The Iron Bridge: Short Stories of 20th Century Dictators as Teenagers (2 page)

“I’m sick of this place and these stupid soldiers,” his mother tearfully replied. “We’re moving back to Bombo to live with Uncle Yusuf.”

Idi knew it was a lie. He knew that his mother’s failure with Pepsi was at the root of their dismissal. For a moment he stood stunned, but when she repeated her command, Idi stood his ground, scowling and refusing to pack a bag, his arms crossed against his chest. Although he had never before acted with such disobedience, Idi suddenly felt ready to abandon his failure of a mother, ready to live on his own—if only he could remain here, in the barrack, where men wore clean and pressed uniforms, sometimes festooned with medals and ribbons and fancy regalia, and not the rags and filthy shirts worn everywhere else in East Africa. He didn’t want his life ruined by his mother’s absurd and fraudulent sorcery, behaviour that seemed all the more strange and embarrassing when juxtaposed with the military precision of the finest troops in the British Empire—the King’s African Rifles.

Idi told his mother that he would rather stay with Corporal Yasin and all the other proud
askaris
, but she only
laughed at him. “Good luck,” she said, as she threw her things into a beat-up suitcase. “Go on and try. See what happens. Yasin won’t let you sleep here for one night.”

Idi knew she was right. The gruff corporal had never made any attempt at hospitality and would surely have rejected a plea from Assa’s tall and plainly stupid son. Still, these were men here in the barrack, real men, brave and strong and competent, all of the
askaris
in the ranks of the King’s African Rifles. Idi had lived amongst these soldiers for so long, had been so steeped in their ethos, that he’d begun to think of dark-skinned Africans outside the grasp of the British military as uncivilized, apelike creatures—primitives, for lack of a better word—even though he was one of them. They could not walk, sit, or speak with any dignity. They were wild animals, never comfortable outside the forest, desert, or grassland of their birth, whereas
askaris
might travel to Kenya or Egypt, or even someday north to the great city of London, where they would have tea with the King. No matter, Idi couldn’t stay with them.

When Idi and Assa Aatta lugged their few belongings onto the Bombo bus, the boy could see through the rusting barrack gates the elaborate drills and marches and exercises of the Fourth Battalion, the only men in his life, his spiritual fathers. Already, on that bus to Bombo, Idi knew that the Magamaga barrack in Jinja was more of a home than any place he’d ever lived. He vowed to return.

Now, in his dirty apron at the mess hall door, Idi knows that if his mother had turned that Pepsi woman away, he’d be an
askari
by now, not just some miserable
dupi
. His mother
ruined him. Idi downs the remaining cola and tosses the empty bottle into the rocks and dry dirt outside the mess hall, not unaware of the symbolism. He resolves to return to his barrack and spend the night polishing his boots and steaming his cook’s clothing so that when morning comes he will look more like a soldier than any of these disheveled
askaris
, despite his lack of a proper uniform. He removes his apron and returns to the kitchen to hang it on a hook.

“Amin,” calls Joseph, the senior cook on duty. “Don’t you take that apron off.” Joseph approaches with a plate in one hand and a scowl across his lips. “Look at this,” he says, as he holds the filthy dish inches from Idi’s nose, exposing bits of drying beef and mashed cassava stuck to the porcelain. “Are you trying to give the
askaris
dysentery?”

Idi, who can barely comprehend the man’s rapid Swahili, clutches his apron and shrugs.

“You can answer my questions with either a yes or a no.”

“No,” says Idi.

“Are you sure about that?”

“I am sure.”

“Then get back into the kitchen and wash this one and the others. Now, Amin! I want to go home.”

“Yes, sir,” says Idi, as he grabs the plate from Joseph’s hand. “I’m sorry. I’ll do it.”

Idi fills a bucket of fresh water from the faucet behind the kitchen. He pours it into the sink and then adds a kettle’s worth of hot water and soap. His eyes sting from the chalky cleaning powder wafting into the air. As he sifts through the clean plates, sighing and extracting the dozen or so that need
to be rewashed, he wonders if there is any job less fierce or manly than his. With his forearms and elbows submerged in sudsy water, his aching back bent at a sink built for short men, Idi can’t resist comparing his life as a
dupi
with that of a real KAR soldier. Instead of a gun, a sharp panga, and proper training with mortars, signals, and bayonets, he has a sponge, a spatula, and complete knowledge of the evening’s routine for sterilization.

Two years ago, when the young
askaris
of the Fourth Battalion battled the Japanese in the thick jungle of Burma’s Kabaw Valley, Idi owed his allegiance not to glorious King George or any of his colonial representatives, but rather to the balding and bespectacled manager of Kampala’s Imperial Hotel, a coward known more for his oversized paunch and squeaky voice than any proficiency with a Sten gun. Idi’s uniform in those days was the standard red jacket and juvenile cap of a common bellboy, an inherently comic outfit that looked outright absurd on a teenager of his immense stature. His major responsibility during that great war of the world was lugging Europeans’ trunks up the stairs for a spare coin or two. Now he’s nineteen, almost twenty, cleaning dishes in the heat. Is this a man? Is this a Kakwa? Not at all.

He overheard a conversation earlier in the evening between several older
askaris
and a recent recruit that emphasized the difference between an assistant cook and a soldier. Idi lingered in the dining room, clearing dirty plates and filing standard-issue cutlery, drawing out each of his motions so he might extend his opportunity to eavesdrop on their tale.

“He wore blackface,” said the sergeant, who crossed his legs
under the long table just like an Englishman. “It came from a special cream—very dark and very sooty—so the Japanese couldn’t tell who was the European in charge.”

“He’s always the one to kill first,” explained a corporal.

“It’s something they made in England especially for that occasion,” added another.

“It made them look silly,” the sergeant chuckled. “Bwana Robertson, with his English blue eyes, but his face as black as any Nubian.”

“So what happened?” asked the recruit.

“On patrol that morning we reached the river, which was wide and deep and fast—and remember, the jungle was so thick in that valley that the river was the only place where we could be seen by the enemy. They set up their ambush beside it.”

“By the bridge,” said a corporal. “The little rope bridge.”

“Which we never used,” added the sergeant. “We always waded. But halfway to the other side, the Japanese started shooting.”

“They had their trench thirty feet away.”

“Thirty feet!”

The
askaris
broke their conversation to sip their tea from European cups with handles. Idi could barely resist turning to regard those brave corporals and sergeants, their faces weathered by gunpowder, disease, and exploding shrapnel, one with a nine-inch scar in his cheek that extended all the way down to his neck.

“So Bwana charges the river and we follow,” continued the sergeant. “All leaping into the mud on the other side.”

“Except Nabugere,” whispered a corporal.

“Yes, Nabugere. He got hit.”

“And on the other side,” continued the sergeant, “just when he’s in a most desperate fix and should be taking cover in the monsoon mud, Bwana Robertson stands up screaming and waving his arms and jumps back into the river.”

“No!”

“Yes!” confirmed a corporal. “With the enemy firing all around.”

“And then he runs up the river screaming bloody murder, ordering the others to stay put and return the enemy fire, except for me—
only me
—to follow him into the water. This crazy man, I think. But what can I do? If my lieutenant orders me to follow, I have no choice but to follow.”

“And then,” picked up the corporal, “in the middle of the river, with bullets flying all over, Bwana Robertson yanks off his webbing and drops his rifle, pulls down his pants, and sticks his white ass into the air.”

“And with his black face turned back and his blue eyes pleading with me and his white ass up in the sky to get shot by the Japanese, I suddenly see that his whole backside is
covered
with biting red ants.”

“Oh, Lord almighty,” groaned the new recruit, echoing a phrase often heard from British officers.

“He’s screaming,
Get them off, sergeant! At once! That’s an order! Off!
”

“Oh Lord,” laughed the recruit.

“So with the enemy hollering
Banzai! Banzai!
and bullets
all around—and for certain we’ll be shot—I start brushing ants off what must be the whitest ass in all of Burma.”

“His testicles, too.”

“And his cock.”

“Oh Lord!”

The
askaris’
roaring laughter infected Idi Amin. He chuckled openly, his thick fists clutching cutlery, his wide back rising and falling with each sucked breath.

“If I had had a camera, I think I might have given myself up for dead just to snap a picture of Bwana like that. Black face, blue eyes, white ass, red ants. Oh, and the welts rising! Bwana clutching his balls. And his ass the biggest target in the world.”

“How did you survive?”

“How?” The mirthful sergeant shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know how. Ask God that question. We survived, that’s it. Got the ants off the Bwana’s ass, picked up my gun, and fired back.”

“Bwana Robertson still laughs about it. You can ask him. He’ll tell you everything.”

It was all too magnificent for Idi to comprehend. He shakes his head at the sink, wondering at the
askaris’
bravery and sense of duty, their humour and fatalism. These are the very models of men, with their amusing recollection two years later, here, in the safety of the company mess hall. And the way they genteelly sip their tea—such sophistication for Africans; so worldly and European. As the soap bubbles swallow Idi’s giant hands, he resolves to absorb and mimic
everything he can about these soldiers. He’ll learn how to sit and walk and speak like them. He’ll shine his boot caps into shimmering black diamonds and stiffen his crisp khaki shirts with so much starch that they’ll stand by themselves, their creases capable of cutting any finger that dares touch them. His Sten gun—is it possible he will ever hold his own?—will be so thoroughly oiled and cleaned that the others will have to ask him just how he did it. He will shoot straighter, run faster, sing
tu funge safari
with more strength and clarity than anyone in the battalion, even twenty miles into an all-day march through the jungle.

His glorious fantasy is interrupted by a nearby voice, just outside the humid concrete-block kitchen. “They’re animals,” a man says. “I know that for the truth.”

Idi wipes his brow with the back of his hand and looks up from the dishes. Outside a tiny barred window beside him, a couple of
askaris
have stopped to have a smoke or take a piss by the wall. They can’t see Idi.

“I also know it for the truth,” says another.

“They’re like a plague, ripping you off.”

“That’s all they know how to do.”

The soldiers are talking about Asians. Although he’s rarely given East Africa’s Indian merchants much thought, Idi has often heard soldiers complaining while standing outside the local tin-roofed
duka
in the compound, which is owned by an Indian merchant—as are all the
dukas
in the land. He’s heard the
askaris
cursing their inflated prices and their monopoly on purchasable goods.

“I saw them in Kohima, you know,” says the first voice.

“Oh yeah?”

“Here in Africa they think they’re such big men, but in their own country they live no better than goats.”

“In their own shit,” says the second.

“I’d never make my goat live like them.”

“They’re some kind of Asian animal.”

“I saw them with my own eyes.”

The voices fade as the soldiers move away. Idi finishes washing the dishes, dries them off with an old towel, and stacks them on the metal shelves. The head cook nods his approval and Idi removes his apron at last. He returns to the threshold and stands partially outside, watching the increasingly violent game of soccer that’s being played by the drunken soldiers.

“I was open!” screams one
askari
at another.

“But you can’t get anything.”

“Why don’t you kick me the ball?”

“I’ll kick it up your ass!”

One of the grumbling
askaris
spits in the dust and walks away. The game resumes, harder and faster, charged with an aggression that wasn’t present before the latest confrontation.

A British NCO cuts past the mess hall and catches Idi’s eye.
“Jamba,”
he says in passing.

“Jamba,”
Idi returns, as he stiffens his posture and salutes. The NCO smirks at this
dupi
who salutes as if he were a soldier.

Idi catches the smirk and knows exactly what it means. You can’t play at being an
askari
. The British have a keen smell for fraudulence. They court-martial cowards and
liars, sentencing offending
askaris
to lashings with a
kiboko
or, if the offence is committed in combat, to death by firing squad—as well they should.

Idi chews his bottom lip, peeling swatches of black skin off with his white teeth. He recalls his father’s scorn on the only occasion he’s seen the man in the past ten years. His father was employed in Bombo by the military police. When he saw Idi and his mother ambling up the road for a visit, he pointed his gun at them and shouted: “Get away, crazy lady, and take your stupid Lugbara son with you!”

That crazy lady never stops
, thinks Idi, as he leans against the threshold and watches the soccer match. She kept trying to win Idi over, long after he had given up on her. He recalls the morning he finally left home, two years ago, for Kampala and his awful stint at the Imperial Hotel. That was the last time he’d seen his mother. She panicked at his abrupt departure and made him sit down in their dingy hut, demanding to know if he’d had any dreams recently.