11.

Saturday, January 24, 2004

Miisi opened wide the double doors of the garage and walked around his Toyota, a reconditioned Grande G—locally known as a Nagoya—checking the tires. Then he got in and turned the engine. The red needle of the fuel gauge rose to the quarter mark. He turned the engine off. The fuel was saved for emergencies: his depression was not. Depression was the fancy name Miisi brought back from Britain for the slumps that sometimes bothered him. The slumps came on when he allowed himself to dwell on things. Since he met the two cousins, Magga and Kato, he had been dwelling on things. He stepped out of the car and banged the door shut. He closed the garage doors and walked across the compound down to the main road. He knew he should tell the family that he was going out but he lacked the resolve. He crossed the road and stood on the other side waiting for a taxi.

The depression crept on Miisi like a chill. He could not blame it on the cousins’ visit twelve days earlier: they only confirmed what had been in his subconscious all along.

A week after their visit, Miisi woke up feeling tired. His mind was a fog as if the drowsiness of a strong medicine had not quite worn off. For a long time, he sat on the bed with his eyes closed. His wife was dusting in the bedroom. For some reason, her dusting was shrill in his ears. There was a dead taste in his mouth. Seeing how quiet he was, his wife stopped cleaning and joked, “Your foul ancestors are upon you. You’re gnashing your teeth.”

Miisi stood up, stomped out of the bedroom and sat on the balcony. He did not go downstairs that day. He did not eat at all. The family tiptoed around him. He heard his wife tell the children, “Tread lightly around him upstairs: he’s looking for someone to bite.”

Miisi knew that he was making the house jittery, he knew that they thought he was just being moody, but he could not snap out of it.

The following day, Miisi once again sat on the balcony, leaning against the wall. To shake himself out of it, he had closed his eyes to imagine beautiful things but instead his mind revisited the 80s bush war that stole away five of his sons. The tragedy was that four of the boys shared a mother, his second wife. At the end of the war, when the bodies of all her progeny with Miisi had been located, exhumed, and reburied, she laughed, “What was all that sex about?”

At first, the bush war was a fable. Miisi had only resettled in the village for one and a half years when one day a green Tata lorry stopped at the crossroads near his house and tipped out a load of soldiers. They spread out in the village like hatched spiders. Word went around that the government suspected rebel activity in the area and the soldiers had come to flush them out. Three days later, when a whole family was killed in the night, villagers started to sleep in the bush.

Nkaada, Miisi’s eldest, died first. He was thirty-two. He was the most handsome and, for Miisi, the easiest of all his sons to get along with because Nkaada did not know how to hold a grudge. At the age of four, he contracted the flu, which his mother ignored. Miisi was working and lived in the city with his second woman at the time, estranged from his first wife. When Miisi came home to visit, Nkaada’s legs had been sucked thin and soft by polio: the boy dragged himself about on his bottom. Miisi immediately took his other children for immunization. Later, when he returned from Britain, Nkaada had become the village cobbler. Miisi bought him a motorized wheelchair, which Nkaada protected more than his life.

That first evening, before the family left for the bush, Nkaada asked to be lifted into his old wheelchair, the new one was hidden in the ceiling. He told the rest of the family to go and leave him in the house. Nothing happened that night. At dawn, the family crept back embarrassed that they had overreacted. Nonetheless, at dusk, the family disappeared into the bush again. When they returned on the third morning, Nkaada was not in the wheelchair. They searched the house but he was nowhere to be found. Then he crawled out of the outdoor kitchen beaming. He was covered in ash.

“Something warned me to leave the house last night, and they came,” he said triumphantly.

“What were they like?”

“That is the funny thing. They were not army. They wore ordinary clothes but had guns. They climbed over the water tank onto the back balcony and into the house. They took nothing though. They did not look in here. It is queer, but I thought I heard Lamula’s voice amongst them.”

Lamula was Miisi’s son who lived in the city.

That evening, as dusk drew near, it became clear that Nkaada was frightened, that he did not want to be left behind. Guilt fell over the house and then grew thorns. The family avoided each other’s eyes, they avoided Nkaada’s presence. Nkaada’s wide eyes, normally languid with laughter, were now dark with resentment. At around six o’ clock, after supper, one by one, the young ones stole away to the bush until only Miisi remained downstairs. His wife was upstairs, hiding her tears. Finally, Miisi said, “You’re coming with us tonight.”

Nkaada shook his head. “Put me in bed. I want to sleep.”

“How shall we—?”

“Go, Father, go!”

Miisi called his wife to help lift Nkaada. By the time she got downstairs, Nkaada was wiping his eyes.

“Go, both of you. They won’t kill a cripple.”

As they started to lift him out of the wheelchair, gunshots rang out in the back garden and Miisi saw an army uniform running behind the kitchen. When he turned, both Nkaada and his wife had vanished. Gunfire came again close to the back door. Moments later, Miisi was behind a bush near the outer compound where the boys played football.

It was a bad raid with bullets flying about for days. As he dodged gunshots, Miisi drifted further from the house. Sanity would prevail: no one would touch a disabled man, he told himself. In those few days Miisi found out that guns had personalities: some cracked, some thundered, and some roared. With the roaring came tiny gunshots, like corn popping. Silence, after gunfire, fell like rain on leaves. Birds were silent. Bushes stood still. Time crawled. Until gunshots came again.

On the fourth day, the first people Miisi saw without guns were strangers, so he stayed put. Then he heard Kaleebu’s voice and emerged from the passion-fruit thicket he had occupied for two days. Kaleebu talked about a frontline that had been at Katikamu near the schools but had now been moved to Wobulenzi Town. He didn’t know what had happened to his family either. Miisi and Kaleebu walked back home, avoiding the road and open spaces. Everyone they met was going in the opposite direction, toward Bukeeka.

At Miisi’s house, the two men slithered along the fringes of the garden watching the house for signs of life. Faint sounds of digging came from behind the outdoor kitchen. When they came closer, the metal of a hoe flashed in the sun and descended repeatedly. Its rhythm was not threatening: someone was digging a deep hole. Four days in the bush had sharpened Miisi’s instincts. He could tell a safe bush: the shrub near the kitchen was thick enough. Miisi ran behind it and saw two of his sons. Ssendi, the fourteen-year-old, stood by a sack while Jumba, two years his senior, dug a hole. When a turn in the wind brought the stench of rotting flesh, Miisi jumped out of the bush. The lads fled. Kaleebu ran after them trying not to call out loud. Miisi remained at the hole with the sack. He felt so light-headed that he leaned against the kitchen wall. When the boys returned, Miisi pointed at the sack.

“Who is that?”

“Who do you think?” Jumba said.

Miisi sat down. The smell was bearable after all.

“Here, help me,” Jumba heaved the side of the sack to roll it into the hole but Miisi did not move. Jumba motioned knowingly to Ssendi that their father was such a muzungu. Jumba dragged the sack up to the edge of the hole. Then he jumped into the hole with Ssendi. Kaleebu kept watch. The boys lowered the sack and climbed out. Jumba sprinkled earth on the sack and said, “Nkaada, brother, wait here until we return. Then we shall give you proper rites.” Miisi looked at his son in disbelief. “Don’t hold this against us.” Jumba carried on as if his father was not there to take lead of the burial. When Jumba had finished he said to Ssendi, “Let’s cover him.”

Miisi turned to Kaleebu. “We’ve got to tell people.” But Kaleebu started to help Jumba fill the grave. Ssendi was on the watch now. Still, Miisi did not help to fill the hole. Kaleebu went back to watch without a word and Jumba continued to fill the grave while Ssendi carried the cooking stones from the kitchen to mark it.

When they finished, Jumba looked at Miisi and whispered to his brother, “He should’ve stayed in England.”

Miisi slapped him.

Jumba did not flinch, the grin stayed on his face. Ssendi carried on as if he had not seen the slap. Kaleebu watched the horizon. Miisi’s hands shook.

“I’ve got to check my house,” Kaleebu said.

“There’s no one at your house,” Jumba said, the grin still on his face.

“Maybe someone has just arrived.”

“But we saw your family on their way toward Bukeeka two days ago.”

“Did you say you saw them?”

“Your wife and everyone.”

“Well,” Kaleebu smiled.

“Let’s go then,” Miisi said.

“Still, I’ll glance at my house one last time,” Kaleebu insisted.

“One-last-time is the biggest killer,” Jumba laughed at his own wit.

“I’ll kill this boy before the guns do,” Miisi threatened.

“Where do we go then?” Kaleebu asked.

“That way,” Miisi pointed in the direction of Bukeeka and started walking. But the boys stayed put. Miisi stopped and looked back at them. Ssendi looked away. He tugged at a blade of grass. When it came free, he chewed at it frantically. Jumba said, “We’re going to Butanza.”

Jumba looked at his father as if Miisi was a playmate he had just thrown off the team.

“Kayita’s sons did it.” Ssendi said in a small voice. “Lamula is with the rebels. He brought them to the house the night before; probably to warn us.”

“But Lamula’s in the city,” Miisi said in disbelief.

No one answered.

“We’ll come back. Kayita and his family will pay for what happened to Nkaada,” Jumba said.

“There must be a bug in your head, Jumba.” Miisi narrowed his eyes.

“It’s grief talking. They don’t know what they’re saying.” Kaleebu touched Jumba’s shoulder. The boy shrugged him off and turned to Ssendi.

“Come, let’s go.” To his father he added excitedly, “We’re going to Rambo in the Jango,” and he sparred like he was Muhammad Ali himself. “Friends have enlisted us. The rebels’ frontline is a just a few miles away from here.”

“You are going to kill me. Knowing that you’re somewhere carrying a gun will kill me.”

Jumba laughed: “Lamula’s been carrying one all this time.”

“You go, I disown you,” Miisi tried one last attempt but the boys walked on, past the kitchen, past the outside toilet. Miisi last saw them as the shrubs under the mango tree swallowed them.

Miisi and Kaleebu spent that night up a tree. When they saw a large group of women and children coming toward them, they came down and joined the throng. They started their exodus in August 1983 and went around in circles for months until January 1984 when the group was rounded up and put into a concentration camp in Ssemuto. It was a year later, while in the camp, that Miisi learned that Ssendi and Jumba had been killed close to home shortly after enlisting. Miisi was comforted by the fact that the boys had not got the chance for revenge. His mind was about to relive Lamula’s death, his other soldier son, when a child came up the stairs and asked whether he would dine on his own.

When Miisi got out of the taxi in Kalagala Bugerere, he could hear the Nile whirling. He was glad he had not brought the car. At the sound of water, his fog began to lift. As he got closer, the whirling turned to rumbling. By the time he reached the riverbank, the roar of water was deafening. He crossed the picnic area and stood on the rocks. The Nile was a steep drop below. Its banks were gray with jagged rocks. The water rushed from his right, plunged over a cliff, and crashed down on the rocks. For a moment at the bottom the water was frothy and confused. Then it sorted itself out and set off for Egypt.

A picture out of a history textbook flashed in Miisi’s mind and he smiled. John Hanning Speke, hat and spectacles, stood with one triumphant arm punching the air, the other on his hip. Below the picture was the caption: THE FIRST MAN TO SEE THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. The last time Miisi came there was a plaque saying: JH SPEKE STOOD IN THIS EXACT SPOT SOMEWHERE NEARBY. Someone without a sense of humor must have removed it.

Miisi had been told that he was discovered in this same spot that morning when his home burned down. Over the years, he had refused to consider why his mother left him out here and went back to set the family on fire. Apart from the time when he lived in Britain, Miisi had always visited the Nile and sat in the same spot whenever the slumps bothered him. What he could never explain was why his depression always lifted whenever he came here.

Miisi sat down and his shadow squatted beside him. Spray, like steam, rose from the water below. Once, the wind blew it into his face. It was thin and ephemeral, as fine as perspiration. Miisi was at peace. A sensation, as if he sat on his mother’s lap leaning against her chest, overwhelmed him. His eyes began to droop. He tried to stay awake by looking up. In a few hundred yards, the Nile turned sharply making the bank on the other side, covered in dense forest, seem like an island. He lost the fight. He laid back on the grass and fell asleep. When he woke up, night had fallen. He returned home uplifted. The following day, he sent a message to Kamu and Kusi, his two remaining children, asking them to come home urgently.