Free Snakepit by Moses Isegawa Page A

killed for no reason? State Research Bureau boys found him walking home, accused him of supporting dissidents, took his money and watch, and when he resisted, they killed him. In broad daylight!” the Professor said, hardly able to contain his rage.
    Bat found it hard to mount a response. “I am sorry about this. I wish there was something I could do. I would really not blame you if you decided to go abroad. The country has become a snakepit. It is a shame we have not yet found a way to get rid of the vipers.”
    â€œI have lost the most precious thing: pleasure in work,” the Professor lamented, shaking his head vigorously, like a drenched zebra. “I often think that many of my students are members of the Bureau, ready to twist my words and get me killed.”
    â€œMaybe you should leave the country,” Bat suggested again, wondering how his friend would fare abroad. Settling in, getting a job, balancing a new identity with the old one.
    â€œI have thought about lecturing in Kenya or Zambia. I have colleagues there. If it hadn’t been for you and the Kalandas, I would have left already. But somehow I don’t want to go. I keep thinking it will get better.”
    â€œUnfortunately, I can’t help you make up your mind,” Bat admitted, “but whatever decision you take, I will be behind you.”
    â€œI will think about it after the funeral.”
    Bat took the afternoon off to attend the funeral. He perused the day’s newspaper in the car. It read like Amin’s diary. The day before, Amin had met the new Libyan ambassador, visited a hospital, distributed sweets to limbless children and also made a speech at a graduation parade for police cadets. The rest of the paper was full of advertisements by astrologers promising miracle cures for anything from poverty to psychosis to psoriasis. The advertisements were never edited, resulting in the most deplorable spelling mistakes he had ever seen: “pavaty” for “poverty,” “cyclesis” for “psychosis,” “sorryasis” for “psoriasis” and the like. It was so bad he started chuckling. He threw the paper in the back of the car and hoped the cook would use it to light the Primus stove or to wipe his ass. He remembered the Learjet at the airport and wondered who Dr. Ali really was. He had attended many government functions, but he had never met the man. As he got onto Jinja Road, it struck him that Dr. Ali was a very clever man; he was milking the regime without showing his face, the kind of man who could walk down the street unrecognized. One thousand dollars per consultation was not bad. No wonder his followers called him God. It occurred to Bat that if there was anybody who could kill Amin and rid the country of the scourge, it was this mysterious man.
    At the entrance to the Mabira Forest, chills went down Bat’s spine. The density of it, the height of the trees, the possibilities for robbery and carjacking. Rumours had it that soldiers dumped bodies somewhere in its depths. He put his foot on the gas, adrenaline pumping. Many kilometres later, the sky cleared and he gave a sigh of relief.
    The deceased had been a builder, and his house was a stout red-roofed brick structure. The place was crawling with mourners dressed in every colour under the sun. Burials always put Bat on edge. Caught between the corpse and the raw grief of the bereaved, some of whom seemed out of their minds, he felt redundant, an intruder. Words of consolation felt so weightless, so hackneyed. Each time, one was confronted with the fact that people never got used to violent death: it still shocked, the lamentations pierced with genuine sorrow. His feelings were now complicated by the fact that he was expecting a child. It made the insinuation of death in his life more poignant. Before, it had been him against the world; death on the job had seemed heroic, even glorious. But now he felt responsible for