| About the author: | I have a few stories that have been published on the Longford, Ireland-based www.virtualwriter.net website. One of my short stories is also going to be featured in Writing Now, an anthology of contemporary Zimbabwean writing, which is going to be published by the Harare-based publishing house, Weaver Press. I also have some experience as a freelance journalist and book reviewer as well as some teaching experience in both secondary and primary school in Zimbabwe. Currently I am working on a novel. |
Tuesday, March 31, _ _ _ _ I spoke to my friend Elizabeth today. We hadn't spoken for seven months. We spent an hour on the phone. She says last week agents of the ruling party invaded her house again and they clubbed one of her dogs to death. They told her they had heard I was back in the country and they wanted Elizabeth and her husband to tell them where I was hiding. When Elizabeth and her husband protested that they didn't know anything about my whereabouts, they were beaten up. Pete sustained a gush above the right eye and right shin. He had to have two stitches on the forehead and six on the leg. Elizabeth had a bone broken in her right forearm. She had to have her arm in a plaster for a week. It cost her over SH$ 5 million to have the plaster removed. She says the incidents have traumatized her, her husband and their dog and have left her relatives very unhappy. Even though Elizabeth and Pete doubt that his presence will make much of a difference, they have been hiring a security guard every night since this last attack, and are frantically looking for their own guard now to cut down on costs. She says she can no longer bear this terror and dehumanisation of having kids under 25 years of age brandishing revolvers at her and her husband and wielding big sticks at them and beating them up! She says she is shattered and inconsolable at the killing of her dog, and at the wanton loss of life across the country. She wanted me to tell her something to cheer her up. She wanted me to give her some good news. She wanted me to tell her that this abuse she was living with was worth it, that I was ok and that everything was going to be OK. I couldn't tell her that in this country, as at home, I was living in a constant state of terror. I couldn't tell her that my asylum application had been rejected and that there was a possibility I could be deported any day now. | 
