by M G Vassanji
—Where’s Joanie gone?
—Out, with a friend.
—Oh. A pause. A searching look, wistful almost, then she said,—I wish I could come and keep you company.
In reply, I teased,—You didn’t take me to your home when I was there—in Rosecliffe Park.
—There was no time, Frank. Next time. Also, to be completely honest, my mother is with me. She’s handicapped and awkward with guests.
—Well, see you again. Bye.
—Bye…but give me a call any time and come over, Frank. I do mean it.
—Thanks, I will.
—
The evening news was on, arriving with the insistency of a bludgeon, the soundtrack loud and pulsing. Something had happened. It always happens, of course. News breaks all the time. Here’s how it broke for me that night.
There had been a successful rescue of the hostages in Maskinia, carried out by a Northern Alliance special force. All the hostages were now safe and unharmed, except for two who had died in crossfire. Holly Chu was shot dead in an exchange. Details of the heroic mission followed.
The hostages had been held somewhere inside the intricate maze of tunnels under the hills adjacent to the Warriors’ compound. (An aerial view of the area showed the spot, marked by a pennant.) The maze had two secret exits (shown with flashing arrows); once these exits and the exact location of the prison became known, having been determined through informers, the special force dropped down from the air in the cover of dark, entered the tunnels, released the prisoners, and stormed the compound.
The entire rescue episode was reconstructed and played over so that we could share the experience as it happened—land with the forces and, following instructions, enter the Warriors’ compound and join the fight and rescue. The unwary enemy patrols were shot down with homing darts. The tunnel system was entered easily through the two marked back entrances, from where we negotiated our way into the maze following a well-lit crooked path and arrived at the prison. The men were in one room, the women and children in another, all ragged and dazed. The four kids were quickly tranquilized, after which they and the frightened, dishevelled older hostages were all brought out and raced off towards two hovering helicopters. Two hostages were shot here. A Karukori jumped out of a chopper and raced to the rescue but was destroyed, its metallic guts spilling out. Another Karukori managed to scoop up the remains and return. The two choppers took off. A battle took place then, between us and the Warriors. All the terrorist soldiers present were killed, and one of ours. Holly Chu and a group of women, all carrying automatics, confronted us and we mowed them down. The terrorist compound was destroyed. In a fortified room, we found the chief of the terrorists, in his robe and cap, seated on a chair and guarded by three of his men. All were shot down, their faces blown off.
—
I came to with an excruciating pain in my right ankle, my heart was racing frantically, and I was on the ground and there was a whiff of perfume in my nose.
Joanie was kneeling before me and handed me a drink, which was tea with brandy.
—What happened, Frank?
—What happened…I don’t know. Passed out, I guess. My head hurts…my ankle hurts…I was sitting on the sofa and suddenly—here I am on the ground. What’s happening to me…
—I told you, you’ve been under stress.
Nothing was broken or out of sorts. I took a painkiller and we sat down to watch a repeat of the special report.
There were no estimates of the total casualties. The rescue commander was interviewed and congratulated, as was one of the Karukoris, as were the hostages upon their heroic welcome back home. The hostages would meet the president and the prime minister separately tomorrow.
Joanie helped me up and I hobbled with her to the kitchen table.
—What did you eat? I asked her.
—Roast beef. But I brought you a dessert.
I squeezed her hand.
—You still have fever. Let’s go to bed.
—
I was wide awake before sunup with a distinct sense of having talked myself hoarse during the night, but Joanie was deep in the peaceful slumber, as they say, of the innocent. Facing up, breathing deeply—how beautifully white and tender that undulating belly—snoring lightly. I resisted the temptation to wake her with a kiss…on the eyes, the lips, the belly, the crotch. I recalled shouting and screaming. I had dreamed about the news last night. I got up and went to the living room, the tube turned on. Bill Goode’s image dropped instantly on my kilim and he’d just turned around, having said something funny, and flashed his trademark grin as the audience applauded. The temptation was to punch that square block of a face. What had overcome me?
—So all’s well that ends well and we have peace at last—for a few years at least, until someone in Barbaria wakes up from the dead. Or should we simply have nuked them?
Universal applause.
The special report on the rescue began again and I switched it off and went to my study.
FRANK: Can you find references to these two people—Elim and Amirul—in Maskinia? Anything and everything about them.
TOM: There’s a temporary embargo on any access to Maskinia. Sorry, Frank.
Did I imagine that his tone sounded different, more brisk than usual?
Holly Chu’s Profile no longer existed.
THIRTY
The Notebook
#54
The Journalist
In the late afternoon, on some days, Holly would go with Layela and Miriam and other women to the Warriors’ compound and join others as they sat on the ground before their leader, Nkosi. The gathering would have been preannounced. The ground had been cleared and swept and sprinkled with lightly perfumed water. The sun was low, the shadows were long, and the heat wave of earlier that day was memory. There was the occasional burst of quick breeze. A relaxed and festive mood came to prevail. A man would come around with a long copper urn and serve coffee in little cups to all those gathered. Sweets, if anyone had cared to bring them, would go around, bits of peanut, sesame, or coconut brittle, or even candies. Nkosi, the title meaning lion, as Holly had discovered, would be sitting on his chair with its tall back and give homilies to the followers and answer questions. World news would always be discussed, one young man first standing up to summarize the latest. The women might sing or a man recite something. A couple might come forward to get formally engaged or a child blessed.
During one such session the Nkosi made it a point to praise the new member of their group, the guest, for her commitment and how well she had settled among them.
The hostages had been housed in the underground apartments, and Holly, now calling herself Umoja, had a few times explained the Warriors’ cause and made the ransom demands in the broadcasts that were flashed across the globe. Regularly she had gone to visit the hostages to calm them. By now they no longer wished to tear off her hair, their torrents of abuse had eased. Whatever she had become, she was still one of them.
Nkosi, having praised her to the meeting, now asked her if she had any questions or concerns about her life as a Warrior. Was there anything that troubled her? Anything she did not understand about their cause?
—Be honest, don’t be afraid. It is through criticism that we learn and progress. Other eyes are the best mirror for us to see ourselves honestly.
Encouraged, Holly said yes, there was something that troubled her.—Nkosi, forgive me, but doesn’t it look immoral, capturing innocent men and women? Terrifying people who’ve done nothing themselves, and know no better, except what their government and media have told them? Isn’t it cruel not allowing them to speak to their loved ones?
Nkosi smiled benignly through his white woolly beard; his cheeks were flushed, his eyes twinkled. He raised his hand partially and did a brief flicker with the fingers before replacing it on his lap. Then he answered her in his dry, crackly voice with its seductive charm and humour. He rarely raised his voice, and then only slightly. He never hurried.
—Haali, when they drop bombs on us, don’t they terrify us, and kill the elderly and the women and children? When you count the number of ours dead and theirs, which is greater by far? Our hundred to their precious one. Do we not count because we are less fat and consume less and weigh less? When they live so much better than us, why do they come to grow their food on our lands? Why do they mistreat us? Who is responsible for that dead reactor that’s bleeding poison into our water after forty years? Every time you see a boy with a shrivelled penis or a woman with four fingers, think of them. These hostages are our currency. With them we will buy back our people whom they hold prisoners. We will buy food and arms to protect us. Yes…Where you come from, Haali, there is security and there is food. There is water. It is our people’s dream of heaven. Here is desert and jungle and city filth. You come with a gun that sees far and you do not see the kill; the lion must use stealth using only his claws, and he looks at death face to face. He learns to come out at night.
Nkosi fell into contemplation, his beads rattling in his other hand, the wan smile still fixed on his smooth brown and hard face.
—Thank you, Nkosi, Holly said.
But why do you include me with them; am I still one of them to you? Am I still a guest? Am I not called Umoja now? I guess it will take time for you to completely accept me. But how long will you keep fighting? When will the conditions here improve? What do the children whom you bless look forward to except also to fight? And the women—they breed bastards and your strongmen do with them what they will.
All in the compound watched in silence their old leader sitting in contemplation and the foreign girl with the Chinese face looking down in embarrassment. It was some time before Nkosi spoke again. He did not look at her and sounded distant and dreamy.
—It is good you have spoken your mind, Haali. There is some truth to what you say. We should keep talking. We all have much to learn.
There was a story about the past that Holly had recently learned.
Long ago, there were three princes among the Warriors. The previous Nkosi, a wise and beloved leader, had two sons by two wives. The older one was called Elim, and his half-brother was Eduardo. Elim was tall and fair-skinned, his mother being white and American, and he was loved and respected in the compound. People still remembered him as the one who wore glasses and always had books in his hand. He was sent abroad to be educated and returned as a doctor. Eduardo, the dark one, though younger, was on the Warriors’ Council of Seven and adviser to his father. Elim and Eduardo had a cousin called Amirul. He was shorter but handsome and had a thick crop of hair; he was a dashing fellow and liked to dress up; he was also volatile in nature and easily picked a fight. His uncle gave him a command in the militia, and he strutted about with a pistol at his belt. But he loved and worshipped his cousin Elim.
And so Eduardo, the youngest of the three, was the heir; Elim, the eldest, was the doctor, teacher, and intellectual; and Amirul was the fighter. Amirul was the hero who went on secret missions, and he brought back presents—clothes, perfumes, electronics—and stories about foreign shores. For Elim, who had lived abroad and returned to serve and who read everything, he brought books. On one mission, however, Amirul was captured and taken away, and that caused a great deal of grief in the compound. He had left behind his wife and little daughter. A few years after his capture, the Warriors themselves captured a foreign diplomat in Kenya, and as a part of the ransom the Warriors demanded Amirul’s immediate release. Elim was sent to Europe to negotiate the release. However, the Alliance forces managed to rescue their diplomat meanwhile, and neither Amirul nor Elim were heard from again.
—You see, Haali, Nkosi said,—the war goes on. They do this to us, and we do that in reply.
He paused once more before going on, his voice tightening a little this time.
—We are small but not insignificant. We have ancient cultures…and books…they are stored in the tunnels. We are weak but we have our ways to fight back. After all, a mere fly can torment an elephant, until the elephant gives up and goes away.
—I understand, Nkosi, said Holly-Umoja. And her question But for how long? had no answer.
—
#55
The Gentle Warrior
Pres, I see you. Stiff and straight as a mummy, staring up right into the powerful white glare of lights exposing you. Men and women all around you, a doctor in white coat and a nurse in white, in a white room, all eyes shifting from the overhead screens to your open head. Still but not dead, now only part of an electric circuit, sending signals into those very probes that you dreaded so much.
Where, what, who. Where, Amirul, where…?
And you tell them—your brain tells them. From the deep recesses of memory, it leaks out the information. The tunnels of Maskinia.
THIRTY-ONE
—PRESLEY SMITH DIED PEACEFULLY, Joe Green assured me sympathetically.
I hadn’t asked him for this news, though admittedly Presley had been on my mind constantly since I last saw him being wheeled away to the ambulance. I did not think he would survive his condition, so the news didn’t surprise me.
Joe’s office, high up in the Vega Tower, overlooked Freedom Park, a grey barren wintry space at present, but the convertible window could look out over any scene in the universe. It showed now a botanical garden in full bloom, oblivious of the season and that the ground was sixty floors below. The furniture was solid but sleek, the chairs comfortable. I was here because this time I had been summoned, though not in that language. Joe’s message said that Presley Smith had died in the Department’s care and would I like to come over and discuss his case; there were some loose ends to sort. It is rare that I find myself on the other side of the desk this way, and it was not an easy position.
—He could have died peacefully anywhere, Joe, I replied.
What I meant to say was that there was no need to hound him or snatch him away in his last hours. How easy it was for this practiced bureaucrat to ignore the fact that he himself had put out a wanted call for Presley, thus running him underground. And what did peacefully mean? I had watched the man in agony, his memory disintegrating. A brain boiling out its contents. That harrowing scene inside the Holy Trinity Church remains indelible on my mind.
—We didn’t let him suffer, Joe explained.—He died under medication. If he had come to us sooner, we could have saved him, Dr Sina. Frankly—he paused, becoming aware of the pun,—I don’t know why he went to such lengths to avoid us.
—He was afraid of being turned into yet someone else—the way your window there creates another view.
The window had altered to look over a blue and green horizon, an endlessly bland emptiness. If it had a mood sensor, it must have been off.
I should have been on my guard, yet rather carelessly I had let my feelings show. I had implicitly confessed to having been in contact with Presley while he was in hiding, and therefore assisting him in his evasion and lying to the Department when questioned about him. Acted illegally. Presley became more than a patient for me. But of course Joe Green knew all that already.
He said, unfazed,—That might not have been necessary. Though if it were needed to save his life, what’s wrong with that? Life goes on, improved, you discard the old model. It’s forgotten and gone. You know that, if anyone does.
—Yes, I do. I’ve preached that often enough. But Presley wanted to cure himself. Or die as himself, if he must. Or didn’t he have a choice? He was your man, as you said?
Joe stared blankly at me, said in a flat voice,—Certainly. And the patient doesn’t know what’s best.
He looked up quickly over my head. There was a shuffle behind me, from where now a mellifluous voice intoned,
—All that is academic. Obviously you know by now, Frank, that Presley was a terrorist in his previous life. More precisely, he was a military commander in the Warriors of Freedom in Maskinia. It was called something else then—the Warriors of Justice or something grand like that. Do you recall that, Frank
?
I’d turned around and was gawking at the man who had introduced himself as Arthur Axe the other day at my lecture, but who I had felt certain even then was Author X of DIS. He had on a plaid jacket, solid blue shirt, and dull red tie. His deep forehead glistened, and his loose posture, as he softly walked in, was that of someone who’s never in a hurry.
He bore a beatific smile as he headed for the straight-backed chair to my left, continuing, as matter-of-fact as you would have it,—Regardless of his record, when Amirul was captured—that was Presley’s previous name—he was given a chance at another life. That’s an example of the goodwill and grace of our civilization—which is generous and progressive. But our present governments, I would inform you, are not as kindly disposed to our liberal approach to rehabilitating terrorists. I’m Arthur, by the way.
His eyes closed on mine as we shook hands. His hand was limp; evidently his strengths were inner.
Arthur Axe, the author of Presley’s life and, as I now know, mine also. The one whose presence once more sent a chill through me. A chill of, yes, terror. His friendly exterior was as false as perhaps his name. He knew more about me than I did, this powerful man who had imagined my tenderhearted poetic mother and my astronomer father in Yukon and given them a place in my life. Who put Blake and Rumi in her head and named a distant planet after him. Should I be thankful to him for having given me those positive influences? Those touching and wonderful memories? Perhaps they were based on real ones, from my life? How many creatures like me did he know, inside out? How many destinies had he created, and watched, as they unfolded?
—We spoke at your lecture. I asked a question, he reminded me.
—Of course, I remember.
—A very interesting lecture, Frank. It has a lot of bearing on what we do here. We have actually used some of your keen observations and theories in our mission here.
—That’s very flattering…Joe has also told me that. Thank you. You said Presley had been a terrorist…
