The Lost Tribe

1

ON THE MORNING of my execution, I woke up late and found a marabou stork tapping on the window of my hotel room. The stork was a large, gawky bird with spiny legs, gray feathers, and a flesh-pink neck. When I sat up, he stopped pecking on the glass and scrutinized me with his little black eyes.

I felt that the bird was judging me—questioning my right to be in Africa—so I grabbed a stack of telexes off the nightstand and threw them across the room. The stork cocked his head to one side and ruffled his feathers as if to say, All right, my friend. I’ll see you later. Extending his long wings, he hopped off the window ledge and glided away.

It was time to get up, but I remained in bed. In a few minutes the porter would arrive with some bananas and a cup of tea. Lying on the thin mattress, I stared up at the twisted wires in the middle of the ceiling. Most of the hotel’s electrical fixtures had been stolen during the last coup, and the army captain who owned the building refused to buy new ones. In the daytime the hotel resembled a small prison, with three tiers of cell-sized rooms overlooking a courtyard.

Someone tapped on the door; it sounded as if the stork had flown into the hotel and waddled upstairs. Rolling out of bed, I wrapped a sheet around my waist and opened the door. A Kalashnikov assault rifle was pointed at my face.

An army sergeant lowered his weapon and stepped to one side. Standing behind the sergeant was the Minister of Information, a thin young man named Noah Acholi, who wore a tan safari suit and carried a plastic briefcase.

Mr. Benjamin Chase. We are very disappointed with you, said Noah. You have abused the hospitality of our country.

What are you talking about? I stumbled backwards as the two men pushed their way into my room. The sergeant inspected the closet as I pulled open the dresser and took out my clothes. After the initial moment of fear had passed, I felt fairly calm about my situation. I was being expelled from the country. That was all. Journalists who annoyed the generals were taken to the airport and given a free ticket to Nairobi.

What are you doing, Mr. Chase?

Getting dressed.

What are you hiding in this room?

Nothing.

Noah spoke to the sergeant in their tribal language and both of them frowned. The sergeant had deep scars cut across his cheeks and they reminded me of a cat’s whiskers—turning up or down to match his mood.

You’re lying! shouted Noah. You have written lies about the government!

I stayed quiet and got dressed while the two men looked under the mattress, then pulled down the bookcase and rummaged through the closet. Noah examined a stack of old telexes as the sergeant ripped apart all of my paperback books. Pages fluttered to the floor: Mysteries of the Pyramids, Moby Dick, and Practical Motorcycle Repair.

My residency permit was tossed onto the mound of litter and I glanced at the I.D. photograph stapled to one corner of the document. The photograph had been taken a year and a half ago, when I first arrived in the Capital. My brown hair was a little darker and I looked tall and gawky. Smiling at the camera, I hid my hands behind my back.

After dropping out of Yale Divinity School, I had joined a Christian aid group that worked in Africa. One of our leaders decided that every African family needed a solar oven made out of a cardboard box and aluminum foil. We could preach the gospel and keep the rain forest from being cut down for firewood.

I was sent to a country where overpopulation and the demand for firewood were not major problems. Although there was no need for my ovens, I was a popular figure in the villages around the Capital. I would arrive in the morning with a cardboard box, a roll of aluminum foil, and a frozen turkey that had been flown in at great expense from Houston. After building the oven and placing the turkey inside to cook in the sun, I would play with the children, flirt with the women, and drink banana beer with the men.

By evening, I was usually drunk and the turkey was cooked to perfection. While everyone shared the food, I was supposed to stand before the crowd and talk about God. After a few weeks of solar turkeys, I began to dread these little sermons. The villagers were too polite to complain, but it was obvious that my mumbled comments about salvation were messing up the festivities. I made my sermons shorter and shorter, then finally decided to ditch the Almighty and eat some more turkey.

My aid organization heard rumors and my contract wasn’t renewed at the end of the year. I wrote grant requests for a Baptist group, then became a stringer for the Reuters news service. There was no reason for me to go home. Like many expatriates in Africa, I had lost faith in everything but the hope that something would happen if I remained.

It’s time to leave, announced Noah.

I leaned down to pick up my wallet, but the sergeant waved the rifle and muttered something in his tribal language.

I’m going to need my wallet and passport when I get to Nairobi. You can keep the rest.

You don’t need anything, Noah said. Follow me. He stepped over the mattress and marched out the door.

The two men led me down the staircase to the second-floor balcony. The hotel was usually crowded with plump prostitutes from the Congo and Senegalese traders in white robes who sold gold dust packed in goose quills, but this morning the balcony was empty. Even the hotel manager, an elderly man named Joseph Muwanga, had abandoned his cubbyhole near the staircase. The sergeant started clicking his tongue and jabbing his rifle at me—as if I were a truculent bull on a country road. Without further conversation, we shuffled downstairs to the muddy courtyard at the rear of the hotel.

The German embassy had recently given the government a fleet of shiny blue minivans, and Noah had borrowed one for the trip to the airport. Another soldier, a skinny young corporal wearing a camouflage uniform, was sitting in the front passenger seat with a Kalashnikov cradled in his arms. Like most of the local soldiers, the corporal loved his rifle; he had twisted a green vine around the barrel and burned the outline of a snake onto the wooden stock.

Get in, Mr. Chase. Noah pulled open the sliding door and I saw Joseph Muwanga lying on the floor of the vehicle. Frightened, the old man didn’t speak.

What’s he doing here?

We thought that one of your friends might want to say goodbye.

That’s not necessary. Let him go.

Don’t argue, whispered Joseph. Please, do what they say.

The sergeant clicked his tongue again and I climbed into the van. Noah drove down an alleyway and turned onto Martyrs of the Revolution Boulevard. Joseph and I sat together on the middle seat while the sergeant sprawled out in back. Joseph’s face was rigid. He pulled an ivory rosary out of his trousers; his lips quivered as his thumb clicked off each bead.

The Capital had once been a showcase of genial postcolonialism, but then a stocky master sergeant took over the government and renamed himself the Maximum Leader. At first the Leader had only demanded obedience. Toward the end of his regime, he wanted to be worshiped. The country became famous for its body dumps and public executions until the army attacked the palace at the top of King’s Hill. There was a whirlwind of fire and death, but the Leader’s body was never found.

From a distance, the Capital looked like a real city, a small core of steel-and-glass skyscrapers surrounded by concentric circles of yellow and pink apartment buildings. As we traveled down the street, the buildings seemed less substantial, as false as the plywood storefronts built for a movie. The skyscrapers had been looted during the coup, and the few remaining civil servants worked in darkness, their shadows moving back and forth behind cracked windows. Throughout the city, the green world fought a successful battle against man-made constructions. Fence posts sprouted leaves and branches. Satinwood trees cracked through the sidewalks while thick vines crept up the walls.

Noah turned into the roundabout and zigzagged around some potholes. He was supposed to take the southern road to the airport, but instead we turned west, toward the marshlands.

The airport is south. We need to go south.

Noah laughed and glanced up in the rear-view mirror. Maybe we’ll go that way. But first someone wants to talk to you.

I leaned forward, then heard a thump as the sergeant dropped his feet down on the floor. When I glanced over my shoulder, he frowned and his scars turned slightly downward.

I demand to be taken to the airport.

This is not your country, said Noah. I obey my leaders. Not you.

Who wants to speak to me? What’s his name?

Noah kept driving and I stopped asking questions. We were on the outskirts of the city, passing a small, mud-brick hut where a bald old lady wearing a puffy-sleeved dress was smoking a pipe in the doorway.

I was sweating, but every time I touched my face, the sergeant moved his rifle. We passed a dead thorn tree. A pile of red sand. A naked little boy with a smooth brown belly who was herding a piebald cow. Everything we passed seemed clear and distinct, as if I’d put on glasses for the first time.

Noah slowed down as we reached the marshlands on the western edge of the city. The air was warm and heavy with moisture. There were pools of blackish water in the road ditches surrounded by stalks of fern and spongy patches of dark green moss. I had only traveled on the road a few times. It was easy to get lost. Someone had stolen all the road signs and replaced them with sharp sticks hammered into the mud. Various objects were tied to the sticks—a feather, a bone, a small red flower—as if this were enough to mark the location.

The van turned onto a narrow dirt road. It groaned up a little hill, then passed through the shattered gates of an abandoned drive-in movie theater. The drive-in had been constructed by the Maximum Leader during the first year of his regime. The brick projection building had been blown up during the coup and all the speaker boxes stolen, but the huge screen remained. It seemed to float above the marshlands, a flat white rectangle set against the dark blue sky.

Noah switched off the engine and motioned to the two soldiers. The corporal got out first, then the sergeant yanked open the sliding door. As the sergeant jumped out, Joseph turned and touched my knee.

Joseph was a slender man with a dignified manner who had always restricted his comments to hot water and room keys. Now his voice was urgent and commanding. Don’t try to be brave with these soldiers, Benjamin. Don’t say anything at all.

It’s all right, Joseph. They’re not going to hurt us.

They can hurt anyone they want. Joseph stepped out of the van, then transformed himself—lowering his head and relaxing his knees so that he managed to look smaller. I’m old and weak, he was telling the soldiers. I’ll do anything you want. There’s no need to hurt me.

I jumped out and saw that a black Peugeot was parked at the base of the movie screen. A shadow moved behind the tinted glass, then disappeared.

Who’s that? I asked. Who’s in the car?

Noah smirked and didn’t give me an answer. We walked across the red dirt, then stopped and waited in silence. The shadow moved again, then the door was pushed open and Dr. Abraham Otema got out of the car. Dr. Otema was a large man with a saggy, ash-gray face. He was a British-educated physician, a pathologist who had joined the coup and become Minister of Internal Affairs.

Good afternoon, said Dr. Otema. Clutching a black walking stick, he remained by the car.

My mouth felt dry and I found it difficult to move my tongue.

What’s going on? Why did you bring me here?

Dr. Otema raised his stick; it was decorated with the shapes of a stork, a crocodile, and a pregnant woman. He waited a few seconds and jabbed the stick downward. The sergeant shifted his rifle around, then swung it like a baseball bat and hit me on the side of the head. I staggered forward and fell to my knees. There was a sharp pain on my left cheek and I felt something drool down my neck. I touched the wetness, then glanced at my hand. Blood.

You have listened to whores, said Dr. Otema. You have used their lies to hurt our country.

The blood seemed unusually bright red: a shrill, screaming color. Staring at my hand, I tried to figure out what had made Otema so angry. A month earlier, I had sent out an article about some schoolgirls who had been kidnapped and raped by soldiers. No one had complained about the story and I had assumed it had been picked up by only a few newspapers.

Lies, repeated Dr. Otema, and Noah Acholi nodded in agreement.

Those girls weren’t lying, I insisted. Everything they told me was true.

Otema raised his stick again and the sergeant swung his rifle. I raised my arm, trying to block the attack, but the rifle butt hit the side of my chest and knocked me onto the ground. I lay there for a few seconds, then I got up on my hands and knees.

You can’t see the truth, Mr. Chase. You can’t see anything because of your pride. Dr. Otema shook his head and motioned to Noah. Get the tools. They’re in the car.

Noah hurried over to the Peugeot, reached into the backseat, and pulled out two shovels. I want you and this man to dig two holes, said Dr. Otema. Both of them should be two meters long and one meter deep.

I wanted to stand up and shout at him. No. I won’t do it. Go to hell. But my mouth refused to release the words. Otema stepped forward and pointed at Joseph. The old man clasped his hands and stared at the ground as the corporal jabbed him in the mouth with the butt of his rifle. There was a flat, cracking sound. Joseph staggered sideways, but didn’t fall down. A line of blood drooled out of his mouth and trickled down his chin.

Pick up the shovel.

Joseph and I both took shovels and began to dig. Dr. Otema watched us work for a few minutes, then got back into his car. I tried to dig a straight-sided hole, but the earth refused to cooperate. There were a few inches of topsoil, but the underlying clay was hard and dry. I found myself chipping off pieces of dirt, then scraping up the residue with my shovel. The hole had a jagged circumference and crooked sides; it looked like the burrow of a clumsy animal.

A few years earlier I had been riding my motorcycle on a country road in Vermont when I hit an unexpected pothole and was flung out over the handlebars. There were only a few seconds before I landed facedown on the road, but I could still remember that incident with complete clarity. One small part of my brain knew that I was going to be hurt—perhaps killed— but my impressions of the moment pushed through my mind and overwhelmed these rational thoughts. I remember the warm, humid air, the tightness of my jacket, the sound of the engine, and then all was darkness.

Digging the grave, I tried to think about my family, my past, some means of escape—and yet none of these thoughts seemed to hold steady in my mind. The sergeant yawned and scratched himself. A fat black beetle crawled across the dirt in front of me. Noah returned to the van and switched on the air conditioner as the two soldiers sat down and stared out at the marshlands. Waves of humid air shimmered above the vegetation, and the huge movie screen seemed to bend and glow white.

When the holes were about three feet deep, Dr. Otema got out of his car. He whispered something to Noah, then leaned on his carved stick as the Minister of Information took back the shovels. Joseph and I stood like weary actors who were waiting for direction.

Lie down, said Dr. Otema. Both of you.

Joseph glanced at me—one last look—then disappeared into the ground. I shook my head and a tiny drop of sweat flashed through the air. I wanted to tell them something, but my lips trembled and refused to obey.

I don’t think, I whispered. I don’t . . . Then I gave up and lay down in the grave.

The two soldiers stared down at me. Dr. Otema gave them an order and they both walked away. I heard the snap of a rifle bolt, then the stuttered roar of gunshots as they fired into Joseph’s grave. The world stopped for a few seconds, then moved in slow motion as the two men jammed ammunition clips into their weapons and sauntered over to me.

I saw their faces and the sweat stains on their uniforms. The dark blue sky. They raised their weapons and fired as I curled up in a ball and screamed.

The noise stopped. I opened up my eyes and saw that I was covered with chips of red dirt. The soldiers had been shooting at the sides of the hole.

Breathe in. Breathe out. I stood up cautiously and watched Joseph emerge from the ground. Breathe in. Breathe out. Everyone was watching me, but I felt alone, as empty as a bottle that had been drained and discarded, floating in a vast sea.

2

FOR THE REST of the week I hid in my hotel room and tried to sleep with a sheet pulled over my head. The firing bolt from the sergeant’s rifle had cut my left cheek. It was a minor injury, but the scab kept breaking and the cut refused to heal. I would dream about the rifles firing down at me, then wake up to find dark red spots of blood on my pillow.

Joseph and the rest of the staff wanted me to remain in the Capital. If I flew back to the States and wrote an article about the mock execution, Dr. Otema’s men would arrest all the hotel workers and execute them in the forest. It was safer for everyone if I stopped writing articles and stayed in my room. Three days after the incident, strangers began to slip small sums of money under my door, and the porter brought me baskets of fruit. I was a household god—a familiar spirit who could be assuaged with free food and an occasional bottle of beer.

The fact that no one was urging me to leave reinforced my own inclination to remain in Africa. When the rainy season started, water leaked into the Capital’s corroded electrical system and there were daily blackouts all over the city. Lying in the dark room, I listened to the rainwater sloshing out of the roof gutters and dripping onto the ledge outside my window. The rain softened the light; it muffled the street noises and the sounds of the hotel plumbing. I felt as if I were living at the bottom of the sea.

One rainy afternoon, someone wearing rubber boots squeaked down the hallway and knocked on the door. I didn’t answer, even though I heard Joseph greeting the intruder. There was a mumbled conversation, then Joseph’s passkey opened the lock and Gordon Taggart entered the room. Gordon was the intelligence officer at the British embassy—a small man with a walrus mustache. He wore a bright yellow rain slicker with a hood, and looked more like a school crossing guard than a British spy.

Well, if this isn’t a bloody rathole.

Hi, Gordon.

What have you been doing, Ben? I haven’t seen you for several weeks.

I was sick. That’s all. Had a little dysentery.

Really? How unfortunate. Gordon prowled around the room, inspecting all the clutter. I heard a rumor about you a few days ago, and it didn’t involve your being sick. I think it’s time you went home.

Sorry, Gordon. I’m not ready for that yet.

You’re about to become a public embarrassment—one of those lost expatriates who shuffles round the Capital in stained walking shorts. Usually they rent a house outside the city and start to drink. Children tease them in the marketplace.

Guess I won’t get invited to embassy parties.

Gordon stared at me for a while, then squeaked his boots over to the window and looked out at the rain. Perhaps there’s another alternative. You could remain in the country, but get out of the Capital for a few weeks.

I doubt if any relief agency is going to hire me.

I’m not talking about a job. Ever heard of David Mather?

He digs water wells, right? Works for United Christian Relief.

Right now, Mather is staying at the Methodist Boys’ School on Nakumba Hill. He’s about to travel up to the Northern District and wondered if you’d like to come along.

He knows I’m a journalist?

Of course.

Does he want me to write a story about water wells?

I’m not quite sure what he wants. There’s a Halloween party at the American ambassador’s house tomorrow night. Mather will be there. Why don’t you come along with me and talk to him?

Sure. If it’s just a conversation.

Gordon flipped the yellow rain hood back over his head. You were the wrong kind of journalist for this country, Ben. Much too ambitious.

After Gordon left, I boiled a pot of water and tossed in a few coffee beans. While the beans bobbed on the surface like a flotilla of leaky rowboats, I thought about David Mather and his trip up to the Northern District. The district had been a white patch of unknown territory on the map until a group of surveyors led by a British army captain named Louis Pomeroy explored the area in the 1870s. Pomeroy wrote in his journal that the region was flat, rocky, and hotter than damnation. His African bearers had rebelled during the journey and the captain had personally executed three of them with his silver-plated shotgun.

Recently, there had been rumors of a terrible drought that had dried up all the hand-dug wells in the district. It was logical that one of the relief organizations would send a drilling team up to the area, and David Mather was the natural choice to lead such a group. The local missionaries talked about Mather as if he were an eccentric uncle who had moved to the