Dinaw Mengestu - All Our Names

“It’s nothing,” he said. “They are doing exactly what they said they would.”

“This is what you wanted me to see.”

He took my hand again.

“No. What I want to show you is much better.”

We walked back toward the market. When we reached the last stalls, Isaac led us in between them onto a path that was barely visible and looked as if it led directly into the bush. Waist-high grass gave way to a dense pocket of trees. I expected Isaac to tell me that my only option was to take my chances in the wild, like the refugees I had seen that morning, but just as abruptly as the forest began, it ended. Before us was a wide, circular clearing, at least a hundred feet in diameter, in the center of which was a single-story house, made of concrete and wood and painted white on all four sides.

Isaac unlocked the front door, which was carved with signs and symbols that most likely were never intended to be put on a door; he used a lone key he had hidden in his shoe. He led me inside. All the windows were shuttered, but light flooded the main room through the skylights that lined the ceiling. There was no furniture. The floors were made of the same wood as the door and the beams on the roof; even with the dust, they shone.

“This is what you wanted to show me?”

“This is only part of it,” he said.

He walked to the center of the main room, knelt down, and wiped a bit of dust with his finger.

“Joseph had floors like this in his home in Kampala,” he said. “I wish you could have seen it. He had a woman who scrubbed it every day on her knees. He told me the wood came from a tree in Brazil. I asked him where Brazil was. I had heard of it, but I thought maybe it was in Africa. He showed me where it was on a map, and promised someday we would go there together.

“This is not the same wood,” he said. “He used the trees outside. The floors in Kampala were made of mahogany.”

Isaac led me on a tour of the other rooms, which branched off from the main room into two separate wings. Each room was virtually identical — wooden floors, white walls, windows that looked onto the back — but they had all been assigned different functions that distinguished them even when empty. Isaac named each one.

This was going to be the dining room.

This was for the servants.

This was the kitchen.

This was the library.

He did the same with the other wing of the house, except now he lingered a bit longer on each room we passed.

“These were the guest rooms,” he said. “Joseph has little family left, but he has many friends all over the world. In Europe. Even in America.”

The next room was Joseph’s. We didn’t enter: we stood in the doorway, as if afraid of disturbing someone sleeping inside.

“He wanted the smallest bedroom in the house. I asked him why build a house with so many rooms if you have such a small one for yourself. He said I shouldn’t think of them just as rooms. Each one was a different part of his life. He had a room for work, for friends, for guests, and one to be alone in.”

We continued to the last one, which was larger than Joseph’s, and which was the brightest of all the rooms, with light coming in on three sides through the slats in the shutters. This time, Isaac entered. When he reached the center, he said, “And Joseph promised me this was going to be my room.”

He took a few seconds to consider what he had said before turning to face me.

“You understand what I am telling you?”

I said yes without pausing to consider if it was true. Only later would I understand that Isaac wasn’t confessing; he was telling me how much he was about to lose.

He began to make a slow tour of the room.

“Joseph wants me to go study in America. He’s made all the arrangements. He says I could come back in a year and it will be safe — the fighting will be over. He knows he can’t win, but he thinks the British will make it end, and they will make him vice-president or prime minister. He says this is the future of democracy in Africa. He thinks it will only be a matter of time until he becomes president, and then he can do whatever he wants. None of it is true, though. He will never be president. There will never be a house with enough rooms for us to live in.

“I asked him once, ‘What kind of revolutionary has a woman scrub his floors?’ He laughed at me. He said, ‘That’s why people become revolutionaries — so they can have someone else clean their floors.’ What could I say to that? I was living in his house by then. For the first time in my life, every day when I woke up I had clean clothes, and something to eat two, three times a day, as much as I wanted. Once I had that, I realized my revolution was over.”

Isaac opened the windows in what would have been his room. A banana tree right outside tempered the heat and allowed a slightly cool breeze to blow through. He leaned his body over the frame and stuck his head outside.

“He thinks I am already halfway to Kenya by now, but I wanted to see this house again. Neither of us will ever live here.”

“We can leave now,” I said.

“I promise, soon we will.”

The sun covered the room in a yellow haze. Not since our first day at Joseph’s house in the capital had I felt such peace. We knew to do our best not to disturb it. We took a place on the floor against the back wall and held that pose until dusk approached. The light shifted from yellow to a reddish pink, a sign that the air was full of sand and dust from a strong wind blowing in from somewhere.

Isaac stood up first.

“We should go now,” he said. “Joseph will be at the hotel soon. I need to tell him we are leaving.”

I didn’t argue; I wanted him to have his goodbye if it meant he was free to leave. We took the shortest route back to the main road. When we arrived, we were exactly halfway between the bronze fist and the hotel. The dust had turned what would have been a common sunset into an occasion to color the sky a shade of red that was either glorious or frightening to witness. We stood at the intersection and looked up until we heard a large diesel engine and could see a lorry and a car trailing it, approaching us.

“Here they come,” Isaac said.

“You don’t want to leave now?” I asked him.

“There is one more thing I have to show you,” he said.

We arrived at the hotel before the cars. Isaac said it was best if I waited for him in one of the other rooms while he spoke to Joseph.

“I will come find you when it is time to leave,” he said.

The injured soldiers were still lying in the courtyard; three had passed away since morning, and their bodies were draped in light-blue sheets lifted from the beds. The soldier who had told me to bury the bodies was gone, as were many others, but there must have been at least two dozen able-bodied men remaining.

Isaac suggested I take a room on the second floor, where I would have more privacy. I climbed the stairs while he remained in the courtyard. He wanted me to stay in my room until he was finished, but I couldn’t resist seeing Joseph again.

The lorry full of soldiers and the sedan trailing it stopped in front of the hotel. Isaac was standing in the middle of the courtyard with his arms folded, as if he were the owner waiting for his guests to arrive. When soldiers entered with their guns drawn and pointed squarely at him, he seemed more amused than bothered. They formed a semicircle around the courtyard, while a second wave of men entered, with Joseph securely hidden in the middle. They were the same guards who had been with him at the house in the capital — tall, powerful men whose loyalty had been bought. Once inside the courtyard, they opened up just enough for me to see Joseph. He was no longer dressed as a soldier. He had traded in his fatigues for a dark three-piece suit, a return to his original role as a politician rather than a soldier.