The magician

Photo: Julius Drost

I was interning at the local Magistrates Court when they brought in a young witch doctor to answer charges of fraud. The prosecutor read out the rap-sheet; she had fooled government ministers into believing that the ancestral spirits had shown her the location of high-grade diesel behind the mystical Chinhoyi Caves.   

It was an elaborate con; she had hidden the drums of fuel behind the rocks herself. The ministers, desperate to provide a solution to the biting fuel crisis, fell for it.    

“Will you rise please, madam?” The magistrate, who was notoriously ill-humoured towards all accused persons who came before him, spoke to her with something like courtesy, even inclining his head. There is no point denying it; the young woman in the dock was a beauty, even with feathers sticking out of her head.

“How do you wish to plead?”  

“Not guilty,” she said, her head held high such that she surveyed all around her along the length of her aquiline nose.   

“What are her full names for the record?” The magistrate addressed the prosecutor, his voice growing an octave gruffer.   

“Nomatter Tagarira, Your Worship, but—,” the prosecutor licked a finger and used it to leaf through his papers. “I see here, she also uses the alias Rotina Mavhunga”.  

It was then that my memory was jogged, and I remembered who the woman in the dock was.   

****

Years ago, in that season when exams were long written and pupils were restless, our headmaster had arranged for a magician to come to our school. He arrived late because he went to Sinoia Primary first—a different school on the other side of town.  

Photo: Joshua Newton

With independence, our new government had begun the process of re-naming whole towns, schools, hospitals, streets, and anything else with a name, to banish the vestiges of Rhodesian rule and to provide evidence that the white man had really been vanquished. And so my town’s name was changed from Sinoia to Chinhoyi. The magician must have assumed that Sinoia Primary School was now Chinhoyi Primary School. Sinoia Primary School had, in fact, remained just that because there was already a Chinhoyi Primary School—ours—which had always borne that name since its establishment in 1964. There was nowhere for Sinoia Primary School to go but to remain in Rhodesia.  

“We shall sing while we wait,” the headmaster said. He called on the head boy, a tall lad who was as thin as a broom and the fastest sprinter in the whole school, to lead in chorus.  

“Around the corner, Jesus is coming.” He sang so lustily we could see the wag of his tongue and where his pink throat disappeared inside him. Mr Chapisa, the senior master, accompanied him on the accordion, swaying this way and that way to its strains and stretching out its pleats, then crushing them together so that it whooshed.  

After the song, we sat down in orderly rows on the sacred Kikuyu lawn which was out-of-bounds on most days and we listened to poem recitals about the greatness of the fallen Chinhoyi Seven and our beloved town.  

To our side were the teachers. They sat in the cool shed built for the school by Mr Lesley, the scarf-wearing, pipe-smoking socialist with a forked beard whose shop in town had the school uniforms’ contract. He liked black women and some of his special friends sat in the shed, striking a range of fashionable poses. One had dark glasses pushed up her big hair. Another had a patterned chiffon loosely slung around her giraffe neck and a lanky leg draped distractedly over the other. Yet another sported a little hat which was stuck into a bouffant perm and inspected her long painted nails while sipping Coca-Cola from a bottle.   

No one paid any attention to the male teachers whom we merely graded on their levels of grumpiness.  

Teachers were top of the pile then, and it showed. Several of their cars took spaces in the gravel car park, just behind the large flower bed in which the school motto was spelt with pebbles: Deeds not Words.   

Midway through the second song, the headmaster appeared with the guests in tow.  

Our headmaster, a tall and imposing man who walked with a limp, rarely smiled. He had a glass eye in his right socket which was so good that many had not noticed that he was one-eyed. Its ‘unblinkingness’ exacerbated his severe features and it was whispered behind his back that he had rubbed on the fat of a lion like the Wagogo. To be summoned to his office was akin to creeping into a throne room and there was only one fate which awaited any pupil who had the misfortune of entering it. Such was the aura around the man that even the teachers feared him. As for us, he only needed to stand in the corridors of our school without uttering a word and we would scurry like mice, tucking in our shirts and picking up litter as we disappeared into classrooms.  

He walked slowly and stood silently out in front until every cough was suppressed. He shielded his one good eye with a hand and cleared his throat.  

“Boys and girls, we are very lucky to have a guest with us today, Alibaba the magician and his lady assistant. I hope you enjoy the show.”  

With that, he went and sat under the shed, on a chair a little detached from the rest of his teaching staff.  

**** 

Alibaba the magician stepped forward. A diminutive man with a slight paunch, he was too light to be black but too dark to be white. His curly hair, which he had subdued with glycerine, fell back on his head like grass on a dewy morning so that his jug-ears appeared even more prominent. He wore a large black cape with a red underlay which was secured around his neck with twine. Underneath the cape, he had a white shirt and white jeans.  

Alibaba was trailed by his female assistant who might as well have been his daughter and who stood at attention slightly behind him, holding her clasped hands out in front. She was strikingly pretty, with a white woman’s nose, smoky eyes and thick, moist, lips. Her hair was woven into a mass of intricate braids and piled high on her head. She wore a kaftan cinched at the waist and in similar colours to Alibaba's.  

“Good afternoon Chinhoyi Primary School,” Alibaba cried in a show-time voice, his eyes sparkly and his arms raised wide.  

“Good afternoon Alibaba,” we chorused.  

“When I say abracadabra to you, you say abracadabra back at me. That makes the magic to respond. But before I start, is there anyone here who is one-eyed?” He looked around.  

The headmaster frowned but did not move. A small boy at the back, with a rheumy and misshapen black hole where an eye should have been, raised a trembling hand.  

“Rotina,” the magician signalled to his assistant. She moved swiftly and frog-marched the boy away.  

“Anyone whose father is a witch doctor or a prophet?” The magician asked again.  

Hitler, my classmate and the son of a witch doctor, shot up a hand. He too was frogmarched off by the officious Rotina.  

“The show can now begin,” the magician announced and stretched out his arms, lifting his cape with the motion and exposing the white shirt underneath.  

“Abradacadabra!” He cried.  

“Abracadabra!” We shouted back in unison. He lowered his arms and allowed the cape to drop down, then suddenly spun around so that the cape lifted up. The exposed shirt was now black.  

We whooped and clapped.  

He repeated the sequence and lifted his arms, dropped them, spun around and lifted them again. The shirt was now crimson red.  

And, with each spin, it became yellow, then green, then striped. Each different colour elicited our appreciative cheer and applause.  

“Bravo! bravo! An impressive performance indeed!” The teachers chorused, nodding to themselves and clapping their hands daintily by the fingers in the manner of enlightened folk.  

Only the headmaster was not clapping.  

For his next trick, Alibaba brought out a large brown suitcase and flung it open. He motioned to Rotina who stepped inside it and folded herself into a ball. The magician shut the case and pulled out a gleaming sword from a scabbard. He suddenly thrust it into the sides of the suitcase, piercing through it, in three quick motions.  

There were loud gasps.  

Alibaba flung open the case and flipped it over so all of us could see inside. Even the teachers stood up to see. It was empty. A loud “ahh” rent the air. He shut the suitcase again and turned to face us.  

“Abracadabra!” He cried.  

“Abracadabra!” We yelled in response.  

He stooped and opened the suitcase very slowly. Rotina had re-appeared and lay inside. She leapt out, unharmed. Another loud cheer went up.  

Next, Alibaba took out a top hat. He dipped his hand into its depth and whisked out a large multi-coloured handkerchief with a flourish and waved it in the air.  

“Abracadabra!” He cried.  

“Abracadabra!” We shouted back. He thrust the handkerchief back in the hat, then whisked it out again. The handkerchief had transformed into a white rabbit which hopped down and ate up some of the turf.  

We clapped and whooped, as did the teachers. The headmaster's frown had deepened.  

Rotina picked up the rabbit and gently placed it back inside the hat as Alibaba prepared for his next trick.  

“Is there anyone here with an expensive watch?” He looked at the teachers. There was hesitation but, eventually, the drama teacher stood up and volunteered his chunky timepiece.  

“Very nice watch this. A Rolek.”  

“Rolex,” the teacher corrected.  

“It says Rolek on the back,” Alibaba showed him.  

“Does it?” The teacher appeared puzzled.  

Alibaba placed the watch carefully inside a small jute sack with a drawstring and placed the sack on a trestle table. He gave the sack a heavy thwack with a small claw hammer; then again and again. When he was done battering it, he slowly untied the sack to reveal the watch, now a mangle of tiny metal bits. He tied up the little sack again, shook it about, then untied it again and showed the inside to the bemused spectators. It was now empty.  

“Everyone, check your wrists now,” Alibaba instructed.  

There was a cry from a girl at the back.  

The watch had re-appeared, intact, on the girl's wrist. Its relieved owner went to retrieve it, raised it, and gave it a good inspection. He was the first to lead the applause, a large smile breaking out on his oval face.  

For his next trick, Alibaba pulled out four volunteers, one of whom was a notorious bully, and made them sit on chairs spaced out in front.

“Abracadabra!” Alibaba screamed.  

“Abracadabra!” We shouted back, most of us now on our feet and secretly hoping that the bully may, at the very least, be transformed into a goat, even if for a moment.  

Alibaba took off his cape and swung it over the volunteers, then asked them to stand up from their seats. On each of the seats they had just vacated lay a perfectly formed white egg.  

“Quack, quack,” we pointed and fell over laughing as they walked back to their places rather sheepishly.  

“Now ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, for my final, final, final act. What we call the grand finale.”

Alibaba moved and stood next to a granite outcrop at the edge of the stage which had a grotto on its lee. Rotina came and stood next to him.

“I'm going to produce diesel from this rock here,” he tapped the rock with a wand. “High-grade, pump-ready diesel. You will never need to buy diesel for your cars again,” he declared, his eyes wild and his arms outstretched like an oracle.  

Our enlightened leaders in the shed leapt up and clapped their hands in anticipation of miracle diesel. 

About the Author

Taffi Nyawanza is a Zimbabwean lawyer living and working in the UK. He is on the Exiled Writers Ink writing programme and his debut collection of short stories will be published later in the year.