Then the engine, flooded with water, stopped. Now the real hell. The disabled boat was tossed in every direction, spinning helplessly in a circle, while we waited, in terror, for the next wave to flip it over. Someone was shouting hysterically, someone else was calling to God for help, someone else still was lying on the bottom, moaning and vomiting. Everyone was desperately holding on to the sides. The squall drenched us over and over, seasickness tore out our insides, and if there was anything left of us, it was only an ice-cold animal fear. We had no inner tubes or life jackets, and death loomed with each approaching wave.
The engine was dead; we couldn’t restart it. Suddenly, Peter yelled through the gale: “Oil!” It had occurred to him that an engine of this type needs not only gasoline but also oil, mixed in with its fuel. He and Mark began rummaging through the storage places. They found a can and added the oil to the tank. Mark yanked a few times on the line; the engine sputtered, then roared. Our joyful shouts pierced the wind; the storm was still raging, but at least there was a hope now.
The dawn was gloomy, the clouds hung low in the sky, but the rain was breaking, and it was finally growing light. Where were we? All around was water, vast, dark, still agitated. In the distance, the horizon, rising and falling, undulating, in a measured, cosmic rhythm. Later, when the sun was high, we spotted a dark line on the horizon. Land! We headed in that direction. Before us was a flat shoreline, palm trees, a group of people, and in the background — huts. It turned out that we were back on Zanzibar, but far beyond the town. Not knowing the sea, we didn’t realize that we had been caught by the monsoon, which blows at this time of year, and which luckily spit the boat up here — it could well have carried us to the Persian Gulf, Pakistan, or India. No one would have survived such a journey — we would have died of thirst, or eaten one another from hunger.
We got out of the boat and fell, half-dead, on the sand. I couldn’t calm down, though, and began asking the assembled people how to get to town. One of them had a motorcycle and agreed to take me. We sped along through fragrant green tunnels, between banana trees, mangoes, and clove trees. The rush of hot air dried my shirt and pants — they were white and salty from the seawater. An hour later we reached the airport, where I was hoping to find Karume — and hoping he would help me get to Dar. Suddenly, I spotted a small plane standing on the runway, and Arnold loading his gear inside. In the shade of a wing stood Felix. When I ran up to him, he looked up, greeted me, and said:
“Your place is empty. It’s waiting for you. Get in.”
The Anatomy of a Coup d’État
From a notebook I kept in Lagos in 1966:
On Saturday, January 15, the army staged a coup d’état in Nigeria. At one o’clock in the morning, an alarm sounded in all the military units across the country. The various divisions set about carrying out their designated tasks. The difficulty of the coup lay in its needing to be implemented in five cities at once: in Lagos, which is the capital of the federation, as well as in the capitals of Nigeria’s four regions — in Ibadan (Western Nigeria), Kaduna (Northern Nigeria), Benin (Central-Western Nigeria), and Enugu (Eastern Nigeria). In a country with a surface area three times that of Poland, inhabited by fifty-six million people, the coup was executed by an army numbering barely eight thousand soldiers.
Saturday, 2 a.m.
Lagos: Military patrols (soldiers in helmets, battle dress, and carrying automatic weapons) seize control of the airport, the radio station, the telephone exchange, and the post office. By orders of the military, the electrical plant cuts power to the African neighborhoods. The city sleeps, the streets are empty. Saturday night is very dark, hot, and airless. Several jeeps stop near King George V Street. It is a small street at one tip of the island of Lagos (for which the whole city is named). On one side is the stadium. On the other — two villas. One is the residence of the prime minister of the federation, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. In the other lives the minister of finance, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh. The soldiers surround both villas. A group of officers enters the prime minister’s residence, wakes him, and leaves with him. A second group arrests the minister of finance. The cars drive off. Several hours later, an official government communiqué will state that the prime minister and his appointee “were taken to an unknown destination.” Balewa’s subsequent fate is unknown. Some say he is imprisoned in the military barracks; many believe he has been killed. People maintain that Okotie-Eboh was also killed. He was not shot, they say, but rather “bludgeoned to death.” This version may be less a reflection of reality than an expression of public opinion about the man. He was a deeply repugnant individual, brutal, greedy, large, even grotesquely fat. Through corruption, he managed to amass an indescribably large fortune. He behaved with the utmost contempt toward the people he ostensibly served. Balewa was his opposite — likable, modest, calm. A tall, thin, almost ascetic Muslim.
The army seizes the harbor and surrounds Parliament. Patrols circulate through the streets of the sleeping city.
It is 3 a.m.
Kaduna: On the outskirts of the capital of Northern Nigeria, surrounded by high walls, stands the one-story residence of the region’s prime minister, Ahmadu Bello. In Nigeria, the titular head of state is Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. The head of the government, Tafawa Balewa. But the actual ruler of the country is Ahmadu Bello. All Saturday long Bello receives guests. The last visit, at 7 p.m., is paid him by a group of Fulani. Six hours later, in the bushes across from the residence, a group of officers sets up two mortars. The group’s commander is Major Chukuma Nzeogwu. At three o’clock in the morning, a shot is fired from a mortar. The shell explodes on the roof of the residence. A fire erupts. It is the signal to attack. The officers first storm the palace’s guardhouse. Two of them die in the struggle with the prime minister’s security force, the rest make it into the flaming building. In the hallway they encounter Ahmadu Bello, who has run out of his bedroom. He is felled by a bullet, which hits him in the temple.
The city sleeps, the streets are empty.
It is 3 a.m.
Ibadan: The palace of the prime minister of Western Nigeria, Chief Samuel Akintola, stands on one of the gentle hills over which sprawls this single-storied city-village, “the largest village in the world,” with 1.5 million inhabitants. For three months now, bloody battles have been waged in the region, a police curfew is in effect in the city, and Akintola’s palace is heavily guarded. The troops begin their assault, a gun battle ensues, and then outright hand-to-hand combat. A group of officers finally forces its way into the palace. Akintola dies on the verandah, hit by thirteen bullets.