Conversations

What you have said is very right. The problem is on what is to be considered right and wrong. Just because they have made right wrong and wrong right does not mean right is wrong and wrong right. I saw all the wrong. Humans in paper-bag houses walking naked in streets, eating carcasses cooked in tins. The murderer sent the murdered to the gallows. The thief steals from you and imprisons you for being stolen from. And that’s what they call right. Yesterday you were telling me about your uncle. Where did you say he is? Oh! In this very prison. I thought you said he is still in remand. What are you saying? Please speak louder, since they tramped on my head with those boots I can hardly hear a thing. Oh, you said he was sentenced for life. Now, look at his case, he saw them wronging rights and he was bold enough to tell them and look what it earned him.
“Daktari, what is wrong?”
“Nothing officer, I am just talking to Isutsa, a very keen former student I had. He likes visiting me for a chat.”
“Daktari, all other inmates are asleep and you are busy rambling to yourself in there. I don’t care whether you are here on presidential orders. I will open this cell and beat you to sleep if you don’t shut up and sleep like the rest.”
“But officer, cant a man have a little talk with his former student? Isutsa is the only link that I have to reality.”
“I don’t give a damn about your students, former or present. Next time I hear you talking to yourself I will whip the hell out of you. This is a prison, not your home where you tell bedtime stories to ghosts so go to sleep.”
Isutsa, let’s go to sleep. No, I will tell you about it tomorrow. Yes, how I finished them. Yes, that too, why they brought me here.
“What are you mumbling about, I thought I told you to go to sleep.”
“Yes officer, we are going to sleep.”
“You and who?”
“Me and Isutsa.”
“I don’t want to hear this Isutsa nonsense anymore! Just shut up and sleep.”

* * * *

“Good afternoon officer. I am the government psychiatrist Professor Sigmundu Fraud. I am here to examine Dr. Okaka Okaka who was brought in for treason. After that I should be able to advice the court on his mental status. I am told you guard their cells so I would like you to assist me by informing me on his behaviour. That should make my work a lot easier than wasting time talking to him.”
“Professor, I would really like to help you, but I have not had lunch and so I was busy thinking how I will have that lunch.”
“Oh that is no problem. I hope this will do.”
“You will have to do better than this because I am still thinking how I will have that lunch.”
“Why are you so hard? Okay, have this as well. The economy is bad for all of us you know. Next time I will come better armed.”
“Not so bad but not so good either. Anyway I will help you hoping next time business will be better. You wanted to know what about which prisoner?”
“Yes officer, now we are talking. I wanted you to tell me if Dr. Okaka says or does anything strange.”
“That one is gone, Kaput! You just go and say that he is mad so that they can take him out of here and send him to a mental hospital. He gives me a lot of headache that one. No prisoner can stay with him in the same cell so he enjoys a whole cell to himself. Does he think this is a holiday camp?”
“What strange things does he say or do?”
“That does not matter. He is mad, full stop. What does it matter to you what he says or does?”
“Officer, he was a colleague of mine. We used to lecture at the same university. I want to argue for mental stability in his case so that he is sent to a mental hospital. Treason carries a death tag on it.”
“So it is true. He keeps talking to imaginary students. I thought he was a medical doctor.”
“No, he has a PhD in Philosophy and that is why he is called Doctor. You said he talks to students?”
“Yes Professor. He has a favourite one called Isutsa. Talks to him all night long and I cant get him to stop.”
“What does he say to this … what did you call him?”
“Isutsa.”
“Yes, Isutsa, what does he say to this Isutsa?”
“How do you expect me to know Professor? The man is mad. He just mumbles to himself. The other day he was telling me that I am just like him and them. Imagine, saying that I was like him! And when I asked him who ‘them’ are, he said they are the bees, making honey for humans to steal. He said the humans had colluded with the queen bee to drink our sweat and keep her majesty the queen bee fat. Just imagine. Comparing me to a bee! That day I clobbered him for insulting a police officer.”
“Is that all he says?”
“That man says a lot of things. You cant get it all unless you are Isutsa. Anyway, is it true he did it? You say he was your friend, why cant you just talk to him?”
“He cant stand me. He says I am a coward. What he doesn’t know is that cowards live longer. I tried to stop him from doing it but he would not just listen.”
“So it is true he did it. Imagine doing that to the president himself in front of all those guests on such a big day. Doing it to him in the eyes of all those citizens who had gathered to celebrate the independence day. He must be nuts.”
“I tried to stop him. I remember the day he came up with the idea very well.”
“Tell me about it.”

* * * *

“Prof. I have found the key to myself. That which will open me up and let me out of my trapped self. The missing piece in the puzzle.”
“What are you talking about Dr. Okaka?”
“What I have been talking about all this time. My entrapment in myself. Being locked in yourself such that you are always trapped. Today, God has dropped the key in my hands. Today, I will be free.”
“If it is what you’ve been prattling about, save me the time and don’t tell me about it. Doc, cant you see there is nothing much you can do about the state of affairs? You are lucky to be where you are so stay there. You did not make anyone poor. You don’t steal the money, you earn it. Why should you worry about the poor. That is the government’s problem. You cant ask me to give up my salary to go and agitate for people who never even went to school. Forget it.”
“Not just you. Me, you, all of us! However thin the sticks are, when they form a bundle they cannot be easily broken. Prof, the salary they pay you is not theirs, it is yours. You give to them so that you can wag your tail when they give it back to you. The master is away Prof. Let us come together and plan against him.
Prof, how much did he give you? Five thousand – write that down. He gave me two thousand – write that down too. Our poor fellow here was given one thousand – write that down too. Let us all bury his money under the ground and trade in our own. Why make his money grow while our money lies idle in our homes? Let him call us fools.”
“Whatever song you sing Doc, you are not going to convince me to fight for poor miserable people I don’t even know.”
“You have been transfused with their individualistic blood. In their language, the ‘I’ is written in capital while the ‘we’ starts with a small letter. They capitalise on the ‘I’. There is no difference between us and those you call miserable. We are all bees, we are all being stolen from. Let us come together. Let us desist from visiting the flowers and the nectar. Let us go to the queen bee and her thieving drones. Let us tell her that they have fattened enough on our honey and it is time they left. Come, let us go together.”
“Call me a coward if you want but I am here to stay. I shall never descend the food chain. Forward ever backward never. So what is this key you were talking about earlier?”
“I have just received an appointment from the chief thief.”
“You mean the president?”
“The chief thief himself Prof. I have found the key to my freedom. I was going to quit anyway but he has given me an honourable way to do it.”
“What is your appointment?”
“Song-writer.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Once upon a time there existed a thief, the chief thief. He would go to the people and sing a song so sweet to the ear. The people would be stupefied and in the stupor, the chief thief’s men would ransack their pockets and strip them of the little they had.”
“What is that all about?”
“tomorrow is independence day and the chief thief needs to sing a song to the poor that will be gathered there. He wants me to write the song.”
“I hope you are not thinking what I think you are thinking.”
“That is what I am thinking. He will sing my song, not his. I will have downed my tools honourably.”

* * * *

He who seeks to save his sanity shall loose it but he who loses it for the sake of the truth, verily verily I say unto you, shall save it. I have saved mine, Isutsa. They are all mad out there. What they sought to save they have lost, just because they disregarded the truth.
Isutsa, I have something to tell you. Okay, that too but before I tell you how I came to be here, I have another thing to tell you. Today is our last day together. No, don’t say that, I always enjoy your visits and I will never want you to stop coming. It is only that when you come, you will not find me. No, not that, I am not being moved to another prison. Not that either, they said the mental hospital is full. Yes, that. How did you guess? That is why I liked you as my student, you always read between the lines. You are right, the charge is treason, the punishment termination.
You should have seen the judge passing the sentence. Sweating under his white wig and his ludicrous robs in the hot afternoon, he passed out the sentence which he had definitely not authored. ‘Germination! No appeal. Case closed’ he said banging his hammer. The people’s bewildered look made him realise it. He stopped chewing his gum, put on his spectacles and after squinting at the paper that carried my fate, he cleared his clogged voice and shouted, ‘Order!’ There was silence. ‘Termination! No appeal. Case closed’ he thundered banging his hammer. The cameras clicked and the judge resumed chewing his gum.
Don’t cry Isutsa, no greater love has man than this, that I should die for you. Come on now, stop crying. This is a day for redemption so don’t cry, rejoice instead. That is better. I want you to promise me one thing though, Isutsa, that you will witness my last moment. You will? Thank you, I knew I could count on you. I also want you to promise me that you will tell the world about our conversations and tell them all about the truths, all about the rights wronged. Yes, tell them all so that the son of man does not die in vain.
Okay, I think I can now tell you how I ended up here. It was the greatest moment of victory in my lifetime. The foreign guests were all there. They had come to inspect their businesses and they dropped by to grace our independence celebrations. They had come to see how the honeycombs were doing and give the queen bee a large tip. They sat in the air -conditioned dais behind their dark glasses. In the field, the masses squeezed each other in the scorching sun. They pulled and pushed with their clammy bodies trying to catch a glimpse of the chief thief and his guests. The police drove them back with batons to prevent them from polluting the guests’ air- conditioned air. The broadcasting stations had their cameras placed in all strategic positions so that no bit of my genius would escape the rest of the nation.
Isutsa, the chief thief is a retard. On such occasions, he just sings the song the way it is written. He never reads it prior to the presentation and when reading it, he does not pay attention to the words. He trusts his song-writers to come up with spell binding songs, who would dare defy the chief thief? He trusted me and sang my song.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he sang on, ‘these dignitaries seated in front of you are our gods from foreign countries. They are the Humans. Those who eat the hen’s eggs, drink the cow’s milk and lick our honey. The Humans like our honey because they don’t pay all of you for producing it. They only pay me, the queen bee, the chief thief. Paying one person for the sweat of a million sounds cheaper doesn’t it?
One thing you must know though, they pay me well. How else could I afford this executive suit specially imported from Italy? How could I drive in a convoy of twenty limousines, all air-conditioned and bullet proof? How could my wife afford to fly to London twice a week for her shopping? How, I ask you, how could my children and their children and their children’s children live in palaces? What I make in one month can feed your hungry bellies for a lifetime!’
I was seated among the dignitaries and I could not believe my ears. Some of the dignitaries had started walking of in disgust. The crowd was too dismayed to react. They just stood there mute not fathoming the insults just heaped upon them.
I jumped up and started shouting in joy. I praised the Lord for seeing it through. I could not believe I had actually made it. It was then that the police realised what had actually happened. ‘The new Speech-writer!’ shouted the police commissioner. I was bundled into a ball and kicked all the way to this room.
You cant trust the newspapers Isutsa. What else did you expect them to write? Those stories were fabricated for state security and I am not mad. Remember that he who looses his sanity for the sake of the truth shall save it but he who seeks to save it shall loose it.
“Daktari!”
“Yes officer.”
“Time has come.”
“Let me say my last words to Isutsa.”
“Isutsa my foot! The priest, the hangman and the rest have better things to do than wait while you perform your madness. Let us go!”

* * * *


“Dr. Muga, is he dead?”
“Yes Mr. Police commissioner sir, dead as a dodo.”
“Pastor, say your prayers, we have better things to do.”
“AMEN!”

©2008 Otiato Opali