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Acknowledgements

Some time in early 2003 I sat down at the manual typewriter in the day room of Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin, California. The vintage Olivetti was much like the one on which I’d learned to type in Mr Fink’s class (yes, that was his name) in high school in 1963.

I’d just finished reading The Da Vinci Code and was longing for my family and community in southern Africa, where I’d lived for nearly 20 years as a fugitive. I had an idea for a novel about an historian going to Zimbabwe in the early 1980s. I’d never written a novel before. New environments create new occupations.

My first few words on the Olivetti were barely visible. The 100000-mile warranty on that tattered ribbon had definitely expired. The authorities told me no backup was available. Then they outlined the myriad steps required to obtain a new one. I filled out the first round of request slips for a replacement. I was certain my fiction fantasy wouldn’t appear in legible print for quite a while.

I had made a rookie’s miscalculation, and discounted convict ingenuity. The ribbon was not dead.

‘If you put baby oil on it,’ one veteran inmate told me, ‘it will squeeze out the last drop of ink.’

Sure enough, an hour of the baby oil treatment breathed life into that fading black nylon. A few months and several baby oil sessions later, a totally inadequate first draft emerged. I sent it to my mother. She liked it. A mother always does, even when her son has been a fugitive for 27 years. I figured my story could just rest there. Besides, the ribbon’s ink had dissipated beyond the reach of baby oil.

Then my months of pestering prison bureaucrats paid off. Two brand new ribbons arrived. My project resuscitated, I spent hours enjoying the clear, crisp letters filling the pages of my redraft. I had a new companion.

The manuscript travelled with me to four prisons over the next three years. It passed from a manual typewriter to an electric typewriter to a computer disk. By late 2006 I had a 300-page printout of draft number six of my masterpiece.

With great anticipation, I sent it to Judy Kendall, a woman I taught with in Zimbabwe in the early 1980s. She was just finishing a doctorate in Literature. I thought she’d be able to appreciate my wonderful tale. She read it, then returned it with some not so kind comments. She politely told me it wasn’t a novel. The characters were solid wood; the dialogue was flat, the story went nowhere. She had a laundry list of recommendations.

By that time I’d lost some of my enthusiasm and all access to technology. If I wanted to incorporate any of Judy’s suggestions, I’d have to write by hand. Fortunately, I guess, I was at Deuel Vocational Institution where, save for short walks to the dining hall twice a day, your cell is your life. I beavered away on my top bunk, targeting 20 pages a day. In a little over a month I had 570 pages of manuscript. What the hell could I do with this monstrous pile of paper?

I worked up the courage to ask Judy to look at it one more time, apologising profusely for its handwritten state, then again for the horrors of my particular script. Luckily for me, it’s hard to say ‘no’ to an incarcerated friend, though if letters could sigh with consternation, Judy’s would have. I then convinced an

other friend, Roger Dunscombe from Melbourne, Australia, to take a look. He’d also been a teacher in Zimbabwe in the 1980s.

I’ll never forget Judy’s response to the new version: ‘I think you’ve cracked it.’ She spoke of future reviews, book signing parties. Roger got even more carried away, connecting me to the tradition of Steinbeck and Dos Passos. When you’re in prison, a few words of ridiculous hyberbole never go unappreciated.

So there I sat with this stack of 570 handwritten pages in the early 21st century, the Information Age. Would any agent or publisher take a peek at this thing in such a state? Doubtful.

Enter what I came to call the ‘Magnificent Seven’: my mother-in-law, Pat Barnes-McConnell, long-time friend Stephen Morrow in Sydney and his five-person Aussie typing pool: Rhonda Fadden, Ann Peterson, Greg Peterson, Isla Tooth and Margaret Waller.

I sent the 570 pages to Pat in Michigan. She copied them and mailed them off to Stephen and company. They typed it in batches, Stephen put them together and emailed the product back to Pat. At that time the authorities in my new home, High Desert State Prison, introduced new mail restrictions: no one could receive more than 10 pages in one envelope. Petty admin rules don’t stop a determined mother-in-law. She reduced them, copied front and back, giving me 4 pages to each piece of paper, 40 pages per envelope. She dutifully mailed 10 packets, each within the 10-page maximum allowed.

Like all authors, I wasn’t quite satisfied with what I’d produced. I didn’t know if the bounds of friendship could extend into corrections and editorial changes. I guiltily made manual cuts and pastes and rewrote a couple of chapters by hand. At some point I’m sure the typing pool thought they’d entered a tunnel with no exit – endless therapy for their imprisoned taskmaster.

In the meantime, multitasking Stephen approached Umuzi Publishers in Cape Town, asking them if they would consider my novel. They agreed, though Stephen warned them it might be awhile before a printed version landed in their office.

After three rounds of back and forth with changes, I made it to the end of the rainbow. Stephen sat down for about 20 hours, did the final corrections and sent it off to Umuzi. A couple of weeks later, they were talking contract. We Are All Zimbabweans Now had entered the final stage of its journey. That inmate jumping for joy in the day room at High Desert State Prison was me, though I never told a soul why.

Obviously this book could never have gotten very far without the Magnificent Seven, plus Judy and Roger. How they managed to find hours to deal with my manuscript in their already overfilled lives I will never know. I am forever grateful.

At the same time, an inmate-writer can only sustain the effort with emotional as well as technical support. Unlike most of the 2.3 million prisoners in the United States, I have had the boundless love and nurture of family, friends, comrades and well-wishers.

First among them all comes my mother, Barbara Kilgore. For the 27 years during which I was on the run, she never lost faith, remaining loving and loyal. For most of that time my father, Robert Kilgore, stood at her side. He passed away in 2000, having seen his only child just once in the last quarter-century of his life. I hope I can honour them a little by my writing.

The other bulwark behind my prison writing has been the loving presence and intellectual inspiration of my wife, Terri Barnes. She shouldered the multiple burdens of single parenting, becoming the fount of strength for our two courageous sons, Lewis and Lonnie. She led them as they braved the alien and hostile territory of visiting rooms, prison-regulated phone calls, harassing reporters, and painstaking court appearances. Then, she always had insightful comments about history and fiction to keep me on track. Without the will of my family to continue to succeed in life despite the intrusion of my capture, I would never have risen to the state of mind necessary for creative production.

The four of us have not been alone. Buoyed by her faith and the support of her church, Pat Barnes-McConnell lent support far beyond the flawless copying and mailing of the manuscript. Let no one ever say an unkind word about mothers-in-law in my presence. Her husband, Dave McConnell, has been equally steadfast and loving in his unique way.

Then comes a network of all those who sent letters, books, postcards, calendars, and visited me in various uncordial venues. In South Africa this network also provided companionship and sympathetic ears for Terri, as well as much needed assistance with child care and other logistics. At the head of this list stands a great friend and incomparable correspondent, Laura Czerniewicz. Also invaluable at every stage were my cousin Carol Ackerman; Mary Bassett; Moses Cloete; Rick, Jacques and Francis de Satge; Annie Holmes; Sue Fawcus; Colin Miller; Tim Reagan; Elaine Salo; David Saunders; and Frank Wilderson.

Dozens more consistently kept in touch. My apologies to friends inadvertently omitted from this list: Patricia Appolis; Ian Bampton; Jim Barnes; Aurora Kazi Bassett; Patrick Bond; Erin Bourke; Graeme Bruce; Debbi BarnesJosiah; Debbie Byrne; Joseph Calluori; Carohn Cornell; Jeremy Cronin; Felice Data; Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz; Peter Dwyer; Gavin Evans; Dianne Feeley; Maj Fiil-Flynn; Mikki Flockemann; Diane Fujino; Rob Gaylord; Clem Glynn; Martin Hall; Matef Harmachis; Martin Hart-Landsberg; Jim Hayes; Nick Henwood; Peter Heywood; Adam Hochschild; Helen Jackson; Nancy Jacobs; Mary Ellen Kaluza; Eric Larsen; Rosemary Lyons; Tom Magliulo; Anne Mager; Mary Joy Maher; Amy Manchershaw; the Mazels (Aron, Annie MacDonald, and Nicola and Rebecca); David MacDonald; Faranak Miraftab; Walt Morgan; Susie Newton-King; Sekai Nzenza; Dan Pretorius; Martin Prew; Maggie Robbins; Ken Salo; Ighsaan Schroeder; Robert Segall; Mike Sullivan; Mary Sutton; Beverly Thomas; Wendy Walker, David Moffat and family; Ed Wethli; Everjoice Win; the Worbys (Cy, Marsha, and Laura); Laila Parada-Worby.

I thank my friends, former colleagues and students in Harare. I must also thank the comrades from my former organisations in South Africa: International Labour Research and Information Group (ilrig), Khanya College, Workers’ World Radio, as well as Labour Research Services, all of whom kept me abreast of events in the region.

Four more debts of gratitude remain:

My legal team in California and Cape Town without whose efforts I would never have dreamed of enjoying freedom with loved ones again, let alone writing a novel. They are: Dayle Carlson, Mike Evans, Anton Katz, Gregor Guy-Smith, Stuart Hanlon and above all, Louis Freeman.

The late Farayi Munyuki and his family who introduced me to Zimbabwe, the Shona language, and the complexities of African liberation.

Those I met in prison who encouraged my writing: fellow convicts Freddy Trainor, Jose Razo-Bravo and Bryan Baldridge; my long-time cellmates Mike Harris and Bob Anderson who tolerated lights on late at night and papers floating throughout the cell; and my prison ‘boss’ Jody Kirch, one of the few caring educators in the world of ‘corrections’.

Lastly, I thank Umuzi Publishers, particularly Annari van der Merwe, Jeanne Hromnik and Frederik de Jager for taking a chance on this first-time novelist and for being willing to scale the prison walls to get the job done.

I offer We Are All Zimbabweans Now as a small giving back to all those who were there along the way. In prison we are down, but not out.

A luta continua.

James Kilgore

High Desert State Prison

California, usa

December 2007

Introduction

I spent most of the 1980s in Zimbabwe, a time of great hope. Thousands of people like myself and the protagonist in this novel, Ben Dabney, flocked to Zimbabwe in a spirit of solidarity. We wanted to lend whatever support we could to the government of the heroic Robert Mugabe and his party, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). Zimbabwe seemed a morality play for the ages. Mugabe and his forces, in conjunction with Joshua Nkomo and the fighters of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), had driven a racist white minority regime and its arch villain leader, Ian Smith, from power. Nearly a century of racial oppression had ended.

As Ben Dabney would put it, at that moment Mugabe appeared a combination of Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, an almost saintly figure who had spent ten years in a colonial prison only to come into power preaching forgiveness of his oppressors.

Perhaps my clearest memories of those days are of the eager pupils I taught at Mabvuku High School, a cohort for whom education held future salvation. Jammed two or three to a desk, they sat wide-eyed, always pleading for more homework. “Can’t you come and give us extra lessons on Saturdays and during school vacations?” they’d ask. And they meant it. I could never provide enough material or assignments to quench their thirst for knowledge. They were convinced that once they completed their schooling, their own futures and that of the nation would be in their hands.

More than two decades later as I reflected on those times, the optimism of that period felt like a remote childhood memory. By the early 2000s Zimbabwe was descending into economic chaos. The once iconic Robert Mugabe had transformed into a megalomaniac, bent on retaining power by any means necessary. For the media, Zimbabwe, that beacon of our hopes, had become but another “African basket case.”

As I was reflecting on those times, I wrote a short poem, a remembrance of one of my Mabvuku students, which brought some of my feelings to the fore:

For Nikiwe

1984

A time of meat and bread

A bus to town for 16 cents

Nikiwe sat in the middle of the class

She sparkled

As she sharpened her tiny pencil with half an old razor blade

And solved her simultaneous linear equations

X was equal to three, y was four

No problem.

Today she can’t find x

There is no y

Pencils are no longer in the equation

The rich have eaten Zimbabwe

And left Nikiwe

Only a razor to swallow

As I wrote those lines I wanted to weep but also I wanted to understand, to unpack why Zimbabwe’s liberation unraveled and why so many of us solidarity-minded “expatriates” got so much of it wrong.

So I created this Ben Dabney character and began to explore 1980s Zimbabwe through his eyes. On one level We Are All Zimbabweans Now is a story about the rise and fall of a once heroic leader and the disillusionment of one of his followers. But Zimbabwe can tell us more. As we follow Ben Dabney through the streets of Harare and along the dusty rural roads to Kuzvitonga Cooperative and Vukani Secondary School, three critical aspects of the history of this time become apparent. The first is that Zimbabwe never fully escaped white supremacy. Though the whites had lost political power and their legal rights to superiority, they clung to their assets and their attitudes. This set in motion a buildup of justifiable racial resentment that Mugabe quite cleverly manipulated later on to serve his own ends.

The second is that amidst all our excitement about the advances Zimbabwe was making—new schools, new clinics, assistance to black farmers, equity for women—we refused to accept, let alone criticize, the faults of the new regime. Too often criticism was taken as siding with the enemy, whether it was Ian Smith, the still menacing apartheid state of South Africa, old imperialists like Cecil Rhodes, or new ones like Margaret Thatcher. As Ben Dabney would learn, in politics there are always many good reasons to justify doing the wrong thing.

Such sentiments were never more apparent than during the government’s military repression of the civilian population in the Matabeleland region. From 1982 to 1985, the security forces killed some twenty thousand people while the media, the citizens in other parts of the country, and most of the expatriate population kept quiet. The official pretext for the killings was that members of ZAPU had defected from allegiance to the new government and with South African support were seeking to overthrow Mugabe. On the one hand, this was a plausible claim. At that very time the apartheid state was visiting indiscriminate death and destruction on the neighboring countries of Mozambique, Namibia, and Angola. Yet the hard lesson was that plausible doesn’t always equate with true. Far too many supposedly well-meaning and progressive people like myself accepted the Zimbabwean government’s denial of wrongdoing in Matabeleland at face value. We heard the horror stories from friends and colleagues who witnessed the atrocities, but their tales were too unsettling to believe. We clung to our paradigm of triumph and liberation. We had many good reasons for doing the wrong thing.

Ben Dabney did a little bit better than most of us. Flawed character that he was, he still attempted to speak out and paid some price for it, though nothing like the terrible price paid by those thousands in Matabeleland.

The third aspect of Zimbabwe’s history that informed this novel is the role and definition of heroes. Coming from an American society where individualism and celebrity reigned, it was only natural that a youthful historian like Ben Dabney would look for an idol to epitomize Zimbabwe’s liberation. But after a while he realized that some of the ordinary people in this book, such as Florence Matshaka, Mrs. Taruvinga, Comrade Rusununguko, Obert the bartender—folks who didn’t inhabit cabinet meetings and university lecture halls or live in five-star hotels—held more important stories than those who grabbed the headlines.

These then are the themes, ideas and historical understandings, that drove me to write this book. My overarching hope was perhaps a little more ambitious. As readers will notice, different characters use the title phrase in different ways throughout the story. I hope through Ben Dabney and the other characters, Zimbabwe will speak to you and you will find your own understanding of what it means to say: “We are all Zimbabweans now.”

James Kilgore

Champaign, Illinois

March 2011

To my mother and father

Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, 1983

‘Are you calling me a liar?’ the sergeant shouts. He’s right in Moyo’s face. Moyo must be breaking into a cold sweat under the African sun. I can’t see him clearly, though. He’s at the other end of the line-up.

‘No, sir,’ Moyo replies, ‘I’m just saying we are not supporting dissidents here. We don’t involve ourselves in politics. We are teachers.’

‘You’re telling me you’ve never seen a dissident here in Vukani, never heard of dissidents in Vukani?’

‘Yes, sir. Never.’

The sergeant steps back and draws the .45 from his belt. He points the gun at Moyo’s forehead, then pulls back the hammer. The click is almost as loud as the sergeant’s voice. We’re all looking away, hoping that averting our eyes will halt the inevitable.

The sergeant eases the hammer forward. ‘Maybe you need a reminder,’ he says.

He flips the pistol in his hand, grabbing it by the barrel. He raises it over his head, then brings the butt down onto the bridge of Moyo’s nose.

Moyo drops to one knee, blood spraying his fresh white shirt and the dirt of the soccer field where they have forced us to gather.

The schoolchildren, huddled in classroom doorways, let out a collective shriek. A headmaster is a man of dignity in this rural community, not someone to batter like a weary fencepost. One girl throws herself on to the ground weeping.

Why did Florence ever tell me to come here? Her instincts are usually right; not this time.

Nomonde breaks ranks, streaking behind the line of teachers, to try to

rescue Moyo. She’s kicked off her high heels, but even barefoot she’s not fast enough. Two soldiers intercept this diminutive woman with a flying tackle. I am thinking of going to help her when another soldier latches onto my arm and leads me away. Whatever else they’re planning, they don’t want a white foreigner to see.

As I walk away, I’m seized by a dream. My hero, Robert Mugabe, swoops in with his motorcade and rewinds everything back to students sitting at desks while the teacher’s chalk clicks against the board.

Of course, Mugabe and his entourage never arrive. I have to face reality. The new life I’ve created has begun to implode. Dlamini’s visions of me as a great historian evaporate. Now the question becomes: will I end up at the same miserable point where I started?

Chapter 1

I’ve always loved history. While other boys hit home runs and memorised baseball players’ batting averages, I studied the emperors of Rome. I wrote their names and the dates of their reigns on 3×5 cards. By age ten, I could recite them all: Tiberius 14–37 ad, Caligula 37–41 ad, and so forth. I finished reading the eighth and last volume of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War on homecoming night in high school – no quarterback or cheerleader could have made that claim. My parents were not impressed, though. They never are.

Even now, dates pop into my head out of nowhere: 1588, the defeat of the Spanish Armada; 1066, the Battle of Hastings; July 2, 1881, the assassination of President James Garfield.

History remains my obsession, but it’s never made sense to me. I fail to see the plan, divine or otherwise. Why don’t we learn from history? After two world wars, the United States and the Soviet Union keep rattling their nuclear sabres. We suffer from a stubborn inability to improve on the past.

For the moment, however, my historical gloom has receded. Robert Mugabe, elected on March 4, 1980 to head the government of the tiny country of Zimbabwe, has given the world new hope. He’s more forgiving than Mother Teresa, as singleminded as Martin Luther King or the Dalai Lama.

A few months ago I’d never heard of Mugabe. Today his presence dominates my office. His profound wisdom sings to me in Old English lettering that took six hours to paint on my wall:

It could never be a correct justification that because whites oppressed us yesterday when they had power, the blacks must oppress them today because they have power. An evil remains an evil whether practised by whites against blacks or blacks against whites. Democracy is never mob rule.

These are the words of a man who triumphed after ten years in a colonial prison. The white authorities tortured him, hooking his genitals to an electric current and rendering him sterile. Once they released him, they made three attempts on his life. Now he forgives them.

I choose my heroes carefully.

On this wintry day in 1981, I am sitting in my small office at Wisconsin State University. My desk has become a storage house for a collection of 1527 index cards containing facts and figures about Zimbabwe. Since this country’s name is so long, I’ve abbreviated it to lof in my notes – Land of Forgiveness.

I typed all the 3×5 cards myself. They’re colour coded – blue for biography, green for geographical topics, yellow for events. Some, like Chinhoyi, have dual categories – it’s a place and an event. ‘Chinhoyi – city in northwest lof, site of first battle of liberation war, 1966; formerly called Sinoia.’

I’m not ashamed to admit it. Mugabe and his lof are taking over my life. I suspect he’ll win the Nobel Peace Prize. No one deserves it more than he does.

I’ve made a decision. I’m going to Zimbabwe to chase my dream. I will write the definitive history of Zimbabwe’s struggle for liberation and reconciliation. Robert Mugabe will be the hero of my story. John Peterson, my African History professor, will supervise.

I’m reading Green Eggs and Ham to my daughter Hilary. She’s five and giggles like I’m tickling her tummy every time I recite the refrain. Dr Seuss is perfect for diverting her attention from my departure.

Dr Seuss is my line of communication to her, the only tool, short of candy and ice-cream, with which I can reach her. The chasm between us is of my creation. I’m running away from it. If I have been only an occasional visitor in her life to date, I will now be an even more distant, less frequent, presence. My dream has no meaning for my daughter Hilary or Janet, her mother. I’ve abandoned Janet before. When she became pregnant I tried to deny responsibility, then just fled. I saw Hilary for the first time when she was three months old. To my shame, I never changed her diaper or fed mashed carrots into her toothless mouth. I wasn’t there when she took her first steps or waited for the fairy after losing that first tooth. I’ll miss many more milestones as I attempt to make sense of my world of ideas.

As I leave, I promise birthday greetings and postcards of elephants, plus the occasional phone call. Janet, small and tight-lipped, knows better than to expect anything. Hilary has no concept of 8000 miles or two years. She probably won’t recognise me the next time we meet or may not want to if she does. I will live with all that somehow, like so many men who find things they think are more important in life than fatherhood.

Less conflicted is my cursory farewell dinner at my parents’ house in South Milwaukee. They respond to what they see as my ‘bad decisions’ with resolution and faith. They pray for me as I set off for what to them is a godforsaken and dark continent. ‘There are pagans there,’ my mother says.

I don’t try to argue and don’t promise any postcards. Since their conversion this is how it’s been.

No one comes to the airport to bid me farewell. I check my backpack and a battered brown leather suitcase with the silver letters db on it. Someone at the Goodwill, where I bought it, must have reversed my initials. My business cards show that I’m Ben Dabney, PhD researcher at Wisconsin State University. That brown suitcase holds my collection of 3×5 cards. I’ve wrapped them in bundles of a hundred and stuffed each bundle inside a sock.

I carry my most prized possession on board: a Hermes Rocket portable typewriter in its grey metal case. Peterson says typewriters are expensive in Zimbabwe. My jacket pocket contains a list of 73 people to interview.

According to my ticket, my destination is Salisbury, Rhodesia. I know I’m going to Harare, the liberated name of the capital of the liberated nation of Zimbabwe. Rhodesia is dead.

My journey is about more than history. Mugabe’s gospel of reconciliation will help me reconcile the ruined relationships of my life.

Chapter 2

‘Which hotel, sir?’ the taxi driver asks as he closes the trunk of his gleaming yellow Datsun. The latch catches on the third try.

‘King George the Sixth,’ I reply.

‘The King George, sir,’ he answers as if he hasn’t heard correctly.

I sit in the back with the Hermes on my lap. Although a plastic piece is missing from the window crank, the silver handle shines like a place setting at a Christmas dinner. The driver picks up a piece of towelling and wipes it across the dashboard, chasing away imaginary dust. The steering wheel on the right has me disoriented. I look out the window for murals of heroic guerrilla fighters or billboards with Mugabe’s face. The yellowing facade of Harare International Airport bears no odes to the Chimurenga, as the Zimbabweans call their 13-year liberation war.

The driver pulls a lever and the meter ticks like an angry metronome.

‘Your car smells new,’ I tell him.

‘We are trying our level best, sir,’ he answers. ‘These days things are so tough.’

‘Why?’

‘We don’t know if the Europeans will keep coming,’ he responds. As we pull out of the parking lot, he puts on black-framed sunglasses. A strip of masking tape holds one of the sidepieces together.

‘Is this your first time in Zimbabwe, sir?’ he asks.

‘My first time outside the United States.’

‘You are from America, sir?’

‘Yes, Wisconsin. A very cold place in the Midwest.’

‘I think at school we once learned that they produce cheese in Wisconsin, sir.’

‘That’s right. Wisconsin is famous for cheese and the Green Bay Packers.’

Despite his politeness, I’m starting to worry about the driver. I don’t see many people or houses. I’ve asked no one about taxis or crime. I am at his mercy in this land of reconciliation.

‘Sir, what’s a Packer?’ he asks.

‘It’s a football team,’ I reply. ‘It’s a little hard to explain.’ A stadium full of freezing people with their faces painted yellow and green is hard to explain.

A station wagon passes us on the left. The back wheels kick up gravel as the vehicle leaves the tarred surface. A dozen people press against each other inside. A baby strapped to its mother’s back peers out the window.

‘These et’s,’ the driver says, ‘they are causing all the accidents these days. Always overtaking on the left. Where do they buy their driving licences?’

‘What’s an et?’ I ask.

‘An emergency taxi, sir. Those Peugeot 404s that keep running people off the road. They’re so dangerous.’ He speaks softly and the accent is new to me. Taxi drivers don’t have the elocution of prime ministers.

After passing many fields of thriving weeds, there are pedestrians and houses. Black people are walking everywhere – on dirt paths, along the side of the road, in front of shops. Most of the women wear black canvas tennis shoes or flip flops. Though I’m sweating from the January heat, many of the walkers wear knitted beanies. A white woman who looks like she’s in a hurry passes us in a blue Morris Minor. A German Shepherd barks from out her back window.

Farther along, two men ride black, balloon-tyre bicycles, like the one I got for my eighth birthday. Ahead of them, a man pushes a similar bike with a table and four wooden chairs tied to a rack over the back wheel. Smoke from a loosely rolled cigarette drifts from his mouth as he escorts his load.

‘Sir, this is where the Europeans live,’ the driver tells me. ‘It’s called Hatfield.’

‘The houses are huge,’ I reply. High walls and concrete fences surround the yards, leaving only the red rooftiles easily visible.

‘Not so big, sir. In Borrowdale or Chisipite they are far much bigger. Some are double storey.’

‘Doesn’t this city have smog?’ I ask. Harare’s blue sky evokes camping in northern Minnesota and not the overhang of a capital.

‘Iwe!’ the driver shouts as a car speeds across the road in front of him. The offender ran a stop sign. ‘Hauzive kudraiva! You don’t know how to drive, you!’ The driver parks in front of the hotel and the meter stops. He hands me a scrap of brown paper.

‘Here are my details, sir,’ he says. ‘Whenever you need a taxi, ask for Cosmas.’

The black metal letters on the building in front of me read ‘King George v Hotel’. One generation, apparently, has fallen away.

Before I can get my arms into the straps of the backpack, a tall man in a white Nehru jacket is standing in front of me. ‘Good morning, sir,’ he says, trying to ease the backpack out of my grip. ‘Let me help you.’ He smells like freshly laundered hospital linen.

I carry my typewriter as I follow him up some stairs and through a double wooden door. The lobby has well-vacuumed, ageing brown carpeting and dark veneer panelling. The brass light fixtures are missing most of their bulbs.

‘Good morning, sir,’ says a tall blonde woman at the desk.‘Do you have a booking?’

Mugabe’s picture hangs on the wall behind her. They’ve washed away his wrinkles. He’s wearing those dark-framed glasses from the days of the liberation war. He’s not smiling, but I like having him there.

I unzip seven pockets in my backpack before I find the well-folded piece of paper that confirms my booking and hand it to her.

‘Aaron,’ she says in a voice now half an octave higher, ‘take the gentleman’s bags to Room 124.’

‘Yes, madam,’ he replies, picking up the luggage he has just set down. I follow the slow-treading Aaron down a corridor of more brown carpet to my room.

The mattress sags and the nightstand drawer smells of mothballs. I’m coated with lack-of-sleep slime and ready for my first shower on the African continent. Instead, I collapse on the bed. I fidget to find a comfortable position. After a few minutes the springs relax and I’m asleep in Zimbabwe, exactly where I want to be.

Chapter 3

The King George lies on a busy road, opposite a small set of shops. As I come out the double doors, three young men wait for me at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Chess set, master?’ says one of them. ‘Very good price for you, my friend.’

‘Nice hippo, baas. Cheap, cheap.’

They’re hawking stone carvings, animals, knights, rooks and bishops. I keep moving. They follow with marketing ploys and titles of honour. I want to tell them I’m no one’s master, that there are no slaves in a free Zimbabwe. I keep quiet and they turn to other prey.

I can see tall buildings a couple of miles away. After two blocks, a blue Mazda pulls up next to me. The driver, a middle-aged white man, rolls down his window.

‘Do you want a lift?’ he asks. I haven’t seen mutton-chop sideburns like his since Joe Cocker at Woodstock.

‘No, thanks. I’m just taking a walk.’

‘What part of America do you come from?’ he asks.

‘Wisconsin.’

‘I have a brother in South Carolina,’ he tells me. ‘He loves it there.’

‘I’ve never been to South Carolina,’ I reply.

‘How long will you be in Salisbury?’

‘About a week.’

‘I’m heading down south as soon as possible. There is still some sense in South Africa. We’ve lost everything to the communists here.’

‘Thanks for stopping,’ I reply.

I start walking. ‘I need to stretch my legs,’ I tell him. ‘Those long flights can knock you out.’

‘Go well,’ he says. ‘Or I guess I should say “have a nice day”.’ He chuckles as he rolls up his window and drives away.

Before I reach the city centre, two more white drivers pull over to offer rides. The last one gives me a warning: ‘Europeans from overseas don’t realise it’s not safe for us here any more.’

He hangs his head out the window of his pickup and looks both ways. ‘These munts will smile at you and say “yes baas”. Then, the next thing you know …’ He drags a forefinger across his throat and bares his teeth.

Sirens sound in the distance. The driver perks up like a startled squirrel and slams his car into first gear. ‘I must get out of here before the nonsense starts,’ he tells me. ‘I might get stuck here all day. Bloody fools.’

He speeds away.

Half a block ahead, a white-enamelled motorcycle glides to a halt in the middle of the intersection. A man in a sharply pressed green uniform and white helmet gets off the bike. His siren screams as he raises his hand to stop cross traffic.

By the time I reach the corner, four or five cars are backed up on each side of the street. A few of the drivers stand alongside their vehicles, chatting and smoking cigarettes. Dozens of pedestrians gather and look toward the oncoming noise. In the nearby high rises, a collection of black women in servants’ uniforms hangs over various balcony railings. As the sirens peak, a half-ton pickup shoots past. Soldiers in camouflage fill the bed, ak-47s at the ready. One shoulders a bazooka. Behind the pickup come four black Mercedes-Benzes.

As the third Mercedes passes, two women next to me point and say, ‘Varimo. Varimo.’ I snap my head toward the car just in time to catch those dark-framed glasses. The Prime Minister is reading the newspaper in the back seat.

Behind the four Benzes comes a blue-and-white police car, then a second truckload of soldiers even bigger than the first. Another white-enamelled motorcycle trails at the rear of the procession. The driver steps up the volume on his siren as he passes.

I stagger off toward the city centre, feeling like a groupie after an all-night concert. Three hours in Harare and I’ve already seen my hero. I keep forgetting that traffic travels on the opposite side of the road. I look the wrong way when crossing streets, barely avoiding collisions with the dented Datsuns, rusting Renaults and other ancient four-cylinder vehicles that dominate the roads. A Pontiac in Harare would look like a battleship in a yacht harbour.

The cars aren’t the only things out of date. Modern department stores haven’t reached Harare either. I walk slowly past a tobacconist minded by an old white man, a blue ascot riding high on his neck. A rack of pipes and tobacco canisters frames his grey hair. A cuckoo clock on his wall advertises Barclay cigarettes.

The sweet fragrance wafting from the shop reminds me of my grandfather’s living room. As a small boy, I loved to watch him tamp the shredded leaves in his long-stemmed cherrywood pipe. The room filled with wonderful spices when he took that first puff. I’ve never understood why my father smoked Camels instead. But then there are many things I’ve never understood about my father.

A few doors from the tobacconist lies a sidewalk café attached to a Wimpy hamburger bar. A curious glance reveals white women drinking tea and cutting toasted cheese sandwiches into bite-size pieces before delicately forking them into their mouths. Black waiters scurry about carrying red plastic trays. They respond to the curt orders of their customers as if the liberation war never happened.

Some of the men on the street are wearing platform shoes and there are more mutton-chops. White women’s hair is sprayed into lacquered mounds reminiscent of 1960s singer Lesley Gore. The main thoroughfare is First Street Mall, a vast walkway of freshly laid bricks.

I go into Barbours, one of the city’s most exclusive shops. Nearly all of the sales staff are white women in those Lesley Gore hairdos. In the perfume section, a tall black woman in a pink suit sprays something on her left wrist, and then tries a second spray on the right. ‘That one’s lovely,’ I hear her telling a smiling saleswoman. This is a revolution of sorts. Before 1980, stores on First Street didn’t allow blacks inside. They had to shop via kiosk windows at the side of the store or in a back alley.

I look for coloured t-shirts and, instead, run into racks of safari suits – blue, tan, brown, even a crisp white, presumably for weddings. A clerk tells me to try Greatermans for t-shirts.

Back on the street, a newspaper vendor sells the daily for twelve Zimbabwean cents. Headlines speak of the impending wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, and of dissidents in Matabeleland. Nothing of consequence.

After a few more blocks, the comfortable distance between shoppers narrows. The broad landscape of First Street Mall shrinks to sidewalks no wider than my reach. Now I’m touching elbows, shoulders, backs and fronts. Children in tow scrape against my knees. A few people do a double take when they see me. Several gaze at my blue-striped Adidas running shoes. Though I’m the only white person in sight, I’m not frightened. I read curiosity, not hostility.

Foot traffic congests behind a white-bearded man who plods along with the aid of an intricately carved cane. As I overtake him, he stops and raises his hand to the brim of his porkpie hat.

‘Good morning, master,’ he says.

‘Good morning, sir,’ I reply and increase my pace.

Many shops profile their presence with three-foot-high speakers set on either side of the entrance. Distorted versions of local hits bounce off the passing crowds. The music complements the smell of chicken, fish and potatoes frying in near-rancid cooking oil. Diesel buses add their pungent billows of black smoke to the mixture.

I stop to examine the wares of a young watch repairman. He’s proudly mounted his 1976 certificate from the ‘Westchester School of Watch Repair’ in a well-worn plastic cover. I pick up a silver Elgin with an analogue dial from another era.

‘That one is self-winding,’ he boasts. ‘You never have to worry. Twenty dollars for you, my friend.’

He stands up and selects three or four other watches from his stock. ‘I also have these,’ he says, laying them across his thick wrist.

‘I’ll give you five dollars for the Elgin,’ I say.

‘I can’t take less than fifteen for such a masterpiece. A man offered me fourteen yesterday and I refused.’

‘I guess I don’t need it,’ I reply.

I’m not sure why I’m haggling with this man. It’s a way of making contact, I guess.

‘Okay,’ he says, ‘I’ll take that fourteen dollars today. Special reconciliation price.’

‘I’ll come tomorrow,’ I promise and walk away. He calls me back.

‘Sir, it will be gone by then. Take it for twelve.’ He smiles sheepishly, revealing the huge gap between his front teeth. I pull out a Zimbabwean ten-dollar bill plus two one-dollar coins and drop them in his hand. He straps the band around my wrist.

As I look at the watch, a flock of salespeople surrounds me. They offer combs, candy, doormats, baskets. A young man holding a piece of cardboard dotted with watch batteries begins to quarrel with an even younger girl hawking heart-shaped gold lockets with an ‘I love you’ inscription. I’m not sure where all this is heading or if I’ll have to buy what they’re offering to escape unscathed.

Just as I’m about to run for it, the watch salesman intervenes. He puts an arm around me and waves the olive branch of his right hand. The cacophony of the sales pitches evaporates, as if the pontiff has spoken. ‘Give the gentleman a space to walk,’ he says.

The vendors separate. The crowd of pedestrians who have gathered to assess the disturbance returns to business as usual. Half a block away, I realise my watch is gone. Was the entire group in on the act or did an opportunistic thief merely take advantage of the situation? I don’t know and I’m definitely not going back to ask.

I dart along the pedestrian path, dodging tiny piles of tomatoes, onions and bananas. Three for a dollar, four for a dollar, five for a dollar. Amidst this sidewalk commerce, unselfconscious mothers sit on kerbs nursing their babies. I’m not worrying about them though, or the street-corner shoe repairmen who beaver their way through stacks of pumps, wingtips and loafers in need of rejuvenation. My mind is on my wallet, my passport and any other target for a thief. I wonder if someone might try for my shoes.

As I reach the periphery of the shopping area, a young man in a navy blue sports jacket approaches. A silver cross hangs from a chain around his neck. He pulls a white handkerchief from his front pocket and dabs his forehead. The air is getting heavier, clouds are moving in.

‘Sir, don’t you want to last longer?’ he asks me.

‘Doesn’t everyone?’ I reply, unsure of where he’s going with this.

‘I have just the thing for you, mupfuwhira love potion plus my boom-boom.’ He shows me some brown powder in a baby food jar.

‘The perfect recipe for perfect love,’ he assures me. ‘With my boom-boom you can last the whole night. Even African women will love you, handiti?’

‘I guess so,’ I reply. He puts two little packets into the palm of my hand.

‘Just five dollars for the two,’ he says. ‘Guaranteed. The madam is going to love you tonight.’

‘I don’t need them right now,’ I reply. I drop the packets into his jacket pocket.

‘Don’t you want to last, sir? You can be as powerful as an African chief.’

‘I guess not,’ I reply, stepping back and patting my back pocket to make sure my wallet is still there. I leave him behind and set out in search of something to eat. I duck into a small café called Tafara Take-Aways. The minute I enter everyone goes quiet for a few seconds as they scrutinise the newcomer. I’m trying to read the menu on the wall while I hide my concerns about pickpockets and armed robbers.

An Indian man at the cash register looks over the heads of the six people in front of me in the line. ‘Sir, can I help you?’ he asks.

‘Yes, but I’ll wait my turn.’

‘We can serve you now. No one will mind.’

I keep scanning the menu board. Two black men in front of me mumble to each other in Shona. ‘We were here,’ one of them says to the Indian man, who ignores them and keeps looking at me.

‘What would you like, sir?’ asks a plumpish black woman standing next to the Indian. She’s wearing a blue apron. Someone in the line speaks to her in Shona. She spits back a reply. I should wait my turn, but I’m hungry and don’t know how to handle the situation.

‘Sadza,’ I answer. She giggles at my reply. Sadza is a thick sort of porridge, something like grits. At least that’s what one of my 3×5 cards says. It’s supposed to be the nation’s staple food.

‘Would you like nyama or chicken?’ she asks. Since I don’t know what nyama is, I opt for chicken.

‘And to drink, sir?’ she asks. Her smile grows with each question.

‘A Coke, please.’

I start to hand her the money but the Indian man reaches over and takes it. She brings me a Coke in a much recycled bottle, the kind we used to get when I was a Cub Scout. Part of the glass looks frosted. I like the feel of the cold, sweating bottle in my hand.

A couple of minutes later, the woman hands me a green metal bowl. I’m almost too nervous to eat. There’s lots of chatter in Shona. War wounds could be close to the surface and I’m an easy scapegoat, especially after jumping the line. I remember the white driver’s warning about the ‘munts’.

The bowl holds four pieces of chicken, including a foot. The cook has poured gravy over the chicken but the little white mountain of sadza remains dry.

All five of the white plastic tables are occupied. I stutterstep as I walk away from the counter, trying to figure out where to sit. I want to avoid the man who objected to the Indian serving me first.

An old man eating alone pulls out a chair. ‘You can sit here, sir,’ he says, patting the seat of the chair.

‘I’m Nyatsanza from Mutare,’ he informs me as I get closer.

He holds out a limp wrist. I grab the top of his forearm and pinch it between my thumb and forefinger. Two young boys at the next table press the backs of their hands to their mouths to conceal a snicker. A pair of women behind them give each other a smacking high five.

‘I’m Ben. Nice to meet you.’

As I look at his face, he turns away. One of his eyes has no iris. His overalls have a faint smell of engine oil. He must be on his lunch break.

‘I hope I haven’t disturbed you,’ I say.

‘No, sir. Not at all. We are all Zimbabweans now,’ he replies.

My eating utensil is a silver tablespoon with chips in the plating. I don’t know where to start.

‘Sir, you can wash your hands,’ Mr Nyatsanza tells me. He nods toward a wooden stand near the wall which supports a green metal bowl much larger than mine. A white hand towel with a few dirty finger marks hangs on a hook next to the stand.

I walk over to the bowl. Tiny food particles peek out at me through the cloudy water. My hands go into the cold liquid, slosh around a little bit, and then dry themselves on the towel. Ready to eat.

I’m not quite sure how to handle a chicken foot. I’m not even sure if I’m supposed to eat it. Maybe it’s like a ham bone, there to add flavour. A man at one of the other tables holds his chicken foot in both hands while he nibbles at the skin. I do the same and no one laughs. The chicken foot doesn’t have much to sink my teeth into and the sadza has no real flavour. When I spoon the gravy on top I can pretend it’s mashed potatoes.

As I scoop up the last piece of sadza, Mr Nyatsanza nods toward the handwashing bowl. ‘It’s warm now, sir,’ he says.

Back I go, this time finding clear water and a slightly cleaner towel. I thank Nyatsanza for his hospitality and am leaving when I hear a banging on the window.

‘Sir, someone wants to speak to you,’ Nyatsanza says. He points to a face pressed against the front window of the shop. The watch repairman. Before my anger has a chance to boil over, he holds up my watch and motions for me to come outside. I tell him to come in. I don’t want another sidewalk convention of onlookers.

‘Sir, you dropped your watch,’ he tells me as he comes through the door. ‘We’ve been looking everywhere for you.’ He hands me the watch. He’s added a new leather band.

‘It’s still running,’ he boasts with that gap-toothed smile.

I offer him a reward but the most he will accept is a cold Coke, not enough to drown the shame of my mistrust.

At exactly 2.31 p.m. I head back to the hotel. A few clouds have rolled in. I wind my way through various gauntlets of polite but persistent street sellers. I’ve stopped worrying about my wallet.

Suddenly the skies pour forth like a summer storm in the Midwest. People run everywhere. I tuck myself next to a few damp bodies in the doorway of another café. After a few minutes, the rain stops and everyone returns to their normal activities.

With a clammy shirt and dripping hair, I re-enter the commercial fray. By the time I lie down on my bed again, I’m the owner of a soapstone rhino and a four-foot-tall giraffe whittled from a soft, light-coloured wood. Hilary might like it. Along the way I have also acquired a small bag of boom-boom for three dollars, in case I ever need to perform like an African chief.

Everything seems in order, though the giraffe doesn’t stand quite straight on the floor. As I drift off to sleep I think I see it fall over.

Chapter 4

My first foray through Harare leaves me in shock. I expected liberation to hit me in the face. I’m disappointed at how quickly I become fear-ridden and suspicious. I take refuge in the hotel, reading through my notes and books. I make a master list of all 1527 cards, giving each one a number and title. The exercise reassures me. I am still in control.

After two days of seclusion, I visit the hotel bar, the Princess Lounge. I’m not settled enough to contact the people on my list.

The Princess is neither royal nor feminine. The lounge has the same dark panelling as the hotel lobby; the same picture of Mugabe hangs above the door. A pay-to-play snooker table is the centrepiece. Four black college students compete for a coin they have set on the wooden rim of the table.

Behind them, two white men sit at the end of the bar, talking as if in perpetual dialogue. One wears a pair of veldskoens, the local desert boot, with khaki shorts and no socks. The other has on leather sandals. They pay as little attention to the pool table as they have to their grooming.

I sit at a brown plastic-topped table for two. The waiter arrives. His name tag says ‘Obert’. He has a neatly trimmed moustache with a touch of grey and a white towel is draped over his arm. He lists the available beers for me: Castle, Lion and Black Label.

‘What’s cold on tap?’ I ask.

‘Tap beer is finished, sir. Most of the Europeans enjoy a Lion.’

‘Is it cold?’ I ask, remembering that Zimbabwe is a former British colony. I’ve heard rumours that the English drink warm beer. I don’t believe it, but I don’t want to take any chances.

‘Yes, sir. The Lion is cold,’ Obert replies.

‘I’ll have a Lion and a Castle.’

‘Two beers, sir. Are you expecting someone?’

‘No, I’ll drink two. Save you the trouble of coming back.’

‘I’m coming now-now with the beer.’

Obert brings me two brown bottles and two frosted glasses. The beer tastes bitter at first but the flavour lingers nicely. After four sips I’m becoming a convert.

As I finish the Castle and start to pour the Lion, a man with an emerging belly and a blue pin-striped shirt approaches my table. A gold ‘M’ is emblazoned on his cuff links.

‘Shamwari, how are you today?’ he asks.

I assure him I’m well and tell him I’m an American who’s come to learn about peace and reconciliation.

‘I knew you weren’t one of these local whites,’ he says. ‘Something about the style of dressing. They have their own places. Sports clubs and the like.’

‘I thought reconciliation meant everyone came together,’ I reply.

‘In a way that’s true,’ he says. ‘That’s what the Prime Minister is saying. We’ll see if these whites change. I doubt.’ He offers me a cigarette. I don’t often smoke, but I accept. The first puff goes straight to my head.

‘Are none of the whites changing?’ I ask.

‘Some are. My employer, Diane Johnstone, now calls me Mr Mzondiwa at work. Maybe their children will be different. It’s hard after a war.’

He takes a sip of his Castle and holds up two fingers to Obert. He scoots his chair a little closer to the table and leans toward me.

‘Saka shamwari, don’t you think we can do some business?’

‘What kind of business?’

‘You know, import–export. Zimbabwe has been hit hard by sanctions. There are so many things we don’t have. I’m thinking of stereos.’

‘Stereos?’

‘Famous brands. Sony. Panasonic. Here we just have our locally made Supersonics. After a month or two they’re finished. Marantz too. You buy them and bring them in. I sell. We share the money. As easy as eating porridge.’

‘I’m not much for business,’ I tell him. ‘I’m an academic.’ I slide my chair back and try to find a way out.

‘They won’t bother you, these customs people. It’s too perfect.’

‘I don’t think so. I’ve got my hands full.’

‘But you’ll think about it?’ he asks.

‘Okay.’

‘That’s great,’ he says, pulling a business card from his shirt pocket. ‘You can always get me on this number. Let me borrow your pen.’

He scratches out something on the card and replaces it with his name and number. We have two more beers. He tells me he was a mujiba during the war.

‘We pretended to be herding cattle or running errands. We were spies. Who would suspect a nine-year-old boy with no shoes?’

‘What were you doing?’ I ask.

‘Looking for Rhodesian soldiers. We were the eyes and ears of the vakomana, the guerrillas. Girls did it too – chimbwidos.’

I try to ask him more questions about what he did during the war and what he thinks about Mugabe and reconciliation. He steers the conversation back to stereos. He has heard that Pioneer is also a good brand and ‘not too dear’. I leave him with one more promise to ‘think about it’ and retreat to the company of my giraffe.

Harare has only one daily newspaper, The Herald, formerly subtitled The Voice of Rhodesia. The new government took over the paper at independence. Every day the lead story dwells on the latest activities of the Prime Minister, always referred to as Comrade Robert Mugabe. Occasionally his middle name, Gabriel, is added for emphasis. Whether Mugabe receives a delegation from United Nations Headquarters or goes to the rural areas to pick ticks off sheep, his photo appears on page one.

Even for someone who admires the man as much as I do, this treatment is a little excessive. On the rare day that Mugabe’s actions don’t warrant headlines, his wife, Comrade Sally Mugabe, features, handing out food parcels to orphans or accepting donations for the destitute from a local bank.

While the Herald actively propounds Zanu’s vision of a socialist Zimbabwe, the paper remains capitalist enough to advertise on behalf of local landlords. Under ‘Flats to Let’ I find: Greendale: granny flat, kitchen, Christian, non-smoker. Tel. 63721.

I speak to the owner, Mrs van Zyl, on the phone. Van Zyl is an Afrikaans surname. One of my 3×5 cards, No. 25, fills me in: Afrikaans: a hybrid Dutch language spoken mainly by whites known as Afrikaners or Boers, ancestors came to South Africa from the Netherlands beginning in 1652, large Afrikaner population in South Africa, few in lof, typically associated with hardline, racist views.

I travel to Greendale in a Rixi taxi that is parked in front of the hotel. Rixis are fashioned from Renault r4s, the smallest car I’ve ever ridden in. Built in the shape of a work boot, the r4’s cane-shaped gear stick comes straight out of the dashboard. The driver slides it out for first, pushes it back into the dashboard for second.

Mrs van Zyl is short with blue hair. She tells me she is a widow. She sits in a puffy chair and pets her snorting Pekinese. Princess Hildegard, Hildie for short, blinks contentedly in her lap.

While she questions me, a black man in khaki shorts whom she calls Amos serves us tea and cookies. ‘Since I lost my husband,’ she says, ‘I’ve had a hard time with tenants.’ Her previous tenant packed up his things in the middle of the night even though he’d paid two months in advance.

‘I’m holding thumbs this time,’ she says.

I duck, dive and smile my way through various queries, selling the idea that I’m a quiet, conscientious researcher. I try to remember to pronounce the ‘z’ in her name like the hissing of a snake, as someone told me it sounds in Afrikaans.

Mrs van Zyl’s granny flat is a small cottage that more than meets my needs. The double bed has a foam mattress, the small kitchenette comes with a two-burner hotplate and a bar fridge. The furniture includes a wooden cable-spool table and two accompanying pine chairs – unvarnished. Reader’s Digest Condensed Books fill the metal frame bookshelf. She promises to remove them to make way for my history texts.

Mrs van Zyl doesn’t charge me a deposit because I am so ‘polite and well mannered’.

I celebrate my newly acquired granny flat with a trip to the Princess. Obert delivers my usual two beers. I ask him if he, like Mzondiwa, was a mujiba during the war.

‘We did what we had to, sir,’ he replies. ‘Now the war is over. Let us carry on.’

By the following afternoon, I’m on my way to Mrs van Zyl’s in another Rixi. Within a couple of hours I’m settled in. The cards are on the wall. Three dozen works on Zimbabwean history, including my all-time favourite, Zimbabwe before Rhodes by Callistus Dlamini, have replaced the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. What more could an historian need?

Chapter 5

Florence Matshaka is the first name on my list of interviewees.

Peterson didn’t know much about Florence other than that she was once a guerrilla fighter. I try to phone her half a dozen times. The line never connects. Mrs van Zyl tells me this is common, ‘especially when it rains’.

Luckily I have Florence’s home address. She lives in The Avenues, an area adjacent to the city centre. The Avenues is the only part of Harare where apartments predominate.

Florence’s building, Winchester Mansions, is ‘turning’: blacks are moving in, whites are moving out. She lives in Apartment 321, on the third floor. Even before I reach 321, I hear the screaming of little children and the bass throb of a Bob Marley song. I knock loudly but get no response. I wait for ‘No Woman, No Cry’ to finish.

When I knock again the voices go quiet. A woman’s voice says something in Shona which most likely is directed at me. She might be telling me to come in, but I can’t be sure and the war wasn’t that long ago.

A frosted window to the left of the door swings open. A young girl peeks at me through ornately shaped white burglar bars. She shouts something with the word ‘murungu’ in it, then closes the window. ‘Murungu’ means ‘white man’ in Shona.

A large woman answers the door. Florence.

I explain who I am, that I want to interview her on questions of the liberation war and reconciliation. I lick my lips, trying to get some moisture back in my mouth. My feet start to shuffle.

Florence tilts her head back as if to catch me from a different angle. Then she smiles and stretches out a carpenter-sized hand that swallows mine as we shake. ‘I never thought a white man would come all the way from America to talk to me about anything,’ she says. ‘Come in.’

Loose tiles in the parquet floor click under our steps. She limps just a little.

The living room window overlooks the street. A woman sells tomatoes on the sidewalk. Two men ride by on those black, balloon-tyre bicycles. Florence directs me to a beige armchair with a crocheted doily laid over the back. A bigger version of the doily covers the dining room table in the corner. A long-legged spider clings to the wall.

Florence sits on a sofa that matches my chair but has three doilies, one on the back of each seat. Black lettering on a wall poster just above her head reads: There is no liberation without the full emancipation of women. The brightly coloured figure of an African guerrilla with a baby on her back reinforces the slogan.

Florence closes a khaki-coloured notebook sitting on the coffee table. She places it on top of a foot-high stack of similar books.

‘So much marking these days,’ she says.

‘I don’t have the patience,’ I answer.

‘You can learn. Zimbabwe needs lots of teachers. Without education we’re doomed to failure.’

Her voice is deeper than most women’s. Before I can respond, she calls someone from the kitchen.

‘Maybe I should come back another time,’ I suggest.

‘We can start today. It’s not a problem.’

I’ve never interviewed anyone before and I haven’t prepared any questions. My tape recorder still sits on the cable-spool table.

The girl from the window comes in. She’s wearing a faded flowered print dress, carrying a tray of glasses and a bottle of bright orange liquid. She sets the load down and fills the glasses. She hands me one and curtsies. The drink is too sweet. Florence finishes hers in two swallows and places the glass on a cardboard coaster of a seascape. The thin extensions tied into her hair are pulled back and bound together in a sort of pony tail. She leans forward, resting her bulky forearms on her knees.

‘Can you bring some potato crisps, please musikana?’ Florence asks the girl.

‘Yes, auntie.’

Florence wears at least a dozen silver bangles on each arm. The oversize turquoise t-shirt with a flamingo in front does little to conceal her girth.

‘One day a group from our school just left and walked to Mozambique,’ she says. ‘We weren’t far from the border. It was a boarding school, so we didn’t tell our parents. Better security. Is that the sort of thing you want to hear about?’

‘Sure,’ I reply, ‘keep on going.’ I’ve already thought of questions to ask her.

‘Aren’t you going to write something down?’ she asks.

‘I’ll just listen and write later.’

The young girl arrives with a bowl of potato chips. She offers me some, then sets the bowl in front of Florence.

‘We walked for three days,’ Florence continues. I try to imagine her as a gangly schoolgirl traipsing down a rocky path in the bush.

‘We ran out of food after the first day. We were so proud to be joining the liberation struggle.’ She likes to lift her hands as she speaks. Each time she does, the silver bangles jingle down her arm.

‘We reached the camp just after sundown on the third day. The comrades gave us sadza, and water to bathe. When you are so young nothing seems impossible.’ She pauses to eat two handfuls of potato chips. ‘Nothing,’ she repeats, grabbing some more chips. ‘They took us to Accra, a camp for women. Life was harsh. Many women couldn’t read, so I became a teacher. Children died there due to a lack of milk. But we didn’t lose hope.’

I stay at Florence’s house for five hours. It turns out, though, not to be her house at all. Her cousin, Kundesai, has the lease. Florence rents a room.

‘My cousin’s hardly here,’ she tells me. ‘She usually stays at her boyfriend’s, but there’s no rest for me here. I need my own place.’

Despite staying for so long, I don’t hear much of Florence’s story. People come in and out. Between pieces of our conversation, Florence changes a baby’s diaper, cooks lunch for half a dozen children, settles some financial matter for another cousin who drops by, hangs a basketful of clothes on the outside washing line, walks to the shop to buy beer and helps a neighbour rearrange her living room to make way for a new sofa.

I find this all very interesting.

Everyone who enters the apartment comes and shakes my hand as if I’m a normal feature of the living room landscape. Each time I think I’ve worn out my welcome something lands on the end table next to my chair. Faith, the thirteen-year-old in the blue flowered print dress, brings me some tea and some poker-chip-like cookies with a vague taste of butter and sugar. After that come rounds of Castle and plastic bowls filled with nuts and more potato chips.

By late afternoon an even younger girl, Hope, kneels at my feet with a metal bowl for hand washing. Meat and sadza follow, without silverware. We eat at the big table with the doily on top. Florence tells me that ‘nyama’ is the Shona word for ‘meat’ and that I should eat with my right hand only as the left is intended for ‘other things’.

She shows me how to squeeze the sadza into a ball, then use it to mop up the gravy. ‘You can also grab some meat or vegetables with the sadza,’ she says putting a lump of the white porridge and a few strands of green vegetables in her mouth.

I try to imitate her, but the sadza burns the palm of my hand. I lick at it, feeling like a dog cleaning the bottom of its bowl.

‘It’s a little hot,’ she says, ‘but we are used to it.’ She doesn’t laugh at my awkward efforts. She just keeps eating.

‘Sadza is like our bread,’ she continues, ‘the staff of life as they say in English.’

When the sadza cools a little, I try again. I get into a rhythm, rolling the sadza into a ball, picking up meat and vegetables and jamming it all into my mouth. A little gravy runs down my chin and more of the white porridge clings to my palm and fingers. I don’t worry about licking it off. Gradually the two mountains of sadza on my plate diminish. I’m uncomfortably full.

‘You’ve barely eaten,’ she says as I finish. Before I can refuse, she ladles more meat and gravy onto my plate, then adds enough sadza to mop up.

‘You must eat,’ she tells me, ‘you never know if there will be food tomorrow.’ She empties the serving bowl onto her plate.

I can’t keep up. Florence’s plate is clean again, save for one tiny piece of sadza.

‘You don’t seem to like our Zimbabwean food,’ she says. ‘Maybe we must cook you some potatoes.’

‘No, no, I love the food,’ I reply. ‘It’s just that I’m trying to watch my weight.’ I pat my stomach. It feels bigger than ever. ‘I’ve been drinking a lot of beer.’

‘We are proud to be stout in Zimbabwe,’ she says. ‘Let the English remain skinny like a village dog.’

I force down the rest of the food. Hope brings the hand-washing bowl. As I rub off the sadza residue I think about how to make a polite exit. I look forward to a relaxed walk home to digest those hillocks of sadza. I’ll return another day with a stack of cards and my tape recorder.

I’ve just said the initial parting words, ‘Well Florence …’, when the phone rings. At least someone can get through. Florence chats for a while, then puts her hand over the speaker.

‘My friend Rumbi is inviting us to a party tonight,’ she tells me.

I’m not sure if this is a date or just African hospitality. Either way, I can’t say no.

Florence puts down the phone and heads for the front door. ‘I’m coming now-now,’ she says.

A few moments later, she returns with an armload of white laundry and disappears into the bedroom.

On tv, the Prime Minister is speaking to a crowd in some rural area. The people clap and raise their fists in salute. A circle of very round women entertain him with a hip-shaking dance after his speech. He smiles at the appropriate moment.

Florence pops her head out from the hall that leads to the bedroom. ‘By the way,’ she says, ‘do you have your girlfriend waiting for you somewhere? We can collect her on the way.’

‘No, I’m free,’ I reply. ‘But I don’t want to be a gatecrasher.’

‘Don’t act like a white man, Mr Dabney. We don’t send out invitations to our parties. You’re at home now.’

I’m not really dressed for a party and I’m supposed to be doing research. How can I write objectively about people who feed me, give me beer and take me to parties? Maybe I’m overthinking.

A few minutes later, Florence comes back to the living room. She’s changed into a shining blue, floor-length, African-style dress that looks like silk, with a white crocheted pattern running down the front. A scarf of the same material as the dress covers her hair. She’s shed the silver bangles for ivory. Gold loops hang from her ears.

The room smells of carnations and Florence dominates it even more than before; majestic is the word that comes to mind. Being a little plump myself, I’m not usually attracted to large women. But this is Zimbabwe. A place to turn the past upside down.

When Florence isn’t looking, I reach down to dust off my scruffed-up brown shoes. I ask to use the bathroom. I wet my fingers in the sink and slap a little water on my hair, trying to pull some errant strands into place. At least I shaved in the morning. I moisten some toilet paper and attempt a more thorough cleaning of my shoes. As soon as the water dries, they’ll look just as scruffy as before.

I take one last peek in the mirror. Even with slicked-down hair and temporarily shined shoes, I’m feeling like the garbage man in uniform about to enter the Debutante Ball when Rumbi turns up to collect us.

Rumbi is a thin woman with gold-frame glasses. She’s an accountant. She drives her Volkswagen Golf like a newcomer to the roads. I sit alone in the back while ub40’s ‘Red Red Wine’ blasts from the cassette player. I have no idea who will be at the party and I’m showing up in the company of two black women. I guess it’s all part of reconciliation but it’s new territory for me. I’m more comfortable in the company of my books and 3×5 cards.

The owner of the six-bedroomed house in the suburb of Waterfalls at which we end up was known as Comrade Kundai during the war. ‘Kundai’ means ‘conquer’. In the post-1980 era he is Titus Mawere, Deputy Minister of Housing. The occasion is the first birthday of his son.

By the time we arrive and make our way through the phalanx of Peugeots, Benzes and Nissan Skylines parked in the street, the young boy is asleep. Birthday cakes and happy tunes have given way to tubs full of beer, chicken and goat on the barbeque, and high-volume music from around the world. Under a blue-and-white marquee, the sounds of Abba, The Commodores and The Gap Band blend with the tunes of local stars Thomas Mapfumo, Oliver Mtukudzi and Lovemore Majaivana. I sport the only unpolished shoes and collarless shirt in the gathering. The only other white person there wears a tan summer suit and leaves about half an hour after we arrive.

The dance floor used to be a shuffleboard court. Florence keeps dragging me along to be her partner. She laughs as I search for the beat of the music.

‘You dance like you’re wrestling an ox,’ she says. ‘Just relax.’ Her encouragement doesn’t help. She keeps seeing old friends just when I’m grasping the rhythm and leaves me to go and say hello. Each time she does this I receive another partner, usually a man.

At first I think this pairing off has sexual overtones, that Waterfalls is a major gay vein in the Zimbabwean lode. As the night moves on, my notion of coupling blurs. I dance alone, in groups, with whoever is nearby. I can’t tell what strings bind the people together here. Maybe I’m just too distracted by trying to keep my out-of-time clapping to a minimum.

During one of my forays to the metal tubs holding the beer, Mawere intercepts me. ‘I’m made to understand you’re a historian writing about our struggle,’ he says. I’m not sure if he is accusing me or welcoming my efforts.

‘Yes, Mr Mawere,’ I reply, ‘I want people in America to know about reconciliation. We still haven’t fully reconciled from our civil war in the 1860s.’

He’s a stocky man, most likely a soccer player in his youth. A razored part on the left side highlights his meticulously managed hair. He says he’s happy to meet an American who supports ‘our young nation’. His voice is slow, deep and soothing. I want to listen to him some more.

‘Actually, Mr Mawere, I’m just a graduate student, working on a PhD.’

‘Call me Comrade,’ he says. ‘We’re trying to scrap the formalism of the colonial days.’

‘Yes sir, Comrade Mawere.’

He turns to say a few words to a Bubba Smith-sized man standing behind him who must be all of six-foot-eight. ‘I’ll arrange for you to interview the Prime Minister,’ Mawere says to me.

Visions of sitting next to Mugabe in one of those high-ceilinged rooms at State House drive even the image of Florence in her flowing blue dress out of my mind.

‘I don’t know how to thank you, Comrade Mawere.’

‘Start by interviewing me,’ he says. ‘Then I will organise the pm, as we call the Prime Minister.’

I see Florence limping back to the dance floor. I think she’s looking for me. I can’t wait to tell her about my conversation with Mawere. He gives me his direct phone line, which I write on the back of one of the Rixi driver’s cards. The last four digits are 1859, the year Darwin wrote The Origin of Species and John Brown died at Harper’s Ferry. I suppress the onrush of dates as the Bubba Smith look-alike steps forward.

‘This is Comrade Tito,’ says Mawere. ‘He’s keeping an eye on the party for us.’

I wait for the knuckle crunch, but his hand is soft, his grip as gentle as a grandmother’s.

‘One more thing, Ben,’ Mawere says. ‘Be careful with Florence. She’s a very clever girl, but not quite normal.’

‘That’s right,’ Comrade Tito adds. ‘We call her Comrade Chokie, short for Chokwadi, meaning ‘truth’. She’s a problem.’

I nod but don’t reply. Why call a troublesome person ‘Truth’?

When a Shona song ends, Mawere taps a spoon against an empty glass to quiet everyone. As people huddle together to listen, a slight breeze slips in, cooling the hot dance hall. Mawere speaks in Shona, joking with the crowd. He switches to English and talks about the ‘historian in our midst whose work is so important, who wants to tell the story of Zimbabwe’s freedom to the rest of the world’. His baritone is booming. Most of the party is looking at me.

‘You may not think, kuti, a murungu can write such a history. But I have spoken to him. I’m confident he can do the job.’

Florence whispers something to a woman standing next to her. They both look at me and shake their heads.

‘So I ask kuti, everyone, support him one hundred percent if he comes to you with questions.’

A few people applaud, then everyone. I try to pull in my stomach and smile. I want to remind them all that I’m just a graduate student, but there’s no time. Sounds of approval fade as Mawere puts on a Bob Marley record.

He’s singing about Zimbabwe and the dancers know all the lyrics. I try to join in. At least my off-key efforts relieve my embarrassment. Divine sanction can be painful.

Florence’s elbows are swinging high. She holds a bottle of Castle in one hand, waiting for the tune to slow to take a sip. All the other women have taken off their shoes. Dozens of carefully manicured toes that grew up treading rural paths slap against the fading triangle where white shuffleboard players used to score 8s, 9s and 10s.

As the deejay cranks up the volume one more notch, Florence leans over to say something in my ear. I can’t hear. She tries again. I shrug my shoulders. She lips an ‘I’ll tell you later.’ We keep dancing. I’m trying to pump my knees like Marley. If only he were still alive.

When the song ends, Florence leads the dancers in a chorus of ‘encore, encore’. The deejay plays the song four more times. I collapse into a plastic chair.

‘This one is for lovers,’ Mawere shouts. A voice even deeper than his blossoms. Barry White. Florence is tugging at my hand, then her arm slips around my waist. The smooth, moist cloth of her dress clings to her back. She’s taller than I am, but only a little. I try to dance so our chests don’t touch. Keeping a professional distance is important. I still have to interview her.

‘Comrade Chokie, ndiwe, ndiwe! Mai wee! It’s you!’ shrieks a woman behind me.

Florence pulls away in a rush and almost knocks the woman over with a charging hug. The two of them walk inside the house. They have a lot to tell each other. I flop down on a chaise longue near the almost empty tubs of beer.

Suddenly Florence is shaking my knee. So annoying.

‘Come on, my American friend. Time to go.’

Chapter 6

It’s almost light outside. Only half a dozen people are still around. I take a swig of the beer I set by my feet a few hours earlier and stand up.

‘Will this party make it into your history book?’ asks Mawere.

‘I don’t know yet,’ I reply, ‘the editor might cut some parts.’

I ride in the backseat of Mawere’s Peugeot 504 with Florence and two other women. Comrade Tito sits in front with Mawere. Florence’s arm rests behind my neck. Each time the car turns left, the weight of all three women shifts onto me. Florence’s dress smells of sweetened sweat and wood smoke. She’s finishing off her last Castle as we drive.

‘Chef, you never expected me to arrive with a historian from America, handiti?’ says Florence as Mawere pulls to a stop at a traffic light. ‘He’ll be a genuine Zimbabwean once I give him a few dancing lessons,’ she adds, enjoying my blushing grin.

A red Volkswagen bug with three white teenagers inside draws up beside us. Florence mimics a dance to the Fleetwood Mac song on their stereo. The three try to copy her moves.

‘Help, chef,’ shouts Florence, ‘we’re drowning back here.’

She’s spilled her beer down her front and onto my pants. As the light turns green Mawere hands her a tea towel to dry us off. The vw pulls out onto the main road. A tan Mercedes coming at high speed doesn’t even brake. It catches the right rear fender of the vw sending it fifty yards down the road in a flurry of broken glass. Florence is pushing me out the door before I realise what’s happened. She hurries toward the vw in an uneven lope, the bottle of beer in one hand, tea towel in the other.

The impact has left a web of broken glass in the passenger side window. The shirtless driver staggers out of the car, blood spurting from his forehead.

‘Chef, go to one of these houses and call an ambulance,’ Florence instructs Mawere. ‘Ben, check on the passenger.’

I see Mawere walk toward a brick house where the driveway gate is ajar.

‘Lie on your back,’ Florence orders the driver. She helps him get down, then tells him to hold the tea towel against his wound.

‘What’s your name?’ she asks.

‘Geoff Gilbert.’

‘Where are we now?’

‘Somewhere in Harare, Cranborne I think. What is this, twenty questions?’

‘I just want to make sure your head is all right,’ replies Florence. ‘Look at my finger and follow it with your eyes.’

By now, people are emerging from the Mercedes. Two teenage girls in yellow dresses stand next to the car, flanked by a tall, grey-haired man in a blue shirt and yellow tie. The girls reach into the back seat and each pulls out a bright blue canvas backpack. They start running up the road.

The tall man walks over to the driver’s side of the vw. I look in on the male passenger in the front seat. He’s bent over, head in his hands. I tap him on the back.

‘Are you all right?’ I ask.

‘I think so,’ he replies. He has a thin beard and a pimply forehead.

‘My father will kill me,’ screeches a young dark-haired woman from the back seat of the vw. She’s crying although she has no visible wounds. ‘He told me not to let anyone else drive. He’s going to kill me.’

The tall man in the blue shirt begins to speak. Though he’s slim and looks fit, his wrinkles show he’s from Mugabe’s generation. ‘I’m sorry, my friends,’ he says in a soft but firm voice, ‘we didn’t see you pulling out.’

‘You people must learn how to drive,’ the young woman shouts as she gets out of the car. She shakes a finger at the tall man as if she’s scolding a child. Her white jeans are tight, emphasising her not-so-flattering shape. ‘If you’re going to have big cars you must learn to control them.’

The man grins and adjusts his tie.

‘Comrade Manyeche,’ Florence says to the tall man. ‘Kanjani, chef?’ Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine, Comrade Chokie. How is Elias?’

‘He’s fine,’ she replies.

Such formalities seem out of place at a car accident. I wonder how she knows this man.

‘We can sort this out,’ Manyeche says, raising his voice slightly. ‘Is anyone seriously injured? My people will take care of everything.’

He speaks with absolute calm, as if accustomed to much bigger crises. ‘We must avoid unneeded publicity,’ he adds.

Florence turns her attention back to the driver. He wants to get up and walk around, but she tells him to ‘stay still until the ambulance comes’.

‘You must pay for all of this,’ the woman says to Comrade Manyeche. ‘What do you think this is? Kyalami race track?’

‘Young lady,’ he replies, ‘stay calm. I can take care of everything. I am not, in case you failed to notice, your ordinary township lad.’

The young woman looks away from him, unsure how to respond.

‘I’m quite prepared to tell your father you were driving if it will ease your burden.’

‘Super,’ she replies, as if Manyeche has miraculously restored the twisted vw to showroom condition. ‘Geoff, do you hear that?’ she shouts. She

walks over to where the driver is resting. ‘The man says he’ll say I was driving. Isn’t that lekker?’

Geoff nods. He’s holding his head.

‘I’ll take you all to the hospital in my car,’ says Manyeche.

The young whites agree and Manyeche heads back toward the Mercedes. Geoff offers the blood-soaked towel back to Florence.

‘Don’t worry,’ she says, ‘just throw it away when you’re done.’

‘Thanks for your help,’ he says. ‘This really is a different country. We’re helping each other.’

Florence gives him a quick smile. ‘We’ve always been helping you,’ she says, ‘only now we’re doing it because we want to, not because we have to.’

Manyeche’s vehicle pulls up next to us. The three white youngsters get into the back seat and they drive off.

‘Manyeche loves speeding,’ says Mawere.

‘When he drinks, he takes over from the driver,’ adds Comrade Tito. ‘He ran over a pedestrian three weeks ago – a Mozambican farm worker who came to town to visit his mother. Never made it into the Herald. He’s dangerous.’

We all get into the car. Mawere looks both ways before starting off.

‘Who were the girls who ran away?’ I ask.

‘What girls?’ asks Florence.

‘The ones in the yellow dresses,’ I say. ‘They grabbed backpacks off the back seat and ran up the road.’

‘Were they in the car?’ she asks.

‘I think so,’ I reply. ‘Who is that guy anyway?’

‘Pius Manyeche, Minister of Information,’ Mawere replies.

‘Oh, that Manyeche.’ I’d read about him. If I remember my notes correctly he came from just outside Gweru in Midlands Province. He was in detention with Mugabe from November 1964 to August 1968. He got out, escaped overseas to study and came back to join Zanu in Mozambique in the midseventies.

‘One of Zimbabwe’s most brilliant minds,’ says Mawere.

‘A little too old for schoolgirls,’ says Florence. She’s almost sitting on my lap now. My leg is going to sleep, but I don’t mind. Her neck is so close I can smell the last glimmer of the carnations.

‘We were lucky,’ says Mawere. ‘If you hadn’t spilled that beer, we would have been squashed between Manyeche and those white boys. We’d have ended up like the inside of a boerewors.’

‘The ancestors were with us,’ says Florence, laughing as she leans back and puts her arm around me. I am awed by the way she just took command. And those were white kids.

Mawere drives slowly the rest of the way. As we arrive at my house, Mrs van Zyl is backing out of the driveway on her way to church. She and a friend head down the street in the woman’s yellow Datsun. I’m not sure if they see me.

Florence follows me as I get out of the car.

‘When do we see you again, so we can do a proper interview?’ she asks.

‘How about next weekend?’

‘Phone me.’

‘Your phone never works.’

‘Sometimes it does. If not, just come. You are welcome. You and your history research.’

Her determination embarrasses me. I shake her hand and don’t want to let go.

‘I hope you aren’t too bhabharased,’ Mawere shouts out the window.

‘What?’

‘Hungover,’ says Florence. ‘A bhabharasi is a hangover.’

‘I’ll survive,’ I reply. I thank them all for the party and amble off toward my granny flat.

If Mawere keeps his word, I could be sitting in the Prime Minister’s office in a couple of weeks. A daunting dream come true. At least as daunting, though, is the prospect of seeing Florence again. She’s a fascinating historical subject and a potential source of vast information.

The problem is, I’m not thinking of her that way.

Chapter 7

A couple of weeks later, I get my first big breakthrough, a meeting with Callistus Dlamini, Zimbabwe’s preeminent historian and John Peterson’s former teacher. He offers to pick me up in town and take me to his house for a drink. His car turns out to be a black Rolls Royce.

‘I have a job for you,’ says the Professor, as we leave the city centre. ‘It’s a sensitive matter, maybe a little risky, but one of great importance to Zimbabwe.’ He adjusts his beret, then points from the window to a string of houses along the road. Though the car has no radio, I don’t hear the engine, even when he accelerates.

‘That’s Braeside,’ he says. ‘Coloureds live there.’

I take a casual look. Tile roofs and concrete durawalls hold little interest. I want to know about this job. He’s stringing out my anxiety with his analysis of the role played by the coloureds in the liberation struggle. Even the word ‘coloured’, the term for ‘mixed race’ grates. In the us if you still say ‘colored’ you’re living in the 1940s, the days of Jim Crow and burning crosses.

‘They were a buffer,’ he tells me, ‘the whites tried to use them as a wedge. Coloureds were motor mechanics while we, the Africans, were spanner boys.’ He assures me there were some exceptions, even a few who became guerrillas. I wonder if, in the scheme of reconciliation, coloureds need to forgive or ask for forgiveness. I don’t ask. My ignorance will not be on display for the Professor.

We drive down gum tree-lined Birmingham Road. The Professor continues with his tour guide’s descriptions of the various neighbourhoods. He pulls up his vehicle at a small kiosk at the entrance to a vast property. A man in a blue uniform and matching cap stands at attention. He salutes the Professor as we come to a halt.

‘This is my place,’ the Professor says. For a second I have left Zimbabwe. Before us looms a full-blown castle, turrets and all. Only a palm tree in the side yard betrays the fact that we are not in the English countryside.

‘Prince George built this during World War ii,’ says the Professor. ‘It was a refuge from the Nazi air raids for the Royal Family. I got it cheap when Rhodesia fell in 1980. An independence windfall.’

I try to estimate how cheap a castle could have been, even if the seller was in a state of racial panic. Somewhere there must be money in African history.

The ground floor of the castle harbours a genuine English pub – straight-back leather chairs, matching bar stools and a pair of dartboards on the walnut walls. The full-length bar is backed by a massive mirror; in front of it stands a grey-haired man in a black waistcoat.

The Professor eases into what is obviously his chair, discarding his loafers for the fleece-lined slippers that lie at his feet as if this is their regular rest stop.

‘Baba Phineas,’ he says to the bartender, ‘the usual.’ The Professor looks at me expectantly.

‘I’ll have a Castle,’ I say. ‘It seems appropriate.’

The Professor has one last duty: tamping his long-stem pipe. Once the pipe lights up and his red wine arrives, he’s ready to proceed. I still can’t believe I’m in his presence, let alone in a castle.

‘Are you familiar with the case of Elias Tichasara?’ he asks me.

‘A little,’ I reply. Tichasara was a Zanu military leader who died in Mozambique just before the negotiations for Zimbabwe’s independence began in 1979.

‘There has always been a question mark over his death,’ he says.

I’ve heard this, but I don’t know the details. My silence triggers the Professor to lead me by the hand. He’s comfortable in the role.

‘Tichasara was the link between the guerrilla fighters and political leaders like Mugabe and Manyeche. Unlike most educated Zimbabweans, he was as comfortable in the field as in the five-star hotels.’

Phineas sets a leather dart case on the table next to the Professor.

‘He supposedly died in a car accident. We Zimbabweans don’t believe in accidents.’

‘Did he have enemies?’ I ask.

‘Everyone in politics has enemies. We had two liberation movements who fought. Today we only hear about Zanu. But Zapu, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union was there, though they’re mostly Ndebele. Tichasara wanted Zanu and Zapu to stand together in the elections, not as separate parties. Some Zanu leaders figured that if the two parties merged, Joshua Nkomo, the head of Zapu, would end up as prime minister instead of Mugabe.’

‘Someone in Zanu killed him?’

‘That’s what I want you to find out.’

‘Why me? I know so little about this. I’m an American.’

‘Precisely. No one will suspect you. If I go around asking questions, the authorities will start wondering what this crazy old man is up to now.’

‘There must be other people who could do this. Zimbabweans.’

‘It’s too sensitive for us. I’ve spoken to John Peterson – he recommends you.’

I’m proud that Peterson has faith in me, even prouder to be chosen by the Professor. But I’m still in the dark.

‘What do you mean by sensitive?’ I ask.

‘If someone in Zanu did kill him, they might be amongst the leadership. They have a lot to lose. History is not an academic exercise in Zimbabwe, my friend. Whoever controls the past, controls the future.’

While the Professor sips his wine, I take note of the standard issue portrait of Mugabe above the bar, sandwiched between advertising for two of the world’s most famous beers: Heineken and Tsingtao.

‘Tichasara disliked tribalism,’ says the Professor. ‘He didn’t allow people to talk about Shona and Ndebele in his presence. His mother came from Lupane, a pure Ndebele. His father was an Ndau, from Chimanimani. Tichasara spoke the languages of Zimbabwe, Shona, Ndebele, Ndau, even Kalanga. When he went to Zambia, he learned Nyanja. They say he spoke it like a Zambian. Things happen for a reason.’

All of a sudden I’ve moved from novice historian into the deep waters of intrigues of the past. I hope the Professor isn’t exaggerating to draw me in.

‘I have three men who were in the car with Tichasara the night he died. They are prepared to talk with you.’

‘Why would they want to talk now? It seems pointless, maybe dangerous.’

‘Finding historical truth is never pointless. There are great divisions emerging between Zanu and Zapu. We may end up with a civil war here in Zimbabwe between the Shona of Zanu and the Ndebele of Zapu. This would be a great tragedy.’

The Professor sounds off track here. Everything I’ve read about Mugabe and Zanu indicates they abhor tribal divisions. Where is the potential for civil war?

‘Exposing how Tichasara was killed could show the country how far some people are willing to go to get their hands on power.’

If things are really this serious, I don’t think an historian, even one as great as Dlamini, can save the day. The old man is carried away with the grandeur of his mission.

‘What is it you think I can do?’ I ask.

‘Interview these three men and write up what they say. I’ll make sure it gets published in the right places.’

‘This is a whole new direction for me, using history to fight the battles of the present.’

‘History is always like that,’ says the Professor. ‘People want to justify their cause. You must be clear what it is you want to justify.’

‘I believe in peace and reconciliation. It’s no trick to justify that.’

‘There is no contradiction between that and what I’m asking you to do.’

The Professor offers me a handful of darts. I decline. He stands up and lofts a dart toward the board. He smiles as it scores 19.

‘Let me give you some time to think about this,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to hand you information that may be dangerous for you if you aren’t going to use it. Come by my shop when you decide.’

He pulls a small flyer from his jacket pocket. The ‘Great Zimbabwe Curio Shop’. The Professor specialises in Shona sculpture, baskets and copper masks.

‘That’s where I spend my mornings,’ he says. ‘A little business venture to occupy me in my old age.’

We walk outside to a blue Peugeot. A young woman is at the wheel.

‘Tambudzai will drive you home,’ he says. ‘She’s a good driver, though not yet ready for the Rolls.’

I sit in the back seat while she moves cautiously toward the street. She honks twice to warn pedestrians. Two women, each carrying a stack of baskets on her head, scurry past the driveway entrance. I still don’t understand why the Professor selected me.

‘How did you like the castle?’ Tambudzai asks.

‘Fine,’ I reply. ‘A surprising thing to find in Africa.’

‘They say it was built by Europeans,’ she says, ‘but I’m not so sure. I think they found it already here.’

‘Stranger things have happened.’

She comes up to a small pickup truck with a dozen workers piled in the back. Two of them dangle their legs over the open tail gate. Such carelessness seems commonplace here; there’s no sense of road safety.

I sit in my living room until after midnight going through all my books, recording all mentions of Tichasara. I fill eleven cards with his data. Only Mugabe and Nkomo occupy more space in my files.

Zimbabwe’s greatest historian has offered me more than a chance to interview a trio of passengers in Tichasara’s car. My books all say the man died in an accident. If I can prove otherwise, I could earn a permanent place among this country’s historians, maybe even right up there with Dlamini. Despite the Professor’s warning, the risk can’t be anything to worry about. We are just academics, not soldiers of fortune.

A couple of days after my meeting with Dlamini, I receive a letter from Wisconsin State, telling me that John Peterson has received a well-deserved promotion. He’s going to head the African Studies Program at ucla, one of the best in the country.

I’m happy for Peterson, but I’ve lost a great supervisor and a resolute ally in the trench warfare with academic bureaucracy. John Peterson was the driving force behind my trip to Zimbabwe. He took me under his wing, then made sure I had funding.

Peterson spent ten years in Kenya and Uganda and wrote two books on independent Africa. He shares my enthusiasm for the possibilities of this country. In our discussion about the Prime Minister’s first speech to parliament, he told me Mugabe was destined to become the ‘African Gandhi’.

In his place the university has bestowed on me Professor Geoffrey Latham. Peterson and I used to call him ‘the dinosaur’. He attended Oxford some time before World War ii. Like so many ageing Englishmen, whatever minute traces of passion remain in his soul are reserved for the glory of the British Empire.

Chapter 8

A few days later, I receive a letter from Latham himself.

February 4, 1982

Dear Mr Dabney,

As you are aware, Dr Peterson has left Wisconsin State. Consequently, the university has determined that I will now be responsible for the supervision of your doctoral research and dissertation.

Having read your documentation quite thoroughly, I have a number of concerns. Regrettably, since you have already embarked on your fieldwork, we are unable to communicate in person. Hence, I will have to take a rather uncomfortable but I think vital step of informing you of my concerns in this letter.

My major reservation regarding your overall approach is objectivity. Even your vocabulary shows a definite bias. Terms such as ‘liberation struggle’ and ‘freedom fighters’ reveal preconceived opinions and value judgements which could ultimately compromise the quality of your research as well as your final publication.

Moreover, you seem to revere Mr Mugabe almost as if he were divinely inspired. This is an extremely precarious standpoint from which to proceed on a research project in which Mr Mugabe’s actions and philosophy play such a central role.

Lastly, in your list of prospective interviews, there is a noticeable paucity of individuals affiliated with the previous government (which you refer to as the ‘racist regime’ on six occasions). It seems rather obvious that reconciliation is a two-way process. Therefore, your research should be equally balanced between the groups you call the ‘liberation movement’ (‘insurgents’ or ‘armed opposition’ would be more appropriate terms) and those you deem to have been part of the ‘racist regime’ (I suggest the ‘previous regime’ as a neutral rendering).

In order to proceed further with your research under my supervision, you will have to address these concerns as soon as possible. I urgently request that you contact me within two weeks of the date on this letter to indicate how you plan to address the issues I have noted.

I look forward to hearing from you. I wish you the best in your research. I eagerly await a dissertation of the highest calibre.

Yours faithfully,

Professor GD Latham, PhD (Oxford)

The day after Latham’s letter arrives, I receive a packet of his articles sent by Peterson.

The contents of Peterson’s package aren’t reassuring. In a piece entitled ‘Eulogy for Rhodesia’, Latham lauds the contribution of the all-white Rhodesian Front party to the Southern African region. He characterises Ian Smith, the last white prime minister of Rhodesia – who once promised blacks would not rule the country ‘in a thousand years’ – as a ‘misunderstood maverick with an instinctive feel for life in Africa’.

An enclosed note from Peterson says he’s heard rumours that Latham was a major shareholder in a company that supplied mercenaries to the Rhodesian government during the war against Zanu and Zapu.

I’m in deep. I tear up the first six drafts of my reply. After nine days, I send draft number seven.

March 7, 1982

Dear Professor Latham,

Thank you for your letter of February 4.

I regret that you are not entirely satisfied with my research proposal. Unfortunately, I am not wholly persuaded by your explanation as to why I should alter my approach.

My main concern is the issue of Mr Mugabe. I will not deny that I hold him in very high esteem. For any man to endure a decade of unjust incarceration and then preach a gospel of reconciliation toward his captors is truly remarkable. I wish there were more Robert Mugabes in this world.

Nonetheless, if my research should reveal shortcomings or contradictions in his actions of which I am not currently aware, I will be open to changing my perspective.

With regard to my interviewees, I admit to a bias in selection. In my view, the black population is the key to reconciliation. They are in power. They were the victims in the past. Their actions will largely determine whether Zimbabwe succeeds on its path of reconciliation or plunges into further bloodshed and hatred. The whites can, however, play an important role if they choose to accept Mr Mugabe’s terms. Let us hope they do.

Despite these biases, I have not excluded whites from my interview list. I have just not given them equal status. Considering they comprise less than two per cent of the population of Zimbabwe, I think this is quite justified. I trust you will agree.

In conclusion, while I appreciate your concern and your interest in my work, I am confident I am on the right track. I assure you I will produce what you desire – a dissertation of the highest calibre.

Sincerely,

Ben Dabney, PhD student

Chapter 9

The brightly lit reading room of the National Archives of Zimbabwe seats twenty people in numbered chairs. I’m No. 14. Rules allow pencils only. The assistant director, a giant marshmallow of a man named Chambers, sits in an office with a huge window overlooking the reading room. If he spots a researcher taking notes with a Bic or a Paper Mate he can ban him for life. My single No. 2 lead pencil will have to shoulder the burden of my quest to record all there is to know about Elias Tichasara.

My counterparts are half a dozen middle-aged white researchers and one young Asian. A stack of yellowed newspapers partially hides the Asian. I have a long list of documents – enough to keep me in chair No. 14 for months. Though I am focused on Tichasara, I’ve also acquired material on Mugabe, Manyeche and several other leaders. There are no entries under ‘Matshaka, Florence’ in the card catalogue.

Apart from the rustle of paper, only the occasional grinding of the Boston pencil sharpener breaks the silence. I think it’s the same model we had in my fourth grade classroom.

I start with a piece from the Chicago Tribune which refers to Mugabe as a ‘fanatic communist terrorist’. My snickering at this phrase brings reproachful glances from the other researchers.

Tichasara, I discover, did not pass away at just any random moment in the liberation war. When he died, in November 1979, he was travelling from a Zanu military camp to the city of Beira, Mozambique. From there he was to catch a flight to London to join the Zanu delegates in the negotiations that ultimately consolidated the Lancaster House agreement on Zimbabwe’s independence.

‘What if he had lived?’ the author of one article speculated. ‘Could the presence of one man have turned the tide of this newly independent country’s history?’ Questions like those have tortured historians for ages. If there was no Hitler, would there have been a Nazi Germany? I have no answer.

After two days of the pencil-writing routine, the inside of my forefinger feels permanently flattened. I set aside some articles about Tichasara to photocopy.

The photocopy machine is down the hall from the reading room. Mr Murehwa, a statuesque gentleman in a khaki uniform, is in charge. His green government-issue sweater features leather elbow patches. I hand him the articles and ask about the price of copies.

‘I’m sorry sir, the machine is not working today,’ he replies.

‘Will it be working tomorrow?’

‘I’m not sure, sir. We’re waiting for spare parts.’ Mr Murehwa stands almost at attention.

‘Where do these parts come from?’ I ask.

‘From overseas somewhere, sir.’

‘How long has it been broken?’

‘For some time now, sir.’

‘Two weeks? Two months?’ I want specifics and my voice is not concealing the frustration. Mr Murehwa responds to pressure with vagueness. He doesn’t know when it might be repaired, can’t remember how long it took to repair last time. He retains his rigid posture throughout our encounter as if standing upright substitutes for competence. I’m feeling nostalgic for once, homesick for a little American efficiency. I just want a few photocopies, nothing more.

‘Can I leave these magazines with you then? You can make the copies when the machine is fixed. I’ll phone to see if they’re ready.’

‘That’s fine, sir,’ he replies. ‘If the phones are working.’

‘The phones aren’t working?’

‘Yes, sir. They are not. Yesterday they were fine, but something happened.’

‘Then you’re waiting for a replacement?’

‘No, sir. They usually fix themselves. Phones are like the weather, sir. You never know what’s going to happen.’

In my most reasonable voice I tell Mr Murehwa I’ll take the magazines back to the reading room and make some more notes.

‘He was a great man,’ says Mr Murehwa, handing me the papers. He’s seen a photo of Tichasara in one of the magazines. ‘Zimbabwe would be different if he was still with us.’

‘I’ll drop them by on the way out,’ I tell him. ‘When the copier’s fixed you can make the copies. We can talk then about Tichasara.’

‘Fine, sir. Make sure you fill out the form for copies. And write your phone number.’

‘Just in case, eh, Mr Murehwa?’

‘That’s right, sir.’

I return to the archives a few days later. A magazine from West Africa contains an article entitled ‘Tichasara’s Death: Accident or Intrigue?’ Without a shred of evidence, the writer asserts that the Rhodesian security forces had arranged the killing. A comment from an ‘African expert’ at Cambridge attributes Tichasara’s demise to an ‘internal power struggle within Zanu’. The article mentions past intrigues in Zanu: the Nhari rebellion in 1974, which left over a hundred Zanu fighters dead, and the mysterious assassination of party leader Herbert Chitepo in Zambia in 1975. Zanu may not be the idealistic monolith I envisioned from Wisconsin.

I read the local newspapers for November and December 1979 on microfilm. I’m huddled in a dark closet of a room in front of a machine with an aggravating focus knob. When I get the top half of the page in focus, the bottom half blurs. And vice versa. After half an hour of this, my first migraine in Zimbabwe is on the way. Tichasara has to wait. I lay my head down. The darkness and quiet of this claustrophobic space is a near perfect cure.

An hour of this solitude and I’m ready to risk a shot of caffeine to wake up.

The archives serve tea each morning at 10.30. Mr Murehwa brews the leaves in a huge metal pot and neatly arranges the white cup and saucer sets on a table next to his office.

The researchers gather outside for a little sunshine. Two wooden benches border an ample bed of sunflowers. Two British nationals, Daniel Watson and Elizabeth Routledge, are sitting on the more recently painted bench. Watson is researching the history of sorghum production in Zimbabwe, something about crop hardiness and tradition. He has those long fingers that come from a life of contemplation.

Routledge is wearing leather sandals and a brown dress that makes her look dumpier than she is. I don’t tell them a word about Tichasara or Dlamini. That’s my secret. I do say I’m from Wisconsin.

‘That’s where they make that putrid beer you Americans love so much,’ Elizabeth says. ‘What do you call it?’

‘Budweiser,’ I reply. ‘My father spent most of his life working in the Bud factory.’

I’m not close to the man, but I won’t let a stranger denigrate his life’s labour.

‘And you actually call people Bud, don’t you?’ She speaks in an upper-class accent that doesn’t seem part of her birthright.

The two of them continue their discussion about an article in the most recent issue of Modern African Studies. They’re dropping in terms like ‘hermeneutics’ and ‘metanarratives’. They’re very excited about a French writer named Michel Foucault. I’ve heard of Foucault, but I have no idea what they’re talking about. Wisconsin State is out of the flow of great ideas.

The young Asian arrives with his cup of tea. He introduces himself as Chung Lee from the University of Hong Kong. Chung’s been in the country for a year. He’s read every edition of the daily Herald from 1931 to 1965. Twice. I don’t even ask him what he’s researching. My migraine’s returning.

As I leave, Routledge takes my details. ‘I’ll invite you around for supper sometime,’ she says. ‘You’ll enjoy meeting more of the research community.’

I doubt her sincerity but I thank her for the offer and rush back to my granny flat to squash the headache with a towel around my eyes and a nap. Tichasara’s death couldn’t have been an accident.

Chapter 10

Chuck tells us he has just come back from Matabeleland. He’s involved in low-income housing development, sponsored by the us government. ‘We’ve had to stop two of our projects there,’ he explains, ‘because of the fighting.’

We are sitting around a table in a dining area that leads off the enormous sunken lounge in Elizabeth’s house.

‘The Boers are always infiltrating,’ says Colin, a bearded, frizzy-haired South African in his late twenties. He’s made a point of informing us several times that he’s a deserter from the South African army living ‘in exile’ in Harare. ‘They won’t leave Zimbabwe alone,’ he adds.

‘It’s not the South Africans,’ says Chuck, ‘it’s the Zimbabwean army. They’re terrorising people.’

‘Zimbabweans didn’t fight a fourteen-year civil war to start it all over again two years later,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘I’m only telling you what our people told me,’ says Chuck. ‘The Zimbabweans working for us are in fear for their lives.’

‘That’s a lot of kak,’ says Colin. Lisa, his girlfriend, nods in agreement.

I don’t know Elizabeth well, but I can see she’s upset.

‘Let’s enjoy the evening, people,’ I say. ‘We don’t want to spoil a lovely meal. Arguments aren’t good for digestion.’

I give Elizabeth a quick wink and the dinner table conversation drifts to concern about a possible drought. Safer country, though I’m still miffed by Chuck’s insinuation that Mugabe’s troops are engaged in atrocities. Typical American. He talks through straight white teeth that his parents paid thousands for. And he wears a New York Knicks cap. I wonder where people like him get their information.

The other guests don’t seem as taken by the roast lamb, fresh green beans and gem squash as I am. Since I’ve been in Zimbabwe it’s been sadza, beer, slimy French fries, and those grim English meat pies. I especially like the gem squash. I’ve never tasted it before.

The food isn’t the only positive aspect of the evening. The invitation alone came as a surprise. Now Elizabeth is being extremely friendly. Her scooped-neck red top has unveiled a sea of freckles across her chest and shoulders. I love freckles, maybe because I’m extra pale.

Chuck is not alone. He’s come with his wife Joy and their tiny baby Gary. Joy’s an academic on sabbatical from Georgetown. Though her specialty is African art, she hasn’t said much. Gary’s demands for food and clean diapers have kept her occupied.

As Elizabeth starts to clear the table, Gary spits up all over Joy’s shoulder. The sight of baby vomit gives my Cabernet a rough edge. I adjourn to the living room with Colin. ‘The police are still after me,’ he boasts.

I tell him a little about my research and my high regard for Mugabe.

‘Back in the 70s in South Africa,’ he says, ‘we used to look at guerrilla fighters as our heroes. Then other organisations began to spring up – the unions, student groupings, church formations. Democratic organisations.’

Despite his youthful look, he speaks like a veteran. ‘Remember this,’ he says, pointing at me with an instructive finger, ‘a guerrilla force can never be democratic.’

‘If people support them they can be,’ I reply. ‘Zimbabwe isn’t like China or the Soviet Union. Mugabe was elected. That’s democracy, not dictatorship.’

Colin finishes his wine, then starts a snifter of brandy.

‘These are peasants,’ he reminds me. ‘They can’t control production like workers. You need organised workers to transform society.’

Chuck approaches us and starts in again on how worried he is about Matabeleland. I don’t want to hear it. I ask Colin if he knows anything about Elias Tichasara. I figure that will exclude Chuck from the discussion.

‘The Mozambicans killed him,’ says Colin. ‘Probably with the backing of the Soviets. They feared Tichasara might gain power and get too friendly with the Americans. He was more conservative than Mugabe.’

‘Where did you hear this?’ I ask.

‘Around,’ says Colin, glancing at Chuck. ‘It’s a political hot potato.’

‘There are lots of hot potatoes here,’ says Chuck.

These two are lining each other up in their cross hairs. I move toward Elizabeth. We sit on the off-white couch, the centrepiece of the living room. Chuck’s sneakers squeak on the plastic runners that protect the thick white carpet as he berates Colin about ‘archaic socialism’.

‘You need to help me calm those two down,’ Elizabeth whispers. ‘I’m such an idiot. I should never have invited them on the same night. Chalk and cheese.’

‘A little debate never hurt anyone,’ I reply. ‘It definitely won’t spoil that wonderful meal you cooked.’

She goes shy for a second, then touches my arm lightly.

‘I grew up around drunken fights,’ she says. ‘Not an experience I wish to repeat.’

‘Try some music,’ I suggest.

Elizabeth bounces up and heads for the stereo.

‘Does anyone want to hear something?’ she asks.

‘I’d like to hear some sense from these Americans,’ says Colin.

I think he’s joking, but neither Chuck nor Joy, who’s joined the conversation, is smiling. The marimbas of Thomas Mapfumo’s band drown out the details of the debate, but the body language tells us the temperature is rising.

Elizabeth tries to ignore it all by telling me a little of her life story. The music is so loud she has to snuggle up and place her mouth right next to my ear. I don’t mind. She smells of coconut. Her warm breath along the side of my neck elicits a few faint chills. The argument has become a side show.

Elizabeth is the eldest of seven children. Her mother died when she was thirteen, leaving her as a surrogate matriarch. ‘My father is a plumber,’ she says. ‘He was always either working or drinking. He didn’t know how to cope with a home full of children.’ Elizabeth only started college when she was twenty-seven. Eight years later she’s finishing a PhD. She doesn’t look like an older woman.

‘My father is so proud,’ she says. ‘No Routledge ever went to university before. He even joined the anti-apartheid movement when I explained to him that blacks in South Africa couldn’t vote or live in the same areas as whites. He idolises Nelson Mandela.’

I tell her about my own adulation of Mugabe and reconciliation.

‘Are you a Christian?’ she asks.

‘No. But my parents are. Big time Christians. We barely speak. They’re fanatics.’

‘Lots of them in America,’ she says.

I don’t mind her criticism of my parents this time. We’ve moved on from the exchange over tea at the archives. Besides, the fundamentalism my parents have imbibed is incomprehensible to me, let alone to someone from another country.

When the Mapfumo record ends, Joy picks up Gary who’s just woken up from a nap. ‘We have to go,’ she says. ‘If Gary’s sleep routine gets disturbed, our household goes into a tailspin.’

It sounds like an excuse to escape Colin. How could a tiny baby disrupt the life of two adults? The few times I saw her after Hilary was born, Janet used to moan about the same thing, searching for pity. I didn’t give her any.

Elizabeth walks the Americans to their car.

‘Sorry,’ Colin says. ‘Sometimes I do get a little emotional about my politics.’

‘A little emotional?’ says Lisa. ‘When have you ever been a little emotional?’

Lisa looks a bit like Janet – short, thick, black hair, and a small yet intense body. She wears a gold stud through one side of her nose. She might come from Indian ancestry, but given the complicated racial categories of South Africa I definitely won’t ask.

‘I didn’t mean to tar you with the same brush as Chuck and Joy,’ Colin tells me. ‘Those are real Americans. Our struggles here are life and death matters. Not silly games.’

‘Whenever you drink it ends up like this,’ says Lisa. She’s sitting alone in the middle of the carpet.

‘I hope we didn’t ruin your evening,’ she adds, looking at me.

Colin goes to the bathroom.

‘I think it’s because of his brother,’ Lisa says. ‘They sentenced him to five years this week for refusing military service. That’s a lot of time for a white person.’

She goes on to tell me how the police have harassed her family members, hunting for Colin. ‘Our family name is Abrahams. It’s a very common name in South Africa. Most of the people the police have bothered aren’t even related to me.’

Colin comes back with his hair and beard soaking wet. When Elizabeth returns, he promises to be ‘more polite the next time no matter how ugly the Americans are’. Elizabeth finds a diplomatic reply, adding she didn’t know Chuck and Joy were so conservative. ‘You should have heard them outside carrying on about communists,’ she says.

Elizabeth summons me to the kitchen. ‘I’ll get rid of them,’ she says. ‘Don’t leave just yet.’

She pours me a shot of j&b. ‘The night is still young,’ she adds. She’s drinking peppermint schnapps.

After they leave, Elizabeth tells me she’s in Harare on an exchange with a local academic. ‘He gets my one-bedroom flat in dreary London. I get this three-bedroom house with a swimming pool and Georgia, the maid.’

I’m not really listening. Between surges of sexual tension, I’m considering the prospect that the Mozambicans killed Tichasara. Sounds feasible given Mozambique’s Marxist government. While Elizabeth trails her finger along the back of my ear, a flurry of dates comes on: 1809, the birth of Abraham Lincoln; 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation.

I stop the flow there. She’s already led me to the bedroom.

‘The bed came with the house,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Not my choice.’

It’s a four-poster with canopy. The cover and spread are purple, with gold frills.

Elizabeth wears a long light blue t-shirt to bed. She likes to rub my tummy, which is embarrassing. It’s grown too large. At least she also has a little baby fat.

Her kisses taste of mint. She seems more at ease than I am, even after two more shots of j&b. I’m not sure she’s satisfied in the end, but I’ve never figured out how to ask that question.

The roots of her hair still have a trace of the coconut smell.

In the morning we shower together, but the hot water runs out before we get past playfully washing each other’s backs. Afterwards, she makes Jamaican blend coffee by draining it through paper filters. Georgia brings fresh bread from the Italian bakery.

I leave before noon. We promise to meet again and share more ideas about research. The night with Elizabeth was so comfortable – buttery green beans, fried mint kisses. It’s been many months since a woman’s head rested on my shoulder.

On my way home, I buy the Sunday paper. It details how some ‘agents of apartheid’ blew up four planes belonging to the Zimbabwean air force the previous day. The planes were parked at an airfield in Gweru.

Though the news is disturbing, my mind quickly shifts elsewhere. I can’t stop thinking about Florence tending to the wounds on Geoff Gilbert’s forehead. That’s genuine reconciliation.

Chapter 11

For a couple of months Elizabeth and I become inseparable. We drive to the archives in her blue Mazda, drink Mr Murehwa’s tea, return to her house for dinner, conversation and cosy lovemaking in the four-poster bed. I’m not sure if we have a future and I don’t ask. The relationship meets our needs in this exciting, decidedly slow-paced and foreign country.

I still don’t mention my research about Tichasara. The day I go to inform Dlamini I’ll take up his offer, I tell Elizabeth I have a doctor’s appointment. I am an infrequent visitor to my granny flat. Mrs van Zyl may be lonely but I must be the least troublesome tenant she’s ever had.

Elizabeth is more than a lover; she’s my connection to the world of researchers. She knows them all: historians, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists. Nearly all are, in the local parlance, expatriate, ‘expats’ for short, meaning they come from outside Zimbabwe. This country has become a fashionable venue for British academics, in particular, to do fieldwork.

Elizabeth Routledge’s sprawling house has earned the status of compulsory stop on the expat’s tour of duty. The dinner table overflows with inquisitive visitors who feast on her sumptuous roasts, butter-drenched gem squash and nutmeg-laced milk tart. Many in this social circle have been studying Zimbabwe for years. They rattle off titles of books they have read or written, conferences they have attended and dignitaries they’ve interviewed. I feel like I’ve lived my life in a living room fish tank while they’ve been swimming in the seas of knowledge and experience. Milwaukee does not rate as a citadel of intellectual activity.

The most frequent dinner table guests are Professor Albert Runnels and his wife Rose. Elizabeth describes them as ‘old Africa hands’. They’ve lived in several African countries: Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, as well as Rose’s native Uganda. Rose doesn’t talk much. Her children are grown and living in the uk. Despite being in her mid-forties, she radiates the glamour of a much younger woman.

Runnels compensates for his wife’s reticence. He has a well-grounded opinion on every topic of conversation and counts himself one of a half-dozen ‘genuine experts’ on African birdlife. He’s authored four books on African politics, including a biography of Idi Amin entitled Just Another African Despot.

‘I hate to see young researchers being deceived by the public pronouncements of African politicians,’ he tells me one evening while the four of us finish a bottle of Courvoisier. ‘Mugabe is an authoritarian wolf in the sheep’s clothing of a quasidemocrat.’

Runnels avoids our gaze, preferring to address a space somewhere near the ceiling where an imaginary crowd hangs on his every syllable.

Rose smiles and reaches for her husband’s hand. ‘Perhaps you need to keep Albert’s concerns in mind,’ she tells me, ‘but your work sounds interesting.’

Unlike most African women I’ve met, Rose prefers casual clothes – t-shirts, shorts, running shoes. She used to run marathons. Her legs look like they could still last the 26 miles or 42 kilometres, the unit they use here.

‘I won’t be swept away by rhetoric that doesn’t coincide with reality,’ I tell them.

‘Don’t be naïve,’ Runnels replies. ‘Reconciliation is a public relations ploy. African politics goes one way, down the drain of corruption and repression. Only a fool would think otherwise.’

He adds, ‘I’d hate to see you writing drivel like those intellectual puppets of Zanu, David Martin and Phyllis Johnson.’

Martin and Johnson authored The Struggle for Zimbabwe. After Dlamini’s work, it’s my favourite book on Zimbabwean history. No one else has portrayed the liberation war in such detail.

I’m weighing up the consequences of confrontation. These are long-time friends of Elizabeth’s. They even visited her in the uk. But the man is insulting me.

‘I don’t think it’s foolish to be optimistic or hopeful,’ I reply. ‘The Zimbabweans have achieved a lot already, building schools, clinics, houses.’

‘It means nothing, my young man,’ he responds. ‘It will all go up in a cloud of African smoke.’

I give Elizabeth a pleading look. I want her to intervene before I say what I’m thinking. She and Rose get up and go to the kitchen, leaving the bulls to lock horns.

‘I suggest you change your direction or you’ll end up being a source of jokes within the African academe – the Mugabephile.’

He looks proud at his creation of a new term of deprecation. Without replying, I excuse myself to go and find Elizabeth. She’s slicing a block of Gouda cheese in the kitchen.

‘Let me do that,’ I say. ‘You go and talk to that asshole before I grab him by the throat.’

‘Albert means well,’ says Rose.

I hadn’t noticed she was in the pantry.

‘He sometimes has an unfortunate manner,’ she adds, not coming out to face me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

Elizabeth is trembling, but she is still slicing the cheese. Finally, she puts down the knife and rushes down the hallway. I follow.

She is lying on the bed, her head buried in a pillow.

‘I told you I hate conflict,’ she says in a wavering voice. ‘I love my father, but he’d get drunk and brawl with the Tory neighbour. I need peace in my house.’

She’s sitting up now. The tears have stopped. ‘Albert and Rose are my friends,’ she says.

‘The man is an arrogant bastard,’ I tell her. ‘He talks to me like I’m three years old.’

‘Count to ten,’ she says. ‘You’ll find a way.’

Elizabeth shows no sympathy for my outrage. Maybe Runnels was once the butt of sarcastic comments at African Studies conferences. Whatever his problem, his goal now is to curdle the passion of all around him. What kind of history declares that every African country must travel exactly the same depressing path? Dogma is destructive, be it my parents’ brand of Christianity or Runnels’ cynicism.

Since Elizabeth doesn’t want to discuss this any further, I go back to the living room with no idea how to mend the fences. Albert and Rose are gone. A note on the coffee table informs Elizabeth that Rose will come by and see her tomorrow.

I don’t feel like dealing with this. I’m off to Mrs van Zyl’s.

I give Elizabeth two days. I avoid the archives, rereading Martin and Johnson’s book. I like the style and the comprehensive coverage of the war. After the conversation at Elizabeth’s, I’m more aware of the bias, though. All the quotes come from Zanu leaders: Mugabe, Manyeche, Mawere and the others. Though Zapu combatants also died and many of their leaders are in government, they’re overlooked.

In a way, Runnels is right. This is what they call hotel history, done from the comfort of bars and restaurants in the Monomatapa or Meikles hotels. I wonder if the authors even left Harare while doing their research. But then, who am I to condemn? I haven’t been out of the city either. I’ve lived in the cloistered stratosphere of garden teas, struggling Xerox machines and Rixi taxis. Only the roar of the Boston pencil sharpener and the outbursts of Runnels or Colin have disrupted my tranquil existence.

I want to bounce these reflections off Elizabeth. She is level-headed when we’re not engaged in petty quarrels.

I put the Martin and Johnson book in my day pack and set out for her house. It’s lovely, clear and warm like almost every evening in Harare.The weather is too perfect at times, no extremes in heat or humidity, no torrential rains. No wonder the white settlers chose to defend this country with their lives.

Elizabeth will just be coming home from the archives. I buy a bottle of red wine on the way. I have it all planned. We’ll sip the wine by the side of the pool and discuss how I can avoid the pitfalls of Martin and Johnson. The hostility of the other day will melt away as we interact like mature and rigorous intellectuals. Stimulating discussion always yields dynamic lovemaking.

As I expected, her car is in the driveway. I hope she is cooking some lamb chops with that mint sauce. Meat is cheap here and there are butchers, not supermarkets that offer plasticwrapped, assembly-line packages. Stepping back in time can have its advantages.

The front door is locked. Unusual, but maybe Georgia is away. I knock several times. No response. I walk around toward the pool. I hear voices and splashing.

‘Elizabeth,’ I shout, ‘how ya doin?’

The voices and splashing stop.

‘Ben?’ she yells. ‘Just a minute. Wait there.’

I hit the corner of the house just in time to see Elizabeth wrapping a towel around her bare buttocks. A blushing Chung Lee treads water in the centre of the pool.

‘It’s not a good time, Ben,’ she says. ‘You should have phoned.’

‘How’s the water?’ I ask Chung. He doesn’t answer.

Elizabeth and I walk back toward the gate.

‘Why don’t you come tomorrow for dinner?’ she says. ‘We can talk.’

‘Who will you have naked in the pool tomorrow?’ I ask. ‘Professor Runnels? Mr Murehwa?’

‘I’m sorry this happened,’ she says, though I don’t detect remorse in her voice. ‘I told you I don’t like conflict.’

She stops a few feet in front of the gate. I keep walking. As I reach the exit, I turn back.

‘Here’s your wine,’ I say, tossing the bottle to her. ‘Catch!’

She reaches with both hands to grab it. The towel comes undone and falls to the ground.

‘Bastard,’ she says, setting the bottle on the ground and fumbling for the towel. I’ve never seen her naked in the sunlight. She’s almost pink.

‘Get out of here with your bullshit about reconciliation.’

I take one last look at her nipples before I leave.

I walk to the King George and prepare to get good and drunk. I’ve lost the little grounding I had in Harare. Now, even going to the archives will be uncomfortable. I think of all those people clapping for me at Mawere’s party. And I’ve done nothing.The only history I can write is the debacle of my relationship with Elizabeth.

I wonder if her dinner invitation for tomorrow is still good.

Chapter 12

The Princess Lounge has live music – a balding white crooner who specialises in Frank Sinatra with a twist of Tom Jones and Dean Martin. Well-dressed young black civil servants flock to the King George to loosen their ties and sing along to ‘My Way’ or ‘Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime’.