12

One evening Nyawlra told Kamltl that two men would come for him on the following day and take him to meet the Central Committee of the Movement for the Voice of the People so that he could say in his own words and from his own lips that he wanted to become a member. Kamltl was expecting them and yet was shocked a little. It was the first time since their last return from the mountains that he had seen another person enter their place, and he realized how much of a sheltered life he had been leading with Nyawlra, newspapers, and the radio his only windows to the world. The two escorts looked his age and there was a lot about which they could have chatted, but there was not much talk between them and Kamltl was left to his own thoughts. He reviewed his life since that fateful day when he flew out of his body at the city dumpsite, setting in motion subsequent happenings like his flight in time and space in bird form, that added to the miracle his life had become, making him wonder about the thinness of the line that divided the real and the unreal in human lives.

“We are already there,” said one of his guides, jolting Kamltl from his reverie.

His two escorts ushered him into a room, showed him a seat, and went into another room. Alone, Kamltl let his eyes pan the walls, over posters and drawings of some heroes and heroines of Aburlrian and African anticolonial resistance who were never mentioned in official documents. Then his eyes rested on a big map of the world with Africa at the center. On the map were red paper arrows pointing at cities circled with a black marker. He was contemplating these circles when he saw, at the Nile Delta, a neon-lit arrow. The arrow began to move down the map, and when it reached a town it would stop and flicker as if asking him to note the spot well. This was too unreal, and he stood up and went near the map to make sure. Yes, the arrow was moving along the trail he had followed and it flickered only at those towns he had visited in the body of a bird. What was the meaning of this?

“We are just trying to learn our history,” Kamltl heard a voice say, and he quickly turned around to face six men and four women. One of them was speaking to him as the others listened. “We try to locate our origins and know all the places to which black people have been scattered, from India, where dwell the Siddis, to Fiji in the Pacific, where the people claim Tanganyika as the site of their origins.”

“And what about this flickering arrow?”

“Which arrow?” the man asked, wondering what Kamltl was talking about.

Kamltl looked back at the map and was surprised to find that the neon arrow was not there.

“Oh, I was thinking about these red arrows,” Kamltl said, as if the matter was not of consequence.

“Those arrows are pointing at the centers of ancient black civilization,” the man said. “They are the sources of black power.”

They sat down in a semicircle. Again, Kamltl could not believe his eyes. Were these not the ones who used to work at the shrine? However, he now kept his thoughts to himself in case his mind was deceiving him again. The man said that they were still waiting for the chairperson, but even before the man had finished—was Kamrö dreaming or not?—Nyawlra entered.

“The chairperson of the Central Committee of the Movement for the Voice of the People and commander in chief of Aburlrian People’s Resistance …”