Memory of Departure

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  ‘You’re masturbating,’ I said, part admiring, part amused.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said, sighing and blowing, while his hand beat a lather out of the soap. ‘You’re throwing me off my stride, man. You want the soap or not?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t want the soap.’

  I pulled the sheet over my head and closed my mind to the noise. I think I fell asleep at once. I woke up feeling cold, and instantly remembered with pleasure where I was. The sun was pouring in through the thin curtains but it was not yet warm enough to dispel the chill. Moses was still asleep, lying on his back. He looked vulnerable with his mouth half-open and with one arm cramped to his side. I dressed quietly so as not to disturb him. I knew we would be arriving in a few hours and I wanted to be ready. He had seen all this before but to me it was all new, and I did not want to miss anything. The corridor was still deserted, and I toyed with the thought that Moses and I were the only passengers on the train.

  The toilet was occupied. I stood by the door to wait, but the gut-curdling eruptions on the other side of the door drove me farther away. I wondered whether I should go away and come back later, but the pressure on my bladder demanded more immediate attention. And what could the poor man emptying his gut in the closet do that was worse than the crusted squalor of the latrine holes at home?

  The land we were travelling through seemed dark and fertile, on the verge of being lush. The hills were endlessly rolling towards the purple horizon. The train lurched heedlessly on, its indifference almost joyous and carefree, like a preoccupied runner waving to passers-by but intent on the happiness that lay ahead. The green hillsides were hunched contentedly, fecund and swollen with complacency. They were in every way unlike the overbearing oppression of the narrow streets of our town, with its aromas of past cruelties and entangled jealousies. It was no wonder that people had learnt to fight for this land, to murder and maim for it. Who would think to risk so much for a squalid, slippery alleyway?

  Near at hand, the verges of the railway tracks were choked with tall grass that even in the limp chill of the morning light looked venomous and sharp.

  The door of the toilet opened and a tall man staggered out. He seemed to have difficulty steadying himself. After his exertions, it was a wonder that he could walk at all. I waited until he had staggered away, then reluctantly approached the toilet. I took a deep breath, threw the door open and hurled myself in before my resolve weakened.

  A man was lying on the floor, wedged between the pedestal and the partition wall, his knees pulled up and spread apart. I moved back and shut the door. It was nothing to do with me. I went in again. He seemed to be asleep. His breathing was laboured and heavy. His shirt was spattered with blood, but there was no sign of a wound. His arms were jammed by his side, as if they had been forced into the narrow space. His face was swollen and puffed with bruises. Gently, I kicked his foot. He groaned once, and then opened and closed his mouth without making another sound. It was nothing to do with me. I moved back and closed the door behind me.

  I heard voices coming down the corridor. The tall man was coming back, followed by the ticket-collector. The official was shouting, pushing the tall, thin man ahead of him. When they reached the door, the tall man pushed me roughly to one side, and I saw that one side of his face was glossy with blood. He pointed at the door, waiting for the official to go in ahead of him. The ticket-collector had not had time to button up his tunic and chose to do this now. He had difficulty with the top button, but eventually he clipped that round the heavy folds of his neck.

  ‘You!’ he said, turning to me, and practising on me the splendour of his authority. ‘Are you anything to do with this? I’ll have you and the rest of them thrown out at the next station. Where do you think you are?’

  ‘I was just waiting to go in there,’ I protested, hearing and hating the frightened whine in my voice. ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Get out of here, then,’ said the tall man.

  ‘You shut up,’ said the official, wagging a warning finger at him. ‘That booze is still going round in your head, is it? Nobody asked you to give any orders. You’d better mind yourself, or I’ll have you locked up at the next station.’ He waited until the tall man had dropped his eyes in defeat before he turned to me. ‘You! Isn’t it enough to have grown men drinking themselves to sickness without having people hanging about, staring as if they have nothing better to do? Come on, get out of here.’

  The noise had woken some people up, and as the faces made their dishevelled appearance from behind doors, the official turned to them for sympathy. I squeezed past him, and then past the tall man. He turned the injured side of his face away from me.

  ‘What’s going on up there?’ a man asked me as I made my way back.

  ‘I think somebody is hurt,’ I said.

  He looked quickly up the corridor and then back at me, as if to make sure that I was not playing a cruel joke on him. He hurried away to see for himself. I found Moses still asleep. The ease of his slumber irritated me. It seemed callous and insensitive in the circumstances. I was tempted to shake him awake, but the thought of the demands his conversation would make dissuaded me. I would probably only get a robust and knowing summary of my naïvety. I shifted my eyes from him and tried to think of what lay ahead.

  I had enough bread left for breakfast, although I would probably have to share it. I would have to take a taxi to my uncle’s house when we arrived. My father had written to him to tell him the date of my arrival, but I expected that he would be too busy or would forget. I knew very little about him. I had never met him, but in the months before my journey many of the stories I had heard as a child about him had been revived. I knew that he had made a lot of money selling cars, and that he had worked himself into a position of respect. My father said that he had made big money out of smuggling. I had no idea how true that was. I did not know how rich he was, and whether he could afford to lend or give me the money to study. My mother had told me as much as she could, so she said. I sensed that she was holding things back, and that what she told me was more the legend than the reality. She had spoken of his vile temper, his bear-like rages. I told her that I had had a lot of practice at those and would do my best not to provoke them. At other times she described him as generous to a fault. Yes, I could see that in the way that he had done nothing for his sister while she lived in poverty a few hundred miles away. I suspected that I was on a futile quest. Yet, he had invited me to go. Perhaps . . . No, it was silly to assume that a brother who would do nothing for his poverty-stricken sister – and good luck to him if that was how he wanted to live – would willingly part with thousands for her son.

  Still, there was nothing to be lost but a little dignity. The worst that could occur would be to seem foolish. And here was the opportunity to travel and see the world, to breathe in a different air and sense freedom nuzzling the leash. Cross the swamps and sail down the Nile, all the way to Alexandria. Perhaps my arrival would shame the rich uncle into an orgy of generosity, reparation for his previous neglect. He will not fail to be impressed by my sagacity and my integrity, and at the very least will burn with bitter shame for his refusal to help such a paragon in his selfless search for even greater wisdom. For the moment it was enough to be on the move, to be in the running, to have escaped the suffocation of those narrow alleyways.

  I went in search of another toilet. There were people in the corridors now, and the train was more crowded than when we started out. The compartment was empty when I returned, and I ate what was left of my bread before Moses came back. He returned wearing my kikoi, cleaning his teeth with a plastic brush. He bent over the basin for a few moments, spitting and scrubbing and washing his mouth out. He dried himself with a corner of my kikoi. He looked completely refreshed, happy to be alive. He rubbed his palms up and down his cheeks and smiled. I envied him. My smile felt pale and sickly compared to his.

  ‘Somebody’s hurt,’ he said, ripping the kikoi off without any
inhibitions. ‘Some fucking drunk. Somebody beat him up good and stole his money. He was covered in blood. I tell you, there are some mean bastards around. I remember once in Nairobi . . . ’

  He paused and I assumed he was marshalling his story together. He zipped up his trousers, stood undecided, then smiled and shook his head. ‘Too early for that sort of thing,’ he said. ‘We get something to eat first.’

  ‘I’ve eaten,’ I said, feeling ashamed.

  I don’t think he believed me. He must have assumed I was too broke to afford breakfast. ‘On me,’ he said. ‘You know, we must arrange to meet in Nairobi. You must come and see me at the University. Just ask for Moses Mwinyi. We’ll go out some place, do some whoring. And I’ll show you some of my poems. Oh yes, does that surprise you?’ He stood by the door waiting for me.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I really don’t want anything.’

  He shrugged, closed the door behind him and left me to pick up my kikoi off the floor. I examined it for marks of his previous night’s abuse but it seemed clean. There was little else to do but sit by the window and gaze at the hills. The tall brown grass was quivering gently in the wind, little waves of motion on the silent hills, silent now with a primeval patience. In the distance were scattered bushes of whistling thorn. The train had lost its joyous step, moving slowly, gruntingly on the final haul.

  As we approached Nairobi, the Ngong hills were visible in the west. Moses pointed them out to me, and we laughed with pleasure at the sight of them. A plane, coming in to land, passed over our heads, throwing us into a flurry of dashes from one window to another.

  ‘It’s good to be back,’ Moses said, leaping back into the compartment. ‘You really must come and see me.’

  He picked up his bag, explained that he would have to look sharp if he was to avoid being caught by the railway officials, and shook hands. I was sorry to see him go. He reminded me again that I must visit him at the University, smiled pleadingly and waved farewell.

  4

  The station was large. Did it need to be that grand? Unexpectedly, I did not panic. I showed my ticket and was allowed to go through without a single question. It was hot and I felt stale and greasy with sweat. I clung to my travel-stained musk for comfort. I remember the press of people, the shouting, the many varieties of uniform. It was what more romantic travellers would have described as the zest for life that was unmistakably African, the dance that was part of the natural rhythm of life. I found the crowd confusing and frightening. I kept my eyes to the ground, jostling the crowd but unable to resist its momentum. I kept a tight grip on my bag, expecting a hand to grab for it and wrestle it from me.

  The crowd deposited me outside. I was too confused to see very much of the city as the taxi drove me through it. I remember being pleased that the wide roads and the tall, stone buildings were as impressive as I had hoped. They suggested both wealth and order. The pavements were crowded with people. I tried to be calm, tried hard not to give the impression that I was a country boy who had just arrived in town. Our seaside town had been in existence for three centuries before Nairobi had even been thought of, I reminded myself. We were trading with China before the railways that gave birth to this conceited works-depot had even been invented. What was there to fear? The taxi-driver was silent and sullen, interested neither in the crowd nor in his passenger. He handled the car with grim determination, only once muttering angrily when an Indian boy leapt off the pavement and ran across the road in front of us.

  We seemed to drive for a long time before we reached the rich residential district where my uncle lived. I saw the growing magnificence of the houses with relief. Rumours transform a poor man’s good fortune to such an extent that his modest breeze-block bungalow becomes a palace. These things happen. It was a relief to find that thus far the legend round my uncle was true. Salaam aleikum, ami Ahmed. Ahlan wa sahlan, ya nurullah. Good morning, sir. I practised.

  The house we stopped at did not have a hedge, unlike most of the others we had passed. Instead there was a wrought iron chain separating the front garden from the road. Most of the front garden was lawn. There were bushes closer to the house, and a large blooming hibiscus by the door. By the side of the house was a mature flame-tree, with some stunted ornamental palms behind it. The taxi-driver hooted, waved and drove off. A little surprised by this sudden bonhomie, I was too slow in waving back and the car had disappeared behind next door’s hedge before I had raised my arm to respond.

  I hoped that by now I had been observed from the house. In the face of such gentility my errand seemed stupid and vulgar. The door was locked, but I was ready for this. I put my bag down and straightened myself for my first doorbell. I expected it to ring gently, echoing down corridors, so the harsh jangle on the other side of the door surprised me and almost destroyed my composure. I thought I had done it wrong. I waited, worrying whether I should ring it again.

  A girl opened the door. She leant against it, enquiring my purpose with raised eyebrows and an impatient thrust of the chin. ‘Yes?’

  I remember the sense of grievance and hurt I felt at this treatment. I’m not a beggar, I thought as I scowled at her. She moved off the door and leant back a bit, as if to get a better look at me. Any moment now she’s going to call for help. She examined me, running her eyes quickly over my clothes and my bag.

  ‘My name is Hassan Omar,’ I started on a speech I had prepared for the occasion. Her eyes twinkled. I realised I had spoken in English. She folded her bare arms across her chest, shifted her weight on to one leg and sighed.

  ‘Yes?’ she repeated. She was now preparing to enjoy this little event. I could not help smiling. She smiled back, a mere twitching of the lips, ironic and unamused. She pushed her chin forward again aggressively, peremptorily. I smiled again, unprepared for this petulance.

  ‘I’m calling on Bwana Ahmed bin Khalifa,’ I said, speaking more correctly and deliberately.

  ‘He’s not in,’ she said. She unfolded her arms and reached for the door, bracing her legs for the grand slam.

  ‘I’ve come to see him,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Well, he’s not here,’ she said less abruptly.

  ‘He knows I’m coming,’ I said, bending down to pick up my bag. I was tempted by the idea of turning on my heel and striding angrily away. That would make plain my wounded dignity, and would make her sorry.

  ‘Yes?’ she said, waiting for an explanation. I took comfort from her tone of voice, and from the watchful, searching way she looked at me.

  ‘He’s expecting me,’ I said, sensing an ascendancy, and vaguely regretting that I was not to be turned away after all. I made a movement towards the door and she hesitated for a moment before stepping aside to let me in. I wiped my feet carefully and at length on the doormat. I had heard stories of friends walking shit and mud off the streets into such houses. I bent down to take off my plimsolls, and I sensed her agitation behind me. Her hand touched me on my shoulder, merely a flutter, without pressure.

  ‘You don’t have to take your shoes off,’ she said.

  I straightened, feeling foolish. She smiled, reassuringly. She was now feeling sorry for me. So I shrugged, to show that I was not bothered by such things. We all make mistakes. I did not think to protest at the time that where I came from to wear shoes inside a house was impolite. She must have thought I was just being embarrassingly obsequious.

  ‘Welcome,’ she said, motioning me down the hallway and leading off ahead of me. Gentle colours covered the walls and the floor. The deep lilac looked yielding and thick like a rug. The carpet was a very delicate, silky brown. A brass chest stood in a corner of the hallway, under the netted window, and on it stood a tall fluted vase containing bougainvillaea bloom. I could sense my shoulders hunching forward deferentially in the presence of this wealth.

  She led me into a large room, filled with light. One wall was almost all glass, and through it I could see the garden. Didn’t the boys in the neighbourhood throw stones in Nairobi? This was the kind of h
ouse that Moses wanted to kill all those tribals for, I thought. The garden stretched away on a slope, tilting gently towards the fence at the bottom. I could see trees and passion-fruit bushes at the bottom of the garden. She pointed to a chair by the fireplace, a huge chair upholstered in the same maroon as the carpet. I put my bag down beside it and turned to thank her. She had gone. I peered at the fireplace, which was clean and swept out, and looked as if it had never been used. I tried to imagine a little boy going up the narrow hole to sweep the chimney, and imagination failed. I sank into the chair, so far that I gasped with surprise. Country boy comes to town.

  The radio was playing so softly that it required a search to find it tucked away on the other side of the fireplace. There was a sudden scream from the garden, and I rushed to the open glass doors to see what it was. A large grey bird had just taken to the air, its wings beating lazily before it sank behind the slope of the hill. I wondered if they had pet peacocks as well. Somebody laughed loudly, and I craned my neck to try and trace the source. I went back to the chair, but kept an eye on the garden door.

  She returned through an archway on the right. Evidently it was through there that she had disappeared in the first place. She was carrying a small silver tray on which stood a large jug and two glasses. She put the tray on the table nearest to me and then knelt down beside it. I was made uncomfortable by the intimacy. She smiled as she handed me my glass.

  ‘Welcome,’ she said. ‘I know who you are now. I remembered while I was in the kitchen. You’re my cousin, aren’t you? You should have told me that. Daddy told me you would be coming, but I didn’t remember the date. How was the journey?’

  Daddy! She had used the English word. I knew it. And I felt sure that they would eat with knives and forks and have afternoon tea. ‘I had a very good journey, thank you. This is very nice juice. What is it?’

  ‘Passion-fruit,’ she said. Scattered on her face were tiny little spots that had swelled into pimples on her forehead. I did not find them at all unattractive. She smiled again, and then rose with her glass in her hand. ‘You must be very tired,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if there’s a room ready . . . and perhaps you’d like to have a wash and rest. Would you like something to eat?’