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The Zimbabwe of Memory, Eroded by a Deluge of Troubles

Gallery

Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe is officially sworn in as president after a sharply criticized runoff vote that was boycotted by his only rival, Morgan Tsvangirai.

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"Is that the bad guy?" Chipo asked.

Yes, honey, he's the bad guy. He is why we left. He is why we don't live in Zimbabwe now.

Here were televised images of Morgan Tsvangirai emerging from a hospital, eyes puffy and swollen from being beaten.

"And that's the good guy?"

Pretty much, yeah. He's the good guy.

Pictures now of children, ill-dressed, rough-looking skin, swollen bellies, holding bowls for corn porridge.

"Is that the hospital I'm from?"

I don't think so, no. There were lots of sick children then, but it was not nearly so bad as now. I don't think they could have taken those sorts of pictures at the hospital where you were. The children were sick and many of them died. But they had clothes.

So now the election is done and things will go on like this until it all collapses. Until Mugabe runs out of money to pay his thugs? Until South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, decides Mugabe is too much of a problem? Yeah. Some time like that. Maybe it will even be on television.

This brings to mind a particular feeling. It is something like Fritz Kreisler's arrangement of Dvorak's "Songs My Mother Taught Me," the violin and cello slow and mournful, and the sense that there once was a time when you could turn to someone older and stronger and wiser for comfort and they would make it all okay. Except now that time is like e e cummings's little lame balloon man, whistling far and wee, and it's something you can't even see anymore, it's just a feeling you used to have.

Zimbabwe: uneasy its sleep, uneasy its dreams.

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