The man lived in a small settlement of iron-roofed mud houses where children were playing inside, now and then one or two of them venturing into the rain and the red mud before dashing back indoors. The women were busy making the best of the soggy, muddy situation: cooking, cleaning, making sure their children did not stay out in the rain and catch fever. The man had been doing the job for a number of years and oozed with the confidence of an expert. These were in fact the boom years. He had begun by going to strip corpses of watches, rings, necklaces, clothes, any valuables the soldiers overlooked in their haste. Business had been good then because the victims of purges were mostly well-to-do people. Nowadays the soldiers had become wiser, hungrier. There were no more pickings, but the “surgeoning” was booming because of the dramatic rise in disappearances.
He was in his thirties, in the prime of his life, dressed in gumboots, jeans and a khaki shirt. He was a very average-looking fellow who could have passed for a teacher, a carpenter, or a driver if you found him walking on the street in his Sunday best, because of the air of calm and control he had about him. He had worked in a hospital morgue but had resigned over bad pay and decided to become self-employed. Hands sheathed in surgical gloves, a cigarette smouldering in his mouth, a flashlight dangling at his hip, he led the group into the forest.
“We are the only remaining true foresters. We care more about the forest than those trained to name the trees. We know where the animals are, where the people live. The name ‘surgeon’ does us an injustice,” he said at the beginning of the journey. But nobody had been in the mood to appreciate his sense of humour.
Light gradually dimmed, little insects started screeching, the forest floor felt thicker, softer, with dead leaves. The silence of the people seemed to make the ambience grimmer. When they had walked for a long time, a change in smell warned them of what lay ahead. As they drew nearer, the intensity rose, attaining a well-nigh physical pressure. The “forester” just marched on, a man in his element, a vulture surveying his domains. Suddenly, they were there. He turned around to face the group, as if asking them if they had the nerve to get down to business.
They were lying on their backs, on their sides, on their faces, some in coils like pricked millipedes. They were lying on top of each other, arms and heads over their neighbours, as if for fun or in ritual. They were lying singly, in twos, or in bigger bunches. They were dressed, naked, half-naked, sheathed only in coats of blood. There were those who seemed to have dozed off midway in prayer, rapture, boredom, disgust, dirtied as if they had failed to find the time or patience to wash. There were the faceless, the half-faced, the ones daring you to blow their cover. There were the fresh ones, with heat seeping out, and the stone-cold, with collapsed skin coats betraying bones. He guided them through them, past them, over them. With his gloved hand he pulled, exposed, unveiled, rearranged. He went on and on, a conductor musically twitching; a surgeon rubbing, probing; a history teacher selling faces, fictions. At the end of the exercise, with his bloodied glove and impassive face, he spread his hands like a priest at mass beckoning the congregation to embrace the Lord and told them that he could do no more for them. He wished them well, studying their faces, as if checking as to who had vomited most, who mourned most, who couldn’t wait to get away. He brought his hands down by his sides, shrugged his shoulders like a doctor who has failed in his duties, and one by one the group turned around ready to get out of the forest and go to meet another appointment, another fisher of men.
The final search occurred on a riverbank turning to marsh. In the razor-sharp bulrushes, as if looking for floating baskets with babies, water up to their shins, they surveyed bodies surfeited with sun and cordite. Most faces were upturned in supplication, mortification, abortion. Weeds and flowers bent in the wind and touched the faces, as though to wipe snot from runny noses, or pus from sick eyes. Here and there was a trouser-ripping erection, obscenely captured in death in all its glory. Tortured by hope and despair, they retired to spend the night listening to exploding bullets and grinding out new plans, better ways to handle the present and confront the unknown.
In the morning Mafuta, Sister and Babit went to Entebbe to attack the phone in search of the elusive British politician. Sister wanted to give him the news. She dialled away, working through a cacophony of honking faulty connections, snorting disconnections, and a ringing, echoing maze of failure sounds. It was towards late evening when she got somebody on the line. Emergency. A British emergency in Uganda? She tried to explain that it was about her brother. The woman at the other end wanted to cut her off. Too many weird callers these days, some threatening violence to her boss, some saying obscene things to her or anybody else answering the phone. Sister held her ground. She insisted; she demanded; she informed. She came away with the promise that the politician would call her back. She spent a bad night loaded with doubt, hope, fear.
Much to her surprise the man did return her call, and expressed deep regret. He chatted. Bat had called him to congratulate him on becoming MP. He had sent Bat greetings on a few occasions. He promised to study the case.
THE FIRST TWO WEEKS in detention slipped by steeped in suspense, boredom, fear. His spirit felt compressed, cut off, strangled by the weight of isolation. A candle starved of oxygen slowly going out. His own company depressed him. His mind tried to roam outside, a bird without a song or a worm. He kept thinking that man was a strange animal: in a group he often sought isolation; isolated, he did his best to fit into the group. How many hours did he spend thinking about people he normally fled or whose company he found mediocre? How many hours did he spend re-creating banal conversations, images he had found boring at the time? He tried to concentrate on clinical things, reasoning his way out of the maze.
The knowledge that government was doing business just a few floors above him brought with it a crushing sense of redundancy, insignificance. The thugs could do their demolition job without his forlorn efforts to keep some things running. The Ministry of Power hadn’t collapsed: delegations were being sent abroad, deals were being cut, the machinery grinding on, just a few blocks away, in his own office. As he wasted away, he tried to imagine what he would do if suddenly released. It had happened to others. Would he go abroad and seek asylum in Britain or America? Did he want to leave the country? No. He wanted to stay.
He wasted hours going over calculus, various mathematical theorems, geometry. He remembered that when he was young he used to believe that it was the British who had discovered mathematics and was later surprised to learn that it had started in Arabia. And that writing began in Baghdad. He remembered the sand of the Arabian Peninsula as he constructed tunnels, calculating the depth, the width, the time it would take to dig so much each day. He devised the most efficient means of waste disposal. He planned escape attempts using a climber’s gear, helicopter rescue, smoke grenades, massive shoot-outs in which he would have to depend on the expertise of other people, as other people depended on his own expertise at the office.
He felt no bitterness towards the General; it cost too much precious energy. He just excised him from his mind, his life. He liked to think of his tormentors as a group in order to avoid hating them too much, seeing their faces in his sleep. From the flimsy residues of his Catholicism, he dredged enough stoicism, saintly resignation, to accept his punishment. Good people got punished; so did bad ones. That was the beauty of it. He now and then went over his life, the class wall he had built to protect him and his interests, and tried not to lose hope. He tried to look for those moments which would fortify him, keep his spirits up. They kept shifting, changing position according to mood.
He thought a lot about justice; it did not make much sense. He was living outside the bounds of book justice; most Ugandans, most people groaning under dictatorships of all sorts, did. In many places it was the criminals handling the apparatus of justice, meting out their version of book justice. I am also compromised. By accepting the Saudi prince’s money I participated in corruption, albeit involun
tarily. Now I am being punished by criminals, killers with dripping hands. It did not make much sense. Salvation lay in the passivity and patience of a crocodile. Maybe something will happen and I will be free to go and do my work.
In the fourth month, when he had quit thinking about Babit, his family, his former life, because it disturbed his equilibrium, a soldier entered his room deep in the night. He switched on the light and barked at him to wake up.
“Job. Exercise. Good for body.”
He marched out of the room. He felt weak in the knees with fear. At the end of the corridor were five other men. He knew them by sight. They stood under the light looking at the soldiers.
“Move.”
They were herded together towards the garage and then outside into the yard. The air was cold, fresh, the sky a marvellous deep blue dipped in twinkling icy stars dominated by a fat moon. It was a very quiet night, with no shooting, no shouting. Bat felt momentarily free. Fantasies and memories rushed to the surface. His body tingled with excitement. He was then pushed inside a Stinger, which cruised past his office and entered the gates of the Nile Perch Hotel. He saw the spot where he had left his XJ10 and tried not to think who owned it now.
They were herded inside the hotel. He found himself in a room with two other men. The sight at his feet made his legs buckle. There were six bodies on the floor. He realized that he was standing in blood, pools of it.
“What are you looking at? Roll them in blankets and take them outside. Quick,” a soldier with a very nasty voice barked, gesticulating fiercely with his hands.
Bat did not know how he brought himself to do the sordid job. It was an out-of-body experience, something the brain washed clean and locked away in order to preserve its sanity. It was heavy lifting, with sandals squeaking, slipping on the marble floor. Outside, a lorry was parked, tail-gate open. They hoisted the bundles, coming away sodden, panting. He stood at the side and looked out. The dome of the mosque on Kibuli Hill looked imposing, like a huge egg. They were ordered to climb in the back together with four armed soldiers. The lorry drove away towards Jinja Road. The cold air whipped in through the slats and over the tail-gate. Everybody shivered, teeth clattering. The soldiers smoked to keep the demons at bay, to generate heat in their bodies and to fight the stink.
He had been on this road before, going to visit Babit’s parents. He remembered the last time, the reception, the joy, the going home with Babit. Now he was going to pass right by those people. He thought about jumping off, an impossibility. But he had convinced himself that he did not care if he got shot or not. Had he not seen it all? What did he have to look forward to? More money? More power? More love? Would the rest of his life not be just nostalgia, the re-created taste of familiar stuff?
The vehicle entered Mabira Forest with a squeal of abused gears. The driver went faster. The massive forest looked even more formidable, more ominous, more pregnant with secrets of life and death. The overpowering darkness was opposed only by the headlights and the groan of the engine.
They swerved off the main road. Tree limbs whacked the side of the lorry and the top slats. They stopped. For a moment nobody moved or talked. A rifle clattered against the tail-gate, sending chills down spines. Then two soldiers barked orders at once. Grabbing a head, Bat led the way, stumbling, hurting his legs on sharp sticks. The human cargo was dumped, naked, the blankets taken back for further use. The soldiers smoked, puffing away, doing their best not to look. Everybody seemed eager to get away.
The next stop was at a river on the edge of the forest.
More orders: Wash blanket. Wash lorry. Wash self.
They washed the blankets, glad that they were thin. They scrubbed the lorry floor, the sides, the tail-gate, while fighting the mosquitoes and other biting and stinging insects of the night. They finally got into the lukewarm water to bathe off the filth which they could no longer smell. It took them an hour of endeavour to get everything ready. They shivered all the way back to the hotel. There they had to wash the rooms, the corridors, the entrance.
“Cleaning woman’s job. You still long way off, you pussies,” one soldier said.
They were given new clothes and sandals before being taken back to Parliament.
It became a fortnightly event. Each time he was sent out with different prisoners. What happened to the others? Was there no end to the number of people held here?
On the fifth trip the soldiers had a surprise for them. At the hotel there were no bodies awaiting disposal. Instead, men were lined up, hands tied in front of them. Every prisoner was given somebody to dispose of. Bat tried not to look. He hesitated, waiting to see what others would do. He was viciously prodded with a rifle barrel. He lifted the hammer, said a prayer of absolution, and smashed. A clinical exercise robbed of either the thrill of anger or the satisfaction of malice. He remembered beheading, gutting and roasting chickens for the family when he was young. The jump from chicken to man, without progression between, seemed ridiculous. He had always wondered what butchers felt when they slit the throats of huge bulls. If they felt as empty as he did now, he pitied them.
At the river he thought of drowning himself and what a waste that would be. The soldiers would return to the hotel without him; his people wouldn’t know where his bones lay. He had almost stopped washing the blanket. At that moment the nastiest soldier with a face like the night rushed towards him.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry. You think you still big man, eh? You think because some white snake go making noise you are special? Tell me,” he barked, collaring and bringing him close to his face. He could see envy all over it.
At that moment Bat knew that he wasn’t abandoned. It struck him like an electric shock, short and sharp. Now he could handle this man. “No, sir. I am not a big man.”
“That is right. You nothing. You hear that? Nothing. You going nowhere.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, feeling so excited that he wanted to dance. A white man! Damon Villeneuve, MP? Had he stepped on a few corns? The moments of exuberance tasted delicious. The fact that a soldier knew about it meant that something was really happening. It was possible that this man had got wind of the affair a few weeks back and had been smouldering with resentment ever since. They had made him do these grisly things hoping that he would refuse and they would get a chance to injure him badly or to kill him. They were mistaken; he was going to play their game. The chance would come for him to hurt them later.
“First kill make you no special, you pussies. Be very careful. I catch you little mistake, I kill you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wash, wash, wash,” he ordered, pushing him away.
DAMON VILLENEUVE, MP, met with reluctance and indifference from the very start. The members of the English Parliament he usually cut deals with were busy with more momentous international issues. They had had enough of Idi Amin’s capers. It was quite entertaining to hear or read about them but dreary business to try and unravel them. Politicians were interested in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the oil crisis, the Watergate scandal, terrorist attacks, hijackers, unemployment and riots in Britain, the nuclear threat from the East, the ramifications of the Cold War for the West. The disappearance of a small civil servant in an obscure country was far from top priority. There was no political percentage in it, domestic or foreign. Dictators like Amin had been largely left alone as long as they did not fall into the Cold War territory and the fight against Communism. They could do whatever they wanted as long as it was not to key British subjects. Nobody expected Britain to play world policeman. The empire was gone. When there had been incidents of British involvement, the outcome had been very mixed indeed. There was that Bossmans affair, Villeneuve was reminded more than once by colleagues who were knowledgeable about Uganda. Trouble in Uganda was not worth anybody’s attention. In consolation, a few colleagues promised to sign a letter if he wanted to write to the British and the Ugandan Embassies, maybe Idi Amin too. Villeneuve consulted Ugandan exiles and British expatriates, who advi
sed him to play it low-key, but he started making phone calls, writing letters.
The news slowly seeped into Uganda. The British Embassy was reluctant to take up the case. There were heaps of similar cases involving more distinguished Ugandans lying unsolved. What was so special about this one? Villeneuve was insistent. A Member of Parliament usually got his way; the news finally reached the right ears. Amin asked Colonel Robert Ashes to look into the affair.
At the time Ashes was busy putting together another megadeal with Copper Motors. Big Bossman had been replaced by a more sensible fellow, and big bucks were in the making. The last thing Ashes wanted was interference from back home. He felt he had suffered enough over the Bossmans affair, explaining himself to embassy people he despised, people who had threatened to bring in Scotland Yard to investigate the disappearances and claims of fraud. Nothing came of the threats, but now he wanted nothing to do with the embassy. Besides, people were disappearing every day. Over trivial things like offending the wrong person, land disputes, women, grudges, politics, business. Why should he get involved in this case?
When Ashes discovered that the missing man used to hold a key post in the Ministry of Power, a jolt of excitement cut through him. Here was a golden chance to deal General Fart a blow. He had threatened to investigate the bastard but had let him off the hook. Not this time.
Colonel Robert Ashes called and promised to look into the matter with immediate effect. His first course of action was to send his men, the Acolytes, to the headquarters of the Ministry of Power and arrest everyone in Bat’s department. In the early afternoon, without a warning, Stingers swooped onto the place. Men jumped out, guns drawn, dashed into the offices and came out with eight people, including Bureaucrat One.
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