not the marrying kind

"Talking about not being married --" he says. "I've got a story to tell you."

We're sitting on our oil-lamp lit verandah, crickets chirping in the blackness. He is a Zimbabwean academic, now living in the diaspora. He's come back for the Christmas holidays to visit his frail mother, 83, who -- all credit to her -- is just finishing her third book.

"I've got this colleague" -- he says. The colleague's interested in things military. When our friend sees a pair of rusted small cannon sitting in the long grass outside an apparently deserted storeroom he pulls out his camera.

A few minutes later a soldier taps him on the shoulder. "My boss would like to see you."

A six-hour ordeal begins. He's taken to the police station, then to the back offices. Why did he take a picture? How did he know that building he photographed was a disused barracks? (He didn't. My husband did. He can remember being taken there in the back of the family station wagon during the war days when his parents dined in the officers' mess. There was a waiter -- Goodson, was it? or Warrior? -- who brought cold drinks out to the boys in the night) How do the CIO (because it's CIO interviewing him now) know he wasn't trying to make a map? A map to be used for espionage purposes?

They confiscate the camera, want a print-out of the photos. Just one problem: the police (of course) have no printer. So officers accompany our friend to the market square where the outdoor photographers roam, cameras in hand. Yes, one of them can print out what the police need. The photographer disappears with the precious memory card. He returns later with the photos. It's only when the police examine the prints that they realise these are not the right ones . A Shona couple beam, resplendent in wedding attire, at the officers from Kodak paper.

We sip our coffee.

"You forget there are eyes everywhere," I murmur. I wonder again about that white car that I've seen parked outside our drive the last few nights, lights off. Roadside lovers? Probably. But in Zimbabwe, the fear is never far. The car is there tonight.

"But what I wanted to say -- " He's remarkably calm about this. That's even though the military police called at his mother's cottage earlier in the day "for fellowship purposes. To check you are alright" (ie where you said you'd be and not reporting to your colonial masters) -- "The reason why it took so long with those eight people questioning me, is that they couldn't believe I wasn't married."

He's in his 50s, our friend, a steady girlfriend (plus cat) waiting for him back home.
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"What, not married? But why?" they kept saying. "No children?" It's unthinkable, a disgrace, for a Shona male to die childless. In the past, you could be buried with a rat on your back if you had no kids.

"What about children outside?" the CIO persisted. "Ok, so not inside marriage, but outside then?"