The Teeth May Smile But the Heart Does Not Forget
There are better bets for one鈥檚 first book than Uganda. A faraway place, beset by exoticism and stereotype, the country doesn鈥檛 often make the bestseller list.聽And journalist Andrew Rice didn鈥檛 set out to write an easy book: The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget is an ambitious work of narrative journalism, the story of one man鈥檚 quest for the truth about the murder of his father, who was killed during the brutal reign of dictator Idi Amin.
But Rice鈥檚 debut may well do for Uganda what Philip Gourevitch did for Rwanda, or Adam Hochschild for colonial Congo: bring an unfamiliar place and its terrifying history to the forefront of the American imagination.
Duncan Laki was 9 years old when his father, a local leader named Eliphaz, disappeared one afternoon and, like thousands of other Ugandans, simply never came home. The son spent much of his life consumed by the need to know what happened. Eventually, by following a series of clues about his father鈥檚 prized Volkswagen Beetle, Duncan meets the guilty: two foot soldiers, under order from Amin鈥檚 No. 2 general, Yusuf Gowon.
After recanted confessions, they go on trial for Eliphaz鈥檚 murder 鈥� the first trial for crimes committed under Amin鈥檚 regime. The suspense of Rice鈥檚 story stems from whether, in a country that seems to prefer amnesia, these men will be held accountable for their crimes. In the context of Amin鈥檚 horrific regime, is following that order 鈥� or giving it 鈥� even a crime? Or is an entire society guilty of crimes in which its members, by simply trying to survive, were complicit?
A cast of pitch-perfect characters makes these questions even more compelling. There鈥檚 Idi Amin, of course, whose global reputation for sinister buffoonery concealed his power to suffuse every corner of society with paranoia.聽Eliphaz Laki is an ideal foil: Active in politics during the euphoric moment of Ugandan independence, Eliphaz landed an appointment as chief, a duty he fulfilled with a near-sacred sense
of responsibility. Early activism put Eliphaz in contact with the young, rebellious Yoweri Museveni, then a Marxist trying to foment revolution, now Uganda鈥檚 longest-serving president. Eliphaz once helped Museveni sneak over the border to Tanzania; that fact, run through the conspiracy-crazed rumor mill of the Idi Amin bureaucracy, helped mark Eliphaz for death.聽This was hardly a surprise, even to Eliphaz himself.聽What tormented his son Duncan were the unknown details:聽How did his father die and where was his body left?聽Who led the killers to the family鈥檚 home?聽What became of the Beetle?
Duncan wants answers, but the circumstances are more complicated than they seem. They go back to the country鈥檚 fraught colonial history. In his telling, Rice distills a bibliography worthy of a doctorate into captivating storytelling.
Background on the British system is the story of 鈥渉ow Eliphaz Laki ended up going to school,鈥� while the earlier Turkish presence in northern Uganda 鈥渨ould determine the course of Yusuf Gowon鈥檚 life.鈥� In lesser hands, one man would be the victim, the other a perpetrator, each cast in the rigid roles of the moment that brought them together. In Rice鈥檚 story, they are neither.聽They are, instead, ordinary men caught in the crosswinds of history.
It is in managing this tension 鈥� between individual and collective culpability, in a society to which the writer is an outsider 鈥� that Rice is at his most masterful. Through the controlled and blessedly infrequent use of the first person, Rice leverages his own incredulity to reveal something about Uganda.
鈥淭he idea that an entire nation might decide to let its murderers go free,鈥� he writes in the first pages of the book, 鈥渢hat it might suffer so much and commemorate it so little upended everything I thought I knew about the human response to loss.鈥澛燣esser writers would be distracted by their own confusion, but Rice rises to the challenge. Rice knows we need him to guide us 鈥� sparingly 鈥� through a moral matrix complicated by a culture and history of which we know little.
The circumstances of Eliphaz鈥檚 life could have been fodder for any number of genre stories.聽Rice could have taken up the true crime mantle and written a Ugandan 鈥淚n Cold Blood鈥� or penned yet another quasi-memoir masquerading as a book about Africa. Instead, he offers up first-rate reportage, sustained over the two years he spent living in Uganda.
In the idiosyncrasies of Ugandan history and in the material he gathers from his sources, Rice finds 鈥� without forcing it 鈥� a universally appealing story about living through, and after, violence. 鈥淭he Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget鈥� is a stunning book.
Jina Moore has reported for the Monitor from East Africa.
