Nightmare!
13 July 2012
RUTH KAMASUNGUA | The Crocodile Prize
THINGS HAPPENED SO FAST and he still could not digest all that had happened. He had walked down to the street near his cousin’s house to buy betel nut. It was sometime past six when he crossed over to the other side of the road and bought two nuts for K2.
After he chewed the meaty fruit he threw the skin at a passing police truck. The truck stopped and a policeman came out of the back of the Land Cruiser with a rifle.
“Did you throw a stone at the police car?” The officer asked. “No I swear I didn’t.”
The policeman cursed and swung his rifle at the head of the man. He felt a thud at the back of his head and fell. That was the last he could remember.
When he came back to his senses he was rolling about on the floor of the police truck with his hands cuffed. He couldn’t gain his balance. He was rolling like a ball with the movement of the vehicle as it made its rounds throughout the city.
His head felt like a heavy stone and he could hardly open his eyes for they were swollen and his lips felt as if they had doubled their size.
He felt jabs of pain coming from his ribs and he could hear cursing and swearing coming from those who were sitting in the car. The smell of alcohol filled the moving vehicle and voices of drunken men talking and laughing.
He tried to open his mouth in vain. Somebody stepped on his head and another kicked him in the guts and he passed out again. When he came back to consciousness, he could hear the sound of laughing men who used curse words at each other.
Suddenly the car came to a halt and someone poured what seemed to be a bucket of water on his bruised head and body. The water was freezing cold and he was completely alert by then. Maybe that was the purpose; these brutes thought that they could wake their victim up with cold water.
He felt ice-cold water penetrating his bruised face like a slicing knife and tried to lift his head in vain. His right eye was completely shut and he tried his best to open his left eye in vain.
“Throw the pig out now,” someone ordered from the front of the vehicle. “Give me the key to the hand cuffs,” said someone else who sat closer to him. He was rolled roughly around by someone’s heavy boots. He could hear the key clicking open the merciless cuffs which had bound him all night.
Someone set him up on the vehicle and the door of the back van opened and he was pushed roughly off the truck onto the ground. He fell badly on to the ground and got up. Someone from the vehicle fired a shot into the air causing him to run like a wounded animal slowly away.
He tried to focus his good eye on where he was but in vain because it was also red and stingy from the punches that he had received. “Keep moving, you @*%%@, someone swore at him from the police van.” It was probably the men who fired the shot. There was another shot close behind him and he accelerated his steps into a run and because he couldn’t see properly, he didn’t know where he was going.
All he could see was a blurry vision of a street which may have been Gordons Buai Market Street accept that this street was cleaner than Gordons Buai Market street where he last remembered strolling to find betel nut.
Then he remembered his dear wife who had sat outside the police station at Gordon breast-feeding his two month old son. He remembered her beautiful face as she said “Where are you going?” He had replied “Just across the road to get some betel nut.”
His father-in-law, a real gentleman was grinning his usual ‘approval grin’ as he regarded him as his own son even though he was not an ideal one. Suddenly, something occurred to him.
He remembered taking his father-in-law’s wallet. He said he would keep it for him and in it was a thousand kina in hard cash. He quickly put his hands into his pocket to check the wallet, it was gone! He was alarmed – by now he was fully alert. As he tried to figure out what actually happened to the money, there was another shot and this was a close one that missed his feet.
He ran for his life – he ran until he came to a big building. His feet grew tired and he was perspiring. He realized that he was running barefoot. His shoes must have been taken with the rest of his stuff. He rubbed his good eye and tried to figure out where he was. He stood there for a while and tried to read the sign on the building. It read ‘Able Computers’.
Right away he knew that he was at Rainbow, Four Mile. He didn’t know what time it was since everything including his two mobile phones and his shirt had been taken from him. He guessed the time to be around 6.30 in the morning and the road was already busy with buses and cars.
He checked his pocket to see if there were any coins so that he could catch a bus to Gordons. There was only thirty toea in his pocket. He dragged himself across the road to the other side and waited for a bus no. 17 or 4 to come by. A bus number 17 came and stopped and he jumped in and sat behind the boss crew.
He could feel that the passenger’s eyes were scrutinizing him, which meant he must have looked like a zombie with his badly bruised face and without a shirt. The bus stopped at Gordons and he got out and walked to the house.
His wife was bathing the baby when he walked in and he went straight to the patapa in front of the house and slept. His cousin-in-law, Josephine and her two daughters were outside marketing when he walked into the front yard. They took one look at him and guessed that he had been drinking in the night.
Thinking that he was in a drunken stupor, they did not ask him about his bruises and let him sleep while they went about doing their marketing and other home chores. He felt a hand on his arm and woke up. There was his mother sitting next to him on the patapata. “Henry, did you have a fight? How did you get your face swollen and those bruises all over your body?”
He sat up and was trying to explain the whole situation when his father and sister arrived. “Henry, your face! What happened?” asked his sister as she sat next to the elderly woman. His wife came out with the baby and joined the rest of the family on the patapata.
As they all crowded around him, he explained to them what had happened. His parents thought he was lying while his sister believed him. His wife looked at him with a sad face. “Why would police officers do that to you, they are supposed to uphold the law?” complained his sister.
As they were talking his father-in-law arrived. “What happened, Henry? Did you have a fight with somebody?” His daughter nudged him aside and whispered to him. “He drank last night with his mates, can’t you see, and he is trying to cover it up by telling us and his parents and sister that he was beaten by policemen.”
“Oh, my money!“ The man’s voice quivered as he looked at his daughter. “Dad, I told you not to give it to him, why did you do it.” “Well, he said he would take care of it and I trusted him. I’m pretty sure that somehow he has kept it safe for me somewhere in his pocket.”
He walked to where his son-in-law was sitting and asked, “Henry, can I have my money back now?” “I’m very, very sorry; the policeman who hit me last night must have taken my money. They’ve taken everything that was on me, my watch, shoes, the wallet with your money and mine, and my two mobile phones.”
His father-in-law stood shocked as he looked from Henry to his daughter and back to Henry. And for the first time he regretted having Henry as a son-in-law.
Ruth Kamasungua comes from the Simbu Province. She is currently completing her masters degree in literature at the University of Papua New Guinea. Her first book of poems, The Learner, will be published shortly by Anuki Country Press and the UPNG Bookshop
Reading through this poem is just horrifying.
The realities of what is actually happenning to innocent ordinary citizens living life normally on their home streets. It is a sad image of how corrupt a police force can get.
As a concerned citizen of PNG,with this kind of attitude from people who are surpose to enforce law and order, be trusted, can they be trusted? A horrifying and threatening police force.
Posted by: Tanya Haro | 26 September 2012 at 12:15 PM
Horrific story.
Fits in well with the discussion taking place on Sil Bolkin's story of "Parochial politics leads to serious problems at the poll."
I know the Australian government has been trying to help the police force in the Solomons. I just wish they could do the same for PNG.
A corrupt police force must be horrific.
Posted by: Mrs Barbara Short | 13 July 2012 at 07:12 AM