The Last King of Scotland (1998) (39 page)

Early that evening, as Kampala’s seven hills came into view, it began to rain. By the time the first buildings came into sight, the road had turned to flowing mud and the verges were full of the noise of boots tramping in the sodden grass. The mud clogged the tracks of the APC, making it creak and rumble all the louder.

There was a little more resistance on the edge of the city, if the crackle of small-arms fire was anything to go by, but the Tanzanians advanced steadily, jumping into the concrete drainage ditches for cover whenever it was needed. As the light began to fail, I watched the vivid orange muzzle flashes as the soldiers moved forward firing. My eye was caught by the strange action of them shooting round the corners of buildings – holding the gun away from themselves as though it was something unpleasant.

Night closed around us, and the fighting continued in a half-light of street-lamp and flame. Some of the defence was brave, not to say foolhardy. At one point, a Mercedes came careering round a corner filled with Ugandan soldiers brandishing weapons out of the windows. A Tanzanian trooper simply picked up one of the bazookas they had captured earlier and sent a vicious spout of fire in their direction. The explosion was loud, roaring in my ears. I once again felt my tympanic membranes flutter – to, I was sure of it, the very point of perforation.

The style of fighting changed as successive waves of troops got deeper and deeper into the city. The Tanzanians nipped from shop-front to shop-front, their rifle reports echoing among the masonry. There was also a lot of waiting, during which periods the troops would pull out sticks of sugar-cane and chew them. The pavements were strewn with gobs of white fibre. If we had been a retreating army, it would have been forbidden, Colonel Kuchasa told me, as it makes it easier for trackers to follow your path.

During the periods of waiting, the Colonel would confer with his officers. Nobody seemed to know exactly where they were going, although I knew from the previous night’s discussion that it was Kuchasa’s intention to take up commanding positions on each of the seven hills, and to secure the UTV and radio stations, the clock tower at the centre of the city, and Amin’s Command Post at Prince Charles Drive.

Capturing the Command Post involved traversing a golf course, and also the moonlit gardens of Kampala’s diplomatic quarter, where the flags of distinguished nations hung unmoving in the wet air. It was odd to hear the sound of machine-gun fire and the crump of mortars in that suburban environment. I had got out of the APC and was walking by this stage. At one point, while I was going past the gates of a house, a security light came on and a dog rushed out into the driveway and started to bark. A dalmatian, it stood there yapping in the pool of light. I looked at it and it looked at me, while behind me hundreds of booted feet tramped past wearily. And then I, too, walked on.

Most of the diplomats, like everyone else, stayed in their beds, except for the North Korean Ambassador, who came out as we went past and asked Kuchasa to join him for a noodle breakfast the following morning. Earlier, in a strange incident I heard about but did not see, Doctor Gottfried Lessing, the East German Ambassador (and former husband of Doris Lessing, the novelist), made a break for it in two white Peugeots in the middle of the night, along with the First Consul and both of their wives. They went over the golf course just as the Tanzanians and Ugandan liberation forces were crossing it. The latter fired rocket-propelled grenades at the two cars, turning them both into balls of flame. There was speculation that they were trying to escape because of East German associations with the State Research Bureau, one of Amin’s terror organizations.

As for Amin himself, rumour was rife concerning his whereabouts. The few Ugandans who were on the street that night said that he had been seen at Namirembe market the previous day, trying to drum up morale. At one point on the approach, during the day, one of the Tanzanian officers had seen his red Maserati through binoculars – but no one really knew where he was now. One road out of the city, that to Jinja, had been deliberately left open to allow diplomats and the remaining Libyan soldiers to escape: President Nyerere was keen not to bring Libya further into the war, which some outside commentators were representing as an Arab-versus-African conflict. Some said Amin had already fled down this road, others that he was still holed up somewhere in Kampala.

There was a peculiar moment in the early morning. Mist had come down along with the dawn, and the outskirts of the city were eerily swathed in the stuff. The troopers’ teeth were chattering with the cold and they looked, as they tramped along there in their grey ponchos, like giant bats. And then out of the mist there suddenly loomed a tall, silver figure.

“It is him,” whispered one of the troopers.

And the shape of the figure was indeed much like that of Amin – fifteen feet tall, mind, and dressed in swimming trunks, but the same muscular build and imperious air. It was, it transpired on closer inspection, a statue advertising a health spa on the edge of Kampala. The fact is, it would have been totally in character for Amin to have greeted the invading force dressed in his swimming trunks. The story went down the line, provoking much merriment.

As for myself, I didn’t really know what to do once we were in the heart of the city, walking past the closed shutters and barricaded doors. There was still a little danger. Small groups of pro-Amin soldiers were moving through the streets in a confused manner, some on foot, but most in tanks, Land Rovers and armoured cars. The odd bullet flicked off the walls of the buildings, and in the distance a burning oil-storage depot gave off the same sick yellow light I had seen during the advance. Salvoes of artillery were still booming overhead.

The Tanzanian command, I learned, were planning to billet at State House. I realized then what a situation I was in. I couldn’t simply go back to the bungalow there: my relationship with Amin might easily be misinterpreted. Already I had seen several pro-Amin citizens prodded by the bayonets of the Tanzanian soldiery, which by this time had got hold of crates of whisky and beer and (perhaps more worryingly) bundles of dagga: the strong Ugandan marijuana.

I decided instead to trudge up to Mulago. I went off in search of Colonel Kuchasa, to find him slightly harassed by the problem of keeping his over-excited troops in order. They were firing their pistols and automatic rifles into the air, and were I a woman, I should not have liked to have been in the vicinity. I said goodbye to their exemplary leader, who had been so kind to me, and began the long walk through the rain up to the hospital. On the way, I noticed that there were a lot more rats about.

When I got to the hospital, soaked through and covered in mud, Paterson was shocked – and at the same time almost too busy to see me. He was in surgical greens, and rushing about the ward. It was full of soldiers. They lay on the beds and they lay on the floor, moaning quietly and staring up at me as I walked past. I saw the dirty bandages, covered in brown and yellow muck, and I felt a rush of guilt. This was where I should have been, I thought, this was where I should have been all the time.

Paterson was exteriorizing a loop of damaged bowel, winding it around a spindle. The patient’s stomach had obviously been opened by a bomb, and it was not a pretty sight. There were shreds of flesh and muscle all over his torso.

“Very nice of you to join us, Nick,” Paterson said, his sarcasm making me feel even worse. “We thought you’d disappeared into the sunset with Amin.”

“I tried for the border,” I said.

“That was brave of you,” he said. “Thanks for letting us know.”

“I…”

“Look, we’re run off our feet. I don’t care where you’ve been or what you have been doing. Just scrub up and pitch in.”

I did as he said, changing into surgical greens – at least they were clean and dry – and set to work. Stretcher upon stretcher was brought in, from both sides. A surprising number had broken thighs, from standing too close to their own artillery when the recoil came. As there were Africans with Arab features fighting on the Tanzanian side, and the Libyans and Palestinians on the Amin side, with the majority of both forces having Bantu characteristics – and, as I have said, the same camouflage fatigues, the same canvas packs and steel water-bottles – it was nigh on impossible to distinguish between them. Eventually we realized that only their undergarments provided a clue: the Ugandans wore olive green Y-fronts, the Tanzanians the same except in navy blue. And the Libyans, for some inexplicable reason, wore white woollen long-johns.

The procession of those consumed by death and wounds seemed interminable – and so it was that I spent most of the day at the operating table. A single horrible image from that time sticks in my mind: a kidogo on the slab, not much older than Gugu would have been, Paterson leaning over him, opening his chest with the plastic spreader and then going in. A butterfly, I thought. Ekwihuguhugu. This one is very fragile.

L
ate in the afternoon I stumbled – crazed from overwork and lack of sleep – back down into town, I must have looked a strange sight. I had taken off the blood-spattered surgical gown and pantaloons I had worn for the operations and put on a clean set of the same from the store. My own clothes were simply too dirty and too torn to wear.

I didn’t know what to do. Paterson had grudgingly offered me use of a room in his house, but I couldn’t stay there for ever. I had no money to speak of and nowhere to go. Apparently a tank shell had landed in the grounds of State House. If my bungalow hadn’t been destroyed, it was now no doubt home to Tanzanian soldiers. The rumour was that Amin had come running out on to the lawn as soon as the shell had landed and leaped into a helicopter.

Everyone was wondering where he was. We had heard him on the radio that day in the refectory at Mulago, more incoherent and deluded than ever.

—this last declaration brought a dry laugh from Paterson and the rest of the staff, since Mulago had come through the barrage more or less unscathed –

Where, people asked, was he broadcasting from? One of the mobile Land Rover transmitters he had fitted out? Or somewhere in the city? Certainly it was not the main radio station in Kampala – from where, earlier, one of the officers of the Ugandan liberating forces had made a triumphant speech as soon as they had secured the complex.

“We ask all the masses of Uganda,” the officer had said, “to rise up and join hands in eliminating the few remaining murderers. We appeal to all peace-loving peoples of the world to support the people’s liberation cause and condemn the former Fascist regime.”

On other stations, Western countries and various African ones were busily denouncing the Tanzanian invasion: “It was the first time,” said one commentator, “that an African country had invaded with impunity the capital of its neighbour. If the borders are not respected, the invasions will never cease…”

I turned all these words over in my head as I walked through Kampala. Down Mulago Hill, along Kitante and Akii Bua, then round into Lugard Road. Overnight, it had changed beyond all recognition. Once residents had realized that the Tanzanians would not prevent them, indeed would join in – on the way down I had passed a soldier who was completely naked, except for the helmet on his head and the bottle of Simba in his hand – they had begun to loot their own city.

The process had obviously started early in the morning, and it was still going on, if the crowd that flooded the streets was anything to go by. In the main shopping precinct nearly every door and window I walked past had been broken down. I saw three youths pushing a brand-new Toyota along the road, and then farther up the enormous gaping hole they had made in the showroom window. Others contented themselves with bicycles, typewriters and televisions. Latecomers had to settle for pots and pans.

Elsewhere, crowds were gorging themselves on sugar. A warehouse had been found fully stocked and people were pushing their way through to get a sackful. Many weren’t waiting to get the sacks home but were ripping them open on the spot, and simply filling their mouths with it.

At the same time as all this was taking place, there was also a kind of victory rally in progress. One portion of the crowd was cheering the detachments of Tanzanian soldiers who were combing the city for pro-Amin troops and officials. The people followed the soldiers in large groups, the body of them running slowly after with a heavy, unified tread. Some were beating drums, others calling out.