Dreams in a Time of War

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  “Say ‘effendi.’”

  “Ten, effendi.”

  “Are all your brothers at home? What do they do?”

  “Two work for the government,” I said, thinking of Joseph Kabae and Tumbo, and ignoring the first question. “One of them, Joseph Kabae, was a KAR, a soldier who fought for King George during the Second World War,” I added, to impress on him our British connections.

  But I had forgotten to say “effendi.” I felt rather than saw the blow to my face. I staggered but managed to remain on my feet.

  “Say ‘effendi’!”

  “Yes, effendi!” I said, tears at the edges of my eyelids. I was now a man; I was not supposed to cry. But then a man is supposed to fight back, to defend himself and his own, but I could not summon even a gesture of self-defense.

  For some reason he took my refusal to cry or scream as defiance, and he rained more blows on me. I fell down. I didn’t know whether I should stand up or remain on the ground, but even this indecision seemed to increase his fury.

  “Simama, stand up.”

  I stood up, trembling with terror, especially when I saw the officer with the dog coming toward us, as if it was now his turn to deal with me. He said something to my tormentor and then went back to his herd. They may have consulted about something that had nothing to do with me, but I remained fearful.

  My tormentor spoke with the hooded man for a while. Then he came back to me.

  “Do you have any brothers not at home?”

  Butterflies in my tummy. Shall I tell a lie? I decided to stall to buy time.

  “I beg your pardon, effendi! What did you say?”

  “Have you got brothers not at home?”

  There was no point in stalling or telling a lie. I would tell a truthful lie and stick to it.

  “I have one who is not there, effendi.”

  “His name?”

  “Wallace Mwangi.”

  “Effendi!”

  “Effendi!”

  “Where is he?”

  I recalled my mother’s admonition.

  “I don’t know, effendi. I understand he ran away,” I said.

  “Where to?”

  “I was in school when he ran away, and nobody knows where he is.”

  “Does he come to visit?”

  “No, effendi,” I said without any hesitation. I was thinking of adding that we feared the government had killed him, but I stopped myself.

  He had a further consultation with the hooded man. Apparently, my admitting knowledge of the little bit that was publicly known about my brother had saved the day. When he came back, he motioned me to move to the group of the bad ones who were soon allowed to leave.

  I was shaken by the ordeal, but I felt a little pride at not having cried. Kenneth and I walked in silence, not daring to look back. Even when we heard shots and screams behind us, we did not look back. I never knew what happened to the ones who were left behind. We could only guess, but we kept our surmises to ourselves.

  It was clear, however, that the man behind the hood was a Limuru resident, probably a neighbor of the very people he was sending to camps or to their deaths. Though shaken I was relieved that I had not been forced to say more than I had.

  Kenneth and I did not have much to say about what had just happened or anything else. Such scenes with varying details were common, but this was the first time we were among the dramatis personae. That we had been treated differently may have produced some distance between us and contributed to our silence. Lost in our own thoughts, we did not realize that we had only one more ridge to climb and then we would be home. But both of us needed time to come to terms with what we had witnessed.

  It was still early in the afternoon and we decided to take a detour to Manguo to see if Mr. Kĩbicho, the headmaster, could lend us books, even though we were no longer students at his school. Staff houses had not yet been put up at Kĩnyogori, so the teachers stayed in their old houses at Manguo. Although the cover we gave ourselves was books, at the back of our minds we hoped that Mr. Kĩbicho might be able to tell us something, anything, about our exams. He was not at home. We had forgotten that during vacations he normally went back to his home in Nyeri.

  Disappointed, we took the path that passed by the house of the deputy headmaster, Stephen Thiro, who must have seen us through the window, because he came to the door and called out to us. He invited us inside. After the ordeal of the day, it was nice to have a cup of tea in our teacher’s house.

  “Kenneth,” he started, smiling, “you have passed the exams.”

  It was sudden, unexpected. What about me? I thought. But he would not look at me.

  “But we don’t know what high school you have been admitted to,” he continued, his eyes still on Kenneth.

  I don’t know if Kenneth was happy or not. But my tummy muscles were tight. Had I failed?

  “And you, you have been accepted at Alliance High School,” he told me, breaking into a broad smile. “Alliance High School announces its admissions earlier than other schools.”

  I don’t know how to take the day with its extreme of downs and ups. The news does not sink in. I don’t know how to enjoy it. Even when I go home and say that I have passed the KAPE and have been accepted at Alliance High School, my mother has only one question: Is that the best? And I cannot say what I really want to say—that it is more, it is much more than I had expected. In fact, Alliance High School was not my choice; Mr. Kĩbicho must have inserted the school as one of my choices on my application forms. The others, my brother’s wife, my sisters, and my younger brother, are all hearing of this Alliance High School for the first time. But they are happy that I have passed and that I am going to a high school. Word spreads in the region. I am the only one from the entire Limuru area who has been admitted to Alliance High School that year. But slowly, ever so slowly, I make peace with my fate, especially after Reverend Stanley Kahahu comes to my mother’s to say that I have done well. It sinks in when later I go to see Mr. Kĩbicho and he congratulates me and tells me that Alliance High School is the best high school in the country, that it admits only the best, before he gives me the package containing information about tuition, clothes, and other items.

  And then the brute reality. My mother cannot afford the tuition and everybody knows it. The brother who would have been in a position to help is now in the mountains! Rumors start that the rich and the loyalists would surely petition the government to prevent the brother of a Mau Mau guerrilla from going to such a prestigious high school. I don’t know how to take the rumors, which are only adding to my uncertainty. Why, why would anyone want to gang up against me when I have worked so hard to get this far? I recall all the days and nights when I had read or done my homework in flickering firelight, the nights I could not read because we had run out of firewood and paraffin.

  Aid comes unexpectedly from someone I would never have imagined: Njairũ, a government-appointed headman with a reputation for being a hard taskmaster, an enforcer with a vengeance of communal labor and attendance at barazas, the well-known leader of the hated Home Guard squad who would kill my brother on sight. He puts an end to the rumor. No force will stop me from going to Alliance High School, he says. He personally goes to all my half brothers to impress upon them the importance of what I have done. Some give their shares freely. Njairũ leans heavily on the few who are reluctant.

  Donations come in here and there, and eventually I have the required initial payment but not enough for a whole year. This is fine for the time being; we shall cross the other bridges when we come to them. I have a new set of clothes and a wooden box. I have got everything I need, well, almost everything. A pair of shoes and long stockings are among the requirements, and I cannot find the money for them. One can ask donations for big things like tuition: Education has always been seen as a personal and communal ideal. But money for shoes and stockings?

  I had never owned or worn a pair in my life, except once when I tried on my elder brother’s shoes and trousers, a
ll bigger than my size, and he caught me strutting about in the yard, my younger brother crying for his turn. But after I was admonished rather harshly, my younger brother laughed at me. Otherwise I had walked barefoot all my life. The expectation of wearing shoes for the first time was as intense as that other time long ago when my mother bought me my first shirt and shorts for my primary school at Kamandũra. A pair of shoes stands between me and high school.

  My sister Njoki comes to the rescue. Njoki is the quietest in my mother’s house. She broods a lot. Life has not treated her well. There was a time when she was in love with a tractor driver from Ngeca. He was part of the workforce in the construction of the Limuru tunnel under the land owned by a Mr. Buxton, one of the soldiers who settled in the area after the First World War. Before the tunnel, the train took a long time to go around the hill. The digging of the tunnel after the Second World War had created all sorts of rumors—that the whites were interfering with the order of nature, that they were planning something sinister for Africans. Otherwise why was the whole thing so secret? Still, there was a certain prestige conferred on those who worked on the project, especially the drivers. My sister was happy when her tractor driver visited our place and talked of the dynamite used to break up the rocks. He talked of the dangers he faced daily and even said that some people had been killed by the rocks and dynamite. The danger he toiled under and his bravery captivated Njoki even more. She was so much more alive: She used to laugh and dance. But her love did not meet the approval of my brother Wallace. He and his friends dissuaded her from the wedding of her choice; she instead married a wealthier suitor who owned a truck and had a contract to supply murram for road repair. The marriage had grown sour and ended in divorce. She had lost her first love, the tractor driver, in the process. News of his death under falling rock in the tunnel together with her failed marriage took the joy of life from her. Laughter left her. She earned money, not much, by working in the tea plantations across the rail or in Kahahu’s pyrethrum fields.

  Now she gives up all she has to buy me the required pair of shoes and stockings. I am moved by this. Instead of saying thank you, I tell her that I am very sorry for the day I once chased her through the pyrethrum field with a chameleon on a stick. Like many others in the area, she was mortally afraid of chameleons. I had always felt guilty about the incident, but she obviously has forgotten all about it, and it takes some seconds for her to understand what I am talking about. And then she breaks into laughter. A big bellyful of laughter. It is so wonderful to see her smile, to see the gloom disappear from her face, to see how beautiful she really is, and whenever I wear shoes I shall always recall that smile and laughter.

  I pack everything in the wooden box. Alliance High School is a boarding school: I will be coming home only during the holidays. I am ready to go. I wish I had a way of saying farewell to Wallace Mwangi, my brother who is out in the cold of the mountains, but no doubt he will get the news the same way he knew about my exams at Loreto.

  There are two other people I must see before I go. My grandfather. Regardless of whatever has happened between us, he is still the only grandfather I have, and I am named after him. His daughter is my mother, but she is also my symbolic daughter. It is in the afternoon, and he is sitting in an armchair on the verandah of his house. He asks Mũkami to bring me a chair. She does and follows this with a glass of hot milk. I tell him the news, but I also know he knows because I have been the talk of the region for weeks. I feel as if my visit also relieves him of a weight inside.

  But you will be coming to see us during your holidays, he says. And then unable to hide his feelings, he breaks into a smile, and calls out to his wife, loudly, I knew he could read. He could write what was in my mind exactly. He gave robes to my thoughts. Go well. Continue holding the pen firmly. He makes as if to spit on his breast, a gesture of showers of blessing. Then he tells Mũkami to bring “that parcel,” which turns out to be his wallet. He gives me some money to buy myself something on the way to my new school. I feel good. He had once trusted me and my abilities enough to make me his scribe and bird of good omen.

  The other person? My father! Though I haven’t admitted it to myself, I am haunted by a sense of alienation, and I still carry within me the ugly image of our last encounter. I have to see him: I don’t know what words will pass between us, but a fleeting thought has suddenly become an irresistible desire. When I set foot on the compound, the same compound that was my playground for the first half of my childhood, I feel my heart skip a beat. I am returning to the old homestead for the very first time since my expulsion. My mother’s former hut is still standing, but now green plants have sprouted on the roof and all around the walls, loudly announcing abandonment. My mind races back to beginnings, to the games of my childhood. It is a sunny day, but for some reason what comes to mind is the song we used to sing to welcome rain. At the muffled sound of raindrops on the thatched roofs, we would run out to the compound.

  Rain, I ask you to fall

  I shall offer you a bull

  With a bell around his neck

  That sings ding-dong ding-dong

  Images upon images of the past. Tears and laughter. All the siblings who are at home welcome me and crowd around me. First I enter Wangarĩ’s hut, the senior wife’s house, and before I have even uttered a word, Wabia, my blind half sister, says: Is that Ngũgĩ? Yes, it’s me, I say, with a smile she cannot see, but a smile offered broadly. Here in this hut was the scene of the nightly performance of stories, riddles, and proverbs and the discussion of national and world affairs. Wangarĩ is sorry that she has nothing for me to eat, but she could make me a type of porridge she used to make for me. No, no, it is not necessary. I say farewell to her and to Wabia. Then I go to the second wife’s house, my second mother, Gacoki. She is not a woman of many words, she is still her shy self, but she ventures to ask, Is this Alliance in another country? It is only a manner of speaking, she is just happy that I have come to visit. And lastly I go to Njeri’s house. She is her same, strong-boned, talkative self, admonishing me for not having sent word in advance that I was coming, and now unprepared she has nothing to give me to eat. But she offers eggs that I could take with me to school. No, no, I say, thinking of the days of Bono Mayai.

  Finally I turn to my father. He is sitting on a stool inside Njeri’s hut. My father has nothing to say beyond, You have done well and you have my blessings. I know that he has been receiving many congratulations from other elders on the achievement of his son, but embarrassment prevents him from saying more. I know that he has nothing material to give me and he does not even make a gesture. He is really down and out. But I am not here for money or gifts from him. I want to give myself a gift. I do not want to start a new life with resentment in my heart. My visit is my way of telling him that even though he has not asked for forgiveness, I still forgive him. Like my mother, I believe that anger and hatred corrode the heart. I want my actions to speak for me, positive deeds to be my only form of vengeance. Not much is spoken. But as I am about to leave, he stands up and walks a few steps with me. Then he does something I have never seen him do: He takes me up the dump site, telling me to be careful of the stinging plants, the kind we called thabai. We stand there looking down the slope I had known so well, the slope where I often witnessed my sisters and brothers and mothers going on their way to work at the white-owned tea plantations and scattering all over. From this hill one could hear the sirens from the Limuru Bata Shoe Company built in 1938. And for all those years, the siren, king’ora, had become a timekeeper, marking the passage of the day for all of us: The morning siren announced the break of day, the midday one, lunch break, and the last one, nightfall. We talk about the before and after of the sirens. This was the same hill from which my mother claimed she had witnessed Indian ghosts holding lights in their hands and walking about in the dark. Yes, so many memories, of being stung by stinging nettles, of hiding our dogs in the bush around the dump site and then my mother taking them back to the Indian sh
ops! Even my father is absorbed in thoughts of his own as if surveying the lands that once belonged to him and the distance he has covered since his flight from Mũrang’a. Or his journey in time from his birth before Kenya was Kenya, before there was Nairobi or Limuru or any town beyond the coast; his journey through the First and Second World Wars and now Mau Mau with his sons fighting on both sides of the conflict. I wish I could say to him: Your thoughts about this, Father, but I don’t say it. He breaks the silence but not about the past. You have done well, he says at last. The road ahead is long. There will be holes and bumps. You shall fall sometimes. The thing is to stand up and continue walking. His tone is matter-of-fact. But I have a feeling that he is telling this to himself as well. And in my heart I say thank you. I am free. I am not a prisoner of anger or resentment anymore.

  Everything is ready. I have been to see my friend Kenneth. He has been accepted in Kambũi Teacher Training School. So also have Mũrage Chege, Mũturi Ndiba, and Kamĩri Ndotono, all my classmates. Kambũi is Harry Thuku’s home area, once the site of the Gospel Missionary Society before it merged with Church of Scotland Mission to form the Presbyterian Church in 1946. Kenneth is disappointed that he has not been admitted into a high school, but he does not forget to bring up our arguments about writing and prison. I will still write that book, he says, just to prove you wrong about the license to write.

  My mother is not coming to the train, she tells me. Go well, always do your best, and you will be all right. I discover that Liz Nyambura, a senior at Alliance Girls High School, the girl who was a math prodigy way back in my early Kamandũra days, and Kenneth Wanjai wa Jeremiah, already in form two at Alliance High School, are returning to Kikuyu the same day. I join them at the railway platform. My sisters, my brother’s wife, and my younger brother accompany me to the station.

  The platform seems very busy, but probably not as busy as in those days long ago when the Limuru railway platform was a social center. I recall the days when my sisters and brother used to run down the slope from our father’s house to meet the twelve o’clock passenger train to Kampala or Kisumu. Oh, how I used to envy them, wishing for the day when I would become an adult so that I could race other young men and women to the railway station! And now I am there, not to see the train come and go but to ride it.