‘My dad filled my head with advice before I left. He was like, keep your money in your shoes and your pants. Don’t wear a watch or the thick silver chain he knows I’m partial to. He was actually horrified when he found out I wear boxers, making it impossible to keep money in them. He told me not to carry my wallet or take my phone out. Everyone has phones now. Why would anyone want mine? It’s two models old.’
I laugh.
‘What did you say to that?’
‘“Just listen to me, these are my people,” he said, like, really pissed off. I was like, “You haven’t lived in Kenya for over forty years. Places change.”’
‘People don’t.’
‘Yes, you’re right – and that’s what he said. I was like, your opinions are still from the sixties.’
‘He’s just worrying. He’s already lost one child.’
‘I know, but he doesn’t need to start paying attention now.’
‘I’m sorry about your sister.’
‘Thanks. She was annoying when she was alive. Really annoying. But we grew up together, and I miss her so much. You forget to always appreciate what a constant people are for you.’
‘I don’t know what it is to lose anyone so close to you. I’ve been lucky.’
I remember something from the day before.
‘I read this story in a children’s book in my Airbnb and I can’t get it out of my head,’ I say. ‘About how in the beginning there was no death. And when someone dies and you dispose of the corpse, you must remember to say, man die and come back again, moon die and stay away. But man, being man, forgot to say it and so that’s why they say death came about, because the man in the story forgot to ask for his friend to return, and instead asked for the moon. And that is why up to this day when a man dies he does not return, but when the moon dies, it always comes back again.’
Raks smiles. ‘My dad used to tell me something similar but he’d put his finger to his lips and say, tell no one. We’re Hindu, not Kikuyu.’
‘The Maasai don’t say a person is dead. They say they are asleep. I like that. The idea of a big snooze.’
‘My sister never slept. She’d stay awake all night drinking and watching Star Trek.’
‘How did your mother take it?’
‘My mum’s dead. She died when we were babies, of the same thing that killed my sister.’
I smile. ‘I like the romance of that. Generations apart and yet brought together.’
‘It’s not romantic.’
He thinks I am being flippant. He does not know.
I lead Raks through an archway. We are on sand now. Flecks of dried seaweed circle the ground, caught on the wind. Palm trees hiss.
I take off my shoes and hold them. Raks stares at my feet. The nails were painted red months ago. They’re chipped with usage.
‘You interested in my feet?’ I say, laughing.
He shakes his head.
‘I’m not. Ever since I was a kid, I check people’s feet to see how friendly they are. You can tell a lot about someone from their toes. It’s just a weird thing I do. I don’t want to fuck anyone’s feet.’
The swear word hangs in the air as we reach the top of the dune. The beach is immaculate. It’s empty, the sea is silver, and the untrodden sand looks like an inviting duvet.
‘What do mine tell you?’
‘You’re worn out,’ Raks says.
I laugh. ‘You’re so right.’
I run backwards down the incline of the dune, watching as Raks, removing his shoes, follows, plunging his own feet deep into the sand.
He runs down the incline, hands aloft, his backpack bouncing up and down. If he had troubles, they are blasted in the face by the warm sea breeze that greets his momentum. Hot sand scatters like buckshot across our calves, toes melting into the cool clusters underneath. I tear off my clothes as I run. I’m wearing a bikini underneath my long-sleeved T-shirt and linen trousers. I pull off my bandana and let my hair explode over my shoulders.
I dive into the water, am underneath for ten long seconds and swim out into the cooling refreshing sea. I beckon to him. Raks stops running at the water’s edge. Its shallows caress his toes. The water is warm.
‘Come on in,’ I shout, beckoning with splashes. ‘You won’t regret it.’
Raks rubs at his hair and takes off his T-shirt and shorts. He puts his belongings on top of his bag and runs in, just wearing his white boxers. He keeps turning his head back to his things, hoping they won’t be taken. There’s not a lot he can do if they are.
He dives into the water. It’s warm and cooling at the same time, like swimming in bathwater. He isn’t a strong swimmer – his kick is the problem and he paddles his way to me. We look back at the coast.
‘No one ever comes here,’ I say.
‘Why not? It’s beautiful.’
I point to the ruins of a castle to his left, the fringes of the town to his right.
‘There was a shark-sighting years ago. Now it’s deserted.’
‘The Indian Ocean’s too warm for sharks, right?’
‘That’s why I come here.’
Raks wades closer to me, our fingers and limbs close enough to touch as we tread water in sync. He faces me as I continue to look at the beach.
‘Please,’ I say. ‘That isn’t what this is.’
I pull off the wig to show him my bald head. There are wisps of red hair where it’s tried to grow back but the hair is gone and my scalp is white – there is a thick tan line between my face and hairline. It’s bumpy and you can almost see the blood pumping underneath its alabaster cling film around my crown. I smile at Raks. He shakes his head, his curly hair wildly tossing with each turn. He stops and looks at me, then hesitates, submerging slightly and swallowing water in surprise.
‘How far along are you?’
‘Well, I had months left months ago, so now I wait.’
‘Why aren’t you at home?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Everything’s complicated. It’s simple too,’ Raks says.
‘Okay, well, it’s none of your business.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Out here? I’m living in paradise. With the donkeys and the beautiful people, eating fresh mangoes and avocados, relaxing, whatever I choose. I am a donkey.’
‘But you’re by yourself.’
‘On all roads we are alone,’ I say and lie back so my ears are covered by the bobbing water and I am floating.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘Don’t be. I’m in paradise and I am happy,’ I tell him.
It’s true. I had to come here to be in the moment of what was happening to me. Back home was noise. Here, I cannot be a burden and I can come to terms with it.
‘Just before I got here,’ Raks says, ‘I fucked up my career. I said a thing I shouldn’t have, on television. And my community eviscerated me for it. So while I’m here for my sister, I’m also hiding a bit. And what you’re going through is . . .’
‘Don’t compare yourself to me, Raks,’ I say. ‘That’s patronizing. What is happening to me is mine alone. What did you say?’
‘I sold my people out. The irony is, up until I did, I didn’t really embrace them as my people.’
‘So you have to find a way back to them?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I do. But for the moment, being here, in this water, with the sun on my back and my toes being nibbled by fish, is the only place in the world I want to be. Thank you. This is a blessing.’
‘I know. And you will find your way back.’
‘Yes, I will. It’s my destiny.’
He laughs.
‘What’s funny?’
‘I’m just laughing at my own entitlement. It’s stupid.’
He swims backwards and then forwards towards me.
‘What will you do?’ he asks.
I close my eyes and lay my head back in the water, kicking away from him.
‘In what way?’ I ask.
‘While you’re here. Is there nothing else you can do?’
I shake my head.
‘I am waiting for him,’ I say.
‘Who?’
‘Death. And I’m okay with that.’
When we wade out of the water, our bodies heavy with gravity, we are in silence. He has to get a bus back to Mombasa. I have dinner plans with a local book group. We are to discuss Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow. A quote sticks with me: Your own actions are a better mirror of your life than the actions of all your enemies put together.
Though my life here is dictated by inaction, that in itself is a conscious choice: inaction is still an act.
‘Try not to beat yourself up over whatever you did,’ I say. ‘Thank you for today.’
‘I won’t. And, look, good luck.’
‘Pole-pole,’ I say. He repeats it.
I tell him the Thiong’o quote by way of comfort, and he smiles, writing it in the notes on his phone.
He looks down at his feet, the imprinted contours they’ve made in the sand. Bobbing next to them is a lump of hair. It makes him jump and he moves away from it, thinking it an animal. It’s my wig. It’s lifeless now and though it may have been sun-streaked by excessive blasts of light in this paradise, now it is a wig without a place to call home. I pick it up and wrap it in my towel.
At a loss for anything to do, Raks takes his phone out of his pocket and checks it absently. As he stares at the screen, he sings to himself.
La-la salama. Sleep well soon.
BA
Kenya, 1988
I am not ready for my destiny.
Saraswati Mehta
I Heard that People Bear the Pain of Being Away
The twins look at me quizzically as I sit between them and the radio, playing Rafi, always Rafi, and I place the bowl on the floor, clamping it between my two big toes to steady it before bringing the stone pestle down on to the cumin and dragging it across the surface of the mortar.
I curse Mukesh for bringing them to me. I came here for solitude. I came here to forget. And he has brought me these children, to disrupt my preparations.
Another song comes on, more up-tempo, Lata, doing disco.
Ye hum kyaa jaane, ye wahee jaane, jisane likhaa hain sab kaa naseeb.
I translate the words as I grind the cumin seeds. What do I know, only he knows, the one who has written the destiny of all.
Neither child looks up. She is rereading an old Star Trek comic she has brought with her and he is staring into space, smiling.
I let them ignore me.
I crumble some grit between my fingers and flick it down towards the floor.
It is going to be a long week. Definitely a long week.
You can see a droplet of sea from here. I look at it, hoping for a dance of sunlight. I can hear the frangipani tree swish. Soft music. Listening to the music helps the long days, the long weeks. I do not know why time is stubborn.
I’m not sure of my purpose any more. It is not to be a babysitter. I long for death.
These children have no energy. I say to them, go and play? They ignore me. Go and eat? They sit still, as one.
It reminds me of when Angrezi people talked in uniform. We are one, they would say. We belong to the King, the Queen, goodbye. Stare at my accomplishments on my chest. Tell me why you stand before me. The Beatles are good.
It reminds me of Keighley. How still people were. How inert. Walking to the battery factory, the shirt factory, with heavy shoulders. My God. How I longed to come home.
What did I come home for?
You stayed there.
Scattered in the Worth. A British man to the end. Cremated in your Sunday best, with your china teacup.
I do not remember you in colour any more.
Our photographs stopped before the end of black-and-white.
Why did you not want to come home with me?
I look at our grandchildren and wonder what destiny has written for them. Nisha, when she visited the Bradford Baba, she got him to look into their futures. She never showed me. It is for us, she said. I imagined she was disappointed, otherwise she would have shared their futures with me. Perhaps it felt too much for her, to be shown who her children would become. It would serve as a cruel reminder that she perhaps might not live long enough to bear witness. Destiny is not always what we hope.
The Bradford Baba, a tricky character. Often seen drinking in the places where only Angrezi people went. He did not want to drink with us, in the pubs that were friendly to the coloureds. He was a scam artist. He once asked me to hold a rolled-up piece of card for him while he meditated. It was a blessing, he said. It was actually a mat. For a lager. From a pub where only Angrezi people went.
I had seen him once a year since we arrived in Keighley. But after this, I stopped going.
Because he did not tell me my destiny.
To outlive you, my husband: expected. To outlive our youngest child: expected. To outlive your eldest child who treated his body like a sugar factory: expected.
We knew it was coming.
Genes.
The problem is genes.
We come from bad stock. Bad hearts, bad lungs, bad immune systems, bad tolerance to sugar. We are walking dead.
Nisha, the last thing she said to me, on the phone, I remember it.
Don’t make them believe in destiny, I beg you. They cannot see what is coming. I let her say this to me because she needed to say it, and I said Hahn-ji, because I knew she needed to hear this. All my life, I wanted to take responsibility for my actions. Alas, if these things are pre-written, if we have no control of what is ahead, then we must try to make the most of what is coming. My grandchildren should know what that is. It will help them navigate the time between now and then.
Me? Everything that was destined for me has happened to me and been taken from me. I wait for it all to be over.
All my life, I only wanted to take responsibility for my actions.
I have no role in my grandchildren’s lives. Either of them. Twins. So connected. So different. So the same.
Both act as though they are the only ones in the room.
I am not needed. We do not speak the same language. Mukesh failed. Teach them Gujarati, I begged of him. Speak to them in Gujarati, I pleaded. Yes, Amee, sure, Amee, anything, Amee, he said. I wrote them letters in Gujarati derived from the English script, and I spoke to them in Gujarati and English. I gave them all the tools.
No one understood me at any juncture.
It is important. The language of your forefathers is important.
When the cumin is a coarse powder, I lift the bowl up and tap the contents into a cupped fold of my saree. I stand up and walk towards the bowl where I do the vaghar.
She does not eat spicy food, Mukesh told me.
She will, I think. We have one week till he is back from visiting his mummy.
One week to break you both, I think.
Before you can fix something, it must first be broken.
Rakesh interrupts his staring competition with the wall when I cross the room and he stands up. Neha stays where she is. She is transfixed by a panel of Spock trying to stay alive.
Rakesh walks over to where I stand at my bowl, hand-mixing the grains of spices together by grabbing a fist’s worth and sieving through my fingers so the grains separate.
Bhook lage che? I ask, rubbing my stomach, hoping they will learn through forced repetition.
He shakes his head as he watches what I am doing. Neither of them has eaten anything since they’ve arrived – only a packet of Parle-G biscuits between them for each meal. Mukesh warned me they had difficult dietary requirements.
Who is going to cook them home food? he asked. Me? Who has the time to learn? I already do everything for them.
You hide behind your dead girlfriend too much, I told him.
I knew as soon as I said it that I was driving him away, back to England with closure in his heart. They had booked the wedding. They h
ad booked the taxis. She had bought the saree. I kept it. I kept everything.
Sugar rotli? I ask. Rakesh looks confused. I repeat myself. Two or three times. He smiles at me as though I am talking two different languages. I make him one. I take a cold rotli glistening with ghee out of the steel dubba and I sprinkle sugar on to it, roll it into a tube and hand it to him.
Sugar rotli, I say.
He repeats it.
Shoo-gur rot-lee, he says, understanding.
Sugar rotli, I repeat. He parrots my syllables. I cannot hear the difference. I was born on a dhow. I cannot hear accents. I was born in the sea.
He chomps on it. He is confused at first, and takes a few nibbles before finishing the whole thing in one bite. I laugh at his enthusiasm.
I make him two more.
It is a small victory.
He eats both sugar rotlis within a minute.
His sister does not look up.
I was like her until I discovered a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in a bookshop on Salim Road. I thought the book was banned. In England, maybe. In Mombasa, you could find anything if you had the money.
My neighbour asks, why are they so quiet, why have you not seen them since they were babies? She does not need to know that after losing my daughter, my husband, knowing I would lose my son too, I came home. Shut up, Mrs Chatterjee, you shit. Your son likes women’s feet too much. I see him sniffing chappals. He thinks, because I’m old I don’t understand.
I am awake. D. H. Lawrence, I am awake.
I don’t want to tell her, my son-in-law forgot to teach his children Gujarati. My son-in-law forgot to feed his children Gujarati food. My son-in-law isn’t even my son-in-law. He is the sperm that carried on my bloodline.
My Gujarati bloodline.
God, now Mrs Chatterjee is inside my brain. I think she is evil. She tells my cleaner I do not mind if she washes her sheets. She has opened a letter from my bank. She likes lager. I like lager too but in private. She likes lager like the neighbourhood sharabi.
That night I read Neha and Rakesh a bedtime story. It is about the moon and about death and why people die. When Nisha died I read it to Chumchee, even though he was a grown man. Because it helped him understand why we mourn and why these things happen.
The One Who Wrote Destiny Page 22