The Iron Bridge: Short Stories of 20th Century Dictators as Teenagers Read Online Free Page A

is strong enough—these
askari
have been to Burma—but then decides that it doesn’t matter, he is most certainly strong enough; he has won all his fights in every town he’s ever lived: Jinja, Bombo, Semuto, Kampala. He won that scrap with Akello behind Garaya mosque—the man’s hand was dust inside Idi’s—and there was also the time Idi beat Mukasa unconscious with a sugar stalk in Mehta’s fields. Was that not
askari
material? Idi steps from foot to foot, side to side, but he can’t seem to find the confidence to propel himself forward into the fight. His skin prickles. Part of him wants to turn away and head back into the mess hall.
    Idi hears his mother’s voice, so shrill and easy to conjure:
Never forget you are an
askari. But his mother was crazy when he last saw her. Her trance was fake, her dream interpretation fraudulent. His mother is nothing more than a shrill screeching monkey, responsible for getting him expelled from heaven, a powerless woman who can’t even cure a simple lunatic like Pepsi-Cola. And yet he hears her voice: Adro yaya
will not touch you unless your turn your back on the other soldiers
.
    The fighting in the dusty soccer field has grown fiercer.It is a good thing these men have left their pangas in the barracks and brought with them only beer. Still, the glass bottles are thrown and cracked, their shards used as makeshift knives, so far with little effect. It won’t be long until there’s a rifle crack in the sky and a firm order to halt, and then an angry march of white officers storming onto the field to scold their black charges.
    Idi’s fingers touch the Yakan water in his pocket.
    For some reason that he couldn’t understand, this morning, as Idi was getting dressed, he picked up the small bottle of Yakan water that he always keeps on his shelf in the
dupi
barrack behind his two pairs of underwear, and stuffed it into his pants. He’s never sampled it before, never even been tempted. His mother pressed that little bottle into his hands two years ago, the same morning that he left her for his new life in Kampala, just after she interpreted his dream. It was her final offering. The Yakan water was given to him a moment before he stepped onto the bus. Her bug eyes were wild and her throat punctuated each of her crazy commands with those high and purposeless whistles: “Yakan, my son, to make you fierce and frenzied—
sssssswhit! sssswhit!
—touched with the
kamiojo
herb that I myself have picked from our village, yes, and you will hear your ancestors calling when you take the Yakan to your lips and they will call you—
sssssswhit!
—and they will show you the enemy and whisper their names and it will not matter if they have guns, for when you charge against them—and charge you must, after you have drunk the Yakan!—their bullets will not puncture you, and their pangas will not slice you and even ifthey are Karamajong with their eight-foot-long spears, they will break and crack against your body and you instead will cut their throats,
sssswhit!
But you must be careful, Idi, and only use the Yakan for battle.”
    He takes the bottle out of his pocket and stares at it incredulously. Did his mother know the future? And did she somehow send him a secret message this morning from wherever she might be in the world, a message that Idi didn’t even know he was receiving? He unscrews the metal cap of the recycled brandy bottle and knocks back a mouthful of its clear and potent fluid. He could use its power now. As soon as he drinks the water, Idi feels that he is invincible, that Allah and Yakan are behind him now.
    He stuffs the half-empty bottle into his pocket and charges the field with long and steady strides, his lean belly unburdened by the girth that will plague his later years, his gigantic fists clenched into powerful iron balls. He ignores the secondary skirmishes and goes for the original two. They are now at midfield, locked in an angry embrace—the Kakwa’s arm