Wizard of the Crow

19

After the ordeal, Kaniuru viewed Sikiokuu, the students, and newspapers as a grand alliance against him, and this intensified his determination to seek vengeance. First he unleashed his thugs to beat students wherever they were to be found. This caused a scandal throughout the country, but it did not deter him. Against Sikiokuu he decided to try to capture Nyawlra himself, thwarting Sikiokuu’s chances of winning the race. He would effect this through his own capture of the Wizard of the Crow, convinced as he had always been that there was a link between the two. Kaniuru would also get from him information on the women of the people’s court.

Kaniuru designed his Wanted poster featuring a hazy illustration based on his recollection of his various encounters with the wizard. At the bottom he asked the sorcerer to make himself known through a telephone number to answer a few questions about the husband bashing that was now epidemic.

He ordered Kahiga to keep a close watch on Sikiokuu and Ma-chokali to steal their respective plans for the capture of Nyawlra and the wizard. He also charged Kahiga with overseeing the demolition of all Sikiokuu’s posters, replacing them with Kaniuru’s, and gave him a black motorcycle to make him flexible in the choice of highways and country paths. For his part, Kahiga decided to simplify the tasks heaped upon him by following A.G. secretly to put to his own use whatever A.G. discovered.

Sikiokuu retaliated by having Kaniuru’s posters pulled down and replaced with his, which is what turned their struggle into a poster war. He gave Njoya a golden-colored motorcycle to supervise the poster war, and Njoya decided that the most effective way of carrying out his new duties was to follow Kahiga secretly.

20

Having had a feast of students’ bones broken, and confident that he would win the poster war and the race, Kaniuru now turned his attention to the media. But he had yet to find a way to punish the journalists.

The opportunity he sought suddenly knocked at his door when matatus and buses went on strike to protest a new decree that banned any queuing of passengers before entering public transport. Passengers, it seemed, had been ignoring the ban on the queues of more than five people and making long lines. The new decree required that people get on buses and matatus by pushing and shoving. The strike almost paralyzed the country, particularly the major towns, until the owners of factories and business enterprises complained that they were being ruined. This forced the government to modify the decree, allowing for both queuing and rushing. Here passengers formed queues; there they climbed all over one another as they rushed to enter matatus, buses, or trains. But, above all, the government wanted chaos, so it restricted the licensing of new passenger vehicles. Plans to add to the railway system built by the colonial regime were scuttled. Disorder reigned supreme, for any attempt on the part of the people to organize themselves was deemed by the Buler’s government as a challenge to its authority.

At the height of the strike, when people who could afford it took taxis for transport, word reached Kaniuru that at ground transportation in the airport there was a long queue of journalists with cameras and the like and of course their pens and notebooks. Kaniuru did not even bother to find out who they were or what they were doing at the airport. He dispatched his thugs, his patriotic citizens, to set upon the journalists, who, caught unaware by the thugs’ relentless fury, fled in every direction.

Kaniuru felt joy erupt as he savored every aspect of his victory over the journalists and the media.

21

The media had come from many parts of the world to cover the widely circulating rumors that the Ruler was pregnant. They now filed stories that claimed that organized thugs were attacking people who had come to verify the rumors. But, far from keeping curiosity at bay, the stories and TV images of bone fide journalists on the run at the Ruler’s Airport served only to attract yet more media: The rumors must be true, it was thought. The Ruler, after all, had disappeared from public view. Big Ben Mambo, Minister of Information, condemned the allegations, leading to even greater circulation of the rumors. Journalists continued to pour into the country, and when all hotels were full they started pitching tents in the prairie among mounds of earth. These mounds were so many and so big that some discerning observers began to wonder what kind of ants had built them, and proceeded to report on the strange landscape of Aburiria. The stories attracted tourists. So now, in addition to sex beaches and fauna and flora, monstrous anthills and an unnatural pregnancy had become tourist attractions. Despite his contribution to the dramatic rise in tourism, the Ruler was furious: in America they had managed to keep a lid on his condition, but in Aburiria, where his word was law, his condition was the talk of the whole world. It was a terrible blow to his manhood, and of course he blamed his travails on the note written by the wizard to Machokali.

Amid his fury, he got a call from the American ambassador, Gabriel Gemstone, asking him to receive a special envoy of the American president. Things were looking up. Maybe the special envoy was coming on behalf of the superpower to apologize for how the Ruler had been treated in America. He considered refusing to see the envoy to register his unhappiness with how things had gone in the States but thought the better of it. This was nothing to sneeze at. The apology would be too sweet.

22

The special envoy was accompanied by Ambassador Gabriel Gem-stone. His Mighty received them at the State House, Eldares, together with his ministers, including Machokali; Sikiokuu; the new governor of the Central Bank, Titus Tajirika; and the official biographer, Luminous Karamu-Mbu. There were two photographers selected from the Ruler’s special unit, and they were instructed to take pictures of the visitors as they entered and left the State House. All the other pictures, of the Ruler receiving the visitors for instance, were to be taken with cameras without film.

The visitors did not show any surprise at the bodily expansion of the Ruler. The envoy, in fact, went straight to the point. He had been sent by Washington and by the capitals of the leading industrial democracies to convey their concern about what was happening in the State of Aburlria, especially the unprovoked attacks on members of the international press. They were also concerned about the on and off queuing in the country, especially the skirmishes between opponents and supporters of queuing. They were alarmed at the possibility of a complete breakdown of the rule of law, and there was nothing worse for a people than their country falling into the hands of thugs, evildoers, and warlords and becoming a terrorist haven.

When he heard the word queuing issue from the mouth of the special envoy, the Ruler felt upbraided, criticized for being unable to control his own people, so he cut the man short with ironic laughter. He then said that the government had already apologized for the inconveniences the foreign press had suffered. He had issued a stern warning to his citizens that Western journalists must never again be made to suffer even the slightest inconvenience. But a quid pro quo was in order. Queuing, as an expression of order, organization, and discipline, was a very Western idea, and they should be mindful that they were now in Aburlria, Africa, where people are guided more by emotion than by reason, and therefore to scramble for things is “what comes easily” to Aburlrians. “Your ambassador,” the Ruler said, “should have told you that we are a people of hearts big with warmth and not of heads swollen with ideas, and that is why we love dancing and opening our houses to guests. But a guest observes the rules of hospitality laid down by the host. So when in Aburiria, do as the Aburlrians do.”

He went on to reassure them that as far as unauthorized queues were concerned, they should not worry or doubt his ability to bring them to a halt. He paused and sent for the heads of the military and the police. He wanted them to outline to his visitors the measures that he had asked them to carry out in order to teach unauthorized processions, particularly of women, lessons they would never forget. But the Buler did not give them a chance to