missionary societies. What private capital did then it can do again: own and reshape the Third World in the image of the West without the slightest blot, blemish, or blotch. NGOs will do what the missionary charities did in the past. The world will no longer be composed of the outmoded twentieth-century divisions of East, West, and a directionless Third. The world will become one corporate globe divided into the incorporating and the incorporated. We should volunteer Aburlria to be the first to be wholly managed by private capital, to become the first voluntary corporate colony, a corpolony the first in the new global order. With the privatization of Aburlria, and with the NGOs relieving us of social services, the country becomes your real estate. You will be collecting land rent in addition to the commission fee for managing the corpolonial army and police force. The corpolonial powers will reward you as a modern visionary. You will enjoy the irony that just as Gabriel Gemstone has stolen your intellectual property you will have appropriated the intellectual property of the corporate West.”
“A tit for a tat. They steal ours and we steal theirs,” said the Ruler, laughing. “That’s why I have always maintained that you are a crook,” said the Ruler, now laughing as if he had just complimented Tajirika. “A loyal crook,” he added.
Indeed, the Ruler was comfortable with Tajirika as counselor. The Minister of Defense had the common sense and realism of a crook so his counsel was nearly always to the point, but he was a cowardly crook who was once beaten by women and never retaliated and so was safe. Were it not for the cowardly strain in his character, he would be very dangerous, the Ruler thought in passing.
“About this business of corporonialism, why can’t I incorporate instead of being incorporated?” the Ruler continued. “I don’t want to be a company employee,” he added, and laughed aloud at his own joke. “I hope that you did not make any promises to Washington.”
“Oh, no, no!” an alarmed Tajirika hastened to deny.
“I am their only sun here, and they will have to deal with the sun as is.”
“And the West does not want to set with its sun,” Tajirika said, and both laughed at Tajirika’s wit.
“But for now you and I have some work to do,” said the Ruler. “We have to neutralize the impact of these leaflets and threats of queues before they become another menace.”
“Yes, we take the fight to the underworld. Scare and scatter the ghosts of Nyawlra and the Wizard of the Crow,” said Tajirika.
6
A few days before yet another double celebration of the Ruler’s birthday and the anniversary of Baby D, four apparitions covered from head to foot with long silver hair and beards converged at the headquarters of the Eldares police from four different directions and collapsed at the entrance. The startled police dragged the presumed corpses inside, but before they had decided what to do they heard whispering from the four creatures. All police could make out was the word
When they finally came to, they identified themselves as the four riders who had been sent to the four directions of the compass to tell people the blessedness of queuing and the joy the queues gave the Ruler. Yes, they had been preaching the gospel of queuing, the beatitude being: “Blessed are they that queue, for they shall receive countless rewards from a grateful Ruler.”
“Riders without motorbikes?” said one skeptical officer.
“Our bikes are long gone.”
“You, policemen with hair and beard all over you? Defying the long-standing law of the beard?”
“We had no wherewithal to buy razor blades and shaving cream.”
“And why not cover them?”
“Our clothes are long gone,” the apparitions whispered.
But each rider had retained his shoulder flap with police identification numbers, and each was clutching the license plate of his motorcycle. When the interrogating officers looked into the records they were able to confirm that indeed such men had once existed, but their files had been closed and marked MISSING AND PRESUMED DEAD.
The riders did not seem to know one another. They had never met since setting out on their mission, but their narratives were almost identical. They told harrowing stories of people from even the remotest corners of the globe forming queues and demanding change. Now, despite years of lonely toil, they were glad to report that people in Aburlria were catching up with the rest of the world; and that from north, south, east, and west, nay, from the remotest rural villages and urban centers, queues were forming and slowly marching toward the capital, singing an end to the causes of all the cries of the dispossessed. They want a clean atmosphere so that people can have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and clean spaces to live and enjoy. They reject the rule of the viper and the ogre. Their songs end up in chorus with the other parts of the globe: Don’t let them kill our future.
“These incorrigible liars must be charged with desertion and treason for stirring up the populace to queue and march toward the capital,” the police chief said, angry at the bad name that these four had given the Aburlrian police in the world.
But when they showed him letters carefully sewn inside the shoulder flaps, letters with the Ruler’s message and signature, he recalled an earlier saga way back involving a rider in the central region and said to himself, This matter calls for a decision from above, and sent an urgent report to the State House. The Ruler said, Oh, no, these deserters are doing this because they had heard that I forgave the rider from the central region. That was the wrong message to send, and now I must show to all and sundry the fate of those who defy my decree that civil servants must never wear long hair and beards. The riders should be charged with treason before a special court, and when it came to hanging instead of a noose woven from sisal one fashioned from their hair and beards should be used.
What do you think? said the Ruler, turning to his Minister of Defense and trusted counselor, Titus Tajirika.
The counselor was struck dumb by the whole saga. The wonder of the supreme deity having covered the apparitions with natural wear from head to foot had left an indelible mark on his imagination: a sudden incandescence illuminating nameless possibilities. Was that how prophets and seers arrived at new thoughts? How the Wizard of the Crow used to get the visions of the hidden?
He felt a surge of power within, rendering him fearless of the Ruler, at least concerning the spirit riders. He did not even know how the words came to him.
“Masks of deity,” murmured Tajirika at last. “Truly God works in mysterious ways.”
“What are you talking about?” asked the Ruler, startled out of his own thoughts.
“The riders. Their appearance, hair from head to foot. Natural masks. Messengers from the supreme deity. Bearded spirits.”
“Did you say bearded spirits’?”
“It is obvious, my Lord, that these are no ordinary beings!”
“Have them executed immediately,” screamed the Ruler, strangely agitated.
“Before they are executed, put them on national television exactly as they are to tell the nation that they are spirits sent by the Lord to tell the citizenry not to fall for lies by the new generation of daydreamers clamoring for a new tomorrow. After you, there is no tomorrow.”
What brilliance of insight, thought the Ruler, feeling calmer having suddenly seen the way to outwit oracles and end all threats to the immortality of his rule! Aburlrians were deeply religious. Even street sweepers were forming their own sects and gaining followers! So once they hear the riders from the Lord, people will take whatever they say as a direct command from above. And if they don’t heed the ban from Heaven, then the anger of the Lord will visit them with merciless vengeance.
The words that after him there was no tomorrow kept buzzing in his head. He was Aburlria, so how could there be any future after him? He recalled what he used to tell Rachael before he sent her stubborn eyes toward Hell. Yes, I used to tell her that I could bring her future to a standstill, freeze it in the moment, he said to himself, gazing at Tajirika with increasing awe and amazement. The Ruler had not been mistaken when he had seen and realized that a man who could take over an armed camp with only a bucket of shit was unusually gifted, and now he had
