Holding on to the Memories
Introduction by Kathryn Tobin
I
The day Nelson Mandela came to Uganda in 1991, we lined up to welcome
him along the streets under the bottlebrush trees of the International
Conference Centre, like bouquets on display. It rained heavily that
afternoon, sweeping away the burgundy dust that usually covered the
streets. We stood shivering along the sidewalk, without sweaters because
the teachers ordered us to appear smart, and sweaters would hide our
school badges. We waited for three hours in the cold for the African
hero. When his convoy passed, he waved at us, and we shouted in
excitement, our voices sounding louder than the police sirens that
escorted his convoy. He hadn't noticed our badges.
Naboro wished her father was an African hero, not the tall, stooped
man in the arched doorway, a silhouette of himself. This was a man she
was afraid to call father—or even to acknowledge any relation to him,
save for living in the same house. This man lived 25 years back in time
and insisted on wearing bell-bottom trousers, which men of his
generation had long abandoned; he could have walked out of a photograph
from the 1970s. This was a man recently released from Luzira Maximum
Prison as a pardon from the President. This was a man, the papers
reported, on death row for the last 25 years "for atrocities . . . committed
against the Ugandan people during his time as Idi Amin's henchman."
When he appeared in Naboro's life the day he was pardoned, her mother
only said: "You were born nine months after he was taken away. It was
the beginning of the end of my life." She went right on stitching a
client's dress.
"What happened?" Naboro pushed. "I need to know."
All she said was this: "The Tanzanian army and Ugandan
rebels overran the government, and all top officials were arrested. The
people said the terror had ended."
Later, Naboro hunted for family pictures of him, looking for a thread
to connect her to this man she was supposed to call father but couldn't
form the word. There were gaps in the family albums where his pictures
should have been.
Naboro sat on her bed, not knowing what to say. She felt her
heartbeat quicken. She still felt uncomfortable around him. Their eyes
met. He looked at her like he was searching for something he had left
behind when he was arrested 25 years ago. She involuntarily dropped her
gaze and heard his hollow sigh. He took to sighing each time he looked
at her. When she looked up, she met his eyes still resting on her
regretfully. Her gaze, in turn, searched for something that might
connect them. Something that might make this awkwardness between them
lighter. She moved a little on her spring bed, wringing her hands. There
was nothing to say. If she wanted to talk, she wouldn't know where or
how to start. That she despised him? That he should have refused the
pardon and stayed in the prison like the other men had done? That their
lives were running smoothly until he interrupted the embroidery of peace
they had woven around themselves?
"May I come in?" he asked, breaking the silence.
She shrugged. "It's supposed to be your house," she whispered like
the wind had carried her voice away before she let it out of her
mouth.
He stepped cautiously into the room, as though afraid of being
followed or ambushed. His tall form filled the narrow room. It had
originally been a store and was painted a drab grey, which made it
appear smaller than it actually was. The reluctant, late-afternoon sun
seeped in through a small window and rested on her father's stooped
form. Today he wore a flowered shirt and grey checked bell-bottomed
trousers. These were the clothes her mother kept locked away for a long
time in the silver trunk—she had devotedly cleaned them every morning
for 25 years. The trunk sat in the corner of her mother's room, and she
never opened it in the presence of Naboro and her brothers. They always
wondered about the colossal trunk's contents. Naboro imagined gold
jewellery and other fancy things inside, not these flowered shirts and
bell-bottomed trousers.
The spring bed sunk in as he sat down beside her. She held her
breath. She had lived without a father in her life and couldn't react to
this one. She noticed her mother anxiously stealing glances in her
direction. And she sensed her discomfort. For her mother, he could have
been the one love of her life. For her? He was the missing card
discovered too late at the end of the game.
"Can we talk?" he spoke in a voice like a whistle. Naboro cringed.
She was silent.
"About what?" she asked. "Maybe we can talk about the song composed
about you, the one about dead babies and their mothers?"
She didn't want to be part of this man. She wished she could cleanse
her blood or trade it for someone else's. She jumped to her feet and
rushed to the door.
"I want us to talk about that," he said, stopping her in her
tracks.
"You did what the song says?"
She thought she saw him nod before she dashed out of the room. She
crashed into her mother.
"Where are you rushing to?" she asked.
"I'm running."
"Why?"
"That man . . ."
Naboro was tired of the house. The song about that man played in her
head:
Nasser prohibited the wearing of slippers/anyone wearing slippers
was like one who wore a mini/and had to be punished/Nasser made them eat
the slippers they wore/He burnt them with melting jerry cans/
The song rang in her mind as she hurried from the house, wanting to
get away from him—and from the eyes that made her think she was looking
at herself, the beseeching eyes that begged her to understand and to
talk. She didn't want to make friends with him; she didn't even want to
know him. She had learned enough from the newspaper archives at the
university library.
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