Dogs of War
Author: Mujeri, Charmaine; Unknown
Date: 2014-10-29T22:00:00+00:00
Keywords: African Literature; AnieBook; Animated Ebook; Short Story; Zimbabwe; Culture & Conflict
Publisher: ICAPA

about BREAKING THE SILENCE: Breaking the Cycle

BREAKING THE SILENCE: Breaking the Cycle is a storytelling project about violence in the Zimbabwean society.

Zimbabwe is in the grip of a chronic pandemic of violence, from the domestic sphere to the public sphere. Zimbabwean life has become cheap to other Zimbabweans and perpetrators appear to get away literally with murder while survivors are numbed and intimidated. Silence becomes the perpetrators’ greatest shield.

Breaking the Silence tears through the veil of silence by bringing the debate on endemic violence in Zimbabwe into the centre of the public domain.
Material for these short stories was collected through a call for stories on violence by The Institute of Creative Arts for Progress in Africa (ICAPA) Trust.

This is the fourth story published from the BREAKING THE SILENCE series.

For information contact
projects@icapatrust.org
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BREAKING THE SILENCE

DOGS OF WAR

A short story by Charmaine Mujeri

ISBN 978-0-7974-6109-3

I adjust my sunglasses to my present, and the sun that beats down on the gathering. Its glare, unrelenting, drains the land of its moisture, sucks sweat from all of us. The pungent smell of hot dust unites us, almost heralding the havoc we are about to wreak on this unsuspecting community. Party slogans rain down but they offer no comfort from the heat, instead they electrify the atmosphere. The older people are filled with dread brought on by the war-time songs, the guns and the death the guns bring. So they sit dutifully in the sun. The dust rises, choking the grandmothers until it covers them with the dark red of it. They do not move, like relics of a forgotten time.

- There are people who will come here and tell you your M.P. is not doing anything for you. Who built the new school? The new bridge that you pass on to go to the city? The medicines in the clinics, the projects you do to earn a living for yourselves and your families. We want to build a university…

The M.P’s voice droned on. I scanned the crowd, noting the targets. They were all present. All present. All of them. It was always easier when you didn’t have to flush them out. I wanted the rally to end sooner. We had work to do. Before we had needed the cloak of darkness to operate. Now we exposed ourselves. Paraded every bit as professionally as the whores in the dark avenues, displaying our wares. They must know who we are and why we had come, so we did not hide our faces. Failure was never an option; we were too disciplined for that.

We are drinking. Crates of scud are passed around wherever we are and we don’t care who sees. Our thirst must be quenched, whatever it is, even if it is not thirst. No law has power beyond this original law and we respect nothing else, and because of its power, we become The Original Law. We take what is there to be taken - power, mines - with promises that we laugh at and we laugh at the consequences of it all: the debts, desperation, disease, decay that scrapes deep troughs in the very earth we walk on. Our unregistered vehicles rumble into these depths and into the desperation that lies everywhere, like the potholes scar every part of the road.

They are everywhere these holes we avoid and sink into, as we drive to the homestead. The rally is over. Our easy work of the round up begins. In no time, we have two in the truck. Each is tied with an electricity cable. Their fingers turn blue. We don't care, why should we? They are the fools who play for the wrong team. We laugh at them. The defiant young man paid with his teeth. They should know by now it is pointless to resist, to go against the tide. His eyes are swollen shut.

No one ever asked if Themba had a license. He just claimed the role of driver. No one contested it. The truck stops. The singing gets louder and more explicit. We re-live the long gone glories of our leaders, the liberators. They are our liberators. We swear again, each silently, to defend the hard won victories, the blood, the sweat, the tears. In these days of peace, this is our sacrifice.

A pregnant woman, upon seeing us, darts back into the house. Otherwise, a pitiful file of humanity ejects itself from the several huts that make up the compound. There is an old man, followed by awkward twin boys, disfigured and pimpled by puberty. There is a girl. A toddler with a crusty moustache of mucus and flies clings to her skirt. I hate flies. They swarm only where things rot.

- Where is your father, boy? Huh? Speak!

The pent up anger rings loudly in my voice. I push the boys around, punctuating each word with a slap to the face. Their distress could be mine. The secret is to know it is not. Knowing brings the joy of watching them caught between the natural instincts to defend themselves but submitting to the pain, the humiliation. The taller of the two raises his hands to deflect the blows. I hit harder, to show him the only way to stop me is by hitting back and hitting hard enough that I don’t come back for more. I know they won't fight back and they don’t fight back, they don’t try. They are slaves born free.

- We left him at the rally.

- What for! Why did he stay?

Now we know the man, their father, stayed for the free alcohol, like the fool he is. In these uncertain times a man should never stray too far from home or leave his family unattended. He acts as if he doesn’t know that no one is safe from old debts that still need to be paid. I make the quick decision not to return to the rally. His family will provide the entertainment while we wait.

- Go and deal with the whore that's gone inside,..

The boys move because the girl with the child-like-a-rat has gone inside. I look around. I never beat up old people. I couldn’t. They are already frail from life. Backs ruined from the wrench of the years they were unlucky to have lived. Plagued by ghosts of friends, children, loved ones they had to bury. Haunted by what was, tormented by what could have been, resigned to what is. Every morning they rise to the fist of pain, and relief that they woke up to it. No, where’s the fun in that? Never old people. So I beat the women. The women bore the children. I beat the men. They used the women and left their seeds to grow in them. I beat the children, the ones who will turn into ignorant people.

- Let’s see what yours looks like old man.

I watch as Roy makes the old man remove his pants. The old man’s granddaughter looks down at the sand where she had been playing with her brothers when we drove in. She looks at the squares and the half hoop of hop-scotch.

- Didn't you hear?

Roy steps forward. The old man fumbles, opens his zipper and drops his piss-stained pants. I laugh at a darker patch, spreading from his failing bowels. His manhood is withered and grey. It seems to have shrunk, to have retreated into his body.

Itayi is our jester. He wonders if the old man can do anything with it. He asks him what it feels like, to be going at it past the age of eighty. The boys join in and wagers are quickly made.

Itayi says, - Grandfather, there’s a young girl. I bet you a bullet you won’t be able to use it!

Faeces trickle down the man’s legs. We don’t bother to laugh anymore. You don’t laugh the first time, then you laugh most, then your laughter is shorter.

- If you can't, start masturbating, Itayi says.

We stand around. The man obeys, hoping to put an end to his embarrassment. His frantic and half-hearted strokes yield no results. We hadn’t expected anything else, but it amuses to watch his effort, knowing everything he does is useless and he will fail. None of us have anything to lose, except Roy. Roy is a man who likes to make things hard for himself. So he bet the old man would manage. He isn’t willing to lose his beer allocation easily, so he looks at the old man’s grand daughter speculatively. It’s easy to see his mind working.

- Enda unobatsira sekuru vako! Go and help him, he says to the granddaughter.

Thirteen, sixteen, you could never tell these days. The girls seemed to ripen faster, bodies rushing into womanhood, dashing into the trouble that comes with the tits, full hips and the blood, like flying ants to a fire because they think it is theirs to enjoy.

The old man opens his arms, begging.

- Don’t do this, men, please don’t…

His pleas are cut off with a boot to the mouth, dislodging the remaining teeth and drawing blood.

- A grandchild is like sugar cane, a sweet reed. Eat it! Our culture allows you to take her as a wife. Go ahead!

- Tell him what to do and if he doesn’t we’ll get that sweet reed! Teach it how it’s meant to behave when it meets a man!

I saw more than one trouser fill at the thought.

Roy pulls the girl up and proceeds to fondle her young chest. She tries to pull away but he puts that manic light in his eyes, which freezes them motionless. He commands her to remove her top. It is always interesting with Roy. He is better of than any of us at thinking up new things to do. Roy is fascinating, and I tilt my head. I don’t like to let him know, but sometimes I am in awe of the sickness of his imagination.

The girl starts to let tears roll down her cheeks without making a sound. The twin boys are at the mango tree. They become invisible as if they are part of background. They are so scared they don’t breathe and I don’t like them not breathing. We are all breathing this air. I want them to breathe it too. We are all the same. The proof is that their father is not here. Families are bastards and bastards are made by families. I watch Roy teach the invisible boys that family cannot save you.

Roy’s grandfather lived alone, apart from hangers on, because no one else could stand the old drunkard. When the old man started getting frail and people started to talk, they sent Roy to live with him. Maybe it had been going on before. Anyway, it didn’t stop when Roy was. The old man made the stragglers laugh after a drink by remembering Roy’s conception. Soldiers had come to the boy’s homestead. When they left, it was burnt to the ground. The boys were dead, just like the dogs, the seed, the mice, the lice and the weevils that ate the crops. And the soldiers made sure the spirits of the girls were murdered. Roy never forgave his grandfather for his tales of fire, of blazing beams and walls and roofs, that ended in a laugh saying that’s how some people are conceived... He hated the shame that webbed his grandfather’s eyes, the weakness that crushed his shoulders as the old man hid again and again in the trees and saw limbs and flesh and bone and fire and his daughter left for dead with a seed sprouting in her body.

Bastard son of a marauder, grandson of a coward, the old man said to Roy, opening his eyes again when he was finished.

When the hangers on went to sleep, sometimes when he had told the tale passionately enough, the old man showed Roy what men do to bastards. Roy was not there when his grandfather showed him. There was only his body which became one with his grandfather’s body and Roy knew when he came back that they had not been bodies after all but a mass of scars, scabs, healing skin breaking afresh, of twisted tendons and bones and black eyes. When he settled down after he returned, Roy reasoned his grandfather healed himself for a while in this way, by giving him the lessons, and so although he hated him, Roy knew that his grandfather was innocent.

Roy said I was the only person he told this tale to. So I let him get whatever peace he could, even though we both knew his peace would only last a few minutes, at most an hour, we both knew without talking about it that there was no more peace in any village or town or growth point than this. Some of the boys could enjoy the full peace for that hour, but not Roy. His peace was like his copper skin and curly hair. It began and ended in halves. He dared anyone to laugh at his light skin of a shade that made dark women reach for the bleach. Roy hated those women who poisoned themselves into needless halves until their bodies raged in war at themselves: pale heads against dark bodies. Roy hated these women as much as he hated himself, because they did not love their skin. Roy never served in the DRC, Congo. But those who did started a craze for bleach you can drink that the Congolese invented. The women drank the bleaching medicine that the soldiers bought and they thought it gave them peace.

No one prevented Roy from doing what he needed to do, not after he burnt his grandfather to death. It was so easy, he said. His grandfather was the local drunk and had holes in his shirts from the countless times he fell asleep with a cigarette in his mouth. Roy said he hid in the bushes as the hut began to burnt, wondering why he hadn’t solved his problem sooner, and when it was clear the job was done, he went screaming and shouting to his mother’s compound to raise the alarm. They screamed at him too when he told them what Grandfather had done. All the same, when the police came, they all grew silent and said, yes the whole time, Roy had been with them that evening so that it was an accident.

I urge Roy on with my silence. After a while, I walk away to watch from the shade of the mango tree where the boys are. It is burdened with greenish yellow fruit already shrivelled up like an old woman by the sun. The same fruit lies on the ground. I batter a mango with the butt of my rifle. But I am watching. No one dares to look away while I am there. When I am here, some of them only pretend they are looking at Roy making good on his bet. I can see the ones who pretend to look, and I watch them. My boots get dustier and dustier as the butt of my rifle hits the dirt around the mango. I stop and clean it. Mother believed a gentleman should always have shiny shoes. I bend down and rub my boots a few times. The boys that are strung up from the tree by their hands should know where their father is. I look at them and they look at me with sullen faces. One is on the verge of tears, the other nostrils flared, breathing hard from pent up anger as he swings from the tree. He’d be fine if he had a little more spirit.

The girl screams. It is the usual. Roy has taken the useless Grandfather’s place. He kneels between her legs held apart by hands that are waiting and eager. The sun is setting. If you watch films, you know white people like the time when the sun is setting. She screams the way they do when they are that young. The boys have fun with her resistance. Roy tells them to let the girl go. He likes a little fight in a woman.

There is a thud, another scream and someone shouts about women who pretend they don’t like things. Whatever, she is all saliva, mucus and tears. Her howls and cries fade to moans. She shakes her head. The dust clings to her hair and ages her. Roy extends his hand towards her face as if to wipe a tear. She cowers away. Roy laughs and slaps her.

- You only slap them if you love them! the youngster called Regai shouts and jostles forward.

Roy let’s Regai have his turn and comes over to me. He tells me he has lost count but he knows he still holds the record for the highest number of defiling virgins. He uses the girl’s torn underwear to wipe himself clean.

He grins at me.

I smile back and say - You should clean your shoes.

He offers me the cloth saying, -You can use it when you’ve been to the pot.

I shake my head. I only joined in if I was going first. One has to maintain order otherwise the boys get too familiar. Anyway, I liked them big and chunky. They were easier to restrain, their fat-ridden bodies made their punches ineffective. In any case, they enjoy it most the first time. I swear they like it towards the end. Every woman enjoys coupling every time. They just fight it because that is what all men expect them to.

Roy rolls up a joint. We smoke in silence while the men finish. The girl could have been dead for her stillness. But the boys know what to do. We know how to watch and see the shallow breathing force her life on. A pool of semen and blood congeals between her legs, the ground unwilling to let it seep in, rejected by her body. This girl will hate herself soon. It is not love that equalises. It is violence.

A flash of green in the dry brown field beside the road alerts me to Moyo’s arrival. His gait is unsteady. He stops to light a cigarette and, as he exhales, sees us. He was going to run. They always try to. I can’t understand why. He has a family. No-one will protect them while he drinks or hides. He is like Roy’s grandfather, the one who wants to live to tell a tale, silently hating. The stupid women who marry these cowards for this thing they want, respectability are even more nauseating.

I whistle to the dogs as I run towards the retreating figure. I pick up a rock as I go.

- Tsvvviiyooo! Tsviiiyooo!

Whistles fill the compound as the men join in the chase. Regai runs forward pulling his pants up. Nothing matters now, except that we run after our quarry. We race, each accelerating to be the one who takes him down. The gap gets shorter. I can smell his fear and the excitement of the boys as we approach him. Moyo takes a sharp turn into the graveyard. His advantage is his knowledge of the terrain. He weaves and jumps over the resting places of relatives gone by, but his age lets him down. We close in.

- Catch! Catch the person!

Our shouts lash him. He glances back in dread. I launch the rock carefully and it catches him on his back. He falls. I run towards him. I kneel over him and hold him tenderly. I want to see if he is still breathing. I ignore the stench of sorghum beer that sours his breath. I dust the sand off his face and body with gentle, almost reverent movements. I catch the kick that is about to land on his ribs. I desire him fit, unharmed. I want nothing, no one but me to acquaint him with the true meaning of pain. It is my job.

Easy! I say

One look at my face and the boys fall back, sullen that I am dampening their excitement. Peace, one of our comrades, is still in hospital. I wait a moment not saying anything, making sure the memory of what he got for disobedience lingers and grows among them. The men back off further. I smile as Moyo recognises me, his childhood friend’s son and relief floods his face.

- Tongai, it’s you! Thank you, oh thank you! I thought it was over.

I help him up. He straightens, huddling a little closer to me. His teeth are yellow and he is much older than I remember. The boys swing their sticks and prance like wild horses, as they flex calves and stretch their necks, breathing in the smoky night air. They whistle. Their energy is in everything they do. The boy Nhamo, who is next to Regai, prods Moyo in the ribs. They start humming.

- Tsviiyo! Iwe!

- Hit the dog, it’s dying today!

They change and hit Moyo again, and again and pull him back, separating him from me. Waves of blows land on Moyo. It’s hard to restrain them, but I do.

We’re taking him to the base, I tell them.

They stop beating him. The singing starts. They swing chains around and pound their feet on the ground. Dust rises up. I look at my shoes and laugh at a mother who is somewhere where she never bothered to tell me roads will be this dusty, the sun would be this hot. One cannot laugh at one’s mother, not even inside. I force myself to stop.

I don’t bother to clean my trousers. They won’t get clean now. The night is already spreading out its blanket of stars, with an impatient moon waiting to show its swelling belly.

Moyo is shoved and elbowed. His hands are tied behind his back. He can hardly keep his balance. Whenever any of the boys cuffs him, we assure him more is coming his way, and somebody always makes the promise come true.

- What’s wrong, boys? Tongai, what have I done? he pleads.

- Shut up, you betrayer. Today you shall be born again, and today we are going to be your mother!

- Today you are going to stop eating at the white man’s table when your sons and brothers, your uncle and fathers are fighting!

Words fly at Moyo. The singing gets louder. Whenever he tries to plead, we speak to him like a child.

- Traitor!

- Sell out!

He is old enough to be father to the young boys like Regai and Nhamo, but soon he realises we will never give a man we call traitor respect, and he is quiet.

- Hit them! Hit the traitors on the head! the boys sing. - Hit them and see them run!

We sing of our work, the work of rounding up traitors. Traitors do not feed anybody. They do nothing for anyone. They deserve no respect. And we work to fill the long, restless days with power, and empty them of traitors. Moyo does not dare not talk to me. I stare at him, wondering why anyone would dare go against the tide.

As we approach his home, we hear his wife wailing.

- You have killed him! You have killed my husband.

It is like a radio turned down low. The wailing rises louder as we approach.

- You have murdered her! Mother, please, oh, mother, her too! My child! the girl’s mother cries over and over again.

Moyo tries to run ahead of us. A club halts him. He cannot do anything.

The girl still lies on the ground. The mother has pulled her legs closed and covered her with her wrapper. She sits by the girl in her petticoat exposed. No one wants their noses rubbed in anything and so we do not like it. We tie Moyo up and beer exchanges hands.

The dancing begins again. Moyo is petrified.

- My ancestors, why have you forsaken me! he wails as though he is his own wife.

The stomping gets louder. I hope he will not piss himself because then I will have to leave him to the boys. As the dark settles in, the mother’s wails dwindle as though she is walking further and further away. The old man is nowhere to be seen. The boys we have given a fine circumcision to are still tied to the tree. On the other side of the compound, we kick down doors, break glass. Nothing goes up in flames. We have decided against burning. Let the widow live here, in this homestead and remember the foolish choice she made of a husband.

We smoke another joint and decide how to proceed. We finally pile into the vehicle and Themba starts the engine. At first the woman runs after the truck. Soon enough she stops and drops to the ground wailing. She is learning the first lesson of survival, that people will fail you.

I say the word. A joint is lit. I inhale and keep the marijuana filling my lungs, until my lungs are like a sponge, soaking up memories. The car bumps over the road and after a while I realise why some people do not smoke weed. At some point, even marijuana will fail you. I sit still. I know it will pass. I cannot let the boys know I am dreaming while I am in the car with them awake. I have been there often enough that I manage to be silent. I am tied to my father’s corpse. It is rotting. I do not know where my mother is and I do not have any shoes on. Liquid leaks from the putrid flesh’s orifices. Famous rebel or not, the bugs still have their day with my father’s body. I was tied. I tried very hard, but I could not brush away the flies. There is no place for the dead among the living and I died too in those sixteen days that I was tied to my father as he rotted to something inside people so inhuman that I retched every minute except when sleep dazed me.

Mother could not endure it. She fled. When she came back she did not talk to me of it, but sometimes when they thought I was asleep and I was retching at the stench that filled my nostrils, I heard them whispering that the man who had done it was Josiah Moyo. Years later, his name comes up again, in connection with our leaders.

I smoke weed throughout the rest of the drive, amid the chatter and singing. After a long while, the car stops. The boys pull Moyo out as though he is a sack of manure. He is disoriented and realises he has come to the place of more suffering. His terror is tangible. It is almost like perfume.

- Put him in the interview room.

I wondered indifferently, not caring either way, whether he knew why I was so eager to catch him. Had he given any thought to the damage he had caused when he sold out my father to the Rhodesian Forces, what a sin it was to take the safety of sleep and of dreams from a ten year old. It is men such as Moyo who kill God.

I am not angry when I enter the interview room. The smell of stale, dried blood from the multiple victims, the dead body that still hadn’t been removed from last night’s excursion makes me think it was a good choice to put Moyo in here and not kill him too quickly, so he can see for himself what it is like, being tied to death. Because of this, today it has become an old friend. I inhale the stink of death.

- Heavenly Father, God of Grace, Moyo prays.

- Those who claim miracles are liars, I tell him.

- We all know the days of miracles are gone, I say slowly to make him shiver.

- Miracle money, miracle abortions, miracle babies, miracle organs, what kind of miracle God is that?, I laugh. - Never!

This is the laughter that I enjoy, knowing I am doing the world a favour. There will be one less fool in it to foul up everything after tonight. I stroke The Confessor, my knobkerrie lovingly, with memories that make me feel calm and good, of the things it can do to a man.

Moyo screams, as he opens his eyes after his prayer and stares into the vacant expression and bloody mouth of the corpse that lies the floor.

- Please, don’t do this, you don’t have to do this. Vana vangu! Who will look after my children! I’ve got money, anything you want, Tongai!

Words rush out of his mouth. Having stopped laughing, I look at him without pity. In the end I smile. Moyo is a sell out. But he gave birth to the man I am. A true mother, my quarry made me what I am today. I swing the knobkerrie.

***

This short story is also available in print in the anthology FAMILY PORTRAIT published by ICAPA and currently available in Harare.

For more information contact

BREAKING THE SILENCE
animations by Mehluli Hikwa

Mehluli Hikwa

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Table of Contents

- I adjust my sunglasses to my present, and the sun that beats down on the gathering. Its glare, unrelenting, drains the land of its moisture, sucks sweat from all of us. The pungent smell of hot dust unites us, almost heralding the havoc we are about to wreak on this unsuspecting community. Party slogans rain down but they offer no comfort from the heat, instead they electrify the atmosphere. The older people are filled with dread brought on by the war-time songs, the guns and the death the guns bring. So they sit dutifully in the sun. The dust rises, choking the grandmothers until it covers them with the dark red of it. They do not move, like relics of a forgotten time.

- Unnamed

- Unnamed