22

The Corporal

‘Your Corporal is a war criminal who should be tried at Nuremberg.’

‘What do you mean that piece of shit is a musician? He is just a mean son of a bitch who loves killing. Music? Music? No!’ Jember Belendia was saying angrily. JB, as he insisted we call him, was tall, balding and portly, but with a thin face and freckled brown skin. ‘But I guess the most fertile place to plant a seed is in shit,’ he added with mock contemplation. JB had served in the army with The Corporal.

Maaza and I were having lunch at a small bar kiosk in Dejen, a small, poor town on the outskirts of Addis where we were to meet The Corporal.

‘The trick to good food is eating at this kind of place. Grandma’s cooking — the real thing, not trying to cater to the city middle class,’ she was saying as she tore some injera and scooped some chicken doro wot from her side of the round serving platter — her territory, I joked.

That was when, through the door, I noticed a man circling her BMW whistling and gently running his fingers along its contours. I pointed him out him to Maaza; she smiled and acquired more territory on the plate. The Maaza who was expensively dressed the night before was now wearing a long, simple blue dress, her hair down, no makeup and looking fresh in spite of the hard night. I was in my journalist uniform, a black shirt, brown corduroys and my safari boots. The man, when he walked in, would turn out to be JB. One of those moments, pure coincidence, which we love as journalists — it means you are in the story, or the story is finding you.

‘Why do you write for a tabloid? You can tell me; I won’t judge,’ Maaza asked, moving away from culinary talk.

I wanted to tell her about how I had received a letter from Mr. Mbugua, my very own Mrs. Hughes, in which he could not hide his disdain at my working for a tabloid. This was all the more hurtful because I had just done a big story on how wealthy old politicians in their quest for perpetual youth were misusing Viagra so much that parliament had to shut down when MP after MP stood to address the venerable body with a hard on. In his letter addressed to the editor, Mr. Mbugua had written that he had always hoped I would become a serious fiction writer, a family doctor or (boldly hinted) an English primary school teacher like himself.

I had considered becoming a writer in the past, even applying to Iowa’s Writing Workshop, where my literary hero, Meja Mwangi, had sharpened his pen, but they did not even bother writing me a rejection letter. Soon after that, I applied to journalism schools, and Boston University took me in. I did not write Mr. Mbugua back, but if I were to do it now, it would be to tell him that we are born many things and then we become one.

But I did not tell her all that — that his letter still disturbed me, the idea that he would feel he had wasted his knowledge on me.

‘For the same reason you do poor law,’ I said instead.

‘Poor law!’ she scoffed, but she let me continue.

‘Anger, I think. Because of my parents, I had access to the private lives of the politicians. On TV they appear put together, invincible. But I had their dirt — little things, but really nasty stuff. No paper wanted to touch that. I wanted to expose them. But along the way, I have been coming across people doing interesting things — ordinary people — like this crazy guy who earns his drinks reading the daily newspaper like a TV news broadcaster in a bar….’

‘Can you do it?’ she asked. As I mimed, to her amusement, a broadcast about a long dormant volcano suddenly erupting, the man from outside came in and asked if that was our car outside. After Maaza answered, he asked if we were married, and she said no, we were just friends.

‘You can’t fool me; you are obviously a couple,’ he said with knowing winks. ‘What brings you to my town?’

Then he asked what we do, and she said that we were journalists and were writing a story about The Corporal and his music. Perhaps he knew him? And that is when JB shouted, ‘Your Corporal is a war criminal who should be tried at Nuremberg.’

‘The Hague,’ I corrected him, but he continued on.

They had served together in the Ogaden war. The Somalis, cut up by the Italians and the British and parcelled out to Kenya and Ethiopia, were waging a unification war. But neither Kenya nor Ethiopia wanted to give up their colonial borders for ones that made sense. Several massacres, like the Wagalla massacres committed by the Kenyan army against Kenyan Somalis, left hundreds dead, and still nothing resolved. Somalia eventually descended into anarchy and piracy — of course, that resolved nothing. Perhaps with national integrity, the country would have survived itself, but already parcelled out and under siege, collapse was inevitable.

Now, of course, JB did not put it quite this way. He saw the Somalis as ungrateful for all the Ethiopians had done for them. And, rather conveniently, he invoked pan-Africanism to say that Africa needed to unite and not form borders along ethnicity. But still, what The Corporal did went beyond the call of duty. So much so that even his fellow soldiers and commanding officers feared him. We were intrigued. He ordered a round of tej, honey beer, for us all as he settled in.

‘The Corporal — there is no courage in that man. We once captured this Somali kid, no more than 16 years old, but he could handle an AK. We captured him, and we were loading him into our army truck. Suddenly, a grenade in the truck. You know what your Corporal does? He picks up the kid and throws him on the grenade. We survive, but the kid has a crater for a stomach. He is still alive, and I take out my pistol to finish him off. But The Corporal, he tells me not to waste a bullet. And he stands there and watches him die. He has a smile on his face, like he is watching the son he does not have get married. I am angry, and I curse him. Next thing I know, he is holding a gun to my head. He forces me to thank him. Forces all of us to thank him. Later, he gets a commendation for his quick thinking.’

He drank his tej fast, as if to chase down the nasty taste of the memory. I joined him, as did Maaza. We all needed to chase down history with a drink.

‘We all died that day — every one of us. We are soldiers — we killed many more after that. But him, he liked to kill in order, starting from the bottom up,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked him as I ordered us another round.

‘He finds a family. He starts by killing the least, the smallest — a cat, a dog, a goat, a cow, small children, until only the mother or father is left. He called it the bottom-up method,’ he explained, tears that seemed independent of his matter-of-fact narration rolled down his face.

I must have been missing something in translation — it did not sound like The Corporal at the ABC, the Tizita musician. I was not sure if I believed JB — wars happen, and soldiers torture, kill and commit atrocities. But this was Nazi shit, something that went beyond sadism to become evil personified by The Corporal. Was it that I did not want to believe it?

But why would JB lie? Our meeting had been purely accidental, so it was not like he had time to prepare such an extreme story, and why that story, as opposed to another, more believable one? If true, it would certainly make for a better story. I was going to keep listening.

‘I am sorry for asking this — he did save your lives after all, no?’ I pressed him as I reached to put my hand on his shoulder, which he brushed off.

‘It was the kind of saving that kills, you understand? It’s like a child dying to save the parent. The parent dies too. I mean, look at me,’ he said, as he forcefully poked himself in the chest.

‘If I had to do it all over again, I would jump on that grenade. A musician? The Corporal? I can only laugh. He cannot sing his sins away,’ JB added, more to himself.

He ordered another glass for himself. As soon as it arrived, The Corporal walked in, and I saw fear slowly spreading all over JB’s face. Torn between running and finishing his drink, he chose the latter and, with his ever-widening eyes on The Corporal, he gulped down his drink. The Corporal walked over to the server-bartender to say hello, and they talked for a minute or so. JB finished his drink and tried to bravely walk out. But The Corporal opened his arms wide, started to smile and then broke into laughter, the sort of laughter that comes with not having seen someone for a very long time, a friend from another life. The Corporal hugged JB, slapped his back a few times. JB returned the greetings, with a bit of embarrassment, but just as enthusiastically — and then, as soon as he looked back to Maaza and me, the fear returned.

‘Did JB tell you our war stories?’ the beaming Corporal asked, turning to us.

‘Yes, he told us how you saved their lives,’ Maaza answered, looking at me, and I at The Corporal.

‘Is that so? JB is being too modest — he would have done the same in my place,’ he answered, without missing a beat. ‘JB, my friend, my brother, you must have a beer on me.’

Maaza translated as JB turned it down with effusive excuses. The Corporal insisted, and he relented.

‘Thank you, Corporal. I will drink it first thing in the morning.’

He had quickly come up with a solution, and I admired him for that. The Corporal laughed and told the server-bartender to keep a bottle of beer in reserve for JB. I did not realise it then, but sly or fearful, JB had left us with the bill for the rounds he bought for us.

The Corporal, dressed in a cheap brown suit, had all along been standing, and he politely asked if he could sit down with us. As I introduced Maaza to him, she had a contemplative look on her face, as if trying to figure out which of the emerging, competing stories was true. The Corporal, now appearing slim to the point of fragility, was hard to reconcile with the murdering soldier painted by JB. I asked him if he would like anything, and he ordered tej. He was ready to get started.