Wizard of the Crow (100 page)

By the time the audience recovered from the shock, for in truth since her appointment she had never been seen in public, the Ruler was already in full speaking gear. He asked people, wherever they were, in Parliament, their homes, their workplaces, or on the roads, to stand up and observe one minute of silence in memory of those who died recently on the grounds of the Parliament buildings and the law courts. He said that the deaths were the result of the activities of some bad elements in the country who had hoped to bring about confusion as a first stage in a vast conspiracy to overthrow the government. I have only one question for them: Don’t they know that we defeated communism in the twentieth century?
Communism is now as dead as a dodo.
The so-called Movement for the Voice of the People had urged and agitated the mob to queue not because the movement genuinely cared for the real needs and grievances of the people but because it wanted to use the populace as instruments of its own evil designs. It had even hired sorcerers to confuse the minds of the innocents with very bad magic. The movement was exploiting genuine grievances, and he would be the first to admit that the country faced a few economic problems. But the whole world faced similar problems because these had to do
with global economic forces
and
a global economic recession
due to the oil crisis brought about by the selfish policies of OPEC.

Let me now turn to recent matters, the thunder and smog about
which we are all concerned, he told an attentive Parliament and a curious nation.

It was the same self-styled Movement for the Voice of the People, in collusion with
fundamentalists
from the Middle East, who dropped bombs on the State House, but luckily the Ruler, aided by his experts, had managed to detonate them before calamitous harm could be done to the nation. When the evildoers realized this, they fired tear gas in the air to frighten the population and ignite a revolution. The point of the queues and agitation and the timing of the bombing was clear, but he would not say more about this for
security reasons,
because the matter was still under investigation.

He paused, in fact he had no choice, because members of Parliament were giving him a standing ovation with no end in sight because no MP or minister wanted to be the first to stop.

To the bemusement and then the discomfort of the foreign diplomats who sat through it all, the Ruler let the ovation go on for one hour and seven minutes before gesturing to the MPs to sit down, for he had a lot more to share with them. As for these misguided followers of the Movement for the Voice of the People, he continued, yes, those who had killed innocent citizens whose only crime was to celebrate their Ruler’s birthday, he had only one message for them: his security forces would hunt them down and bring them to justice.

The Ruler allowed that there were a few wrongs he wanted to set right so that the Movement for the Voice of the People would never again find grounds for deceiving the nation. He told Parliament that Marching to Heaven had been conceived by Machokali, a
scheme so absurd as to boggle the mind.
There was devilish cunning in it, and he, the Ruler, had gone along with the scheme only for the purpose of finding out the man’s real intentions. Well, unfortunately Machokali was not around to explain what he had in mind, so we shall never know what he was up to, and there is no point in speculation. The Ruler now lowered his voice and said that he was sad to say that the government had not yet been able to find out how or where the late Markus had met his fate, or even the nature of that fate. However, the private detectives he had hired from abroad had reported to him that this was a case of SID, self-induced disappearance. Let the scheme, like its author, go the way of SID.

Next, the Ruler said, he would respond to rumors that he was pregnant.

The Ruler thanked all those who had come to the grounds of Parliament and the law courts to celebrate his birthday, renaming it the Day of National Self-Renewal because according to an age-old African custom, cycles of birth and rebirth are celebrated through well-known rites of passage. He was also aware that there were those who were talking about his birthday, the Day of National Self-Renewal, as the day he would give birth.

“Well, they were not mistaken. The fact is, my people, I was pregnant. Yes, I was pregnant,” the Ruler emphasized to an astonished Parliament. “Every Aburlrian child knows that I am the Country and the Country is Me, which means that
this
Excellency,
this
Country, and
this
Nation are like the mystery of Three in One and One in Three creating the Perfect One.” That was why when the Ruler spoke, the nation spoke, and when he sneezed, the nation sneezed. Because the country and the head are one and the same, it follows that his birthday is the nation’s birthday and his day of giving birth is as that of the nation giving birth. “You want to see the pictures of the baby?”

On cue, Kaniürü, using crutches, hobbled into Parliament followed by four people carrying a huge board wrapped up in a white cloth and set it up in front of the Ruler.

And now, said the Ruler, I ask the official hostess to step forward and reveal what I have brought into the world. Dr. Yunique Immaculate McKenzie walked to the board and lifted the cloth, revealing a drawing of the Ruler holding a baby vaguely resembling Aburlria in his fatherly arms. At the foot was the inscription in large Aburlrian national colors:
BABY D.
Behold Baby Democracy, he called.

The Ruler then grandly proclaimed the advent of multiparty democracy in Aburlria, to everyone’s shock. But he added that the new Aburlrian system was only making explicit what was latent in all
modern democracies, in which parties were basically variations of each other. He would be the nominal head of all political parties. This meant that in the next general elections, all the parties would, of course, be choosing him as their candidate for the presidency. His victory would be a victory of all the parties, and more important for Aburlrians, a victory for wise and tested leadership.

As a sign of the new times, he decreed that the Ruler’s Party would now simply be called the Ruling Party.

“And in case
our dear friends
are worried that we might be going too far in
our liberal measures,”
he said, glancing in the direction of the row of Western ambassadors, he wanted to stress that whichever party from among the hundreds under his leadership came to power, Aburlria would remain a friend and trustworthy partner of the Western alliance. I worked hand in hand with you in fighting world communism, he said, and now we shall stand shoulder to shoulder in building the new global system of guided freedom and openness. That was why his new system would do away with secret ballots and introduce the queuing by which one openly stood behind the candidate of one’s choice. Direct democracy. Open democracy. Baby D is born.

For the first time all the envoys gave him warm applause; this spurred him on.

“If at this time there is anybody from the public gallery who would like to ask a question or make some comments, they can go ahead.”

This had never happened in the brief history of Aburirian Parliament: the gallery being allowed to intervene. Most people took it for a rhetorical gesture, except for one wizened old man who stood up and spoke in a thin, tremulous voice but one loud enough to be heard by all.

“Thank you, My Lord of Infinite Mercy and Kindness. I say thank you because once a long time ago I attempted to speak to you and the minister in charge of the ceremonies ordered the police to deny me the microphone and remove me from the platform. I went away screaming for you to hear me. You heard my cry. I know that is why you removed him. And that is why I thank you,
Mkundu Wangu Mpya Rahisi,
for hearing my cry then and now giving me a chance to redeem my name so dishonored by the late Machokali. I say with you, Down with state secrets.”

The phrase
My New Cheap Arsehole
had made A.G. suddenly
recall the same old man trying to speak at the ceremony where the plan for Marching to Heaven was first revealed publicly. How was the leader going to handle this? But at that point the official hostess, Dr. McKenzie, whispered in the ear of the Ruler, who now asked the security to take the old man to the State House, where both would later meet for an exchange of views in endless leisure. The Ruler was a genius of double talk, A.G. said to himself, because he knew exactly what the security had been told to do with the old man. Every opinion counts, said the Ruler. The reign of Baby D has begun.

Now, in response to the call on him to divulge state secrets, he had a few to share with the nation. He was giving amnesty to all political inmates, including those under house arrest. He was doing this because some had already confessed and repented their sins. Sikiokuu, for instance, had confessed in writing that, wearing robes of a religion of doubt, he had contacted fanatical followers of the Frenchman by the name of Descartes with evil intentions against the government. The only ones that the Ruler would never set free were those convicted of crimes of thought, mostly followers of the Movement for the Voice of the People. They were unrepentant. He challenged Parliament to come up with a comprehensive anticorruption bill, as in his view there was no corruption worse than that of the mind.

The MPs were about to give him another standing ovation but he waved them off, for he was about to reveal corruption in high places. The new Aburiria could not afford to sweep its own dirt under the rug. It must show itself and the world that it was ready to bring to the light of day all the bones in its closet. He would also address economic chaos and sabotage. A helicopter had crashed in the hills near Eldares after a relentless chase by “our well-trained airborne police.” The helicopter was full of counterfeit money. The pilot had not yet been found. He could not say much more about the matter, as it was still under investigation.

The police were trying to ascertain the connection between the helicopter, counterfeit money, and a recent spate of bank robberies themselves strange because the robbers seemed less interested in paper money than in papers about money. They often broke safes where bank papers were kept or into computers, and left safes containing money and jewelry untouched. Well, two of these odd robbers
were caught in a Mwathirika bank, putting counterfeit money into the safe. From these captives the police learned that the mastermind had intended economic chaos through the unregulated supply of money and bribes to abort the birth of Baby D. The Ruler wanted to say loud and clear that in his government, and in his country, there was no hiding place for the corrupt, be they the top officers of his security forces or the highest-ranked ministers in his government. Bring out the saboteurs, he bellowed.

Two men, shackled, each with a sackful of freshly minted notes, were dragged into the chamber.

A.G. felt as if his eyes would pop out. Kahiga and Njoya were being put on display.

“These are the sinners,” the Ruler hissed, pointing at them with his club as they trembled, their chains clanking. “And, even worse, these were two of my top security men! They were recently dismissed from their jobs for letting themselves be guided by witchcraft in their work. And what do they do next? Turn to bank robbery. Economic sabotage. Let me say this to all the corrupt in the land: come forward, confess, and repent before it is too late. These two will now be put under lock and key, and, believe me, by the time I finish with them, they will have told me all I need to know about those with ill intent against the newborn Baby D.”

A.G., who had not waited for the end of the ceremony, caught up with the rest of the Ruler’s address in the newspapers the following day. New ministers to nurture Baby D were announced. Two women were appointed to Parliament and made Assistant Ministers for Women’s and Children’s Affairs. The Ruler promised to rely on his two pillars of wisdom in his furtherance of the needs of Baby D. One of them was Tajirika, erstwhile governor of the Central Bank, who was now back as a member of Parliament and Minister of Finance. The other was John Kaniürü, the ex—youth leader, now the

Minister for Defense, Youth, and Culture. The Ruler was quoted as praising a paper Kaniürü had once written, the result of a highly successful series of youth seminars in which he had argued that the youth must be deployed to fight the enemies within to complement the work of the security forces, and that culture should be used to cleanse the minds of the young of all rebelliousness. The Ruler, when he first read the paper, had been very impressed by Kaniürü’s originality, and the phrase
originality of thought
was what he now used in announcing the appointment of Kaniürü to his new position, with a mandate to oversee the integration of youth, culture, and the military.

Among the heroes honored to mark the new birth was the Late Dr. Wilfred Kaboca, shot dead in defense of the health of the nation, now posthumously inducted into the company of the Golden Order of Loyal Devotion (GOLD).

The paper carried a smaller heading:
BIG BEN BECOMES CAESAR:
MINISTER COMBINES THE GLORY OF IMPERIAL LONDON AND ANCIENT ROME. The courage he displayed during the so-called People’s Assembly had earned him honorary membership in the armed forces, backdated to months before the assembly.
My dream has come true,
Minister Big Ben Mambo was quoted as screaming unabashedly. In order that he may always remember the day, he added a new name, becoming Julius Caesar Big Ben Mambo, Minister of Information and Honorary Officer of the Armed Forces of the Free Republic of Aburlria.

A boxed item under the heading
ARTIST MASTERS THE ART OF WAR
showed a picture of Kaniürü. It was thanks to him that Aburlria was finally rid of the menace of Nyawlra, alias the Limping Witch, and her cohort the Wizard of the Crow. Although not yet identified, their bodies were believed to be decomposing somewhere. Kaniürü had sustained a bullet wound to his left leg while battling these forces of evil and through his bravery had saved the country much turmoil. He became a decorated war hero. Asked where he learned strategy and tactics, Kaniürü told reporters that it was instinct but that he had thoroughly studied Carl Von Clausewitz’s
On War
and Sun-Tzu’s
The Art of War.