I had no plans to exchange one dictatorship for another. As a lawyer, I would run into dictators, but I would have the power to fight them, hit them hard and exact my own revenge. If I had learned anything from my years with the despots, it was that it was good to be an expensive victim, but even better to be one’s own judge and executioner.
The despotic decision to send me to the seminary was vindicated by the government’s announcement of the impending state visit of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. Suddenly, Padlock talked about her fear that Uganda was about to be Islamized, all the churches closed, the clergy and nuns imprisoned or killed or forced to convert to Islam along with their followers, and that polygamy would become the order of the day. The Islamization rumor was as sinister as the old anti-Communist one spread by the Church in the fifties, to the effect that Communists were going to take power, close the churches, kill the clergy, marry off the nuns and enforce wife-swapping and common ownership of property.
“First he expelled missionaries, then the British, the Israelis, the Indians, and now he is ready to bring in the Arabs, those old slavers who call us infidels. Gaddafi will be spending his weekends here, making sure that the forced conversions go through. Faisal is coming to make Amin speed up the plans.”
In Padlock’s view, all the Arabs were old slavers, and all the Israelis were the people whose exploits she read about in the Bible. On the same level with the Israelis were the very white peoples, who were blessed by the Book. In her mind, the white races could do no wrong as long as they fulfilled what God commissioned them to do: to go out, conquer the world and save it from the threat of Islam. All the darker races had to do was to accept the deal, offering their labor and resources in return. For that reason, she saw nothing wrong with the old missionary tactics of sugarcoated invasion, fomentation of religious wars and political interference.
Serenity, on the other hand, held more intelligent views about the situation. To start with, he did not confuse the current Arabs with the East African slave traders; nor did he confuse the Israelis with the Biblical people, for whom he did not care much anyway. As for the white races, he admired their technology and wanted some of their power, but he did not adore them or hold them as God’s chosen people. He found the concept of a chosen people rather absurd. He knew too well what had happened in the two world wars. The mindless slaughter in the trenches of World War I reminded him of colonial slaughters in the Third World. The cold-blooded genocide of World War II had given him a more skeptical view of the white races. On a personal level, he had never got over the shock of his uncle returning home from the war with his leg blown off. The man used to visit twice a year and make him wash the stump and dress it in bandages. Serenity would not eat meat for days. He would be haunted by the sight and the softness of the stump. The fact that the man did not talk made Serenity afraid of him. What was he thinking? Why didn’t he talk anymore? What did he see when the day ended and people’s conversations were replayed in his head? He was the person who had made Serenity abhor violence. Whenever Serenity felt like exploding, he would remember his uncle and desist. In his adulthood, Serenity’s fear of the white races increased. He believed that they could easily blow up the African continent if it suited them. At one time he had wanted to correct his wife’s view of whites, but he had given up. Like God, Padlock was politically inaccessible.
“Nobody is being forced to convert,” Serenity said after what seemed like a lifetime.
“They are being bought,” she replied, thinking about Dr. Ssali, her husband’s brother-in-law. “They are being given cars, jobs, businesses, promotions, anything to make them convert.”
“People choose what they think is best for them,” Serenity concluded.
Disappointed, Padlock resumed her lookout for those who wolfed their food, or blew onto it instead of patiently waiting for it to cool like decent people, or ate the meat or fish first, or slurped or munched or let soup crawl through the gaps in their fingers. Thank God, everything was in order.
My conclusion was that Padlock was stepping up her anti-Islamic campaign in order to wean me from Lusanani, which proved a noble but doomed endeavor. Lusanani was my partner in crime. She had already shown signs that she would do practically anything for me, which was more than I could say about Padlock. I was hatching a vague plan to keep myself out of the seminary, and although I did not know what role Lusanani was going to play in it, I was sure that she would figure in the final draft.
For the moment, I was very excited by King Faisal’s impending visit. My admiration for my godfather soared. He had got rid of all the foreigners, plus a few foolhardy missionaries, and had turned to the Arab world for sponsorship. Good thinking. I had seen snatches of his visits to the Arab leaders on television. It all looked good. Now I was eager to see King Faisal.
School routine had changed. Every morning we did gymnastics and athletics, sang the national anthem, recited poems and practiced dances and a march-past with the school band.
The city was shivering under the great visitor’s spelclass="underline" shop buildings were pasted with paper flags of Uganda and Saudi Arabia. Many other buildings flew proper flags. All the shops had received a face-lift, and roads were undergoing major repairs. General Amin appeared daily on television and was seen making speeches, supervising road repairs, opening new schools and hospitals and launching multifarious functions. He flagged off a motor safari rally and joined the race in his Citroën Maserati. He was indomitable, indefatigable and as indispensable as air.
Soldiers decked out in new uniforms, new boots and new guns appeared on the streets. On our way to and from school, we passed them, as stationary as trees, as committed as suicide bombers. I felt proud to go past them. They were there for my own good, and for the good of the country. I only had to open my mouth and they, like faithful mastiffs, would come puffing and panting to my aid. They made me feel kind and generous; after all, I had only to summon them and the despots would be in dire trouble.
On the day the great man arrived, we stood on the roadside with two flags in our hands: the green one of Saudi Arabia and the black, yellow and red one of Uganda. Amin, like a bear on a crane, towered over the king, who swayed dizzily in the morning air. A mild sun was shining, creating a sweet haze which touched thousands of years back into the pages of the Bible and thrust onto our asphalt the phenomenon of Elijah going to heaven on a chariot of fire. Every one of us seemed to be saying “Father, Father, don’t abandon me” as the chariot swept by. All we got in reply was Amin’s schoolboy grin and the king’s stationary hand trapped in a salute or a wave. The king’s face did not move; if it did, the gesture was swallowed by a mass of crisscrossing wrinkles. A quaint haze of power emanated from the thin old man. I thought of Abraham. He looked at the world with the sublime dignity of somebody totally at peace with life and death.
The king never stopped at our school; obviously we were not important enough to detain life and death on wheels. Personally, I was not disappointed. I felt that I had been touched by the sweep of his garment. I was no longer afraid of death in the real sense. It seemed to have entered and inhabited me. If this man wanted to Islamize Uganda, he could do it. Gaddafi, on the other hand, had not done it, possibly because he was too jumpy, like somebody with too much to prove, somebody with too many balls in the air. This man looked out of the strange eyes of eternity, had nothing to prove, and every word he uttered reverberated with the weight of the centuries and the powers of heaven and hell. I was captivated, because that was what I wanted to be. That was the power I was seeking in life. I wanted to extract some people from the jaws of death, and to condemn others to the bowels of hell. I dreamed about King Faisal for weeks. Harmless dreams in which nothing much happened.