The Iron Bridge: Short Stories of 20th Century Dictators as Teenagers Read online

  “So Bwana charges the river and we follow,” continued the sergeant. “All leaping into the mud on the other side.”

  “Except Nabugere,” whispered a corporal.

  “Yes, Nabugere. He got hit.”

  “And on the other side,” continued the sergeant, “just when he’s in a most desperate fix and should be taking cover in the monsoon mud, Bwana Robertson stands up screaming and waving his arms and jumps back into the river.”

  “No!”

  “Yes!” confirmed a corporal. “With the enemy firing all around.”

  “And then he runs up the river screaming bloody murder, ordering the others to stay put and return the enemy fire, except for me—only me—to follow him into the water. This crazy man, I think. But what can I do? If my lieutenant orders me to follow, I have no choice but to follow.”

  “And then,” picked up the corporal, “in the middle of the river, with bullets flying all over, Bwana Robertson yanks off his webbing and drops his rifle, pulls down his pants, and sticks his white ass into the air.”

  “And with his black face turned back and his blue eyes pleading with me and his white ass up in the sky to get shot by the Japanese, I suddenly see that his whole backside is covered with biting red ants.”

  “Oh, Lord almighty,” groaned the new recruit, echoing a phrase often heard from British officers.

  “He’s screaming, Get them off, sergeant! At once! That’s an order! Off!”

  “Oh Lord,” laughed the recruit.

  “So with the enemy hollering Banzai! Banzai! and bullets all around—and for certain we’ll be shot—I start brushing ants off what must be the whitest ass in all of Burma.”

  “His testicles, too.”

  “And his cock.”

  “Oh Lord!”

  The askaris’ roaring laughter infected Idi Amin. He chuckled openly, his thick fists clutching cutlery, his wide back rising and falling with each sucked breath.

  “If I had had a camera, I think I might have given myself up for dead just to snap a picture of Bwana like that. Black face, blue eyes, white ass, red ants. Oh, and the welts rising! Bwana clutching his balls. And his ass the biggest target in the world.”

  “How did you survive?”

  “How?” The mirthful sergeant shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know how. Ask God that question. We survived, that’s it. Got the ants off the Bwana’s ass, picked up my gun, and fired back.”

  “Bwana Robertson still laughs about it. You can ask him. He’ll tell you everything.”

  It was all too magnificent for Idi to comprehend. He shakes his head at the sink, wondering at the askaris’ bravery and sense of duty, their humour and fatalism. These are the very models of men, with their amusing recollection two years later, here, in the safety of the company mess hall. And the way they genteelly sip their tea—such sophistication for Africans; so worldly and European. As the soap bubbles swallow Idi’s giant hands, he resolves to absorb and mimic everything he can about these soldiers. He’ll learn how to sit and walk and speak like them. He’ll shine his boot caps into shimmering black diamonds and stiffen his crisp khaki shirts with so much starch that they’ll stand by themselves, their creases capable of cutting any finger that dares touch them. His Sten gun—is it possible he will ever hold his own?—will be so thoroughly oiled and cleaned that the others will have to ask him just how he did it. He will shoot straighter, run faster, sing tu funge safari with more strength and clarity than anyone in the battalion, even twenty miles into an all-day march through the jungle.

  His glorious fantasy is interrupted by a nearby voice, just outside the humid concrete-block kitchen. “They’re animals,” a man says. “I know that for the truth.”

  Idi wipes his brow with the back of his hand and looks up from the dishes. Outside a tiny barred window beside him, a couple of askaris have stopped to have a smoke or take a piss by the wall. They can’t see Idi.

  “I also know it for the truth,” says another.

  “They’re like a plague, ripping you off.”

  “That’s all they know how to do.”

  The soldiers are talking about Asians. Although he’s rarely given East Africa’s Indian merchants much thought, Idi has often heard soldiers complaining while standing outside the local tin-roofed duka in the compound, which is owned by an Indian merchant—as are all the dukas in the land. He’s heard the askaris cursing their inflated prices and their monopoly on purchasable goods.

  “I saw them in Kohima, you know,” says the first voice.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Here in Africa they think they’re such big men, but in their own country they live no better than goats.”

  “In their own shit,” says the second.

  “I’d never make my goat live like them.”

  “They’re some kind of Asian animal.”

  “I saw them with my own eyes.”

  The voices fade as the soldiers move away. Idi finishes washing the dishes, dries them off with an old towel, and stacks them on the metal shelves. The head cook nods his approval and Idi removes his apron at last. He returns to the threshold and stands partially outside, watching the increasingly violent game of soccer that’s being played by the drunken soldiers.

  “I was open!” screams one askari at another.

  “But you can’t get anything.”

  “Why don’t you kick me the ball?”

  “I’ll kick it up your ass!”

  One of the grumbling askaris spits in the dust and walks away. The game resumes, harder and faster, charged with an aggression that wasn’t present before the latest confrontation.

  A British NCO cuts past the mess hall and catches Idi’s eye. “Jamba,” he says in passing.

  “Jamba,” Idi returns, as he stiffens his posture and salutes. The NCO smirks at this dupi who salutes as if he were a soldier.

  Idi catches the smirk and knows exactly what it means. You can’t play at being an askari. The British have a keen smell for fraudulence. They court-martial cowards and liars, sentencing offending askaris to lashings with a kiboko or, if the offence is committed in combat, to death by firing squad—as well they should.

  Idi chews his bottom lip, peeling swatches of black skin off with his white teeth. He recalls his father’s scorn on the only occasion he’s seen the man in the past ten years. His father was employed in Bombo by the military police. When he saw Idi and his mother ambling up the road for a visit, he pointed his gun at them and shouted: “Get away, crazy lady, and take your stupid Lugbara son with you!”

  That crazy lady never stops, thinks Idi, as he leans against the threshold and watches the soccer match. She kept trying to win Idi over, long after he had given up on her. He recalls the morning he finally left home, two years ago, for Kampala and his awful stint at the Imperial Hotel. That was the last time he’d seen his mother. She panicked at his abrupt departure and made him sit down in their dingy hut, demanding to know if he’d had any dreams recently.

  “Mama, please,” Idi said, “I have a bus that—”

  “Sssssswhit,” she interrupted, scratching her cheeks and bugging her eyes. “Tell me your dream, son of Amin.”

  “And why should I, Mama? It’s not like you can do anything with—”

  “Sssswhit!” shouted his mother, louder this time, and pounding the ground with her palms. “I will tell your future, don’t you know? I will let you understand the danger that is coming and how you can avoid it.”

  He dug his mammoth heel into the dirt and sighed at his infuriating mother. She had turned into such a slob. There were rags and old bottles lying on every exposed surface, chicken bones and lanterns, other oracles strewn across the ground, and the whole hut smelled vaguely of rotted fish. Idi had to escape. After everything that had happened to them, all the disappointment brought on by her failure, how could this woman still trust in her own powers? But the quickest way out of hell, Idi knew, would be to tell a dream to the crazy old lady one last time. He could add a few
tantalizing details, sure to interest and delight her, to make it easier for him to escape without a scene.

  “A few nights ago,” Idi began, “I dreamt I was naked and shivering in Jinja, on that old wooden dock a few miles from the Magamaga barrack—do you remember? That dock on the shore of Lake Victoria?”

  “Naked on the dock,” whispered his mother, her eyes shut, body swaying in a pseudo-trance.

  “There was a sprawl of stars above me. And shadows of towering trees. And all the flowers there, remember? The coffee flowers and the frangipani. I was scared. There were hyenas growling nearby and I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were fighting over a human carcass. I backed up on the dock, closer to the water, to get away from them, but I was trapped. And then there was this askari of the Fourth Battalion who appeared but wasn’t alive. His sockets were soulless and hollow. And he was standing on the grassy shore, clutching in one hand the company’s forest green colours, and he was wearing high socks and that strange skirt they all wear, you remember?”

  “Kilt,” said his mother. “Mmmm …”

  “The askari held out another piece of kilt cloth with identical markings and said: Take this, Idi.”

  “And did you take it?” asked his mother.

  “I knew what it was and I wanted to, but for some reason I said: No, sir, I won’t take it. That is a dress and I will not wear it.”

  “Ah,” said his mother, as if this information were especially important. Idi rolled his eyes at her portentous nodding.

  “I turned away towards the lake, turned my back on that soldier, then saw rising from the water, distant and very far, this enormous and pure-white half man—I don’t know how to describe it—”

  “Half man?” asked his mother, her eyes shooting open and staring at Idi in terror. “Was he split down his middle, as if by machete? And was he very white? And with one half taken away?”

  “Yes,” said Idi. “That’s him.”

  “One ear, one eye, one leg, one arm? Half a mouth with razor teeth? One testicle and half a penis?”

  “That’s him,” said Idi. “And that horrifying man floated towards the dock—whistling wheeee wheeeee wheeeeee—faster and faster, coming closer, until at last he stopped before me, just hovering there. He must’ve been over ten feet tall.”

  “Adro yaya,” said his mother. “It was adro yaya come to eat you.”

  “And he was transparent—”

  “Of course, of course.”

  “And hollowed out and ghostly white—”

  “He always is.”

  “And he slit his one eye and grinned his half teeth and laughed in a hyena’s distinctive voice. It was only then that I realized he was the hyena I’d heard.”

  “You see?” cried his mother. “You are Lugbaran! I told you!”

  “I got down on my knees and prayed like Mohammed Al Ragab showed me. Allah is great, Allah is great …”

  “And that did nothing, of course.”

  “No,” said Idi. “Adro yaya stayed right there. Then I woke up.”

  His mother roared with laughter and fell onto her back. She convulsed in some entirely fake fit, sat up suddenly, and pounded the ground in front of him. “You,” she hissed, pointing at her son and trembling her hand as if it were possessed. “Idi Amin—sssssswhit!—you turned your back on the askari. You must never do that. Never forget you are an askari. You will be an Effendi. And then adro yaya will not touch you; he can never touch you, not unless you turn your back on the other soldiers. You have to go and join the soldiers. Do you understand? You cannot wait or you are in grave danger from adro yaya. You are master of men, butcher, strangler. Your lineage is Lugbaran. You are not Kakwa like your father! Sssswhit! You are blessed and you are chosen.”

  His mother nodded to announce that she was finished, and then she laid her palms on the dirt and closed her eyes. Idi stared at his mother, thinking that this advice was not at all what he’d expected. He was amazed that she was encouraging him to return to Jinja, that she read his dream in that way. For the first time in years, Idi realized that his mother wanted him to succeed. She wished the best for her son. Suddenly, he had mixed feelings about leaving. He scratched his heel in the dirt and didn’t know what to say.

  Idi watches the game. Out on the field, while lunging for the ball, one of the drunken players involved in the recent altercation rams his opponent with such force that he knocks the latter over and sends him tumbling through the dust, wailing in agony. Battle lines are immediately drawn, the askaris bumping chests and shoving each other. At first the divisions are clear and easy and a product of the team’s rosters—a skirmish over soccer—but when the racial slurs begin, the division spontaneously reorganizes along ethnic lines. The Acholis and Langos condemn the small brains and backward ways of Kakwas and related Nubians. The Kakwas, in turn, threaten their eastern Nile foes with astonishing acts of violence, such as the puncturing of their lungs with sharpened bayonets and the severing and raw consumption of their weak Acholi hearts. Idi smiles at that last threat, wondering if the soldier who uttered it is serious. You can never be certain with a Kakwa. The young dupi steps out of the mess hall to observe the ruckus more closely.

  A punch is thrown and returned. A Kakwa hits the dirt. Amidst equal-part cheers and jeers, he rises and charges, dive-tackling his Acholi opponent. The two men grunt as their fists pound into each other’s ribs. The opponents stand and separate, and then the Kakwa kicks the Acholi’s shin with an audible crack! The Acholi howls and rolls in the dirt, but gets up on his one good leg to re-engage his enemy. Auxiliary battles erupt across the field, but it somehow remains clear that the real war will be won or lost by the original two combatants. A Kakwa and an Acholi: tribal representatives. An enterprising soldier could have sold tickets to the fight for a healthy chunk of the askaris’ monthly pay.

  Adrenalin now pulses through Idi’s limbs. His breath quickens, his pupils dilate. He wants to get in the middle of the battle, no matter which side—skulls need to be cracked with his fists. He’s hungry to participate in the skirmish, in an event that actually matters, a test of his strength and endurance. Idi wonders for a moment if he is strong enough—these askari have been to Burma—but then decides that it doesn’t matter, he is most certainly strong enough; he has won all his fights in every town he’s ever lived: Jinja, Bombo, Semuto, Kampala. He won that scrap with Akello behind Garaya mosque—the man’s hand was dust inside Idi’s—and there was also the time Idi beat Mukasa unconscious with a sugar stalk in Mehta’s fields. Was that not askari material? Idi steps from foot to foot, side to side, but he can’t seem to find the confidence to propel himself forward into the fight. His skin prickles. Part of him wants to turn away and head back into the mess hall.

  Idi hears his mother’s voice, so shrill and easy to conjure: Never forget you are an askari. But his mother was crazy when he last saw her. Her trance was fake, her dream interpretation fraudulent. His mother is nothing more than a shrill screeching monkey, responsible for getting him expelled from heaven, a powerless woman who can’t even cure a simple lunatic like Pepsi-Cola. And yet he hears her voice: Adro yaya will not touch you unless your turn your back on the other soldiers.

  The fighting in the dusty soccer field has grown fiercer. It is a good thing these men have left their pangas in the barracks and brought with them only beer. Still, the glass bottles are thrown and cracked, their shards used as makeshift knives, so far with little effect. It won’t be long until there’s a rifle crack in the sky and a firm order to halt, and then an angry march of white officers storming onto the field to scold their black charges.

  Idi’s fingers touch the Yakan water in his pocket.

  For some reason that he couldn’t understand, this morning, as Idi was getting dressed, he picked up the small bottle of Yakan water that he always keeps on his shelf in the dupi barrack behind his two pairs of underwear, and stuffed it into his pants. He’s never sampled it before, never even been tempted. His mother pressed that l
ittle bottle into his hands two years ago, the same morning that he left her for his new life in Kampala, just after she interpreted his dream. It was her final offering. The Yakan water was given to him a moment before he stepped onto the bus. Her bug eyes were wild and her throat punctuated each of her crazy commands with those high and purposeless whistles: “Yakan, my son, to make you fierce and frenzied—sssssswhit! sssswhit!—touched with the kamiojo herb that I myself have picked from our village, yes, and you will hear your ancestors calling when you take the Yakan to your lips and they will call you—sssssswhit!—and they will show you the enemy and whisper their names and it will not matter if they have guns, for when you charge against them—and charge you must, after you have drunk the Yakan!—their bullets will not puncture you, and their pangas will not slice you and even if they are Karamajong with their eight-foot-long spears, they will break and crack against your body and you instead will cut their throats, sssswhit! But you must be careful, Idi, and only use the Yakan for battle.”

  He takes the bottle out of his pocket and stares at it incredulously. Did his mother know the future? And did she somehow send him a secret message this morning from wherever she might be in the world, a message that Idi didn’t even know he was receiving? He unscrews the metal cap of the recycled brandy bottle and knocks back a mouthful of its clear and potent fluid. He could use its power now. As soon as he drinks the water, Idi feels that he is invincible, that Allah and Yakan are behind him now.

  He stuffs the half-empty bottle into his pocket and charges the field with long and steady strides, his lean belly unburdened by the girth that will plague his later years, his gigantic fists clenched into powerful iron balls. He ignores the secondary skirmishes and goes for the original two. They are now at midfield, locked in an angry embrace—the Kakwa’s arm formed into an unloving vise around the Acholi’s head, the Acholi’s fingers carving parallel red chasms into the Kakwa’s bare chest. Idi’s forearms pierce the tight crevice between the two pulsing bodies and wrench them apart. Although there’s only a half-second equilibrium, as Idi stands between the two bloodied combatants, most of the spectators register the traditional Kakwa scarring on the big dupi’s forehead and therefore assume that he’ll turn on the Acholi with all his fury. But, to everyone’s surprise, Idi hops to his left, pulls back his right fist, and releases it against the Kakwa’s face, cracking the man’s nose and sending him hurtling off his feet in an almost exaggerated tableau, as if the scene were an animated frame from the Superman comic that the soldiers keep passing around the barrack. The spectators freeze. Acholis giggle; several Kakwas gasp. But while the broken soldier moans in the dirt, darkening the orange dust with his copious red blood, Idi now moves against the Acholi. He grabs the back of his neck with one hand and, with the other, wraps his mammoth fingers and wide palm around the man’s genitals, pressing his five fingertips into the base as if that package were a ripe fruit easily picked and tossed away. Idi is at least six inches taller than the Acholi, so he’s looking down at the soldier.