Nairobi Heat

by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

  LET THE DEAD BURY THE DEAD

  Mo’s story broke later that morning in The Madison Times – and it broke huge. By now she had developed good relationships with several big-time papers and TV stations and they all wanted a piece of the story. It was sweeter than a Mafia bust; a new sort of crime with the good and bad guys in disguise – there was the shadowy Chocbanc, now dead; there was the Macy Jane Admanzah angle; Joshua’s story; the Foundation, its board and the CEOs; there was even my story. So, within hours, headline after headline screamed Justice for Macy Jane Admanzah At Last, Beauty and the Beasts, Sex and Violence on the Dark Continent, The Black Prince (not sure if that was me or Joshua), et cetera. Even the KKK circulated leaflets congratulating the Chief and me, saying we were a good example of what our race could offer if it applied itself.

  That evening I called BQ and asked him to meet me for a beer. I had never done this before, but after a moment’s hesitation he agreed. I wanted to tell him the case was finally over, that justice had been done by Macy Jane Admanzah. I wanted to tell him because I had never forgotten his off-hand comment that someone who knew her well, who might have even loved her, had committed the murder.

  We sat around for a few hours, talking about the case, Northern and Southern women and even country music. I now had encyclopaedic knowledge of Kenny Rogers – turns out he is not well liked in the South – a sell-out of sorts. It was great to sit around in no particular hurry, drinking beer and listening to music. We played darts and pool – he won easily; my fingers, even though not painful, were still cumbersome.

  ‘Looky here, my friend,’ he finally said, drunkenly sucking on an unlit cigarette. ‘We sure are friends now, Ishmael, ain’t we?’ He leaned closer to me and placed his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Sure, BQ,’ I answered. ‘We are friends.’ I meant it too.

  ‘Well then, my friend, your case. It raises more questions than a hog at a Christmas party.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked him.

  ‘It’s too complicated … just too damn complicated,’ he answered. ‘And, my friend, murders are always simple as rain. You know that.’

  From my angle everything fitted. Yes, it was a complicated chain of events, but Joshua had reconstructed the motives behind the crime for me and it made sense. But it was BQ saying this – not the Chief, Muddy, O, or even Mo (they were all too close to the case and all had a vested interest in the outcome for one reason or another). He was as dispassionate as anyone could get – his work, cutting up bodies and holding back his anger long enough to find the cause of death, told me that I should take what he was telling me seriously.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked him.

  ‘Looky here, my friend,’ BQ drawled. ‘You are asking me to believe that Macy Jane Admanzah came here to expose Joshua, and that whoever it is that was controlling the Never Again Foundation, Chocbanc or whoever, decides to get rid of Joshua before he brings all of the whole thing crashing down around him? So they kill Macy Jane Admanzah and leave her body by his door?’

  ‘Can you just tell me where this is going?’ I asked.

  ‘I have no idea, but even this drunken fool knows this: a person cannot be guilty of genocide and innocent of murder. It just doesn’t add up. His instinct is to kill, just like a scorpion stings.’

  I thought back to the statement he had made in the morgue as we had stood over Macy Jane Admanzah’s body little more than a week earlier – ‘My guess is it was someone who knew her well, someone who might even have loved her …’ I asked him about it, but he couldn’t remember saying it. I was relieved – he had nothing but a hunch.

  ‘So, Ishmael, we still friends?’ BQ asked after a few minutes of silence.

  ‘Yeah, of course, man, we’re still friends,’ I answered and laughed.

  And that was that. We sat around drinking beer and singing along to country music until the bar closed. I got home feeling neither depressed nor happy, just drunk.

  I woke the following day to find that there had been two immediate casualties from Mo’s story. The first casualty was the Never Again Foundation itself. The board had resigned even as the powers that be had moved to investigate them for fraud and racketeering. And it wasn’t only the board. Politicians in the US, Rwanda and Kenya whose names appeared in the logbook were also forced to resign, such was the outrage. The US Senate even went as far as to set up a commission to investigate not just the Never Again Foundation but also all major charitable organisations. The second casualty was Joshua Hakizimana. The world’s rage was focused on Joshua. Not for the genocide, but for making the world believe in him. It was as if it had been discovered that Mandela was actually a prison guard. In the days that followed Maple Bluff was mobbed with people literally crying for a piece of him, Hollywood stars tore his picture on live TV and the ICC launched its own investigation into his role in the genocide.

  It seemed to me that everything was going to turn out right. However, as the weeks rolled into months the stories about the board and the trials got smaller and smaller until nothing more was heard about them. And as for Joshua, well it wasn’t long before the Johnnie Cochran type lawyers came crawling out of the woodwork – he was an American citizen after all and there was due process. Later it became apparent that he couldn’t be tried for genocide in the US, only for money laundering and the lesser crime of tampering with evidence. But even on these charges everything was not as straightforward as you might think. Joshua had covered his tracks well and the FBI found only one bank account with about two million dollars in it. He couldn’t account for some of it, but he made a lot on his speaking tours, and if you factored in his professor’s salary the discrepancy wasn’t as much as you might think. And later that same month the ICC found it had no credible witnesses. The Kokomat women were compromised, and no one could say for sure that Joshua had ordered the murder of the Admanzah family. Even my testimony was questioned in light of evidence that I had ‘engaged in extra-judicial killings’ in Kenya. And his confession, told to a detective ‘who had just been tortured and killed four men’, was ‘agitated’ and ‘without a warrant’, was inadmissible.

  The world never fully lets go of its heroes and slowly Joshua was rehabilitated. Even Mo couldn’t stop the tide as slowly students and professors came to his defence – claiming that there was no evidence of his involvement in the genocide. Finally, sensing the turning of the tide, the Madison black community weighed in, speaking of Joshua’s contributions to their development programmes.

  Three months later Macy Jane Admanzah was all but forgotten and Joshua was back teaching his classes. What I hated most were the cops who patted me on the back saying, ‘You can’t win them all.’ I had a front row seat to a genocidaire getting away with it. It wasn’t a question of winning, it was about recouping a sense of justice.

  But so it was. The Chief was promoted to Police Commissioner and I to Chief Detective. Everyone except the dead came off better.

  While all this was happening I volunteered to accompany Macy Jane Admanzah’s body back to Rwanda. Although I hadn’t known her I still felt like she was a family member who had made a contribution to my life for which I could never repay her – taking her back to Rwanda was the least I could do.

  In Kigali the airport was crawling with media – even the ragtag Madison Times had sent Mo over to cover the whole thing. This was the closest a non-Rwandan had come to a state funeral, something confirmed by the fact that it was the President who came to meet the body at the airport. I chatted with the tall thin man for a few minutes. He had been the commander of the rebels and had heard the rumour of a headmaster using his school to lure people to their deaths, but at the time it had felt like a myth. ‘Even in evil times, there is a greater evil we do not allow ourselves to imagine,’ he explained.

  We took a few photographs together before he draped the coffin with a Rwandan flag. Then, strangely enough, we spoke about guns and he explained why to this day he prefers an AK-47 – light, economical and eas
y to use. I suppose guns and death were the only things we had in common. Finally, he thanked me and was whisked away by the secret police.

  Later, I was driven through the city, part of a slow funeral procession that was met by street after street lined with school children and their parents. I couldn’t help but wonder what it was about Macy Jane Admanzah that drew them to her. Was it her whiteness? Was it that she was a foreigner who had lost everything just like them? Or was it simply that she was a representation of all that was wrong with the world – another young person who had lost her life to the genocide? I didn’t know.

  Finally, we came to a majestic Catholic church. They had flown in a father from France and everything else followed suit – over the top. Would this simple family of missionaries have wanted this kind of a funeral for their daughter? But then she, and they by extension, had been adopted by the state, and this was all about what the state wanted – politician after politician took to the stage, condemning genocide and applauding the Admanzahs.

  It was only when I had been out buying the clothes she would be buried in, at a Madison store called Betty Bling, that I had begun to wonder about Macy Jane’s extended family. Her relatives were probably still in Montana, but no one had contacted us, leading me to believe that the Admanzah family had been excommunicated after they had converted to Catholicism.

  Outside Betty Bling, on State Street, hundreds of college students had been going about their lives – drinking coffee, holding hands, playing guitars and doing quick paintings for change. But Macy Jane’s life was over and that afternoon I had felt the loss of her in ways I would probably never be able to explain. I had stood in the shop for a long time, as sales clerk after sales clerk had come up to ask me if I needed help. Finally, exasperated, I had asked one of them what she would like to be buried in. The shock on her face had jerked me back to reality and I had rushed to explain what I was doing there. Luckily, she had recognised me when I had walked in, and once my explanation was complete she had relaxed and introduced herself. Her name was Betty – the owner of the store.

  Betty was about Macy Jane’s height and build. We went through several outfits, her trying each one of them on – a strange thing to do, I had realised later, but it had worked. Finally, we had settled on a white shirt, a red blazer and a long black skirt, complemented by a pearl necklace and a simple copper-wire bracelet.

  ‘No charge. You did a good thing … It’s the least I can do,’ Betty had said nonchalantly when it had come time to pay. And somehow those words had finally broken me and I had started crying. I had never felt that torn before – not just angry and sad, but as if I was being pulled apart piece by piece.

  Betty had helped me to a fitting room where I had sat for a while trying to pull myself together. Eventually, I had composed myself and left with my bundle of clothes and a splitting headache.

  Finally the church service ground to a halt and we accompanied Macy Jane to her final resting place: Heroes’ Acre. This was where those who had been of great service to the country were buried. I was asked to say a few words and although I had known that this moment was coming I hadn’t prepared – I couldn’t think of anything to say, much less how to say it.

  ‘I don’t have much to say except that I am touched by the love you have shown Macy Jane Admanzah in death,’ I started. ‘Hers was a lonely anonymous death. I hope we can make it count for something.’

  I knew I was expected to say more, but I had said all I needed to. Then I remembered a Langston Hughes poem that we had memorised in elementary school: ‘What happens to a dream deferred?’ I started. ‘Does it dry up, like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore, and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over, like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags, like a heavy load. Or does it explode?’

  I paused, trying to think of a way to end. I was no Muddy with words and there was no shame in that.

  ‘What happens to justice deferred? What happens to love deferred?’

  I finished and left the podium to silence.

  Finally, she was put into the ground and it was over.

  Muddy and O had come to the funeral but it wasn’t until after the service that we were able to meet. Even though it was only a few weeks since I had last seen them, they both looked younger than I remembered – Muddy with her dreadlocks pulled back, wearing a simple white-and-blue dress, her skin shiny from the heat, and O dressed in a white T-shirt and stiff blue jeans. With the weight of the case gone, they were doing well.

  I held on to Muddy for a long time, but just when I thought I was going to break down and cry O tapped me on the shoulder and suggested that we go for a beer. We went to the Planet Club, where among the drunken tourists we felt like the foreigners. After a lot of beer Muddy and O bummed a joint from one of the waiters and like high-school kids we hid behind the hotel and smoked it. I probably shouldn’t have joined them because I slipped into senseless laughter for the better half of the night.

  In the morning we left O in his room and started the drive to Muddy’s village in a rented jeep. A few minutes from the city the country opened up to rolling hills. It was hard to imagine that just a few years earlier this land had been soaked in blood as neighbour gave up neighbour, friends became foes and whole families were hacked to death.

  Once, when in college, my ex-wife and I had gone to see a civil war re-enactment at Gettysburg. I do not remember what possessed us to go, but we did – spending the whole afternoon watching hundreds of volunteers dressed in Northern and Southern uniforms duke it out. The whole thing looked silly – even the bearded fellow who read Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. It was too clean, the grass in the field where the original battle had taken place too green, and the soldiers too chubby. But we were determined, and we watched the whole thing despite feeling awkward – there were only a handful of black people in the audience. As we drove to Muddy’s village, up and down hills and valleys dotted with banana trees, I couldn’t help but wonder whether a few hundred years from now the genocide would be re-enacted in just the same way to open-mouthed children and teenagers.

  Muddy was driving and she did not say much. With her eyes hidden behind dark glasses I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. This was her first time back in the country of her birth, and the irony that she had returned to bury a white woman must have been apparent to her.

  We drove on, eating up mile after mile until we passed large metal gates with the name Joshua Hakizimana High School written in a huge metal frame hanging above them. A little further down the straight asphalt road that ran from the gate a huge flag with Joshua’s face swung in the wind. We stopped and marvelled. They had renamed the school after Joshua, Muddy explained needlessly. I suggested we go in, but Muddy had seen enough and we drove on.

  An hour or so later we saw a small wooden church on top of a hill. It had been freshly painted a blinding white.

  ‘This is the church,’ Muddy said absent-mindedly.

  This church, now restored, had belonged to the Admanzahs. There were a number of cars – belonging to tourists and reporters – parked outside, but instead of making our way inside we walked through the graveyard until we found what we were looking for – their graves. It was easy to tell that they had been hastily tidied up – fresh cement work, repainted headstones and a new white picket fence around each of them gave the game away.

  ‘Why didn’t they bury Macy here?’ I asked Muddy.

  ‘Not as dramatic as Heroes’ Acre,’ she promptly answered.

  We went into the church and found a group of about fifteen or so reporters listening to a guide. He was explaining, in English (for the benefit of American journalists), about the rows upon rows of skulls that lined the walls. They probably ran into the hundreds, all cleaned and sparkling white, looking back at us in silent accusation.

  I couldn’t take it and rushed outside, but as I was throwing up I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Mo. She was close to tears, and for a moment we stayed like that – me
leaning over heaving and her with her hand on my shoulder, shaking her head from side to side. She was a tough reporter but this was too much even for her.

  A little while later Muddy came outside and I introduced her to Mo, breaking the spell grief had thrown over us. We found a little bench outside and sat there for a few minutes, talking about nothing until we were well enough to part ways.

  Muddy and I left the church and travelled on to her village. When we got there we found a group of people sitting under a tree, a few elderly-looking folk sitting at a table and a man standing all alone to the left of the group. The man was saying something, and as we climbed out of the car I asked Muddy what was going on. Accused of murder, he was defending himself, she explained. He was saying that it wasn’t him that the witnesses were describing. I wanted to stand around and watch – this was a traditional court – but Muddy said it made her sick to look at the man and hurried me on.

  As we walked away, a few people turned to look at us, but it was obvious that they didn’t recognise Muddy. Practically her whole village had been wiped out, Muddy told me as we walked. These people were resettled refugees, and with them had come some of their killers. After the killing ended where were they to go, if not back to their communities and hope no one remembered? But people remembered and that was why that young man was on trial.

  We made it to a run-down brick house. There were several children in the compound and some women looking after them. Muddy asked if we could come in, and the women agreed. Once inside Muddy asked the women if she could look around. They asked her why and she explained.

  ‘We thought no one had survived,’ they said as they hugged Muddy joyfully – strangers turned into family by death and violence. ‘This is your home,’ they said to her, or at least I think that is what they were saying to Muddy from the gestures they were making. But she simply shook her head and smiled.