One night in Africa, in a bar, I met a woman, not an unusual event I suppose, but she was not just any woman, and of them there were many, cheerful, smiling, charming, that made it a pleasure to go to the market, to a café, to a club, to walk past the jacaranda trees in full violet blossom, and smell their perfume as they passed, laughing in excited conversation, even the sad ones, for life was short and most were young. No, she was more than that. Much more; she was a shape-shifter.
That’s right, that what she said. I laughed, of course, and she laughed with me so I passed it off as just a joke, as an attempt to put one over on the mzungu, the white guy. But in Arusha things are never quite what they seem, In fact, nothing in east Africa is as it first appears, nor in the world entire.
Arusha is a large town in northern Tanzania that began as a German fort when that glorious nation of culture, trying to compete with the British in greed and destruction, troubled the country over a century ago and then lost it to the British, a change viewed with indifference by the peoples of the land who suffered equally under both.
The old fort buildings are still there-but turned over to a small park and café, quiet, peaceful, with peacocks walking about in loud splendour, a beautiful refuge from the dust of the town.
Now Arusha is a jump off point for tourists wanting to see the sweeping plains of the Serengeti, where the moon lights the path of the leopard, the lion, the Masai, to see Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Manyara, Tarangire and its palm trees and elephants, the volcano of Mt Meru, dominating the town, Mt. Kilimanjaro, visible in the distance, its glaciers ever shrinking with the rising heat, the famous snows soon to disappear and the legends with it It’s also famous as the place where Hemingway wrote The Green Hills of Africa and, yes, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and where the Hollywood film, Hatari was made. I once slept in the same room Ava Gardner did. I have never gotten over it.
Why I was there is another story, which has to do with politics, its twin, war, and a Rwandan general I was counsel to at the war crimes tribunal, which had been created by those who created and moulded the war, like putty in their hands, to cover their crimes by blaming others. It’s a long story, for another time, and I only tell you this much to explain my being there.
But about the woman; she said her name was Mariam, and, being polite, I didn’t question it. She was pleasant company and I was alone.
I was sitting at the bar, nursing a scotch, a Johnny Walker Black, if you have to know, talking with the barman, Joseph, a distinguished man with a pencil thin moustache, and a touch of grey in his short dark hair, and, like all barmen, wise to what was going on, to people. He was slowly polishing a glass in front of me as I sipped on my drink, but then he stopped to lean forward and tell me “the girl at the end of the bar is making eyes. Be careful.”
I looked over of course, and there she was, a stunning beauty. She had dark brown eyes that looked right through me and lit me up from inside, with a smile to keep it charged, and well, warning or not, like I said, you get lonely in strange places, strange to me that is, and any company even bad company is better than none. So I gave her a nod. She smiled again, then picked up her glass and very slowly, very sensually, in a gold-green tightfitting dress, sparkling with the sequins scattered over it like tiny stars, came over and sat next to me.
“Jambo rafiki,” She leaned into me, bathing me in her scent, like vanilla mixed with a rose.
“Mimi ni nzuri, na wewe?’ I’m fine, and you?”
She laughed, flashing her teeth in that smile again, her dark hair pulled back in a tight bun, like I saw once Kim Novak do in that film, what was it, ah, Vertigo, Hitchcock’s film, in fact she had a strong resemblance to Kim Novak, except the her skin was an exquisite dark caramel, in contrast to my northern pallidity, and as she sat down asked if would buy her a drink.
Joseph looked at me with quizzical eyes, but on my slight nod of the head politely handed her the bottle of Kilimanjaro beer she preferred, a beer popular there then and now, set it down with a glass, and then stepped back to take care of another couple of men who had arrived, one local the other seemed Italian from his accent, but they don’t figure in the story so I won’t bother you with them further, nor the other people in the bar and the restaurant it was in, nor the fact the Impala Hotel had three restaurants, all very good and popular so the place was hopping as they say. But back to our place at the bar.
“What’s your name’, she asked, adding, Ninaitwa Mariam”
‘John,’ I replied, as she sat down on the bar stool next to me, her dress pulling up a little as she did, exposing thighs that could not be ignored. She noticed and laughed again,
“You like me, Johnny no? Well, every man likes me. I am very beautiful don’t you think?’ It’s ok if I call you Johnny?
“If you want and yes, goes with the whisky and you are beautiful, no doubt about it.”
“But, I can be more beautiful, I can be many things. You are lucky to meet me.’
“Then I am happy to have such luck, but it seems things tend to unfold as they must. So maybe our meeting was inevitable. But, what do you mean you can be many things?”
“Oh, You think we were destined to meet? You believe in kismet?” She laughed again, but in the delightful way she had, then edged closer towards me, touching my right wrist with her warm hand.
“Maybe that it s true. But what were you destined to meet since I can change into any thing, any form I wish, I can be a leopard, or a rock, a cloud or a bird, anything I will, I am shape-shifter.”
She watched my reaction, my arched eyebrows, my slight moving away from her in doubt and disbelief, and laughed again and she had cause, since she both puzzled and intrigued me. She was ascribing to herself her own cause, control over her own state of being, that she could not only will what she wants and want what she wills, but will what physical form she can take. But like I said, sometimes locals like pulling the leg of wazungus and I assumed that’s what she was doing.
“Ok, you surprise me, if that’s what you are trying to do. I admit, it’s fascinating idea. But I have trouble believing you are. I mean how does that work? Why you? How do you do it? How can your friends be with you not knowing what you are going to be from one moment to the next? Sure, I’ve heard of shape-shifting stories. I just didn’t expect to find one here in this bar.”
“I know nothing of stories. I only know what I can do. But look, I found you, and you found me, so we combined out existence into one, don’t you think, so we have already changed, have we not, we are not the same as before we met?” She touched my arm again and moved even closer, I could feel her breath on my eyes,
“Perhaps I will show you one day, one night, maybe if you buy me dinner, maybe things can happen.”
Then she pretended to pout and said, in her purring way and accentuating her accent, which seemed to me to be more of the coast, of Zanzibar or Dar Es Salaam than, the interior, the uplands, of Arusha,
“I’m lonely, I don’t want to be alone.”
Her reverse take on Garbo made me smile but she had me there. I didn’t want to be alone either, for everyone is the other, and no one is himself, or herself, whatever the case may be, a phrase I never understood until I met her and, as she said, my existence merged with hers.
So I asked her, and looking her over, asked, “Is this your original form then, or am I with one of your transformations?”
“This is myself, what you see, what I am. But sometimes I change, if the mood comes to me. Then I just wish it.”
“Magic”
“No, not magic. It is just something I can do. But don’t worry. I only use it when I get too angry, too emotional, too alive to live as this.
“Can you choose the form you take’
“It always is what is needed in the situation. If I am a leopard I want to rake you with my claws, if I am a stone I want to be untouchable, if I am a bird, I want to sing and fly away. But, I am hungry, and you promised me dinner.”
With that I indicated to Joseph that he could send my tab to the table and, putting my arm out which she took, escorted her to a table overlooking the garden and fountains where she ordered the most expensive plate on the menu and I followed suit and, ignoring the critical looks from some of the other bargirls hanging around, friends of her it seemed, or more, rivals.
We settled into a conversation about other things, each of us trying to find out about the other. It was about halfway through dinner, when we were discussing what truth was, brought on by her assertion that it was impossible to know what was true or false, proved by my disbelief of her claims to powers of self-transformation, that Father Mike came into the place, walked past the table, stopped in surprise, saw her, then me, smiled, and turned back to ask if he could join us.
It was clear from the exchanged glances that they knew each other, and their quick engagement in chatter about others they new, and local gossip, that they new each other very well. But then Father Mike got around. Id met him some months before, in Stiggy’s Café, the best one in Arusha then, run by an Australian named Stiggy, who’d left Australia in the 70’s and after world travels ended up in Tanzania’s version of Rick’s Café, a place where everyone met, all the UN types, the locals, the politicians, the police, the lawyers. The Rolling Stones played there once. Just walked in after a safari one night, had dinner, downed some drinks, then picked up the guitars on the small stage local bands used, and did a set that tore apart the fabric of the our minds. But I find myself digressing, there is so much to tell, anyway let me get back to Marian and Father Mike.
Father Mike was Irish, from the Republic, I think Dublin was his home, a handsome man in his forties, with a soft brogue and a peaceful way with him. He had been transferred to Tanzania some years before by the Church and did his good works among the people of the surrounding villages who could not come to the main church of the parish, or who were lost under the influence of the legions of fake holy rollers wearing Rolex watches who demanded the poor pay them to support their version of a church, and, if they complained of their poverty, blamed then for being poor. You only knew he was a priest from his collar; otherwise he looked like he could be one of the tourists or working at the local UN headquarters, with the CIA.
The local gossip dispensed with, Mike finally acknowledged me and said,
“I apologise John, but I was surprised to see Mariam here, I heard she was in Dar, and she’s hard to ignore. She got me to read the Koran and to listen to the call of muezzin in the night Anyway, my friend, how are you?”
“Fine, fine, Father. I’m fine. But after meeting Mariam, I’m not so sure,” at which Mariam laughed, and replied,
“Honey, you are fine, better than fine. Don’t worry. I am really harmless.”
And she laughed again while picking up her glass of wine to sip, while raising her eyebrows at me, a silent means of communication, which becomes very useful once you get the hang of it.
Father Mike also laughed and said, “So, she has told you she is a shape-shifter?”
“So everyone knows. And all this time I thought it was our little secret.”
“Ah, no, she tells everyone that. Never seen her do it. Don’t know of anyone that has, but there are stories, and not just the ones she tells.”
“So, you believer her?”
“It doesn’t matter to me or not. Mariam is special. Right darlin’?”
“Yes, Father Mike, I am something special. That’s why you help me when I need it, Nakupenda pia, I love you too,” and she blew him a kiss.”
I had to break it up.
“Ok, Father, so what are you saying? That the universe is not governed by natural laws, that miracles can happen?
“Ah, Johnny, you set me up with that one. I don’t believe in miracles. I’m not even sure there’s a God. I have my doubts, frankly we all do, we just don’t’ say it publicly. But I didn’t join the Church for all that mysticism. For me, where I was, coming from a family of six kids and no money, being a doctor or a lawyer, or what have you, was not possible, it was the only way I could see of helping people and I felt the need to help people. Freud would have something to say about it. Anyway that’s how I try to live and love. Do no harm, and help others when I can.”
“Fair enough but how can it be? Marian how can I believe you, and then believe anything?’
“Allah is Great and can do anything, and I am his instrument.”
Insha’Allah, Mariam” replied Mike.
Then to me,
“Look at it this way, the Church tells people that Jesus died and came back from the dead. We tell them he was a man but also a God and the son of a God, a Spirit incarnate, but being human at the same time, he was made a human sacrifice to God, a barbaric concept only exceeded by the practice of feeding worshippers the Eucharist and the wine, which become his flesh and his blood, performing two miracles at once, first, transforming inanimate things into life, and then, telling people to commit cannibalism by eating them. Hundreds of millions believe these transformations to be matters of fact. So why should you not believe Mariam?”
“I’m a card carrying atheist so I don’t have to believe any of it.”
“No, but who is the arbiter of what is true or false? You?”
“Well, no, but….”
“You see the complexities, we’re into metaphysics and I haven’t had dinner yet.”
And so the evening drifted into night, the dishes came and went, the wine and whisky flowed, the conversation meandered into deep valleys and up steep mountains until we were sated with everything and I had to decide to get back to the house I rented in Sakina, a district of the town a couple of kilometres down the road, or stay up all night. But I had a trial to attend and had to be fresh.
Mike, always courteous, stood up and said his good byes first, winked at me, winked at her, then walked out past hands extending to greet him, leaving me with Mariam who seemed to be intent on keeping me company, and being weak of the flesh, as the Bible says, or just being myself as Nietzsche would say, invited her back my place, called my driver to pick us up, and ten minutes after his “Ndiyo, mzee, I’ll be right there”, we were dancing to some music in the living room of my house, the lights down low, the feelings up high.
I don’t remember much of that night. No, I am not being evasive. It was too much to keep in my mind. She was wonderful. The whole thing was wonderful. I remember feeling like I was hallucinating with the love, the music, and the caresses; how her waist chain of glistened gold in the fragments of light. But the next morning she was gone before I woke up, leaving behind a note, saying we’d meet later that day, signed with a kiss of her lips. I assumed we would. But we never did.
She never came back, not to me. I had failed to get her mobile number and Father Mike, when I met him the next day, just shrugged, and said, “That’s Mariam. She’ll show up again. In the meantime forget her and move on to less exotic possibilities.”
Some weeks went by before I heard of her, from one of her rivals, Rose, another bar girl at the Impala who joined me for a drink and in the conversation mentioned seeing me with Mariam. I nodded, and she continued,
“You know she is in the prison right now.”
“Prison?”
Yes, they say she stabbed a man in the Queen’s Pub a couple of weeks ago who tried to be too friendly. That is what the police say. But everyone knows they lie. Many people saw her shout at the man she was dancing with to keep his hands to himself, then she suddenly vanished and on the dance floor, a leopard appeared that leaped on the man with great forced, ripped his throat open, then sprang off into the darkness. The man died of course.”
A few months later I had dinner, in the garden of the Arusha Hotel, with a local police captain about an issue about my own security, during which he began telling me about some the cases he was working on. Mariam’s name came up. I told him what I’d heard.
He didn’t look surprised.
“Ndiyo, we finally caught up with her in Zanzibar, brought her back here for trial. She was facing several years.. A terrible thing she did, but claims it wasn’t her. Witnesses talk of a leopard, but friends with tall tales won’t go far in court. It is clear what must have happened. She was in the prison here. You could have visited her.”
“Was? Could have?”
“Yes, somehow she escaped. It is not known how. We think she must have seduced one of the guards and he helped her. But, you know, despite what I said about tall tales, the night she disappeared from her cell, a guard making the rounds of the walls, checking the cell windows and the perimeter, said he saw on her window, what looked like a bird, suddenly leap into the air and dart off into the void.”
He observed my reaction to this with slight smile, amused.
“Do you think…?”
“Sometimes, my friend, it pays not to think. All I can tell you Johnny, is that this world is never quite what we think it is and if you ever think you are on the edge of finding out what it is, that’s when the ground shakes, buildings come tumbling down, rains pour, oceans rise, volcanoes erupt, fires rage, storms howl and you find you have fallen into madness. Would you like another whisky?’
“Sure, Captain, asante sana. I need one.”
And, as he signalled the waiter to bring the bottle, I sat back and gazed out over the garden, the garden lights, the people dining, talking, the waiters and waitresses moving back and forth, the stars in the sky dancing to unheard music and thought deep thoughts about existence and what it all meant, but that waist chain kept stirring my mind, how she moved, what she said, how we were that night, man and woman, and, how, whether leopard or bird, or whatever she was, she had transformed me.
They say we’re all connected, like the branches of a tree,
But frankly no one seems to know or give a damn for you, or me,
For who is no one anyway, I’ve always failed to see,
Absurdities are claimed as truth, the truth is claimed absurd,
Reason has been imprisoned, or have you not yet heard,
That superstition roams the streets, religion, and the Word
They say created all, though the force remains unknown,
It matters not, you must have faith, mere proof is overblown,
For if you say you have your doubts, their masks then turn to stone,
We walk the streets through heat and smoke, but no one seems to care,
Not for those without a home, oh, try it, if you dare,
For rich men offer poverty, and priests, a useless prayer.
That peaceful night we said goodbye, the stars all seemed to cry,
For I was off to war and death, and you kept asking why,
But all I did was bow my head, and promise not to die,
And so we kissed, and touched our hearts, beneath a mourning sky.
I turned to leave, you pulled me back, you knew I had to go,
Still you asked me why and why, but I really didn’t know,
The enemy was cruel, they said, and dealt us harm and woe,
So we had no other choice but fight, to strike a heavy blow.
You grabbed my arm to stop me, maddened by the dread,
Told me I was crazy, a foolish man misled,
Their wars were all a madness, on lies and madness fed,
When loving more was needed, us loving in our bed.
I drew you closer to me and said you must be brave,
The world would find an answer, a road to peace they’d pave,
But one hot night their shells crashed down, a roaring ocean wave,
And now I do not even know if I lie within a grave.
He’d drunk too much, but not enough, the times demanded more,
Cursed the shadows, cursed the lights, cursed the church’s open door,
Which faced him through the window of the only local bar,
Where satisfaction never was, you know how people are.
The voices swirled around him, sharing chit and chat,
Women, men, and in-betweens, a bit of this and that,
But most were young so talked of plans, or of their hopes for love,
Though one young man demanded answers, from his missing God above,
The drunk sat there, drinking, and vowed to drink again,
Told the barman it was his right, his need, to numb the pain,
Which through soul and mind, had spread,
Had sapped his will, had filled his thoughts with dread.
Just then he saw a shadow pass across the evening moon,
And wondered if it were just a cloud, or eclipse that came too soon,
Or perhaps a sign of darker times when the lights would quickly dim,
But decided it was, instead, imagination’s whim.
De Vere once posed the question, but no answer did provide,
For who can judge if life is best, when they have never died,
So when the barman loudly said, to startle those around,
“The play is in the final act, the hare does chase the hound.”
Upright sat the drunk right quick to raise his glass in hand,
“To you, my friend, who sees it all, the wisest in the land,
Our world is gone, has disappeared, old Chaos reigns once more,
And Death, her dear companion, has opened wide the door,”
The barman nodded in salute but others called him mad,
“Just an old eccentric who’s lost what he once had,
A bum, a jerk, an idiot, they should put him in a room,
We don’t need his stupid tales of endless woe and doom”
The drunken man ignored their words and retreated deep within,
Where tranquillity could there be found, far from their dismal din,
Then, refreshed, he left the place, to wander through the night,
Guided by that yearning to hear the music of the light.
I have the habit of going for a walk in the morning, walking silently, in safe solitude, simply breathing, legs stretching out, arms keeping time, feeling a different rhythm of life. It helps me deal with the increasing agitation I experience on hearing the daily news of wars, corruption, of people alienated from each other, from themselves, of a dying world.
My routine takes me up the paved road to the top of the hill, the hill that dominates the small Ontario town in which I live, which lies spread out along the river that winds its way south to the great lake. There, looking down over the valley below, sits a church, a cathedral almost, St. Mary’s, the Catholic church which dominates all the other churches in the town by its majesty, as if to show the protestants what a real church should look like. Sometimes, when the mood strikes me, I stop to look at it, to admire it, for though I am not a religious man, the ceremonies, the architecture, the art and iconography of the church are to me mysterious and beautiful. The rest of it creates no interest for me. I find my salvation in the nature that surrounds me, not in the mythology of its creation.
Or so I thought, until something happened that caused me to reconsider the mysteries of the world.
One day, in early June I think it was, the year of the great spring rains, I decided to get up earlier than usual to take my walk. I couldn’t sleep. The sun was rising. It promised to be a dramatic overture to the day; a blue sky covering green hills awash in bird songs sung in many different keys, accompanied by the soft rustling harmony of countless leaves whispering in the warming breeze.
The locals of the town were beginning to stir. The occasional vehicle, a pickup truck, a run-down car, passed me by on the way to market or work, but no one else was walking along the street that led from my house to the main street, then up the hill heading towards the edge of town and the tower of St. Mary’s that held the big bell; the bell that rang out several times a day calling the faithful to prayer.
When I got to the top of the hill and stood in the shadow of the entrance to the church with its big wooden double doors, flanked on each side by a Norman tower graced with several stained glass windows, the left tower with the spire and cross at its top, the right containing the bell, I paused in my walk, put my hands in my pockets, looked up to the bell tower and wondered just how big that bell was. It was while pondering this question that I heard the clunky thud of the church doors opening and closing and on looking over I saw a figure coming towards me dressed in the black habit and black beard of a Jesuit, which struck me as odd as there were no Jesuits in the parish that I had heard of.
I could not see his face. It was hidden in the shadows of the old fashioned cowl he had covering his head. He approached me slowly with a steady step until he stood in front of me. For some reason, the angle of the sun, the weight of his cowl, I could not see his face apart from the black beard, tight, grim lips, the tip of a hooked nose above the moustache. The rest vanished into the darkness of the hood he wore despite the warming of the day.
I greeted him with the usual “Hello; nice day, isn’t it?”, or some such thing that we say without thinking when meeting strangers. It gets muddled in my head now, but there was no response. The figure stood in front of me without moving, very still, like one of those human mannequins tourists are delighted by in Europe, a Marie Antoinette, a silver clown, or a marble Dante with his book. He seemed very solid at first, but then I noticed that his form shimmered in the light as do those mirages of dark water that lie across the road in the summer heat and vanish as soon as you see them.
The silence of this apparition, for so it seemed to be, unnerved me. I stepped back, took my hands from my pockets and prepared to retreat. But the form continued to stand there without a sound or movement. Now more unnerved, I challenged him with, “Are you all right Father? Can I help you?’
There was no sound, no movement, except for the subtle, almost undetectable, shimmer I referred to before, but then a voice that seemed to come from some distant place, some distant time, cried out, as if wailing at a death, “What have you done? What have you done?” And with that, the figure raised his right hand and pointed it, while turning his body, calling out all the while, “What have you done?”
He spoke in French, a language I understand, but with an accent I had not heard before. I still am not sure if I understood him correctly, but I was so transfixed by the voice and the movement as I followed his hand pointing at the world around us, that I seemed to comprehend him nevertheless and was surprised when a sudden feeling of intense melancholy swept over me. Tears filled my eyes, and I fell to the ground at his feet, overwhelmed by sudden grief.
He stopped turning, looked at me, lowered his hand, and bowed his head. He began to turn away from me. I reached out to try to stop him, but my hand passed through air. I struggled to my feet, wiping away the tears that still bathed my eyes, trying to restore my equilibrium, but he did not stop and kept walking back towards the doors, his shoulders and back bent, his head lowered and, through my own tears, I saw signs of a man sobbing uncontrollably. I managed to shout out, “Who are you?’ perhaps an unfair thing to ask when I was not even sure who I was.“Your name?” And protested, “I’ve done nothing, just lived.”
He stopped, turned his head to look at me over his shoulder and with a voice that came from a deep abyss said, again, “What have you done? What have you done? Terrible things, terrible things,” each word a moan, or so it seemed, as he turned his head away and walked slowly back to the door of the church where his shimmering figure merged with the door and dissolved into the shadows as if he had never been.
The encounter so disturbed me that I felt paralyzed for some seconds until I regained my senses and, shaken, decided to turn back towards home. As I walked slowly back into the town, I reflected on the melancholy encounter, what it meant, that question from the past demanding an explanation from the present, about our destruction of the future. For that was what it was. Of that I am sure.
Upon relating what happened to my wife, my friends, my doctor, explanations were quick in coming. My wife looked at me oddly. Some said outright I was a liar and pulling their leg. Some religious people took it as a proof of God, a warning from the Almighty, some as the visitation of an angel. The Catholics quickly claimed it as a miracle, proof of the true martyrdom of Jean De Breubeuf in 1649, whose ghost this undoubtedly was. I hear the matter has been raised at the Vatican, and the students of the local schools now discuss the work of the Jesuits in the area three hundred years ago. The Protestants, in protest, proclaimed it to be God’s clear condemnation of the Roman church. The new agers stated categorically that it was the manifestation of some spirit of nature, mourning its steady destruction, and, of course the psychiatrists, my psychiatrists, determined, on clinical evidence, that it was an hallucination, a psychotic episode; that I had experienced a break with reality. I cannot comment on these theories. When I try, my attempts are considered just more evidence that my mind is unbalanced. And who am I to say it is not.
Several months have since passed. I have learned now to keep quiet, to agree with them that I was ill but now am welI. I was finally allowed home after a long period of analysis, allowed to return to the birds, the sky, the whispering leaves, to again walk past the church on a warm spring or summer’s day, as if nothing had ever happened. But, each time I do, each time I see those doors, when the light is right, the sky is blue, the leaves whispering, and no one else is there, I still see the man at the church, and hear that ancient voice moaning and asking over and over again, “What have you done? What have you done? Terrible things, terrible things.”
One Voyce of the World 