Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

“Dr. Yunice Immaculate Mgenzi,” he called out.

Slowly and deliberately, the silent woman stood up; she was truly striking in poise and general appearance.

“Do you see this woman?” he continued. “In the days of the cold war this one you now see was a revolutionary. Very radical. Her name said it all. Dr. Yunity Mgeuzi-Bila-Shaka. You see? A revolutionary without a doubt. Maoist. Alikuwa mtu ya Beijing. But in the final days of the cold war, she gave up this revolutionary foolishness, repented, and pledged faithful service to me. Did I jail her? No. I even asked Big Ben Mambo to give her a job as an information officer, and now I am happy to announce that I have appointed Dr. Yunice Immaculate Mgenzi as the next deputy to my ambassador in Washington. The first woman in the history of Aburlria to hold such a post.”

Dr. Mgenzi acknowledged the thunderous applause from the crowd with a bow and a wave of the hand, and then sat down.

“And now,” continued the Buler when the applause subsided, “I want to talk about another radical who used to breathe fire and brimstone at imperialism, capitalism, colonialism, neocolonialism, the whole lot. He used to go by the name of Dr. Luminous Karamu-Mbu-ya-Itulka. You see, calling on luminous pens to scrawl revolution? An agitator. A Moscow man. Educated in East Germany’s Institute of Marxist Bevolutionary Journalism. There was even a time when some of our neighbors, drunk with the foolishness of African socialism, had hired his services to write radical articles calling for class struggle in Africa. As soon as it was clear that communism was a spent force, he too wisely repented and hastened to remove the word revolution from his name. What did I do? Jail him? No. I forgave him. And he has proven himself worthy of my forgiveness with his work. In the Eternal Patriot, the underground leaflet he used to edit, he used to denounce me as a creator of a nation of sheep. Now in the Daily Parrot he helps me shepherd the sheep with his literary lashes.”

To protect the country against malicious rumormongers, so-called historians, and novelists, and to counter their lies and distortions, the Buler appointed him to be his official biographer, and as everyone knows his biography was really the story of the country, and the true history. “My Devoted and Trusted Historian,” roared the Buler, “I want you to stand up that they may behold you and learn.”

The biographer obliged, and it was then that everybody realized that the man with the leather-bound notebook and a pen the size of a water pipe was the Buler s official biographer. My beloved children, the Buler now called out, turning to the multitude, I want to say, may you all be blessed for your superwonder gift to me. Not least of what made it so endearing, he said, was that it came as a complete surprise: not in his wildest dreams had he thought that Aburfria would show its gratitude by attempting something that had never been done in the history of the world. He had never expected any rewards; doing what he had done had been its own reward, and he would continue to do so out of a fatherly love. He stopped, for suddenly near the center of the multitude issued a bloodcurdling scream. A snake! A snake! came the cry taken up by others. Soon there was pandemonium. People shoved and shouted in every direction to escape a snake unseen by many. It was enough that others had; the cry was now not about one but several snakes. Unable to believe what was happening and with none wanting to be first to show fear, the Cabinet ministers cast surreptitious glances at one another, waiting for someone to make the first move.

Part of the crowd started pushing its way toward the platform, shouting, Snake! Snake! Some police officers and soldiers were about to run away but when they saw the Ruler’s guard ready their guns to shoot into the crowd, they stood their ground. The chaos continued unabated.

To calm things down, the police chief shot his gun into the air, but this only made matters worse and the melee turned into a riot of self-preservation as people took to their heels in every direction; after a few minutes, only the Ruler and his entourage of ministers, soldiers, and policemen were left in the park. The head of the secret police woke up from a stupor and whispered to the Ruler, This might be the beginning of a coup d’etat, and within seconds the Ruler was on his way to the State House.

The media never mentioned the pandemonium at the park. The headlines of the following days were all about the special birthday gift and the impending arrival of the Global Bank mission, MARCHING TO HEAVEN IN SPACE, intoned the front page of the Eldares Times. Said the newspaper: America, take notice that we will not let you monopolize Space. We are right behind. We might be several years behind you in science and technology, but we shall surely win the race like the Tortoise in the story, who defeated the Hare.

So if it had been left to the media, the story about snakes would have remained only a rumor. Ironically, what subsequently gave life to the rumor was the strangeness emanating from the State House.

For a number of days the Ruler did not utter a word about what had happened. Those who claimed to be in the know asserted that he was furious and that much of his fury was directed at Sikiokuu. Sikiokuu’s calls for a personal spaceship and a Rock Rover in Heaven came back to haunt him. So intrigued had the Ruler been by Sikiokuu’s suggestion that even in his anger he asked for a video on the exploration of Mars, but when he saw the size of the spacecrafts, especially the early one, Sojournertruth -all the vehicles, to him, seemed smaller than toys made by boys-he seethed and kept muttering to himself, This Sikiokuu has no shame-how dare he, my Minister of State, suggest that my Might be associated with so tiny a thing? His agitation knew no bounds when he later learned that Sojourner had been a slave, a woman, and a freedom fighter, a terrorist, as he called her.

For some days, the Ruler would not receive Sikiokuu, who became so worried that he took steps to stave off the impending explosion. He began by sending his first wife by night to plead for him. The Ruler ignored her. Sikiokuu then sent the second wife. The Ruler ignored her. Sikiokuu sent his much younger third wife. The Ruler ignored her. Finally, he sent his two daughters. It was only then that the Ruler softened and he started to see Sikiokuu again, but then only to vent his anger on the hapless minister.

It was not simply the size of the star surface cruisers or that one bore the name of a slave woman that made the Ruler angry with Sikiokuu. The disruption of the birthday gathering, the memory of the multitude melting away and leaving him and his retinue alone on the field made him boil inside: What message had this sent to the world? Where had all the M5 gone? The intelligence services were under Sikiokuu; hence the Ruler’s fury at him. Why had these services not heard anything about those snake people? he kept asking Sikiokuu.

To save their skins, the head of M5 and Sikiokuu explained that the snake people were members of an underground party, the Movement for the Voice of the People, and that the intelligence agents had known all along about them but had kept the knowledge to themselves to buy time to sort out the truth from rumors to get at the roots of the entire movement. It was not a good idea, they explained, to give the group unnecessary publicity before the fullness of its perfidy was known. One does not rush to hit a snake before it has fully come out of its hole.

This made the Ruler even angrier. And so you gave it time to come out of its hole? How dare anybody say that I cannot strike a snake before it has fully revealed itself? Who says that I don’t have the power to strike at that which is most hidden from view? Sikiokuu’s attempt to diffuse the Ruler’s wrath by explaining that his statement was only a proverb made matters even worse. Was Sikiokuu suggesting that there were proverbs that superseded the Ruler’s mighty sayings? The Ruler had power over all proverbs, all riddles in Aburlria, and no proverb could bar him from hitting the hidden, even in the most inaccessible of holes.