Paying for my infidelity

Having succeeded in fooling my wife the first time, I decided to try my luck again after nine months. 

I spent the whole night away with a woman, knowing that I would pretend that I had been arrested.

The next morning, at about 6:00am, I went to the Police station to set the plan in motion.

My friend, the officer in charge, ensured that I was locked inside again and he made a phone call to my wife, Namuli.

As I waited, suddenly there was commotion in the cell. Seven armed robbers had been arrested and were brought in to the Police station. They were pushed into the cell violently and I was even injured in the process.

Apparently, they were also former rebels. Through the window, I saw Namuli's car arriving, but visitors were stopped from proceeding for security reasons.

Meanwhile, the military Police from Makindye barracks came to pick the robbers. They called those who had their cases in the Police case book to get out of the cell. The men left in the cell were considered to be the robbers who had been hurriedly pushed in without recording their details.

But I was a fake prisoner, so I was not recorded in the book. I found myself among the robbers being transferred to Makindye barracks.

That is when my philandering became offensive to me. The military beat us as they moved us to their pick-up truck. I was already bleeding. I tried to explain to the military Police that I had not been part of the robbers, but the more I tried to talk the more I was beaten. So, I decided to keep quiet. I saw my friend, the officer in charge looking at me as if I was a stranger.

I understood that he had to protect his job. Namuli was in a state of disbelief and tears. She thought that all along I was a robber.

The patrol pick-up sped off with that rude cracking siren singing as if we were terrorists. A soldier was stepping on my head with half his weight.

The distance from the Police station was so long that we could not have gone to the nearby barracks. It took us 10 minutes to reach our destination, but for me it was like the longest journey

I have ever travelled. Because there was not enough space, the soldiers stepped on us as if we were mats.

My fellow ‘robbers' were real robbers, unlike me. They were battle hardened and did not look moved much by the situation.

They were just silent and waiting for what would happen next. When we reached our destination, the soldiers jumped off the pick-up truck and we were left there with our faces down for over 40 minutes. I did not know where we were.

This is when I realised that I had lost my two upper front teeth.

Read Saturday Vision next week for what happened next