Free In the House of the Interpreter by Ngugi wa'Thiong'o Page B

stepping, rolling his tongue in his cheek, and fuming. I eyed the door and the windows.
    I faced a dilemma. The whole of last Saturday lay before me. I could tell him about the raid, but did I have to talk about the questions and my responses? If I told him that my brother was out in the mountains fighting against Churchill’s empire, I could be expelled from the sanctuary and have to return to the village and the community prison I had helped to build during my very first break as an Alliance student, the place that always reminded me of loss. Still, I decided to tell him everything.
    There! At long last, my secret was out. I was relieved. It was my turn to dare him, silently, looking straight into his eyes, resigned to my fate. You are an officer of the British Empire. My brother is sworn to end the empire. Send me back to my mother, if you so wish, but I will never deny him. Not for you. Not for Alliance. My brother is a goodman. All he ever asked for was the right to be free. Had your Churchill not fought Hitler so that his people would not be ruled by the Germans? You see, sir, my brother wants the same thing for his people. All he ever wanted was—Carey Francis cut off my flow of thoughts.
    Had I been in my Alliance uniform last Saturday? he asked. It was the last thing I expected from his mouth. Alliance uniform? Of course, yes, with the badge and the logo, AHS, I said. He did not ask any more questions. You can go, but in future, be more careful. Some of those officers are scoundrels! he added, gritting his teeth.
    I was completely taken aback, confused even, by his reaction. I was relieved and grateful that he did not dole out any punishment, but to call the British officers scoundrels? In the world of Carey Francis, politicians were either statesmen or scoundrels. Bureaucrats were either statesmen or scoundrels. Those who had detained me, even though white officers, were scoundrels for discounting the evidence of the Alliance uniform.
    Only later did it hit me: he had not reacted to the fact that my brother was in the mountains. Or that my sister-in-law was in a maximum security prison. He did not even ask if I had taken the oath, which I had not. It was as if he knew my story all along. Or perhaps my story was not so unique, just one among many he had heard.
    Indeed, I was to learn later that my case was not unique, that among my classmates were others who carried similar woes. In the early days of the state of emergency, the school, even during vacations, had become a sanctuary for victimsof both sides of the conflict: those who feared retaliation by Mau Mau because their fathers were loyalist home guards, and those who feared retaliation by the colonial forces because their relatives were guerrillas in the mountains or captives in the concentration camps. The Franciscan reaction to my revelation put more cracks in my perception of a white monolith pitted against a black monolith, already challenged by the reality of many Africans, including some relatives, who fought on the colonial side. In a more personal way, his reaction went quite a long way to undercut the fear that had haunted my stay in the sanctuary, the fear that a discovery of my blood connection with the freedom fighters would somehow curtail my education.
    One good attracts another, and I also got the welcome news soon afterward that Kĩambu Native African Location Council had awarded me a full scholarship. My arrears would be covered, and I would not have to pay tuition for the rest of my years at Alliance. My next holidays in August were the first that I would enjoy without the fear that money and politics would block my educational path. And then the unexpected happened.

26
    I was about to return to school for the last term of my second year, when we learned that British forces had captured my brother. Since there was no official announcement, the news reached us through the grapevine from Banana Hills,where his in-laws lived. There were all