The pot-holed tarmac, an occasional sparkling fuel-guzzler arrogant with road monstrosity, loud-mouthed hawkers, weighed down by huge hoarded goodies, competing here with impatient hooting, and there with street preachers, old tilted taxis, and stranded passengers, pedestrians, drug peddlers, idlers, and the playful scatter of street urchins make the street a visual and an oscillating concerto of confusion.
This chaos climaxes every Sabbath Day, when spirited lips chew chants and sing sacred songs while the revivalist irritates every open space with verbal diarrhoea. The street pays no attention, for an anthem of hullabaloo from the madding crowd, hustles noisily upon its ear, and drenches the whole hallowed hum. Even when the ‘brother’ proclaims like the prophets from his Ararat podium, eloquent as Luther King but boiling with braggadocio, and, his hand on the open Bible, of the ‘revered realities of our religion’, and of angel-like lives and vicarious sacrifice, and of endless bliss or indescribable gnashing of teeth, its eyes darkens with restless dust, agitated, in case the heavens up yonder should rumble and smite those speckled lips busy spewing forth sacrilege.
An old dark man, old as the sea, with the most depressing looks and a face that reminds one of Rufus, but on second thoughts, of Hannibal dusts the windshield of his London cab for an umpteenth time. He has the most curious raincoat that has its rightful place in the war memorial museums. It covers his spurs, barely concealing his shining army boots and had once been a confederate grey in colour. But rain and sun and age has so speckled it that Caesar’s rabbit-fur coat, beside it, would have discoloured to a pallid monochrome. A despondent descendant of kings is this old man.
The old man stands majestically by his dark cab that is so old that Lot himself might have asked for a ride in it after he fled Sodom
An Undertaker’s hat conceals his white wig but still reveals a wee-bit of his parched face and also shows some secret forces of despair and shame that pull it earthwards. He assumes the most revered expression to match his outrageous overstatement of the weight his burly figure carries. His sharp eyes join the other million-dollar Zimbabwean eyes curiously detained by a revival meeting that is just starting, conducted by three sisters in black, and a brother.
A sister waves and strikes the tambourine against her hand in attempts to silence the crowd. She gives up as no one pays attention to her listen-to-di-servant-of-the-word cries. Aah! It’s her sorry figure; darting eyes from the crowd seem to confirm. She’s in a shapeless black robe and white shoes, had starved her face of make-up, and thus would be a miracle if forty-nine out of fifty men dared to look at her twice!
Like the old street, the old man too, is not impressed by the enacting scene, now pregnant and anxious with clamoured chants of [1]Miserere Mei Deus, for they are like, the reception room of an undertaker’s office, a cold ambience motioning toward the mysteries of ethereal raptures: a place painted with reverent images of immortal proportion, disturbing odour, flower vases, sketches of soaring swifts and gloomy misty mountains.
The brother glances sternly at the mortified faces of his listeners, swings with swaggers his Bible as he preaches, his powerful voice resonating with threats of repentance. Two sisters clasp their hands in harmony, nodding their consent at his testimony with mismatching refrains of HalleluJahAmen, the third sister stalks around with a tambourine extended charitably for the congregation to give what’s the Lord’s. When the brother’s testimony ends, the tax-collecting sister deposits the Caesar’s coins into her palm and—with a zeal that would embarrass Zacheus—transfers them to the pocket of her long black robe.
She shakes the tambourine in a rising crescendo like a lead percussion military band player, and strikes it against her left hand. The brother starts clapping his hands and prods the other two sisters to join her. They sing in a husky, dehydrated tone the well-known worship hymn,
‘Di Spirit of Jah,
Pour down di fyah!’
Their rasping voices and phrasing literally hypnotize the sisters and seem to transpose them to the Day of Pentecost. They beat their chests, shake their heads, their black robes spin from the gyrations, and the brother stretches forth his right hand into the sky, eyes searching the clouds, and blinking like a light indicator, no wonder seeing visions of [2]Ecce Homo hanging upon the cross.
The sisters seem to see a different apparition—their Lord’s blood gliding from his veins down the trunks and onto the base of the cross. They tremble with mortal dread, seem out of this world and even the old man of the pyramids has to agree, this is no ordinary revival.
The old man’s eyes searches the faces of those who stand there and gawk blankly into the sky—for signs of lunacy. He only sees gaping eyes arrested by a likely spectacle of torrential brimstone and fire. He realises too, that for once, the street is unattended, that eyes has stopped watching the street, and focussed on the heavens, looking out for miracles and signs. He sees doubting Thomases, impatient to watch, yet stand still—like the sun did for Joshua—gazing at the azure horizon and scorching the roofs of their mouths, then take back their eyes to watch the street, shaking their cricking necks, cursing, ‘I told you silly goose, this is just another impostor.’
They watched and watched and listened too, for a rumble, that is, but all they heard was another urgent hymn:
‘Di voice of di Lord a-callin’
Di las’ train soon a-goin’
Come all git on board
Don’t be left behind.’
But every soul that stood and watched seemed determined to be left behind as none stepped forward when the brother made a last call. His keen eye only met the most unwilling stares of the would-be passengers, suddenly reluctant to plant their cold feet inside his Zion Train. Perhaps he had not scared them hard enough by intimidating threats to book a one-way ticket to Zion Zion
He didn’t seem to notice that behind those empty stares were discerning souls which especially had no faith in his ability to chariot the Lord’s Train with the crew of his three sisters, for they knew everything about them, knew where they lived, and how.
The tax-collecting tambourine sister, whose voice governed the air, whose voice was intense with ecstasy, shared a lot in common with the woman who stood watching her, throwing knowing looks from her scarlet eyes, obviously after a [3]khat chewing session, blowing puffs of smoke like a tractor with a defective carburettor, darkening her stone-face that was already cursed and blemished by scars from countless extra-marital escapades. This was why when they bumped into each other in the street, a polite title of ‘sister’ escaped from their pursed lips.
When the music saturated the air, the faces that stood watching seemed to be elevated to another plane, transformed even and started struggling like the Djinn trapped inside the bottle that was found by an Arab fisherman. The music seemed to unveil new possibilities, a new horizon unseen before by those gazing eyes and breaking the walls of their existence, shattering into splinters what held them back, lifting them higher out of their present state, as if, once the bottle was opened, allowed only a split of a second scurrying from their first condition, into a worthy next.
A beggar came along, stood for a moment to weigh the prospects offered by the large crowd at the revival, but hesitant to try his luck, then his face lit up when the first man he desperately stretched out his hand for, dug into his pockets for loose coins. Nothing came from his effort, for he reflected for a second, his hand still inside his pocket, and started walking away, as if some unexpected emergency had occurred. At this, the old man half shook his head and smiled, adjusted his undertaker’s hat and went back dusting his cab.
The meeting came to an end. The three sisters and the brother, waving their hands sadly, sang, ‘May the sweet airs of heaven, be with you till we meet again.’ This had an effect on the faces; caused upsetting expressions, and one by one, they left, dispersing unwillingly and dejected. The music stopped, and the brother put the Bible into his big pocket and gathered his flock of three to leave.
The old man watched the three women and the one man walk up slowly the street. He gave them a second or two, then started the cab and made towards them, caught up, threw open the door of his cab, got out, flourished his duster, and began his depressing formula: ‘Zion Train express! Get on board sire, spotless—no dust, jus’ back from di funeral, ma’am.’ The 49-50 sister smiled when she recognized him—the old man who had dropped crisp new bank-notes into her collection, but the other sister, whose long black robe looked designed in wrath and worn in a rage, was restless not to get trapped in any talk that might impede her voyage—to Zion.
‘Please, step in. I am off duty, and I shall give you a lift to your place.’ The old man offered again, waving impatiently at them to get in.
‘You done seen him before?’ the brother whispered. The sister nodded. And for a moment, they meditated between silence and speech. Then the brother after studying the air to the left and to the right of the street, seemed to agree with the proposal, entered and sat in front. The three sisters sat in the back.
‘Know De Klub House?’ the brother asked him.
‘Oh, yeah,’ the old man swallowed and adjusted his Undertaker’s hat, without taking his eyes off the road, ‘so, you live by the Klub House, huh?’
‘No sire, I live by the monastery.’
‘Are you monks and nuns, then?’
‘Not really, I’m not a monk and definitely they are not nuns, but I’m saying I live next to the monastery because our house is next to the monastery.’
‘So you’d say the General lives by the beggar if a beggar lives near him?’
‘You have a very strange way of twisting words, old man. You waste your talents driving this cab—you should be with the FBI!’
‘I’m just pulling your legs.’ The old man jokes, his teeth luminous like a lighthouse and his laugh coming up out of him like the beginning of an earthquake.
‘Your voice is so strangely familiar, ol’ one.’ The brother muses.
‘I’d have almost sworn by God that I’ve heard that voice before.’ The sisters looked at each other, and then shake their heads in unison.
‘Oh, come on now, I’m everywhere in this little world, riding in this taxi, and this town is so small, when a cab driver buys a bag of peanuts in the street, they compose a little song about him.’ He threw a grin and started tuning the car stereo, searching for a suitable station. He settled for one. He hummed to the song.
Dem waan I fi come to deh burial
But dis man a no come a no one funeral
Yet deh man claim say him a di general
‘Yeah, General Brute!’ the 49-50 sister exclaimed. ‘You have his voice.’
‘Hahaha..!’ the old man guffawed. ‘I’d almost believe it myself, about this General, Conqueror of the British Empire , Last King of Scotland, the one and only president of this country, but riding in a cab? Funny thing, isn’t it?’ he grinned, and from his voice he could have been pointing out the shortest way to get to get out of town.
‘Yeah, very funny indeed,’ the brother observes, ‘the General’s life is shrouded in mystery. We don’t know if he’s dead or alive. It’s only when he fools around that we get to know that he’s still in charge of this country.’
‘You’ve heard the rumours about his ruthless killing? They say that, two days ago, he drowned all cripples and street beggars into the sea. That he lured them that he was going to entertain them at the State House, and poor souls, bundled into trucks and tossed into the sea for the fishes to feast on!’ the dressed-in-rage sister explains.
The old man tensed a moment, but attempts to defend what he felt were necessary evils. ‘Perhaps it was because the Queen of England, her brother Briton Hood, and international AMF visiting the country and the General didn’t wish his ‘extinguished’ guests to witness ten million underbelly crooks pretending to be beggars.’
‘Killing innocent souls?’
‘The means justifies the end.’ The old man went on. ‘I myself decry the soaring number of children in our streets, I will personally recommend a statue to be set up, and a title, the Knight and Preserver of the Kingdom, to whoever can invent a painless way of turning these brats into useful members of the commonwealth.’
‘Brutal and gullible General!’ the brother went on, ‘couldn’t even address the queen properly with dignity at the state dinner. Just listen to his speech last night on State TV: “thank you disgusting guests, ladies under gentlemen, Mr Queen sir, before I undress you, may I open the windows for the fart climate to go out.” and when they were opened, the fool cracked his sick joke about Edward de Verre, the 17th Earl of Oxford, who was so embarrassed after he passed wind when bowing before Queen Elizabeth I that he left England and travelled abroad for seven years. When eventually he plucked courage to return, the Queen welcomed him and said, ‘‘my lord, we had forgotten the fart.’’’
It was such an uproarious joke that their faces turned a little lighter, and they all screamed with amusement. The dressed-in-rage sister cracked so hard she had to hold her heaving chest as a trickle of tears squirted from her eyes and emptied down into the raised corners of her cheeks.
‘And we Africans say British his-story is boring?’ the old man cut in, humming to the refrain coming from his car stereo.
Dem want I to come a dem funeral
Dem claim say dem a di general
‘And how about the one that the CNN journalist asked him, whether he was cannibal, as reported by the western media, and he replied that he didn’t like eating human flesh because it tasted too salty!’ the sister added to the general mirth.
The brother goes on, ‘I love the one that when he heard about the Russians going to the moon, he directed our leading astronauts to invent a rocket that would take them (and our country into the light of scientific advancement) into the sun. And when he was informed that, the rocket would melt under the sun’s intense heat, he advised them not to travel during the day, but fly by night, that way, the sun would be sleeping and cold!”
‘I think the great things happen at night, in the moonlight, including scientific advancement, because the moon is more important than sun; it gives light at night when light is needed; but sun gives light during the day when light is not needed!’ the old man added.
They stopped to let the lights change at General Brutus road junction. A cocktail of humdrum din and clamouring voices, dashing pedestrians, eager to cross the street, idlers watching everything in the street, and inside the car, the scents of body sweat and polluted fumes from the exhaust made the atmosphere in the street almost visible.
A Hummer, driven by a very sophisticated looking youth, stopped next to them, and is playing very loud Wailing Souls song Mass Charley Ground. It’s an ear-splitting statement that leaves them to re-assess society’s anxiety with the youth and loud music. Perhaps they heard too much wailing souls in music their parents danced to before they were born, and by playing loud music, were declaring what their parents missed.
This noise juxtaposed with what was on other side of street, two mass choirs in black and white robes. They sang hysterically, their wailing voices like wounded angels, pleaded to the wrath of God to smite a sinning universe. The attempt was glorious, but all around them, people were preoccupied with pressing earthly cares, looking trodden and weary of feelings.
‘Com duon Fadduh, com don!’ begged the preacher. ‘Dis world-o na be my home, I’m jus’ passim by!’
‘This poor people, who, who…,’ the old man mused, ‘who’re so busy worrying about the next world that they can’t live in this one! Just see all these idlers and hypocrites in every street.’
‘Brother, man!’ the brother admonishes, ‘your talents are wasted as a grumbling taxi driver; you really must join the army of our Lord.’
‘The Army of the Lord?’ he smiles, ‘but I’m the General in the Army of the Lord, only on undercover assignments!’
‘You must confess, and declare publicly, brother.’ The brother forcefully puts in, his Martin Luther tone having come back.
The dressed-in-rage sister says, ‘this is more than a spiritual warfare my brother, you must declare to the world that you’ve booked an express first-class to Zion
‘We desire eternal life—but most of us want it here on earth, not in heaven.’ The old man replies.
‘We can build our little heaven down here, if we allow the Spirit of the Lord to dwell upon us,’ the 49:50 sister offered. But the old man half-shook his head, still unconvinced why the word Lord shouldn’t be kept within the precepts of a church like other words inside the bedroom!
The preacher then waved his hand and called to someone in the crowd, ‘You mustn’t let the doors of heaven shut upon you! You must plant a seed! You must give generously! And yeah, nobody leaves here till we have a hundred dollars!’
The old man watched, and no longer speaking an unnecessary word to his passengers. ‘No wonder He didn’t hesitate to use a whip on those who were defiling and turning His house into a den of idlers.’ He mused, his eyelashes twitching, they couldn’t tolerate seeing wolves in sheep clothing with a cosmetic tongue designed to confuse the gullible. Yet he knew where the carcass was, there will the eagles be gathered. He turned back to his music and hummed to it.
Let deh dead bury dem dead
I’m a living man, ‘ave got work to do
‘The light has changed, brother.’ The brother nudged him.
‘Oh, has it?’ He said, as if he had not been conscious of it. To evince surprise at his passenger’s impatience was part of his PR benevolence.
Before a fly could blink twice, they were at their 4th Brutus Street
‘Thank you very much, may you be blessed abundantly.’ The brother wished him and they turned to go. There was an embarrassed moment from the 49:50 sister who thought the old man deserved more than just ‘blessed abundantly’. She couldn’t bear the thought of breaking an old heart like the way one would throw a cigarette you were through with.
‘Perhaps you’d still pray for me, my most excellent accomplished sister, for heaven to rain sweet odours on me.’ The old man, as if reading her thoughts, suggested to her as she were leaving.
They delayed their voyage again, and for another moment, they meditated between silence and speech. Then the brother after studying the air to the left and to the right of the street, seemed to be in agreement with the suggestion, that there was no harm in throwing an old man a few left-over blessings.
And they all disappeared into the big house from another century, the old man tagging along, deliberately and with measured steps. It did look like a monastery, but only in age and simplicity about it. They made through the main door, there must have been more than five bedrooms in that old house, judging by the space the hallway boasted of.
There was an old prophetess sitting in a raised chair in the middle of the sitting room. Her countenance changed as soon as her eyes met the old man’s. ‘I don’t like surprises, children,’ she observed. ‘And from the look of things, I can see fear.’ She looked at them. Her eyes went quick and fast to the old man, darting as if she was troubled there wasn’t time to look, for without moving her head at all, she looked at them—at all the three of them at one time.
Someone knocked loudly at the back of the house. Before the prophetess could stand, the 49:50 sister had sighed a soft excuse and was gone to investigate the noise. She returned shortly with a cheered up face, a faint flush on her cheeks, and sixty years lifted from her shoulders. She was fondly holding the hands of the newcomer, a man, whom before he could properly be introduced; the gun stared at his face.
The old man had pulled out a revolver. He used the other hand to tear off the mask on his face, and warned brashly at the new arrival: ‘Don’t even dare!’ Their initial shock instalment was the sight of the gun; the aftershock was when they finally realised who he really was. Mortal fearful faces full of OMG followed and filled the room. They stood arrested with fear and fright and for a few moments, remained still, looking down in that gloomy direction where all dreadful faces looked for respite.
‘Holy Moses, General!’ A sigh escaped the prophetess.
‘What the …!’ cried the new entrant.
When you find yourself in a backstreet building at the beginning of the year and see faces that are not as other faces, you can bet your million dollars that you are looking at faces that have come face to face with the face of General Brute. That is what happened back there, as soon as they registered and digested who the messenger of wet news was, now standing in their sitting room, with a pointed gun, and face to face with three sisters, a brother, an old prophetess and worse, the Rebel Chief of the Lord’s Liberation Army, a religious rebellion that kidnapped babies still suckling and strapped to their mothers backs, to go fight in the forest in the name of the Lord!
A deathly silence fell over the room. The brother and the three sisters are obviously in despair over their careless chit-chat back in the car, behind the back of the General, even when he had been right in front of them. After a while the General turns matter-of-factly to the Rebel Chief: ‘how many bodyguards are out?’
‘Seven.’ The Rebel Chief says, and then goes into a silence like that which saturates a cathedral after a service. ‘But they’ll swarm all over this place if I don’t show up in ten minutes.’ He added.
‘Don’t worry about your soldiers; do you think they know their behinds from the holes in the ground? I doubt there is a brave one in the bunch.’ The General dismissed. ‘But just in case, push comes to shove, no one moves, no one gets hurt, am I clear?’ he went on in clear as day orders. The silence of the next few seconds must have been louder than the sound of all the music ever played by the youth since time immemorial.
‘How foolish was I?’ the prophetess cried, like a maidservant remembering half-an-hour too late the water tap that she left running in the bathroom tub.
‘Old woman, your guardian angel didn’t warn you in your visions, did he? Your world just coming to an end this way!’ the General mocked. ‘I’m sure we can all come into some understanding. The gun I’m holding is just to remind you who is in charge.’
They stood in respected awe and listened without answering back, for to contradict the General was a death sentence in itself; he was rumoured to have killed more men in a year than a mortar could do in a decade.
‘The scriptures say,’ he went on unheedingly, ‘“reap what you sow, for thou shalt eat thy bread by the sweat of thy brow”, because, if you always eat bread not from your own sweat it’s just tasteless. Brothers, why are you reaping where you never sowed? Brother, you have been measured, weighed and found wanting.’
The prophetess starts shaking but after a second she restrains herself and proclaims, ‘this is not how it ends, General, for the cherubs have spoken to me, in visions and they don’t make mistakes. They’ve chosen me to have a blessed birth to a reincarnation of St. Elizabeth who’ll usher in our Lord to fight the Armageddon and end the times. You wouldn’t wish to meddle with that eternal plan, would you?’
The General smiles, ‘if all men could have power to strike like lightening, as the heavens does, then the skies above would never be silent, for we’d abuse our skies for nothing but strike vengeful lightening. It’s consoling that that power is only vested in the hands of lenient heaven, which with its fast and furious force, tears to shreds the unbreakable and bulky rock, as swiftly as a soft siltstone. But man, mortal man, dressed in a diminutive power, doesn’t even know what he claims he knows, his naughty nature, like a bull in a china shop, amuses himself in such subterfuge and sham before high heaven, and causes the cherubs to weep, who, if they had our faces, would all have laughed themselves mortal!’
‘If what I hear is true of you General, then I’m afraid good wombs have borne bad sons.’ The prophetess said sadly.
The General agreed, ‘not only have good wombs borne bad sons, indeed, not only have the rains from heaven nurtured the ear of the corn and nourished the scent of the rose, but also strengthened the thorn and fed potency to the poisonous nightshade. That’s why the hypocrite who supposes they can have the best of both worlds, by assimilating good and evil is merely feeding the virus in their heart, for they are false already, and there’s no truth in them.’
Finally the Rebel Chief cleared his throat, ‘we are in a war General, I fight beside the Word, and you, with the Sword. The blood we aspire to shed is mutual. By the Word of my mouth and by the Sword of thy hand, whoever gets the other first, I pray to high heaven, and even I, to forgive them. And if there is such a place prepared for those that die in honour, I pray that when he falls, his weary soul may merit such a right to be with the seraphim.’
The General was prepared for this outburst: ‘How cowardly men crawl under the long arm of the law, while hypocrites play hide and seek with eyes of heaven! How some men devour into other’s narcissism, while egotism abstains in their impiety.’
But the Rebel Chief wasn’t giving up, ‘If you have come to cut a deal with me, then I must disappoint you, for the movement and the cause is not up for grabs. You can take me in. You have me. You can finish me off. But the Lord’s Army is bigger than just me. For every one of me, there are hundreds of them,’ he dared, pointing at the sisters and the brother, ‘and we have the Lord as our General and Shepherd!’
‘I see you are trying to put your religious tragedy into petitions, how encouraging!’ the General walked, pensively, around his prime prisoner. ‘You know, when we squander time and whole energy on white elephant projects that don’t work, normally we are left with only one alternative—disband it! That’s sensible, stop wasting more valuable time. Just discard it into the dustbins of history. Your followers preach in the street, day in day out so that you can have funds to fuel your religious warfare. Well, this opium of the masses, it doesn’t add up anymore. You crowd the streets with what you call morality, religion and so on. When your religion becomes obsolete, revamp it, renovate it, kick-start it, but in the most practical way. This is your chance; I’m extending you a brotherly hand.’
The Rebel chief seemed to chew on the proposal, for a while, but finally disagreed, ‘How gladly I would shake your hand brother, except that your finger nails are full of filth and blood of my brethren. How would you explain that? If you can only prove that there’s hope amidst the gloom that has darkened this dreadful country—with its kleptocratic bureaucracies and corruption, then I’ll die for an embrace.’
‘Development and progress don’t have to explain themselves.’ The General dismissed. ‘It’s open for the whole wide world to see. There’s nothing but bright hope in this country. What do you boast of in your army of the Lord but poverty, despair, starvation, desolation and chasing after dreams of heaven? I pay my army men a good salary, and they follow their own earthly dreams.’
‘But don’t you see what happens to their souls?’ asked the Rebel chief.
‘You think they’ll be eternally damned? No! No! No! I will save them, just as I will save yours?’
The Rebel Chief was amazed, ‘Save? You? You mean corrupt me! You will save my soul?’ he pointed at the General and guffawed.
‘I will fill your pockets with enough money to buy food, clothes and provide you a decent house in the government quarters. That way, you’ll live well off, my brother, enough to be a spendthrift, and to live handsomely—more than enough, self-actualise even; so that you could be copious, carefree, and charitable. That will save your soul and preserve you from the sins of the flesh.’
‘Whoa…’ he looked confused, ‘the sins of the flesh?’ the Rebel Chief seemed to be learning everything new from the General who was well-versed in the Art of War.
‘Yes. The sins of the flesh,’ the General spat. ‘Power, wealth, authority, liberty, pride, respect, and to be somebody in society; what else can save a man from those evils breaking his back, but money? The only means that can lift your soul up the food chain and heal your body, I’m proudly proffering you this golden chance to be elevated, transformed, and purge your poverty-ridden flesh from its virus.’
‘Wealth makes men of weight, and it was a man of weight whose entrance to the kingdom of heaven was botched. So don’t blaspheme that poverty is a virus!’
‘I agree, yes, it’s not just a virus, but the most virulent of viruses!—to be poor is a crime! Of all crimes, it towers in majesty and other crimes pale in comparison, for they become like virtues. Poverty is a disease that plagues our souls with immortal fear—just ask those who’ve lived in it! Just as those whose souls are dying or dead and their bodies are following suit. Poverty has blighted the happiness and demoralized the well-being of the society. It’s why we spend our invaluable time worrying how we’d keep these imbeciles far away from infecting us with the virus, and sink us down into their abysmal oblivion.’
There was no stopping the General, he swallowed his accumulating saliva, and argued, now addressing the Dressed-in-Rage sister, ‘you talked ill of the cripples and beggars that I drowned into the lake; you reproached me of condemning their souls into damnation unrepentant. Well, bring me a hundred more beggars; I will bathe their souls into deliverance and not just by empty rhetoric and dreams of heaven, but by paying them attractive wages, a good decent house in General Brute Boulevard. You watch them after three months, they’ll be driving to the Intercontinental Hotel, in a limo and spotting a tuxedo, to dine with American diplomats, and obviously become members of private golf courses.’
‘And will that make them better?’ the Rebel Chief sneered.
‘Of course, what is life, but in the living? Stop being hypocritical—they’ll grow a beer belly and have shiny faces. Their wives will spoil themselves in Jacuzzis, and their children will go to high cost ‘intercontinental’ schools. You know it—their lives would be much better than in the street, where they clap their hands and dance to false prophets in shower caps and long Joshua’s beards, giving their all, body and soul and money to you, and hoping your manna promises will come falling out of the sky. I tell you, you’ve perfected your gimmicks in dishonouring heaven. It’s so cheap a work converting desperate souls with a bible in one hand and a threat of eternal damnation in the other. Even I can convert the whole street into Zoroastrianism on the same basis. But I wish to give you that appointment—to test your revival skills on my men whose souls are starved because their bodies are bloated.’
‘So you want us to stop preaching in the streets, and leave our brethren starve of the Word of God, so that we can contribute in the very depraved natures that we’ve been fighting against in our cause? You want me to be the shepherd in your splendid church, embellished in the most extravagant manner, and erected on your avenues and where your congregation array themselves in preposterous and furore apparel. You need me to be your talented priest, so that you can give me a salary worth a king’s ransom, because then, I can amuse and entice and pull such a crowd with gimmicks. Then warn me that my sermons must not touch popular sins, huh! But be made polite and agreeable for the fashionable ears, for fashionable sinners are the registered members and fashionable sins must be concealed under a pious fiction and a badge of godliness. That, my brother, I cannot simply agree to do, I prefer the street. Better a lean moor hen than a fat caged sparrow.’
That punctured the General who sadly solemnized, ‘I too lived in the street; I was down there, my brother, for such a long time. I moralised and waited for God to pour His blessings, like He did Brother Job, but what did I get? Nothing but verbal diarrhoea in my famished stomach, until it occurred to me that I could also posses the attractions of the next world and be a General, and that God helps those who help themselves. Then I set out to follow my dream.
‘Nothing could stop my pursuit of happiness—I was determined to use the Bible, or the gun for this purpose, and comforted myself that neither ideology, ethics nor integrity, nor what have you would dissuade me. I rose up from my stupor, promised myself to “eat before I was eaten” and see now where I am? Am I not one of the greatest men in this country? Am I not charitable? Am I not somebody who can change society’s destiny? This is how we stand up and are counted, brother, and we can together rewrite this to be the history of every African so that we can rid Africa from the virus of poverty.’
The Prophetess joined in the fray, ‘How you talk! You contrive to say nothing at the most inordinate length!’ This is nothing but idle chatter, gibberish and nonsensical rigmaroles.’
‘But my dear prophetess,’ the General’s emotions finally collapsed, ‘where else can I have a better platform to express my ideas, when you don’t allow anyone to ask questions in your revivals?’
‘They are utter nonsense!’ The Prophetess threw all caution, ‘And if we allow you, I’m afraid; you’d be stringing gabble till the dawn of eternity! We all know what you did and how you made your way up there, with your self-seeking and ruthless scruples robbing from the poor, brutally butchering your enemies.’
‘No! No! No!’ he shook his head. ‘That’s not simply true, for I have the most careful conscience about the vice of poverty which you moralise and sanctify as a desirable quality. I’d prefer to rob than to beg; I’d rather be a slave master, than buckle and slave under poverty. I don’t like either conditions, but if you put those two unnecessary evils on my table, then, by God, I’ll go for the valiant and nobler. My scruples against poverty are so strong, and that’s why I wonder why you keep on extolling them. Let’s just say, my policy is not to moralise about them but destroy these unnecessary evils. Don’t reason with beggars; exterminate them. That’s why drug trafficking is minimal in China
‘So all your scruples boil down to brutal killing, huh? Is that your solution for our troubles?’ That was bait from the Rebel chief.
‘That is the ultimate penalty for a General to pay, for how can he make omelettes without breaking a few eggs? It works elsewhere; it can work here because it’s the only language strong enough to shake up a shit-system; the only armed prophet that would succeed in bringing lasting change to a social system.’ The General grappled with his feelings, absolute power corrupted absolutely. He could crush a street protest by just sending only a handful of anti-riot police to scatter them, and he was about to kill a rebellion, for this Rebel Chief, with his moral rabble, imagined by moralizing, would change the system. That was a big fat lie, useless like a powerful prince without a smell of a gun under his breathe!
The Rebel Chief went on, ‘theocracy, one so much ordained by God, neither by the ballot nor the bullet, but founded on the principles of the Holy Book, that is the only way out of this mess, Mr. General.’
The General dismissed, and ignored what the Rebel Chief said, ‘By the sword or the word, whatever you choose to use to change a system, is the one and the same, for when you destabilize a system, you crush the old order and set up new one. Kingdoms rose and fell under swords and words, isn’t that what the war history of the Bible proclaims, Mr Brother Man?’
The Brother nodded from where he stood stupefied, ‘Although the scriptures say so, I’m quick and reluctant to confess it, for I disapprove your sentiments and despise your disposition. I wish to challenge it; but even the devil can misquote the scriptures for his purpose and still make sense, which shouldn’t be the case.’
‘Shouldn’t be the case?’ The General laughed, ‘we are not about squander our time quarrelling under some cover of barbaric scruples like your moralists out there. We live only once! Isn’t it enough that the history of the world is the history of those who plucked courage to accept this reality? Have you the courage enough to embrace this truly necessary evil, which still is, true and necessary?’
‘Children, I can’t allow you to listen to this blasphemous balderdash.’ The Prophetess admonished the three sisters and the brother, and then she turned to address the General, ‘what are you trying to prove by claiming that evil things are necessary? What does it matter whether they are necessary if they are evil?’
‘Let’s just ask it this way, what does it matter whether they are evil if they are necessary?’ the General punned.
‘Children, close your ears this instant!’ the two brainwashed sisters, obeyed their Prophetess, took the palms of their hands to shut their ears and closed their eyes as well. But the brother and the 49-50 sister didn’t.
‘Does it matter whether we listen to nonsensical rigmaroles?’ Instead of closing her ears, the 49-50 sister mused aloud.
‘It matters every inch. It confirms that you disapprove evil ideas from wicked men.’
‘But that wouldn’t save them, would it?’
The Prophetess could not stand this nonsense, ‘are you about to challenge me, sister? Are you closing your ears or are you not?’
‘Of course, it’s depraved of General to extend his brotherly hand, but I don’t think it’s necessary to close our ears without giving him a chance to justify himself, I hate the sin, but we are commanded by the scriptures to love the sinner.’ The disobedient 49-50 sister corroborated.
Then the brother got back his voice, and added his salt to the boiling pot of heated brawl, ‘let’s just say, I can perceive some hint of truth about this notion of necessary evil. We could join his forces, and fight from within, that could work. Let’s weigh the options, I’m not saying I totally agree with his ideas indiscriminately, but I’m thinking we could come to a compromise. Everybody does it one way or another, a man must live, you know…’ he trailed limply and suspended his speech in mid air when the prophetess, engrossed in interest to his outburst, made him anxious, ‘may be I don’t make any sense,…’ he became tongue-tied, looked to his right, then to the left, and whispered something to the 49-50 sister.
The General came to his rescue, ‘I am not asking you brother, to exchange your soul for power, no; all I’m saying is you’ll still have your soul, as well as the power thereof.’
‘That’s not what is worrying, I mean, this sale of my soul, you know many a time, a man must do what a man must do—for money, for wealth, for the world, even for heaven! I can even exchange it for vanity, but that’s not what I’m doing right now, am I? It’s not for wealth or position, but for truth and for power.’ He stammered.
The Prophetess cautioned, ‘we all know that the devil doesn’t have any power, and neither does he, nor would you, don’t fall for his traps, son!’
‘This is not just for my own supremacy,’ said the General, ‘I’m creating power for the whole wide world, for all bodies and souls of men of valour!’
‘To have power?’ the Rebel chief agreed, ‘that too, is my humble aspiration, but it has to be spiritual power.’
‘I believe all power is divine,’ the Brother made a come back, ‘I have preached on how the people can acquire, perpetuate and use spiritual power on this earth, how the people might gain and posses this holy power, but people don’t feed on spiritual power, they want a tangible power that they can see and feel.’
‘That’s what I’m talking about,’ the General explained, ‘that’s the power we can have, and that you can manipulate, and give it to your fellow men.’
‘Power to kill helpless men and rape women?’ sneered the Prophetess, ‘Power that justifies the rule by brutal force rather than by law?’
The punctured General shifted his gaze to the old prophetess, tortured her with mean looks and he explained, ‘when you have power for good, you must also have its opposite, I pointed out before that good wombs borne bad sons, who will still suckle from their mother’s breasts in spite of their villainy. Don’t imagine heavenly kingdoms and principalities that can’t exist on earth. The way your men live is just but an antithesis of how men should live in the society. If you abandon what is, for what should be, then you’re only calling on your own collapse rather than your preservation; for men who struggle after goodness in whatever they do are sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men out there who are evil.
‘Of course, we have on the board, many possible dispositions that we can embrace, but we don’t have to be excessively anxious about possessing all the good ones. A man may be thought of being generous, guileless, and religious, but he must only appear to have this persona. You soon become aware that you can’t actually possibly posses all these traits since it comes a time when out of a necessary evil, must needs contradict and act against them. You have to steer the country by doing what it takes to keep power, and you are left with only one rule: one that’s favorable—by rook or crook.’
‘Is there no higher power than brutal force by the power of the gun? The Rebel chief Asked, pointing at the General’s gun.
‘Every General would love to be adored and feared, but because it’s not easy to unite both qualities in the same person, then I’d rather have my men fear me than adore me. So long as I don’t meddle with their business and property, or their women, or take their lives without a just cause, then force is a necessary evil that holds my men together and bonds the country cohesive. I’d say that’s not brutality in the strongest sense for a General who leads his own army must practice brutal force so as to command complete reverence from his soldiers. Ask any Hannibal
Suddenly there was an outburst from the 49-50 sister, ‘I wish I could get away from all this. Oh, that I had the wings of a dove I would fly away.’
‘And be a deserter? Just run away from the street? Just run away from the cause? You can’t be this selfish, sister?’ That was the Rebel chief.
‘I really wish it was this easy, just to go away from all this, and everything. But it isn’t. In the streets, I’m blissful, but only for a moment. It’s an escape from my little miserable world into a heaven of happiness and soul saving; but what is the point of chasing after little fishes when the bigger ones swim out of our reach? Why not fight evil from its heart. Why not launch an attack where it’s lodged, where the devil himself would least expect, yet in the very place we can do with most evil destruction. That’s where we should take our battle—at the very heart of the devil indeed, right in the middle of hell’s whorehouse. As long as we just keep to the streets, we can never really get anywhere to fighting the virus of evil, which we have sworn ourselves to. There’s no getting away from the General and his evil men who are everywhere. Turning our backs on him is like turning our backs to life.’
The Rebel chief admonished her, ‘You were once an indomitable sister, bent on nothing but fighting the evil side of life. Whatever happened to your zeal? I can hardly recognize you in your new guise!’
But she was determined to have her way, ‘come to think of it, life’s a tree with many branches, the inferior and the superior side are but one reality; it’s all one and it’s what you make it to be. I’m not going to squander mine squabbling whether the evil I have to fight is of sin or suffering, or poverty, am I now?
‘I wish I could cure you of your irreligious idiocy.’ The Prophetess cut in once again.
That stung the General and he gasped, ‘don’t be such a religious zealot and hypocrite! You are all just spiritual gymnasts to me!’
And the 49-50 sister sighed a relief, and confessed, ‘I have principles; I have forgiveness too, and wouldn’t allow for some scruples to turn my back on the General’s offer. I’m no longer squandering my life in the street, with brother preaching, and my sisters singing and making collections, and I shaking the tambourine, because sooner or later I would be sweeping the street, paved with General’s power, or be a barmaid in one of General’s clubs, like all those women back there.’
The 49-50 sister was determined to take the plunge and work for the General. She had that same feeling she had felt the first time the General had dropped the crisp new bank note into her collection. She felt she had to do what a sister had to do—get herself life to live, and never let go such a million-in-one chance. Only she thought it was the money and the wealth, power and the glory, when it was actually salvation to human souls.
And this time, she wouldn’t be in pathetic streets, where depressed souls clapped with clamour for brimstone and fire to fall from the sky and expecting some miracles and signs, but with the high and mighty, overfed and indifferent, superior and conceited creatures, all belching about their liberties and rights to transgress, and thinking that the devil would wholly honour them for committing so much sins in the name of their General—or so she thought.
That was the break-even of her life she had ever dreamed of. Her Rebel Chief would never toss it to her face again to run around converting the street and inducing them with hopes of heaven so as to rob them of their coins. She was no longer in the captivity of the prophetess, to be brainwashed to do God’s work on earth. What was this work that you never saw immediate results but a foretaste of things to come? And who ripped the most from this work? Wasn’t it men under guise? That God had had to create in His image to do it because it couldn’t be done except by living men and women. If that was the case, then, as the earthly caretaker of God, she held the keys of heaven and hell and when and if she died before she awoke, then she would still be saved, for she had faith in the hunch of religion, and would even hedge her bets in it, just in case the brutal revelations of damnation would come to pass!
The brother joined too the General’s fray, he was no longer yielding to the absurd demands of the prophetess nor listening to the Rebel Chief and his infinite tyranny, he was no longer indulging in a greedy egotism that fed on powerless people of the street. He was going to try his hand alongside the army of the General and operate from the heart of hell. The comfort and trappings wouldn’t placate his gnashing of teeth in the torture chambers, but at least it will give it the meaning. Yes, the meaning he could not find in the ‘Lord Liberation Army’ side of hell.
But the stubborn Rebel Chief had his own ideas. He preferred death to compromise, and his ultimate line of defence pointed in that direction for he threw all caution, dared the General to shoot him point-blank in the head and finish his business. The General was reluctant to take him out in this manner, and the younger Rebel Chief, seized him by the arms, taking advantage of his hesitation, and wrenched the gun from him, but he couldn’t use it as they got entangled, started to struggle.
‘Oh yeah,’ yelled the Rebel Chief, trying to have a better grasp of the gun, ‘did you think I wouldn’t get back to my feet? Did you imagine I was blindly going to cut a deal with a tyrant? That I, who have tasted spiritual power and promised my followers that this power is real, who have blessed assurance of greater things from above to come down, could develop cold feet when a semi-Armageddon trial came my way? Never! I will die with true religious colours and a proud soldier in the army of the Lord.’
A struggle ensued once their hands were free, and the General, being the stronger, wrestled back the gun from the Rebel Chief, but before he could cock it, the bodyguards, attracted by the commotion, came rushing into the house. The prophetess, caught in the scuffle, tried to dart for cover, but even with the speed of a lizard nailing a fly, it was still too late. The General grabbed her and using her as a human shield, scurried back to the car, the bodyguards, hot in pursuit, and the Rebel Chief helplessly watching, while he, daring them to shoot and kill their own prophetess.
The next day, the national TV announced that the General, had ordered a crackdown on revivalists, and banned street preaching with stiff penalties to those caught in the act.
The street became quiet once again as the hounded preachers went underground. The Prophetess was placed under house arrest.
A week later, the Rebel Chief was found dead on a dark street. The late human being had been engaged in terrific battle—there were plenty of evidence to prove it. Fanatic and bigoted though he had been, he had also possessed all the honours and merits of a soldier. But he had lost, true to his creed—to die with the colours because it was better dead with blood drained away than alive with it rotting in the veins. His hands held securely and so firmly a new crisp bank note that no one could wrench from his fingers.
His funeral followed, an almost lonely affair, and was attended by a handful of mourners. The moderate men from the street who had known him groped about with words, looking lost as they rummaged around their adjectives that would appropriately describe the Rebel Chief as demanded by funeral custom. The brother stepped forward, looked to his left, and then to his right, whispered to 49-50 sister, and then spoke thus: ‘when Rough Neck was about sev’n, he had the best army knife in the whole street.’
After the brief funeral, when the 49-50 sister was leaving, she saw the familiar old black cab, standing in the corner of the street. She inched closer, her heart pounding, and then her eyes met the silhouette of the old man from the hills, who for a brief moment, forgot his stone-face looks, and threw her a-happy-to-see-you-again smile.
He threw open the door of his cab, flourished his fly whisk, and began his depressing formula: ‘Zion Train express! Get on board ma’am, spotless—no dust, jus’ back from another funeral, ma’am.’ And then the sister smiled at the ritual. His coat had added on a few eternities, and discoloured in darkness, the thread and cords were raggedy and shabby, and one of the two enduring buttons—the ivory—was gone. She entered and sat herself at the back left, and the old man drove away, whistling wistfully to his mystical music:
Dem waan I fi come to deh burial
But dis man a no come a no one funeral
Yet deh man claim say him a di general
End.
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