One Man Dancing by Patricia Keeney

Author:Patricia Keeney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inanna Publications
Published: 2016-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

5. AMIN

JUNE 28TH, 1976. ABAFUMI STEPS off the plane into the summer sunlight of Rome. A representative of Africa House greets them, ushering the group into a cramped minivan. With news they cannot avoid. Absorbed as they breathe, seeping in through their pores.

By the time they get to their quarters, they know the essence of disaster, how Uganda’s own national tragedy is affecting the world. An Air France flight has apparently been hijacked and has landed at Entebbe Airport. The details emerge from television and radio.

Robot-like, Abafumi gathers in Rome to rehearse. But now they cannot concentrate. How do they justify this play-acting? In Rome, this indulgence in make-believe while real events in the real world are wreaking such havoc, events taking place on a bloody stage in Uganda.

Even Robert seems distracted.

June 29. Details are emerging from Entebbe. The flight had set out from Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport for Paris. During the flight, German hijackers took over the plane and rerouted it first to Athens, then to Benghazi, Libya, and then to Entebbe. Idi Amin allowed the plane to land. At the airport, the passengers were taken by the hijackers to a hangar where they were separated into groups at gunpoint.

Visiting the wide square of St. Peter’s Basilica, Charles gazes up into the stony eyes of divine shepherds and saints with crosses and staffs who study him from the high, round dome of this Catholic world.

Inside the huge church, Charles studies what Robert has called God’s “Centre of Operations.”

June 30th. In Tel Aviv, a retired Israeli Defense Force Colonel named Bar Lev, who had spent some time in Uganda, is led into a sterile military planning room. He makes an international call through to Kampala. This is the first of several calls that the Colonel makes to his old acquaintance Idi Amin, massaging his ego, reminding him that Amin had received his paratroop training from the Israelis and eliciting every scrap of relevant information while Defense Minister Shimon Peres listens in on an extension.

At that same moment, forty-seven of the hostages — all non-Israeli — are released as a goodwill gesture. They include the captain, his crew, and a French nun. The captain refuses to go. The crew joins his protest. As does the nun. The Ugandan military forces the nun to cooperate but allows the others to remain behind with the Israelis. Paris, Tel Aviv, and Washington are in close contact.

In Israel, three possible plans emerge: a parachute drop at Entebbe, a large-scale military crossing from Kenya, and a direct landing at Entebbe followed by a quick assault and a fast removal of the hostages by air.

Inside St. Peters, Charles sees himself arched splendidly over everything. Glimmering in bronze and gold and ivory, ruby and emerald and deep polished wood, carved and majestic. He towers and twists, streams holy pictures in flowing patterns.

It is what he always wanted to do. Send rays of light.

The church radiates pure light on him. A sunburst beams into the dark. His art will take him there.

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