One night a detachment of five led by the officer and including Hamza headed for a German mission called Kilemba, which they hoped the British command had not yet reached. The British practice was to close all German outposts, farms or missions, to prevent the schutztruppe from receiving supplies there. The German civilians were treated with the courtesies befitting citizens of an enlightened combatant nation and were taken away to Rhodesia or British East Africa or Blantyre in Nyasaland where they could be interned by other Europeans until the end of hostilities. It would not do to have Europeans watched over and restrained by unsupervised Africans. The local Africans, who were neither citizens nor members of a nation nor enlightened, and who were in the path of the belligerents, were ignored or robbed and, when necessity required, forcibly recruited into the carrier corps.
The officer knew from his map that the mission used to be near here before the war, but he was not sure if it was still open or if the British had got to it already. Normally finding it would have been left to the askari troops who were expert at reconnaissance and tracking, but their commanding officer was curious about the mission station, which he had heard about from a fellow officer who had spent some weeks there recuperating during the Maji Maji war. There was also the lure of finding a German meal and some good schnapps, Hamza suspected.
They found the mission without any difficulty and arrived there in late afternoon. They had crossed from a wooded area, which rose into a stony escarpment and then descended into a grassy plain surrounded by mountains in the distance. The mission was at the top of a rise in the middle of the plain. It had a walled compound, with whitewashed buildings and a spreading fig tree. It looked serene and peaceful on the hill. The pastor was still there with his wife and two blonde-haired little girls, and stood waiting to greet them at the inner gate when they arrived. It was obvious that they were delighted to see the German troops, adult faces smiling while the children waved.
There were two small, fenced-in cultivated terraces just inside the outer gate, with pumpkins and cabbages and another crop Hamza did not recognise. The detachment waited there while the officer went forward to greet the missionary and his family and then follow them inside. A few moments later an African man came out and invited them into the compound. His brow and face were heavily lined, and there was a jagged scar on the right side of his neck. He spoke Kiswahili fluently. He told them his name was Pascal and he worked in the mission. The mission was large and had several buildings, a school, an infirmary, a chicken run and a fruit and vegetable garden. There had been fighting nearby and the people from neighbouring villages had all run away. That was why it looked so empty. Normally there were children in the school and the infirmary was always busy, treating the multitude of diseases that afflicted people in these parts: worms, sleeping sickness, malaria. The mission was allowed to stay open by the British because the pastor and his family had looked after a wounded Rhodesian officer who befriended them and pleaded for them to be left to stay and look after the local people rather than be sent to Blantyre for internment.
‘Why did the people not come into the mission for safety?’ an askari called Frantz asked.
‘Because the pastor said not to,’ Pascal said. ‘He did not want the British to come back and say he was keeping ruga ruga here.’
‘Do you have ruga ruga?’ Frantz asked, taking on the role of spokesman.
‘I don’t know,’ Pascal said. ‘I haven’t seen any. That is who we are really frightened of, not the British and the Rhodesians but the ruga ruga. Some people say they are cannibals.’
Some of the askari laughed at this. ‘Who told you that?’ a soldier called Albert asked. It had become the fashion among some of the askari to take German names.
‘People say it,’ said Pascal calmly. ‘The Rhodesian officer who was here told the pastor that the ruga ruga don’t take prisoners and they eat human flesh. I don’t know if it’s true.’
‘They are just rabble-rout riff-raff, not cannibals. They are savages in their goatskins and feathers, playing at being fierce,’ Frantz said after another bout of laughter. ‘We use them because they have a terrible reputation and create havoc and frighten people. Do you know why they are called ruga ruga? Because they are full of bangi and are always jumping about. Ruga ruga, do you see? We are the people you should really be afraid of, the schutztruppe. We are merciless angry bastards who like to have our own way and to bully and mutilate washenzi civilians. Our officers are high-handed experts in terror. Without us there is no Deutsch-Ostafrika. Fear us.’
‘Ndio mambo yalivyo,’ the mission man said quietly. That’s how things are. His polite indifference made it seem as if he did not really believe Frantz or else was not as awe-struck as the askari might have liked.
Later Pascal brought them food – mealie and salt-fish stew – and some plums and figs, which they ate in the lean-to where they spread their gear and mats. He sat with them while they ate with great relish. This is a feast, they said. You don’t know what we’ve been eating out there. Afterwards Pascal fetched two other men who also worked on the mission, Witness and Jeremiah who preferred to be called Juma. They were fellow Christian members of the mission community. They looked after the animals and the gardens, and Witness’s wife looked after the house. She was inside serving the family and the officer their lovely German dinner at that very moment, Pascal told them. Frantz began talking about battles and the vicious events they had participated in and the other askari joined in with their own gruesome contributions. It was to frighten the mission men but they sat there and took it all in, open-mouthed. This was what they had come for, to listen to stories of askari ferocity. The more outrageous the stories became, the deeper the silence and awe with which they were received.
‘The war came very close to us,’ Pascal said. ‘Then it went away. We have looked after a German officer and the Rhodesian man I told you about. God looked after all of them and us, and we have lost no one here at the mission.’
The temperature dropped steeply after dark. Hamza took the stone staircase to the top of the wall and felt a relentless chill wind blowing on his face. A puddle on the plain glowed eerily as it caught the light of the moon. They were to stay there the night and head back at dawn. The officer had satisfied his curiosity about the mission and the missionaries, both evidently safe in the hands of God. They left Kilemba with a gift of sausages and a bottle of schnapps for the other officers plus a supply of tobacco, which was the crop Hamza had not recognised growing on the terrace. Pascal had shown them the shed where they did the curing but he would not let the askari take any. The pastor looked after the tobacco himself and he knew how to count. He would know if any was taken. Pascal did not want the pastor to think he was a thief.
They left early and rejoined their troop without encountering any difficulties. Later that night, after the German officers had their feast, the Oberleutnant lay on his cot while Hamza sat on his sleeping mat nearby. It was time for their conversation class. The visit to the mission and the schnapps had put the officer in a good mood.
‘The pastor was a decent man but maybe a little stiff,’ the officer said.
‘Yes, he was a decent man,’ Hamza said.
‘What was he thinking, bringing his wife and small children to such a distant, isolated and diseased place? She was charming and kind. The orchards were beautiful, hey? She looks after the fruit and the school. It’s the coolness up here that helps, a perfect climate for fruit. But the poor woman, she was terrified by the rumours of the cannibal ruga ruga. It’s just British propaganda, I told her, to reassure her. They are our ruga ruga, our auxiliaries, we would not have dealings with cannibals.’
‘It was good that you were able to reassure her,’ Hamza said. He had to speak from time to time otherwise the officer became irritated and told him he was having a conversation, not listening to a sermon. If Hamza did not have anything to say, he repeated the last thing the officer had said.
‘It’s possible, about the cannibalism, isn’t it? Anything is possible when human beings go out of their minds as we have been doing, let alone those blood-crazed ruga ruga savages. That’s why we use them – because they terrify our enemies with their utter savagery. Why would they stop at eating the bodies of those they kill? Can you imagine doing that, eating human flesh? I don’t mean as an act of craziness in war or as a ritual of primitive people who eat their dead enemies to gain their strength, not as a custom, not as an item on your customary menu, but as a desire, as a curiosity, as an adventure. Can you imagine doing that?’
‘No, I can’t,’ Hamza said because the officer awaited his reply.
The Oberleutnant smiled scornfully. ‘No, you don’t look as if you would have the daring,’ he said.
*
The last few weeks of the war were a nightmare as they ran and hid from the pursuing forces. The retreat southwards drew the British and Allied Forces after them all the way to the Ruvuma. The schutztruppe did not just run and hide but were ruthless and successful in punishing the British and their allies: mainly the South Africans, the Rhodesians, the African KAR and even the Portuguese who decided it was now time to join the war, but they also took heavy casualties especially in the fighting after Mahiwa. The carriers regularly deserted in large numbers every few days, or perhaps they fell by the wayside from hunger and weariness. It was not always safe to desert. They were now in the land where the schutztruppe fought the Wahehe nearly thirty years before and then carried out the atrocities of the Maji Maji war some fifteen years later. The people who survived those times and who were now burdened with further depredations on their lives and provisions were worn down by schutztruppe violence and were not likely to show kindness to deserting carriers.
The askari remained steadfast and loyal. It was a wonder that they did. They had not been paid for months or even years in some cases, not since Dar es Salaam fell and the German administration lost the mint there. Still, it was safer for an askari to remain in the column despite the difficulties than to desert in such hostile terrain. They were short of ammunition and food, and their raids on enemy supplies and villages were no longer well rewarded. They had exhausted the land, which was now littered with starving or empty villages, their supplies repeatedly plundered by the rival armies. Beyond the Ruvuma, the schutztruppe turned westward towards the Rhodesias, deliberately leaving scorched villages behind them to thwart their pursuers, who themselves were struggling to obtain supplies and fight disease. Hamza’s troop was in the thick of the retreat, and he was so exhausted by the constant movement that at times he fell asleep on his feet. The troop was all dressed in motley, including the German officers, and looked more like a rabble-rout than an army. They were now retracing their steps to the area they had been in earlier in the year, near the Kilemba mission. It was there that the final stages of Hamza’s war were played out.
In the early hours of the morning, while it was still dark, he smelled the rain before his eyes were open. They woke to discover that most of the remaining carriers had deserted during the night. It was not so unexpected to Hamza or to anyone who understood what they had been muttering incessantly for days. They were exhausted by the relentless pursuit, by the heavy loads and the degrading work they were required to carry out. They were porters for hire but they had not been paid, and in addition many of them had been coerced into work they did not want to do. Casualties were high among them. They were poorly fed and badly equipped, most of them barefoot and dressed in whatever rags they could loot or steal. They died from disease and lack of care, and in the dire straits the schutztruppe were in, they must have been desperate to get away from an army facing defeat. They had been deserting day by day in small numbers but this was an organised flight, an admission that the schutztruppe could no longer ensure their survival or well-being. The Oberleutnant was furious and the other Germans joined him in his rage at the indiscipline of the carriers, as if they really believed that the ragged troop they beat and despised and overworked owed them loyalty.
‘There is no choice. The askari will have to do the carriers’ work,’ the Feldwebel said, speaking with force as was increasingly his manner. He addressed the commanding officer, demanding his compliance with a vehemence that was close to indiscipline. The Oberleutnant shook his head and glanced at the three other Germans still with him. The medical officer also shook his head. He was very unwell now. In addition to the malaria he was exhausted and suffering from a gastric infection that repeatedly sent him into the bushes. He had no medication left to ease his suffering. The other two officers who had joined the troop in the last months of tortured retreat remained silent. They were a former music master who required the troop to exercise every morning and who waved his handgun at them while he shouted his commands, and a reserve Leutnant, soft-spoken and unwell, a settler volunteer who looked worn out by his struggles. Their silence was respectful but its meaning was clear. The askari would have to do it even though they all understood the iron protocol that an askari did not carry loads. It was a matter of honour. Just as the Europeans were immovable on the sanctity of their prestige, so were the askari. The Oberleutnant shook his head, as much in consternation and uncertainty as because he knew there was no other option. If they were to abandon their supplies and equipment then they might as well march directly to the nearest enemy outpost and surrender. It would be safer than wandering unarmed among hostile natives.
After a few minutes of fruitless reflection he gave in to the tense and silent demand of his officers and gave the order for the askari to carry the loads. The Feldwebel smiled triumphantly and took charge. He roared for the soldiers to come to attention and when they did so he called out the new order. There was a brief silence and then a breaking of ranks followed by uproar. It was a long while before order was restored by the outraged Feldwebel and the under-officers who used their canes and even their guns to force the askari into silence and then obedience. By then the rain had arrived, and the men stood in two glowering files while the officers faced them and Feldwebel Walther berated them. It was left to the under-officers to distribute the loads among the askari before they set off on that day’s march. By then the rain was well set and heavy, a cold driving rain which cut into them as they trudged across the nyika towards the escarpment.
They made slow progress despite the officers’ shouting and their canes. There was little respite from the under-officers’ blows as the ombasha and the shaush seemed to have lost their minds too, goaded into worse ferocity by the Feldwebel. After a while the march settled into a reluctant shuffle despite the best efforts of the tiring under-officers. They stopped often, to rest or to adjust loads, and at every stop there were grumbles and scowling looks. They were not spared the usual perils of the march – the bites and the heat, the intermittent heavy rain, the aching feet from walking in worn-out boots, the exhaustion. All these were even more intolerable to the askari than usual now that they were forced to do menial work. When they finally stopped to make camp in the late afternoon, there was a tense expectation of trouble. The men grumbled in loud voices, wanting to be overheard, complaining that this slave washenzi work was not what they had agreed to when they joined up. They knew that the British were encouraging them to desert. They saw leaflets in the villages they raided for food and heard rumours from other askari. They complained that the British did not treat their soldiers with this kind of disregard. Such provocation to their dignity was intolerable. Hamza was surprised at how inconsolable their discontent was. It seemed at times close to violence, and they all knew what askari violence was capable of. In those last weeks it seemed to Hamza that there hung over the officers a fear of mutiny and massacre. He heard the Oberleutnant say softly to the other Germans, ‘Everyone on the alert. There could be trouble.’
The Feldwebel saw that Hamza had heard. Their privations had made the Feldwebel lean and sinewy, his face dark from the sun, his eyes shiny with a vigilant light, his hair and beard long and dirty, his whole manner full of menace and contempt for everyone, including the Oberleutnant. To Hamza it seemed that his hatred for the officer was transmitted to him too, that in some way he exacerbated it. At that moment, when he saw that Hamza had overheard the officer’s warning, his look was sharp and threatening. Hamza looked away hurriedly.
Squalls of rain turned into a thunderstorm as night fell. They had made camp in a wood, which was not normal practice but they needed cover from patrols. Some of the trees there were vast. Earlier, when Hamza put his arms around a trunk, he felt its heart beating and the sap surging up to the branches. Lightning crackled in the trees and weirdly illuminated the grove where they had sought shelter. Hamza wondered if it was safe for them to see out the storm here. He was wet through, lying on ground that was soggy and sloshy with water the earth could no longer absorb. Water dripped down on him from the trees and he felt something crawling over him but was too exhausted to move. Late into the night, he heard sounds of movement and guessed it was a small animal walking furtively about. Then all of a sudden he knew that it was the askari and lay still and silent where he was, pressing himself into the soft ground as if that way he could make himself disappear. When the lightning flashed he shut his eyes involuntarily, but in the instant before he did so, he saw the huddled shapes of men walking away into the trees. The furtive noises went on for a few minutes and then stopped and all he could hear was the splash of the rain on the sodden ground. He knew the askari were deserting but he lay still in the downpour, waiting for the dawn.
Somehow he must have fallen asleep because he woke up suddenly to shouts and commands. It was just about light and one of the under-officers, he thought it was the shaush, had discovered the desertions and was giving the alarm. Several people were quickly on their feet, shouting and looking around in agitation, not yet sure where the danger lay. Wamekimbia, wamekimbia, the shaush was shouting in a panic. They have run away, they have run away. The commanding officer asked for a head count. The Feldwebel tramped about in the rain, his sword in his hand, calling for the under-officers to count the men. Traitors, traitors, he called as he strode back and forth. Twenty-nine askari had left during the night, leaving twelve behind. Two of them were the ombasha and the shaush who had given the alarm, both Nubi and long-serving schutztruppe. The Feldwebel glared around the remaining troop and his eyes rested on Hamza, who looked away to avoid eye contact but it was too late.
‘Come here,’ the Feldwebel shouted, pointing at the ground two steps in front of him. Hamza stepped forward as ordered and stopped a pace or two short of where the Feldwebel pointed. ‘He heard you telling us to expect trouble,’ Feldwebel Walther said, addressing the Oberleutnant. The Germans were standing in a scattered group to one side facing the African troop, both the music master and the Leutnant with revolvers in their hand. ‘This traitor whore of yours betrayed us. He incited them to go. He told them lies and they deserted,’ Feldwebel Walther cried in rage. Then he stepped forward and with a wild swing slashed at Hamza who turned sharply to avoid the blow. It caught him on his hip and ripped through flesh and bone. He heard someone screaming and then his head hit the ground with jarring force. He heard several voices shouting and someone close by screaming dementedly. He struggled for breath, heaving desperately but unable to take in air. Then he must have passed out.
He came to for a brief dazed moment and saw the medical officer on his knees beside him and felt arms holding him. He came awake again amid angry voices and shouted orders. When he regained consciousness he found himself on a stretcher carried by two askari. It was raining and water ran down his face. He was awake for a while before he was able to arrive at that conclusion, only gradually adding together his confused impressions before lapsing into unconsciousness again. On one of the subsequent occasions he was awake, he saw the Oberleutnant walking beside the stretcher but lost him again. Hamza was hallucinating by then, perhaps he was not even on a stretcher. He saw the Oberleutnant once more, walking beside him, and asked, Sind Sie das? Is that you? His whole body was trembling and rippling and he had the taste of vomit in his mouth. The throbbing was worst on his left side but it enveloped all of him. He had no strength left to move any part of his body. He did not want to move any part of his body, and it required a great effort to open his eyes. Then they set him down on the ground and the pain shot through his leg and forced a scream out of him before he was even aware it was on its way. He came fully awake then and saw the ombasha Haidar al-Hamad on one knee beside the stretcher.
‘Shush wacha kelele,’ he said. ‘Shush shush alhamdulillah. Not so much crying, askari.’ His face was streaked with rainwater, his lips puckered as if hushing a child.
As Hamza lay on the ground with the pain pounding up one side of his body, suffocating with a feeling of nausea in his mouth, he saw the Oberleutnant some feet away, looking down at him prone on the stretcher blanket. ‘Ja, ich bin es. Macht nichts,’ the officer said. Yes, it’s me. Don’t worry.
Then Hamza passed out again. They stopped walking some time during the night. He knew that because he woke up briefly several times. It was so cold. He was wet through, trembling and shivering uncontrollably. Later he heard hyenas barking and a strange coughing he could not identify. He heard the howl of an animal having its life torn out.
It was no longer raining when they left at first light, and as the sun heated him he felt some relief. He knew now that the wetness was not only rain, that he was bleeding heavily. Flies gathered around him, in his face and on his body, and he did not have the strength to wave them away. They found a rag to cover his face, to keep away the flies. The shivering was now constant and he drifted in and out of sleep. It was night when he woke up and it took a long time to work out that he was lying on a bed in a room dimly lit by an oil lamp on a nearby table. He was trembling constantly, groaning involuntarily as spasms of pain ran through him. He was indifferent to everything else in the pain’s embrace. Later he sensed the approach of dawn through the open doorway, and in a while heard someone enter and draw near.
‘Oh, you’ve woken up,’ the man said. It was a familiar voice but he was too weary to open his eyes. ‘You are safe now, brother. You are in Kilemba mission. It’s Pascal here – you remember Pascal. Of course you do. I will get the pastor.’
‘We did the best we could to stitch you up,’ the pastor said, his sunburned face bent over Hamza. Pascal translated even though Hamza could understand, their voices drifting in and out of his hearing. ‘The bleeding has … some seepage. We don’t know … damage inside the bone … infection. It is important … fever down … nourishment. Then we wait and hope for the best. I will tell … officer that … awake.’
The officer came in and brought a chair to the side of the bed. Hamza could not keep his eyes open and fell into and out of consciousness, but each time he opened his eyes the officer was still there at the side of the bed. He had cleaned himself up but was dressed in the ragged clothes he had worn in the field. He wore his usual mocking smile as Hamza strained to hear. He could follow the words better now. The Oberleutnant said, speaking slowly, soothingly: ‘It seems that you will survive after all. What a lot of trouble you are. Now you will be lying here recuperating in this beautiful mission while … go back … troop and continue our senseless war. Zivilisierungmission … We lied and killed for this empire and then called it our Zivilisierungmission. Now here we are, still killing for it. Are you feeling a lot of pain? Can you hear me? Blink your eyes if you … Of course you can … a lot of pain, but the missionary and his people … promised me. They are good people. They will throw away your uniform so no one … you were askari and they will give you plenty of food and a good dose of prayer and you will soon be well.’
His words sounded unlikely and far away. Hamza made no effort to speak.
‘Tell me, how old are you really?’ the officer said, and his words suddenly came through very clearly. ‘Your record says you were twenty when you joined up but I don’t believe that.’
Hamza tried but it required too much effort to summon the words.
‘No, I don’t believe you,’ the officer said. ‘I can order fifty lashes for lying to an officer, a double hamsa ishirin. You could not have been more than seventeen when you joined up. My younger brother was that age when he died. In a fire in the barracks. I was in there too. Eighteen … a beautiful boy, and I think of him often.’ He stroked the stretched skin on his temple and then sat stiffly for a few minutes as if he would not say any more. His hand reached out towards the bed but then he pulled it back. ‘It was a terrible fierce fire. He did not want to be in the army. He was not suited to it. My father wanted it. It was a family tradition … all soldiers … and my young brother did not want to disappoint him … a dreamer. It was very clever of you to learn German … quickly and so well. He loved Schiller, my brother Hermann. Well, you must rest now. We’ll get ourselves ready to go.’
The ombasha Haidar al-Hamad and the other askari came in to say goodbye. ‘You are a lucky boy,’ the ombasha told him, using his regular snarling tone, his lips at Hamza’s ear as if he did not want him to miss a word. ‘Oberleutnant like you, that’s why you lucky. Otherwise we throw you away in the forest, hamal.’
The other askari touched him on the arm and said, ‘Amri ya Mungu. Mungu akueke, sisi tunarudi kwenda kuuliwa.’ It is God’s command. May God keep you, we are going back to be killed.
When the officer came again, all set to depart, Hamza heard everything he said. ‘Do you know why I told you about my brother?’ He smiled one of his old sardonic smiles. ‘No, of course you don’t. You are only an askari and you are not allowed to speculate on the intimate concerns of a German officer. You are piling up more strokes on your record, for insolence as well as lying and desertion’ He put a book down on the table on the other side of the room. ‘I’ll leave this for you. It will keep you company while you recuperate and it will help you practise your German. Leave it here with the missionary when you are well enough to go. Our war will soon be over, and maybe I will come back and collect it one day. I expect the British will intern us with nigger criminals for a while, to humiliate us for being such a nuisance to them, but then they will send us home.’
*
Hamza was placed under the care of Pascal who came to attend to him several times in the day, to give him water or feed him the soup that the pastor prescribed or to clean him. Hamza had only a vague and intermittent sense of what was happening. His fever was high and there was no part of his body that did not ache. He could no longer locate the source of the pain. The wound was on his left thigh and the whole of that side of his body throbbed with a pounding pulse. He did not have any feeling in his right leg and could not move either arm. Sometimes it took an enormous effort even for him to open his eyes. The pastor came to examine him during the day and gave Pascal instructions on how to clean him and make him comfortable. The faces of the two men moved in and out of his vision, and day and night merged into one another. Hamza felt a cool hand on his brow at times but could not tell whose it was.
He woke up one night in utter darkness and realised he was the one who was sobbing in his nightmare. The ground was covered in blood sucking at his feet and his body was drenched in it. Limbs and broken torsos were pressed against him, and voices were screaming and shouting at a demented and terrified pitch. He stilled his sobbing but could not stop the shaking of his limbs or wipe away his tears. Pascal heard him and came in with a lamp. Without saying a word, he lifted the sheet to look at the dressing and then put the lamp down on the table at the other side of the room. He came back to Hamza and put his hand on his brow. He wiped away his tears with a wet cloth and then cleaned the mucus from his nostrils and his lips and made him drink some water. Finally he pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed but did not say anything until Hamza was breathing quietly again.
‘You are safe here, my brother. Hawa wazungu watu wema.’ These Europeans are good people. ‘They are people of God,’ he said, then could not restrain a smile. ‘I am not the doctor but I think your fever is going down. The pastor said when the fever goes down then you are on the road to recovery. He knows about healing. I have worked for him for a long time, from down on the coast before he came to work in Kilemba. His medicine saved me when I was hurt,’ Pascal said, and stroked the scar on his neck. ‘He will make you better too, but we will not leave everything in his hands. We will ask God’s help as well. I will pray for you.’ Pascal shut his eyes and clasped his hands together and began to pray. Hamza could see him clearly, as if a film was cleaned off his eyes. He looked at Pascal sitting on the chair beside him, face weathered and lined, eyes closed as he mumbled the sacred words. Hamza looked around the room – at the table with the lamp on it, at the half-open door – and it was as if he was seeing all these sights for the first time. In the midst of his prayers Pascal reached out and took Hamza’s right hand, which was lying on the bed, and lifted it up. Hamza saw his hand firmly clasped in Pascal’s but could not feel it. Pascal put his other hand on his brow, and then he spoke aloud words of blessing.
‘Were you remembering bad times?’ he asked afterwards. ‘I shall stay with you if you wish but maybe it’s better to sleep. I will hear you if you call out. The door is open and I am sleeping next door. Do you want me to stay? I think tomorrow the pastor will be very happy to see your eyes shining like this.’
The next morning the pastor took his temperature and nodded approvingly at him. He removed the dressing and looked less happy but put a brave face on it. Pascal adjusted Hamza’s pillows while the pastor waited. He was a thin neat upright man who held himself stiffly, just as the officer had said. When Pascal had made him comfortable, the pastor said in German, ‘Verstehst du? Do you understand me? Do you want Pascal to translate?’
‘I understand,’ Hamza said, and was surprised by the strangeness of his own voice.
The pastor’s austere face lit up in a smile. ‘The Oberleutnant told us you did. That’s good. Shake your head if you don’t understand something I have said. I think your fever has gone down but this is only the first step in your recovery. It will take a long time,’ he said severely as if Hamza might misunderstand and think himself safe. ‘The bleeding must stop completely then we will get you to move a little and do exercises. For now there is still some seepage. This war makes everything difficult. We will do what we can here until we can get you to a hospital where you can be looked after properly. The most important thing is to prevent infection. Now we start you on solid food, one step at a time. Can you move your right arm? This is where we begin the exercises, with the right arm and right leg. Pascal will teach you.’
Pascal was the main nurse. He spent the night in the next room although he had his own quarters in the compound. Every morning he cleaned Hamza and helped him sit up, massaged his arms and his right leg, talking to him in his unhurried and slightly solemn way. Then he said a prayer with his eyes shut and afterwards helped Hamza eat his meal of yoghurt, sorghum and mashed pumpkin, which he told him the other African workers in the mission also ate. After that he made Hamza as comfortable as he could before leaving to attend to his other duties in the mission.
Through the open window Hamza could see part of the fig tree and part of the missionary’s home. On most mornings he saw a small light-green heron standing motionless for a long time on the ridge of the roof, then for no reason he could see, it took off. He did not know why, but the sight of the heron standing motionless on the roof ridge filled him with sorrow. It made him feel so alone. In the mid-morning the pastor came to examine him. As he leaned close Hamza smelled the mingled odours of soap and moist flesh and a yeasty vegetable smell. The pastor thoroughly examined the wound, exercised Hamza’s limbs, interrogated him at length and looked serious and grave whatever the result of his inspection.
Through the window Hamza heard a piano and the voices of the little girls singing and practising and heard their voices when they played on the patio. Sometime during the day, their mother, the Frau pastor, came to see him. She was a slim blonde-haired woman who looked used to hard work and perhaps a little weary but smiled easily. She usually brought him something on a tin tray: biscuits and a tin mug of coffee or a small bowl of figs or sliced cucumber. She talked to him about the months they had spent on the coast before they moved to Kilemba. Wasn’t the landscape here wonderful? The chill at night kept away the mosquitoes, which was such a blessing after the coast. Both the pastor and she came from farming people and the climate here was perfect for their crops. Do you not love it here? This climate will do you good, you’ll see. She asked Hamza questions and exclaimed at his German. Such excellent diction. When she left Hamza always felt better than he really was. When the Frau pastor could not bring him his biscuits or fruit at the customary time, Witness’s wife Subiri came over with the tin tray, which she put down on the bedside table with a small benign murmur.
It was two weeks before he caught sight of the little girls on the patio. One afternoon, after he had regained some strength in his arms, he used the wooden crutches Pascal had made for him and, with his help, limped on one leg to the window. Hamza felt the blood rushing through his left leg and an unexpected tingling throughout his body. Out of the window he saw a corner of the patio outside the missionaries’ home and the two girls sitting on a mat there playing with a doll’s house. He heard the mother’s voice talking to them but did not see her. They were not aware that he was watching. He placed his chair by the window and sometimes sat there throughout the morning, watching the comings and goings at the mission. As he became more mobile and could hobble out of the infirmary to catch the sun, he waved to the girls and they waved back while their mother looked on. He remembered what the officer said about how she worried for her little girls and he saw how she hovered over them. He sometimes saw the Frau pastor in the orchard by the side of her house, the girls trailing after her with their baskets.
One morning, as he sat outside on the chair he had brought out of the infirmary, the pastor came to him and stood squinting at him in the sun, regarding him without saying a word for a moment. ‘We have just heard that the war is over and Germany has surrendered,’ he said. ‘Here in Ostafrika our commander has only just surrendered to the British with his remaining forces. It seems he did not know for three weeks that the Armistice was agreed, but now it is all over. God has kept you alive and we must thank Him for that when so many have been taken. You must always be grateful for that and that He has made this mission the instrument of His mercy.’
Pascal told Hamza that there was to be a service to pray for all who had perished and that he should come. ‘It will please the pastor and the Frau pastor and will please God too. In addition to that,’ he said, ‘if you don’t come, you will annoy the pastor. It will be better if you make him happy. He is a cautious man and would like to see you gone before the British and Rhodesians come, as they surely will. If they find you here, they will know you are a wounded askari and may even close down the mission. If the pastor is not happy with you he will let them take you into detention, but not if you are one of his flock.’
A handful of the villagers who were part of the mission’s congregation were back and the service was attended by more than a dozen people, most of them women. It was Hamza’s first time in the mission’s chapel, an unadorned whitewashed room with a cross on the wall and a lectern standing in front of it. He thought he understood what Pascal was doing, saving his life and at the same time looking to win Hamza’s soul for the Saviour. He knew none of the hymns and sat throughout the service with head bowed while the congregation sang and the pastor prayed for the fallen.
Hamza’s condition improved steadily over the weeks that followed although movement was often painful for him in the damaged hip joint and across his groin. The wound healed and he gained mobility with exercising but the pastor said there must be some damage to tendon or nerve that he was not expert enough to treat. Hamza needed crutches to get about because the leg was not strong enough to take his weight. Pascal said that it looked as if he was going to be staying for a while so they had better make him more comfortable. With the help of Witness, Pascal walled up the lean-to next to the quarters he shared with Juma, covering wattle panels with a thick paste of mud, and then he helped Hamza to move in there. You only need raise your voice for one of us to hear you, he said.
The infirmary was now back to its proper use as the local people began to come in for treatment. They heard rumours of illness everywhere at the end of the war although the worst of it had not reached Kilemba. Hamza began to help out in the work of the mission, things he could do sitting down at first: sorting tobacco leaves, cleaning vegetables, mending furniture. He found he had a certain skill with the latter and the Frau pastor and Pascal found bits of furniture for him to mend. The pastor watched his work with the tobacco leaves and the furniture and approved in his taciturn way. He was a naturally watchful man who kept his steady eyes on what was going on in the mission but did not often intervene to correct or rebuke publicly. In the evening Hamza joined Pascal and the other workers as they ate their food and talked about the chaos outside the mission’s walls.
The Frau pastor said Hamza’s recovery was nothing short of a miracle. He must have led a righteous life. He knew she was teasing him and exaggerating his recovery to lift his spirits, but he was thankful. The little girls, Lise the elder and Dorthe the younger, brought over their hymn sheets as he sat in the shade and taught him the words, saying them to him and making him repeat them when he could just as easily have read them himself. He did his best with the hymns but they were stern teachers and made him repeat the lines several times. On one occasion they disagreed about how to say a word, and without thinking he reached over and took the sheet from Lise so he could see for himself. She snatched it back instantly, as if without thought. It’s mine, she said. In that instant as he looked at the verse he had a vague memory of the officer saying something about a book before he left. What book was that? Was that a hallucination? Did he dream about that?
‘Did the Oberleutnant leave a book for me?’ he asked Pascal.
‘What book?’ he asked. ‘Can you read?’
A little, Hamza remembered, thinking of his officer. ‘Yes, I can read,’ he said.
‘I can read too. We have some pamphlets in the chapel cupboard if you want something to read,’ Pascal said. ‘Perhaps in the evening we can read together? Sometimes I read for Witness and Subiri. They are such devoted worshippers.’
‘No … I mean, yes, we can read together if you wish, but did he leave a book for me? The officer,’ Hamza said.
Pascal shrugged. ‘Why would he do that? Was he your brother?’
The Frau pastor said to him, smiling, ‘Lise told me you took her hymn sheet from her when she was teaching you. She was outraged you took such a liberty. I wondered if you wanted me to teach you how to read.’
‘I can read,’ Hamza said.
She raised her eyebrows slightly, briefly. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said.
‘A little,’ he added humbly. ‘I need more practice. Did the Oberleutnant leave a book for me?’
She looked away without replying and then said, ‘I’ll ask the pastor. Why do you ask?’
He had seen in the second before she looked away that her eyes lit up briefly, so he knew that he had not hallucinated, that the officer had very likely left a book, which they were keeping from him. Hamza shook his head, as if he was uncertain or making light of the matter. He did not want to make a fuss when it could be his own feverish imagination at work. ‘I thought I remembered something like that but I am not sure. My memory is so confused.’
The more he thought about it, the more certain he became, and the officer’s words came back to him in fuller fragments, something about a fire and his younger brother dying and how young he had been. Then he said the book was for Hamza to practise his German on, and after that something about nigger criminals. Hamza could not remember what that was about. He did his exercises and silently thanked the pastor and Pascal for caring for him and crushed any hankering desire for a book, or tried to. The wound was now completely healed on the outside although he still needed a crutch to support his weight. It had taken many weeks, past Christmas and New Year and a visit by a British officer, during which he was kept out of sight. The British officer told the pastor that an influenza epidemic was raging over the land and across the world and that thousands had already perished. There was chaos in Germany, which had banished the Kaiser and declared itself a republic. There was chaos and war in Russia after the revolution which murdered the Tsar and his entire family. The whole world was in turmoil, he said. They had food and supplies here and had better stay put for the time being until clearer orders came through.
It was the pastor who brought up the subject of the book again, but he did not do so directly. At the end of one of his regular examinations, the pastor suggested they go for a walk together to give Hamza a little exercise. It was late in the afternoon and they walked over to the gate to the mission building and then to the compound gate. The pastor stopped there, his eyes running over the plain ahead and then to the escarpment in the distance.
‘Sunset gives a benign aspect to the landscape, doesn’t it? Yet it is a landscape where you know that nothing of any importance has ever happened,’ he said. ‘It is a place of no significance whatsoever in the history of human achievement or endeavour. You could tear this page out of human history and it would not make a difference to anything. You can understand why people can live contentedly in such a place, even though they are plagued by so many diseases.’ He glanced at Hamza and then smiled in a relaxed manner, at ease with his own words. ‘At least, it was like that until we came and brought them words of discontent like progress and sin and salvation. The people here all share one quality, they cannot hold an idea for long. At times this can seem deceitful but it is really a lack of seriousness, an unreliability, a failure in application. That’s why it is necessary to repeat instructions and to supervise. Just imagine, if we left here tomorrow they will return like bush to their old ways.’
He glanced again at Hamza and then turned to walk back. Hamza thought of him as a man torn between the demand made on him to dominate and the inner desire to give succour. He wondered if that was how it was for European missionaries working with backward people like them.
‘The officer who struck you must have been out of his mind,’ the pastor continued as they strolled back. ‘The Oberleutnant told me about him. He said he was an officer of great competence but also a political man who was full of grievances against the nobility and the ruling class in Germany. Ours is a painfully divided country and now, after the military defeat, grumblers have ousted the Kaiser and chaos rules. It makes you wonder what a man like the Feldwebel was doing in the Imperial Army in Ostafrika. Perhaps he was attracted to violence and the schutztruppe would have given him scope for that. The Oberleutnant also told me that this officer was difficult to control – that he hated the natives so much he constantly broke the rules about what he was allowed to do to them, including his treatment of the askari. What he did to you was a crime according to schutztruppe rules. The Oberleutnant told me it was as if that man wanted to attack him when he struck you.
‘Do you understand everything I have said? Of course you do. The Oberleutnant said your German was very good and I have heard you speak it myself. Perhaps it did not seem right to the other German officers that he … befriended you, that his … protection of you was so … intimate. I am only guessing, I don’t know, because of something else the Oberleutnant said. Perhaps his behaviour was seen as undermining German prestige. I can understand how people might think like that. I also understand that war brings about unexpected bonds.’
The pastor did not say more until they were back in the infirmary and then he stood by the window, glancing alternately out and back towards Hamza, avoiding eye contact. ‘Yes, the Oberleutnant left a book for you as you asked the Frau. He told me you could read but I did not tell her that. The Oberleutnant said you were in the wrong place in the schutztruppe and now that I have seen you here for several months, I can see that too. I have watched you recover your health with the stoic patience of someone with intelligence and faith. I don’t mean religious faith. I don’t know that about you although I know Pascal has hopes of winning you over to the Saviour. Pascal is a great romantic and a wise man.
‘When I took the book away, I did not know this about you and thought that the Oberleutnant was being reckless, that he was led by his emotions because he felt responsible for your injury. That was what made me think that he had overextended his protection of you, that it was that kind of … solicitude that had provoked the Feldwebel to violence. The Oberleutnant said you reminded him of someone he knew in his youth, and I thought this showed too much sentiment for a German officer speaking about a native soldier. I thought the gift he left too valuable for a mere native. When my wife told me that you asked for the book, I thought again about what I had done. I did not tell her that the officer told me you could read. She believed me when I said that the book was too valuable to be left lying about, which is true. When she told me you had asked for the book, she also told me you could read. I said to her that I knew that. So then she said, you must give him the book back. It was left for him. I knew she would say something like that, which was why I had kept silent. I told her that I doubted very much if you would be able to read the book with any true understanding, which still remains my conviction. She told me that was none of my affair and I should give the book back to its rightful owner.’
The pastor smiled as he said this. ‘She defeated me at every turn. Perhaps I should say, she convinced me that I was wrong to have taken it away, and so I determined to give it back to you and to explain fully why I had taken it away from you in the first place. I was mistaken. Perhaps in time you will be able to read it with as much pleasure as the Oberleutnant anticipated.’
He handed over a small book with a gold and black cover: Schiller’s Musen-Almanach für das Jahr 1798.