Henning Mankell - I Die, but the Memory Lives on

Aida could get at the cockerel, but not at the 'somebody' she thought had inflicted the disease on her mother.

But I can't be certain what Aida believed or didn't believe.

There are many fallacies about Aids. Not least with regard to what happens in the critical stages that lead to death, what is known as "full-blown" Aids. One of the fallacies is that the really horrific aspect of the disease is the way it strikes in haphazard fashion, and often affects very young people. What creates angst in a person is the psychological torment of knowing that you are going to die early from a disease that you could have avoided. The physical symptoms, as the disease takes hold, are that you lose a lot of weight, grow very tired, might have a lot of sores, and then die of something like pneumonia when your immune system can no longer cope. There is rarely any mention of the fact that Aids can lead to a mental deterioration that causes suffering worse than practically anything else.

The people I spoke to in Uganda seemed to be aware of this, however. They didn't hide behind fallacies even if the illusion might have been a temporary consolation. It seemed to me that Moses, Christine, Gladys and all the rest approached what was in store for them with their eyes wide open. It was a duel they had already lost. Once again it was that dignity that I couldn't help but notice everywhere, and that I think of now above all else as I write these words. The dignity that was so important to all those who had been infected with the disease.

On one occasion we met, I told Christine a story. It was about something I experienced in the early 1990s in northern Mozambique. A few days later when I went back to her house, she asked me to tell her the story again. This time Aida was there too.

It was a story about dignity.

During the long and difficult civil war that ravaged Mozambique – from the early 1980s until 1992 – I made a journey to the Cabo Delgado province in the north. One day in November 1990, I was in a place just south of the border with Tanzania. The area had been badly affected by the war. Many people had been killed or crippled, and starvation was widespread since most of the crops had been burnt. It was like entering an Inferno where misery rose like smoke all along the dusty roads.

One day I took a path that led to a tiny village. A young man came walking towards me. It seemed as if he was walking out of the sun. His clothes were in tatters. He could have been nineteen, maybe twenty. When he came closer, I noticed his feet. I saw something I shall never forget as long as I live. I can see it before my very eyes as I am telling this tale now. Rarely does a day pass when I don't think about this boy who was coming towards me as if from out of the sun. What did I see? His feet. He had painted shoes on to his feet. He had mixed paint from the soil and preserved his dignity for as long as possible. He had no boots, no shoes, nothing, not even a pair of sandals made from the remains of a car tyre. As he had no shoes, he had to make some himself, so he painted a pair of shoes on to his feet, and in doing so he boosted his awareness that, despite all his misery and destitution, he was a human being with dignity.

I thought at the time and I still think now that of all the strangers I have met in my life, this meeting may have been the most important of all. For what he told me with his feet was that human dignity can be preserved and maintained when all else seems lost. I learned that we should all be aware that there could come a day when we too will have to paint shoes on to our feet. And when that day comes, it is important that we know that we possess that ability. I don't know what his name was. He couldn't speak Portuguese and I didn't understand his language. I have often wondered what became of him. He is most probably dead, though I have no way of knowing for sure. But the image of his feet will always be with me.

It was like telling a fairy story, I thought. But Christine knew it was true. She turned to Aida.

"Do you understand what he is talking about?" she asked.

Aida nodded. But she didn't say anything. And Christine didn't push her to provide an answer, like the sensible mother she was.

I've seen it once. A person's face just after being told that she has tested positive. But I didn't see it just in her face. The pain and the shock was all over her body. Her feet were screaming, her arms were flailing desperately so as not to go berserk, despite the fact that they were hanging down by her sides.

It was a woman, and she can't have been more than twenty. It was in Maputo, in a private clinic of the simpler kind. I was there to check my blood pressure. I waited outside the closed door to the doctor's consulting room. It opened and the woman emerged. I knew immediately even though I didn't know: this young African woman had just been told that she was HIV-positive. She was just setting out on life, but had found that her time had been brutally cut short. Her life was coming to an end almost before it had started.

She walked away down the corridor. When they measured my blood pressure it was extremely high. The doctor frowned. But I told him it was only temporary. Something had happened shortly before I entered his room that had forced up my blood pressure. Now it was on its way down again.

I keep some people very close at hand, easily accessible in my memory. Aida is one, that nameless woman is another. I wonder very often what became of her, whether she is still alive.

There was once a famous library in Alexandria. It contained the sum of human wisdom, or as much of it as was recorded, on its shelves. Then it burnt down. Now, a few months before I go to Uganda, I pay a visit to the newly opened library in Alexandria. Architecturally, it is a remarkable creation. More of a cultural centre than a straightforward library. At the time of my visit an Austrian symphony orchestra is rehearsing in one of the halls.

While I am in Uganda it occurs to me that if all the memory books that are now being written could be gathered together, they might fill the library in Alexandria. There are so many memories to be written down, so many million little books will be left behind after the people who will shortly die from Aids. The vast majority of these millions of people will die too young. Most of their lives will be cut unjustly short. Many of their children, who are going to receive these books and are the reason why they are being written, will have been made homeless and will end up wandering aimlessly from continent to continent.

Then I have a vision: empty, abandoned libraries, and the great collections of books find themselves with no readers.

It is not a totally outrageous thought. Many a plot could be composed that would be just the thing for a science-fiction movie. There is already research which predicts that certain countries or regions in Africa south of the Sahara will be ruined if Aids continues to spread at the rate it is today. What they say should be taken seriously. The social fabric will be altered. A large percentage of the workforce will be wiped out, making society increasingly dependent on child labour. To make things yet worse, the whole existing intellectual heritage will be in danger of dying out because young people who are infected will not be able to raise the motivation for studies.

Wilderness, child labour, silence. Many people refuse to believe that this could happen. Or at least, think it is a threat that won't concern us for a very long time to come. But it takes only about nine hours to fly from the heart of Europe to the heart of Africa. In other words, a good night's sleep or a somewhat extended working day, and you are in the centre of what is threatening to become a wasteland, a return to the most primitive circumstances for work and property.