Abyssinian Chronicles (49 page)

In the sea of jubilation, one saw floating islands of masked anxiety: the very dark, sometimes tribally scar-faced, northern-born civilians. They were doing their best to look cheerful in the hope that they would not remind their southern counterparts of their tormentors, the killers on the run. One could see them praying not to be lacerated by the flashing pangas of revenge. Each jubilating hand had the potential to vivisect, each hailing mouth had the power to condemn someone to death. For the moment, the joy of the masses was too intense to be sullied by such base sentiments, and vengeance remained sealed in the kaleidoscopic casket of euphoria.

I felt weak in the knees. Aunt was jumping up and down. I held her very tight and felt her body quaking with feverish joy. Tears of happiness flowed down her face and tickled my neck. The energy from the crowd seemed to sweep me up in the sky. I suddenly felt part of the monster, moved by its shouts, intoxicated by its cheers, tears and laughter. I was now sure that war had left the gun-mounted hills, the soldier-infested valleys and the cordite-stained skies and was coursing through us all. I did not know when I let go of Aunt. I remembered being offered free liquor by a group of men who urged me to drink, drink, drink. It was some sort of competition. Drums were throbbing, accompanying lewd songs. The lights made me feel very intoxicated. I became dizzy, went out and puked against the wall. A vendor who
bought Aunt’s liquor wholesale invited me in. I knew she liked me, but she was no spring chicken. She cleaned my face, my clothes and my shoes. She had fine knees, which gleamed like polished and varnished wood. I looked at her fingers. Aunt said that one could tell a woman’s age by her fingers; I could not, and thought she had said that because she herself had smooth, beautiful fingers. As the vendor woman maneuvered me onto the sofa I was overwhelmed by her beautiful knees. I grabbed her with all my power and came in my pants. Her curse was the last thing I heard.

Two days passed. I felt sick. I couldn’t rest fully because of the noise and the firing of guns. The din and gloom were shattered by the arrival of Uncle Kawayida. I was very happy to see him. He was reticent, as if he was not happy to see me. He was wearing dirty clothes and mud-stained shoes. I had not seen him in years, but he had not changed much. He was still thin, tall and alert, his oval face with its big eyes giving him a wily, charming look. He refused the long greeting formula I had begun unravelling. That meant big trouble. Had one of his women got gang-raped by soldiers? Had his in-laws lost members of their large family in a fire or a massacre or an accident? Mr. Kavule, his late father-in-law, had after all left forty children, thirty girls and ten boys. Had something happened to them?

Danger was closer to home. Grandpa was missing!

Grandpa had left the village a week before the fall of Amin’s government in order to meet a clan elder. The man who foresaw national explosions thought that the time for the big one had not yet come. In the village, far away from the theater of war, things had still been quiet. He believed he could go and return before the city fell. He met the clan elder, settled some important clan affairs and left three days before the fall of the city. He was last seen ensconced in the cab of an overloaded pickup van which was to take him straight home.

I felt sick with grief. I asked Uncle Kawayida what he thought had happened, but he did not want to talk about it. He was waiting for the arrival of Serenity to make a plan for a detailed search. In the meantime, he asked what I wanted to do in the future, what I was doing for money. I told him about Aunt’s monthly liquor-brewing activities. He made calculations by scratching figures on his hand with his index fingernail.
He shook his head and said that it was a good business. What did I think of taking part? I said it was too dangerous. He replied that it was dangerous businesses that paid. I found the suggestion repulsive. How could I, the former seminary librarian, the ouster of Fr. Mindi, the terror of Fr. Lageau, the future lawyer, do something as crude as brewing liquor in a discarded oil drum over a wood fire? I was cut out for white-collar jobs that earned clean money. I said I was planning to do part-time teaching jobs. He screwed his lips into a pensive pout. No money, he implied. How long would I continue to depend on Aunt? I felt tongue-tied and misunderstood. I asked him about his turkey and chicken business.

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. Lakes 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.