Moses Isegawa - Abyssinian Chronicles

Kasawo woke up late the following afternoon. The red tiles of the Vicar’s residence peeped at her from her window with the seductiveness of a sweet fading fire. She was overwhelmed by the noise of activity in the compound, and she wondered how she had slept through it. As night dropped like a dark veil she went to the kiosk to buy some food. Moths had appeared. They circled the lamps in dizzying yellow arcs. She sat on her bed and ate. She retrieved a moth’s wing from her mouth. She spat and threw away the food.

As Kasawo waited for the man to arrive, she thought about how the therapy worked. She had told him everything about the attack and much about her life. It seemed that he had picked out salient elements and used them to make her relive her pain and move on. It hurt more than she had expected, but she felt it was all for the better. Now more than ever, she wished she were more educated and thus able to tie the different strands of her life together. She remembered confessions in the cupboard-like confessional. At the beginning, she really believed that the white priest was Jesus, and she quaked with holy terror, not daring to tell a single lie. But gradually it had struck her that if the priest was indeed Jesus of Nazareth, then he surely did not need to be told anything. She started telling him small lies and omitting little details. “Jesus” swallowed it hook, line and sinker! The terror went away, and she started smelling the man’s tobacco breath. From then on, she stopped saying prayers of contrition. The Vicar knew better. He guided his clients through the rituals. He is a Catholic, Kasawo thought; he must have fooled the priests himself. Send a thief to catch a thief, her primary school headmaster used to say.

His massive frame filled the doorway. He beckoned her to follow him to the cave, where she took the same long, cold bath. She had never shivered so in all her life. Her teeth rattled badly as she walked back to her room for the final installment of lashes. He administered them and turned her over. The cold hand of the wind pushed inside her and shook the very marrow of her bones. She was so cold that she started feeling a dull heat building inside her. She closed her eyes and succumbed to the convoluted meanderings of her mind. She was awakened by the fire of his latex-sheathed penetration. He rubbed the stretched membrane of her rejuvenating self with the hellfire of her worst pains. He reminded her of the professional brutality of bone-setters who broke badly set bones in order to correct the mistakes. Her mind worked on and off between bitten-back screams and tears as she tried to hold on. She thought of Pangaman, of her fear, hatred and even love of him. She thought of her father, of the parish priest who had beaten her, of the nun who had whipped her, and of Amin’s soldiers, and of her violators. Her face was wet with tears. He asked her if she was crying. She felt shame over it, but she could not lie to the ultimate confessor and admitted that she was. He laughed. She felt relieved.

Back at the cave, she was ordered to fill a bucket with water. He sprinkled herbs in it and ordered her to carry it on her head. This time they headed for the road. They stopped in the junction. She eyed the three arms of the road with trepidation. She prayed that it would remain empty, desolate, dead. He ordered her to strip and bathe while saying the following words: “I leave the world’s rapes here. I leave the world’s ill luck here. I leave every evil here. Let the winds carry it all to the ends of the earth.” He stood at a distance, and she could hear him mumbling. They walked toward the compound in silence. She was glad that part was over. Her body was still burning, but she felt calm. She did not care whether another seven lashes were awaiting her. She had broken a psychological barrier. She felt invincible, fearless, ready for anything.

At the door he stood aside and let her enter. He stood in the doorway and watched her shiver, the black cloth tight on her steaming body. He seemed wreathed in priestly isolation. “It is over, girl,” he said in a thick voice. He stood there as if waiting to be thanked. She found herself on her knees, thanking him as though she weren’t going to pay him.

The Kasawo that rose from her knees was a woman full of a fresh fire and a blazing, peppery zeal. She dominated all conversation during her visit to us. Aunt Lwandeka looked cowed by her. Kasawo was not my favorite political analyst, but I agreed with her that the departure of the Tanzanians was good for all parties. She swore that the exiled dictator Obote was about to return. This greatly disturbed me, for all along I had been holding that as an abstract possibility. Aunt Lwandeka did not like the news either. It made her sacrifices in fighting Amin look futile. She angrily responded with the view that a guerrilla war would break out as a result.

“Governments are there to fight guerrillas,” Kasawo said smugly. I kept thinking about those words long after her departure.

Within a few months, most roadblocks were gone and most Tanzanians were back home. A new army was being formed. The curfew now started at eleven o’clock and ended at five in the morning. There was much talk about elections, democracy and development: the magic trinity.

I was feeling inviolable once more. I had survived the dark days without a body scratch. I was going to the university to study law. I never bothered the few female liberators who were manning the last of the roadblocks. They did not seem to notice me either. I kept slipping past them as though by magic. Within three weeks they would be gone, I had heard on the news. Every other evening, I visited a friend, a fellow student who was living on his own. We enjoyed weighty discussions, especially about politics and women and power. Sometimes I took him a little liquor, which loosened his tongue, and he talked as if the world were coming to an end. We both felt that we could change the world. We talked as though we were in parliament or in some national forum where our words turned into law.

One evening, I was stopped by a voice emanating from the front of an old factory building where surprise roadblocks were sometimes staged. There had been no roadblocks there or in the suburb as a whole for the last five days. I stopped in my tracks and saw two bricks on the shoulder of the road. Sometimes they used a car tire or an oil drum, anything. I was very apprehensive: these people could be up to no good at this hour. To make matters worse, I had neither money nor a watch to bribe them with. Three uniformed women came toward me with rifles casually held, muzzles down. Each rifle had three magazines held together with rubber bands; each woman had ninety bullets with her. What I saw next made my lower lip fall: I thought I recognized the large girl as one from Ndere Primary School whom I had told that she would birth a limbless creature.… It seemed logical that she had joined the army to avoid the risk of having such a child. When had she crossed the border to join the guerrillas? When had she recognized me? Had she been stalking me? How long had she waited for this moment? How many men had she shot in my stead? I could not tear my eyes from her. I wanted to make sure that it was her. I tried to look under her cap. Had she changed so little over the years?

I was given little chance to complete my investigations. The Infernal Trinity mistook my questioning look for ogling. But who in their right senses would dare ogle three women armed with two hundred and seventy high-velocity bullets? I was accused of disrespect, disregard for military procedure, subversive activity and more. I was dazed by a sense of impending doom. Shtudent? Yes. Amin shtudent, he-he-heee. In the meantime, I looked around for a drunkard, any passerby, who could distract the Trinity with his arrival. This was the road that had eaten the northerners: How come it was so dead now? I was ordered to produce my identity card. I had never been asked to show my card at any roadblock before, and I wasn’t carrying it. I explained my predicament and volunteered to take them home if they deemed it necessary.