6.

At school, Isaac discovered two things. One—that studies were so easy, especially mathematics, that he did not understand why anyone struggled. Two—that he was ugly. The latter explained why no one loved him. The six-year-old girls in his class recoiled from him to such an extent that he wondered whether they had a different humanity. The first girl he sat next to in class broke down in tears. When asked why, the creature replied, “They’re laughing at me. That I am his wife,” she pointed at Isaac.

“But you’re not Isaac’s wife.”

“He’s old and has such small red eyes and—”

At which the rest of the class burst out laughing and the crying girl reluctantly joined them. It was the practice in lower primary to make a girl and a boy share a desk as, at that age, they could not stand each other: it kept the class quiet. The following term, when Isaac was moved to another place, the girl he was made to sit with this time sat at the edge of the bench and sulked for the rest of the term. But as boys did not flinch from him, Isaac grew wary of girls. He had heard men in Katanga say things like, “I must have met a woman first thing this morning: my effort was barren all day,” or “Women are a curse.” Now he understood why.

In 1978, at the age of seventeen, Isaac sat his PLE, primary school leaving exams. He was the mathematics genius in the school. But when the results came out, his math grade was missing. He got 85 percent in English and 87 percent in the General Paper but without a Math grade, he could not proceed to secondary school. His teachers tried to track down his marks, but Nakivubo Primary, a slum school, was too insignificant to warrant effort from UNEB officials. Isaac resolved to sit the exams again the following year but by then, the Tanzanians were fed up with Amin’s antics and were on their way.

The wonderful thing about being Katangese, as Katanga residents were called, was that Amin’s brutality flew above their heads and toward the hills, especially Nakasero and Kololo where the elite resided. Sure, the army were deadly when they got drunk and many times they did not pay for their drink, but Katangese knew not to insist.

Amin had turned the tables against the intellectuals. Makerere University had become the haunt of failures. Intellectuals stood out. A mournful and persecuted demeanor, a battered leather bag full of paper and worn-away soles of shoes were the classic signs of an intellectual. They tended to be alcoholic. The term “professor” was synonymous with a lack of common sense. Isaac heard Katangese poke fun at lecturers as they asked for crude Waragi on credit. The plush hotels in Nakasero were now haunted by army generals and the Mafta mingi businessmen. Graduates worked in markets and denied their stint at the “Hill of Knowledge” to avoid ridicule. People in Katanga said, “Amin has no problems with us. It’s them the ‘I-Knows’ who are trouble.” Yet, despite these discouraging echoes, Isaac put his faith in education. Ziraba insisted, “Certificates don’t rot: they only collect dust. Amin will go.”

For some time, war anxiety did not bother Isaac: his grandmother did the worrying. Yes, there were fresh bodies in the streets every morning, but all Isaac had to do was cross the road. Yes, there were nights when he heard angry noises and pleading cries but in the morning they would discover that it was none of the slum-dwellers. The bodies, dumped in the yam fields or gutters of Katanga, tended to come from Kololo or Nakasero. To Isaac, Ugandans were like ants. You swept away the ones that were killed the day before and still others came out the following day. As he was yet to find the corpse of a child on the roadside, Isaac had no fear. He wore his school uniform everywhere.

When the war arrived, the Katangese stopped laughing. Isaac had seen young men from Katanga and poorer backgrounds rush to join Amin’s army because of the power and quick wealth it brought. But as death became imminent, the army grew angry. Soldiers asked why they should die for the rest of them and made everyone feel their pain. When Isaac saw trucks carrying stony-eyed soldiers to the frontline, he understood their brutality.

It rained continuously during the war. Vegetation all over Kampala thrived on a combination of abundant rain, decomposing bodies, and the absence of humans. Marabou storks migrated to Nakasero Hill while the bats in Bat Valley went into exile. Only funereal songs played on the radio. Continual announcements said that the enemy had been repulsed, but people whispered that the BBC said otherwise. Tanzanian anger cracked the skies at night relentlessly. Rockets, just before they exploded, squealed like a giant cat whose tail had been trodden on. Now Isaac was frightened. Rockets exploded in the back of his house, but in the morning people said it was up in Kololo Summit View. Now, guns and army uniforms that the army fleeing had discarded lay strewn on roadsides.

One night, the rockets exploded without pause into the following day. At around four in the afternoon, as Isaac opened the door to sneak to the toilet, a huge German Shepherd crashed into him and went straight into the inner room. Isaac shut the door. The dog curled in the furthest corner under Ziraba’s bed. “Gettaut, get-taut,” Ziraba shouted in English but the dog would not budge. It whined silently and quivered. Its eyes were all black, its coat thick and glossy. Isaac could not help laughing, “What were you thinking you rich bastards—that your day would not come?”

Ziraba was beside herself with anger. “How can anyone keep a dog that eats more than two humans do a day?” The following day, worried that it would foul the room, Ziraba moved her bed and hit the wall so hard that the dog bolted.

“Fahkin you,” she spat in English. “Go die your own death, rich dog. We’ll die our own.” As Ziraba shut the door she remembered that being nasty to dogs brings bad luck and said, “I’m sorry! Poor creature, either the owners have been killed or they didn’t buy an air ticket for it.”

Isaac’s phobia of hair cut off the head started on the first day he stepped out of the house after Kampala fell. A neighbor called at their door, “Ziraba wuuwu: are you still alive?” When Ziraba called back that she was, the woman rebuked, “The world is out here getting rich and you’re locked in the house?”

When Isaac opened the door, Ntulo, their neighbor, whizzed past carrying a sack of shoes, all similar. She did not take a breath when she dropped it in her house but ran out immediately.

“Are you waiting for church bells?” she asked as she ran past the dazed Isaac and Ziraba. “Come on, come with me, I’ll show you. These people up in Nakasero lived like kings, wait and see! Yesterday was theirs: today is ours.”

At the turn into Kyadondo Road, the path on the roadside was so overgrown that people kept on the tarred road. But Isaac had walked this path often. As he turned the corner, he saw a skeleton. Its clothes lay flat on the ground as if the body had melted. There was no smell. Yet the hair, black and thick, was intact. It had moved a few inches away from the skull as if shaved. Isaac was so shaken by the non-putrefaction of the hair that he failed to pull away his eyes. He was used to corpses: fresh ones, swollen ones, even those that had burst open, but this hair washed off the skull was hard to take.

That day, as he carried the looted items home, the image of the hair haunted him. Two days later, outside the Fairway Hotel, Isaac came across another skeleton. (Isaac was lucky at Fairway Hotel. He was right there when the liberators broke into it. He got blankets, sheets, and towels.) He could tell from the clothes that it was the skeleton of a female. The cranium was bleached white. A few inches away was thick hair plaited together in mounds. It remained there unchanged, as though its owner had not died. Isaac crossed the road and retched until he felt as if his innards were coming up as well. From then on, he kept away from bushes. Whenever he saw a barber’s shop ahead, he crossed the road lest he look in and see hair on the floor. Isaac kept his own head bald.

In search of Amin’s remnant army, the liberators seemed to hate the rich as much as the looters did. They broke into shops and houses and let the hungry loot. The soldiers would have their pick first, normally of small things—watches and jewelry. When looters came to a rich home that was unoccupied, the absence of the owner signified guilt. The people would shout, “Amin’s man!”

“Wattu wa Amin?”

“Yaa,” and the doors would fall away. Looters, like termites, would strip the house of anything movable. In no time, Ziraba’s room was filled with an assortment of things—a sack of shoes from Bata, which Isaac later discovered were all for the right foot and could not be sold, a kettle, an iron, a hotplate, car and bicycle tires. There were a few other gadgets he didn’t know—when the doors of depravity fell away, there was no time to ask: What’s this? What does it do? Instead, he took home whatever he got his hands on and later someone who had worked as a domestic in rich homes would explain, “That is a toaster: it roasts bread . . . yes the same usual bread . . . No, they don’t cook it again. It makes it crispy . . . yeah, too much money.”

Two days later, as Ziraba wandered the Industrial Area looking for opportunities, she came across a crowd hanging about the Tanzanian liberators expectantly. They were about to break into a warehouse. When the doors opened, there was sugar—the real white sweet stuff. Ziraba, who had not seen sugar in three years, grabbed a 20 kg sack, dragged it to the side and sat on it. When the warehouse had been stripped empty she asked a man to help her put it on her head. The man shook his head and said, “My old one, you won’t manage. If you agree to share half-half, I’ll carry it for you.”

“Do I look stupid? What if you walk away?”

The man lifted the sack and put it on Ziraba’s sixty-year-old head. Ziraba made it across the rail lines, Jinja Road, De Winton Road up the roundabout below Shimon Road. She even made it to the island in the middle of Shimon Road, hoping to get to Kitante Road, when she felt tired. But as she made to throw the sack down, she collapsed under it. Someone relieved her body of the sugar, saw that she was dead and said, “Every dog has its day: today is hers, mine is coming,” and made off with the sugar.

At home, Isaac waited. Then he searched the city. He worried that his grandmother had been killed by a stray bullet. Many people who had made it through the war became careless and lost their lives during the looting. The fleeing army had strewn the city with bombs disguised as tiny radios, torches, balls, clocks, and toys. Often, looters, mainly children, picked them up and they exploded. Nonetheless, when Isaac cooked, he made food for two. For a month, he searched hospitals in vain. Neighbors came by to check on him but without a corpse they sucked their teeth, shook their heads, and walked away. That was all the mourning Ziraba got for her stint in the world.

Finally, Isaac accepted that his grandmother was not coming home and climbed onto her bed. He had a cooker, a fridge, a TV, an electric iron, a dryer, and electric kettle. Even though there was no chance of electricity straying into his house, the sight of the gadgets made him feel rich.

Even after all that bloodletting, neither peace nor prosperity came to Uganda because as people believed, the expelled Asians had cursed the country. The liberators fell out with each other and there were coups and counter-coups. Tendo slunk back home with two young children in tow. Isaac reverted to his mute days. He could not even look at them. Tendo and her little ones ate right through everything he had looted, and soon the house was back to its pre-liberation emptiness.

Isaac got a job. He worked in Port Bell as a laborer on a fishing boat. He worked in the night and slept between four o’clock after school and eight o’clock. Tendo and her children lived off Isaac’s fish. He did not begrudge them the food: it was given to him every morning along with his pay. Tendo justified her presence by keeping the house clean and cooking the meals. But Isaac could not open his mouth to speak to her. She seemed to understand, for there was a perpetual look of mortification on her face.

It was not until 1980 that Isaac was able to re-sit his exams. UNEB, the Uganda National Examination Board, demanded that he re-sit all three subjects. The earlier results, however good, were now void. At nineteen, Isaac had to wear a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of khaki shorts even though his arms and legs were overgrown with wild hairs. The other pupils stared and whispered, “Grandpa.” This time, the results in all three subjects returned but the excitement had gone. Isaac was invited to the top two schools in the country but as he could not afford a top school’s fees, he sold copies of his results to rich kids and started at Kololo High.

Life was bearable until his employer bought a larger boat and turned from fishing to transporting people. As if that was not bad enough, Isaac’s mother Nnamata returned. She had a litter of five children and they stank of poverty. Isaac looked at her once and looked away. “You’ve turned out well, Isaac,” he heard her whisper but he did not look back. Luckily, Tendo and Nnamata didn’t get on. His mother found a stall in the market and moved out as soon as she was able.