In the end, he decided to keep his counsel, never telling what he saw or knew about other people. After school he read books on astrology and Arabic. He was determined to go to Iran and study ancient religions. At twenty-five he got his university degree in religious studies. By then people had acknowledged his gift. People came from far and near to have their omens read. He got a job offer as head astrologer in Saudi Arabia, working exclusively for the royal family, but turned it down. He wanted freedom. He returned to the coast and settled in Zanzibar, where his fame grew even more.
By the time he made his first visit to Uganda, he was the most expensive astrologer on the continent. He was already on a retainer with President Mobutu of Zaïre, Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Republic, and General Gowon of Nigeria. He also had famous customers in Saudi Arabia and Europe. During their first meeting he told Amin that he would die an old man. He also described forthcoming assassination attempts to him, one of which occurred a week later, in almost exact detail. Amin became a follower. He foretold the deaths of two of Amin’s wives, also in detail. Amin had shivered. His mother had been a witch-doctor and he had his own clutch of astrologers and witches, but he had never met someone like Dr. Ali. Dr. Ali became the only man Amin truly feared. To keep him away from his generals, he raised the astrologer’s fees to one thousand dollars per consultation and ten thousand per séance. To weaken organized religions, he promoted the spread of astrology. Dr. Ali’s writings were spread everywhere, thus the nickname God. Astrology became a department at the university.
Now, three years later, the two men had become very good friends. The Marshal loved the fact that Dr. Ali hated the limelight. The air of mystique served both parties well. He also had few vices, apart from a streak of exorbitance. Every night he consumed a thousand-dollar bottle of red wine, a habit picked up from President Mobutu, whose cellar boasted the most expensive wines in the world.
“A thousand dollars worth of piss!” Amin would exclaim.
“I have drunk wines costing fifty thousand dollars per bottle,” the astrologer would counter, raising his eyebrows, turning his head slightly and smiling faintly. “I last drank that at Mobutu’s birthday.”
“Thank God whisky is not so expensive. Give me Johnnie Walker any day. And a bag of cocaine,” Amin said, laughing out loud.
“We are talking about the fine things in life, Marshal,” the astrologer said, laughing.
“Fuck them in the arse,” his host said, roaring with more laughter. He rang a bell and a soldier appeared. “Bring my friend his thousand-dollar piss. Don’t break the bottle. We are going to drink a toast.”
The phone rang. Good news. General Bazooka had crushed the core of the rebellion. He was now busy wrapping up the operation.
BY THE TIME BAT LEFT for Saudi Arabia, the rebellion in the army had been quelled. He headed a delegation charged with the business of negotiating with the Saudi government for a supply of construction equipment. Offers had been tendered by two companies, both owned by Saudi princes. It was up to Bat to decide which company should receive the contract and to close the deal. General Bazooka and a few other generals would get a cut of the commission, delivered in cash. What Bat did not realize was just how fierce the competition was between the two princes. It almost soured an otherwise fine journey.
Bat had arrived in a good mood. Victoria had moved out, and it was now up to Babit to move in, although her parents opposed the idea, preferring to see her married first. As he contemplated while treading on the ubiquitous sand, he hoped that Babit’s parents would relent. He even wished that Babit had come along to see this sand and the cities placed in its midst. He wished she could see the palace where the delegation did business under ceilings high as a pylon, in rooms uncluttered as an empty warehouse.
It was here that Bat began to feel that he had been wasting time, that he should already have made his fortune. The prince who seemed more eager to get his tender accepted invited him to his home. They went by helicopter, a white capsule with luxurious fittings. It brought back memories of General Bazooka’s Avenger. It felt like he was standing on a very high hill, looking down at a gargantuan city wrapped in sand, with vertigo pulling him down to the bottom at a dizzying pace. Do I want to take the offer? Do I have a choice? Is this how it goes down: an offer is presented to you, and you take it and wait for the men with guns who come or do not come? Is there any way out of this? Before this I did not know how I would make my money, at least not the details. But this is blackmail, an insult, not the clean deal I dreamed of where everybody would be happy with the results.
Bat’s host was a large bearded man with big eyes, a hooked nose, a serious face. Wrapped in brown flowing robes billowing like a full sail, he resembled an Old Testament prophet burning with zeal as he talked about his business empire: shares in American corporations, houses in New York, Montego Bay, Buckingham, the Spanish coast.
“I plan to carve for myself a chunk of Africa and South America,” he declared. “They are the continents of the future where everything goes.”
And I am the grease that is supposed to facilitate the process, Bat thought morosely, no better than General Bazooka or the other goondas, sliding down the slimy walls of the snakepit without a hand- or foothold. And if I refuse, I will face the threat of death or disappearance.
The helicopter landed somewhere in the desert. It looked as if they had not moved at alclass="underline" it was still sand, curvaceous and glossy like something made out of burnished glass or sanded wood.
“With a foothold in Uganda I will be able to buy one hundred islands in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania and develop tourism. Ultimately, I intend to build a string of hotels on the Kenyan coast and compete with the Italian mafia. At the moment, they are having it all their way. It is simply not fair. Arabs came to the coast first. Mombasa, Malindi and Lamu are Arab towns. I want to claim them from the Kenyan government. If all my plans go well, I will become the most influential businessman in East Africa and leave the wranglings over the Saudi throne to my brothers.”
Bat did not know whether to believe his ears or not. He knew that the first Arabs on the East African coast had come from Arabia fleeing persecution. It just seemed strange that somebody wanted to claim their heritage fourteen hundred years later. Did this man want to take over East Africa? With the petrol dollars gushing from the Middle East, eagerly lent to dictators and anybody the European and American banks thought could guarantee payment and a healthy interest rate, maybe the man was not deluded.
“I have never failed to close a deal. I win, no matter what it takes. I want us to be friends because we will be seeing a lot of each other. My generosity has never been spurned. My brother knows this. Everybody else does. I have already made a decision. The usual rate is ten percent commission, which comes to five million dollars. I have arranged for my men to give you briefcases with the said amount in cash for the generals. For you personally I have opened a numbered account and deposited the equivalent of five percent commission. It is not enough to buy a decent house in any livable place today, but I hope you will accept it. It is just a beginning, a sign that I treasure your friendship. You and I know well that you are the government, not those generals who can hardly tell left from right, and it is you I need more than anything else. Members of the elite need each other, because we all speak the same language. We are brothers.”
Bat felt insulted and humiliated by the veiled threats, the tying of his hands so that he could not defend himself, and could only crawl like a legless, armless creature, which in his host’s eyes he was. He did not buy that “we are brothers” stuff at all because one does not threaten to take a brother’s life, least of all in these reckless, terrorist- and assassination-filled years, where the value of an individual human life was almost nothing. In Uganda the kind of money he was talking about could buy assassins to kill a hundred presidents. Out of a sense of self-preservation he had no choice but to take the bribe. His fantasies of making his fortune in a more sophisticated fashion were now gone. Still, there was the matter of the other prince. Bat started sweating as the anxiety in him grew, as the sense of his own importance dwindled, as he realized that he was being hired and treated like a labourer.