MY arms are pinned to the cold parquet floor; face up, tears chocking my eyes, mucus cascading on both sides of my cheeks.
Report by Rejoice Ngwenya
The space below my bosom is drenched in blood.
An unpleasant sight, but strangely, I am overwhelmed with hopeful resignation despite my perilous confinement.
He has strategically positioned himself on my chest.
Accomplices refer to him as The Chief, far too old to be this cruel.
Has he no conscience?
His cronies do not seem to notice my grief, even rejoicing in my poignancy.
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Once in a while, one routinely jeers at me from behind her overflowing plate of food.
I would have thought she would care: an outsize woman stroking the sack full of diamonds and money they took from my vaults. I am too much in pain to bother.
Occasionally, she heaves her body up, walks to the heavily curtained window, repeatedly letting in a streak of light and muttering: “I don’t see them yet.”
Whoever “them” are, how I wish they would bring relief before I expire.
I keep hoping that the roof will suddenly open for fire and brimstone to rain on these morons.
And this has been my world for three decades — hopeful expectation in the midst of excruciating pain.
Nobody seems to care — even the neighbours.
Such an aberration to have persisted without anyone asking: “What’s this place all about?”
I could almost sympathise with The Chief.
They call it Stockholm syndrome — strong emotional ties that develop between a hostage and his victim.
The Chief — no doubt with a false sense of indefatigability — seems exhausted from this perennial routine.
In its own crude way, in the melee of my pain and suffering, it pleases me to notice his discomfort.
We kind of share the same destiny — me pain, him involuntary compliance.
I am flabbergasted by the henchmen’s insatiable thirst for plunder.
I could swear I have heard the thin short man ask: “Are you sure her vaults are completely empty?”
The outsize woman peeps into her loot and replies: “Not until my sack is full!”
There are vibrations of a heavy vehicle in the distance.
Footsteps of misery.
Pangs of hunger assail my stomach whose movements are suppressed by The Chief.
He signals that it is time, he wants out, but the outsize woman keeps repeating, ad nauseam: “Not until my sack is full!”
What manner of a chief is this, acquiescing with such cruelty!
How dare these morons arrogate themselves the exclusive right over my body humanity?
Don’t they see my pain?
The streams and veins of my being have practically been silted.
My head bolded by anxiety, strands of its hair used as fuel wood to quench the fiery greed of The Chief’s henchmen.
The cold, dusty floor has become a weighbridge of misery, emotions of pain measured by an imaginary digital meter I see deep in the tired eyes of the old man.
Just to survive, I can only cling to the memory of the glistening bones buried at Bhalagwe.
Just before I pass out, there is a buzz of excitement in the room.
The outsize woman drops her sack like it is hot and lumbers to the window: “They have come. Damn these Sadc commandos, only to rescue you, Zimbabwe? We are finished!”
She crawls back to her loot, stares menacingly at The Chief: “Stay put old man, until my sack if full!”
