A Grain of Wheat (26 page)

‘These thoughts soon gave way to the work at hand. The trench was to surround the whole village. After you were taken away, beating was not isolated to one person here, another one there. Soldiers and homeguards entered the trench and beat anybody who raised their back or slowed down in any way. They drove us into it, for, you see, there was a time limit. Women were allowed out two hours before sunset to go and look for food. Nobody else was allowed out: even school-children had to remain in the village. Within days, the two hours of freedom were reduced to one. And as the time neared, even one hour of freedom was taken away. We were prisoners in the village, and the soldiers had built their camps all round to prevent any escape. We went without food. The cry of children was terrible to hear. The new DO did not mind the cries. He even permitted soldiers to pick women and carry them to their tents. God! I didn’t know how I escaped from that ignominy. Every night I prayed that such a thing should never happen to me. Wambuku died in the trench. They took her body and threw it into a grave dug a few yards from the trench.

‘Do you know that we all thought the end of the world had come?

‘Then one day we started singing. More soldiers and homeguards were added into the trench. They came with whips and sticks, but somehow these could not stop our voices. A woman or a man from
one end of the trench would start and all of us joined in, creating words out of nothing.

‘But the one that moved us most was sung on Wambuku in the grave.

Mumbi had stopped her narrative to hum the tunes for Mugo, trying to fit in two words she had forgotten. The tunes were slow, defiant yet mournful, the tears clearly stood at the edges of her eyes. Her breasts rose and fell with the songs, and Mugo was rooted to his seat, painfully reliving a scene he never saw, for by that time he had been detained.

‘Invalids and old people like my father and children were not forced to dig. But they had to sit around the trench to watch their wives and sons and daughters or mothers work and bear the whip. Every day the DO came with a loudspeaker to remind us again and again why we were being punished. Thabai was a warning to other villages never to give food or any help to those fighting in the Forest.

‘Two more women died. Another hole was dug by the trench.

‘All this time I had not seen Karanja. People said they saw him at this end or that, but he never came to where I worked. By now our
store of food was finished. I could not go to the neighbours because many were in the same condition. At that time, you hated anybody who came to visit you during a meal; no, we never visited one another. Came a day when I felt I could not endure it. I must say that my mother-in-law and my parents seemed to bear it better than I. For me I felt I could not live another day. And that night Karanja called at our place. He would not come inside, so I went outside. Under cover of the dark, he had brought us some bread. Saliva filled my mouth. (Have you ever seen a hungry dog’s mouth at the sight of food?) But at the sight of the gun he carried, strength and appetite left me and I could not take the food he offered. I went back into the hut. (Then rumours had started that it was Karanja who had betrayed my brother.) I did not tell Wangari what had happened and she did not ask me any questions, but at the sight of her emaciated body, I felt guilty for having refused the bread. I thought she would die, we all would die, and I wept silently. I knew that my parents and Kariuki were equally stricken with hunger.

‘Two men died.

‘Our singing ended abruptly. There was no longer any sound of human voices and it seemed that even little children had stopped crying for food. The sound of jembes, spades, pangas and whips went on. A strange day: I was not feeling anything. And again that night Karanja came. I could not see him clearly in the dark, but I gathered my declining strength and moved my lips to let the word “Judas” escape from my mouth. When he spoke, his voice seemed many miles away from where I stood. “Take this maize-flour and bread, or else you will die. I did not betray Kihika, I did not. As for carrying a gun for the whiteman, well, a time will come when you too will know that every man in the world is alone, and fights alone, to live.” He went away. Somehow I believed him, what he said about my brother. But even if I had not, I would still have taken the food. I am sure I would – though his words made it easier for me. When I went inside, I felt ashamed, even in the midst of my hunger and I could not tell Wangari where I got the food. She did not ask me any questions. Neither did my parents and younger brother when I gave them the food the following day. For many days I went with a head bowed
down. You see at that time a number of women secretly and voluntarily offered themselves to the soldiers for a little food, and I felt no different. To this day I’ve never told anybody about the food which saved us. For, to tell you the truth, I still feel ashamed.

‘Altogether, twenty-one men and women died. They were buried beside the trench. The strange thing is that not a single child died during that period.

‘After the trench, I started work in the settled area. Those who worked for the white people in the farms or in their houses were given cards exempting them from forced communal labour which was the lot of those who remained in the village. And again it was easier for them to get pass-books. Your pass-book had to be stamped by the DO before you could move from the Reserve to the European farms or from one location to another. On the whole, I was lucky, because I was paid nine shillings a week while others in different farms only got six or four shillings a week. We worked in their large tea-plantations, sometimes digging at Muthangari grass and at times gathering the tea-leaves. With the money I earned, I bought flour which kept the five of us alive. I was determined not to accept any more help from Karanja, who by now had worked his way up and was the leader of the homeguards. Kariuki was doing well at school – I paid his school-fees. In him we saw the hope for the future. There is nothing like education.

‘And all this time I never stopped thinking of my husband. It seemed to me that if only he was present, everything would be right. Months and years went. We never heard of those who went to detention. The radio said they would never come back. We did not believe this, but in public we told one another that our men would never come back. If anybody expressed a different opinion, we would look at her with angry eyes – and requested her to shut her mouth: how did she know? But in our hearts we hungrily ate these words of hope and we wanted such a person to go on insisting that those who had gone to detention would one day come back.

‘At this time, something happened to Chief Muruithia which made us all fear another trench. Chief Muruithia, in charge of this area, was known everywhere for his cruelty. He was especially harsh to those
Gikuyu squatters repatriated to the Gikuyu Reserves from the Rift Valley Province, from Uganda and from Tanganyika. One day we heard that he had been shot on his way to Ndeiya, in broad daylight. The man who shot him wore a military coat and hat and had followed behind the Chief and his bodyguard at a safe distance. If the Chief stopped, the man too stopped and bent down to lace up his shoes or pass water. Then he entered the forest, ran ahead, and shot at the Chief. They say that he laughed openly as the Chief’s bodyguard, homeguards and policemen, ran for cover. But before they could shoot back, the man had disappeared into the forest. The Chief did not die, and he was taken to Timoro hospital. A week later, two men carrying a basketful of food went to visit the sick Chief. Their papers were in order and they were allowed to his bed. There, they shot him dead and jumped through the window and went back to the forest.

‘That is when Karanja became a Chief. Soon he proved himself more terrifying than the one before him. He led other homeguards into the forest to hunt down the Freedom Fighters. It was also during his rule that even the few remaining fit men were taken from the village to detention camps. He became very strict with curfew laws and forced communal work. I met him one day as I was coming from work. He stopped and called me. I went on. Two homeguards ran to me and threatened to beat me. But Karanja told them to leave me alone, and told them to move ahead, he would follow.

’ “Why didn’t you let them kill me?" I burst out.

’ “Please, Mumbi."

’ “Don’t you call me Mumbi, Mumbi."

‘I was angry and I did not want him to remind me of the gift of food. I longed for anything that would break that knot of guilt that tied me to him.

’ “Mumbi, why do you hate me so?" he went on and broke into words of passion. He loved me, he said, and he wanted only me, that he had saved himself from detention and forests for me.

‘Strange, isn’t it, how we give many motives to our actions to fit an occasion. Anyway, I was no longer angry. Now I despised him. He really appeared contemptible in his khaki uniform, and a big rifle slung on his shoulder, and talking of love in the middle of the road. I even
managed to laugh, a little. This seemed to hurt him, but it did not stop the flow of words from his mouth. The words did not touch me. I wanted to hurt him, to strike a blow for Kihika and Gikonyo and everybody.

’ “Why don’t you wear your mother’s skirt and Mwengu? When others went to fight, you remained behind to lick the feet of your white husbands.” I said this clearly, and I thought he would beat me. This did prick him. His lips moved and he struggled to say something. His face changed shades from light to dark, and then he also spoke slowly and clearly.

’ “You don’t understand. Did you want us all to die in the Forest and in Detention so that the whiteman could live here on this land alone? The whiteman is strong. Don’t you ever forget that. I know, because I have tasted his power. Don’t you ever deceive yourself that Jomo Kenyatta will ever be released from Lodwar. And bombs are going to be dropped into the forest as the British did in Japan and Malaya. And those in detention will never, never see this land again. No, Mumbi. The coward lived to see his mother while the brave was left dead on the battlefield. And to ward off a blow is not cowardice."

‘This frightened me.

‘ “Leave me alone, why don’t you leave me alone!" I cried, feeling weak. He went away. My stomach was heavy, my heart dark. It was cruel of him to say Gikonyo would never come back.

‘And yet towards the end of the year I had gone to seek out Karanja in his house at the Homeguard Post. Kariuki was with me, because he had passed KAPE and he was the only boy in these ridges to get a place in Siriana Secondary School. This had made many people angry: why, they asked, should a boy whose brother was in the Forest, be allowed to go to a government school, while the sons of loyalists could not? But they could not stop him unless they proved that he had taken the oath. That is why we went to the Chief’s house. Karanja did not raise any questions. He gave us a letter stating that Kariuki had been screened and found not to have taken the oath. I felt ashamed of my sharp words to Karanja.

‘It’s when Kariuki went to Siriana that life came back to my parents.
Mbugua even started talking about the future, while Wanjiku wept because she was happy. I was also happy, but I could not forget, for a moment, Karanja’s words, that those in detention would never come back. Maybe Gikonyo and the others had already been shot dead. The thought would keep me shivering in the night and I could not pray, or sleep. Wangari noticed my restless looks, and it was she who now became my warmth and comfort. In those years of waiting, we came closer together, not just a mother and a daughter-in-law, but as something else, I cannot describe.

‘Karanja always pointed out to me that my faithfulness was vain. The government forces were beating the Freedom Fighters. We never got a letter or heard a word from those in detention. The radio no longer mentioned them. And with years, Karanja became arrogant towards me. He did not humble himself in front of me as he used to do. Instead, he laughed to hurt me, and I hung on to Gikonyo with all my heart. I would wait for him, my husband, even if I was fated to rejoin him in the grave. I completely lost hope of meeting him again on this earth, and lived on the memory of happy days before the State of the Emergency.

‘Let me not tire you with a long story, though I might tell you it already makes me feel better to have opened my heart to you. One day Karanja sent for me to his house. It was on a Thursday, I remember. I felt tired and bored with living. For what is life unless you live for a person you love, a man who is breathing, whom you can see, and touch? Gikonyo was dead. And the Emergency was never going to end. Anyway. I went there and I swore that if he tried anything on me, even a word, I would get a piece of wood and strike him hard on the head or neck. I found him alone. I stood at the door for a while. He did not look at me directly. He seemed to have changed. He appeared worried and slightly aged. This surprised me – I thought he was ill or something. So I went in and asked him what he wanted with me. He did not answer me for a little while. Then he said:

’ “Your husband is coming back."

’ “What?"

’ “Your husband is coming back,” he repeated and tried to smile.

‘Something that caused pain rippled in me, as if, as if I had been paralysed all over and blood and life was now entering into me.

’ “Please, Karanja, don’t play with me,” I stammered. My voice was broken. My heart was full of fear and hope. I would have done anything to know the truth.

‘He came to where I was standing and showed me a long sheet of paper with the government stamps. There was a list of names of those on their way back to the villages. Gikonyo’s name was there.