to America, returning empty-handed.
“And now, Governor Titus…” He smiled, welcoming Tajirika to the inner counsel.
13
One day a man on a motorcycle arrived at the police headquarters in Eldares, demanding to see the police chief urgently. His hair was down to his shoulders; his beard reached his knees. His clothes were more like rags and the paint on his beaten up motorcycle was long gone, though on closer scrutiny one might have imagined the color red. Had he not shown his badge of office, nobody would have believed that he was a policeman: the police chief would not have wasted so much as a minute on him. Responding to puzzlement, he claimed that he was one of five police riders dispatched to all corners of the country to tell people about the virtues of queuing. When was this? he was asked, and he could not remember how long ago or how long he had been gone; all he knew was that he had been ordered by his superiors not to return without accomplishing his mission. When the bearded rider was asked about his four fellow riders, he said he did not know their fate, and that if they had not yet returned, he clearly had won the race. What race? the police chief asked. The race to prolong the queuing, of course. The bearded rider seemed irritated by what seemed pointless questions when he had more important news to deliver: that in the central region, school kids, following in the footsteps of the university students, were forming queues, not for food in the cafeteria but to demand additional books and teachers and an education that would teach them about their own country and its relation to the world. Were these old or new queues? To tell the truth, he said, there was no discernible difference between the old and the new, for all had neither beginning nor end. The police chief rushed the report to Sikiokuu, who rushed it to the Ruler, who at first reacted with an angry frown, as if to say, What is this nonsense you bring to me? But, recalling what the Global Bank in New York had told him, that there were people going around his country preaching the virtues of queuing, and considering that this had ended his visit abruptly and might even have cost him the loan for Marching to Heaven, and now, realizing that the agents for this sedition were members of his security team, he ordered the rider to face a firing squad and the Minister of Information, Big Ben Mambo, to announce this on the airwaves, as a warning to any other miscreants in his armed forces.
The rider would have been executed except for his pleas that they should not kill the Ruler’s messenger without reading a note he had sewn inside his jacket to ensure its safety. And, sure enough, the piece of paper was discovered, and when the police unfolded it, they saw its heading,
14
Kaniuru could not believe his luck. He had not known where or how he would start the search, but now? He hated university students with a passion, for their radicalism had deprived him of a good wife. If Nyawlra had not entered student politics, she might very well still be living under his protective wings. He dwelled on the news brought by the crazy rider. These students had been behind the snake incident at the aborted birthday ceremony. They were definitely behind the recent queuing mania. Kaniuru recalled that even the Ruler had said that students and youth caused the downfall of many a government. And all at once he saw the solution, simple but effective. Crush the university students, and all forms of queuing would come to an end. But how would he go about it? The students had been poisonously indoctrinated. Empty their heads of all foolishness and fill them with good and correct ideas supportive of the State. But how would the government go about this?
Kaniuru recalled that, according to the recent reports, the students were demanding to be taught about their own country first. Was the Ruler not the Country? Kaniuru immediately got pen and paper and started drafting a memorandum for a new national education program. Everybody in Aburlria knew that the Ruler was the supreme educator. Teacher number one. So all institutions of learning, from primary schools to university colleges, would be required to teach only those ideas that came from the supreme educator. They would be required to offer the Ruler’s mathematics, the Ruler’s science (biology, physics, and chemistry), the Ruler’s philosophy, and the Ruler’s history; and this would definitely take care of their demands to know their country first. But the students also wanted to be taught how their country was related to other regions of the world. That was also quite simple. They would be taught the geography and demographics of all the countries the Ruler had visited or intended to visit. As for the books to read, this too was simple. In recognition of the fact that the Ruler was the number one writer, all books published in the country would carry the name of the Ruler as the original author. Anybody who aspired to write and publish could do so only under the name of the Ruler, who would allow his name only on those books carefully examined and permitted by the subdepartment of Youth Conformity. All new editions of the Bible, the Quran, the Torah, and even Buddha’s Book of Light, or any other religious texts read in schools, would have prefaces and introductions by the Ruler. Such an education system was bound to produce students with a uniform knowledge streaming from the same source: the Ruler or those imbued with his thought.
Kaniuru formed an advisory board consisting of university professors from history, literature, political science, law, philosophy, and the sciences. They were all members of the Mighty Youth and under his command. He gave them the memorandum and asked them to look at it critically and make comments and necessary corrections, but they all came back full of praise: the document was well written and it contained the best educational program they had ever seen. They sat down to work out the best way of effecting this educational initiative, and they were all of the view that the best way was to sell the idea to university and secondary school students. Once the students had accepted it, and the advisory board did not see a problem in this, since the memorandum had met all the student demands, Kaniuru would present it to the Ruler for it to become the official government policy on education. They gave the memorandum a weighty but memorable title:
One of the professors, a specialist in all aspects of parrotology, came up with the idea of regional seminars to educate students and the public about the new educational program. The first seminar was to be held in Eldares, and Kaniuru was charged, at his own suggestion, with seeing whether the Ruler himself would open the proceedings.
Kaniuru simmered in joy. He knew that the Ruler could not make it to the seminar. But he did not mind his name being mentioned in the same breath as the Ruler’s. But a message, a word or two of greetings from the Ruler, would suffice.
15
There is nobody quicker to anger than a thief who has been robbed. This adage was no less true in the case of Silver Sikiokuu, Minister of State in the Ruler’s Office, for though over the years he had extorted bribes in the millions and did not see anything wrong with that, he now felt hurt and aggrieved that the Ruler had ordered him to repay money of which he had not seen a cent. He had been clueless about Kaniuru’s exploitation scheme in connection with Marching to Heaven. What pissed him off even more was that he had groomed the youthwinger into
