Amriika (14 page)
“No,” she said. “You’re no Kenyatta.”
“Certainly not. Why do your friends call me that?”
After his visit to the Freedom Action Committee meeting in the Student House last spring, the students there had debated calling him either Kenyatta or Gandhi, and had settled for the former, as Kate had sneeringly told him.
“To mock you, I think. But you’re all right. I have an instinct for people. I can tell. And I think you’re all right.”
“Thanks,” he said. He was rather touched, though he wasn’t quite sure what she meant by “all right.”
There are more people behind you than ahead of you, urged the marshalls in blue armbands; keep moving. And we kept moving.
So that Saturday afternoon I marched for peace; not for or against America, this mighty cauldron of a place, but simply for an end to the war, and this country’s shameful, bullying role in it. And I was one among thousands, hundreds of thousands, an endless sea, a moving carpet of people; carrying placards and flags, and babies, supported by crutches and canes, in wheelchairs and strollers.…From the Capitol to the Washington Monument, moving to the beat of drums. Pennsylvania Avenue was cordoned off by buses and police, and Nixon was inside the White House watching football, they said, unperturbed by the marchers. But you bet he’s concerned, his mouthpiece Spiro Agnew will come up with a statement soon enough. We can’t all be wrong, thousands upon thousands, we feel it in our bones: Give peace a chance!
When Ramji refused a Viet Cong flag, blue and red with a yellow star, there was a scuffle; he was saved by a middle-aged woman carrying a placard that read
MOMS WANT PEACE
and walked with her awhile. My son’s in high school, she said, and I don’t want him drafted. If he’s called up I’ll take him to Canada, I think.…Oh why do these kids utter such obscenities? … With such marches Gandhi fought the British in India, and King the racists of
America; with such a march will there be peace in Vietnam? Cambodia? South Africa? Rhodesia, Mozambique, Angola? …
PEACE NOW! PEACE NOW!
Realistically speaking, this is not going to bring peace to the world; homo sapiens are not peaceful creatures. A girl carrying a portrait of Ho Chi Minh stumbled, a guy offered to hold it for her, she refused. Along the route a line of silent Weathermen in fatigues, standing to attention and shoulder to shoulder, holding up Viet Cong flags.…
I HAVE A DREAM!
Yes, we have a dream, too, of one day returning to our countries and working in a school or college; of paying back to our country. Ask not what your country can do for you, et cetera, et cetera. “Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, Viet Cong is gonna win!” A stone flew into the demonstration, and two fellows from the march made a dash for the culprits among the spectators, but were restrained by marshalls. They don’t throw tomatoes here; they shoot presidents, don’t they. Bystanders joined the march.
TRICKY DICK STOP THE KILLING!
Sona’s pamphlet to Tech foreign students had worked a miracle. Fifteen of them raised their heads from Bessel functions and Landau and Lifshitz textbooks and signed up to go to Washington. Fifteen nerds, each one worth fifteen ordinary demonstrators, that’s how difficult they are. You deserve a medal, someone told him. Remember, said a voice, Sona’s, if there’s a riot in Washington you could be hauled in for conspiracy. That’s a new law. Conspiracy! — for God’s sake, for manning a sign-up booth in public! America is the most powerful country on this planet, the most influential in the world, it has an interest in our countries, it sends agents there, and it sends Coca-Cola and movies, and sets up libraries and dominates the United Nations, the
IMF
, and the World Bank, surely we should say what we feel when we’re here … but you’ve gotta watch
it, said a guy at a rap session yesterday, the movement dies, the government kills it, with the aid of a tiny number of crazies who love to trash, because ordinary folks just get scared shitless to demonstrate about what they feel.
STOP HARASSMENT OF THE CHICAGO SEVEN. SEND JUDGE HOFFMAN TO VIETNAM
. And among the bystanders, a bunch of men and women screaming “Baby killers! Butchers!” at a Yippie contingent, referring to the Tate murders. How you can turn things around; you couldn’t find more peace-oriented people than the Yippies. Pregnant Sharon Tate was murdered by the psychopath Charles Manson and his zombies.
NO MORE MY LAIS
.
And babies too?
— a reporter had asked one of the soldiers involved in the My Lai massacre.
And babies too
, answered the soldier. That was a shocker: Americans do that too? — we thought it was only the gooks and the huns and the nips who did that. Lieutenant Calley and his men lined up unarmed villagers and shot them; women and children, babies too. That was the My Lai massacre, that is war.
THERE CAN BE NO REVOLUTION WITHOUT GENERAL COPULATION
.
The speeches lasted five hours in front of the monument, but it was all like a concert, better, because you could simply lie down during a boring interval, tune off, close your eyes, and dream. Yeah, dream, about where you are right at this very moment on the grass, where joints are passed around, a neighbour chomps on a hotdog, and a girl and guy sit back to front, up close, the girl lifts up her long skirt and gives the bearded long-haired guy a real rub on the crotch, and it’s all right, the sky is all colours and there are tears in your eyes from the light; or is it the cold November wind. Who are you? I am a guy, a simpleton, from the town of Dar es Salaam in the African country of Tanzania, belonging to a small Indian community called the Shamsis. It’s so far far away,
this city by the blue-green Indian Ocean, it could be in another galaxy; it could belong to another life, a past incarnation.…Once I didn’t know what America was, where it was, this country of Elvis Presley, later I thought everything it did was good, the Kennedys, John and Bobby, were princes and God’s answer to Communism, and now I lie stretched out here before the Washington Monument in the capital, the cordoned-off White House not far away, because I have come here with thousands of other young folks to demonstrate against a war we think is evil, fought, financed, sponsored in all possible manner by this country, and its hands are bloodied, so is its soul.…And finally the refrain over and over, led by Pete Seeger, with Peter, Paul & Mary and the others, All we are saying, is give peace a chance, over and over, oh over and over, hold hands and don’t stop …
Afterwards, when the rally was dispersed, feeling at a loss Ramji followed a bunch of rowdies on their way to the Justice Department to demonstrate against the Chicago conspiracy trial. He kept his distance from them, and when they reached their destination he watched them first defy and then do battle with the police. His own voyeurism surprised — and repelled — him. Yet he could not restrain the desire to witness something daring and dangerous — and destructive; this manifestation of mad commitment.
As last night, too, he had watched.
He was sitting before the
TV
in the lounge of the dormitory where he’d been put up, and along came Lucy-Anne Miller with two guys, all three in boots and helmets, looking formidable, and immediately the focus of attention of every pair of eyes on the floor. These were the tough guys, they were taking on the government’s troops, actually bringing the war home.
“We’re going over to the rally outside the South Vietnamese
embassy, we thought you’d like to come by.” She presented it as a casual affair, no hint of riot. But the way she was dressed gave her away, with her hair tied up, pants stuffed into her boots, pockets sewn up; tight jacket and that small bag for what — riot paraphernalia? Nevertheless Ramji agreed to go, and Ebrahim came along, if only, he suspected, to impress Lucy-Anne.
“Kenyatta — you hail a cab,” Lucy-Anne said to Ramji, without a glint in the eye; perhaps she yet hoped to rouse the Mau Mau in him. In their battledress she and her friends were unlikely to stop a cab, and just as unlikely was the Afro-haired Ethiopian.
The driver nervously dropped them two blocks from the embassy, and they started walking. There were sounds of bullhorns, sirens, and as they walked, their eyes slowly began to water. Holding wet cloths to their faces, they hastened their pace, drawn on by the bullhorns. An obsessive curiosity had seized Ramji, such as a child feels towards something it’s told is hot. You want to touch it, feel it’s real, tangible. “You’re assembled here illegally, please disperse.” Lights blue and red and white from the police cars. “Come on — let’s go!” Lucy-Anne said, and she and her two companions ran to join the demonstrators. “… please disperse.” A canister of tear gas flew in the air, a crowd of young people raced back, then some of them took out stones from their bags and they started throwing, at the police, at cars, at windows … and Ramji and Ebrahim walked away.
“We did the same thing in Ethiopia …”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
And now at the Justice Department, the same scene, in daylight. A Viet Cong flag went up in place of an American one, which had been torn down. He watched for a while; a tear gas canister flew in his direction, and he turned to walk away; it fell far
short. I can never have that madness, that commitment, he thought; that certainty.…It’s better to be a sane coward.
On his way to the dorm he came upon a phone booth and decided to call Runymede as he’d promised Ginnie he would. He smiled at the thought of her — surely she would cheer him up. John Morris picked up the phone and they exchanged a few pleasantries. And then John told him, “You called at the right time, Ramji. Ginnie’s in hospital.”
Ramji asked, Can I come see her tomorrow, I can then take a bus back to Boston. John said that would cheer up Ginnie immensely.
John picked him up at the Runymede bus depot the next day, in the Grand Prix. He shook Ramji’s hand warmly. He looked well, braced as if he’d just emerged from a shower, and smelling lightly of cologne. The red blazer and the checked permapress pants on him were utterly sporty and cheerful.
“Glad you could make it. The whole family’s here. No problems finding a bus?”
“Amazingly, no.”
“And how was the protest march in Washington?”
“Great. A few hundred thousand people …”
“You’re not saying!”
“They say it was bigger than the Martin Luther King march a few years ago.”
Their route took them through open countryside. It was a crisp sunny afternoon. Late autumn’s leaves clung to the trees, blushed
in the cool clear light streaming through them. It was Sunday quiet, hospital quiet, deathly quiet, as they arrived.
Three low white buildings lay parallel amidst large green park grounds, which a paved driveway entered between two white pillar posts. Two children played on the lawn, minded by an adult in a windbreaker; a man and a boy puttered about near one of the buildings with ladder and wheelbarrow.
“Quite a small place,” John was saying, “… exclusive, and the doctor’s an expert in his field … not cheap either …”
“And what happened?” Ramji asked. “I mean, why —”
“Well, they decided an operation would help. At this stage all we can do is take the doctor’s advice.”
“She’ll get well, then?”
“You’ll see.”
The three buildings were edgewise to them as they approached and were connected by glass passageways. The hospital entrance was in the leftmost wing. As they reached it, they saw Junior and Chris at the garden benches, with a girl, playing charades. She was the boys’ cousin, Mary, John told him. Ginnie’s sister Pat’s daughter. Yes, they were here, Ginnie’s sisters, they had driven up from Baltimore.
“Will he ever return …,” Chris called out playfully, and the two boys grinned at Ramji and said “Hi there!” Ramji returned the greeting.
“Get on with it,” Mary said to her cousins. “I said ‘Cuckoo’.”
Junior proceeded with the clues, miming a brood, negating it, with his hands.
“Sterile,” Chris said.
“Sterile cuckoo,” Mary shouted.
“Easy, huh?”
It was Chris’s turn, and he took Junior’s place. From the
entrance, Ramji watched him do an elaborate pretense of reading, and moments later, as John registered him inside at reception, they heard Mary’s triumphant scream, “Story!”