Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

It was in his hotel in New York during his first visit as the Minister of Finance that Tajirika had happened to read an issue of the Billionaire, a magazine about the richest men and corporations in the world; almost all the men white Americans, and almost all the corporations based in America. He started musing about the fate of nations. America, a former colony, was still rising, while Britain, its colonizer, was rolling downward toward Third World misery. And suddenly, out of nowhere, the answer to a problem that had always bothered him about his white-ache came to him. The cure the Wizard of the Crow had prescribed had been in response to Tajirika’s desire to become a white Englishman, moreover an ex-colonial type. The white American male was the desirable ideal. Yes. He should have aspired to be a white American male. But alas, it was now too late to do anything about it. The Wizard of the Crow had been shot dead by Kaniürü and his effigy buried; and as far as Tajirika was concerned that was the end of the matter. No more ifs and ifness for him, especially now with his dramatic rise from jailbird to gold digger to governor to minister and who knows what else awaited himr

And then one day at a New York street corner somebody handed him a leaflet, and when he later looked at it he saw that it was an advertisement for a clinic specializing in genetic engineering, cloning, transplants, and plastic surgery. The ad claimed that the company, Genetica Inc., grew all the body parts in its own laboratory and that its very highly trained staff could change anybody into any identity of their desire, quickly and efficiently, without any side effects.

He read the ad over and over and started to tremble. His white-ache, which had been in remission, came back with a force that almost swept him off the ground.

This time around, Tajirika did not hide his secret desire and what he intended to do about it from Vinjinia. Vinjinia agreed that Tajirika could become an American white if he so wanted, but she, Vinjinia, would stay black and settle for a mixed marriage. But she insisted on a quid pro quo, a face- and breast-lift for herself, to which he readily agreed. So while Kaniürü, the then Minister of Defense, was secretly buying pornographic videos on Forty-second Street, Tajirika and Vin-jinia were secretly visiting the Genetica clinic. By the time Tajirika went home with the rest of the delegation, he was the recipient of a white right arm as the first stage in his transformation, obliging him to wear a glove, but that was okay.

Tajirika and Vinjinia were soon back in New York, and after one week Vinjinia was the happy recipient of a more youthful face and firmer breasts and Tajirika had added a white left leg to his one-white-armed body. Half white, half black, he always wore pants and long-sleeved shirts, and of course a glove on the right hand. When people commented on the glove he explained that it was his way of commemorating the first time his minister’s hand had shaken the Ruler’s.

Then tragedy struck. Tajirika was making preparations to return to America for the other body parts to complete his transformation when he read in a newspaper that the clinic had been closed because it was not licensed. He also read, to his dismay, that the company, Genetica Inc., was bankrupt and under police investigation. The feds were considering releasing the names and records of clients, the better to uncover the criminal elements and foreign spies involved in the disreputable company. So despite his incomplete state and loss of money to boot, Tajirika dared not complain, remaining a man in transition, with a white left leg and a white right arm. Luckily for him Vinjinia was privy to his predicament, and together they resolved to keep this between husband and wife until such time as they could find a licensed lab with the appropriate genetic technology to complete the transformation. He never swam in public, and even at home he had to be careful in case the workers and unexpected guests caught him with his legs and arms uncovered.

They of course did not tell the children about what they had done. Though the children noticed their mother’s youthful looks and firm breasts and maybe even thought them a little strange, there was nothing completely out of the ordinary about Vinjinia. But when Gaciru saw her father naked as she was going to the bathroom to change, she thought that she was seeing an ogre and suddenly her mother’s transformation acquired a different meaning. She could hardly run to her for protection. Perhaps these ogres had taken over the bodies of their parents as ogres almost certainly did in stories, except that this was not a story, and her solution was to run away, beckoning her brother to follow, no questions asked. That was when she got stuck in the Lake of Tears.

In church one day, Gacirü had whispered to Maritha and Mariko the reason she had tried to run away, and they in turn had whispered it to Nyawlra, who whispered it to Kamltl.

“A permanent clown,” observed Nyawlra.

“A man in a permanent state of transition,” commented Kamltl.

Baby D’s Aburlria was full of ironies resulting in daily wonders of tears and laughter. There was a year when people were told that the official celebrations of the Ruler’s birthday involved their going to the nearest bookshop in the morning to pick up yet another special gift from the Ruler and then repairing in the afternoon to the Ruler’s stadium to commemorate some sort of anniversary of Baby D. But whyr Everyone knew how much the Ruler loathed books and writers who would not sing his praises.

Curiosity drove Kamltl and Nyawlra to the shops, where they found stacks upon stacks of a newly minted book, The Birth of Baby D: The Ruler and the Evolution of an African Statesman: An Objective Biography, written by Henry Morton Stanley, A White Englishman.

In the book, whatever ills had befallen Aburlria during his reign, like Rachael’s disappearance and the attempted coups by the likes of Markus Machokali and Big Ben Mambo, were blamed on the late Wizard of the Crow and the Limping Witch, and that was why the State had sentenced the already dead sorcerers to a second death and burned their effigies to make sure that even in Hell they would suffer more than the other inmates.

“Our deaths are confirmed in a book,” commented Nyawlra. “If you ever hear the name Wizard of the Crow mentioned, you must not respond by look or gesture.”

“This applies to the Limping Witch also,” Kamltl said. “Maybe that is what Vinjinia was telling us. That we let those names die.”

They looked at each other, feeling sad that the characters Wizard of the Crow and the Limping Witch would have to be no more.

It was soon after this that leaflets bearing the symbol of a viper and a two-mouthed ogre with the slogan Let Them Not Kill Our Future were scattered in every village and town. It was the first open and mass challenge to Baby D. Every upheaval during the regime of the Ruler, like the drama of shame, had been preceded by leaflets.

The Ruler summoned his most trusted counselor, the Minister of Defense. Tajirika had just returned from yet another trip to Washington, where he had concluded an agreement on joint military exercises in Aburlria. The discussion touched on a whole range of other matters, for instance, the leasing of land at the coast for permanent American military bases, and he came out feeling that he was being appreciated not only as the Ruler’s Defense Minister but as a leader in his own right. He had even had a private dinner with the retired ambassador Gemstone, attended by leaders of the business community, including defense contractors. The dinner was so secret that even his own bodyguards did not know about it. In his talks, Tajirika had it be known how close he had been to the late Machokali, his friend- in fact, Tajirika had been his protege, which seemed to go well with Washington and emboldened him to repeat the same claims in London.