Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

“But thank you for your magic tonight. It saved us,” Nyawlra said. “Now tell me this,” she added in a slightly more serious vein. “When did you join the band of beggars? I had not seen you in the group before.”

Kamltl gobbled another mouthful of ugali.

“Where shall I begin?” he asked as a means of clearing the way for his story. “I come from KTambugi. My parents were not rich, so paying for my schooling was a burden. They had to sell off their chickens, goats, and eventually their land, thus leaving us with nothing for a rainy day. When I finished college, I thought my time had come to show my gratitude. Aburlria thought otherwise. I have been a pest to my friends-this one for a place to spend the night, another for something to put in my belly. Borrowing here and there for bus fare.”

“And Bahati? You told me you lived in Bahati!” she asked.

“I am sorry-I lied, or rather I misled you. I was playing with the word’s dual meaning, suggesting a place to you, which it is. But it was really that I live wherever luck and chance guide me. Then one day I told myself, I must no longer burden my friends. I will follow in the footsteps of John the Baptist and make my bed in the wilderness. And like the homeless I would seek my sustenance in the garbage dump. At first it felt good that I no longer humiliated myself before my friends; but still, even my self-debasement was hard on the soul. If you lose self-esteem, what are you left with?

“The question nagged me, and then one day I decided that my life must take another direction, a different direction, the way of a Buddhist monk. So it was that I decided on two uniforms: that of the job seeker by day and that of the beggar by night. Tonight was my first night as a beggar, and see where it got me…”

Kamltl stopped abruptly. He felt that Nyawlra was not really listening to him, and he was right. He looked at her and her eyes said it all, even as she voiced her disbelief.

“You mean you were there to beg for real?” she asked.

“Why weren’t you?” Kamltl responded, puzzled.

“You mean… you are not… not one of us?”

“How do you mean, one of you? What were you doing outside Paradise in the rags of a beggar?”

“Nothing. Nothing, really. We oppose the Buler’s birthday cake and the Global Bank mission of putting us in a permanent debt trap. We must all oppose this business of Marching to Heaven.”

“By pretending to be poor and beggars?” Kamltl asked, a tinge of bitterness in his voice. “What is the connection between doing politics and donning rags? Do you think that begging is theater?”

“A theater of politics,” she shot back. “The water I drink, the food I eat, the clothes I wear, the bed I sleep on, are all determined by politics, good or bad. Politics is about power and how it is used. Politics involves choosing sides in the struggle for power. So on which side are you?”

“Must one always be on this or that side? I believe in humanity, divine, indivisible. We all need to look deeply in our hearts and the humanity in us will be revealed in all its glory. Then greed and the drive to humiliate others will come to a halt.”

“And this glorious humanity you wax so poetic about, what turns it against itself? Original sin?”

“Listen. I am not a priest. I am not a politician. The tribulations of this world are too much for me and my will.”

“So why did you choose to stand outside the gates of Paradise when there were so many other seven-star hotels around?”

He did not respond immediately. Images of what had happened all day flashed across his mind. Tell it all to her, a stranger? No, not everything.

“I did not choose to be there,” he now told her. “I just found myself there. I was blinded with anger and hunger. I went where they led me. What happens in life is fate. Fate falls like rain from Heaven above, and like rain it does not fall on all equally. Fortune, good and bad, comes from God.”

Nyawlra interrupted him with a hymn:

In the Christian Heaven we shall meet

We shall meet in the Christian Heaven

She laughed a little. Kamltl looked at her: this woman was chameleonlike. One moment she was a faithful secretary, then a player in the politics of poverty, and even a singing religious fanatic.

“Are you religious?” she asked him.

“Why?”

“Because you said that the good and the bad come to us ready-made from Heaven above. Did you, when in India, convert to some religion that believes that the poor and the wealthy are born so? That their fate is predetermined? Then what would be the point of one looking into one’s heart for humanity revealed in all its glory? What if what one sees is tainted? What if the taint is fated?”

“I don’t know,” Kamltl said vaguely.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Nyawlra pressed him. “How can you be religious and not know, or not know what religion you subscribe to?”

“Because… because… I don’t know. Sometimes I feel overcome by unanswerable questions. Who created the universe? The lives in the bodies that die-where do they go? Or is life an illusion? Maya, as the Indian Shankara would teach. Sometimes at night, alone in the wilderness, lying on my back, looking at the stars and the vast universe, I feel lifted out… I mean, I hear voices telling me, Kamrö, why do you burden yourself with so much worry? See how big the universe is? What are you in the face of its immensity and eternity? No, I would not say that I am religious, but I believe in something greater than us. And you?”

“Have you ever heard of the Animal of the Earth?” Nyawlra asked him suddenly. “Surely you’ve heard the rumor that the Ruler of Aburlria is a Devil worshipper and that he does so in the name of the Animal of the Earth?”

Kamltl sensed rather than knew clearly what she was talking about, but it was enough to raise in him new suspicions. Could this woman be a member of the dreaded Ruler’s M5? And would that not explain why she had impersonated a beggar? Was he the victim of a new plot? Had she been trying to compromise him? If so, she was good at it. Her talk and kindness had already softened him. For although they did not see eye to eye on all the issues, their disagreements had so far not degenerated into anger or hatred. They talked as if they had grown up together, knowing each other in times of sorrow and happiness. Kamrö was so at ease in her presence that he felt as if he could reveal his innermost thoughts and experiences. But weren’t the agents of the State renowned for seducing their victims into lowering their guards, and then pouncing on them? Kamrö became wary of Nyawlra and withdrew into himself.

“What do you mean by Animal of the Earth?”

“That which crawls on its belly?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“The one that deceived Adam and Eve?” Nyawlra continued as she rose and went to her own beggar’s bag and bent over it. Kamltl was quite sure that he saw her take something out, which she now held behind her as she stood facing him.

“Close your eyes,” she said, smiling.

Kamltl pretended to cover his eyes with the palms of his hands while peeking through the gaps between his fingers.

“Look now!” Nyawlra told him, dangling what she had been holding a few inches from his face. Kamltl jumped from his seat.

“A snake!” he cried, bolting for the door.

But Nyawlra beat him to it.

“No, I will not let you go,” she said, brandishing the fork-tongued snake at him. “It is a viper. Very dangerous,” she whispered menacingly.

When growing up Kamltl used to hear stories of women who lived in the big waters who would sometimes appear alongside unsuspecting male swimmers and accompany them to the edges of the sea. Their faces were very beautiful, their swimming tops hung delicately over the tips of their pointed breasts, and their narrow waists seemed to be inviting the onlooker to embrace them.