by Joseph Grant
Thoughts of the very bad years were never far behind, Ume recognized as he ran. These contemplations were a part of him as certainly his body, his mind and his soul. These memories were still alive even though long since passed. No matter what Ume tried to forget them, they invaded his waking hours and permeated his dreams into nightmares and his sleepless nights as well.
Ume (pronounced Oom-way) ran whether day or night, sunshine or inclement weather and was known in the marathon circles as a serious contender. He developed his love of running in his homeland of Rwanda as a child, sprinting carefree into the jungles and villages even if against his parent’s wishes. His father would beat him with a cane he used to hobble, having suffered a near incapacitating gunshot wound in one of the many tribal wars.
Ume’s father made certain never to beat his son on his legs or feet, mindful of the disgrace he himself felt in not being able to work as a laborer like the rest of the men in the village. Instead, he stayed close to the village, helping the women with their crops, spice baskets and heavy lifting. Ume’s father never wanted his son to feel less than the man he felt himself to be every day.
When Ume became a young man and underwent the tribal initiation along with the rest of the boys his age, Ume’s father held back his tears and reserved his emotions proudly so as not to be seen as weak like the women with whom he stayed in the village. There were feats of strength set up and a race, which Ume easily won. He was given the nickname of gufata ishuheri or “One catches the wind”.
During this period, the time of the Great Genocide, where entire villages moved or disappeared entirely off the map in a smoldering enigmatic end, Ume’s village was attacked, women and children slaughtered and men taken prisoner. These men were forced to join their oppressor’s ranks and fight against other peaceful villages or be driven out into the savannah and never heard from again. When the trucks lumbered it into Ume’s village, Ume’s father told him to run and not look back and to run until the screams could be heard no more.
Ume heeded his father’s counsel and these last words spoken from a father to his son, saved his life. His father was already old and had lived his life and could not run. He stayed behind and chose to fight. Both he and Ume knew it was suicidal to fight against such heavily armed men. There was no shame in running his father told him.
In reflection, Ume felt no shame. He did bear great guilt in running from his people, the village where he grew up but he never disobeyed his father. There was no shame in crying as he ran, he knew. It would have been utter disrespect to disobey his father’s last wishes, although many times since he had played the scene differently in his head. In his version, he ran back and saved his father and his village becoming the great warrior-hero. He knew such thoughts were useless, but no matter how he tried to keep these thoughts at a distance, they would always catch up with him. These doubts would linger, pervading his mind during the day and in his dreams at night until sleep and the lack of it offered little respite from his past.
Ume recalled running and hiding from government troops and their hired militia made up mainly of able-bodied men kidnapped from villages. These men were never given arms, just great sticks called mguni in which they used to great success to battle other unarmed villagers, never their captors. Any prisoner deemed not doing their part would be threatened by execution. In this way, these soldiers of misfortune were spared their lives by enslaving others in combat and this never-ending game was a constant battle for survival.
The irony was that once there were no more villages to plunder, there would be no more need for these captives. After assisting these militants in the genocide of their neighboring tribesmen, the government troops would shoot them en masse, at least the ones that did not commit suicide from the guilt. Some pleaded in futility for their lives, but these pleas always fell on deaf ears and hardened hearts. The government men beat them and laughed at them for being so insolent and naive. The captives could entreat all they wanted, but there was no longer a need for them. There was no money in feeding them or encamping them and in the end, the government wanted no witnesses.
In a last act of cruelty, the troops would taunt their captives who wanted nothing more than to go home. “To what home?” They would ask. “To what family? Your families are ghosts.”
Often they would inform the men that they were free to go look for their families an once they set out on foot on the dusty roads back to what once had been, the troops would chase the bewildered and frightened men down in their trucks, all the while using them as target practice.
Ume had heard the rumors, had seen the reports in the American newspapers as he roamed from sanctuary to citadel. He ate what he could from the land and drank from the rivers in the rainy season. Some villagers would take pity on him but more often than not he was chased away as an outsider, not wanting to incur the wrath of any government militia always seen driving the main roads.
One day, a soldier recognized Ume’s tribal markings and arrested him without delay. Ume was thrown into a small and clammy prison cell on the most ridiculous of charges; disobeying the very government who came to kill him and his village. There would be no trial; his charge was his trial and his innocence was never an issue. In their eyes, he was guilty by just being alive and a witness to their history.
The cell in which he was kept was a 5×8 foot cement box with bars on the door and window on high. It was cold, dank and barely hospitable to the rats much less humans and the occasional juicy spider, providing it didn’t rain. When it did drizzle, the water would trickle down the wall until he was standing in ankle-deep, freezing water. For this, he hated the rain and the rainy seasons ever after. Apart from fresh water, it wasn’t the rain chased that away the rats, cockroaches and spiders. It was the snakes that made up for their absence.
Under such conditions and little more than a diet of inedible food other than grubs and maggots in his open sores to make up most of his nutrition, Ume became sick. When the rains came, they would dry up eventually but he noted the moisture stayed in his lungs. It was only by his constant coughing and of those dying around him that reports surfaced in the press of such intolerable conditions, allowing Amnesty Worldwide had gotten involved. This brought some Western celebrities and Congressmen on a good will tour. Despite the intentions, this unwanted interest brought nothing but trouble to Ume and his fellow inmates.
Once the trips were announced, the prisoners were hustled into the main yard, many of them squinting and shielding their eyes from the long-forgotten sun. The cells were hosed out, decontaminated and sanitized. This did not bode well for the prisoners in the long run as it drove away their constant food source of vermin. New mattresses were brought in as well as for the first time ever, new prison attire.
It was the first mattress Ume and many of his fellow prisoners ever slept upon. Many of them had no understanding of the piece and took it off the rusty box springs and put it on the floor where they usually slept. Previously when it rained, Ume slept sitting in the highest spot of the cell or leaning against the wall so as not to drown in his sleep. Amazingly, the rain was no longer a problem. The new attention brought in French drains, deflecting the water from the window, allowing Ume to sleep dryly and comfortably for the first time in many months that he had been a prisoner.
To alleviate the boredom, Ume began a routine of the running the confines of his cell. His fellow cons thought him mad at first but in truth, it was the only thing that kept him sane. Other inmates cracked from the combination of sheer confinement, government oppression and murder of their families. Boredom certainly played a hand in the madness of men confined 23 hours a day. In that, man’s flaw were his own limitations.
Ume had running to keep his mind free from jail. Even prison had a flaw. A prison would only keep a man bound but never imprison his thoughts. In his mind, he ran free from the cage, outside under a brilliant blue sky and feel the grass beneath his feet, feel the air in his lungs as he ran and even grow to appreciate the very rain he had grown to hate. Running kept him free. Prison could never take that away from him. Running allowed his earthbound soul to soar beyond the prison walls.
In the weeks prior to the visitation by Amnesty and the Red Cross, the prisoners were regularly allowed into the yard. During the cleaning of the cells the warden had become aware of the fact that his men were glaringly unaccustomed to daylight and exercise. It then became mandatory for the inmates to be forced into the yard and to practice some regularity of calisthenics, despite their various weaknesses. It was during one of these episodes that a guard spotted Ume running for what he thought was the locked gate. Ume was oblivious and ran on, happily content to be free from his usual suffocative living quarters. The guard yelled for him to stop, blew the whistle as a phalanx of security pounced upon Ume, beating him with their sticks while more than one beat him on his legs.
It was decided that the guards acted appropriately and Ume should have known better than to run in the direction of the perimeter. The idea of escape was a ludicrous one as the fence beyond that was electrified and locked as well. Despite this, the guards were given awards and a dinner in saving Ume’s life, surely an incident that would play to the prison’s favor against alleged human rights violations. It was decided that Ume’s injuries came from falling off a ladder while helping to paint the exterior of the prison, a blatant falsehood.
Ume would be their model prisoner. He would be paraded about in front of the invited VIP’s, which included members of the international press corps and exhibited as an illustration of fair and impartial treatment the prisoners were receiving. It would show the prison and current government in the best possible light and after the organizations saw for themselves what the government had been touting as true, everyone could go contently on their way and the prison could return to its hellish routine.
The big day came and everyone dressed their best and put their best smile forward. A few A-list celebrities and rock stars got their photo opps while the press got their story, one for which they did not originally come. With such good nature abounding and smiling, happy and well-dressed prisoners, certainly the rumors of torture and injustice were just that.
But the Red Cross and their accompanying international doctors who examined the prisoners read a different diagnosis from the story around them. They could see the old wounds and scars inflicted over the previous months and when they examined Ume, they gathered around him in a huddle, which made the warden nervous. It was deduced that the wounds were fresh and that one of his legs was showing early signs of gangrene. It was apparent that the show was just that; one big show. It was apparent that Ume’s injuries had not been called by a single fall but numerous beatings apportioned over a period of time. Doctors pointed out the truncheon marks upon his calf, administered violently enough to still appear only days old when in fact, it had nearly been two weeks.
Ume became the cause celeb almost overnight with calls coming in from world leaders and the United Nation’s Ambassador to free him at once. His photo was everywhere within days from newspapers to magazine covers, t-shirts, buttons and posters. It was said that he was the new Mandela. He became a folk hero in his own land of Rwanda. School children all over Africa sang of him and his brave deeds.
He was removed from the facility after a brief but vitriolic extradition fight wherein the warden and the government didn’t want to lose their resident cash cow but fell under the autonomy of larger influences of other governing bodies. He was taken to a hospital in Johannesburg where his leg was saved from having to be amputated. From there, he was sent t London for further treatment and being flaunted to the English press and made appearances at a range of concerts for aging rock stars and their likewise causes.
After much unrest and recovery, he was sent to physical therapy where he learned to properly use his leg again. This astounded the medical professionals who feared Ume would never walk again. He then surprised them by running in the London Marathon soon thereafter.
Ume made a full recovery and sought asylum in the United States. He had heard about the country while a child and had wanted to see this land of many freedoms. In his home, there had been no freedoms and yet this country supposedly had many. The idea fascinated him. He was awarded with a scholarship by some anonymous benefactor and chose the sport of track, which shocked no one.
Ume was soon a familiar face in many of the big metropolitan marathons whether it be New York, Boston, Houston or Los Angeles. Ume loved the freedom he could literally feel throughout his body as he ran. Though he was sometimes taken aback by the enormity of his adopted country, its buildings and the friendliness of the people, he could not forget how old-timers in his village told him that America was certainly a myth and that no country, free as it is, could exist in such a world.
But it was real enough to Ume, not a myth. It was the same sensation of freedom he felt when he ran or as his countrymen called it, to catch the wind. Freedom was like that, Ume thought. It was in the wind and all one had to do was catch it, if one ran fast enough. No one ever had the power to take away another man’s freedom. In such a place as this new country, a man was only limited by himself. When he had finally proven himself by winning the New York City Marathon, a feat that even overwhelmed him as well as everyone in the race, the press again clamored around Ume.
“Why do you run?” asked a reporter who thrust his microphone at Ume’s face.
Ume thought for a second as he stood with his hands on his hips, his clothing drenched and his breaths coming in quick successions. He recalled his father, the villages destroyed, his country burned, his friends and family killed and tortured the continuous beatings and the liberty taken from him and his countrymen. His eyes searched for a second as the foolish question circled his head. The answer was obvious.
“Because I can.”