5
* * *
The Doctor also reminded me . . . that . . . he had a stock of jellies and crackers, soups, fish, and potted ham, besides cheese, awaiting him in Unyanyembe, and that he would be delighted to share his good things; my imagination loved to dwell upon the luxuries at Unyanyembe. I pictured myself devouring the hams and crackers and jellies like a madman. I lived on my raving fancies. My poor vexed brain rioted on such homely things as wheaten bread and butter, hams, bacon, caviare, and I would have thought no price too high to pay for them . . . I thought that if a wheaten loaf with a nice pat of fresh butter were presented to me, I would be able, though dying, to spring up and dance a wild fandango.
Henry Morton Stanley, How I Found Livingstone
Bwana Stanley arrived just at the moment that I had begun to despair that we would ever leave Ujiji, for we had no provisions at all for the journey. As soon as he discovered Sherif’s deceit, Bwana Daudi wanted to send messengers to Bagamoyo, to post word to Zanzibar of where he was, but we had nothing with which to pay them.
Nor could he spare Amoda, Susi, or Chuma, for it was just them and me who were with him then. By that time, we had not been joined by the Nassickers, Mabruki, Chirango, or the rest of the pagazi, and so it was just us, along with Misozi, who decided she liked the looks of Susi. There was no one else to send.
In desperation, Bwana Daudi thought our small group should strike out for Unyanyembe, where he had other provisions waiting. But though Amoda and Susi pressed him to this route, still he would not go, for it would have meant not looking for his precious fountains.
The Ujiji people were kind enough, I will give them that. They knew Bwana Daudi from his journey before, and knew that if he said that more things would come, they would come. In the meantime, they fed us even though we had nothing to trade with, and we helped in the small ways we could.
Then, one morning, after Bwana Daudi had finally decided to strike for Unyanyembe and Misozi had said she would come with us, we could scarcely believe it when Susi came running at top speed to where we were all gathered at the morning meal and gasped out, “An Englishman! I see him!”
He rushed back again before we could make sense of his words. Within a short time, he was back, leading a large party. And what a party it was. Behind Susi came a short muzungu man with so much hair about his face you could barely see his skin. I could not stop looking at his eyes. Unlike Bwana Daudi’s, they had no color in them and put one in mind of a ghost, and though the thought was frightening it was hard not to look away.
Behind him came pagazi after pagazi, and more than twenty askari carrying shining guns and muskets, with not a single bit of rust on them. “This is a wealthy traveler,” said Bwana Daudi.
Oh, the things he had with him. Piles and piles of goods, bales and bales of cloth, endless strings of beads, and I don’t know what, along with two baths of tin, huge kettles, cooking pots, and tents. He walked up to Bwana Daudi and shook his hand and said a greeting. By this time, all of Ujiji had come to witness this meeting. Susi translated his words for us all and said he was a muzungu called Bwana Stanley who had come all this way to find his friend.
Susi told us that he said to Bwana Daudi: “It can only be that you are Bwana Daudi.”
Well, if that is not the most stupid thing I have ever heard, I said to Susi, of course it could only be Bwana Daudi. He was the only muzungu among a great crowd of people who were not wazungu, wasn’t he, so who else could he possibly have been if not himself?
Bwana Daudi greeted him warmly, and truly, he rejoiced like a chicken that had been spared the pot, that he did, though it was a quiet sort of rejoicing, as was usual with him. He kept calling Bwana Stanley an Americano, which I had thought to be a type of cloth, but what he meant was that the flag of Bwana Stanley was from America, just like the Americano cloth is from the same place. Very good cloth it is too, if a little stiff.
Bwana Stanley had strange things with him, like champagne, a sort of water that sparkled and bubbled as he and Bwana Daudi drank it out of great silver goblets. Farjallah Christie, who was Bwana Stanley’s cook, kept some aside for me to try. It bubbled up my nose and made me sneeze. It was then that he told me that it was a hongoro and I had taken an intoxicating drink, the filthy goat. Best not to tell Amoda, I said, and drank it up.
Bwana Stanley liked his things proper, I can tell you that, it was just as though he was in his own house. Once a week, he washed in hot water out of one of the great big tin baths. When he and Bwana Daudi ate, he made Farjallah Christie, and his other manservant, Carus Farrar, lay out a table with cloth and silver on it. They were best at it because, like Jacob Wainwright and the others, they had also been to this Nassick school in India where freed slaves are taught the speech, manner, and ways of the English, but had left some years before.
After Bwana Stanley left us, Majwara took to doing this for Bwana Daudi too, for he admired the Nassick boys greatly and wanted very much to be like them. Bwana Daudi said to him, “I shall tell the small bwana, in my next letter, that you continue to keep everything shipshape. Just like an English butler.”
A butler, Amoda said to me, is a person who brings things to table. As if I did not know such a thing. I could tell him all about men who bring food to table, didn’t we have thousands of those, eunuchs and butlers and all the rest, at the Liwali’s house, and at the qadi’s house too after that, ah, but he was a mean man, the qadi, it was all “the Prophet says this” and “the Prophet says that,” and “peace be upon His name and bounties on His blessings,” but with no kindness to him. He would not allow even a crumb of stale bread for the blind beggars in Forodhani, and it is as well that he died and his son sold me on and I was there for only seven months.
In the Liwali’s house in Zanzibar, people sat down to eat from silver and gold plates, they sat and feasted from dishes they picked out from the long sefra that ran almost the length of the room and was so covered with dishes of food that you could not see the wood it was made of. There were bowls and bowls of lamb cooked in ginger and rice boiled in chicken broth, rice boiled in tomato juice, rice cooked with beef and with fish, and with vegetables and chicken too, and for very special festivities rice boiled in cloves and coriander and cardamom and cinnamon and raisins.
There were syrups made of dates, syrups made from honey and tamarind, and the coffee, oh, it was spiced and scented, you could smell it miles away, the best coffee too, from Arabia and Abyssinia. And the spices, from everywhere they were; cassia and cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon, cardamom and saffron, and peppers of all colors. Though there were only ever two meals, one in the morning and another toward sunset, in between the meals there was coffee and tea and lemonade and sugared water, and cakes and fruit. And there were breads and sweetmeats too, and pastries so sweet that they hurt the teeth, and pomegranate seeds.
My teeth grind something terrible when I remember those pomegranate seeds. From Mesopotamia they were, pink and juicy and crunchy, just the thing to eat on a hot day, in between sips of water cold enough to quench the throat, for it was always kept in the shade of the coolest place in the kitchen.
I was meant to help my mother, Zafrene, take them round to all the women of the Liwali’s harem, but I could never stop myself from slipping some into my mouth as I made my quick way to leave them in the bedrooms. And though my mother, Zafrene, scolded me, she always made sure there was enough in the bowls that I would not eat them all before they got to where they were destined to be.
I was getting powerful hungry just thinking of all this food. “And what is more,” I snapped at Amoda, “in the Liwali’s house we did not have ants running in and out of the food while people ate, I will tell you that for nothing.”
I added, “Nor did we have flies that hovered and buzzed around people’s mouths so that you feared you would swallow them with your food.”
He said, “Watch that I don’t slap the Liwali’s house out of you until you talk from the other side of your face.”
/>
I made off, quick as anything, before he could strike me.
6
* * *
Halimah, the female cook of the Doctor’s establishment, was . . . afraid the Doctor did not properly appreciate her culinary abilities; but now she was amazed at the extraordinary quantity of food eaten, and she was in a state of delightful excitement. . . . Poor, faithful soul! While we listened to the noise of her furious gossip, the Doctor related her faithful services. “You have given me an appetite,” he said. “Halimah is my cook, but she never can tell the difference between tea and coffee.”
Henry Morton Stanley, How I Found Livingstone
I will be the first to say that when Bwana Stanley said he preferred the food of his own cook, Farjallah Christie, I was not offended. And that is the truth, no matter what Ntaoéka and Misozi may say on the matter.
Just as Bwana Daudi had Amoda as his expedition leader, Bwana Stanley had a hulking giant of a man, black as soot, with teeth that protruded beyond his lips, who called himself Bombay, though his real name was Sidi Mubarak. It appeared that Bwana Daudi was not the only wandering muzungu in the world. There were many of them, all looking for the beginning of this Nile River, and Bombay had known them all. He had been everywhere, he said, traveling with one muzungu after the other, with Bwana Burton and Bwana Grant and Bwana Speke, who was his favorite. All he wanted before he died, he said, was to visit the grave of Bwana Speke.
This Bombay said to me one day that Bwana Daudi had told Bwana Stanley all about me and how I could not tell the difference between coffee and tea, and though Bombay did not laugh, Farjallah Christie gave a smirk. Susi gave me a smiling wink, bless his good heart, but Amoda laughed fit to burst. That is what that man of mine is like, willing to join in the sport of any man who mocks me, and start it too if he has to.
I went to Bwana Daudi at once, though it was the hour of his ablutions and he was preparing to go to the river, and I would not let him leave his hut, and indeed, I said to him, I said, you forget that I was a daughter of the cook in the Liwali’s kitchen who was also a suria in his harem, and we had all sorts of tea there, I can tell you that for nothing, tea served with mint and cinnamon, and coffee too, like you have never smelled, from Arabia it was, from Abyssinia too.
He was an Omani of the first rank, wasn’t he, I said to Bwana Daudi, ugly though he was, the Liwali, he was an important man with a house in Shangani Point, bursting full with silks and spices and slaves and all sorts of tea and coffee we had in the stores and much more besides. It is all anyone can do to tell what is what when it is all jumbled together any which way in all these old tins, I said, this is not a proper kitchen this, this jungle and forest, these three-stone fires.
And yes, I said to him, my mother who was the suria of the Sultan’s Liwali as well as his cook told me that there are people in Oman, wild people who live in the mountains, who can cook chickens or even a whole goat like nothing you have ever seen on hot rocks with nothing added but salt, but I am no mountain person from Oman, I am not. I am just Halima and it is more than I can do to produce a feast out of rocks and salt and nothing.
And he laughed and said, “Halima,” he said, “but you have an outrageous tongue,” and continued laughing as he walked down the river to his ablutions.
I shouted after him, you can say what you will about my tongue, and you will not be the first either, nor the last if it comes to that, it is what it is, my tongue is, but I will not have my character taken away from me, that I will not, Bwana or no Bwana, or else I am not the daughter of Zafrene. Not know the difference between tea and coffee indeed.
Still, though he joined Amoda in mocking me, he knew how to cook, Farjallah Christie, and I will not begrudge the skills of someone when they are clear, and what is more, he shared what he knew, which is not what most would do, and men for that matter. He knew what he was about, and could do things with a fish that were as good as any cook from Oman itself, which is as well because that Bwana Stanley of his was obsessed with food, I tell you.
Bwana Daudi made the mistake of telling him that there was plenty of food awaiting him with the stores that he had left in Unyanyembe. After that, Bwana Stanley could do nothing but talk of the good things in Unyanyembe. He talked more about this food and that food than Bwana Daudi talked about this Nile. That is all he did, eat and talk and talk and eat. He ate and he talked, and he talked and he ate and he ate and he talked. I have heard it said, from the time I was a girl, that I could talk enough for anyone, but that Bwana Stanley had nothing on him but a tongue, and when he was not lashing his pagazi with it, he talked on and on with the Doctor, long into the night.
“There is a lot to talk about,” his man Bombay told us. “Your bwana has been out of the world six years and a great many things have happened in that time.”
As we sat over the fire on the nights when the two bwana talked to each other, Bombay told us about some of the things that had happened in those far-off lands. They barely made sense to me. They had dug into the earth in the land of Egypt to make a passage in the sea that led from England, where the Bwana came from, to India, where Bwana’s lazy askari—sepoys, he called them—and the Nassickers come from.
Chuma, who likes to draw lines and squiggles on pieces of paper that he calls maps, wanted to know the exact location of it to see if he could draw it. “This is great news indeed,” he said, beaming at me. “This is the most marvelous of news. It means that we no longer have to round the Cape to get to India.”
“We” indeed. As if I have ever rounded the Cape in my life, or would even want to do any such thing. Round the Cape indeed. I am not likely to be rounding any Cape. If the Nassickers and those sepoy people are anything to go by, they don’t know what it is to work in India, I will tell you that for nothing. India is no place for me. When the Bwana came from India, he had a great number of these sepoy people, they were to march with him, and get paid double the wages too, but did they march? Did they march.
They abandoned him when they got to the nearest settlement, didn’t they, and marched themselves back to the coast. Back to India too, no doubt of that, rounding the Cape and whatnot, and they had better stay there if they know what is good for them, and they can stay there all their lives and round the Cape to their hearts’ delight.
There was more news, Bombay said. There was a new president in America, a man called Grant. I asked if this was the same Bwana Grant with whom Ntaoéka’s man Mabruki had traveled. Great friends they were, this Bwana Grant and Bwana Speke, until Bwana Speke blew his own head off after coming here to look for this Nile beginning. It was not the same Grant, Bombay said, and when I asked what a president was, he said it was someone chosen by the people, who said to him, “Here, we want you to be our sultan.”
In this America where Bwana Stanley came from, and where there was a sultan called Grant, there had been a great war that lasted years and years, and it was all about slaves. I wanted to know more about this war and who had won the most slaves, and what they planned to do with those slaves now that they had them, but on they went talking about this passage of water in Egypt. Suez, Suez, they kept calling it, for that was the name of it, a supremely silly name if you ask me. If you are going to name something, why give it a name that means nothing at all? Then again, none of these muzungu names mean anything at all.
It made my head ache, I tell you, to hear of these new places. Apart from India, where the Nassickers say they are from, though they look like any of us; Abyssinia and Arabia, where the Liwali’s coffee came from; Oman and Muscat, where the other sultan lived; Mecca, where the Mohammedans go to pray; Circassia, where most of the sariri of the Sultan’s harem came from; and all the places where we got food and spices, like Malay and Mesopotamia, Asia and this England where Bwana Daudi is from, I had not heard of any other land.
For those four months that Bwana Stanley was with us, listening to Bombay telling us his stories night after night, I got a strange feeling, I tell you, to think that there wer
e simply thousands upon thousands of people like the Bwana, and women too, far away in England, and in America too, doing what they did, and not knowing at all about the things that we did.
Then there were people in India, all Hindi like those lazy sepoys of the Bwana’s, or stiff and proper like Jacob Wainwright; then there were people in Egypt and people in this land America, where Bwana Stanley came from, all doing what they did, not knowing anything at all about us. It made me feel small and shriveled, I tell you, like a raisin on the Liwali’s drying roof, to hear about all these people in all those lands not knowing we were there.
And I simply could not understand how it was possible for any people to choose their sultan. That was nothing, said Bombay, the people living in the land next to Bwana Daudi’s had even cut off the Sultan’s head, and his wife’s too, and all their children. When I imagined someone cutting off Bhargash bin Sultan’s head, or even the heads of his wives and the women of his harem, it made my head simply stiff with thinking, I tell you, as though it were my head that was for the chop.
“Why is the Sultan the Sultan?” I had asked my mother once.
“Stop your talking now,” she said. “The Sultan just is.”
I even thought to ask the Liwali himself once. Some people said he was my father, my mother being his suria and me born in bondage, but that was not likely, and it is no loss not to know my father, I will tell you that for nothing, especially if the Liwali is a possibility. Imagine me with a father like that. He may have been an Omani of the first rank but he was as ugly as the underside of an underground oven and always he smelled of hot spices, old sweat, and burnt offal.
Out of Darkness, Shining Light Page 4