The Cousin-Wife and the Other Woman

An excerpt from The Missing Corpse

The General sat alone in his private office, the air thick with the scent of old Waragi and power. His tongue, still rough from last night’s drinking, ran absent-mindedly over his upper teeth.

The texture was…unpleasant. Sticky, like something had died in his mouth overnight. It

took him a moment to realize that, yet again, he had skipped brushing his teeth. It had become a habit. He told himself it was because he was too busy running a country and, more recently, hunting for his father’s missing corpse. But deep down, he knew the real reason. He simply did not care.

Yet, somewhere in the back of his mind, he could almost hear the familiar scolding voice of his dentist—a curvaceous woman called Rehema, whose body alone could start a coup. She had a way of chastising him that almost felt like a plea.

" Please, General, remember to brush and floss every day. You’re the image of the country, and we need you in good oral health. "

The General chuckled at the memory, a faint smile creeping across his face. He’d once entertained the idea of hiring her as his personal teeth cleaner, doubling—no, tripling—her government salary. But the thought of his wife Charity marching into his office, screaming about impropriety and embarrassment, made him reconsider. His wife had a knack for ruining his better ideas. Charity was his first cousin, Bernard Musinga or Uncle Sayyid’s daughter. In many

African cultures, it would have been unthinkable to marry her—a taboo so ingrained that the idea itself was revolting. But not in their family. The generals were different. Once they had ascended to power, they had also granted themselves the privilege of bending tradition to their will. Customs, like rules, were for the powerless.

For them, marriage within the family was not only acceptable, but encouraged. It was a

matter of security and preservation, they claimed—a way to keep wealth, influence, and secrets confined within their bloodline.

Charity had the entitlement of a royal cat—sleek, lazy, and convinced the General existed solely to refill her bowl. Being the daughter of the General’s uncle didn’t help matters. That made things familial, which in their world was just a polite word for inescapable. Divorce? Not an option. Murder? Tempting. But, alas, also frowned upon at family functions.

One humid afternoon, while Charity was in the shower humming some off-key gospel

tune like she was washing her sins down the drain, the General’s eye caught her phone buzzing. Pure reflex, he told himself, as he picked it up. He wasn’t snooping. No. He was conducting reconnaissance.

And there it was. A contact in her phone labeled Stupid Man. The General’s eyebrow twitched. Curiosity flared. Who was the poor bastard? A boyfriend? A lover? A fool? He hit dial. His own phone rang back. The line went cold. So did his spine. Stupid Man…was him. The General stared at the screen like it had slapped him. His own wife—well, his cousin-wife—had assigned him a name better suited to a dog who licked sockets. He didn’t scream. No, he took it to Sayyid, her father, the old family lion with a cane and a temper like fermenting jet fuel. Sayyid roared. Charity shrugged.

She changed the name, sure. But not to Darling, or Sweetheart, or even something

halfway romantic like Bae. No, her compromise was cold, calculated, and surgical: Father of Daniel. Like she was labeling a specimen jar.

And just like that, the General knew: Even dictators get demoted in their own damn house.

The General had always viewed the family’s in marriage tradition with disdain. He had played along at first, out of obligation more than conviction, marrying Charity as his father had suggested. She was beautiful, no doubt—graceful, with sharp features and an air of sophistication that matched her privileged upbringing. Yet, to the General, she felt more like a transaction than a partner. There was no fire, no challenge, no thrill. Loving Charity felt like eating food without salt—necessary, perhaps, but utterly uninspiring.

For the General, love was not just about family duty or preserving power—it was a

battlefield, an intoxicating conquest. He desired women who radiated strength, who commanded attention, and who, above all, carried themselves with grace and beauty. That was what had drawn him to Josephine.

Josephine was nothing like Charity. She was bold, outspoken, and undeniably beautiful. She could light up a room simply by walking into it, her confidence radiating like the sun. Her father, Lubwama, an opposition leader and a thorn in the General's side, had not approved of their union. But Josephine’s fierce independence and beauty had captivated the General in ways no one else ever had. His usual conquests—musicians with honeyed voices and politicians with sharp tongues—were fleeting passions. But Josephine had drawn him in with her intellect, her power, and her rare ability to make him feel like a king without ever compromising her own dignity.

At first, his relationship with Josephine had been casual. He had approached her with the same intention he had for countless women before her: sex. It was supposed to be a fleeting affair, a dalliance to satisfy his cravings. But Josephine had been different. She had shown him a side of herself he hadn’t expected—a softness, a humility. Despite her outspoken nature in parliament, where she had argued fiercely against his father’s policies, she never raised her voice to him. She knelt when she served him food, a gesture he didn’t think he cared about until he saw her do it. And then, as if fate had conspired to tie him to her, she became pregnant.

The General decided he would also marry Josephine, even if it meant going against his

family’s wishes. His love for her felt natural, untainted by the politics and power games that had dictated his marriage with Charity. He wanted Josephine not as a calculated move, but as a matter of pure desire.

Still, he was a man who wanted everything his way. He would not discard Charity; he

would simply take them both. Polygamy was hardly unusual for a man of his status, and he had never been the sort of man to ask permission. He owned the country, and in his mind, that meant he owned everything—and everyone—in it. But Josephine brought with her complications, ones that the General had not foreseen.

Chief among them was her past—a boyfriend who had been in her life before him. The General had learned of the man called Godfrey through his network of informants, and the knowledge had festered like a wound.

The General could not abide the thought of another man having shared Josephine’s

affection. It disgusted him, enraged him. In his eyes, a woman’s love should belong to him and him alone. There was no room for rivals, even those from the past.

To the General, men like Josephine’s ex-boyfriend were a liability. Former lovers were

like cockroaches—if you didn’t crush them flat and final, they’d crawl back to life the moment they got some air. To him, ex-boyfriends were thieves holding a spare key to a woman’s heart, ready to unlock it and slip inside whenever they pleased. They knew exactly which buttons to press, which strings to pull, the exact ways to ignite her passion. The thought of Josephine’s ex resurfacing, of even having the audacity to think he still had a place in her heart, was intolerable.

The General made up his mind. Godfrey had to be eliminated—not just removed, but

erased entirely. He summoned his most trusted henchman, a cold and efficient killer named Shafic.

“Find him,” the General ordered, “and make sure he never resurfaces. Ever.”

The plan was set in motion with precision. Shafic tracked the ex-boyfriend to a small

neighborhood in Kampala. Godfrey, unaware of the shadow looming over him, went about his life as if he weren’t marked for death.

One night, Shafic and his men abducted him from his home, driving him to a run-down

lodge on Salaama Road. There, they carried out their orders without hesitation. A single gunshot ended the man’s life, and they left his body in the lodge, arranging the scene to look like a sordid accident. The narrative was carefully crafted: he had died after a night of drug use and sex with prostitutes.

The lodge owners were instructed to play their part, as were the man’s family. Shafic visited the family personally, delivering the General’s warning in a tone that left no room for negotiation.

“If you speak out,” he told them, “if you challenge the story, the General will kill all of

you. And no one will dare mourn you.”

The family fell silent. They grieved in private, afraid to even whisper the truth to one

another. Meanwhile, the lodge owners spread the official story, and soon, the whispers of drug abuse and immoral behavior surrounded Godfrey’s name. No one dared question the General’s version of events.

“A sharp, fast-paced political thriller.” — Kirkus Reviews

Disclaimer: This excerpt, like the novel The Missing Corpse, is a work of fiction created from the author’s imagination. All characters, events, and institutions are fictional, and any resemblance to real persons—living or dead—or to actual events is purely coincidental.

— Yasin Kakande

Author of The Missing Corpse