Desertion

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  ‘I don’t want anything to do with these high-handed, sneering-mouthed chewers of betel-nut badam and drinkers of sour milk,’ their father said. ‘See their mouths, red and twisted with ugly thoughts, sneering sneering all the time. I had enough of people like them in India, always better than everyone else, always pure, always right. Look, they live alone in the little rooms behind the warehouses, living like paupers. You see the way they walk in the streets feeling themselves up through their pants? They don’t bring their families because they’re afraid the natives will eat them. What do you think they do to themselves? Chinless goatfuckers, that’s what they are. Who cares about them? What do you mean don’t use such words in front of the children? The children should know that these are sneering worthless goatfuckers.’

  No, he had never seemed too bothered about being an Indian, and in later years he had spoken Gujarati, when he had to, with an exaggerated voice, with his teasing voice, his voice of play. So it was a surprise that Hassanali was so excited by the connection with India that Azad offered. Perhaps their father had had different conversations with Hassanali when they were on their own, and he had been anguished about his loss, or perhaps for all these years Hassanali had felt a desire for the India which their father denied them, but it was still a surprise, a silliness. Her brother was inclined that way, anxious about the strangest things, and at times quite naïve. She was sixteen when their father died, and Hassanali was fifteen, and the day after the funeral he had opened the shop and stayed in it, brave and dutiful for them all. From his earliest youth he was counting and weighing, lifting and sweeping, hanging around the shop and listening to the idle fables of the old men who were always sitting on the bench outside. When business was quiet and their father went out and sat with the old men, Hassanali would perch on the cash-box with an air of achievement, as if this was all he wanted. Then, coming inside later, he would sit quietly and listen to their mother’s ailing grumbles or eavesdrop the conversation of women, sitting with an empty gaze as if he were the victim of troubled thoughts. Why wasn’t he out in the street making a racket and chasing about with the other boys? Then when he caught her eye, which to her felt hot with impatience and irritation, he looked away with his tender, guilty smile.

  The next day after the funeral he opened the shop, the very next day, and hardly allowed anyone to help him. Their father would not allow their mother or Rehana to work in the shop. These people won’t show you respect, he used to say. Now Hassanali stubbornly refused their help too. He was all right, he said. He didn’t need to rest. ‘There’s no need for you to sit there all day,’ Rehana argued with him. ‘It’s not your fault that things have turned out this way. It’s as God wished it, alhamdulillah. Shut the shop in the afternoon. There isn’t much business at that time, anyway. Have a rest. Go and meet your friends. You don’t have to be like him, and even he had his wild times.’ But Hassanali only shut the shop when he needed more stock and for Friday prayers, and only smiled guiltily when his sister or mother harangued him. Otherwise he spent his days in the shop, and the evenings in the store, arranging, weighing and packing, eyes blazing with tragic agitation. So with time she had found it harder to suppress her irritation with him, though she knew that he truly deserved better. He was silly, and afraid of things she could never understand. That was how she took his enthusiasm for the man Azad who knew their family in India. It was another silliness, a sense of obligation that was not even required of him. Why care about India, when their father, who was the only Indian among them, had wanted nothing to do with it, and the only Indians they knew treated them with disdain?

  Azad came again the next day. Hassanali reported that he was full of smiles when he came, saying how happy it had made made him to meet the previous day, how moving he had found it, to meet the son of a man they thought had been lost. So Hassanali invited him to lunch after the Friday prayers. He brought him home. On Fridays, Hassanali shut the shop at noon and went to the Juma’a mosque for prayers. After prayers he came straight home to eat and did not open the shop again until four o’clock in the afternoon. It was his only half-day off in the week. Rehana always tried to make something of an occasion of the Friday meal, which they ate together, as they did every meal, even when they had guests. On Fridays, every Friday, Rehana made a chicken pilau, flavoured with cardamom and ginger and littered with raisins. She served this with a plate of fried red mullet or changu and a salad of white radishes, an onion cachumbar, a freshly made chilli sauce, a pickle or two, and a platter of whatever fruit was to be had, to eat before, during or after the meal. On this Friday, she swept the backyard, watered the plant pots and started chopping and cooking in mid-morning. She would serve the men on their own. They never had men to eat, had never had anyone who was not a relative or a friend of their late mother’s, and she was sure Hassanali would be embarrassed if she sat down to eat with a man who was a total stranger.

  When they came, Rehana was wearing her best shawl, covering her head and her neck, standing beside the backyard door to greet the guest. He took her hand briefly, grinning with pleasure, and moved his head from side to side to indicate his delight. She served them and then withdrew inside, from where she listened to Azad’s animated voice with a smile on her face. He came to the shop every day the next week, as Hassanali reported, and the following Friday he came to lunch again. Only this time he insisted that Rehana join them, since he had found out this was their normal practice. His face was lean and beautiful. He was almost tall, and well-built, half a hand’s-breadth taller than her, who was slight of build. His beard was neatly trimmed and his whole appearance was handsome and clean, and Rehana thought he carried himself with the knowledge of his attractiveness. It was not very pronounced vanity, but she saw his slow contented smile when he thought his appearance had pleased. And he pleased her, he could not have helped but notice that. When he talked, she sometimes found herself sitting still, a smile on her face, listening, but really watching the movements of his face.

  He spoke to them in a broken Kiswahili which they tried not to laugh at, at first, but which Azad turned into good-natured comedy with his gestures and the over-zealous repetition of their corrections and promptings. Sometimes Rehana recognised his unmistakably thin voice among the ones that came over the yard from the shop. He seemed to be there very often, and Hassanali spoke about him every day, sometimes with a sly look at her. Friday after Friday he came to eat with them, not every Friday but often, over several weeks, and then afterwards he sat in the shady part of the yard with Hassanali until it was time to open the shop again. Hassanali had never had a friend like this, with whom he could sit for hours screeching with laughter. Rehana could not stop herself from thinking about him, and when she heard his voice and could not see him, she felt a pain in her chest that she could only think of as longing.

  Then one Friday, three months or so after he arrived among them, after their meal, and after Rehana had cleared away the dishes and left the men to their talk, and after they had finished talking and Azad had gone on his way, Hassanali stood outside her room where she was lying down and called her to come out. Azad had asked for her, he said, unable to stop himself grinning, unable to disguise his pleasure and anticipating hers. She felt the blood rising to her face, and her first thought was the madness of it all. How could such a wished-for thing happen to her? Look at you, Hassanali said laughing, reaching for her. Then, because it was what she wished for so much, she felt herself drawing back, squirming out of Hassanali’s embrace, saying to him, Wait, wait, let’s think about this.

  She saw Hassanali’s impatience, mild, good-natured, still smiling, but his smile lined with faint dismay. She had turned down other offers before. ‘Yes, of course, you must pause and think about this,’ he said. ‘But . . . I thought he . . . Doesn’t he please you?’

  She nodded, hu bly, made shy by her admission. ‘He does,’ she said, and felt her face becoming warm again. ‘It makes me happy that he has asked . . .’

  Hassana
li grinned with pleasure and reached for her again. Wait, wait,’ she said, leaning back from him and retreating into the doorway of her room. ‘It’s not conceit . . . not vanity which makes me hesitate. It makes me happy that he has asked. He is a good man, joyful and courteous and . . . pleasing. But we don’t know very much about him or his people. We don’t know . . .’

  ‘I know he feels like a brother to me already,’ Hassanali said stubbornly, his smile fading. ‘I know that he has been a cheerful and kind friend from the first day he visited me. I believe I have seen enough of the world to know that he is a truthful and . . sincere man. I feel ashamed that you should doubt him when he has shown us such friendship. Has he been discourteous to you in any way? No, he has been proper and honourable in every way, even though anyone could see how much he admired you.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rehana said, and could not suppress a smile.

  ‘Well then, and even a half-blind man could not miss that you liked the look of him,’ Hassanali said, triumphant now, his case made by the sheer force of his own feelings for Azad, and by the fugitive smile on Rehana’s face.

  ‘Yes, but we don’t know anything about his . . . obligations,’ Rehana said.

  ‘What obligations? Why don’t you accept him and then we can ask him any questions you like? I don’t want to offend him. I think he’s a good man, I don’t think you’ll find another one better.’

  ‘His family,’ Rehana said, becoming impatient herself. ‘Does he have a family . . . of his own? Is he married already? Is he required to return or will he live here? This is not a small thing he is asking.’

  ‘Married. I didn’t think of that,’ Hassanali said, at last understanding. The three marriage proposals that Rehana declined had all come from men who were already married and wanted her for a second, and in ne case, a third wife. But they were all older men, with children from their existing wives, who wanted to renew and replenish the pleasure of matrimony with a new young wife. Azad could not be much older than they were, and seemed so carefree and cheerful that it was hard to imagine him married.

  ‘If you don’t want to ask about these things, we can send word to Aunt Mariam. We can get someone else to ask these things which you fear will complicate your friendship.’

  ‘No,’ Hassanali said quickly. ‘She will torment him with questions and drive him away. And it will take days to get word to her, and days for her to get here. It’s not right to keep him waiting that long. No, I’ll ask him. I’ll talk to him. But can I say that you’re happy to be asked, as happy as I am?’

  ‘Say I’m happy to be asked, yes,’ she said cautiously, already uncertain about how seriously Hassanali would press for answers.

  He left her to open the shop. She went into her room and shut the door, then she lay down on the bed and involuntarily gasped. She felt a kind of terror, as if she was being asked to agree to something that would have unknowable consequences, but she also smiled at the thought of Azad, and shivered slightly as she imagined touching him, on his arm or his shoulder, and then shut her eyes to feel his breath on her body. She kept her eyes shut for a long time, her body melting in the detail of his embraces.

  She understood why Hassanali was so anxious, so eager for her to accept. She was twenty-two, old for a woman to be unmarried. She was sure he worried for her and for his honour, in case her unattachment made her vulnerable to impropriety. In his eyes, and in everyone else’s opinion, he would have failed to protect her if she succumbed to something unseemly and then both of them would be dishonoured. There were men who made a kind of profession out of seduction, and their victims were generally widows or older single women whose families were lax in their surveillance. Well, things hadn’t got that desperate for her yet, but she thought Hassanali worried. He had said something like that to her when she turned down the second offer of marriage. With the first he had laughed at her refusal, the very idea of Abdalla Magoti marrying his sister was ridiculous, above all because he could not imagine her married, she thought. Then there was something ridiculous about Abdalla Magoti himself. His name described his knees, which were large and bandy, and which made his walk unmistakable and comical. He already had a wife and three children, and they all lived at the back of a gloomy one-room café down one of the lanes. That was soon after their mother died, and perhaps Abdalla Magoti thought she would be feeling vulnerable and would accept the protection he offered. Hassanali himself giggled when he delivered that offer, and smiled understandingly when she declined.

  The second time he wasn’t so amused, which made Rehana want to laugh at the way he was giving himself such airs. It was while Aunt Mariam was staying with them on one of her long visits. Whenever she came, she made her rounds of visits to all the numerous people she knew in the town, was invited to weddings, attended the wakes for the dead and received more visits in a few days than Rehana did all year. Of course, Rehana had no choice but to accompany her. It would have seemed peculiar and unsociable of her not to, and Aunt Mariam would not have allowed it. One day they visited the house of one of the Omani notables in town, who owned land here as well as in Takaungu. Aunt Mariam had a weakness for these grand connections, and when she was in their houses she behaved as if this was her milieu too, and not the modest dark house (but with a spacious walled yard where she grew rose bushes and jasmine) where she had lived throughout her adult life, through marriage and widowhood, and all her busy aunting. Rehana was always surprised at how many people lived in those huge houses, wives, relatives, servants. Some of them were slaves, or were children of slaves and now considered themselves part of the family.

  They were sitting with one of the wives of the household and her servants and re tives in an upstairs room with a veranda. A sweet breeze blew from the bay, so that even though it was mid-afternoon and trembling with heat outside, in the room it was as cool as the shade of a tree at sunset. A man’s voice called from outside the room, announcing himself. One of the women called out that there were visitors, but she was not quick enough to stop the man stepping into the room. The women hurriedly pulled their shawls over their heads, all except Rehana who was not quick enough, and in any case was not as punctilious with a shawl as these Ibadhi women who covered themselves even in front of their own brothers, or so she had heard. The man who walked into the room was stocky and dark, in his late thirties. He stood immobile with embarrassment in the doorway. His eyes rested on her for a moment, and then he retreated with apologies. The wife returned their visit a few days later, and then invited them to call on her again, and visited them another time before the matter was brought out into the open. The man, whose name was Daud Suleiman, had asked for Rehana after seeing her that one time. The offer was relayed through Aunt Mariam, who asked all the questions and delivered a full story to Rehana and Hassanali. He was related to the wife of the notable they had visited, and Aunt Mariam conveyed the details of the relationship with such complexity that Rehana stopped listening. She thought she already knew her answer. Now that she knew what was in the offing, she remembered that something about the worldly and appraising look he had given her had repelled her. Was repelled too strong? Had made her flinch and turn away, and although at the time she did not examine her reaction, she realised now that she understood his look and was intimidated by it. He managed one of the landowner’s farms near Mambrui, and yes, he was married and had four young children, but the house on the farm was roomy and there would be plenty of space for everybody. There would be the pleasures of living in the country, fresh fruit and vegetables and eggs, and the patronage of their landowner meant that they would never be short of life’s necessities.

  Aunt Mariam nodded quietly when Rehana said no, and asked her to explain so that she could convey an answer to the notable’s wife. ‘Do I have to say something? Can’t I simply say no?’ She did not think she could say that from the look of him she feared he would constrain and crush her. He looked an assured and respectable man, who understood his duties in their tacit subtleties and was careful to
fulfil them, and would require her to fulfil them too. She didn’t know that, couldn’t know that from a brief glance, but she felt it, and felt that he would want to dictate and direct, the way her father used to and Hassanali thought he had to. She didn’t want to be anybody’s second wife. She had never heard her father say anything about taking a second wife. What did anybody want a second wife for? ‘I don’t want to live in the country,’ she said in the end, because she could not think of anything better.

  ‘Who do you think you are? A princess?’ Hassanali snarled, quite unlike himself, unable to control his rage at what he took to be her frivolity. Then he stood up and made for the yard door, storming out. After a few steps he stopped and turned around. What is so good about living here like this? You’ll say no to this man, who saw you and liked you, and who can provide for you, and then no one will ever ask for you again. They’ll say you’re too proud.’

  ‘You, child, keep your voice down,’ Aunt Mariam said sharply.

  ‘What are you shouting about anyway? It’s my life,’ Rehana said.

  ‘Yes, it’s your life, and it will always be your life, but if you go on like this, it will end badly,’ Hassanali said, lowering his voice to an angry whisper. ‘No one will come to ask for you because they will say you’re conceited, and you have nothing to be conceited about. Then one of those evil men will get the better of you and you’ll bring dishonour to all of us.’ That was when he said it, and then stormed off while Rehana glared and Aunt Mariam in an undertone asked God to forgive him the malicious thought.