Wizard of the Crow

  His suspicion became so intolerable that he sought to still it by summoning his sons under the pretext that he wanted to see them before leaving for America. He opened the family council by telling them that in his absence they must keep their ears open for any intrigues among the armed forces. They should also keep an eye on the ministers who would be left behind, particularly Sikiokuu. He cautioned them against too much drinking, and, as a warning, he disclosed the reports that had reached him that one of them, the two-star general, once left part of his army uniform in a bar while pursuing a whore. The son so accused jumped to his feet in his own defense and told his father that those were tales of envy and malice from some sections of the M5. The Ruler seized on that denial to steer the conversation to the subject of Rachael, their protected mother. He asked them about their last visit to her; what subjects they and she had touched on; whether she had ever asked them to bear greetings to any of her friends and relatives. And had anybody ever approached them with messages, innocent greetings, even, for their mother? They seemed completely at a loss as to what he was talking about, since as it turned out none of them had recently talked to her in person or on the phone. Looking at their puzzled faces, noting the confusion in their voices, and comparing their reactions to what he had gleaned about his sons from M5 reports, the Ruler could tell that none of them would have done anything to jeopardize the privileges they now enjoyed. To prove that he was not singling out their mother for his fatherly concerns, he asked them about their wives and urged those not yet married to get on with the job of starting a family, while advising them to be careful with women because all women, be they mothers, wives, sisters, or daughters, were an enigma and not to be trusted. Never trust a woman, he told them bluntly, for woman is the source of all evil.

  He was deep in his lecture when he was struck by an idea: how to strike back at Rachael and the women. For the first time since the day of shame, he felt jubilant—such is sweet vengeance. He told his sons about it immediately so that they would not inadvertently undermine his plan while he was away in America. For security reasons, he said, he would order that the electricity in Rachael’s home be disconnected in his absence. He warned them against visiting the area while he was away, that were they to do so and disaster befell them they would have nobody but themselves to blame. What he did not of course tell them was that he intended for Rachael to rely on wood and dry leaves for energy. The deprivation would teach her a lesson and force her to cut off all ties to the evil and shameless women. And even if no communication had yet taken place between Rachael and them, the Ruler wanted to make that impossible during his absence from the land.

  Following the family conference, electricity to her farm prison was disconnected. Tongues started wagging. People who lived on hills adjoining Rachael’s prison farm and who had always been able to catch glimpses of the house at night despite the high walls started seeing a light moving about in absolute darkness, sometimes outside Rachael’s mansion, at other times inside, and because they could not see who carried it, they concluded that it was really Rachael’s ghost prowling, uttering curses, and the only reason they could not hear the exact words was because of the never-ending song amplified by loudspeakers at the four corners of the woman’s farm for all the world to hear.

  I will become more diligent

  In removing all evil from my heart

  I will repent all my sins

  Before my Lord comes back

  The light that walked at night and the relentless song made them conclude that Rachael had long been dead and, as revenge, her ghost walked the night, cursing the Ruler and his plans for America …

  15

  “What will you do?” Kamltl asked Nyawlra after she had finished talking about the drama at Eldares.

  “I want to live in the bush with you, at least for a few days.”

  “But what if they should follow you here?”

  “I fled in the dark. Nobody saw me slip out of Eldares. They don’t even know what I look like.”

  “Kaniürü does. You and Kaniürü used to share the same bed, and you might have talked about the hills and forests as political hideouts.”

  “When he and I were students at the University of Eldares,” Nyawlra explained, “my friends and I played guitar and talked a lot about neocolonialist politics in Aburlria and Africa. How many times did we go without sleep, analyzing the class structure of our society and the politics and history of Aburlria? Those were the days when the exploits of Yunity Mgeuzi-Bila-Shaka and Luminous Pen-Scream-Revolution, as we sometimes called his name in English, were the topics of the day among us students and youth. Although we did not know them personally, for they were then in exile, we read and talked about whatever they had said or written on revolution. Even the books they said they read, like Gorky’s Mother, became our reading list. Kaniürü was not outspoken on these matters, but he was always around and now and then he would put in a few dissenting words. When he failed in his arguments he would dub us starry-eyed idealists. More often than not he was simply there, a silent listener, a man without opinions. But I don’t remember us talking about forests and mountains and hideouts.”

  “A person does not recall everything he or she talked about with a lover or spouse when their hearts were in sync, their eyes set on a shared future. Kaniürü might not even have known that you are a member of the movement, but adding two and two he stumbles on the truth and even if he does not get all the details right he comes close enough to do effective damage.”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “Go back to Eldares,” Kamltl said without hesitation.

  “What?” Nyawlra asked, a little surprised.

  “Yes. Back to Eldares.”

  “You don’t want me to be here? Not even for a few days?” Nyawlra asked, suspicious of his words and motives.

  “It is not a matter of what I want or don’t want. I have a hunch that if they fail to find you in the towns, they will try to search for you in these hills, even if only as a deterrent to others who might think of fleeing to the mountains.”

  “Why can’t you just say that you don’t want them to interfere with you?”

  He winced at her tone, hurt by the accusation.

  “It is not like that,” he said. “I care about your safety.”

  “So what do you want me to do? Go and parade myself in the streets of Eldares?”

  “The best hiding place is under the nose of the enemy” Kamrö said.

  “Are you saying that I go and hide in a police post? No way!”

  “I am not suggesting that we surrender. I am saying that we hide under their very noses.”

  Had she heard him say “we,” or were her ears deceiving her?

  “‘We’? Are you coming, too?”

  “Yes, Nyawlra, this time you will not leave me behind. I will be at your side wherever you decide to go.”

  “I am sorry for my tone and suspicions,” Nyawlra said, “and I am truly moved by what you have just said. But you also know that I would not want you to do something in which you do not believe for my sake.”

  “There is nothing for you to be sorry about,” Kamltl said. “Since we parted I have been turning over what you and I talked about. You were right. There is a foulness inundating our society, and if we do not do something about it we shall all drown in it. I confess that I may not be able to deal with the demands and the discipline of your movement. I am not even sure whether I want to become a member. But a fellow traveler in the journey against the evil you are fighting? Yes. I am a seer of the spirit only. I am concerned about the welfare of the heart. But I also know what the scriptures say: The body is the temple of the spirit, or something like that. A healthy spirit needs a healthy body. Many hands, it is said, make heavy work feel light. You and I can work together, you with matters of the body and I with those of the spirit. You women of Eldares have shown the way.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nyawlra asked, now laughing. “Which way??
??

  Kamltl was silent for a while as if pondering the question. Then he responded with something that sounded like lines from a poem:

  The way that can be told of is not the eternal way

  The name that can be named is not the eternal name

  The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth

  “Excuse me, what’s that?” Nyawlra asked.

  “The lines are taken from The Lao-Tzu or Tao-te Chung, a small book written by a Chinese seer more than five hundred years before Christ was born. Tao. The Way. May you walk in the middle of the way—don’t we have a saying like that?”

  “Okay show me the way to go home. When do we set out? Now? Today? Tomorrow or the day after?” Nyawlra said quickly, still attempting to be lighthearted as she exorcised the remnants of the heaviness in her heart.

  “Not today. Not tomorrow. Not the day after. We must prepare ourselves.”

  “We must do what?”

  “Tulia! Tulia kidogo mama! What did you tell me when we last talked in this very place? That I should become a people’s seer. I will start with you, and I want you to trust yourself in my hands. Before I disclose what I think we should do and where we shall hide, I want you to learn what nature and solitude can teach us. Simplicity and balance, the Way. Call it the Forest School of Medicine and Herbol-ogy. I shall offer you such medicine that will make your eyes see what I see. Only then will you be able to say, I used to see as in a mirror darkly but now I see clearly.”

  “Did you learn all this in India?” Nyawlra asked a couple of days later, after realizing how much medicine even a tiny bush contained, what he described as nature’s pharmacy.

  “Nature is the source of all cures. But we have to be humble and willing to learn from it. I supplemented what I already knew with what I gleaned from my contact with Indian healers of the Western Ghat hills, places like Kottakkal, Ernakulam—siddhar healers especially. A siddhar is a poet, a seer, a soother of souls, and an expert in herbs. It is said that he has the power to come out of his body and enter those of other beings, even animals, and stay there for some time before returning to his own.”

  “Imagine what I could do with such power,” Nyawlra said with a laugh. “Just when the agents of the State are about to pounce on me, I just change into a cat with all its nine lives, or a bird, and just float away.”

  “This is not a laughing matter,” Kamltl said in a solemn tone, which made her look at him, puzzled.

  One night, after making love, they lay on their backs in the yard and communed in silence. Kamltl thought of telling her how when alone he sometimes went out of his body and floated in the sky above but stopped when he recalled her tone of voice when they had talked about the power of siddhar healers.

  “The skyscape is another field of knowledge,” Kamltl said. “The stars guided shepherds across deserts and prairies.”

  “Not just the shepherds,” Nyawlra said. “The same stars led me across the prairie.”

  “Did you know that our people believed that the sun is God?” Kamltl said, still gazing at the stars.

  “Deities are never far from your thoughts,” Nyawlra commented.

  “Shall I show you something?” Kamltl suddenly said. “You promise not to make fun of me?”

  “Why should I make fun of you for showing me one more herb?” Nyawlra said, curious about the excitement in Kamltl’s voice.

  Holding her hand, he took her to a cluster of sycamore trees and stopped in front of one with branches so low that they were indistinguishable from the thicket around it.

  Kamltl let go of her hand, bent down, picked something up, and handed it to her. It was a wooden figure, but one with such an intense expression on the face that for a moment Nyawlra thought it alive. Then she saw that there were more, half covered by the bush.

  “So you are also an artist and you never once mentioned this side of you to me?” Nyawlra asked. Did I escape from the arms of one artist only to fall into those of another? she wondered as she now picked up one sculpted figure after another.

  “I started here,” Kamltl said. “When one is alone in the forest, one is forced to contemplate the universe and creation. My thoughts were mostly on African deities. I caught myself thinking: Why don’t I carve a Pan-African pantheon of the sacred? They will keep me company. My heart and body trembled, and when I set out to work it was as if an invisible hand were guiding my hands.”

  “They are all truly powerful and beautiful, and they feel very much alive,” Nyawlra said. “You should be renamed Wangai. But what we now need is a little applied art. It is time I returned to confront the real and the concrete in the struggles against the dictatorship.”

  “Okay tomorrow we apply applied art to you,” he said.

  They stretched dried animal skins and softened them for wear, and made necklaces of sharpened wood, animal teeth, and dried berries. They made a leather skirt and matching top for Nyawlra, and really it became her so well that Kamltl himself swore he would never have recognized her in it.

  “With this,” Kamltl pronounced, “Mr. and Ms. Wizard of the Crow are ready to open a business in witchcraft in Eldares.”

  16

  The name Wizard of the Crow kept cropping up during Tajirika’s ordeal in captivity: his torturers kept on asking the same question over and over again, which irritated Tajirika so much that once, despite the pain and the fear of more lashes, he shouted back at his then nameless and invisible torturers.

  “What more do you want to know about the Wizard of the Crow that I have not already told you? Should I tell you that he is maker of Heaven and Earth?”

  “Just tell us everything. When, where, and how you first met; what he wore that day; the exact words he uttered on the day you met, and most important, whether you ever met with him again …”

  “Who? Machokali or the Wizard of the Crow?” Tajirika asked, now confused, for he had met the Wizard of the Crow only once.

  Their interrogation regarding the Wizard of the Crow and even Machokali was just pretext. The torturers were after bigger fish: they wanted a word, a gesture, that would lead them to Nyawlra, the woman who had awakened women’s daemons, which in turn had awakened Rachael’s daemon, now prowling her prison plantation at night, an illumination for all who lived around to see.

  Nyawlra, a woman who could raise female and male daemons at once, was dangerous, a menace to Aburlria. It was necessary to hunt her down by any means so as to comply with orders repeated by the Ruler with ever-increasing urgency and desperation and last uttered just a few minutes before he boarded the plane for the USA, a large entourage, including his official biographer with his giant pen and book, and his security team, now including Arigaigai Gathere, accompanying him: Give me Nyawlra; look for her here on earth or in the land of the spirits.

  “True! Haki ya Mungu!” A.G. would pause in his narrative to swear. “I was one of the security specially chosen to accompany the Ruler to America, and I was standing close by, at the airport, and I heard him tell Sikiokuu: By the time I come back from America, I want that woman, Nyawlra, in my arms …”

  BOOK THREE

  Female Daemons

  SECTION I

  1

  Come, all you who were there, and help us tell the story of what followed the Ruler’s visit to the USA. This tale needs many tongues to lighten the sense, for none of us was at once in Aburlria and America.

  As to what happened in America, there are many sources from which to weave a narrative. There is, for instance, a paper written by Professor Furyk of Harvard about the Ruler’s strange illness. The paper is rich with information, but even richer is the diary the professor kept about his struggles to find a cure for the malady. Bits of truth may also be gleaned from the archives of responsible newspapers and even the fanciful tabloids. Libraries the world over, including the Library of Congress in Washington, may also prove useful for documentation. Alternatively or in addition, we may turn to the invisible global community of Internet users for postings fro
m their local media.

  Our own media, needless to say, was very thrilled with the American angle, though they may have gone overboard in describing how well the visit was going and how Americans, dying to hear about Marching to Heaven, mobbed the Ruler and his entourage. Even the delegates to the UN were quoted as eagerly awaiting the Ruler’s promised address. AMERICA is A SUPERPOWER, BUT ABURIRIA HAS THE SUPERWONDER, declared the headlines of some of the AburTrian newspapers. TV and radio followed suit. The AburTrian media, however, was hesitant in predicting the outcome of the journey because the Global Bank, like fate, would have the last word, which the Ruler was waiting to hear.

  So it is only events within Aburiria where we may find it difficult to get a full picture, and for that part of the story we must rely on countless rumormongers, who at the time were abuzz with the return of the Wizard of the Crow to Santalucia and his wondrous powers of healing and divination.

  2

  There was not a single bodily ill he could not heal. Some, swearing by whatever was most sacred to them that they had witnessed with their own eyes the drama, claimed that the Wizard of the Crow could ferret any disease out no matter where it hid, all the while murmuring mockingly, “So you thought you were more cunning than the Wizard of the Crow!” The illness, sensing ignominious defeat, would flee the body of the victim, it was said. He knew so much about the healing properties of herbs, the tellers claimed, because he could turn himself into a plant and would return to human form armed with the secrets of plant life.

  Kamltl may have sparked the rumors with his advice to his clients: All life is one and it flows like a river or the waters of the sea. Plants, humans, animals down to the creatures that crawl, all draw their share from the one indivisible river of life, just as they all draw breath from the air.