Two days passed. I felt sick. I couldn’t rest fully because of the noise and the firing of guns. The din and gloom were shattered by the arrival of Uncle Kawayida. I was very happy to see him. He was reticent, as if he was not happy to see me. He was wearing dirty clothes and mud-stained shoes. I had not seen him in years, but he had not changed much. He was still thin, tall and alert, his oval face with its big eyes giving him a wily, charming look. He refused the long greeting formula I had begun unravelling. That meant big trouble. Had one of his women got gang-raped by soldiers? Had his in-laws lost members of their large family in a fire or a massacre or an accident? Mr. Kavule, his late father-in-law, had after all left forty children, thirty girls and ten boys. Had something happened to them?
Danger was closer to home. Grandpa was missing!
Grandpa had left the village a week before the fall of Amin’s government in order to meet a clan elder. The man who foresaw national explosions thought that the time for the big one had not yet come. In the village, far away from the theater of war, things had still been quiet. He believed he could go and return before the city fell. He met the clan elder, settled some important clan affairs and left three days before the fall of the city. He was last seen ensconced in the cab of an overloaded pickup van which was to take him straight home.
I felt sick with grief. I asked Uncle Kawayida what he thought had happened, but he did not want to talk about it. He was waiting for the arrival of Serenity to make a plan for a detailed search. In the meantime, he asked what I wanted to do in the future, what I was doing for money. I told him about Aunt’s monthly liquor-brewing activities. He made calculations by scratching figures on his hand with his index fingernail. He shook his head and said that it was a good business. What did I think of taking part? I said it was too dangerous. He replied that it was dangerous businesses that paid. I found the suggestion repulsive. How could I, the former seminary librarian, the ouster of Fr. Mindi, the terror of Fr. Lageau, the future lawyer, do something as crude as brewing liquor in a discarded oil drum over a wood fire? I was cut out for white-collar jobs that earned clean money. I said I was planning to do part-time teaching jobs. He screwed his lips into a pensive pout. No money, he implied. How long would I continue to depend on Aunt? I felt tongue-tied and misunderstood. I asked him about his turkey and chicken business.
He said that he had made a lot of money because he had done something different: where others had rushed into retail business, he had cut his own path. He added that in order to succeed, one had to make one’s own way. I wanted to ask for advice in love matters. I wanted to know more about his escapades with the sisters of his wife. I wanted to know his views on polygamy. I looked for the right words which would accommodate both titillation and the real quest for knowledge, but failed to find them. All this was good distraction for both of us. Looking for a way to pose questions about sex, I asked him about his mother. He said that he was happy that she was looking after Grandpa. But where was Grandpa now?
Serenity arrived: it was evident that he was expecting the worst, as though a monster had leapt out of his favorite book to torment him by kidnapping first his father, then his wife and children. I had not seen him in a long time, but it felt as if we had parted only yesterday. The two men set off almost immediately. They rode round the city on a Kawasaki motorcycle Uncle Kawayida had borrowed from a friend. He still dared not use his van for fear that the liberators might impound it for military purposes.
I was immobilized for days. I felt like a stone on a riverbed: events eddied all round me. I had to look after the children because Aunt was busy meeting her National Reform Movement colleagues and, I suspected, the brigadier too. There was a loose coalition of exiles which was going to form a provisional government before the elections. Aunt was very optimistic, saying that the National Reform Movement was going to play a big role in the coalition. I asked her whether she wanted to get into politics. She said that she wanted financial help from the NRM in order to launch her own business. She obviously still treasured her independence. Rumors, however, had it that the coalition was a front for the return of Obote, who had spent all the years of Amin’s rule in Tanzania. Aunt said that the rumors were wrong: Obote could never come back. He had had his chance, and the exiles would block his return. I was not convinced. Aunt did not want to go into objective analysis. She seemed to believe that all the Tanzanians had come to do was to help Ugandans get rid of Amin. But who was going to pay for the war? Uganda, of course. Who would guarantee the payment? I was thinking about the Versailles Treaty of 1919, made to guarantee that Germany paid war indemnity. Was Uganda going to make a treaty with Tanzania, or was the return of Obote going to be the guarantee of payment? Aunt did not want her optimism sullied by such callous speculation. I sensed that the “snek” woman was annoyed by the theories of somebody who had not been part of the struggle, somebody who had never been threatened with torture and death. She had her faith in the National Reform Movement, and in the brigadier, whose picture was still under her mattress. Who was I to make her doubt her instincts? What if she knew something I did not? I backed off. I might even have been bothering her just to forget Grandpa’s disappearance.
At about the same time came the news that Aunt Kasawo, survivor of a life-and-death chase many years ago, had been attacked by uniformed men — a popular euphemism for Amin’s thugs. I speculated wildly, and the event distracted me from the search for Grandpa for a while. The attack had occurred not long before the fall of the city, which meant that Amin’s men had already left her area. I had a hunch that it was our liberators who had attacked her. If it had been Amin’s men, I reasoned, the news bearer would have said so, since Amin was gone and there was freedom of speech. The euphemism pointed to the reluctance of the public to believe that the liberators were also capable of these acts, especially now, as the euphoria was still high. This time, though, I knew that I would get the details soon. I already had my theory; I was just waiting for confirmation. Locally, I had heard rumors about liberators “begging” women to service them, and on occasion using force to get what they wanted.
Three thousand and ten days of oppression, murder, mysterious disappearances, kidnappings and torture-chamber excesses had to erupt from the dungeons of memory into the sunlit streets. Euphoria, like every other drug, had worn off, and withdrawal symptoms like ravenous hunger and vengeance made people look around for scapegoats. Post-liberation food shortages did not help the situation, and the corny radio promises now sounded spurious, insulting.