Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

“And why not cover them?”

“Our clothes are long gone,” the apparitions whispered.

But each rider had retained his shoulder flap with police identification numbers, and each was clutching the license plate of his motorcycle. When the interrogating officers looked into the records they were able to confirm that indeed such men had once existed, but their files had been closed and marked MISSING AND PRESUMED DEAD.

The riders did not seem to know one another. They had never met since setting out on their mission, but their narratives were almost identical. They told harrowing stories of people from even the remotest corners of the globe forming queues and demanding change. Now, despite years of lonely toil, they were glad to report that people in Aburlria were catching up with the rest of the world; and that from north, south, east, and west, nay, from the remotest rural villages and urban centers, queues were forming and slowly marching toward the capital, singing an end to the causes of all the cries of the dispossessed. They want a clean atmosphere so that people can have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and clean spaces to live and enjoy. They reject the rule of the viper and the ogre. Their songs end up in chorus with the other parts of the globe: Don’t let them kill our future.

“These incorrigible liars must be charged with desertion and treason for stirring up the populace to queue and march toward the capital,” the police chief said, angry at the bad name that these four had given the Aburlrian police in the world.

But when they showed him letters carefully sewn inside the shoulder flaps, letters with the Ruler’s message and signature, he recalled an earlier saga way back involving a rider in the central region and said to himself, This matter calls for a decision from above, and sent an urgent report to the State House. The Ruler said, Oh, no, these deserters are doing this because they had heard that I forgave the rider from the central region. That was the wrong message to send, and now I must show to all and sundry the fate of those who defy my decree that civil servants must never wear long hair and beards. The riders should be charged with treason before a special court, and when it came to hanging instead of a noose woven from sisal one fashioned from their hair and beards should be used.

What do you think? said the Ruler, turning to his Minister of Defense and trusted counselor, Titus Tajirika.

The counselor was struck dumb by the whole saga. The wonder of the supreme deity having covered the apparitions with natural wear from head to foot had left an indelible mark on his imagination: a sudden incandescence illuminating nameless possibilities. Was that how prophets and seers arrived at new thoughts? How the Wizard of the Crow used to get the visions of the hidden?

He felt a surge of power within, rendering him fearless of the Ruler, at least concerning the spirit riders. He did not even know how the words came to him.

“Masks of deity,” murmured Tajirika at last. “Truly God works in mysterious ways.”

“What are you talking about?” asked the Ruler, startled out of his own thoughts.

“The riders. Their appearance, hair from head to foot. Natural masks. Messengers from the supreme deity. Bearded spirits.”

“Did you say bearded spirits’?”

“It is obvious, my Lord, that these are no ordinary beings!”

“Have them executed immediately,” screamed the Ruler, strangely agitated.

“Before they are executed, put them on national television exactly as they are to tell the nation that they are spirits sent by the Lord to tell the citizenry not to fall for lies by the new generation of daydreamers clamoring for a new tomorrow. After you, there is no tomorrow.”

What brilliance of insight, thought the Ruler, feeling calmer having suddenly seen the way to outwit oracles and end all threats to the immortality of his rule! Aburlrians were deeply religious. Even street sweepers were forming their own sects and gaining followers! So once they hear the riders from the Lord, people will take whatever they say as a direct command from above. And if they don’t heed the ban from Heaven, then the anger of the Lord will visit them with merciless vengeance.

The words that after him there was no tomorrow kept buzzing in his head. He was Aburlria, so how could there be any future after him? He recalled what he used to tell Rachael before he sent her stubborn eyes toward Hell. Yes, I used to tell her that I could bring her future to a standstill, freeze it in the moment, he said to himself, gazing at Tajirika with increasing awe and amazement. The Ruler had not been mistaken when he had seen and realized that a man who could take over an armed camp with only a bucket of shit was unusually gifted, and now he had shown him the way to outwit oracles and spirits, affirming the Ruler’s belief that he himself was the supreme sorcerer.

At this moment of absolute belief in his counselor, he sensed in Tajirika’s offer of advice and his confident tone the danger he posed. Yes, this man of uncanny insights might one day feel emboldened to challenge his authority. He would strike first. Confront danger before it was too late. This guiding principle in dealing with political adversaries and friends had served him well.

He had a sudden moment of inspiration. Just as the Lord of Heaven will one day call the world to account, he, too, would call Aburlria to account. What he once told Rachael he would tell to Aburlria. And what he did to Rachael he would do to Aburlria, thus enacting what had never been done by any ruler before him: freeze or even abolish the future of a country. His instrument would be none other than Tajirika. He would send Tajirika on one more mission.

His plan was simplicity itself. He would send his devoted minister, his very trusted counselor, on a last mission, to order the army for a massacre. Blood would flow. And after the massacre he would set up a commission of inquiry supervised by a couple of observers from America and the European Union, if necessary, which would end up blaming his Minister of Defense. He would then have him executed publicly.

Thought, Word, and Deed!

He told Tajirika to put the riders on television, as he had so magnificently proposed. They should say that all queuing and agitation for tomorrow must cease immediately and that if the people failed to heed the call from their ancestors, then the spirits would urge the Ruler to halt the progress of time; the whole country would be bewitched in one endless moment by sorcery, for there was no tomorrow beyond the Ruler. He then asked Tajirika, in his capacity as the Defense Minister, to order the armed forces to mow down any resistance twenty-four hours after the ultimatum.

Tajirika was hearing the last details of his mission with his thoughts wandering. The talk of a frozen future triggered Tajirika’s memories of the Museum of Suspended Motion. Had that been a sign of things to come? That he would one day become the chosen instrument to freeze the future of… whor

He looked up and saw the intensity of light in the Ruler’s eyes, and he did not like what he read in it. He acted on instinct rather than cool reason using whatever was at hand, in this case, words.

“My Lord, I am only your Minister of Defense. Everybody knows that you are the commander in chief, and for chiefs of staff and commanding officers to believe me when I ask them to act I need your written and signed authority, as much for that as to have the masked riders, awaiting execution for treason, released for their appearance on television. I need the seal of your office, my Lord, to bolster my authority. As for the four riders, I think I should first bring them to you so that when speaking on national television they will be animated by the warmth of recent contact with you. You know that your handshake means a lot,” he added, glancing at his gloved hand.