Unbury Our Dead with Song

by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

  Close to dawn, we heard loud knocks on the door. It turned out the juke joint was a restaurant by day, and it was time for us to leave.

  Mustafa drove me back to the hotel. I was sitting up front, and The Diva in the back. We drove in silence, no music except the hum of the Benz. When we arrived at my hotel, she called out to me as soon as I stepped outside, and I went to her window expectantly.

  ‘So, you are going to see The Taliban Man next?’

  ‘Yes, in a few hours, after a quick nap.’

  ‘Tell him I am trying to bring him in.’

  She asked me to get closer, and I leaned in. She kissed me on the forehead.

  ‘Into what?’ I asked her.

  ‘Just tell him that. By the way, you are wrong about me. I am always me, even when I am many. See you in Nairobi,’ she said as they drove off.

  For a moment, I wanted to run after them just to catch a last glimpse of her. She was the most charismatic, magnetic, beautiful, kind and cruel person I had met so far in all my journalistic travels. Who she was? My problem. The Diva, Kidane, superstar, mother, wife, businesswoman — she was always herself by one or all of her names. The same person, but living in a world that demanded she divide herself to be herself. And she, as an army would, activated and deployed all her selves so that she lived out a full life — Mohamed, her kids, her fans — me, her confessor — is that why I was here with a front row seat? To reconcile all of her selves in one single narrative that would go out to the world? A record of her many selves reconciled into one story?

  But even as I was trying to work my way through the fog, lines for my National Inquisitor profile were forming — first sentences, all of them trying to prepare my reader:

  For The Diva, a song is many people — too damn poetic.

  Many voices sing one song — uninteresting and missing the point of who she is.

  A one-song orgy — that might just do it, but already a mixed metaphor, there was nowhere to take it. I needed an opening line that would allow the rest of the story to spill out easily.

  To sing the ultimate Tizita, one that taps into our collective subconsciousness, The Diva has disintegrated into several fully formed personalities. When she sings, her voice is a chorus — too damn long.

  Kidane, aka the double-edged Diva, is a chorus unto herself — almost there. I had to keep working on it.

  18

  The Taliban Man

  ‘For some people, sanity and insanity are truly a choice.’

  I was sitting in the music room of the Progressive International High School in Addis waiting for The Taliban Man’s former music teacher. It felt much easier to make my way through JFK Airport security than to get a guest pass to go through the PIHS security, but soon I was passing immaculately groomed and uniformed boys and girls, walking about and talking in hushed, respectful tones, on my way to the classroom where I would meet with Mrs. Hughes.

  I could have been back in my high school in Kenya — pristine, disciplined, green, rich — elite. Even the way the students walked with the confidence of knowing that the future and the country were theirs for the taking reminded me of my friends in high school. Though, looking back now, I wonder if the confidence also masked the pain of knowing our rich and powerful parents were part of the problem — that they were rich because others were poor. It was not something we talked about, but the silence that followed a news report that so-and-so had been disappeared or detained, or millions of shillings were missing from one ministry or the other said quite a bit.

  How does it feel to go through life knowing you are part of the problem? And how do you go about living knowing you are part of the problem? Two different questions. You compartmentalise and hang out only with others like you. And you have ostentatious, loud fun and crash an expensive car or two.

  Mrs. Hughes walked in. She had long, silver dreadlocks, and her nails were painted in Rastafarian colours — a 65-year-old ball of energy. I did not ask her how she was allowed to teach at such a school, but I would think her whiteness came with the privilege of looking and dressing however she wanted. But it still said something about her — she must be damn good.

  ‘Why is a fucking tabloid in Nairobi interested in my Yosef Kabede?’ she asked as she showed me to a student chair.

  I explained the competition and how The National Inquisitor is the most read newspaper of any kind in Kenya and that it would be good for The Taliban Man’s career.

  ‘Of course it will. I can’t imagine a better person for a tabloid than Yosef, The Taliban Man,’ she said and slapped her knee, laughing.

  ‘Sometimes, our stories are picked up by international tabloids as well — and I intend on telling a good story,’ I added.

  ‘There can never be a genuine Tizita competition. How can one judge a Tizita? I mean, have you found a way of weighing a soul? Anubis, where is thy feather?’ she asked.

  ‘Anubis?’

  ‘An Egyptian god. To get to heaven, your heart has to be lighter than a feather. Anubis does the weighing. You cannot judge a Tizita unless you are Anubis,’ she explained with schoolteacher patience. ‘What is happening over there in Nairobi is simply obscene,’ she added, with mounting anger.

  I could understand why it would seem that way to her, and for most Ethiopians, I assumed. It was tantamount to taking something dear to a people and lampooning it. But she had not seen what I had seen, and I tried to explain it to her: how the musicians were in control, how they each got on stage and gave us something different and how, in the end, they had performed together.

  ‘Surely Anubis must know that while there are souls that weigh the same, no soul is the same?’ I asked her. ‘The Tizita won that night,’ I added before she could answer.

  ‘Well, I am glad that is all happening at an off-shore site,’ she said sarcastically.

  She started to say something else then changed her mind. ‘Here, let me show you something instead.’ She walked to an upright piano. She played a minute or two of a complicated classical song. She was impressive; the music room temporarily transformed into a concert hall.

  ‘That piece — do you know it?’ she asked.

  ‘I do not. I only know bits of Beethoven — that’s about it,’ I answered truthfully.

  ‘Not all classical music is by Beethoven,’ she said with a laugh. ‘That is one of the hardest songs to master; technically very difficult, the feeling to capture it and play at the same time, almost impossible. You either play it — or you feel it. But at sixteen, Yosef had mastered it. I have known only one other person to do it as well, his sister. She was almost as good as he was…,’ she said, looking up at me, waiting for me to ask the inevitable question.

  ‘What happened to her? His sister?’

  ‘Lawyer — a fucking lawyer — a lawyer joke!’ she spat out.

  ‘Why did she choose law over music, do you know?’ I asked her.

  ‘For some people, sanity and insanity are truly a choice,’ she answered.

  ‘Mrs. Hughes, Yosef and hip-hop — what do you think about that?’

  ‘You want me to say it’s a waste, don’t you? No, it’s brilliant; different forms of music, they need to speak to each other. His talent is so massive — if anyone can do it, he can. He does not know it, but he is my little messiah,’ she said with a wistful smile on her face, instinctively running her hands over the piano keys.

  Her music students started trickling in.

  ‘Mrs. Hughes, that piece you just played, who is it by?’

  ‘Maurice Ravel, Gaspard de la Nuit. But even your Beethoven — they could do his toughest pieces — youth and genius….’

  The way she said, ‘youth and genius’ — all teachers must have a student they regret.

  Later I would look into Ravel’s piece, its emotional range, from intricate to dangerous — at 16 years, I would never have listened to that, let alone want to play it. But The Taliban Man and his sister, they both grew up taking what they had for granted.

  ‘Is it
that he feels he cannot own classical music? It can never be his?’ I asked, and she looked at me, surprised.

  ‘Do you own life, yet others have lived and continue their lives? In classical music, you own what you play; there is no ownership. It’s like life — you own the life you live, yet others have lived before you, and billions live alongside you,’ she answered.

  She looked straight at me. ‘Only I know what I have unleashed into the world. Give Yosef my love when you see him. You are going to see him, aren’t you?’

  As she walked me to the door, she said, ‘Mind your head.’ I was nowhere near tall enough to hit the doorway, so I turned and looked at her.

  ‘Mind your head,’ she said again.

  19

  ‘If you have ever in life wished to be in with the cool kids, this is it.’

  In contrast to Kidane’s modest home in the hills on the outskirts of Addis and The Diva’s not-so-humble apartment in the city, The Taliban Man lived in an enclave of wealth carved out of a well-to-do suburb. In this enclave, the houses — with armed guards at the massive gates, which opened up to winding roads paved with marble and other shiny stones — were monstrous. Once, in a suburb in Harare, I saw a massive house built to look like a yacht, but it was an anomaly. Here, I am talking about a suburb so extreme that it would seem this was where extravagance came to shop.

  I was observing all this sitting in the back of a bright red limousine that I knew to belong to The Taliban Man because the plates yelled TM. When the lobby had rung to tell me that my ride was here, I walked outside to find the bellboys pointing at the bright red limo. Where before, the bellboys simply did not see me, they now rushed to open the doors. I, of course, hoped that word was going to spread that I was someone who knew somebody and could be a VIP myself.

  I felt good being in the limo, and I rolled down the partition to chat with the driver who, as it turned out, spoke very poor English, but at least I could share my excitement by asking him a few questions, like how long he had worked for The Taliban Man and what kind of a person he was.

  ‘He is a simple man. And also very, very, very — how do we say? — very privacy,’ he answered and rolled up the partition before I could ask another question. Style and attitude even in those who worked for him — I liked him already. He was my kind of subject: flashy and perfect for my readers.

  We finally drove up to a gate with a huge, neon-lit guitar hanging above it. We waited for the guards to call someone in the house, and gates rolled open, the hum of electricity making it feel like it took longer than it actually did. Dinner was starting at 6pm. I looked at my watch, it was 5.55 pm — right on time. The driver opened the door for me and, stepping onto the marble driveway, I immediately felt underdressed, like I should have been wearing a formal suit, or if not, a bohemianish torn jeans outfit that spoke the language of careless money. My corduroys, my fucking safari boots with my still-blistered-but-now-manageable feet and a jean jacket were out of place above the marble. I gave myself a pep talk to remind myself that I too came from wealth and power. Hey, you might even be the president’s son, I told myself.

  Eight or so limos pulled up, and young people, mostly in their twenties and thirties, stepped out wearing expensive-looking skinny jeans and various forms of Nike sneakers. Obviously, they knew each other, and they hugged and chit-chatted as I, the older gentleman in my late thirties, stood alone there with my little reporter kit. The Taliban Man stepped out of the house and walked into the driveway dressed in a long, dashiki-looking shirt over white pants and sandals, and a colourful gabi, the long scarf wrapped around his shoulders. Servers dressed in black suits and skirts carrying champagne bottles and glasses followed him. He appeared a bit high, or tipsy — or most probably both.

  ‘Welcome!’ He kissed his right fist and pointed to the sky. We introduced ourselves in the driveway; some of his guests had variations of his name without the ease of his — Sandinista Man, Cubano Man and so on.

  He walked over to me and put his hand around my shoulder.

  ‘And this is the reporter,’ he announced.

  ‘How about we call him the Repo-Man?’ someone yelled, to laughter. For the rest of the evening, I was known as Repo-Man.

  The Taliban Man showed us around the house, though it really was for my benefit. His house is the closest I have been to a house in Rome as I imagine it. There were chiselled statues, only this time, instead of being Michelangelo’s David, Bacchus and Angel, they were recognisably African heroes — Shaka Zulu, Bob Marley, Miriam Makeba, Steve Biko and others. In the huge, dome-shaped sitting room, my eyes followed pencil-thin lights that shone on the Sistine chapel painting, only instead of a white God giving a jolt of life to a wilting Adam, it was Menelik giving life to Che Guevara shortly after his execution in Bolivia.

  We made our way through the mansion to the backyard, where there was a band playing some jazz standards by a massive pool. There were several grills sizzling with all sorts of goodies, and three bar stations with expensive beers and liquors. At the bar, inspired by the Chivas juke joint The Diva and I had patronised, I asked for a glass of Chivas as I debated how I was going to be a journalist when all I wanted was to be part of the crew and have some fun. The word camouflage naturally came to mind; I would meld in with the crowd and party — an observer-participant. After all, the Repo-Man is in the house!

  The Taliban Man — I had done enough research of his background to know that he came from a wealthy family. Not just the wealthy, the powerful wealthy, two or three degrees removed from the president. But, unlike my parents, who liked to keep simple and dull, his family was part of the new cosmopolitan Ethiopia. A father in his fifties educated at Harvard, a PhD in economics, and a white English mother, an MIT-educated astrophysicist who loved the ‘absolutely dark Ethiopian night,’ as a newspaper write-up had quoted her as saying. They were now on various advisory boards and consulted for firms trying to set up shop in Ethiopia. His mother, though, was still researching, writing and giving conference papers.

  His parents were out of the country, somewhere in Singapore on holiday. Going on a holiday, now that is something my parents would never dare do — they might have to talk to each other. I was disappointed I would not get to see The Taliban Man’s parents in person, but they had agreed to a Skype conversation. They might as well have given me a press release statement saying they loved their son very much and supported him in all his endeavours, because that was pretty much all I could get out of them. What did they think about his music? They thought highly of it. And his decision to give up classical music for hip-hop? They had brought him up to do the right thing for himself, and they were sure that he knew what he was doing. They kept looking at what I figured was a clock on the wall, and it seemed best to let them go.

  ‘Tell our son we shall see him in a day or two,’ they said, and that was that.

  The Taliban Man’s friends reflected his dynamism, and I was pulled right in. They knew themselves as part of the new Ethiopia — young lawyers, university professors, TV and radio broadcasters, bloggers with large followings, musicians and dancers, Silicon Valley types now venture capitalists, and returnees. Yes, as in Kenya, the old corrupt guard was after their souls. And what they offered — easy money and power in return for their consciences — was tempting enough, but there was something about their easy confidence that made me hold out hope. In time — and by that I mean in five or so years — the die would be cast, and perhaps they would have fulfilled their destiny of becoming part of the problem, but for now, out of this outstanding group of young people, two stood taller: Binyam, his friend, and Maaza, The Taliban Man’s sister.

  Binyam had made his money on Wall Street and returned to Ethiopia to be part of the team building the Addis Stock Exchange from the ground up. Coming back after the stupidity and violence of Mengistu, Binyam had fit right into Zenawi’s Ethiopia, an Ethiopia eager to build skyscraper cities with the hope that glitter and gold would trickle down into the poor urban and rura
l areas. Young and handsome, armed with the easy confidence or even righteousness of being part of something bigger than himself, he literally embodied a man of his times.

  But not so much Maaza, a lawyer by training who had made partner in a law firm in New York, but had instead followed the dream of building the new Ethiopia. Unlike Binyam, who had set up shop in the business centre, she had set up a law office smack in the middle of Addis Ketema, Ethiopia’s equivalent of Nairobi’s River Road, a poorer sibling of the business world, where one found the small traders of second-hand clothes, cheap radios and TV’s, and curio shops. These were the areas outside the protection of global capitalism laws, and police raids to shut down illegal kiosks and traders without licences were the norm. And so she was often in court defending or suing on behalf of the struggling small traders. She knew full well that Ethiopia had as yet to turn its back on the unforgivingly brutal and corrupt crony capitalism of the old. But just looking at her, beautiful and expensively dressed, with her peers in The Taliban Man’s mansion, there was no way of knowing all this. I was to learn bits and pieces of their lives as the night wore on.

  As I walk you through the night, imagine this group of dynamic young men and women at a party — they have earned the right to be here and to have a good time. Some are in the swimming pool, others huddled together talking politics, poetry and philosophy; lovers are holding hands and kissing, others awkwardly trying to make conversation to get laid for the night; others are quite drunk and are dancing by themselves. Imagine the band every now and then playing a crowd favourite that brings all the partiers together, like the Electric Boogie, and all of us, some in bathing suits and dripping wet, doing the synchronised electric slide.

  Let me put it another way, if you have ever in life wished to be in with the cool kids, this is it — only they are also doing serious and rewarding, if not necessarily good, work. And they are here to have a good time.