left his tea on the table and strode out of the dining room.

  Without his den behind the stables, Mathew found the best place to get away from the house was the strip of land that he used for target practice. It wasn’t as hidden as his old hideout, but the orchard provided a screen. On the other side, you looked through the wire fence to the bush. It was where he and Mugo had found the fence broken… when his rashness and new Red Ryder had got them into trouble with an elephant. Mugo had saved him that day, not only from the elephant’s anger but also from Father’s. It seemed such a long time ago now.

  Glad not to have to go to the dairy, Mathew began target practice but soon tired of it on his own. He wasn’t concentrating properly and couldn’t forget the argument at breakfast. When Father had said that Kamau was being sent to a detention camp, it was like a bombshell. Yet Father hadn’t even stopped to talk about it. The fire had changed everything. Father suddenly trusted everything that Lance’s father said just when Mathew could see that Lance was a mean, deceitful bully. He felt sick that he had ever wanted to be friends with him.

  Laying his Red Ryder on the ground, Mathew sat on a tree stump and called Duma to his side. He fondled her ears.

  ‘You’re my only friend now, aren’t you, girl?’

  Duma raised her soulful eyes, wagging her feather-duster tail. Her copper-red coat glistened in the morning sun.

  ‘You miss Mugo, don’t you, girl?’

  Duma’s eyes and ears lifted expectantly and Mathew threw his arms around her neck, burying his face in her silky hair.

  ‘He’s not coming back, you know! Everything’s gone wrong!’

  Duma whimpered.

  ‘I don’t want to go back to school because I won’t have any friends there now,’ Mathew whispered. ‘Lance will see to it.’

  Duma startled him with a burst of loud woofs. Was she reacting to Lance’s name? Then, just as abruptly, she turned and dashed to the fence, barking all the while.

  ‘What is it, Duma? What’s there?’ Mathew picked up his gun and hurried after her. Duma was now scurrying alongside the fence. She seemed to be looking for a place to slip underneath. But the lowest wire was too close to the ground. She was now whining and barking alternately. Something must be there!

  They were reaching the end of the orchard and the corner of the fence when Duma bounced ahead. She began to leap forward and back, in excitement and frustration. All of a sudden, Mathew saw why. On the other side of the fence, where the bush was cleared, was Kamau’s homestead… and there, staggering out of the door with an upside-down stool and objects piled on top, was Mugo, with a hoe also clutched between his arm and chest.

  ‘Mugo!’ Mathew yelled spontaneously. Mugo halted and looked up towards him. So did Mugo’s mother and two small children who were a few paces ahead, each laden with household objects. Mugo’s glance was only fleeting.

  ‘Haraka! Hurry up or you leave everything here!’ A guard in khaki uniform emerged in the doorway behind Mugo. Even without the guard shouting, Mathew knew that Mugo wasn’t going to look at him again.

  The family had almost reached the banana trees on the border of their compound when Mugo’s mother unexpectedly turned and hastily stacked the pots that she had been carrying on top of Mugo’s load. Steadying the box on her head with one hand, she began to run in the opposite direction towards the back of the house. The guard swished out at her with his stick but she didn’t stop. Squawks and screeches rent the air and she soon reappeared with a hen under each arm. She scuttled at arm’s length from the guard to catch up with her children. The squawking continued from behind the house.

  New thoughts now occurred to Mathew. The hens could not have been fed since the fire! Whoever Father brought to replace Kamau would inherit the family’s hens, their shamba and everything else that they had been forced to leave. In the reserve, there would be nothing. Mathew had some idea of what a reserve was like because when they drove to Nairobi they passed through a couple on the way. They were barren places where the cattle had eaten most of the grass and, unlike Father’s cattle, their skin clung to their ribs. If the cattle didn’t have much to eat, what was there for people?

  Mathew felt his face burning. He had to see Mugo before they took him away! He had no idea what he would say but he just had to see him. He began to run. The quickest way was to cut alongside the house. But on the spur of the moment he slipped in through the French windows into the lounge, down the passage and into the larder. He could hear Mother in the kitchen. Holding his breath, he lifted the lid of Josiah’s biscuit jar. It still had some soft crumbly butter biscuits… Josiah’s speciality. Mathew took one of the brown paper bags that Josiah saved so prudently and, as quietly as possible, filled it with biscuits before sneaking back into the passage.

  The first thing he saw from the front door was Father talking to a white officer next to a truck being loaded with people and possessions. They were on the other side of the security fence and the gates were shut. As Mathew ran to the gates, Duma came pelting towards him from the side of the house.

  ‘Jambo!’ he shouted to the Turkana guards. They stood with their ramrod backs to him. ‘Open! Open please!’ Duma echoed the words with barks.

  But before the guards even turned to look at him, Father put up his hand, signalling ‘No’. They were not to let him through.

  ‘Go inside, Mathew,’ Father called firmly.

  ‘I want to say goodbye to Mugo… and to Josiah and Mercy!’ He couldn’t see Mugo. But there was Josiah approaching the truck with his shoulders stooping forward and his head lowered. Mercy shuffled beside him. Each was laden with bundles. They had always kept their uniforms starched and spotless. Today their clothes looked dirty and crumpled as if they hadn’t changed them for days. Since he had last seen them, they had become really old.

  Father excused himself from the police officer and walked over to Mathew.

  ‘There’s no need for you to see this, Mathew,’ he said briskly from the other side of the fence. ‘Just stay inside like your mother, until it’s over and done with.’

  ‘But I want to say goodbye! I’ll be quick.’ He was beginning to whine. If he could only give Mugo the biscuits, Mugo would know that he was sorry and wished he wasn’t going.

  ‘We can’t afford to let personal feelings come into this, Mathew. Go inside now!’

  Father turned deliberately and walked back to the officer. Mathew’s eyes prickled and he swiftly wiped the back of his hand across his face. Not doing what Father said would mean trouble later. But even before he could decide whether or not to defy Father, there was Mugo, behind Father, lurching towards the truck. With his load piled up to his chin, he had missed his footing. Mathew watched as Mugo swivelled like an acrobat, regained his balance and averted a crash. The sweat on his face glistened in the sun. In the past, Mugo would have grinned at his feat, but not today.

  ‘Mugo!’ Mathew cried. ‘Over here, Mugo!’ Once again Duma echoed him with barks. Math
ew couldn’t tell whether he was responding to him or to Duma, but Mugo slowly turned his head to look at them. Mathew felt those concentrated seer’s eyes that could pick out the tip of a tail or an ear over a hundred feet away in the bush.

  ‘I’ve got something for you, Mugo!’ Mathew held up the brown paper bag. Father was already striding back towards him, but he fixed his gaze on Mugo, hoping desperately for a response. There was none. Mugo had clearly seen and heard him. Why did he give no reaction at all? Mathew lowered the bag, pressing his lips tightly to hold down his disappointment. Father came towards him, blocking his view.

  ‘What have you got there?’ Father sounded exasperated.

  Mathew thrust the brown paper bag between the barbed wire.

  ‘It’s for – for Mugo!’ he stammered. He jerked the bag up and, before Father could grasp it, the paper snagged on a spike. Josiah’s best butter biscuits tumbled to the ground.

  He heard Father sigh. ‘Now will you go inside, Mathew? Maybe when you’re older, you’ll understand.’

  Mathew stayed where he was, behind the barbed wire. He stared at Josiah’s broken butter biscuits scattered on the dry red earth. Duma promptly scoffed up what he could reach. The ants would demolish the rest. Mathew’s eyes blurred with tears. The truck’s engine revved up, throbbing in his ears. He would probably never see Mugo, Josiah, Mercy again… or Kamau… If he didn’t understand now, how would he understand later?

  22

  Burning

  Dust rising up under the wheels invaded Mugo’s throat and nostrils. Every bump and jolt rattled through the densely packed truck, jostling people up against each other and their belongings. He sat with Mami, Mzee Josiah and the children on a small mound of blankets. Mama Mercy lay at their feet on the metal floor, her head next to a cardboard box in which Mami had made some holes and put the hens. The only thing Mama Mercy would accept was a blanket from Mami for a pillow.

  They were hurtling away from Kirinyaga. The great mountain of Ngai, and his ancestors, was already like a distant anthill. The mzungu had chased them from their home like a snake displaces ants. Everything had been left behind except what they could carry. The table and chair that had been Mami’s pride, carried all the way from the secondhand shop in town… the wooden bed that Baba had built for her… the maize meal ground by Mami and carefully stored next to the tin of oil in the kitchen hut… the beans, tomatoes and greens ready for picking in the shamba… so much they had been forced to leave behind with the guards shouting in their ears ‘Haraka! Haraka!’. In the panic he had even nearly forgotten his leather bag of treasures. Yes, he thought, Gitau was right. Wazungu don’t care when we suffer. We are insects to them. He thought of Baba’s legs dragging on the ground and winced. Baba could be lying on the floor of a truck like Mama Mercy, not even seeing where he was being taken. Baba had had a dream. His children would go to school and learn the wazungu’s knowledge! They would learn how to get back their land! Wazungu would learn to respect them! ‘They are people and we are people.’ Where was Baba’s dream now? How would the prophecy of the great seer be fulfilled? Must his family be ants forever?

  Mugo dug his knuckles into the blanket. To his surprise, Mzee Josiah clasped one hand over Mugo’s fist.

  ‘Your father – he’s a good person,’ Mzee Josiah said unexpectedly in his low gruff voice. Mugo was taken aback. It was as if Mzee Josiah knew what he was thinking. Baba and Mzee Josiah had never been close. Did Mzee Josiah not blame Baba in some way for their troubles? The inspector had surely questioned everyone about Gitau.

  ‘This fire, it’s bigger than all of us, my son.’

  My son. Mzee Josiah had never called him that before. Mugo felt the warm sweat of Mzee Josiah’s palm on his skin.

  ‘It will eat everyone – Kikuyu, wazungu, everyone.’ Mzee Josiah withdrew his hand, slapping it on to his own thigh as if talking to himself as well as Mugo. ‘But don’t let the fire eat your heart! Do you understand?’

  Mugo wrapped his arms around himself, pressing his wrists against his ribs. How could he stop it? The burning was already inside him, from his head to his stomach. The pain was in his heart. His mouth felt dry, too dry to speak. He sensed what Mzee Josiah was saying. He was telling Mugo not to hate. Perhaps he was even telling himself not to hate.

  Mugo’s eyes trailed the barbed wire alongside the road. One fence led to another. Wazungu were everywhere. A burst of barking made him turn his head. Behind the wire, three dogs, with spiky hyena faces, were chasing the truck. They looked as if they wanted to rip someone to pieces. He had seen Duma behind the bwana’s fence, trying to reach him. She had only wanted to nuzzle him. But the bwana had kept her in. Mugo would have liked to scratch her one last time behind her long soft ears. The mzungu boy had been with Duma, calling his name ‘Mugo! Mugo!’ How many times had he heard that? Today it wasn’t in his bossy ‘Hurry up, Mugo!’ or ‘Play with me, Mugo!’ voice. It was pleading. But the bwana hadn’t let him out.

  Mugo had seen the boy holding up a packet. Even before he saw it tear on the wire and Duma snuffling his nose over the red earth, he had guessed it was a bag of Mzee Josiah’s biscuits. When the boy used to sneak a batch of biscuits to eat in his den, he always slipped them into a brown paper packet. Afterwards Mzee Josiah’s grumblings would reveal he was secretly pleased that his biscuits were so popular.

  A sudden lump caught in Mugo’s throat. It would have been better if the bwana had never taken him into his house and made him the kitchen toto! If he had stayed herding the cattle, he would never have got to know the mzungu boy whose grandfather had taken away his own grandfather’s land. He had taught the boy how to make his first sling from goatskin. He had shown him how to make a ball out of banana leaves, a money box from bamboo, a snare out of sisal… all the things he would show a younger brother. When the boy had been silly or showing off, he had done his best to ignore it. He had looked after the boy like Baba said he had looked after the bwana when they had been children. So how could he ever forget the way the bwana had looked at Baba and him on the night of the fire, his eyes full of suspicion, accusing them of betraying him!

  Did Gitau know what had happened to them? Mugo could imagine his brother’s enraged eyes narrowing as if to say: ‘Now do you see? Now, do you understand?’ Mugo leaned over to a cooking pot and pulled out his small leather bag stuffed between some wooden spoons. He slipped his hand inside, his fingers pushing aside marbles given to him by the mzungu boy, a catapult, the piece of memsahib’s china, and other childish treasures. When he pulled out his hand, his little wooden elephant lay upside down in his palm, its feet and tusks in the air. He revolved it with his fingers until the creature was facing him, trunk raised, tusks forward, ready to charge.

  Mugo squeezed it in his palm, feeling the solid weight of its body carved out of Kirinyaga’s wood. He prayed that Gitau was safe with Maina, and that his brother still kept the little elephant’s companion with him. It was rough and dangerous up there in Kirinyaga’s forests. When the long rains set in, pouring in torrents, it would be worse. Kirinyaga was now out of sight, no longer even an anthill. The truck was taking them somewhere far away, and Baba would be taken to some unknown place behind more barbed wire. Only the land would still join all of them to their mountain. They had been dug up… roots pulled out… and scattered like weeds to shrivel. But the wazungu cannot dig up the land. It will always be here. Wasn’t that what Baba would have said… would say… if he could? As long as the land was there, they had to have hope.

  Mugo glanced at Mami. His brother and sister had fallen asleep, their heads lolling against her. With her eyes closed against the dust, lines of worry cut her face like shadows on a mask. He had never thought of Mami as old. He was no longer a child. Without Baba, it was up to him now to take care of his family. But if he were called to join Gitau and the others fighting for ithaka na wiyathi, their land and freedom, would he not go? Mugo trembled at the burning tearing deep inside him. The fire was eating everyone and he did no
t know how to keep the blaze from his heart.

  Afterword

  It feels strange to stand in a place that appears so beautiful, calm and peaceful when you know that if the earth, grass and trees could speak they would tell you another story. This is what I have felt watching the morning mist rise up the slopes of Mount Kenya… Kirinyaga.

  55,000 British soldiers were sent to Kenya during the Emergency, declared in October 1952. The Mau Mau killed thirty-two white settlers, although people who remember the news reports often say that ‘it seemed like more’. Over 1,800 African civilians were murdered for being loyalists and hundreds disappeared whose bodies were never found. Many terrible stories were reported at the time. However, British forces killed at least 12,000 (possibly as many as 20,000) Mau Mau fighters and suspects.

  The Emergency was a disaster for the Kikuyu people. Even families became divided. It was like a civil war. At least 150,000 Kikuyu men and women were imprisoned as Mau Mau supporters, most of them without any trial. If a hooded informer pointed a finger at someone, that was enough. Whole communities were punished as ‘collective punishment’. The government extended the death penalty to cover a wide range of offences. People were sentenced to death even when the evidence against them was poor. 1,090 Kikuyu men were hanged and thirty women were sentenced to life imprisonment. There were far more executions in Kenya than in any other British colonial struggle. The government said that it had suspended human rights because of terrorism.

  Some people in Britain protested strongly, like the socialist MPs Fenner Brockway and Barbara Castle who were active in the Movement for Colonial Freedom. Accounts of torture and abuse in the detention camps were published. But the British government backed its officials in Kenya, who kept giving in to the fears and demands of the white settlers. Even when there were charges, these usually resulted in very light sentences, such as three months’ hard labour and a fine for burning a suspect’s eardrums with lighted cigarettes or £25 for pouring paraffin over a suspect.