Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

“An order to recall the Wizard of the Crow can come only from the Ruler’s lips,” said Kaboca, and they all knew that the Ruler was not in a position to issue any order.

The Wizard of the Crow had calmly watched the drama of the unwrapping of the mirrors and their placement in a pile before him. But inside he was all turmoil. Time was running out, and he still had not worked out how to extricate himself from this mess. How would he play with the mirrors convincingly in front of this crowd? He was almost certainly performing his own death, but he was equally convinced that the Ruler would not do anything drastic against him on the spot in front of the local and foreign media. The reprieve would delay his death by a few hours only. What would Nyawlra do if she were in a similar position? But she had been! As the Limping Witch, she had daringly gone right into the belly of the Aburirian beast!

He felt courage suffuse him. Why see the warts of the land only when reflected in Western eyes? No, he was not going to play the game of foreign mirrors. The truth he carried within and the eyes of the people were the only mirrors he would now use. “I have been asked to use mirrors imported from abroad to smoke out enemies of the State,” the Wizard of the Crow started.

He asked a policeman to lend him a club. Then he took the first mirror, read aloud the country of its origins, and then set about breaking it. He took the second and third. Systematically he broke all the imported mirrors, and at this act of defiance people started clapping in rhythm.

“Since true divination is about revealing the hidden,” he said, “I want to share with you the secrets of my heart. I know Nyawlra. I love her and will never betray her, even if I must go to the land of no return. Nyawlra, I know, will be there with me, for she found me in pieces and made me whole. What she did before, making pieces whole, she will do again.” He paused as if to catch his breath.

Clever fellow, a few skeptics muttered. Trying to flush her out of her hiding place, eh? But even they were touched by his tone as he now called out softly, as if addressing someone very near:

“Nyawlra, I embrace you with all my heart and soul, with the people as my witness that truth never dies, its glory never fades. Holiness lies in wholeness.”

The Wizard of the Crow felt a gentle breeze wafting the scent of flowers into his nostrils, a scent he knew so well but had not smelled for a long while. He felt a new surge of power, power rooted in his sure knowledge that his words had struck a responsive chord in the hearts of those assembled and reached Nyawlra, wherever she was among the people. He felt good because the words came from the depths of his being and he was ready to die for them.

“Nyawlra is you. Nyawlra is you and me and others,” the Wizard of the Crow continued, without fear. “If you know that you are Nyawlra, please rise so that those who have been looking for you, calling you an enemy of the State, may see you. Nyawlra, show us the way”

A woman stood up; I am Nyawlra, she said. Hardly had the eyes of the people turned to her than a man stood up and said, I am Nyawlra; he was followed by every other woman and man until the entire assembly proclaimed itself Nyawlra.

Big Ben Mambo, the Minister of Information, and his official escort remained seated. The police and army officers who were already standing found themselves in an awkward position: they did not know whether or not to sit so as not to be counted as Nyawlra. They remained standing anyway, and for a few minutes it looked as if the army and the police were one with the people.

Cameramen did not know on whom to focus. And to the government agents, Nyawlra was everywhere. One woman started shouting: How many tribes are there? Others replied two, producers and parasites.

Voices rose in song:

Come, come, the weak and the strong

Let’s build a beautiful land

Bring your knowledge and your heart

The whole assembly was dancing now, one group working its way to the platform. And before Big Ben Mambo had time to react or figure out what was going on, a protective wall around the Wizard of the Crow had been formed.

He felt a dancing presence beside him and knew it was Nyawlra.

Their eyes met. They held hands and for a minute or so they danced to the song, a twosome indistinguishable from all the other dancers. Even so, the Wizard of the Crow and the Limping Witch felt as if they were in a world all their own, but one guarded and protected by the unity of the Aburlrian people.

When at the State House the Ruler, his body still grossly expanding, saw what was happening on television, he brooded: How dare they sing and dance for joy when I am in infernal pain? It is time to scatter them with money. He gathered whatever strength he still had to make one more effort at teledirecting. He had hardly finished instructing one of the pilots to start dropping money from on high when a new wave of agony swept through him. He dropped the mobile phone; it clattered on the floor, as by now his body was taking up the whole chamber, pushing his doctors and cameramen up against the walls.

Nyawlra heard the whine of a helicopter in the sky, looked up, and saw it dropping leaves as people shouted. The pieces of paper floated gently as if suspended. Before she could push to the microphone to tell the people that it was counterfeit, the dictator’s trickery to corrupt their souls and scatter them through temptation, she had a premonition. She looked behind her. Her eyes saw Kaniürü. She had never seen hate and jealousy burn so intensely as she now saw in his eyes.

He was pressing hard against the crowd, heading straight to the platform. Nyawlra quickly glanced around for an escape route. She saw two formations from two different directions pressing against the crowd, all converging toward the Wizard of the Crow.

Kaniürü held a gun. At first she thought he was pointing it at her. But no! He was pointing it at the Wizard of the Crow, and before she could cry out a warning Kaniürü had fired a shot. She was unable to scream; she threw herself on the fallen body of the Wizard of the Crow as if to shield him from further harm. She saw Kaniürü now pointing the gun at where she lay. We are finished, she muttered to herself.

Somebody jumped on Kaniürü and wrestled him to the ground. The gun went off in the air. People nearby screamed in horror. Kaniürü and his adversary were rolling around on the ground, the man trying to get the gun, Kaniürü fiercely resisting. She had seen the man’s face somewhere before, Nyawlra thought. But she had no time to dwell on the thought.

Suddenly, thunder split the sky. People felt the earth tremble. Kaniürü and his adversary stopped struggling momentarily. Fearing for his life, Kaniürü dropped his gun and simply took off. He had been preceded by his famously courageous youth, some of them crying out in despair, Oh dear, we have been caught red-handed, as they bumped against others also scampering.

Finding himself without a protector, the ex-garbage driver also fled, moaning to himself, It is Satan, not once looking back until, fortunately, he fell in with a group of Soldiers of Christ at the incinerated remains of a building and he immediately submitted himself to Christ, assuming a new name, Pilot-of-Souls.

At the People’s Assembly, Kaniürü’s adversary ran after him and shot him in the leg. Kaniürü fell, but despite the pain of his wound managed to limp away.

And then another crack of thunder, followed by six more, each louder than the previous one. It is raining bombs in the land! some people shouted, the entire place now a chaos of anguished cries and running feet.

Caught unaware, the armed forces at the assembly assumed that a coup was taking place at the State House. Soldiers and police waited for word from their superiors, who waited in turn for word from theirs, who waited for word from their commander in chief. Word never came. The chain of command seemed to have broken somewhere. Uncertainty and panic led to random shootings. Terrified people were running to and fro, pointing to the sky and saying, It is doomsday.