Rotten Row

by Petina Gappah

  The command was again interpreted for him. The witness started again, stuttered, and was still. The court adjourned the trial presumably so that the witness could realise the importance of not shaking and fidgeting in court.

  Maybe, Pepukai thought, this too was justice.

  *

  There was no other court session while Pepukai was in Freetown. She and Anton were not to worry, Patrick O’Connor assured them, because when they came back with the crew, there would be a lot more of what he cheerfully termed ‘the real action.’ On the day they were to take the helicopter to Lungi for their flight back to Johannesburg, Johnny sped to beat another driver to the roundabout at the Cotton Tree. From the other side came another car. Johnny swerved to avoid it and hit a road sign. Pepukai and Anton were flung around like sacks. There was a pile-up of traffic as people gathered around. Johnny looked dazed. The Special Court sent another driver to replace Johnny. The new driver, Mustafa, was quiet and not given to talking. Anton slept, and for the first time in more than a week, Pepukai travelled in a car the way she preferred, in the silence of her own thoughts.

  As she boarded the helicopter to Lungi, she clutched to her chest the Report that she had come to know so well. She had read every page in the last eight days, she had highlighted the passages that spoke the most to her. She had made notes in the margins. Pepukai distracted her thoughts from the whirring blades of the helicopter by turning over in her mind the names of the men who had caused the devastation recorded in the Report that she held.

  Dead or presumed dead: Johnny Paul Koroma, Sam Bockarie, Samuel Hinga Norman, Foday Sankoh. Arrested, the men from all three sides in the war, the AFRC, RUC, and CDF: Alex Tamba Brima, Santigie Borbor Kanu, Brima Bazzy Kamara, Issa Hassan Sesay, Morris Kallon, Augustine Gbao, Moinina Fofana and Allieu Kondewa.

  Unlike the prisoners just down the road from Pepukai at Pademba prison, who killed out of wartime, the detainees were safe from retaliation. They would not face the ultimate sanction of their land. They were safe from the death penalty because that was the condition for the fancy court and the long trial supported by the United Nations. They would not die for their crimes.

  They would serve out their sentences far from their homeland. Perhaps their wives and families would continue to see them. They would have other children too perhaps, conceived on conjugal visits, with the elegantly dressed women who came to see them. As prisoners over which all states had assumed responsibility, the might of the United Nations would ensure that their human rights were scrupulously observed. They would earn more money under the Detainee Earning Scheme. They would argue with each other over other World Cups. Perhaps in time, one or all of them would find religion and wash themselves free of their sins.

  Maybe that, too, was a kind of justice.

  Pepukai turned to the final section of the Report that listed the names of the displaced, the enslaved, the killed, the raped, the abducted, the amputated and the forcibly conscripted. The names rolled on from page 273 to page 503, 230 pages of names and non-names, the youngest a two-year-old, the oldest seventy-five. Gailu Baindu, Ayena Gaima, Fatoma Gassma, Keni Gbakina, Anne Jakamu, Hassan Kamara, Mohammed Zoker. Victim 1, Victim 2, Victim 75, Girl 5, Girl 74. Perhaps this recording, this recounting, perhaps this was enough. Maybe this too, was a kind of justice. As the helicopter began its lurching, choppy descent to Lungi, Pepukai closed the Report, shut her eyes as though in prayer and hoped that she was not going to be sick.

  At Golden Quarry

  That which is altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, and inherit the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

  – The Book of Deuteronomy –

  Tevera zakarurama kwazo cete, kuti urarame, ugare nhaka yenyika yaunopiwa naJehova Mnari wako.

  – Buku yecishanu yaMosesi inonzi Deuteronomio –

  From the pile of rotted vegetables and soggy paper came a shimmering glint that sent a rush of hope coursing through Gracious Saungwe. She had found only a few things that day, six things to be precise, four empty bottles of beer, one chipped and useless, a child’s scuffed purple and yellow rattle with no stone inside to make a rattling sound and a square coloured scarf gnarled in one corner.

  She scrambled across the cans and the old shredded newspapers and flat cardboard boxes with her gaze fixed on the gleam that seemed to shine brighter as she got closer to it. She did not flinch at the smell of decay but focused with mounting excitement on the face of the watch, for it was a watch that glinted in the sunlight. Smiling, she reached for it. There she had been, about to go back along Bulawayo Road to Kuwadzana, about to give up on finding anything of worth.

  She put her fingers amid the rotting vegetables and grabbed at the watch. And as she did so, there came the immediate and certain knowledge that there was something wrong. Why was the watch so heavy, so hard to lift, why, she thought, were the rot and vegetables rising with the watch as she pulled?

  Disoriented, she let go, the watch fell back into the rubble. It was then that she saw that what held the watch back was the hand to which it was attached, and beyond that, an arm. Gracious gasped and let go and fell back into the dump in one awkward motion. Not taking her eye off the hand, she scrambled to a kneeling position, and as she tried to stand, staggered back and fell into the dump, her head hitting a rusting bucket.

  She struggled to right herself; the blow to her head had told, and fighting dizziness, she lost her balance, thrust her hands backwards to support herself, and cut her hand against a sharp tin. The piercing shock of the pain cut through the numbness in her brain and at last she screamed. The sound of her cries attracted two men who had been working several metres ahead of her. They were not who she would have wished to come to her aid; she had fallen out with Richard and Job before, they did not scruple to take what others had found, and Job did not hesitate to use his bulk to intimidate even the smallest children. But she forgot the past now in her fear and desperate need to share what she had seen.

  ‘Pane chi-chitunha,’ Gracious said without prompting and pointed at the arm that she had pulled up with the watch digging into the wrist. The two men looked to where she pointed. They removed the surrounding rubbish to reveal the body of a young man in a dark suit, his eyes glassy in death. He had not been there long, the only smell of contagion came from the waste around him. A swarm of blue-bottle flies rose from the small wound on his forehead. The three on the dump looked down at the body, the spell was broken only when Gracious screamed again.

  A look from Job silenced her, and she stood to one side, sucking her cut finger, longing to move but rooted to the spot. She was fixated on the body, taking in the eyes, open, as though in mild surprise, the short neatly groomed hair that had evidently received the recent attentions of a barber.

  As Gracious looked on, Richard bent down, removed the watch and held it up to his ear. In her head raged a battle between fear, caution, superstition and avidity mingled with the accumulated resentments from former battles with these men.

  Bitterness and avidity won.

  ‘Ndipe heyo kuno,’ she said, and reached out her hand. ‘Ndini ndaiwana.’

  When Job did not respond, she made a quick sudden move to snatch it. He was taller than she was, swifter too. He sidestepped her and made to walk away. She grabbed him at the elbow, her still bleeding hand leaving a trail on his skin. He turned and hit her full in the face with his fist.

  Gracious felt her blood run down her nose. The choice was clear; she could accept defeat or risk further assault, and so, shouting, she walked away from them and the corpse. When she was a safe distance away, she hurled a fluent and practised curse at his mother’s cunt. She walked off along Bulawayo Road, disregarding any thoughts of modesty, the hem of plastic carrier bag containing the little collection of gathered treasure.

  She gave one last look at the men up on the dump, but they did not look up from their task. They were silent and efficient, and the corpse was pliant beneath them as they stripped it of its suit
, shirt, shoes and belt. In the wallet, they found an Edgars discount card and ID in the name of Gabriel Makonyera and a staff card that said he was an employee of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, ZBC. Richard pocketed the wallet. As Richard moved to take off the man’s underwear, Job put his hand on the shoulder, and shook his head. Richard let go of the boxer briefs, and stood straight and looked down at the large yellow cartoon man with the letters Who loves yah, d’uh beneath his boxer-clad dancing self. There were red hearts surrounding the dancing figure. ‘Ngatibaye,’ he said, and they moved off, down to Golden Quarry Road and turned right in the direction of Warren Park.

  That afternoon came the rain for which farmers had looked out with anxious eyes, for which penitents in white garments in all the shaded places of the country had prayed in the heat of that ba king December. It swept in from Chimanimani and Chipinge, delighting fleet-footed children who danced it a welcome and sang mvura naya naya tidye mupunga before the deluge got too much for them and they rushed laughing back to their mothers’ huts.

  The rain moved across the Eastern Highlands in a force of hail and winds that burst across the breadth of Mashonaland and reached Harare with a steady hardness that converted the city’s gaping potholes and craters into smooth-surfaced ponds. At the corner of Park Lane and Julius Nyerere Street, just next to the National Art Gallery, the forty-one-year-old driver of a ten-year-old Nissan Hardbody truck drove into one such disguised crater and there met his death. And at Golden Quarry, the December rains beat down over the body of the man who had been Gabriel Makonyera in its Homer Simpson boxer shorts, lying among the discarded things of Harare, his eyes staring sightlessly at the pouring skies above. He would be missed and searched for, his name announced on all the radio stations, and his name in all the papers. For every day of her life until she died, his mother would say fifteen rosaries for his return. He would be found when the flesh had fallen from his bones, but not a single voice would mourn his passing, for in this state, he was just another of the nameless, faceless dead.

  CRIMINAL

  Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.

  – Karl Marx –

  ‘The President Always Dies in January’

  Therefore is judgement far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.

  – The Book of the Prophet Isaiah –

  Naizozo kururamisirwa kuri kure nesu, nokururama hakusikiri kwatiri; tinotsaka ciedza, asi, tarirai, rima bedzi; tinotsaka kubginya, asi tinofamba pakasiba.

  – Buku yaMuprofita Isaya –

  Lying on a black leather couch in a small, overfurnished flat on Dunstable Road in Luton is a man called Fortune Mpande whose attention moves between four screens: an iPad, a 40-inch Philips TV screen playing a football match, a Sony Vimeo laptop and a Samsung Galaxy phone. The sound on the television is muted. The Mulemena Boys and Fortune’s favourite band, Mokoomba, play in rotation from the iPad. It is Fortune’s day off and this is his downtime. Fortune makes his living caring for Britain’s ageing population.

  Work in care homes is poorly paid but requires rich reserves of patience and unfailing good cheer, something that Fortune, the public Fortune anyway, possesses in abundance. At the care home, they consider him a quiet and useful member of staff. He volunteers for extra shifts; he has patience with the patients. They love his accent.

  Like Mokoomba, Fortune is from the resort town of Victoria Falls, and that by the way, is how the resort town of Victoria Falls is always prefixed in news reports, by the words ‘the resort town of’, as though the whole town is on a permanent holiday. Though he is from the resort town of Victoria Falls, Fortune was taught in Bulawayo, which means that he says cattley for cattle, littley for little, wiggley for wiggle, brittley for brittle. Sometimes he exaggerates his accent for effect. They also love his name at work and they love punning on his name. We are fortunate to have Fortune, they say, what good fortune to have Fortune, such fortune!

  Away from the care home is this private Fortune who lies prone on his black leather couch in a studio flat in the least salubrious part of Luton. His entire life is in this one room. He lives out his life before the screen. He bought all his top-end gadgets on credit. His successful asylum application means that he is now a refugee.

  He is aware of the public view of asylum seekers and refugees. They are a burden on the state, they come to get our jobs. But in the ten years that Fortune has been in Britain, he has not met one single British care-worker, not one native, and what the natives will never know is that asylum, this safe harbour is, in effect, a prison.

  He longs to travel to the United States or Europe, but his passport marks him because its cover states that it is a Travel Document (Convention of 28 July 1951). The document does not say refugee but it is clear enough what he is, and because it is not machine-readable, he has had to wait sometimes for as long as six hours while they checked him over.

  He cannot go back home. If he does go back home, it will automatically disqualify his status because it will be a clear demonstration that he no longer needs asylum. So he leaves the country once a year, each time being stopped for six hours on leaving and re-entering the United Kingdom. He leaves only because he wants to see his mother and three sisters, and so he takes a plane to Livingstone, on the Zambian side of the thundering waters of the Zambezi and they come over to him from the resort town of Victoria Falls.

  He had tried to invite them to see him once, but they had been thwarted by an official at the UK embassy in Pretoria who had turned down the application with the terse statement: ‘I am not convinced that you will return if you are granted the right to enter the United Kingdom.’ The official had misspelled his mother and sisters’ names on the form.

  Thus it was that Fortune was not able to leave the United Kingdom to go home to bury his father. Nor did he have the heart to fly down to Livingstone just to sit while on the other side, in the resort town of Victoria Falls, they were burying his father without him. He had sent money for his father’s coffin, mourned his father on Facebook and consoled his mother over the telephone.

  His sedentary lifestyle means that Fortune is well on the way to being overweight. He lives on processed food from Aldi and on social media. His favourite forum to troll is GreatZim.Com, where he is an active and permanent member of the Political Commentariat.

  On that website, he has three alter egos that he uses as sock puppets. First, there is Nyamaende Mhande, a name taken from one of the Mutapa emperors, whose avatar consists of a picture of the Zimbawe Ruins superimposed on the flag of Zimbabwe. As Nyamaende Mhande, Fortune campaigns for the restoration of the Mutapa Empire. Because Nyamaende Mhande is Conscious with a capital C, Fortune spells Africa, not with a C but with a K.

  Then there is Rhodesian Brigadier. His avatar is the Birchenough Bridge; a bridge over the River Save that when built was hailed as a spectacular feat of Rhodesian engineering. Across the bridge are the first words of the old anthem, ‘Rise O Voices of Rhodesia’. It is Rhodesian Brigadier who riles people the most because Rhodesan Brigadier does not hesitate to remind people of the glories of Rhodesia and the failures of Zimbabwe. When Fotune is in a more playful mood, Rhodesian Brigadier will light up the Forum with one joke after the other.

  Fortune also occasionally uses both avatars to fan divisions on ethnic lines. ‘Ah, these murderous Shona, these mice-eating, ignor ant fools,’ Rhodesia Brigadier will write beneath a story about a man called Wonder who is said to be haunting Gokwe until his killers are caught. ‘Look at them with their nonsense and goblins, the murdering bastards. They should just shut up and eat mice.’ On a story about a hwindi from Bulawayo, who was subjected to mob justice after being accused of stealing a phone, as Nyamaende Mhande, he writes: ‘Serves him right. These fellows always travel with knives. A knife for a knife, I say.’ Fortune prides himself on being an equal opportunity offender. />
  His ventriloquism extends to female impersonation: he is also a commentator called Amai Bhoyi and here his avatar is a woman on her hands and knees with a large bottom invitingly offered to the viewer while she gives a knowing sideways wink. As Amai Bhoyi, he uses a caustic female voice to insult any woman who makes the news for any reason. Her most frequent comment for any woman in the news, whether for good or bad things, is always the same: ‘Haiwawo, kushaya anokwira uku, she just needs a good screw.’ Amai Bhoyi’s comments receive many more upward ticks of approval on the site than the other two avatars combined.

  So popular has Amai Bhoyi become that Fortune has parlayed the character into her own blog, www.zvekwaamaibhoyi.com, where he writes long and inventive stories in Tonga, Ndebele and Shona about her sexual exploits. Here his degree in African Languages from the University of Zimbabwe really comes into its own.

  In this iteration, Amai Bhoyi is a sexually rapacious, permanently available and ravenous woman who has sex with just about every man she meets. There is Amai Bhoyi, in her church uniform, pleasuring the Deacon. There she is, polishing the floor on her hands and knees when she is surprised by her gardener; there she is in the backseat of her car, paying her way out of a spot fine with the aid of an able constable; there she is, demanding payment in kind from her lodger and there she is, cross-border trading at the Beitbridge border post, subjecting willingly slash unwillingly to an intimate body search from two customs officials. ‘Ah nhai vakuwasha, mungabva mabata ipapo!’ she faux protests.

  There is something particularly raw, he finds, about writing sex scenes and fantasies in languages other than English. The words he uses are words that are never written down, they are words spoken in raucous laughter in pubs where the only women in attendance are hookers, so every time that Fortune writes them, he gets a thrill, almost like he expects his mother to reach out from the resort town of Victoria Falls to whack him across the head for even thinking such words. So popular is the website that he has half a mind to find online collaborators to help him expand Amai Bhoyi’s exploits to the fifteen written languages in the country’s constitution. He will of course, have to exclude the sixteenth, Sign Language.