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."Rose smiled and laid her hand on his forehead."Rest now.I'll bring you something to eat.""But where—?""You're safe here.And you can trust me.I am going to take care of you and see that no harm comes to you ever again."The general closed his eyes, and his body relaxed.36THE EXPLOSION OCCURRED EXACTLY AT NOON, DURING THE Muslim call to prayer.Extensive damage was done to the police fortress on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and five British soldiers were killed."It's that bloody Menachem Begin," David Mathenge overheard his commanding officer, Geoffrey Donald, say.And thus began the intensive manhunt for the underground terrorist that brought David out of his cot in the middle of the night to muster with his regiment and wait in the cold and damp September night for orders from Captain Donald.It was coincidental that David was in Geoffrey Donald's African regiment in Palestine.When he had volunteered to join the British Army at the outbreak of war, he had not expected to be assigned to mere garrison duty but had hoped to be able to fight Hitler's racist Nazis.Nor had David expected to find himself under the command of a man he had despised for seven years.Ever since the day of his escape from the Nairobi jail and subsequent exile in Uganda, David Mathenge had carried a special hatred for the Trevertons and, because of his friendship with that family, also for Geoffrey Donald, a man whom David was now forced to salute.David had been in Palestine for four years and was by now familiar with its various fighting camps—Arab, Jewish, British.The terrorist bomb that went off in the British police fortress had to be the work of Menachem Begin's Irgun; it couldn't have been the work of the Haganah, the Zionists' secret army, David knew, because it always gave advance warnings so that people could escape.The fight was over whose homeland this mandated territory was.It seemed to David Mathenge, who, like all Kikuyu, was deeply tied to the land and understood territorial possession, that this was a tribal issue.There were the Arabs, who had lived here for centuries, being pushed off their ancestral lands by European refugees, Jews fleeing Hitler.The Jews claimed this land as their own by right of ancestral legacy.And in the middle sat the British, catering to both parties, making and breaking promises with both.It was no wonder, as far as David was concerned, that Menachem Begin, fed up with Churchill and his empty words, had turned his terrorist tactics not upon the Arabs, his natural enemy, but upon the British.That was why the police fortress outside Jerusalem had been targeted.David was utterly miserable.What had happened? Where had his life gone wrong? Four years ago, when the colonial government had launched a massive recruitment drive for the King's African Rifles, David Mathenge and thousands of other young Africans like him had eagerly joined up, believing that Hitler was going to invade Kenya and cart them away in chains.The young Africans, newly out of school, unemployed and anxious for action, had been convinced that they were marching off to fight a monstrous evil and that they were going to have the glorious opportunity to defend their country, freedom and democracy, and their way of life.Outfitted in a smart new uniform and a hat with the side brim turned up and fixed with a plume, David had paraded proudly before the eyes of his white officers, feeling like a warrior going into battle, and had left his homeland to discover that the world was a far, far bigger place than he had ever dreamed.At the time he believed that joining the British Army was the smartest thing he had ever done.Now he realized that it wasn't.David decided that the smartest thing he had ever done was to stay on in Uganda after Chief Muchina, ill and dying—from a thahu, people whispered, placed on him by Wachera—had dropped all charges against David and had declared the arrest a false one.David had been free to go back into Kenya, but he had opted to stay in Uganda and attend Makerere University, from which he had graduated three years later with a degree in agriculture.He had learned farming and farm management.Now he was ready to take back his land from the Trevertons.But when will that be? he asked himself as he left the barracks, rifle slung over his shoulder.For years his mother had been promising the reinstatement of his lands.Had she not placed a thahu on the Trevertons? And didn't Wachera's curses always work? But not quickly enough for David."The Treverton coffee estate is doing well," Wanjiru had written in her last letter."The white girl Mona is running it herself." This was not what David had joined the King's African Rifles for—to waste his time in a dry, godforsaken country where the people were determined to annihilate one another, with him in the middle, the target of both sides because he was a British soldier, while the Trevertons grew fat on his land!David was overcome with misery.What was there to love in this arid Palestine? In the summer the heat was killing, and hot winds seared one's lungs; in the winter there were gray, relentless rains and a biting cold he had never felt back in Kenya.David's heart was heavy for his homeland.He yearned for the forests, for the clean mists of Mount Kenya, for the songs of his people, for his mother's cooking, and for Wanjiru's love.Wanjiru.She was more to him now than just the woman he loved and hoped to marry; Wanjiru had come to personify all the things he was homesick for
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