Desertion

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  ‘I’m coming, I’m bringing your coffee,’ she called back, her voice muffled by the sacks and chests that lined the passageway into the house.

  ‘Come now,’ he called urgently, but he was already beginning to be reassured by the sound of her voice. She did not sound terrified, but he still wanted her to hurry, so he could tell her to take care, so he could warn her about the world. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked when she came, bringing a pot of coffee and a millet bun wrapped in cloth. ‘What’s going on in there?’

  ‘Well, it turns out that he is a demon who has taken the form of a man,’ Malika said, standing in the doorway with her head uncovered and looking at Hassanali with terrified eyes. ‘As soon as Rehana gave him one sip of honey and water, he turned into a rukh and is now perched on the roof, waiting for one of us to drop dead so he can steal our souls.’

  ‘Stop playing the fool,’ Hassanali said, although he quite liked for Malika to tease him. ‘It can’t be a rukh. I’ve told you before, a rukh has a name but no body, so it can’t be perched on a roof.’ What is more, the rukh is the indestructible spirit that leaves the body after death, not the stealer of souls. Their mzungu was a body without a name, and was conclusively not the rukh. She did not care, and wrongly repeated the things he told her just to tease him. She teased him a lot when they were on their own. One of their secret games was for Malika to scold him while he offered apologies and caresses. His life was transformed since her arrival.

  ‘What do you think is happening then?’ she asked. ‘Mzungu is lying there, groaning and taking a sip when Rehana gives it to him, dribbling and burping like a baby. Legbreaker came a few minutes ago and is now looking him over. Don’t make yourself anxious for nothing.’

  ‘I’m not making myself anxious for nothing,’ he said, frowning, tempted to remind her that he was nearly twice her age and she should show more respect. He did not want more respect, he just did not want her to hurry away yet. ‘I wanted to know that you were all right. You were a long time with the coffee, and we don’t know who that man is. I didn’t know what was going on in there.’

  ‘The man is lying there hardly living, my master.’

  Hassanali nodded. ‘What does Legbreaker say?’ he asked.

  ‘He hasn’t said anything yet, and when he does he probably won’t say it to us,’ Malika said, and then added in a whisper: He’s a frightening old man.’

  ‘Take care now,’ Hassanali said and waved her away. He could see a customer approaching. ‘And tell Legbreaker to see me before he does anything.’

  Legbreaker was the bonesetter, and he acquired the name and a frightening reputation because he frequently set the bone wrong after a fracture. Often he had to break the bone again afterwards and try to set it right. Sometimes more than one resetting was necessary, and to fall into the grip of Legbreaker’s treatment could turn into a minor tragedy. Parents trembled when their child fell over, for fear that the services of Legbreaker would be required. There was no one else who had any idea how to set bones. He hoped the poor mzungu had no broken bones.

  Hassanali liked the idea of the mzungu in his house. He had seen one before, two or or three years ago, when he had gone down to the water in town. When he was a child, he had gone down to the shore like everyone else, although there were no mzungus then. Now there was no one to look after the shop, and he bought his stock through long-standing arrangements with suppliers, so there was no need for him to chase around after anybody. Sometimes, at the death of a neighbour or someone notable, he shut the shop and joined the procession to the cemetery. And during Ramadhan, it was pointless keeping the shop open during the hours of the day when no one went out. Also, since Malika’s arrival, he shut the shop for lunch and took a short rest in the afternoon. Aside from these occasions, or one or two others like that, the shop was open every day from after the dawn prayers until one hour after sunset, and Hassanali rarely left his post on the cash-box for any reason. He had even trained his body to be obedient to this inflexible regime.

  The time he had gone down to the shore was the day of Idd, when it was customary to shut all businesses for at least part of the day, and he had gone to the bay along with everyone else to watch the annual boat race. There he had seen the mzungu, standing on the covered podium among the Arab nobility. He was heavy-looking and tall, in a green jacket and pale trousers, and one of the padded hats which he had heard about but never seen. He knew this was the man the sultan had sent over from Zanzibar to run the plantations, and who had unexpectedly freed the slaves and ruined the wealth of the landowners. That mzungu was so far-away when Hassanali saw him, merely a green jacket and a hat, more vivid as a figure in a story than someone real. This one was his guest, lying groaning there on the eating mat in his yard.

  Guests were always exciting, especially for the first few days. Everything was happy confusion and everyone had a good time for a while. He loved it. But this guest was a different thing altogether. A European, mzungu. What were they going to do with a European? Where were they going to put him? He should have let Hamza have him. Hamza had empty rooms in his house, and the wealth and furnishings to make the mzungu comfortable. They only had two rooms and Hassanali would have to share his room with him. From what he had heard about them, the European was bound to ask to have the room to himself, or even the whole house. What were they going to feed him? How were they to speak to him? He was probably an Englishman, or a German or perhaps an Italian. Hassanali didn’t know a word of these languages. Why should he? He was only a shopseller in a crumbling town on the edge of civilised life. Perhaps, he thought as he arranged the baskets and sacks in the shop, he should send word to Hamza to ask him to come and collect the Englishman or whoever he was. He was seized by this idea, his timid heart racing. He should send word straight away. Please come and take the Englishman, I have no room in my humble house for such a guest. But then what a joke people would make of it, how they would laugh at him. They would say that he was mean-hearted and a miser, that he had grudged offering hospitality to a wounded stranger when in truth he had treasure hidden away in his house, the usual rubbish. What tiny amount he had secreted away certainly did not amount to wealth.

  Then, it was he who had seen the man appear out of the dawn darkness and had taken him to be a spectre stranded by the approaching light. It was he that the man’s grey gloaming eyes had sought out and pursued. It was God’s chance that made things happen as they did, and God did nothing by chance. This was a burden that had been chosen for him, perhaps to try him or punish him or test him, according to a wisdom which was not yet apparent to him. How could he even consider refusing the wounded man hospitality and succour? Having satisfied himself that it would be offensive to God for him to give up the European, Hassanali felt his body subsiding to the calm thrill he had felt before at the thought of the Englishman in his house. It was as if he had acquired an exotic pet that he had almost given away, but had talked sense to himself in good time.

  The morning stream of customers was gently flowing when Legbreaker came out. He came through the passage from inside the house which was also the shop’s store. Hassanali gave him a swift and suspicious glance, in case he had picked up something on his way through. It was an involuntary look, a habitual mistrust. They were always pilfering from him, everyone. Who told him he could come through that way?

  ‘Yahya, how are you?’ Hassanali said. No one called him Legbreaker to his face, unless he could run very fast or did not fear an accidental fracture. ‘How is our guest?’

  Legbreaker was a big elderly man, with a large belly bulging out of his kanzu. Stories of his youthful strength and his lust for sex were part of his legend, and even in old age he found it hard to resist strutting about like a champion warrior. The tight-fitting thick white cotton cap he wore hardened his appearance and made his head look like a cannon-ball. He glowered at everyone, and strode the streets with shoulders pushed back and belly thrust forward, swinging his arms like a soldier, hilariously unaware of
how comic a figure he cut. People called him captain to please him. Yet those who laughed at him did so behind his back or at a distance from him, for he had a reputation as a crazy and dangerous man. He lived on his own in a rented downstairs room with a window which opened to the street, and many nights passers-by and neighbours heard him groaning with raucous anguish in his sleep, yet no one dared to wake him for fear of his rages.

  He had been among the first Baluchi soldiers the sultan in Zanzibar had sent to guard the new plantations. The Al Busaid sultans had a fondness for Baluchi mercenaries, for some reason, and had used them from the beginning of their conquest of the coast. So when Sultan Majid decided to revive the land behind this far-off town in his dominion, he sent a Baluchi contingent with the thousands of slaves who were to work the plantations. It was there on the plantations that Legbreaker acquired a reputation as a bonesetter. Hassanali shuddered at the thought of the poor slaves who would have been his earliest patients.

  Hassanali’s customers, who by now knew the story of the European’s arrival, waited for Legbreaker’s diagnosis too. Hassanali could see the three magi Hamza, Ali Kipara and Jumaane, rise from the early morning coffee at the café across the clearing at the sight of Legbreaker in his shop. They too wanted to know if Legbreaker’s frightening services would be required.

  ‘Captain, is it true that the bones of Europeans heal themselves?’ one of the customers asked Legbreaker, a skinny young man who carted produce around town for whoever paid him. He stopped every morning at the shop for a plug of chewing tobacco which Hassanali gave to him free, to win his goodwill for the odd errand he needed him for and because he felt sorry for him. He had no family and no home that Hassanali knew of. Everything about him was frantic and edgy, brittle grins, manic laughter, filthy loud-mouthed banter. Too much hashish, everyone said. None the less, smiles were poised on everyone’s faces, knowing from the tone of the question that some bit of cheek was bound to follow, and that Legbreaker was bound to lose his temper and make a racket or worse.

  ‘Don’t talk such nonsense,’ Legbreaker said mildly, therefore signalling that this was too important a moment for melodramatic rages. ‘If anything the European has weak bones because of the cold and the wet in his country, and because he eats the raw fat of hogs. Everyone knows this.’

  ‘Captain, so it should be easy to break and break again when you give him his treatment,’ the young man said, jumping and grunting, miming Legbreaker’s surgical procedures.

  Legbreaker looked interested, and for a moment glared hard at the skinny young man. Then he turned slowly, reluctantly, to Hassanali who had just spoken to him.

  ‘Any breaks?’ Hassanali asked.

  ‘No, no breaks,’ Legbreaker said sadly, shaking his head at the gloomy news. ‘Some bad bruising. I put a poultice on his shoulder and will come later to check. Perhaps you should send him to town to the Arabs. They’ll look after him until a ship comes in. Or they’ll take him to a doctor in Mombasa or somewhere.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hamza said, by now arrived in time to hear these last remarks. ‘Send him to the big people in town. You don’t want anything to happen to him while he’s in your house.’

  ‘That’s the last thing you want,’ Ali Kipara said, wagging his finger for emphasis.

  ‘Let him rest first,’ Hassanali said, not eager to part with his mzungu yet.

  He measured out a quart of rice into a piece of cloth, tied it into a neat bundle and passed it to Legbreaker, who took his payment without a word and strode out of the shop. By the time the skinny young ma realised what was happening, Legbreaker had him by the collar and was mercilessly twisting his ear. ‘You have no manners, you filthy diseased whore, you son of a howling savage and grandson of a four-breasted beast,’ he snarled, giving the young man’s ear a further twist. ‘You’re a monkey, a baboon with no brains, a drivelling dog. What are you?’ Legbreaker asked, giving the ear one final impossible twist. Then he marched off to howls of laughter and elderly cackles fit to choke, swinging his arms like a soldier on parade while the skinny young man clutched his wounded ear and shouted filthy abuse as he wept with rage and humiliation.

  Hassanali dealt with his customers, and after the rush and the talk settled down, people dispersed to their work or to their homes for breakfast. He knew that the elderly sages would be back later in the morning to sit on the bench he put outside the shop for them, once the sun disappeared behind nearby houses. Then when it reappeared later in the day, they would stroll away to another bit of shade perhaps, or move back to the café, then to the mosque and then back to his shop late in the afternoon. In the cool of the afternoon and evening, the gossip would be milder, the stories longer and older. That was how things always were, from his father’s days. The elderly themselves slowly changed, shuffling on and off as mutability decreed, but the bench was always there, and was never short of occupants.

  In the quiet after the morning rush, he had time to think about their guest. When the man wakes up, and after he has had a rest, he would ask him if he wants to be taken to the Arabs or to the government mzungu. For now, let him rest. They had never had a guest as strange and unexpected as this one. Since his marriage two years ago, Malika’s mother came every few months and always stayed too long. Their Aunt Mariam, their mother’s elder sister, came every few months too, and sometimes overlapped with Malika’s mother. They were old friends, and it was through this old friendship that Aunt Mariam negotiated Hassanali’s marriage to Malika. All he had to do was finally to say yes to the marriage arrangement and in due course his lovely Malika appeared. It could have been worse, but it wasn’t. It was a miracle.

  When Aunt Mariam came, it was always with a cousin or a nephew or some such. Hassanali was convinced they pillaged his stock whenever they could. The nephews were the sons of Uncle Hamadi, who lived in Mombasa. Hassanali had only met this uncle a few times, once when he came to pay his respects some weeks after their father’s funeral. They were all convinced at the time that Uncle Hamadi, who said that he had come to make sure that his sister was not left wanting in widowhood, was there to see if there were any easy pickings to be had. Another time was soon after their mother died. This time he said he had come to see that his nephew and niece were not in need. Hassanali could not mistake the way he glanced at Rehana who was about nineteen, and he feared that he was going to ask for her as his whatever-number wife. Aunt Mariam was staying then too, and perhaps her presence shamed him into silence. She was the eldest of the three and had a keen eye for the ridiculous, and would have laughed Uncle Hamadi out of the house if he had suggested marriage to Rehana. He could not really remember if there were other visits when he was younger, but they had not seen Uncle Hamadi since the time when he gave Rehana those frightening looks, all of a dozen years before.

  Aunt Mariam was always welcome. Within minutes of arriving she was out of her finery and in her house clothes, distributing news and gossip, laughing laughing laughing, delivering her country gifts of vegetables and fruit. Not long after that, she would have found something to do, picking stones out of the rice, sweeping the yard, washing the bedlinen or something else as necessary. She had a gift like that. Her help was not intrusive or reproving, but companiable and unforced. When she was staying with them, all the tasks that had been put off for months somehow got done. When she was around, the talk and the laughter seemed unending, and visitors called from nearby who did not usually visit. She had no children of her own, and had been living alone for many years. She loved for her nephews and nieces to go and stay with her for a few weeks every year. Hassanali had a memory of her husband from those visits, a short, plump, friendly man who died suddenly from internal bleeding that no one knew the cause of. Aunt Mariam said Hassanali reminded her of him, and even while her husband was still alive, she threatened to give him up one day soon and marry Hassanali instead. When their own father was still alive, Aunt Mariam used to flirt with him and propose to him every few days, offering herself as his second wife. Their mo
ther said she was shameless, but Aunt Mariam said men were allowed four wives and she wanted four handsome husbands. As soon as she tired of one she would change him for another, though in truth she remained a widow all her life after her husband died. Now she brought Uncle Hamadi’s boys when they came to stay with her, or some more distant cousins who were children of a niece of hers whom Hassanali had never met. It seemed the niece divorced easily and had many children, which she distributed among her relatives for them to look after. Aunt Mariam said she wanted everybody in the family to know each other and none of them could be bothered except her. If Malika’s mother always stayed too long, Aunt Mariam knew with uncanny courtesy exactly when to leave.

  There wasn’t a spare room in the house, so a guest meant anxious arrangements about sleeping and eating, and especially about the use of the washroom. The meals were more elaborate, the conversation livelier and full of laughter, at least at first, and Hassanali found the hectic plans and their revision exciting. When Malika’s mother came, she shared Rehana’s room and forced Rehana out into the yard for most of the day with her illnesses and her complaints. Some days she was sensitive to light, other days it was the heat. Some mornings she could not bear the early morning chill, and some nights she could not sleep because of the buzzing in her ears. When she was not suffering from any of these complicated and sometimes subtle complaints, she made good conversation and had surprisingly detailed recollections and stories. Sometimes Hassanali sat nearby in the yard, eavesdropping on the conversation of the women as they sat or stretched out on a mat in the dark, curbing the urge to interrupt and ask for more details. They knew he was there, and hushed each other when they came to parts that were too sensitive for his male ears. He didn’t mind because he could hear their smiles in the dark.