1 ~ ‘Yes, Ilmorog was never quite the same after the journey . . .’ wrote Munira years later, echoing Nderi’s words. His was a mixture of an autobiographical confessional and some kind of prison notes.
At night, pacing about the cold cement floor, feeling the unfriendliness of the cell’s bare walls and the barren darkness creep through the flesh to the bones, he would mutter to himself . . . ‘things were never quite the same’. He sat in a corner and leaned against the walls and stretched his legs along the floor. He started scratching himself, his ribs, his waist, his behind, his everywhere, and for a second he almost enjoyed this cruel distraction from heavy thoughts and memories. From his hair he dug out a fat louse which he killed by pressing it between his thumbnails. The tiny sound of death so sharp in the cold darkness startled him. He cleaned the lousy mess against the sides of his trousers and muttered: ‘After the journey . . . after that journey . . . a devil came into our midst and things were never quite the same.’
Munira had now been held at the New Ilmorog Police Station for eight days. He had expected that Inspector Godfrey would call on him daily for questions and discussions. Every evening one of the policemen on guard – either the short or the tall one – would collect the day’s instalment and take it away. And Munira would hold himself ready; he felt an incandescence of the spirit, a glow of the intellect, the pride of an inventor or a discoverer, and he was eager to communicate this to any listener. He felt even more than before that he now held the key which opened up, once and for all time, the true universal connection between things, events, persons, places, time. What caused things to happen? The New Ilmorog of one or two flickering neon-lights; of bars, lodgings, groceries, permanent sales, and bottled Theng’eta; of robberies, strikes, lockouts, murders and attempted murders; of prowling prostitutes in cheap night clubs; of police stations, police raids, police cells: what brought about this Ilmorog from the old one of sleepy children with mucus-infested noses, climbing up and down miariki trees? And why did things happen the way they did at the time they did and no other? How was it that the puny acts of men, arising from a thousand promptings and numerous motives, could change history and for ever condemn and damn souls to eternal torment and loss, guilt and cruelty, but also to love – yes – love that passeth all understanding? No there was a design, a law, and it was this that he would have liked to impress on Inspector Godfrey.
But when by the ninth day the Inspector had not yet called him, Munira felt a little alarmed. He was beginning to get slightly weary of the daily routine: porridge in the morning; the writing-desk; lunch of ugali and boiled sukuma wiki; the writing-desk; supper of maize and mbuca-infested beans: and finally the cement floor. An uncontrollable anxiety gnawed at his sleep at night and in the morning it made him restless. For relief he tried walking about the exercise yard. It was during the night of the fifth day that he suddenly felt the effects of his isolation. Time was a vast blankness without a beginning, middle and end, no tick-tock-tick-tock divisions, no constant lengthening and shortening of shadows, no human altercations or laughter and the to-and-fro activity which ordinarily made him aware of time’s measure and passage. Suppose . . . suppose . . . well . . . suppose it was not . . . ! And alone in the dark without a human voice to argue with he felt his assurance desert him, he panicked – and tried to reach out for the law, only to find that it was not as palpable as when he was arguing with or trying to persuade an avowed adversary. Inspector Godfrey was playing with him. He was laughing at him. He was probably amusing himself the way a cat lets a rat run a little with illusions of freedom and near-escape before joyously pouncing on him. In the morning Munira walked to the tall policeman on guard and found himself pleading and demanding at the same time:
‘I want to talk to the officer in charge. I demand to see the highest authority at the New Ilmorog Police Station. Why, Mr Policeman, even you can see that this is becoming ridiculous. I, a grown-up, a teacher, guarded and scribbling fiction on paper. For what are recollections but fiction, products of a heated imagination? I mean, how can one truly vouch for the truth of a past sequence of events? I have my rights too. I know their sly ways: the officer protesting his readiness to accede to my wishes: Mr Munira, all we want is a simple statement . . . Why then has he kept me here for eight days? Today is the ninth day. Mr Munira, we shall give you pen and paper . . . I don’t want their paper: I don’t want their pen. Listen to me, Mr Policeman . . . It is not a statement they want . . . They want a confession, an accusation. Tell them that I am not accusing anybody. No, Mr Policeman. That is not true. Please go and tell him, them, anybody, even the first officer, the youth I mean, that I am ready to answer any questions. Only they must take me away from this, er, this prison . . .’
The tall policeman looked at him, unable to follow the logic of his argument. But he was still afraid of Munira, as indeed he was of anybody who claimed to hear voices from God. He would in fact have preferred to guard another: he tried to be reasonable and very polite.
‘But you are not in prison, Mr Munira!’ he said. Munira was startled by the mention of his name.
‘What’s this, then? Open that gate and let me out.’
The policeman was really alarmed. He feared something might happen. Ever since childhood, he had always been afraid of Christ’s second coming and he kept himself on guard ready to jump to the right side. With these things one could never really be sure. He now spoke quickly, almost nervously.
‘Be reasonable, now, Mr Munira. Here you have a cell, well, a room to yourself. You have an open courtyard. You can walk about or sleep or write. Nobody interferes with you. Look at the other side of this partition. All those newly arrested, all those remanded are put there. They share cells, sometimes four or five or ten in one cell. Not even as big as yours. Last night two young fellows, totos I would say, well, thugs. They were brought in. Would you have liked that kind of company? I am not suggesting that you are in prison, arrested, or remanded. Only . . . well . . . Chui, Kimeria and Mzigo were such important people. VIPs. It will take us years before we can get their likes. So wealthy. Millionaires. Imagine. African Delameres. Did you ever visit the scene of the arson? Of course you couldn’t have. It was terrible . . . terrible . . . Mr Munira, between you and me it was not a case of robbery or attempted robbery. There’s more to it than meets the eye. The police must leave no stone unturned. And this Inspector Godfrey . . . so famous . . . a bit odd . . . I mean his methods . . . like now . . . He never leaves the office . . . reads . . . reads. . . .’
‘I don’t want your theories. I just want to speak to Inspector Godfrey. You are only a jailer. Both you and I are in prison. Well, everybody is in prison . . .’
‘Mr Munira. But you chose to be confined here! You wanted to write down truth. You are a big man yourself. A teacher. A man of God. You ought to be sympathetic. Imagine. It might have been you. Well, it might be you next time. Mr Munira, prevention is better than cure.’
Munira laughed. Uneasily.
‘You are too talkative. But look. I don’t even have clothes into which I can change. You came for me in the morning. You said: It’s nothing much, Mr Munira, just routine questioning: we have nothing against you. Now you don’t even give me a newspaper . . .’
‘A newspaper, Mr Munira? But you have not asked for it. I am under instruction from Inspector Godfrey himself to supply you with whatever you need. Ask and it shall be given, that kind of thing. I will go just now and get you one, Mr Munira. Only I must lock this gate. But don’t take it ill. I am not your jailer. I am only waiting on you.’
Munira watched him lock the heavy iron gate. He had felt better talking with him. But now the panic of the night returned. He almost called him back. For it was as if, now, his last human contact had deserted him, and he was alone with the unresolved question . . . suppose . . . suppose this law is not there . . . He walked away from the gate and sat by the barbed wire that divided his yard from the others. He felt sleep steal on him. He readied himself to submit, hopefully. Suddenly he heard voices coming from the other side and his heart leapt a bit with pleasure. At first the voices were a little distant and a little vague, but after a while he could follow the conversation. He looked in that direction. Their backs were turned to him. So he just listened.
They were telling their story, maybe to a third person, probably their warder, or they were simply reliving their experience, uncaring, daring the warder or the listener to reveal it outside those walls. In court they would certainly deny it. They laughed at one another, laughed at their earlier declaration of innocence before the resident magistrate at Ilmorog. The two had been arrested trying to rob the Ilmorog branch of the African Economic Bank. They seemed proud of this as of their other exploits and their hide and hope-not-to-be-found games with the law.
The voices were vaguely familiar to Munira. But he could not place them. He wished they would turn their faces toward him. They went on talking and laughing as if they had not a care in the world, as if the whole thing was a game with certain rules, and except for the ‘traitor’ they were not bitter with anybody or anything else.
The policeman came back and brought him a copy of the Sunday Mouthpiece. Munira simply looked at him: he was not any longer interested in reading. What did it matter whether one read or not? But he took the paper all the same and idly flipped through the pages. He sat up and stared at banner headlines on the fourth page. Murder in Ilmorog. Foul play suspected. Political motivation? The headline, as it turned out, was more dramatic than the story which followed. The news aspects of the incident would of course have been exhausted by the national dailies, especially the more sensational Daily Mouthpiece, Munira reflected, and hence the speculation without evidence. So that was the source of the policeman’s theories. He quickly glanced up at the policeman who was eyeing him from the gate, and resumed his reading. The feature column was more interesting. The writer, after giving brief life histories of Chui, Mzigo and Kimeria, described them as three well-known nationalist fighters for political, educational, and above all, economic freedom for Africans. Their ownership and management of Theng’eta Breweries & Enterprises Ltd, which had brought happiness and prosperity to every home in the area as well as international fame for the country, was cited as an example of their joint entrepreneurial genius, unmatched even by the famed founders of the industrial revolution in Europe. Our Krupps, our Rockefellers, our Fords! And now their lives were brutally ended when they were engaged in a bitter struggle for the total African ownership and control of the same Theng’eta factories and their subsidiaries in other parts of the country. Negotiations for them to buy out the remaining shares held by foreigners were soon to start. Whom then did their untimely deaths benefit? All true nationalists should pause and think!
Below this were more tributes and denunciations.
But the one that most held Munira’s interest was another news item captioned: MP to lead a Delegation of Protest. ‘The MP for Ilmorog and Southern Ruwa-ini, The Hon. Nderi wa Riera, yesterday told a press conference that he would be leading a strong delegation to all cabinet ministers and to even higher authorities if necessary to demand a mandatory death sentence for all cases of theft, with or without violence. He would also seek the same mandatory death sentence for all crimes that were politically and economically motivated.
‘Speaking over a wide range of subjects, the MP called for a total and permanent ban on strikes. Strikes generated an atmosphere of tension which could only lead to instability and periodic violence. Strikes should be regarded as deliberate anti-national acts of economic sabotage.
‘Calling on Trade Union leaders to be unselfish, he asked them to refrain from demanding higher and higher wages without proper regard for the lower income groups or the jobless, who would be the sole beneficiaries of a more equitable reallocation of what would have gone into unregulated wage increases. It was time that Trade Unions were told in no uncertain terms that they could no longer hold the country to ransom.
‘Referring to the proposed delegation, the MP called upon teachers, employers, Churchmen, and all men of goodwill to join it to demonstrate their unity of purpose in abhorring recent dastardly acts which would only scare away tourists and potential investors. Even local investors, he warned, might find it necessary to invest their capital abroad if the situation were left to deteriorate.’
The MP was fond of press statements and government by delegations and petitions, Munira thought. He recalled the picture of the MP ten years back pontificating in a solemn suit and tie and then dashing across Jeevanjee Gardens, abandoning all pretences to dignity, with a group of the city’s unemployed in hot pursuit, and he probably praying for a miraculous intervention. Munira started laughing. He laughed until the newspaper fell from his hands. He turned his eyes to the other side and he caught the three youths also laughing and looking in his direction. Their eyes met. He stopped laughing. He had recognised Muriuki. And so he, Munira, had educated Muriuki to make him ready for robbery and jails?
‘Why my sudden doubt?’ he wrote, answering back the temptation of the night before. ‘Everything is ordained by God. The vanity of man’s actions divorced from a total surrender to the will of the Lord! We went on a journey to the city to save Ilmorog from the drought. We brought back spiritual drought from the city!’
There was an element of truth in Munira’s interpretation of events that followed their journey to the city. An administrative office for a government chief and a police post were the first things to be set up in the area. Next had come the church built by an Alliance of Missions as part of their missionary evangelical thrust into heathenish interiors. Only that, for him, so many years later, this irony of history was just the manner in which God manifested himself.
2 ~ Even the rain that fell a month after all the charitable individuals and organizations had packed their bags and returned to the city was, later for Munira, the way God chose to reveal himself in all his thunderous and flaming glory. It was this way of showing that men’s efforts could only come to nought and could never influence God’s will. Only total surrender . . . But for Nyakinyua, Njuguna, Njogu, Ruoro, and the others who knew about Mwathi’s powers, the rain had clearly been God’s response to the sacrifice and it signalled the end of a year of drought. They heard Afric’s God wrestling with the Gods of other lands. They heard and listened in wonder to the Gods’ fearful roar and the clashing of their swords which emitted fire from heaven.
The whole school came out and in supplication to the heavens, sang with expectant voices:
| Mbura Ura | Rain pour down |
| Nguthinjire | So I’ll slaughter you |
| Gategwa | A young bull |
| Na kangi | And another |
| Kari Iguku | With a hump |
| Guku Guku | Hump, Hump! |
The rain seemed to hear them. The earth swallowed thirstily, swallowed the first few drops and gradually the ground relaxed its hardness and became soft and sloshy. The children splashed their feet in muddy pools and slid smoothly on slopes and hills.
Wanja was possessed of the rain-spirit. She walked through it, clothes drenched, skirt-hem tight against her thighs, revelling in the waters from heaven. She would at times sit or stand still on her hut’s verandah and look, wonder-gaze, at her life in droplets of rain falling from the roof. What was the meaning of her life? Where was the continuity of purpose? Why should she go through life an unfulfilled woman? She wanted to cry for . . . she knew not what. She and Nyakinyua were now close, very close, mother and daughter more than grandmother and granddaughter, and when the rain subsided they would wander about Ilmorog, would go to the shamba to break the clods of earth and of course plant together.
In the evening people would crowd Abdulla’s place and talk about the rain blessings. Baada ya dhiki faraja; and Abdulla wished he could truly believe this. The older folk told stories of how Rain, Sun and Wind went a-wooing Earth, Sister of Moon, and it was Rain who carried the day, and that was why Earth grew a swollen belly after being touched by Rain. Others said no, the raindrops were really the sperms of God and that even human beings sprang from the womb on mother earth soon after the original passionate downpour, torrential waters of the beginning.
This waiting earth: its readiness powered Wanja’s wings of expectation and numerous desires. Feverishly, she looked out for tomorrow, waiting, like the other women, for earth to crack, earth to be thrust open by the naked shoots of life.
And indeed came the sunshine, and the rain stopped, the earth steamed, the earth opened, and the seeds germinated, bean ears flapping free in the breeze, maize-blades pointing skywards, green potato leaves spreading out and wide in the sun.
Karega, Abdulla, Munira often met at Abdulla’s store. They sat outside, basked in the sunset beams over the new growth, warm bellies, drowsy heads, dreams over a Tusker beer, and their hearts would beat suddenly at the sight of Wanja coming toward them from the fields.
But brooding not too far below their tranquil existence was their consciousness of the journey and the experiences which spoke of another less sure, more troubled world which could, any time, descend upon them, breaking asunder their rain-filled sun-warmed calm. They did not talk about it: but they knew, in their different ways, that things would never again be the same. For the journey had presented each with a set of questions for which there were no ready answers; had, because of what they had seen and experienced, thrown up challenges that could neither be forgotten nor put on one side, for they touched on things deep in the psyche, in their separate conceptions of what it meant to be human, a man, alive and free.
Karega said to Abdulla: Joseph will get far. He is doing extremely well in school and we have asked for him to join Standard IV.
School had resumed almost as soon as the city crowd dispensing charity and promises had gone, almost as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving behind the kind of restless silence that is felt after an abrupt cessation of numerous high-pitched voices. Karega once again threw his weight into teaching, to avoid answering anything to himself, but the same questions came back, with greater unsureness than before: where, he asked himself, was the unity of African people?
There was a time when he used to be sure of things: there was a time for instance when he thought that contact with a loved one could solve everything, was the key to the world. And indeed in those days when his heart beat in rhythm with Mukami’s, he had seen a world without knots and riddles opening out, a world which, bathed in the floodtide and light of their innocence, promised eternal beauty and truth. He was soon to know, shockingly so, that there were those who waited in shadowy corners to suffocate growth with their foul breaths with the fart and shit of their hypocrisy and religious double-dealing. But even after Mukami had gone from his life he had retained some kind of expectation, an irresistible need to have faith in at least the decency of those who had known suffering in the past, those who had heroically stood up to oppressive forces. The existence of people like Chui, even though only in the school’s popular lore, had strengthened his faith in deeds of heroes. Hero-worship of those he thought could clear the air of suffocating man-made foul smells had gradually replaced his earlier faith in the universal healing power of love and innocence. But in Siriana he had watched the transformation of Chui from a popular hero into a tyrant who thought that his power came from God and foreigners. Karega had gone though all these experiences including his fruitless search for jobs in the city and his even more humiliating venture of selling fruits and sheepskins to tourists. Why then had he not learnt from these? Why had he urged a whole community to undertake a journey which he should have known would end in futility and added humiliation? Yes, Njuguna had been right: they had all gone begging in the streets!
Alone, in his one-bedroomed house a few yards from Munira’s, he could not readily fall asleep. In class, he did not feel that glow he had felt before the journey to the city. The same thought would buzz in his head: so it was not he, alone, as an individual: so a whole community and region could be condemned to only giving! And when their store was exhausted, through philanthropy to cities and idle classes, or through the fatigue of the soil, or poor tools, or drought, they had nothing and nowhere to turn to! A whole community of direct producers reduced to beggary and malnutrition and death in their country! He would recall Nyakinyua’s words before the journey and she too was right. Wanja too was right. Everybody had been right except himself with his enthusiasm and idealism: where now the solidarity and unity of blackness?
Amidst this chaos and whirlwind of thought, the figure of the lawyer would suddenly stand out, clean, splendid in his dedication and understanding.
He one day sat down and wrote to him. Send me books, he appealed, for somewhere in the high seats of learning in the city somebody was bound to know. For two weeks he waited not so much for the books as a word which would restore his faith and his belief. But the lawyer did not say anything. He just sent him books and a list of other titles written by professors of learning at the University. ‘See what you can make out of these,’ the lawyer had scribbled. Karega did not know what it was that he really wanted to get, but he vaguely hoped for a vision of the future rooted in a critical awareness of the past. So he first tried the history books. It had seemed to him that history should provide the key to the present, that a study of history should help us to answer certain questions: where are we now? How did we come to be where we are? How did it come about that 75 per cent of those that produce food and wealth were poor and that a small group – part of the non-producing part of the population – were wealthy? History after all should be about those whose actions, whose labour, had changed nature over the years. But how come that parasites – lice, bedbugs and jiggers – who did no useful work lived in comfort and those that worked for twenty-four hours went hungry and without clothes? How could there be unemployment in a country that needed every ounce of labour? So how did people produce and organize their wealth before colonialism? What lessons could be learnt from that?
But instead of answering these, instead of giving him the key he so badly needed, the professors took him to pre-colonial times and made him wander purposelessly from Egypt, or Ethiopia, or Sudan, only to be checked in his pastoral wanderings by the arrival of Europeans. There, they would make him come to a sudden full stop. To the learned minds of the historians, the history of Kenya before colonialism was one of the wanderlust and pointless warfare between peoples. The learned ones never wanted to confront the meaning of colonialism and of imperialism. When they touched on it, it was only to describe acts of violent resistance as grisly murders; some even demanded the rehabilitation of those who had sold out to the enemy during the years of struggle. One even approvingly quoted Governor Mitchell on the primitivity of Kenyan peoples and went ahead to show the historical origins of this primitivity, or what he called undercivilization. Nature had been too kind to the African, he had concluded. Karega asked himself: so the African, then, deserved the brutality of the colonizer to boot him into our civilization? There was no pride in this history: the professors delighted in abusing and denigrating the efforts of the people and their struggles in the past.
He turned away in despair: maybe it was his ignorance and his lack of university learning. What of the resistance of African peoples? What of all the heroes traversing the whole world of black peoples? Was that only in his imagination?
He tried political science. But here he plunged into an even greater maze. Here professors delighted in balancing weighty rounded phrases on a thin decaying line of thought, or else dwelt on statistics and mathematics of power equation. They talked about politics of poverty versus inequality of politics; traditional modernization versus modernizing traditions; or else merely gave a catalogue of how local governments and central bureaucracies worked, or what this or that politician said versus what another one said. And to support all this, they quoted from several books and articles all carefully footnoted. Karega looked in vain for anything about colonialism and imperialism: occasionally there were abstract phrases about inequality of opportunities or the ethnic balancing act of modern governments.
Imaginative literature was not much different: the authors described the conditions correctly: they seemed able to reflect accurately the contemporary situation of fear, oppressions and deprivation: but thereafter they led him down the paths of pessimism, obscurity and mysticism: was there no way out except cynicism? Were people helpless victims?
He put the books in packets and posted them back to the lawyer with a note: why had he sent him books which did not speak to him about the history and the political struggles of people of Kenya? And now ironically he got a rather long letter from the lawyer:
‘You had asked me for books written by Black Professors. I wanted you to judge for yourself. Educators, men of letters, intellectuals: these are only voices – not neutral, disembodied voices – but belonging to bodies of persons, of groups, of interests. You, who will seek the truth about words emitted by a voice, look first for the body behind the voice. The voice merely rationalizes the needs, whims, caprices, of its owner, the master. Better therefore to know the master in whose service the intellect is and you’ll be able to properly evaluate the import and imagery of his utterances. You serve the people who struggle; or you serve those who rob the people. In a situation of the robber and the robbed, in a situation in which the old man of the sea is sitting on Sindbad, there can be no neutral history and politics. If you would learn look about you: choose your side.’
What did he mean look about you? Choose your side? He did not want any more masters – he just wanted to know the truth. But what truth? Weren’t they all, shouldn’t they all be on the side of blackness against whiteness?
He looked out of the window and saw the green crops, the new growth: crops will flower and later we shall harvest, he muttered to himself but his questions remained unanswered: was that the kind of African studies he and others had gone on strike about?
Munira could not understand the new motion of things, the new mood of the village after the journey. Wanja and the other women on the ridge had formed what they called Ndemi-Nyakinyua Group to cultivate and weed the land and earth the crops, working in common, on one another’s fields in turn. Munira and Karega were busy teaching, but on certain selected days the whole school joined in the collective enterprise. At first some were suspicious, but on seeing how much a Kamuingi could accomplish within only a few weeks, they joined the group.
They all felt the stirrings of a new birth, an unknown power riding wings of fear and hope. The previous certainty had deserted the village. They now knew that forces other than droughts posed new types of threats but nobody wanted to quite voice their new fears.
He looked at Wanja, at her face, and marvelled at her ready involvement in practical labour. He looked at her hands, now cracked, nails broken, and he could hardly believe any of the stories she had told about the city and about her wanderings. He wanted her now, to possess her, and it pained him that she kept him at a distance. But then she seemed equally distant to everybody and this consoled him and made him bide his time. He himself was possessed of a new thirst to find out about things. His desire to read had gradually come back and whenever he and Karega went to Ruwa-ini to collect their salary they would pass by a bookshop to buy books. He was on the verge of being inside things and he felt good and generally grateful.
Alone in the shop, Abdulla would keep alive memories of hope and bitterness. He wondered what mood he could now trust, seeing that one so quickly and frequently, without any warning, changed into the other. But he was glad that Joseph had started school: how, he asked himself over and over again in his repentant moods, how could he have kept Joseph from school? He eagerly waited their fatigued return in the evening from school and from the fields, for only then, lost in their talk and their drinking, could he be sure that the calmness in him would not suddenly be rent asunder by his remembrance of things past. He looked at Wanja’s utter transformation, a kindred spirit, and he felt that maybe with the rains and the crop and the harvest to be, something new was happening.
The herdsmen also returned. They talked of the cattle they had lost to the sun. They talked about the journeys they had made across the plains. Now they hoped that the drought would never return. Not after so much sacrifice. Things would soon follow their normal rhythm.
But the previous flow and pattern of the seasons was obviously broken by the late rains. This irregular season, for instance, ran from December to March which under the old rhythm should have been the beginning of the major Njahi season. Their first harvest since the journey to the city was not big but it would keep bones and skins together.
They adjusted to the new pattern and once again after the harvest they cultivated the fields, readying the earth for new rains and new planting whenever this would come to be.
And so once again the peasants of Ilmorog waited for rains, their hearts alternating between fear and hope. Nothing seemed to have changed in Ilmorog. The journey to the city seemed a thing of the past.
Then suddenly two lorries came almost at the same time and brought men who started erecting a church building and a police post. What was all this about, they wondered? Was this the promised-for development? The post would be occupied by a chief, they were told.
The builders who lived in tents would occasionally come to Abdulla’s place. Their very voices and their presence marked them as different, as outsiders, and this made the people of Ilmorog feel a solidarity and an intimacy among themselves that was a way of rejecting the strangers. It was as if the men had been sent by the forces that had earlier humiliated them in the city. Even Wanja, Abdulla, Munira and Karega took the side of Ilmorog against the new intruders.
But suddenly, soon, the church and the post were forgotten under a new flurry of activity.
June had brought rains.
It fell day and night for two weeks so that nobody could really leave their huts.
The builders packed their tents and tools and drove away.
Children sat at the doors and went on with singing:
| Mbura Ura | Rain, rain |
| Nguthinjire | I slaughter for you |
| Gategwa | A young bull |
| Na Kangi | And another |
| Kari Mbugi | With bells, around the neck |
| Kara, Kara | Ding-Ding-Ding-Dong. |
After two weeks it changed the rhythm: it would pour only at night to be followed by a day or two of sunshine. Rain, sunshine. That was always the classical pattern heralding a big crop and a big harvest. And this balance remained so until the whole land was one luscious green growth with crowds of flowers of many colours.
So that even when toward the end of the season the builders returned and resumed their twin structures of the post and the church, the fears of Ilmorog were drowned by two big expectations.
The second harvest since their return from the city was going to be one of the biggest in the history of Ilmorog. It was a total reversal of previous years when Njahi season that started in March produced the most. This now was more or less the Mwere season at the end of the year and it had all the signs of a major event. Munira and Karega offered the school’s help in the harvesting.
There was also going to be a circumcision ceremony after the harvest. Some of the herd-boys were going to be initiated into men. As a boy Munira used to hide from home to listen to the singing which accompanied the ceremony. And even as a young teacher, after Siriana, he once or twice stole to the ceremonies. That was before the dances were banned during the Emergency. It was during one of the ceremonies that he had met Julia. She was then Wanjiru. Her voice, her dancing, her total involvement had attracted him and he had decided that here at last was what would bring fulfilment to his life. But she had become Julia and the temporary dream of an escape into sensuality had vanished on the marriage bed.
Maybe it was the memory of the dream: but Munira was thinking of possessing Wanja again during the harvest or after it and he felt a thrill course through his blood at the prospect.
3 ~ There was something about harvesting, whether it was maize or beans or peas, which always released a youthful spirit in everyone. Children ran about the fields to the voices of women raised to various pitches of despairing admonition about the trails of waste. Sometimes the children surprised a hare or an antelope in a lair among the ripened crops: they would quickly abandon whatever they were carrying and run after the animal the whole length of Ilmorog, shouting: Kaau . . . Kaaau . . . catch . . . catch it . . . catch meat. Even old men looked like little children, in their eyes turned to the fields: only they tried to hide their trembling excitement as they carried token sheaves of beans to the threshing-ground. But as they sat and sipped beer or merely talked about this and that they were still thrilled by the sight of children competing in threshing the mass of pea- and beanstalks with thin poles: a purring rustling sound issued forth as the bare grains of beans or peas jumped from the beaten dry sheaves and coursed through the dry stalks to the ground. Women winnowing beans in the wind was itself a sight to see: sometimes the breeze would stop and women would curse and wait holding their wicker trays ready to catch the breeze when it returned. It was as if the wind was teasing the women and was only being playful with their hopes and desires and expectation of clearing off the chaff before darkness fell and put an end to the working day. Later it was the turn of the cows: they were left loose to roam through the harvested fields of maize: they would run about, tails held up to the sky, kicking up dust with their hind legs, their tongues reaching out for the standing feed of maize. Sometimes the male would run after a young female, giving it no rest or time to eat, expecting another kind of harvest.
Munira and Abdulla were one evening resting from the last stages of the busy harvest, talking about the coming ceremony of circumcision. Karega was teaching Joseph some algebraic sums. Munira was telling Abdulla how he had always felt a little incomplete because he had been circumcised in hospital under a pain killer, so that he never really felt that he truly belonged to his age-group: Gicina Bangi. Wanja suddenly sprang among them, micege and grass and maramata sticking to her skirt. Abdulla gave her a beer. Munira playfully admonished her: where has our proprietor been? Karega continued with his teaching. Wanja sat quietly on a low stool, her legs parted a little, her hands pressing down her skirt between her thighs. She looked at them all as if she was in deep meditation. Maiden from the fields, Munira thought, and now he remembered the bruises on their skins, sustained when gathering beanstalks into sheaves. They were all caught up in that atmosphere of indolence and relaxation from a fatiguing session of breaking maize in the sun which only needed a beer and a fire to send them to sleep. ‘Like she had come from another world,’ Munira continued with his line of thought. Was there anything she would do which could possibly make her less attractive? There was a fever-excitement in her eyes which would not go even when she laughed off the male concern in Munira’s eyes. Then she started talking almost to herself: ‘I’ve got it now, now I’ve got it. And you won’t believe it when I tell you of it. But I shall tell you, for you see – must we not redeem this village, bribe the troubling ghosts of those that went before us? Sometimes it pains, the memory. Must we not lure new blood to a forgotten village? Theng’eta is the plant that only the old will talk about. Why? It is simple. It is only they who will have heard of it or know about it. It grows wild, in the plains, the herdsmen know it and where it grows, but they will not tell you. Nyakinyua says that they used to brew it before Europeans came. And they would drink it only when work was finished, and especially after the ceremony of circumcision or marriage or itwika, and after a harvest. It was when they were drinking Theng’eta that poets and singers composed their words for a season of Gichandi, and the seer voiced his prophecy. It was outlawed by the colonialists. He said: These people are lazy. They drink Theng’eta the whole day. That is why they will not work on the railway line. That’s why they will not work on our tea and coffee and sisal farms. That’s why they will not be slaves. That, says Nyakinyua, was after the battle of Ilmorog, and they said that these warriors must have been drunk: for how dared they put out their tongues and flex their muscles at the colonialists when they already knew what had happened to others who had resisted? So only the less potent stuff, Muratina, was now allowed. Even this was only licensed to the headmen and chiefs who had shown that they could secure more people to work on European farms – for according to her, people kept on running away. For how could a whole people leave their land to go and work for strangers? So that’s why the art of making Theng’eta was lost, except to a few. But it is a Gichandi player’s spirit: it is also used in fertility rites.’
Karega, who had stopped the teaching to listen to her monologue, asked:
‘This battle of Ilmorog. What did she say about it?’
‘Aah! she is always evasive. She will tell you a story without your asking and when you become curious she suddenly cuts it off. You had better ask her yourself.’
‘And Theng’eta,’ asked Abdulla. ‘Did she tell you how to make it?’
‘She said she would show us how to make it. Theng’eta . . . just a little spirit to bless the work of our hands.’
‘When?’ Munira asked.
‘Soon. It must be ready on the day of circumcision. When the elders are having their Njohi we too can join them with our Theng’eta.’
‘Why not? To celebrate! To say farewell to a season of drought,’ said Karega with boyish enthusiasm. ‘To celebrate a big harvest.’
‘Farewell to the drought in our lives,’ added Abdulla.
‘And for more sperms of God to fertilize the earth,’ Munira said.
‘A Village Festival,’ Abdulla agreed.
‘Time too, before the police post and the church are occupied,’ added Karega.
They started work on the idea with a playful religious fervour. Nyakinyua’s hut was the centre of action. The old woman took out some millet seeds, soaked them in water, and put them in a sisal bag. Every day at about five they all would pass by the woman’s hut to see if the seeds had started to germinate. On the third day they found Nyakinyua standing at the door, beckoning them to hurry up. She had sighted little shoots, she told them, with the eagerness of a child. It was true: as if peeping through numerous holes in the bag were yellowish greenish naked things. Lord watch over us. Wanja poured out the seedlings onto a tray and they all joined hands in spreading them out to dry. Munira’s fingers were trembling at the nearness of Wanja. Lord, breathe strength into our hands. Another three days of anxious waiting. The old woman supervised the grinding but it was Wanja on her knees, a cloth tied just above her breasts so that her shoulders were bare, who did it. This in itself was a kind of festival and children and even men came and sat around and watched the grinding with stone and mortar. She would put some seeds on a large, hard, flattened granite stone, inoro, and she used a smaller one, thio, to crunch-crunch the millet. The spectators stood or sat and moved their eyes with the forward–backward motion of her beautiful body, until the seedlings were one stringy velvet mass. She was sweating by the time she finished but her eyes were shining with suppressed elation.
The old woman now set to work. She mixed the crunched millet seedlings with fried maize flour and put the mixture in a clay pot, slowly adding water and stirring. She covered its mouth with the mouth of yet another pot through which she had bored a hole. A bamboo pipe was fixed into the hole and its other end put in a sealed jar over which she placed a small basin of cold water. Then she sealed every possible opening with cowdung and when she had finished she stood back to survey her work of art and science. Karega exclaimed: ‘But this is chemistry. A distillation process.’ She now placed the pot near the fireplace.
After this it was simply a matter of waiting for the brew to get ready. It would take a number of days, she told them. But their attention was now taken by the preparations for the ceremony. People were already beginning to sing and dance in groups in rehearsal for the eve of the ceremony. It would also be the eve of Theng’eta drinking and celebration.
Karega could hardly wait for Saturday. He had always liked the dances connected with the ritual of circumcision and the singing, especially when two or more good singers happened to be present and faced one another in a kind of poetry contest. Then his heart would be lifted to lands far and beautiful where people were held together by a common spirit.
The main venue was at Njogu’s house because Njenga, one of his sons, was going to be circumcised. Muriuki too, and a few others were going to face the knife, as they would say.
The dances on the eve of circumcision attracted people from ridges near and far. Even the builders came to participate so that both the hut and the compound of Njogu’s place were full. Karega took part in some of the more general dances like Mumburo. But he, like Munira, did not know how to do the mock fight. At times it really looked as if somebody would really throw another into the fire, and Karega’s stomach tingled with fear of expectation. But all the same, he was soon drawn into the dance, and after a while, he was sweating.
Wanja was amused to see Karega laughing and jumping about, completely absorbed in the atmosphere. He was normally so serious that at times Wanja wanted to tickle him under the armpit just to see him laugh or relax that earnest face.
Munira liked the dances: but it always made him sad that he could not take part, that he did not really know the words, and his body was so stiff. So he only watched, feeling slightly left out, an outsider at the gate of somebody else’s house.
And the house tonight belonged to Karega and Abdulla and Nyakinyua. Nyakinyua especially. She was good at singing and she threw erotic abuse, compliments, or straight celebratory words with ease. She would make up words referring to anybody, any event, without breaking the tune or the rhythm. Most of the dance songs had a refrain and everybody could join in the chorus. But it was Njuguna and Nyakinyua who provided the dramatic tension in the opera of eros. They all, young and old, women and men, had formed a circle, and they moved round, feet raising a little dust, in rhythm with the songs:
Njuguna is now a visitor, standing at the gate of the homestead. He pays compliments to the house but demands to know who the owner is so that with his permission Njuguna can throw himself to the ground and bathe in the dust like the young bull of a rhinoceros. Nyakinyua answers him and says he is welcome so should feel himself at home:
| Njuguna: | And show me the bride! |
| And show me the bride! | |
| Chorus: | I’ll pass through Ilmorog— |
| Njuguna: | For whom our goats |
| Came crying in daylight | |
| Chorus: | I’ll pass through Ilmorog— |
| Greeting Muturi and the young braves. |
Wanja is pulled to the centre of the circle. All fingers point at her as Nyakinyua replies that this is the bride, ‘truly ours and not the other one, belonging to a different neighbourhood, for whom I was being abused’.
Njuguna’s tone suddenly changes. He puts contempt on his face:
| Njuguna: | Is this the bride? |
| Is this the bride? | |
| Chorus: | I’ll pass through Ilmorog— |
| Njuguna: | So dark, so beautiful |
| But with a broken cunt? | |
| Chorus: | I’ll pass through Ilmorog— |
| Greeting Muturi and the young braves. |
Nyakinyua’s voice comes in strong accepting the challenge and swearing to abuse him and even extend the abuse to his clan:
| Nyakinyua: | But can you do it? |
| But can you do it? | |
| Chorus: | I’ll pass through Ilmorog— |
| Nyakinyua: | You are the one that roars threats |
| But keeps a bride wakeful for nothing! |
Njuguna is not at a loss for words but comes back to the attack with the prideful authority of a choosy lover:
| Njuguna: | I saw cunt holding tobacco wrapped in banana leaves, |
| I saw cunt holding tobacco wrapped in banana leaves | |
| Chorus: | I’ll pass through Ilmorog— |
| Njuguna: | I didn’t know that cunt |
| You took so much snuff. | |
| Chorus: | I pass through Ilmorog |
| Greeting Muturi and the young braves. |
It is now a full battle in an erotic war of words and gestures and tones suggestive of many meanings and situations. The crowd of dancers is getting more and more excited, waiting to see who will be the first to give way, to crack under the weight of the other’s abuses and allusions. Nyakinyua is now on top and she presses home her advantage:
| Nyakinyua: | I was not even giving it to you |
| I was not even giving it to you | |
| Chorus: | I’ll pass through Ilmorog— |
| Nyakinyua: | It’s only that I found you |
| Fucking a crack | |
| Chorus: | I’ll pass through Ilmorog— |
| Greeting Muturi and young braves. |
Njuguna gives way. Why, he asks, should children from the same womb fight one another, with the enemy at the gate? He is now pleading to his mother. He is really her warrior returning weary but victorious from wars:
Mother ululate for me!
Mother ululate for me!
Or do you leave it to strangers and foreigners
To ululate for your son’s homecoming?
All the women now ululate the five Ngemi for a boy newly born or one returning from wars against the enemy of the people.
Under the emotion of the hour, Munira suddenly tried a verse he thought he knew. Njuguna and Nyakinyua were making it sound so easy and effortless. But in the middle he got confused. Njuguna and Nyakinyua now teamed up against him:
You now break harmony of voices
You now break harmony of voices
It’s the way you’ll surely break our harmony
When the time of initiation comes.
But Abdulla came to the rescue:
I was not breaking up soft voices
I was not breaking up soft voices
I only paused to straighten up
The singers’ and dancers’ robes.
Nyakinyua’s voice now drifted in, conciliatory, but signalling the end of this particular dance. She asked in song: if a thread was broken, to whom were the pieces thrown to mend them into a new thread? Njuguna replied, turning to Karega: it was thrown to Karega for he was a big warrior, Njamba Nene.
All looked to Karega to take up the broken thread. The school children laughed not only at his inability to take up the challenge, but also because of the reference to Njamba Nene. It was Abdulla who helped him out. He sang that when the old thread was broken, it was time for the whole people to change to another tune altogether, and spin a new and stronger thread.
In response as it were to Abdulla’s call for a change of threads, they now sat down. They listened to Nyakinyua as she sang Gitiro. At first it was good-humoured, light-hearted, as she commented on those present to a chorus of laughter.
But suddenly they were caught by the slight tremor in her voice. She was singing their recent history. She sang of two years of failing rains; of the arrival of daughters and teachers; of the exodus to the city. She talked of how she had earlier imagined the city as containing only wealth. But she found poverty; she found crippled beggars; she saw men, many men, sons of women, vomited out of a smoking tunnel – a big, big house – and she was afraid. Who had swallowed all the wealth of the land? Who?
And now it was no longer the drought of a year ago that she was singing about. It was all the droughts of the centuries and the journey was the many journeys travelled by people even in the mythical lands of two-mouthed Marimus and struggling humans. She sang of other struggles, of other wars – the arrival of colonialism and the fierce struggles waged against it by newly circumcised youth. Yes, it was always the duty of youth to drive out foreigners and enemies lodged amongst the people: it was always the duty of youth to fight all the Marimus, all the two-mouthed Ogres, and that was the meaning of the blood shed at circumcision.
She stopped at the dramatic call and challenge. Then the women applauded with four ululations. Nyakinyua had made them relive their history.
And so it went on to the small hours. It was really very beautiful. But at the end of the evening Karega felt very sad. It was like beholding a relic of beauty that had suddenly surfaced, or like listening to a solitary beautiful tune straying, for a time, from a dying world.
Later after the ceremony of the Ilmorog river, Karega and Munira went to Abdulla’s place to wait for Wanja and the old woman and for the mysterious plant. Wanja came for them late in the afternoon. They all went to Nyakinyua’s place.
‘We looked for it all over and at last we found out where it grew abundantly,’ Wanja was explaining.
‘Didn’t you go to the ceremony?’ Abdulla asked.
‘We went. They all bravely went through it. None showed cowardice and so we didn’t get a chance of beating anyone.’
The plant was very small with a pattern of four tiny red petals. It had no scent.
Theng’eta. The spirit.
Nyakinyua dismantled the distillery. The pot-jar was full of a clear white liquid.
‘This is only . . . this is nothing yet.’ Nyakinyua explained. ‘This can only poison your heads and intestines. Squeeze Theng’eta into it and you get your spirit. Theng’eta. It is a dream. It is a wish. It gives you sight, and for those favoured by God it can make them cross the river of time and talk with their ancestors. It has given seers their tongues; poets and Gichandi players their words; and it has made barren women mothers of many children. Only you must take it with faith and purity in your hearts.’
They crowded around as she squeezed drops of a greenish liquid into the jar. There was a small hiss, then the whole thing became a very clear light green.
‘We can try it later in the evening. Wanja will call a few elders, for this is not a stuff for children.’
They came back later in the evening. Under the mood of the frank atmosphere of the circumcision ceremony, they all felt together – a community sharing a secret. They sat in a circle according to their ages. Munira found himself sitting next to Njuguna. Wanja sat between Abdulla and Karega. They all removed their ties, their shoes, anything which might prevent their bodies from being loose and at ease. She commanded them to remove all the money in the pockets, the metal bug that split up homes and drove men to the city. She took all the money and put it away on the floor outside the ritual circle. She sat down.
Millet, power of God.
She poured a few drops on the floor and chanted: for those that went before us and those coming after us, tene na tene, tene wa tene.
Then she put some in a small horn, and continued her admonitions, looking at them, fixing them with her eyes.
‘And now, my children,’ she intoned, holding the tiny horn in her hands, ‘you must always drink from the common measure. Always the correct measure, starting with the eldest amongst you. You may then dream your wishes and wish your dreams. Who knows? If you are the lucky one, the one most ready to receive, it may be given to you. Not for me today. But I will sniff a little.’
She brought it to her nose and seemed to inhale something. Then she tasted a drop or two.
‘Aaaaah. I am old. I have no more dreams. And what are my wishes? There is only one. To join my man in the other world. Do you know we wooed in a millet field while chasing away birds? He was good with herbs, my man was. He showed me how to make this holy water as we lay wakeful to the noise and movement of the birds. Every night of our watch, we would sniff and sip a drop and there was peace around us. The millet fingers caressed our bodies and – and – here, Njuguna, why don’t you take this and start the round?’
Her voice had stilled their hearts and they already felt a oneness even as each waited his turn. When it came to Munira, he sniffed and the slightly acid fumes raced up his nose to his head. You must also sip, he heard some voice say. He felt its burning down his throat – something like the eucalyptus leaves that cured Joseph – right down to the seat of his stomach. For a few seconds he felt only this burning in his belly and in his head. But gradually the fire became less and less as his body and mind relaxed, becoming warmer and warmer, lighter and lighter. Oh, the twilight stillness within. His eyes were a little heavy and drowsy but he could see clearly to the smallest detail. Oh, the clarity of the light. Oh, Lord, the colour of thy light. Changing colours of a rainbow dream. He was now a bird and he flew up and up in the air, and at the same time he saw heaven and earth, past and present open out to him. The old woman, strong sinews forged by earth and sun and rain, was the link binding past and present and future. And he saw her in black robes of celebration-in-work, saw her way, way back in the past and in the future, one continuous sweep of time, how immense, saw her beside Ndemi felling the forests, harnessing the elements and secrets of nature for use by her children. He longed to be there. There past – present – future were one and his children were schooling to some national purpose, also felling trees, clearing virgin grounds, new horizons for the glory of man and his creative genius. Gradually he heard a distant voice calling: tell us your dreams and wishes. He halted, in his flight: what did he wish for in life? What did he want? His parents had always played it safe and he, Munira, had always stood at the shore and watched streams and brooks flow over pebbles and rocks. He was an outsider, he had always been an outsider, a spectator of life, history. He wanted to say: Wanja! give me another night of the big moon in a hut and through you, buried in you, I will be reborn into history, a player, an actor, a creator, not this, this disconnection. But when he spoke, his voice was strangely calm: I don’t really know my wishes and my dreams are few. But this thing I now see – what is it? What is the meaning of this motion about me? I seem to see Nyakinyua yesterday and tomorrow! I see her beside Ndemi, but how can this be since he lived a long time ago? I also see her beside these people marching to war: tell us, Nyakinyua, tell us, since you started it during our journey to the city. What did they see? What did they see that seems suddenly hidden from my sight?
Why, my children . . . you ask too many questions, even after I have told you that there is nothing more to tell. You have been to school. You and this small one here are the teachers of our children. What do you tell them? That we were always like this, will always be like this? And you, my daughter, have you not seen more than you dare tell? What about Abdulla here? What other secrets does he hide in that stump of a leg? Going-away generation . . . but they will one day return to a knowledge of themselves and then the kingdom of God and of man will be theirs. Ndemi left a curse. His children were never to abandon this land: they were to defend it with blood, it and all that it produces. Not that I understand the meaning of it all, why despite the spear, despite our numbers they beat us and scattered us to the four corners of the wind . . . how can I understand this alternation of fertility and barrenness, drought and rain, night and day, destruction and creation, birth and death? No, there are many things that I too do not understand.
There was my man too, remember. He was among the batch that carried food and guns for the white people to fight it out amongst themselves. He did not choose to be a slave like Munoru. The chief who had been appointed watchman for the colonialist demanded the fat of ten sheep and goats. My man was proud. He refused and spat his contempt for a slave. So he was listed together with the poor who in their poverty could not also produce the required fat. My man was wealthy: but proud. Some were taken to work on European farms while the white men went to war. Imagine that: taken to keep the white man’s shambas alive while theirs fell into neglect and waste! For a woman alone can never do all the work on the farm. How could she grow sugar cane, yams, sweet potatoes which used to be man’s domain? How break new ground? And how could she smith, make chains, pull wires, make beehives, wicker work for barns? All that and do her own share of the work? The others in single file, loads on their heads, went toward the coast, cutting paths in the forest, sometimes following the tracks made earlier by Swahili and Arab raiders from the coast. And then – it was before they reached Kibwezi – they saw this animal of the earth. It was so long, they had never seen anything like it before, it was a sight more terrifying than the Ndamathia of the sea from whom we all get our shadows. Its eyes spat out light, its forked tongue fire and hisses, and they, circumcised though they were, stood witch-rooted to the ground. A voice said to them: don’t touch this strange creature that walks on its belly. Study it carefully and learn the gifts of God to all his children, world without end. They were tired. They had walked miles, day in, day out, fighting sleep and even desire for the more permanent sleep. And now the animal was blocking the way. A man took a stone and hit it. It raised its head once, briefly, it vomited out a fire and light tenfold more intense than lightning, and with one huge hiss that shook the ground it moved away, belly on the earth. Blood-lust caught some of the others. They hurled stones and curses at it and even laughed at their easy deliverance! Listen, my children, listen, and fear the ways of the Lord. None who touched that animal ever returned. Some fell to the German fire, others to malaria, yet others to strange and violent vomiting. Only a few of all those who went returned from the war.
And your man, somebody asked?
He came back. He came back all right, but not the same man with whom I had earlier coiled together thighs and bodies made smooth by mbariki oil and sweat.
She was again silent. She stirred the Theng’eta pot once then let her hand just touch the stirring stick. She was not with them now, she had, just as when she had told them the story in the plains, descended into a private gloom of memories and uncertainties. She remained thus, hand on the stirring stick, head inclined to one side, eyes on the floor, answering none of the questions on their silent faces.
Karega glanced at her figure, bent so, and repeated to himself: no longer the same. He turned the phrase over and over again in his mind as if this alone explained all the agony, all the hidden meanings in her unfinished – well, in their unfinished – story. It was how he had felt after Mukami’s departure: it was how he had felt on leaving Siriana; it was how he felt after the recent journey. Indeed, he thought now, things could never really be the same even in viewing that past of his people, the past he had tried to grapple with in Siriana, and at Ilmorog school. Which past was one talking about? Of Ndemi and the creators from Malindi to Songhai; from the cape of storms, to the Mediterranean Sea? The past of a broken civilization, retarded growth, black people scattered over the globe to feed the ever-demanding god of profit that the lawyer talked about? The past of houses and crops burnt and destroyed and diseases pumped into a continent? Or was it the past of L’Ouverture, Turner, Chaka, Abdulla, Koitalel, Ole Masai, Kimathi, Mathenge and others? Was it of chiefs who sold the others, of the ones who carried Livingstone and Stanley on their backs, deluded into believing that a service to a white man was really a service to God? The past of Kinyanjui, Mumia, Lenana, Chui, Jerrod, Nderi wa Riera? Africa, after all, did not have one but several pasts which were in perpetual struggle. Images pressed on images. He tried to wrestle with each, fix it, study it, make it yield the secret that had thus far eluded him. And suddenly as the past unfolded before him, he saw, or he imagined he saw, the face of his brother! But how could this be, seeing that he had never met him? Still the face was there, it persisted in its elusive suggestion of many seasons! He remembered the story Abdulla had told them in the plains and he wondered if Abdulla could have known him. Abdulla, after all, came from Limuru. Then he thought of Munira: he had known him, and he wondered why he had not asked him more about Nding’uri. But then, despite their almost two years together, sharing the same compound, it was surprising how little they knew of each other’s lives. Thinking of Munira brought back the face of Mukami. Was it Theng’eta in his head? But then Mukami’s face had haunted him all his life.
Many a time had he tried to give what he felt a captive form in words – cupped hands raised to the heart in prayer. Under the power of Theng’eta, he seemed to feel the words. But suddenly, and despite the face that now stood vividly before him – had he crossed the river of time? – he wanted to laugh. He had just remembered Fraudsham telling them that writing was akin to religion: ‘My boys, a sublime act, a cleansing rite,’ and Jesus and Shakespeare had changed the English language. Before they did an essay, he would lecture them, so serious: My boys, it is what you truly feel that you must put down on paper. Not that they believed him and his talk of writing as an act of confession of heated passions and anguish. He, Karega, for instance, would often weave incredible heroic deeds and tuck in a little Christian message around the simplest topics. Like that visit to his aunt. That imaginary aunt, he now thought: she had followed him in every class in every school and he could never understand why teachers, black, white, red, or yellow, were always obsessed with people’s aunts, people’s last holidays, people’s first visits to a city. Anguish and passion. What nonsense, he thought. Anything he truly felt, anything that had really happened to him in life was banned from his pen. There were things that one could not say on paper, there were things that belonged to oneself alone: how then could he have spoken his heart to another, to a teacher, for the award of a mark or two? And would they have believed him if he had written that he had not gone to visit any aunts or any cities, that with every sunset he would simply walk up the hill overlooking Manguo and wait for her, hoping that she would come his way? And he would pray, Karega would truly pray, that Christ, God, Lord, anybody in that high sky should let her come out of the big house for just a little walk across the fields or command her to walk up the mountain or go to Manguo to wash clothes or something, anything!
‘Millet, power of God!’ he started, and at their hushed silence even as the horn of the spirit was passing round he knew that he would tell it. It was, after all, what many times he had written over and over again in his exercise books, in his mind, in his thoughts.
‘Whatever I did, wherever I went, she was always inside me, fluttering at the edges of my dreams and desires, between sleeping and waking. It was, God knows, as if I had met her in another world before this one and she had left me a sign by which I would later recognize her.
‘I first really met her when I found her sitting at the edge of the Manguo quarry on a hill we called ha-Mutabuki, near the household of Njinju wa Nducu and that of Omari Juma, but whom we called Umari wa Juma. She was sitting on the edge of the quarry, resting back on her hands planted to the earth, her legs swinging in the menacing caved hollow. Further down the hill was the tarmac road said to have been carved out of the hill by the Italian prisoners of war. It always seemed to me that motor-cars, bicycles and men were suddenly vomited out, or suddenly swallowed by the earth, so sharp was the road at the place we called Kimunya’s bend, facing Kieya’s ridge on which stood Manguo school. I was struck by her daring, for I always felt dizzy even at the thought of standing at the edge of any precipice. I walked toward her nevertheless and she looked up and saw me and invited me, well, challenged me to join her. Just like that. I hesitated. Come on, it is nothing to fear, she said. Who told you I am afraid? I said, pretending anger. I walked on because of her challenge and because I did not want her to see my fear. Still I was scared. My heart gave one huge beat: my legs seemed to lose strength at the knees. I was scared. I was scared. But the fear also fascinated and thrilled me. It was strange: I was walking toward life and death, my legs were really giving way, and yet something between pain and joy coursed through my fear-warmed blood and this became intense. I wanted to cry but I went on, magnet pulled by that face and the smile and the slight gap in the upper teeth – all of which I had seen before but never been really aware of.
‘We sat there and talked and watched the thabiri birds fly away with the sun. I knew her, of course, because my mother had lived as a squatter on her father’s other farm on the other side of the hill facing Limuru Town and the settled area.
‘She asked me why I didn’t go to school. I said I always wanted to, which was not quite true. She said she went to school at Kamandura. I there and then swore that I would go to school.
‘The following week I was daily at her father’s pyrethrum field picking the yellow daisies.
‘I was adept at it anyway, but now there was a new personal involvement in the job and my mother wondered what had come over me. I want to go to school, I said. I want to earn money to pay fees.
‘Sometimes she came to help me and she would tell me more stories about her school. She would also bring me ripe red plums and later juicy luscious pears.
‘Well, I earned enough money to pay for a term. When mother saw my determination, she offered to help with the rest.
‘She taught me what she knew, and I made quick progress. The teachers allowed me to skip a class or two so that within two years I was only a class behind her.
‘My mother was God-fearing, murmuring prayers at every opportunity. But she had never managed to make me pray or to know the meaning of prayer.
‘It was Mukami who taught me prayer. My first prayer – she had told me that God would do anything that one asked for – was on the road to school, under a cedar tree, a place we called Kamutarakwaini.
‘She was not with me that day. I think she was ill or something. Anyway, an emotion I had not previously experienced suddenly seized me: I bent my head, and shut my eyes, and I asked the Lord to cure her: and Lord, if it is true that you can do anything let me, let me, let Mukami be mine.
‘On weekends and during school vacations, I worked on her father’s farms, and again she would come and help me.
‘Oh, and we often waded through the green reeds in Manguo lake chasing away thabiri and collecting thabiri eggs.
‘And sometimes in the pyrethrum fields, or out by the lake, we wrestled. She would fall to the ground and I would fall atop of her and she would cry and I would get off and she would stand up and rub off dust or grass from her skirt, and then she would laugh atme saying: you coward. Then I would chase her, we would wrestle again, she would suddenly become limp and I would fell her to the ground and there was the strange song in my blood and she would cry and call me sinful and wicked. I would go away again and she would laugh at me and I hated her for all those things in me that I could not quite explain.
‘She went to Kanjeru High School, and I thought our worlds had parted. A year after, I followed and went to Siriana High School. The two schools, as you know, are next to one another, separated only by a valley between. There we continued meeting on Saturdays and we talked about our schools, our teacher, our homes, Uhuru and everything was good.
‘We saw one another during the school vacations – this time not too often – but once or twice in church.
‘It was during her fourth year and my third year in high school that I started noticing changes in her attitude. She was more irritable, it was as if she was angry at seeing me, and yet if I missed a meeting with her she would become even more angry. I could never do anything right and I thought, well, I thought it was because of exam fever.
‘One day during a school vacation she passed by our place, our hut in Kamiritho village, and told me, let’s go to church. We followed the same dusty road we used to follow as children going to primary school. We recalled many friends and incidents. There was that tall lanky fellow called Igogo: boys used to tease him to tears by calling him hawk, hawk. There was that daughter of Kimunya, reputedly one of the most beautiful women in all the land. We got into church: and were glad that Rev. Joshua Matenjwa, then the most popular preacher with the youth, was in the pulpit. All throughout she was very playful and where before she had been careful about being seen with me or any boy by her parents, this time she did not seem to care. After church we walked the tarmac road, through Ngenia, to Nguirubi. We lay on the grass and dreamed big dreams: of finishing school, going to University, getting married, children, and all that, even quarrelling about which should come first: a boy or a girl. She wanted a boy and I wanted a girl, we argued, and did not notice the time passing. We ran through Gitogothi, and near Mbira’s place she suddenly said: let’s do like we used to do when we were children: pick thabiri eggs from the lake. It was mad, it was crazy, dusk was coming, but really it was good. We waded through the water, birds flew in the sky, and the green reeds and the tall grass entangled our feet and slowed our progress to the centre. We picked some eggs as we went along.
‘In the middle of Manguo lake were two humps which were never covered by water no matter how much it rained, they always seemed to float above the water. Later I learnt that these were sides of a dam built by the young men of Kihiu Mwiri generation at the insistence of Mukoma wa Njiriri, then a chief, as a condition of his giving them licence for initiation. But . . . legend among us boys had it that they were the humps of two giant shark-like animals that used to dwell in the lake, and the reeds were supposed to be their puberty hair. On one of them we went and sat down. It was still. So still, and we watched the thabiri birds fly away following the sun. We counted the eggs. We had collected about ten. Between us. Then suddenly she broke into the stillness with a little piercing cry – uuu! and I saw that a leech had bitten her chin and was now sucking her blood. I pulled it off and blood flowed. I rubbed it and told her not to worry and she told me to stop it, she was not a child or something. I got angry and she got angry and I really wanted to slap her for calling me a big baby but she held my hand and we started wrestling. We wrestled one another and I was really very angry with her. I threw her to the ground and I fell on to her. I felt warm all over and blood coursed through every vein and artery of my being and she held me, dusk was over us and the world was still, so still in its gentle motion.
‘When later I awoke, I saw that night had descended and a small moon had appeared.
‘Mukami was sitting down. She had broken all the eggs and the shells scattered on the ground beside her.
‘“What have you done?” I asked. “Why did you do it?”
‘It was then that I saw that she was crying. I held her and told her not to worry, that nothing would happen to her, and that I would anyway marry her, should anything happen.
‘She looked up at me, sadly I imagined, and she said:
‘“It is not that. It is not that at all.”
‘“What’s wrong, then?” I asked, concerned, fearing I would never fathom her or any woman.
‘Her next question really shook me, so unexpected it was:
‘“Had you a brother who died or something?”
‘I always had vague feelings about my brother. I even had vague misty feelings that I might have seen him way, way back when I was a tiny child. But no, it could not be, and yet something must have happened because we moved from our place on her father’s farm and went to a village. The whole thing was mixed up in my mind. I once or twice asked my mother – I think I must have heard a whispering from our neighbours – but she waved off my questions and said something about his having gone to my father in the Rift Valley, and since I had also never seen my father I did not follow up her answer with more questions.
‘“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe . . . no, I don’t think so. I mean, the one I know went to the Rift Valley. But why do you ask?”
‘“You see, my father has discovered our love. He knows that you are the son of Mariamu. He says that your brother used to be a Mau Mau . . . and that it was he who must have led a gang into our home and who cut off his right ear after accusing him of helping white men or preaching against Mau Mau in church. Uhuru or not Uhuru, he would never forgive that indecency, and he would never let his daughter marry into such a family, so poor, and with such a history of crime. For a whole term he has been telling me to break it off. And now he has finally asked me to choose between him and you. I give you up or else I look for another father and another home.”
‘We waded back through cold water and the reeds, through the moon silence and the gloom. I took her to near her home and I went back to Kamiritho. I asked my mother about my brother.
‘“Please tell me the truth,” I told her.
‘“Nding’uri. He carried bullets for fighters and he was hanged. Don’t ask me any more. I am not a judge over the actions of men. We are all in the hands of God.”
‘Well, I never saw Mukami again.
‘Mukami, my life, later jumped off the quarry where I first met her. She died before they could get her to Aga Khan Hospital in Nairobi.’
4 ~ The effect of this extraordinary confession on those present was great. The old woman remained staring in the same place. But her hand mechanically stirred the Theng’eta pot faster and faster. Wanja moved closer to him. Munira sighed, something between a cough and a choked cry. He then stood up and went out. He was unable to understand the hatred that had suddenly seized him. Mukami was his sister, the only one who had taken his side, and between his father and Karega he now did not know whom to blame. He stayed out until, slightly composed, he came back to find an even more eerie spectacle.
Abdulla had grabbed Karega by the shoulders and was shaking him almost violently, all the time asking him, repeating the same same thing: ‘You, you, Nding’uri’s brother?’ And his tone was something like the cry of a strangled animal.
In his mind – but how could they know? – seethed memories of a childhood lived together with a friend, haunting the butcheries and tea shops in Limuru, scrambling for rotten bread thrown on the rubbish heaps from Manubhai’s bakery at Limuru; bitter, sweet, bitter dreams of an education he was never to have in colonial Kenya; crowded memories of the search for a decent job or trade: the years of toil at the shoe factory: the years of awakening, with more dreams of black David with only a sling, a spear and a stolen gun triumphing over white Goliath with his fat cheques and machine-guns; dreams of a total liberation so that a black man could lift high his head secure in his land, secure in his school, secure in his culture – all this and more . . . and below it all . . . the loss . . . the unavenged loss.
He could not spill this out at once. He only asked: ‘You? You? Nding’uri’s brother?’
They all waited to see what he would do next, waited for an explanation.
Abdulla sat back on his stool and quickly swallowed one or two Theng’eta drops. Their puzzled eyes were now on him, for his dramatic act had temporarily taken them from Karega’s story. He seemed to be savouring the Theng’eta effect, then he looked at them all. He struck a fly buzzing near his right ear and then rested his eyes on Karega. Amid their silence of unuttered questions, he now started in a pathetic, chanting voice.
‘Millet, power of God!
‘Nding’uri, son of Mariamu. Nding’uri, my childhood. Nding’uri, the bravest of them all. Unwept, unavenged he lies somewhere in a common grave. In a mass grave. The unknown unsung soldier of Kenya’s freedom . . .’
They all felt uncomfortable, embarrassed even.
Then he shook himself, composed himself, and his voice was now slightly tired, neutral, almost without emotion.
‘Millet, power of God,’ he repeated.
‘Nding’uri, son of Mariamu. He had come early to my mother’s hut and together we drank the millet porridge she had cooked. In a day or two it would be his turn to enter the forest. I had not yet taken the batuni oath, but I was to join the fighters as soon as I had successfully undergone the ritual. After the porridge we went out into the yard, leaned against the mud-walls to capture the morning sunshine. There was the sun, there was no wind, but it was still cold. We took a turn around the one-acre shamba, aimlessly pulling out a weed here, a weed there, from among the peas and bean flowers. We threw stones at the pear tree in the middle of the shamba to see who would be the first to bring down a pear. But the game and even the fruit were a little tasteless. Later at ten we sauntered toward the Indian shopping centre. We passed by the house of Kimuchu wa Ndung’u, a wealthy supporter of Mau Mau who was later shot by the white people: we stopped by the house, it was newly built, a stone house, the only stone house owned by a black man in the area, and we asked ourselves: will there come a day when all Kenyans can afford such a decent house? Nding’uri said: That is why I am going to join Kimathi and Mathenge. At the Indian-owned shopping centre we were going to meet a man, our man, who had some shadowy conections with the colonial police and used to get bullets from them and in exchange, according to him, he would bring them juicy women. At least that was the story he had told us. His sister, anyway, was Nding’uri’s girl – they came from Ngecha – or Kabuku or somewhere in that direction – probably Wangigi – yes – I think it was Wangigi, but he was often to be found in Limuru. And indeed on one or two occasions he had sold us some bullets which we had promptly passed to our brothers in the forest according to our oath of unity. Today he was going to bring us some more and possibly a gun. Nding’uri, son of Mariamu. He was so excited about handling a gun. I knew it, I could see it on his face, although he tried to hide it. I joked about his prospects as a fighter. “Once upon a time, a warrior went to fight in enemy territory,” I was telling him. “He came back home and started describing the battle to his father . . . ‘And this enemy came toward me and hit me one in the ribs. I fell. Another came and his spear just missed my neck. Another threw his club and it hit me right on the nose . . .’” he went on and on and did not see that his father was getting angry. “My son, I did not send you there to be beaten and to enjoy defeat. Such stories . . . tell them to your mother.” We laughed. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the road, and thrust his fingers shaped like a revolver, toward me. “Stop, halt, you drinkers of blood! Halt, come here! Lie down. Flat. Arms stretched. You, you, get those hands out of your pockets . . . Why do you oppress black people? Why do you take our land? Why do you take our sweat and ruin our women? Johnnie boys, red men, say your last prayers to your gods . . . No answer? Guilty . . . Trrro-Trrro-Trrroooo . . .” The pistol was now a machine gun in his eager hands, and he was actually sweating. It is all right, I told him, shaking him by the shoulder. He laughed, I laughed, uneasily. And now we recalled the night he and I had done it to the same girl in my grandmother’s hut, where goats and sheep were kept, way back in the past. I did it to her, standing her against the wall and she holding up her skirt. The goats and sheep were bleating, some stampeding. She was crying, not true crying, it was a mixture of sighing and whimpering and sucking in juices of inward pains and it was good. When it was Nding’uri’s turn, she protested a little, no ma Ngaikai inyui muri aganu-i, and then begged for a little rest. But Nding’uri would not hear of it and went straight at her. He found it difficult to enter her in that standing position and she tried to help him, not there, below, that’s too far down, there, and suddenly both fell to the ground, littered with dung and urine, but Nding’uri would not hold back. We recalled her words and laughed. She stood up, when it was all over, and angrily said: See, now, you have ruined my skirt and my calico, and ran out of the hut. We wondered if she, now a happily married mother of two, even remembered that night. Our talk somehow drifted to Nding’uri’s present woman. As I told you, she was our friend’s sister, in fact we had met him through her. At first he did not like their friendship, she told us, but Nding’uri and I dismissed this as the usual protective jealousy of a brother. And indeed he had later become friendly, he was really a talker, and it was he who had casually broached the possibility of his supplying us with “grains of maize”, as we called the deadly things. I told Nding’uri that he should have married the woman and he said it was all right, she had promised to wait for him until after the struggle, and in any case he wanted somebody for whom he would really be fighting. In this manner we soon reached the place, the back street next to a shop belonging to an Indian called Govnji-Ngunji. He was waiting for us. We shook hands and each handshake was a passage of the grains. It was so smooth and easy and it lasted hardly a minute and he was gone. The gun, he forgot to give us the gun, I told Nding’uri, and he tried to follow him. But then we decided we had better wait until the evening or another day. Two men came, emerged from nowhere, and tapped us on the shoulders. Something cold and hot flushed in my stomach. I knew and I think Nding’uri knew that we had been betrayed. The rat, Nding’uri hissed between his teeth, and was jerked forward with a sudden kick. A police van was parked near a kei-apple hedge near the Indian shops. The two plain-clothes men were laughing and cracking jokes and calling us Field-Marshals and Generals. Torn-trousered Generals. I felt bitter at my own impotence and accepted their jibes in bitter silence. One searched me. Then he suddenly stopped and he looked puzzled. Where are the things? he shouted at me. I too was puzzled. Suddenly there was a shout of triumph from the one who was searching Nding’uri. We all looked in that direction. He was holding high the deadly things found in Nding’uri’s pockets. Then it occurred to me that my man had not searched the inner pocket of my jacket where I had put the grains. It was a split second. I didn’t think about it. The decision as it were decided itself. I only followed it, and made a desperate leap for freedom. They were stunned at first. Then they cocked their guns. I heard the sounds. But this was not really me: how could I be so cool inside? I mixed with Indian children and all the police could do was to shoot in the air and shout to the Indians to help. But the traders were probably frightened by the gunsmoke and the children probably thought it was a joke because they were shouting and clapping and hollering, hurry up, hurry up! which brought more of them into the streets, thus further complicating the issue and so sheltering me from harm. I went through the back lanes, onto the fields near Gwa-Karabu toward Rongai, the African shops. Now they shot at me. I fell. I rose. They shot again. I fell and rose, over ditches and hillocks, through fields of grass, through Rongai market-place, across the railway line and on to the workers’ quarters at Bata Factory. By this time, word had reached Bata. They hid me, passing me from door to door onto a secret path that led to the tea bush, to the forest and to friends.
‘Nding’uri, son of my aunt. I never saw him again. A week later, they hanged him at Githunguri.
‘Millet, power of God. I prayed: “Spare me, spare me, oh Lord, so that I can one day get that louse.”
‘And what did I do when I came out? I, Abdulla, forgot my vow to the Lord . . . I was busy looking for money . . . and even came to hide in Ilmorog.’
He broke off, choked, and for a few seconds he was lost to them. Karega’s eyes were fixed on Abdulla. Nyakinyua raised her head and looked at all of them in turn as if she alone could see things hidden from them, as if she alone could read signs in the enigmatic gloom in the hut.
5 ~ For years, Munira was to remember that night of Theng’eta drinking. Later in his statement he tried to sketch the scene, just the outline, of those puzzled faces, to capture in words Wanja’s troubled voice, as she broke into their thoughts with the question that lay beneath the confessions, the memories, the inner wrestling with contradictory impulses, of that first night of contact with the Theng’eta, the spirit, in its purest form. Was she, he had then wondered, trying to save the occasion by changing the subject? And yet it was appropriate, directed at the only person who could show them the light out of their darkness.
‘Tell us, mother, tell us this: what did your man see that changed him? What made him no longer the same? Did he tell you the meaning of what he saw?’
‘In the glare of that light?’ she had asked as if she had all along expected the question and had readied herself for it. ‘What he saw in the glare of that light, he tried to tell me many times. But something always blocked him, his throat, in the beginning of telling it, and he could not continue. But then came the second big war, and once again our children, our sons, your father among them, were taken away and we heard strange names when they came back: Abithinia, Bama, India, Boboi, Njiovani, Njirimani, and others. And this time our sons were actually holding the guns and helping, unwillingly, in the general slaughter of human lives. My man would whisper all these things to me late at night and the fever would seize him and he would tremble so and I would hold him to still him. And one night he told it to me in words that were then strange and lacked meaning. Even this, even this slaughter is not what I saw. I tried him again: tell me what you saw, what is it that has troubled you these many years? Is it your son? Then he trembled again and I could see there were tears in his eyes and I held him to reassure him. He told me this: You see, woman mine . . . when the animal, bigger it was than the famed Ndamathia remember, when it spat out the light, I thought I saw sons and daughters of black people of the centuries rise up as one to harness the power of that light, and the white man who was with us was frightened by what would happen when that power was in the hands of these black gods. He turned his wiles on us: he turned his poison tongue at us: do you remember Wakarwigi, the white man we called the hawk? He would run to Agikuyu and tell them: The Masai are coming to steal your cows and they are armed to the teeth: and he would then run to the Masai and tell them: Wagikuyu are coming to steal your cows and your daughters and they are armed to the teeth. Do you remember how we almost slaughtered one another, with Wakarwigi coming in at the last minute as peacemaker? And when that finally failed, he turned his guns to the black children, who, having grown wiser, retreated to the forests and to the mountains, to reform their broken lines. They came back no longer trembling slaves, but itungati warriors armed with pangas, and spears and guns and faith. Yes, woman, and faith which was another kind of light. There were a few traitors among them, those who wanted to remain porters at the gate, collectors of the fallout from the white man’s control of that power and of the human energies which worked it. But in the main they remained together . . . and there was much blood, many motherless, many maimed legs, many broken homes and all because a few hungry souls sick with greed wanted everything for themselves. They took the virtues that arise from that as true virtues of the human heart. They practised charity, pity; they even made laws and rules of good conduct for those they had made motherless, for those they had driven into the streets. Tell me, woman: would we need pity, charity, generosity, kindness if there were no poor and miserable to pity and be kind to? And did they think that we would continue to be the receivers of their kindness and charity, when the power worked by us was enough to feed and clothe us all with the strength and infinite wisdom and love of a human being? And so there was this groaning, woman, this groaning in the fiery fury of the struggle. That, woman, was a terrible sight and sound to see and to hear, and it has kept me awake or in restless sleep this many a night, and I feared to tell you . . .’
Abdulla was actually groaning and it was this that interrupted her narrative of the vision passed to her by her man, whose meaning they thought they understood: for had it not already happened? But Abdulla continued groaning and shouting obscenities at faces only he could see, and they thought that it was probably the memory of it that moved him so. Wanja rested her hand on his shoulders and he stopped writhing and groaning with pain and looked up into her eyes; then he turned away with a strange incomprehensible expression on his face. She too had a slightly contorted look of pain on her face and she bit her lower lip as if holding back further tears.
The old woman got off her stool by the Theng’eta pot. She looked at them all and Munira had the impression of tremendous compassion and gentleness and eagerness to heal on her emaciated face. ‘Go home, children. Go home and sleep. You have all read the good God’s own book . . . vengeance is mine, and I say, is it any man’s job to do God’s justice and vengeance? Sleep, and let it be, let it be, for there are still so many karwigis in our midst. Sleep.’
I keep on asking myself, now that it has happened, what it was she was trying to tell us that night, Munira scribbled with the inner fury of trying to understand. Would it have stopped what has now happened if it, whatever it was, had been heeded? By whom? Abdulla was the first to go out, he remembered, followed by Wanja and Karega. Wanja walked with Abdulla for a little distance and then came back and joined Karega where he was standing. And Munira could still recall distinctly the feeling he then had of being excluded from something that bound the others together. He would anyway have liked to be alone, with his thoughts, but Wanja’s action somehow increased his smouldering wrath at his own uncertainties. He called her and she came to him. He thought he should hold back his words, but they were out, speaking his bitterness and the frustration of the many months she had kept him at a distance, playing with his emotions, memories, and expectations.
‘Why did you come to Ilmorog? There was more peace before you came here.’
‘The peace of nothing happening?’ she retorted, and he, Munira, waited for her to continue, to say more, but she had already danced to Karega’s side.
I left them standing together and I walked home, alone, wrestling – with my own thoughts and inner anxieties. Theng’eta . . . Ilmorog . . . Karega’s story. During his telling it, my past had flashed across the dark abyss of my present. It was as if before tonight I had never known my family, my past. I remembered my only too recent conversation with my father and his apparent change in attitude. I remembered his missing ear. I had never, I confessed to myself, cared much for my father although I was slightly scared of him. I had never really known any of my sisters or brothers most of whom had married into wealth or had acquired wealth. Others had even gone to England for training as nurses, doctors and engineers. I had been an outsider, a distant spectator, who could only guess what was happening through hastily dropped hints, through earnest conversations that were abruptly stopped on my arrival at the scene. Why, my father had even run my home for me, and my wife had looked up to him for orders and approval. What now pained me, I don’t know how to put it, was a feeling that Karega was more of an insider even in my family. Had he not already affected the course of its history? Mukami, although I had never known her beyond the fact that she was my sister and pupil, was of my blood: had he come all this way to throw her death in my face? Was this why he had come to Ilmorog, hiding the real motive behind past pupilship and desire for advice and help? Was there not a note of triumph at the edges of his narrative?
I argued with myself: my father was after all my father. What I felt was a strange feeling, an uncomfortable eerie sensation, disagreeably sitting in my stomach, of a son who had wined and dined with those who had deformed his father, blood of his blood, and brought death to the family. It was this I could not now justify in my own mind. I remembered Abdulla’s words calling on the Lord to bring him face to face one day with Nding’uri’s real murderer. How short a time it took me to forget Nyakinyua’s words of wisdom and compassion! I cried in my heart: Give me the strength, Lord, give me a steadfast will. I felt, may the Lord forgive us all, that I had to take a drastic step that would restore me to my usurped history, my usurped inheritance, that would reconnect me with my history. Something to enable me to claim my father. And Karega loomed large in the way.
To say the truth, I did not know, I was not quite sure, whom I wanted to avenge: myself, Mukami, my father: but I only felt driven to do something to give me a sense of belonging. I was tired of being a spectator, an outsider.