The cavernous hall of the United Nations General Assembly was a monument to human ambition, a place where the world's cacophony was meant to find a single, resonant chord. But today, it was a mausoleum of silence.
President Emmerson Dambudzo stood at the lectern, a solitary figure swallowed by the vast, blue-carpeted space. The iconic green marble backdrop seemed to mock him, its gold UN emblem a cold, distant sun. Before him, where presidents, prime ministers, and kings should have been, were rows upon rows of empty seats. Their polished wood and deep blue upholstery stretched into the distance like a forgotten graveyard of diplomacy.
His hands, gnarled with age and the memory of holding a miner's pick, gripped the sides of the podium. His throat was dry, not from nerves, but from a lifetime of shouting into the wind. He was Emmerson Dambudzo, the forgotten man, the one they had all agreed to forget.
But there was something else. His eyes, bloodshot and unfocused, struggled to track the teleprompter. His balance was unsteady, his body swaying slightly, as if the floor beneath him was the deck of a ship in rough seas. The distinctive smell of whiskey clung to his breath, invisible but unmistakable to those few aides and security personnel watching from the wings. He had drunk before the speech. He had drunk to steady his nerves, to quiet the voices of doubt, to summon the courage to stand before the world. Instead, the alcohol had dulled his edges, blurred his conviction, and turned his righteous anger into something sloppy and incoherent.
The silence was a physical weight. It was the silence of a world that had become adept at looking away. It was the silence of polished hallways and carefully worded press releases that meant nothing. It was the silence that followed the quiet, unofficial decision to allow a nation to simply… unravel.
He began to speak, his voice a low rasp that was swallowed by the immense, indifferent acoustics. But the words came out slurred, tripping over each other like drunks in an alley.
"Mr. President… Mr. Secretary… General… Distinguished… delegates…"
The titles hung in the air, absurd and hollow. He was addressing ghosts. And he was doing it badly.
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He paused, squinting at the blank faces of the empty chairs. He imagined them there. The delegate from the United States, checking his phone. The representative from China, listening through a translator. The envoy from the European Union, composing a statement that would condemn and do nothing. The Russian ambassador, seeing a chance for a strategic manoeuvre. None of them were present, but in his intoxicated state, Emmerson saw them all, a phantom audience of indifferent diplomats.
"For years," Emmerson continued, his voice gaining a fragile, wavering strength, "we sent our people here. They stood… where I stand… now. They spoke of our sovereignty… of our right to exist… of the children who were dying…"
He stumbled slightly, catching himself on the podium. A sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead. He licked his lips, trying to focus. "They brought with them… the dust of our broken roads… and the tears of our mothers. And you listened. You nodded. You passed resolutions. You expressed… 'deep concern.'" He let out a bitter, wet laugh that echoed unnaturally, a sound more suited to a barroom than a cathedral of diplomacy.
"'Deep concern,'" he repeated, the words tasting like ash and cheap liquor in his mouth. "A phrase so gentle… it can lull a dying man to sleep. You expressed 'deep concern' while our infrastructure crumbled. You expressed 'deep concern' while our currency became worthless… good only for lighting fires. You expressed 'deep concern' while the generals, armed by your proxies, carved our country up like a roast…"
His knuckles were white against the dark wood of the podium, but his grip was slipping. He wasn't just speaking to them anymore; he was speaking for them. For the farmer in the dust-choked fields, for the teacher with no chalk, for the child with a belly swollen from hunger, for the millions of Dambudzans whose lives had been reduced to a statistic in a forgotten report.
But the words were becoming harder to find. His thoughts, once sharp and clear, were now a fog of resentment and self-pity. He was losing the thread. "You said our problems were… internal. A matter for 'national dialogue.' You sanctioned our leaders… then shook their hands behind closed doors. You pledged billions in aid… a river of gold that dried up before it ever reached our shores…"
He paused, swaying dangerously. For a moment, it seemed he might collapse. He gripped the podium with both hands, his head bowed, breathing heavily. The silence in the hall was no longer just the silence of empty seats. It was the silence of embarrassment. The few people watching—a junior staffer, a security guard, a journalist who had stayed behind out of curiosity—shifted uncomfortably.
Emmerson looked down at his prepared speech, a single, blank sheet of paper. The words he had planned were too clean, too polite. But now, he couldn't even remember what they were. The paper blurred before his eyes. He blinked hard, trying to focus.
"My name… is Emmerson Dambudzo," he said, his voice cracking. "In my language… 'Dambudzo' means… 'trouble.' I was born into it. I have lived in it. And now… I have come to this great hall of peace… to tell you that you have made a world… where trouble is a commodity you can ignore…"
He tried to straighten up, to summon the righteous fury that had brought him here. But his body betrayed him. He lurched to the side, knocking the water glass off the podium. It shattered on the floor, the sound sharp and jarring in the silence. Emmerson stared at the broken glass, his expression confused, as if he couldn't understand how it had gotten there.
"You have not failed my country," he mumbled, his words now barely audible. "You have succeeded… in creating a world… where my country no longer matters…" He tried to continue, but the words dissolved into a slurred, incoherent ramble. He spoke of empty chairs, of silence, of ghosts, but the poetry was gone, replaced by the pathetic ramblings of a broken man. His eyes welled with tears, not of rage, but of self-pity and shame. "So… I will not speak to you… any longer," he stammered, his voice barely a whisper. "I will speak… to the seats… I will speak… to the silence…"
He leaned into the microphone, his breath heavy and laboured. The smell of alcohol was overwhelming now, even to himself. "We were here," he said, his voice cracking with emotion. "We mattered. And you… you did nothing…"
But the words lacked conviction. They hung in the air, limp and lifeless. Even he didn't believe them anymore. With that, Emmerson Dambudzo stepped away from the lectern. He stumbled, nearly falling, and had to be steadied by a security guard who rushed forward from the wings. He did not look back. He walked—or rather, staggered—down the long, silent aisle, his footsteps uneven and echoing in the cavernous hall.
Ettar Patience Mhlanga is a Zimbabwean based in the Diaspora. She writes in her personal capacity.
