Where the Air is Sweet (29 page)

It is evening and the children are asleep. Mumtaz is sitting at the dining table with Raju. They are drinking tea and he is eating
gajjar halva
she made that afternoon. Jaafar is in Nairobi on business.

“Do you think we will return home?” Raju asks, chewing slowly. Mumtaz looks at him blankly. She waits while he swallows. “To Mbarara?”

She opens her mouth to answer but a sound in the distance, a powerful, brief explosion, stops her. Another explosion follows it, and then another, and then another, until the sounds quicken to a staccato. Mumtaz feels her bowels loosen.

“They are far. They aren’t nearby,” Raju says, standing up, turning to the window.

She runs to the children’s bedroom. Mercifully, the sounds have not woken them. Her hands are trembling as she pulls the sheets over their ears. When she returns to the sitting room, Raju hasn’t moved.

“Bapa, my children are in there. I have only cotton sheets to protect them. Guns are firing outside—”

“The boy came in,” Raju says, interrupting her, still looking
out the window. “He told me this happens sometimes in the nights. The soldiers fight among themselves. This happens.”

“This happens?” Mumtaz can feel her body shaking. It is moving, almost imperceptibly, forward and backwards. But she is no longer afraid. She is angry. “The houseboy told you this? What happens? What has this place become? Where has your son brought us?”

Raju turns slowly to look at Mumtaz. The colour has drained from his face. She regrets her words, the harshness of her tone. Before she can apologize, he raises his hands, palms open and flat, towards her.

“Maaf karje,”
he says. Forgive me.

“Why is our house called Rubaga Flats? Everywhere around us are hills.”

Raju smiles at Shama’s question. He has taken the children for an outing in the Peugeot 204. Burezu is driving and Shama and Karim are sitting in the back seat.

“Flats means apartments, stupid,” Karim says.

“Shama is right,” Raju says. “Kampala has many hills. We live on Rubaga Hill. The
kabaka
used to have a palace nearby. First it was on Rubaga Hill, then on Mengo Hill.”

“Can we see it?” Shama asks.

Raju shakes his head. “The army lives there now.”

“Like our house in Mbarara.” Karim’s voice is dull. He has become a sullen child.

“Where does the
kabaka
live then?” Shama asks.

“Some years ago, just before Karim was born, the kings in Uganda had to give up their kingdoms.”

The children are quiet.

“Do you know?” Raju says loudly. “The palace of Buganda never remained in one place.” He turns to the back seat. “When the
kabaka
died, his palace became his tomb. His son, the new
kabaka,
built a new palace on a new hill. Each
kabaka
built a new palace on a new hill.”

“Until he died and his palace became a tomb, too?” Karim asks.

Raju nods. “But after an Englishman named Captain Lugard came many years ago and built a fort, this palace remained. And now, it is not a palace anymore.”

“It’s a barracks,” Karim says.

“Vando na,”
Shama says. It doesn’t matter. “The new
kabaka
will find another hill. He has to build a new palace anyways.”

Raju laughs softly, quietly. Not heartily.

It is evening. Mumtaz is setting the table. She hears men’s voices coming from outside. She moves closer to the door. Someone is speaking to the houseboy. She recognizes the voice. It is a man, an African. He is asking if this is Jaafar Ismail’s home. She rushes to the door. She has not seen George since before the coup, three years ago. His face is drawn, his lips dry and cracked. His eyes are bloodshot. He looks frail. She hugs him. It is inappropriate. She doesn’t hug Jaafar’s friends. She doesn’t even hug Jaafar in front of anyone. But she can’t stop herself.

Later, after the children are tucked into bed, they gather in the sitting room, Mumtaz, Raju, Jaafar, Amir and George. Amid a haze of cigarette smoke and the sounds of distant gunfire, George tells his story.

“The day of the coup I wasn’t in Kampala. My father-in-law needed cataract surgery and so my wife, the boys and I were with him in Nairobi. We had planned to travel to Mombasa afterwards for a holiday. Instead, after the news, we remained a few days in Nairobi, listening to reports. I was hoping to see Obote there after his plane was diverted. But he almost immediately left for Dar es Salaam. I called my office. My minister, the cabinet minister I work for, was gone. My father-in-law thought it would not be safe for me to return to Kampala. He bought us tickets to fly to Dar es Salaam. He returned home. I thought Obote could get back, undo this coup. I thought we would be back at work in days. Over time, as others arrived, we started hearing how Amin pulled it off.

“While Obote was in Singapore, soldiers were told if they didn’t take their back leave immediately, they would lose it. Half of the soldiers at the barracks were on leave. And for months Amin had been filling the ranks with his tribesmen and with Nubis. The night of the coup they took all the armouries right away, but first they took the biggest, Malire, right up here in Mengo. In the end there was little resistance.”

“The bloodless coup,” Jaafar says.

George laughs all of a sudden. Then abruptly stops. “The blood quickly began to pour,” he says. “Officers were trucked into Makindye prison, near Malire. They named cells ‘Singapore,’ where Obote was at the time of the coup and ‘Dar es Salaam,’ where he was afterwards. Forty officers at a time were killed. Their heads smashed with guns and hammers. They used bayonets,
pangas
and dynamite. And they made other prisoners clean up the blood and bits of brain and bone.”

It is quiet.

Then George speaks again. “This is Amin’s method. Kill any perceived enemies, perceived threats. It’s simple. For a simple man and his simple henchmen. He’d have killed Asians if he thought he could get away with it. But his instinct for survival is too strong. He can kill as many of us as he wants. The world’s tolerance for slaughtered Africans is without limit.”

“Britain will do nothing to stop him,” Amir says in a monotone.

“And what has any African country done to stop him?” George asks.

“What was Obote’s plan for the Asian problem?” Amir asks.

George blinks quickly and shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“George,” Mumtaz says, “why did Obote make Idi Amin the head of his military?”

“Obote, all of us, we were caught up in the politics,” he says.

Mumtaz has always liked listening to George speak English. His
t
’s are sharp, his
r
’s rolled, as though he is still speaking Swahili or Runyankole.

“The military served us,” George says. “They were an afterthought. Remember, Mumtaz, when I told you UPC joining with Kabaka Yeka was foolish? It was worse than foolish. It planted the seeds of Obote’s downfall.”

“How?” she asks.

“After Obote used Amin to take out the
kabaka,
the army had too much power over him. Amin was one of only two African officers at independence. The British like to promote big, strong men who smile when they bow. But Amin isn’t submissive. He is a magnet for all the rage and humiliation that has been building in this land for hundreds of years. And maybe even before that. He is the embodiment of it. He is the body.”

No one speaks.

“George,” says Jaafar finally, “why are you here? Why did you come back?”

“About three months ago I did some interviews with a Tanzanian newspaper. I said whatever I thought. I expressed my anger that this bloody kakwa, this man who probably was born across the border in Sudan or Zaire like so many of his tribe, has stolen Uganda. My people have lived in the Kingdom of Ankole for centuries. This beast comes and tells the world in his terrible English what Uganda is? He has no clue what it is.” He stops. He is breathing heavily, like he has been running and has finally stopped. “The army began to harass my parents. I have come to get them out and take them to Bukoba. My wife has a cousin there. That’s where we’ve been, that’s where she and the children are staying.”

“It’s dangerous for you,” Raju says. “Someone else could have helped get your parents out.”

“I have cash hidden. We’re penniless. I need it.”

“You couldn’t ask a friend to retrieve it for you?” Jaafar asks. “How stupid to risk coming to Kampala. Your parents live southwest of Mbarara. Why come here?”

George laughs. “When I was in Mbarara, I heard you were here, Bana. I wanted to see you, to say goodbye to you properly. And to say goodbye to my house, to my home, to Uganda.”

“Why are you talking nonsense?” Jaafar asks. His tone, unlike his words, is gentle.

“This is my country,” George says, his voice almost a whisper. “No one can keep me out.”

Mumtaz hears a sound from behind the sofa. She stands up and quickly walks over. Shama is crouched on the floor, like a
cat. She grabs her by the elbow and lifts her to her feet. Shama keeps her eyes lowered. Mumtaz looks at the faces of the men staring at them: Jaafar and George closest to her on the sofa; Raju and Amir across from them on chairs. They are unmoving. Like statues. Like figures in a photograph. She leads Shama back to her bed.

She stays in her bedroom until she is confident Shama is asleep, until she hears her breathing become deep and regular. And then she leans down and takes the child’s limp head into her hands. “What have you heard?” she whispers, her eyes on Shama’s forehead. “What is in there? How can I take it out of you?”

Two weeks later, Jaafar tells Mumtaz he received a phone call from George’s father. George’s empty car was found ten days ago, the windows smashed, the upholstery ripped out. No one has seen him since.

31

O
NE AFTERNOON, RAJU AND KARIM VISIT AN
airstrip. The boy has become fixated on airplanes. For weeks, he has begged to go to the airport with Jaafar so he can watch planes take off and land. But Jaafar is too busy travelling, working. Raju agreed to take the boy to the small airstrip on Kololo Hill. Airplanes are the only things, it seems, that excite Karim these days.

Within minutes of arriving, Karim tells his grandfather he has to pee. Raju walks with him for about five minutes, until he reaches a small cluster of trees. While he waits he lights a cigarette and walks a few steps. He glances down. To his right, in the grass, lies a body. He looks at it quickly. It is a man. A black African. His eyes are open. His limbs are bent and stiff.

Flies buzz around him. Raju walks quickly towards Karim, who has zipped up his trousers and is approaching his grandfather. He leads the boy away from the corpse, back to the airstrip. He does not speak of what he has seen. He does not consider reporting it to the police. After an hour, he has convinced himself he did not see it.

A few days later, Amir tells Raju that he was driving in the suburb of Naguru, on Jinja Road, and stopped to buy some coffee beans from a vendor. He wanted to negotiate a cheaper price. The vendor was holding to his fee. Amir pulled over and turned off the engine so he could negotiate. He was in front of the headquarters of the Public Safety Unit, the site of executions, of torture. “I could hear screaming. It was dark, though not too late. But I heard it. Those buildings are low and have thin walls. I could hear the screams.”

Amir has begun to talk often of the horrors happening in Kampala. A glass of alcohol always accompanies a macabre story. A habit by association, like smoking a cigarette while driving.

People disappear so frequently that the
Uganda Argus
begins to advertise body-finders, whose fees increase depending on the importance of the missing person. Amir is pointing at an ad, showing it to Raju. “I wonder if we should pay to find George. It would cost a minimum of 25,000 shillings for a man of his former position in government.”

“Shut your mouth,” Jaafar says quietly. He is sitting across from Amir and Raju on the sofa.

Amir continues to speak as though he has not heard Jaafar. Bodies have begun to pile up above the Owen Falls Dam in Jinja. He advises Jaafar not to take the children there. “It’s a dumping point. Crocodiles are a cheap way to dispose of bodies. But even they can only consume so much.” He takes a sip of his drink.

“I never take the children there,” Jaafar says. “Why would you tell me this?”

“There is also a dumping point near Murchison Falls.”

“Stop.” Jaafar presses his palms together as though he is
begging, as though he is praying. “Please stop.” He lets his hands drop and turns to the side, so that he is not looking at Amir. “Sometimes, I think this lunacy is all good fun to you.”

“I’m trying to help,” Amir says. “You’re the father, the one with two small children here. In this lunacy.”

“We’ve become what Idi Amin and his faithful said we were,” Jaafar says. “This was my country.
My
country. I didn’t give a damn about any other place on earth.”

Raju stares across the table at his son. He is having dinner with Jaafar and Amir at the Phoenix restaurant. Jaafar looks tired. When he speaks, his voice sounds laboured.

“I didn’t love Uganda or hate it. I don’t love or hate the air I breathe. But I need it. I would die without it.”

“You would not die without Uganda,” Raju says quietly. “You only think you would because you have known nothing else.”

Jaafar continues as though he has not heard Raju. “We have become what they said we were then, when we weren’t these things: people with no ties to this land, who exploit it for our own gain. And the idiot is too stupid to realize what he’s created.”

Amir lifts up his glass of whiskey. Then he leans forward and says in a lowered voice: “May Amin Dada go straight to hell.”

“He doesn’t need to go to hell,” Jaafar says. “He has opened its gates and ushered its creatures into Uganda.”

Amir begins to laugh. He laughs so loudly people stare.

A hush falls. Amir’s laughter echoes in the silence for a few moments. And then it stops. Raju looks around. Everyone is staring at the entrance of the restaurant. He turns in his chair
and looks at the door. Three armed, uniformed soldiers are standing there, their eyes scanning the room. Raju and his sons are the only Asians in the restaurant.