Killing Time

CHAPTER 45

The man's name, I soon learned, was Mutesa; and during the months to come he and his family would prove my saviors, taking me in as something of a cross between ward and pet after their chief, the aforementioned Dugumbe, announced that I could not stay in his tribe's mobile armed camp without a sponsor. Dugumbe fancied himself an enlightened despot: he dressed in an elaborate combination of traditional garb and several modern military uniforms and liked to pepper his conversation with concise denunciations of Western society. His personal code of conduct was based, or so he claimed, on the principal dictate of one of his nineteenth-century ancestors: "Only the weak are good — and they are good only because they are not strong enough to be bad." Yet beneath all this bluster Dugumbe possessed surprising intellectual rigor, even erudition, and in time his attitude toward me would soften. Indeed, because of our shared resentment of the technologically advanced world beyond the shores of Africa, Dugumbe and I would eventually become friends of sorts; but my primary gratitude to and affection for Mutesa, his wife, and their seven children was by then already solidly and irrevocably in place.

Dugumbe made it clear from the beginning that in addition to requiring a family to shelter and feed me while I was among his tribe, I would also need to fill some sort of role in his impressive force of five hundred disciplined, battle-hardened — and, it must be said, ruthless — men. I had no intention, of course, of sharing the remarkable technology that was hidden in my shoulder bag; I had already been fortunate that Mutesa and his detachment had been far enough from the action during my encounter with their enemies that they'd simply thought that I'd killed the men with a conventional weapon. Nor did I much relish the idea of going into tribal battle with an American or European assault weapon in one hand and a crude machete in the other. I asked Dugumbe whether he had any sort of medical officer, to which he said that while of course he had his tribal shaman, he was aware that when it came to the wounds of battle Western doctors could often be more effective. And so I became a field surgeon, calling on my medical school knowledge and even more on the basic tenets of hygiene and sterilization.

We campaigned all that winter and spring in the mountains, where I spent much of my time learning what plants were known to Dugumbe's people to have medicinal properties. Eventually we assembled quite a rudimentary pharmacy, which was fortunate, as there were no longer any "medicines" in the Western sense available to such people: during the height of the AIDS epidemic, Western pharmaceutical companies — after making donations of meaningless amounts of anti-HIV drugs for publicity purposes — had stopped shipping to poverty-stricken Africa not only those expensive products but also drugs that treated the host of other diseases that were decimating the continent: sleeping sickness, malaria, and dysentery, to name but a few. Necessity had, in the years that followed, forced the women in tribes like Dugumbe's to seek new cures in the jungle forest (his shaman continued to rely on spells and absurd potions made primarily from desiccated animal and human flesh), and they had discovered several plants with quite powerful antibiotic and analgesic powers. Some of these, such as the root I had experimented with during my first days in the mountains, had extreme side effects ranging from hallucination to death; but in controlled doses they were quite useful, and it struck me as deeply ironic that the same drug companies that had written Africa off so cold-bloodedly could have made enormous profits had they only shown a bit more foresight.

Dugumbe had decided that the need to stay on the move precluded his participation in the regional slave trade, thus saving me from an inconvenient crisis of conscience. Though never really dead in Africa, trafficking in human beings had in recent years proliferated to an extent that rivaled its ancient heights; and although I often heard Dugumbe describe it as an honored tradition, I chose to ignore such statements, just as I ignored all potentially disturbing aspects of the tribe's folklore, including and especially the ridiculous edicts of Dugumbe's shaman. My satisfaction with the way in which I'd removed myself from the information society that dominated the rest of the world, along with my nightly conversations with Dugumbe about the evils of said society, allowed me to turn a blind eye toward not only the petty squabbling that underlay most of the area's conflicts but also the smaller ways in which purely traditional wisdom hurt these people of whom I was daily growing fonder. It was not until the following summer that their customs and rituals would present me with any serious problem; when it finally came, however, the problem was so serious that I almost lost my life over it.

One evening, I arrived at the series of linked canvas tents that was home to Mutesa's family to find the mood uncharacteristically solemn. Mutesa was striding about with the air of a truly authoritarian patriarch, which stood in stark contrast to the usual way in which he joked and played with both his children and his wife. That good woman, Nzinga, was utterly silent — again very unusual — and while Mutesa's four sons were going through their usual evening ritual of cleaning both his and their rifles, the three girls were huddled in one of the tents. All of them were crying; the loudest was Mutesa's eldest daughter, Ama, who was just thirteen.

I asked Mutesa what evil had come into his house. "No evil, Gideon," he answered. "My daughters weep foolishly."

"And me?" Nzinga called out as she prepared the evening meal. "Do I weep because I am a fool?"

"You speak because you are disobedient!" Mutesa shouted back. "Finish making my food, woman, and then prepare your daughter! The shaman comes soon."

"The butcher comes soon," Nzinga said as she passed us on her way into the tent where her daughters were hiding. Mutesa made a move to strike her, but I grabbed his upheld arm, although I don't think that he would have followed through with the blow. Nonetheless, he was clearly a tormented man just then — and his discomfort was becoming infectious.

"Why is the shaman coming?" I asked. "Is there illness in your house? If so, I can—"

"You must not interfere, Gideon," Mutesa said firmly. "I know that you of the West do not approve — but it is Ama's time."

All was instantly, appallingly clear. I groaned once as the realization sank in and then tightened my grip on Mutesa's arm. "You must not do this," I said, quietly but with real passion. "Mutesa, I beg you—"

"And I beg you," he answered, his voice softening. "Gideon, Dugumbe has decreed it. To resist means the girl's death, and if you involve yourself, it will mean yours, too."

He pried himself from my grip, no longer looking angry but instead deeply saddened; and as he followed his wife into the next tent to comfort his daughter I stood there agape, trying to determine what in the world I could do to stop the sickening rite of passage that was about to take place. My mind, however, had been dulled by shock; and when I heard a gaggle of old maids start to collect outside the tent, chanting a lot of idiotic nonsense about a girl's entry into womanhood, I began to panic stupidly, rushing outside and screaming at them to keep quiet and go away. But they completely ignored me, making it plain that my status as an outsider made me invisible at such a ritualistic moment. All the same I kept hollering until the shaman arrived, accompanied by several armed guards who looked quite menacing. In the shaman's hand was a vicious-looking knife, and the sight of it, along with a very no-nonsense glare from the shaman, was enough to send me back into the tent, where I now found Mutesa with his arm around the shaking, sobbing Ama.

"Mutesa," I said, realizing with deep dread that there was in fact no way to stop the nightmare, "at least tell the shaman to let me prepare her. I have drugs that can dull the pain, and we must keep the knife and the wound clean."

"Gideon, you must not interfere" Mutesa once again declared. "This is not a subject for argument. It will be done as it is always done." I thought he might even weep himself when he said, "She is a female child, Gideon. The pain does not matter, only the ceremony." At his words Ama began to shriek fearsomely, and Mutesa tightened his grip on her. Ordering her to be silent, he proceeded to drag her out to the crowd that had gathered.

Ama's cries were horrible to hear even before the cutting began; but when the knife went in they became quite simply the most horrifying and unbearable sound I've ever heard. I clutched my head, thinking that I might go mad — and then a thought occurred to me. I ran to where I'd stowed my bag and withdrew the stun gun. If I could not stop the unspeakable act, I could at least ease the child's torment.

I dashed outside to a scene so revolting that it stopped me dead in my tracks. There was no special area set aside for the procedure, not even a blanket thrown on the earth — the regard in which the "female child" was held was amply displayed by the way her genitalia were being cut up in the dirt, much as one would have gelded an animal. With a sudden roar, I brought the ceremony to a halt; and when I raised my weapon the shaman, bloody knife in hand, took a step away from the girl, giving me a line of fire. Instantly I pulled the trigger, and Ama's body jerked a few inches into the air as she painlessly and mercifully lost consciousness.

"She is only asleep!" I shouted, using much of what little I knew of their language and breathing hard; then I quickly directed the weapon at the shaman's guards. "Tell the shaman that he can go on now, Mutesa," I said in English, opening the tent flap and backing inside. "And I hope that your gods will forgive you all."