Petals of Blood Read Free Page B

music. What I learned from the game of the country was useful to me with my dealings with the natives.’ Ngũgĩ makes it clear that Blixen mistook the trashy rhythm ground out for game hunters and tourists for the true music of the people, and that a white woman who uses animals to read people’s minds is part and parcel of the reactionary settler culture of the whip, the gun, detention and oppression. Ngũgĩ has also put to rest the Bible as a source of truth; to him it is now a cave which he raids for stories, parables and allegories to fit into
his
world, where heaven is here and now, and passive toleration of oppression in exchange for life after death is out of the question. Ngũgĩ set out to burn the bush of ignorance and indifference behind which many people hide their inaction. It is the reason why the book takes no prisoners and stretches its wings wide to straddle genres – prison diary, whodunit, history book, literary novel – and uses allegory, parable, reminiscence, interior monologue, dialogue and drama to hammer its message home. For anybody who has not worked it out: the days of ‘Please sir, can I have a littlemore?’ have given way to ‘Give me my fair share or I will kill you, motherfucker.’
    In a world where money has been elevated to the status of world religion and where globalization, meaning the sanctified domination of the world by rich corporations, is seen as a panacea for all problems economic, Ngũgĩ is a writer to cherish for warning, witnessing and pounding on the locked doors of the psyche, especially as for a chilling while it was thought that the end of the Third World War, cynically called the Cold War, would be the end of writers who do not glorify the rich – that they would be cremated along with the remains of the communist empire. Ngũgĩ is sitting pretty because for him history is not some dead skunk reeking to high heaven of centuries of despair, but a mammoth beast, a terrible growler that makes hearts tremble when it bellows for change, change, change; struggle, struggle, struggle. Ngũgĩ has spent most of his life wrestling with the essential issues of life in general and Kenya in particular and has come out of the ring with the definitive African book of the twentieth century.
    Karibu Ilmorog, Karibu Kenya, Karibu Afrika.
    Moses Isegawa, June 2001

Part One: Walking . . .
    And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and he that
    sat thereon had a bow: and there was given unto him a crown:
    and he came forth conquering, and to conquer . . .
    And another horse came forth, a red horse: and to him that
    sat thereon it was given to take peace from the earth, that they should
    slay one another: and was there given unto him a great sword . . .
    And I saw, and behold, a black horse; and he that sat thereon
    had a balance in his hand . . .
    And I saw, and behold, a pale horse: and he that sat
    upon him, his name was Death . . .
    And there was given unto them authority over the fourth part of
    earth, to kill with sword and with famine, and with death.
    Revelation, Chapter 6
    The people scorn’d the ferocity of kings . . .
    But the sweetness of mercy brew’d destruction, and the frighten’d monarchs come back;
    Each comes in state, with his train – hangman, priest, tax-gatherer,
    Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant.
    Walt Whitman

Chapter One
    1 ~ They came for him that Sunday. He had just returned from a night’s vigil on the mountain. He was resting on his bed, Bible open at the Book of Revelation, when two police constables, one tall, the other short, knocked at the door.
    ‘Are you Mr Munira?’ the short one asked. He had a star-shaped scar above the left brow.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You teach at the New Ilmorog Primary School?’
    ‘And where do you think you are now standing?’
    ‘Ah, yes. We try to be very sure. Murder, after all, is not irio or ugali.’
    ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘You are wanted at the New Ilmorog Police