Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

Tajirika decided that as long as his friend Machokali and the Ruler were in the USA he would not appear before the commission as summoned, and with that bold resolution he felt at peace. He redirected the chauffeur to take him not back to the office but to his Golden Heights residence.

They came for him at midnight, men in plainclothes. They threw him into the back of a Land Rover like a log of wood, ignoring the entreaties of Vinjinia. They said not a word, did not identify themselves. They drove into the night, leaving Vinjinia standing at the door in darkness and silence.

Vinjinia lay awake, not knowing what to do or even think about the whole thing. Were Tajirika’s abductors police or common thugs pretending to be plainclothes police? What had Tajirika done to deserve this? She had not been pleased with her husband since her own return from police custody. Coldness had settled between them. They hardly talked, and when they did Tajirika simply wanted Vinjinia to go over the questions she had been asked while under interrogation, and only those relating to him and his businesses.

How Vinjinia had felt when the police arrested her, what she thought while in their custody, how she dealt with the ordeal: these were clearly not priorities for Tajirika. What most pained her was her suspicion that deep down Tajirika believed her to be guilty of secretly associating with the women who had brought shame on the Ruler and Marching to Heaven. Unlike her husband, however, she was not indifferent to her spouse’s newfound woes.

She began her inquiry at the Santamaria police station because the boss, Wonderful Tumbo, was a family friend. She did not know that when Tumbo saw her coming from afar he left through the back door. The men Vinjinia found in the office acted as if they did not believe her story: who would be so crazy as to arrest Tajirika, owner of Eldares Modern Construction and Real Estate, friend of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and chairman of Marching to Heaven? Wait a few days, they advised, her husband would almost certainly turn up. She moved from station to station, receiving virtually the same answer to her entreaties. At one, they were so callous as to advise her to look for her husband in the city morgue. She had no success there, either.

At first Vinjinia went about her search quietly, trying to avoid unnecessary publicity, but soon she turned to the newspapers. One editor told her that the disappearance of an adult was not news he could use. Another pitied her and explained to her why.

Political disappearances had become commonplace as the powers that be proclaimed ignorance and innocence even though relatives and friends swore that they had seen their loved ones hauled off in police cars. Besides, he added with a smile, Aburlrian men were notorious for having multiple homes, some official, others on the side.

Next she tried Tajirika’s friends, but none wanted to have anything to do with the case. At first they would listen to her sympathetically, but as soon as it dawned on them that the government might be involved they would become alarmed, some going so far as to ask her not to call again.

She was advised to get a lawyer to file a habeas corpus, but no one would take her case, citing one excuse or another. “You are wasting your money for nothing,” one lawyer was honest enough to tell her. “In Aburlria we are governed by personal whims.” With the Ruler in America, who was making new laws under which people were being abducted at night? she wondered.

She turned to the church and to her Christian friends for help and moral support but they offered only their prayers; some made it clear by their body language that Vinjinia was not welcome in their homes and at their social gatherings.

One day she stopped her Mercedes-Benz by the roadside, got out, and sat on some raised ground and began to weep: everything-the government, her friends, and her fellow Christians-seemed to have conspired against her. She started questioning the truths she had taken for granted, like the fairness of government and solidarity of the religious. To whom would she now turn for an answer to her troubles?

In the midst of tears and numerous questions, Vinjinia suddenly thought of the Wizard of the Crow.

Early one day Vinjinia set out and, as on the first visit, parked her Mercedes-Benz in the street and walked to the old shrine, where she got directions to the new complex of wood and stone walls and iron roofs, far tidier than many of the state-owned clinics and hospitals she had recently visited. She was led by an assistant into an inner chamber, where, after being left alone for what seemed an eternity, she suddenly heard the sound of a latticed window opening to reveal a face.

“I’m here to see the Wizard of the Crow,” Vinjinia said.

“Your wish has been granted,” a voice said, and Vinjinia was surprised to hear that it was that of a woman.

“When I was last here, he spoke in a male voice.”

“I wear many faces. I talk in many voices. What brings you to me today?”

Vinjinia hesitated. Then suddenly the floodgates of woes within opened and she told of her tribulations as she searched for her lost husband. By the time she came to the end of her story she was feeling much better, as if by merely listening the Wizard of the Crow had lifted the load she had been carrying all by herself.

“Might he not be in hands similar to those in which you found yourself not so long ago?” Nyawlra asked, having suddenly recalled her disbelief when news of Vinjinia’s capture reached her secretly in the forest.

Vinjinia almost fell off her seat: How did the wizard know that I, too, had been plunged into a similar darkness?

“The Wizard of the Crow knows what he knows,” the voice said, answering her unspoken thought, which surprised and impressed her even more.

“They have refused to confirm his arrest,” Vinjinia said. “Actually, they have denied it.”

“So even if I use my mirror to find him, they will not admit to holding him?”

“Yes, but it would ease my heart to know.”

“Or burden it even more.”

“Not knowing is worse.”

“But you yourself saw them take him away?”

“Yes.”

“So what you want to know is not whether they have got him. What you want is for them to say that they have got him.”

“You have read my heart completely,” Vinjinia said.

What would Vinjinia do were she to uncover my identity? Nyawlra wondered. Would Vinjinia rush to report her to the very forces that had made her life miserable? While incarcerated, had Vinjinia said anything about Nyawlra to her captors? Was Vinjinia worn down not just by Tajirika’s abduction but also by questions she was asking herself and for which she had no ready answers? She saw herself in Vinjinia: after her car accident, she, too, had started by asking herself questions she had not asked herself before the trauma. Nyawlra felt very strong sympathy for the woman, and her own political stance against the regime in power only strengthened the bond. No matter how she despised the likes of Tajirika, she acknowledged that he had rights, too, like any other Aburlrian. But how could she help Vinjinia? She wished that Kamltl were around so they could put their heads together to find a way to make the government publicly declare that they were holding Tajirika. But Kamltl had not yet returned from KTambugi.

Her mind drifted to the contrast between Vinjinia’s public devotion to her husband and her own father’s public denial of her, and Nyawlra felt a creeping sadness. Kaniürü had ruptured her ties to her father. Her recollection of Kaniürü s words in the media revived and intensified the pain and bitterness she still felt. Kaniürü thinks he can build success on the ruins of other people’s lives. Contemplating the man’s arrogance and mean spirit, Nyawlra found herself forming an idea.