Brigits_Flame, November Entry 02: Dine
Author's note: Let's see how this goes. Points for you if you can identify the country this takes place in. The portrait is a fictional composite, but the man he's based on is real, and really scary.
My phone was dead. I had been captured by insurgent militants twice in my career; once ransomed, once escaped. This would be the third time, and with an added novelty: I had yet, until now, to be held captive in someone’s dining room. I tried to sneak closer to the electrical plug with my phone charger, but the General saw.
“Ah-ah-ah,” he said, wagging a finger. He motioned, and a soldier took my charger away.
“You mustn’t do that, Mr. Burke.” He leaned forward across the table. “You haven’t touched your wine.”
I very desperately needed to call Fareed, or at least text him some kind of emergency message. I knew the wine wasn’t drugged, though. The General needed me.
I sniffed the bulb of the glass and drank. It was good, unsurprisingly - General Nkunda had a reputation for finery, and I wasn’t shocked to find out that it was true; he certainly had the money.
I told him the wine was good, and he chuckled.
“So,” he said, “what of that profile? What will you say of me in your newsmagazine?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“We shall decide together, then, Mr. Burke. Over dinner! I will tell you of my childhood. Charles!” He called for a liveried servant.
I had been interviewing a displaced goatherd when the three technicals rolled up: jeeps with huge .50-cal batteries bolted to them - aid money, AIDS money. Somehow they’d gotten word that I was there. And it was into the back of a truck I went, in a burlap sack for the third time, unluckily conscious. Actually, it might have been a jute sack. It was a long ride and I was left with a long time to consider. For example, where the hell were the UN troops? And why won’t President Kabila talk to this guy?
But now, the first course.
“Let us feast!” cried the General.
General Nkunda, at home, is every inch the country gentleman. He dresses very smartly. He takes great pleasure in dining, so much so that he even removes his military dress and trademark beret and sunglasses. The only trapping of military power he retains at table is the tremendous hunting knife he wears at his hip, with which he carves and serves everything.
Charles, the General’s butler, clapped twice and two young servants brought in platters. Nkunda and I were, aside from the servants, alone in the dining room, separated across a huge expanse of table. “Come sit by me,” he said, with what I have come to identify as his signature grin. He has a lot of teeth; several of which are quite sharp. I picked up my wine glass and place setting and sat by him.
The general pulled a domed cover from a platter, and served me. I was starving, and steam billowed out from the plate, tickling my nose with spice. Couscous, chunks of lamb, mint, a garnish of preserved lemons, and…
“Harissa?” I said, mouth burning from the first bite. Chili and garlic, coriander and oil.
“I find it delicious.”
“But - but all of this is Northern!” I said. “Morocco! Algeria! Tunis - “
“Charles - would you bring out the next course, please?”
He speared a piece of lamb on his knife, slid it off with his fork. He rolled the lamb in a tremendous amount of harissa, one of the spiciest condiments known to man. He popped it in his mouth. “I simply love North African food,” he said, chewing. His head is thin, shaven, skeletal. He looks like an academic while he eats. His eyes did not water, nor did he eat more couscous; he reveled in the harissa. The refugees say Nkunda can breathe fire, even the Christian ones. I began to believe them.
Charles directed a second set of plates to be placed beside those of couscous and lamb. Stacks of injera flatbread, a bowl of curried lentils, lemony chicken colored with turmeric. I gaped. This was Ethiopian food.
“You seem unreasonably alarmed, Mr. Burke. It is only food. You are meant to eat it; it will not eat you.”
“No, of course. It is just -”
“Oh, no - I understand. You mustn’t have expected, Mr. Burke, to eat common food at my home. No, chez Laurent, you shall dine in the fashions of the entire continent. We are no roadside nganda. You know this word?”
“Yes. I’ve eaten at about three dozen, at least.”
“And that is fine for every day, but you are an honored guest, Mr. Burke.”
I tore some injera and scooped up the chicken, feeling oddly fatalistic and cocky.
“Honored guests tend to arrive in motorcades, not burlap sacks.”
Nkunda raised his eyebrows. “It was a jute sack.”
“I’m just saying.”
We continued to eat and he told me of his childhood, his education, his parents, his career in the army, and, most importantly, he said, finding Christ.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
He stretched his hands wide. “I was twenty-two, I was out drilling with my platoon - we were going for a run, and all of a sudden it started to rain. Sergeant says, ‘keep going’, so we do. All of a sudden, lightning strikes this tree in front of me, and then, a split-second later, lightning strikes a tree behind me. Everyone runs away but me - the trees fall over, fall across each other - like a cross. Crushed the Sergeant’s legs. He was not a Tutsi. I knew then that God had a plan for me, and that plan did not involve following orders from non-Tutsis, because He had shown me their path.”
Then he pulled his necklace out from under his shirt - a huge, steel crucifix.
I nodded, pulled out mine. I’m not religious, but I keep these things around. Doesn’t hurt to be safe.
“I am not a violent man. I want,” said The General, “to unite this continent.” He picked up two pieces of injera, one in each hand. It is a cardinal sin in North Africa to eat with your left hand (it is the hand with which you clean yourself), but I made no comment. “Right now,” he continued, “all of these different, tiny factions are fighting one another, endlessly bickering over coltan, gold, steel, land.”
Coltan. I thought of the tantalite in my cell phone, in Fareed’s cell phone, in everyone’s cell phone. In my nephew’s new Playstation. In my wife’s Blackberry. My wife!
“If only, Mr. Burke, they were all united under one banner. Do you see it? One Christian African nation, led by the Tutsis, who alone among God’s children have the sense to run a country the size of a continent. You will note, Mr. Burke, that your country recently elected a man who is part-Luo.”
“This is true.”
“Luos are fools and thieves. Your country will collapse like a mud hut in the rain.”
“That remains to be seen. He hasn’t even taken office yet.”
“Eat your chicken, Burke, if you haven’t anything nice to say.”
I put down my injera and pulled out my notebook, started scribbling.
“What are you writing?” Nkunda asked.
“How’s this for a start? ‘Laurent Nkunda is a man of strict devotion. “I am not a violent man,” he says, over dinner at his sprawling estate. He is a man of vision - a vision of a united Africa.’”
Nkunda stroked his chin. Smiled. “Oh, I like that. Plug your phone in, Burke. You’re going home.”
Two hours later, I was in a truck, riding up front - they dropped me off on the outskirts of Goma. I stumbled into the arms of a UN medic. I was so relieved that shock thundered through me; I fell over, threw up. They pulled my pack off, thought it seemed too heavy for me given my state. The medic removed a bag with chicken stuffed with manioc, wrapped in banana leaves. And several rolls of injera, and some doro wat.
“What’s all this?” said the medic.
“Leftovers,” I said. Next time I see him, I’m giving Fareed two things: my profile of Nkunda, and my resignation.