We walked up grubby stairs and down a long corridor of closed doors, all painted green. There was a smell of dust and damp, mingled with old sweat. We found Mariam in her room. She was a short, plump girl who talked very quickly and was quick to smile. She was obviously delighted to see Salma, holding on to her hand as they greeted each other and exchanged news. Her room was scattered with canvasses and sketches, some hanging on the walls, others pinned to the bookshelf, some thrown carelessly on the floor. It looked as I had imagined a student’s room would, and I was filled with a familiar envy.
When Salma introduced us, she looked me up and down then nodded her approval. We grinned at each other as we shook hands.
‘So you’re the relative from the coast, with plenty of brains but no money,’ she said, glancing at Salma. ‘I’ve heard about you. I hope she’s been showing you the sights.’
I told her about the Hawaiian Suntan and she looked disapproving and cross. You’re such a philistine, Salma. She offered, eyebrows raised archly, to show me the sights. I asked her about the paintings, enquiring if she had done them all. She wound herself up and talked enthusiastically about what she was trying to do as she took me round her small gallery. She talked about lines and despair and loneliness, and I tried to act the way I imagined a sophisticated, cultured character in a novel might. I asked questions about influences and the function of art. She talked at such speed that at times she ran short of breath. I did not understand everything she said, but it sounded very good and I nodded as if I shared her views. She drew me to a large painting to illustrate what she was saying. It consisted of a broken chair, lying abandoned on its side. Beside it lay a hat and a leaking fountain-pen. In the background were weirdly elongated figures, slithering through misty shadows. It was called Betrayal.
‘Is this modern art?’ I asked.
‘I’m not sure that it’s art at all,’ she said. ‘It’s only what I do. It’s up to whoever looks at it to decide whether it is art or not.’
‘Of course it’s art,’ said Salma, giving me a sharp look of rebuke. ‘Somebody offered how much for it, Mariam?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Mariam, laughing. ‘You really are a philistine, Salma. How much would not make it art.’
‘What would, then?’ asked Salma.
Mariam hissed with exaggerated surprise. She glanced at me for sympathy and then shrugged. She took me to another work, which she told me was derived from a famous painting by Picasso, whom she counted the supreme master. Did I not agree? Although for ideas she found the works of Tolkien truly inspiring . . . I confessed that I had heard of neither. They were astonished, exclaiming that they would not have thought it possible. I saw the scales falling off Mariam’s eyes, and I saw her looking at me again, as if she was seeing me for the first time.
They relieved me of my ignorance over lunch at a nearby Indian cafe. I resisted, making difficulties, refusing to be impressed. In the end, Salma was so provoked that she slapped me on the thigh. ‘What do you people on the coast know? You’re just sailors and fishermen,’ she said. I treasured that slap while the two of them ranted on about my ignorance.
They came with me to the administration offices to ask about Moses, but no one there knew the name.
Bwana Ahmed took my side when Salma gleefully retold the story of my ignorance. ‘Why should he know about those crazy people? What have they done that’s so important?’ Salma put up a vigorous defence but Bwana Ahmed insistently repeated his last question. What have they done that’s so important? Tell me that. You can’t, can you? What have they done that’s so important? She gave up in the end, raising her eyes to heaven and praying for patience.
‘Don’t let them make you feel ignorant,’ he said, turning to me. ‘It’s all fashion to them. Picasso! Who’s Picasso? You have a good time and don’t let them worry you. Tomorrow they’ll say somebody else is a genius.’
‘Daddy, you’re making yourself sound ignorant,’ she said with a pitying look. He made a face, dismissing her criticism, and then flashed a grin of complicity at me.
‘I waited for you today,’ he said, sounding wounded but looking pleased with himself. ‘I thought you might want to go to the Juma’a mosque for Friday prayers.’ He took me out that evening. He told me this was his regular Friday outing.
‘I’ve been going there for years,’ he said as we drove to town. ‘We gather at Thabit Adnan’s house and just greet each other and talk. Thabit comes from the coast. I don’t know if you know his family. He’s very rich now, most of it from smuggling and foreign exchange deals. But he’s a good man, a very gentle man.’
It was a splendid town-house, looming all of a sudden out of a narrow road and surrounded by smaller houses that nestled contentedly around it. The gathering was all male, and was dominated by conversation about money and politics. Thabit Adnan fed us like kings, and stoked the fires of contention whenever the conversation became too tame. Bwana Ahmed told him about me.
‘A compatriot of yours . . . he’s visiting us from the coast.’
‘You’re welcome,’ said the gracious man. ‘Is your family well? Your father and your mother? Everybody at home? Alhamdulillah! There’s nothing there now. You should get your uncle to give you a job here in Nairobi. There are still opportunities here.’
I glanced at Bwana Ahmed to see how he was taking this suggestion. He shrugged. ‘There’s a job if he wants one. But these young people don’t want to do dirty work. They don’t even want to do office work. They all want to be professors and geniuses and doctors. Today my daughter tells me that Picasso is a genius. Who’s Picasso? I asked her. What has he done?’
Bwana Ahmed was very cheerful in the car as we drove back later that evening. I began to sense that he was becoming interested in the idea of offering me a job. He did not say anything more but I felt sure he was thinking about it. It was the way he avoided the subject that made me certain. He would have been embarrassed otherwise, but he was acting like somebody with a cheerful secret to divulge, over which he was taking his time.
When we got back to the house we found a little boy standing in the shadows of the drive. Bwana Ahmed got out of the car and went over to speak to him. ‘Ali’s hurt himself,’ he said when he came back. Salma came out of the house, and the two of them exchanged whispered words. They slid into the shadows round the corner of the thorny hedge, and after a moment I heard voices. Salma came back very quickly. ‘Help us,’ she said.
Ali was lying propped up against the veranda wall of the two-roomed shack that was his house. In the feeble light, I saw a short, round-faced woman standing a few feet from him, watching his abandoned body with indifference. The little boy had gone to stand beside the woman. We dragged Ali into the light while the woman watched us. He had cut himself down the arm, and the gash revealed the whitenss of bone near the elbow. He seemed to be unconscious.
‘Who did this?’ I asked, my stomach turning at the sight of so much blood.
‘He did,’ said Bwana Ahmed, his voice unusually low and pained.
‘To himself! I’ve never seen so much blood.’
‘He smokes too much,’ Salma said, glancing quickly at the woman. ‘Then he does this. We must hurry, Daddy. Look at Mali,’ she glanced again at the woman. ‘She goes into a daze like this when he hurts himself. Mali, that’s his wife.’
I helped them put Ali in the car. The woman followed us at a respectful distance. Salma sat with him in the back while Mali stood on the road and watched them drive away. I became aware that I was alone with her. I felt that I should say something comforting, but I was so astonished by the squalor of her existence that I could only hurry back inside, filled with shame and fear. She made me think of my mother and Zakiya.
I waited up for a while, but I could not stay awake. They found me asleep in the chair when they came back. I woke up to find Bwana Ahmed leaning over me, shaking me gently. ‘It’s three o’clock,’ he said. ‘Go to bed.’ Salma was smiling, her arms folded across her chest.
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‘I fell asleep,’ I said. Bwana Ahmed helped me up, laughing at me. ‘How was he?’ I asked.
‘It’s bad round the elbow,’ Salma said. ‘But otherwise he’s not too bad.’
‘He’ll survive, the bloody idiot,’ said Bwana Ahmed.
‘They’ll let him out tomorrow,’ said Salma. ‘Then Mali will look after him. She always does that, goes into a daze. He’s terrible . . . the things he does. He beats her then does this . . . mutilates himself.’
‘He’ll kill himself, or her, one of these days,’ Bwana Ahmed said bitterly. ‘Come on, bed. Everybody bed. I’ll go and tell Mali.’
We played badminton the next day. Bwana Ahmed was the best of us, and the least restrained in his enjoyment. When he came out to suggest the game he was already changed into sports shorts and T-shirt. He raced round the grass court chasing everything with a podgy dignity, never seeming to strain. He taunted us with our poor shots, until in the end Salma rushed round to his side of the court and smacked him with a racket. Left alone with me, Bwana Ahmed lost his appetite for slaughter. We sat on the terrace and sipped cold drinks, turning in our silences to all the things we had not been talking about.
‘You’re going to work on Monday, Salma?’ he asked after a desperate silence. She nodded. ‘I thought Hassan could come with me on Monday . . . to the showroom. Come and see what we do here. In case he wants to stay and take the job I’ve offered him.’
‘What job?’ she asked.
He explained and she smiled encouragement. I could see that they were pleased with each other. Honour was saved. I was not to be sent away empty-handed. They expected me to say no, I was sure of that. It felt dishonourable to accept, as if it would be taking advantage of their kind gesture.
Salma spent the afternoon in the kitchen, preparing the dinner. Bwana Ahmed went to take a nap. I sat in the living-room looking through the pile of books. Sometimes Salma came from the kitchen and sat with me for a while. She offered to get her record-player and records, and told me she loved dancing.
‘What dances can you do?’ she asked.
I told her that I had never danced in my life. She did not believe me at first, and then promised to teach me. She looked wisely at me, and thought of saying something but then changed her mind. I knew she wanted me to say something about being offered the job, to admit that it had absolved them their first insensitivity in inviting me here.
‘Why is your mother never mentioned?’ I asked her when she came again from the kitchen. She glanced down the corridor and shook her head. She did not come in again after that.
On Sunday we went for a drive in the country. They took me to Nairobi Game Park, and Bwana Ahmed pointed out the animals to me as if he owned them. We found Ali at home when we got back, discharged from hospital that afternoon. He was full of smiles and apologies. Bwana Ahmed spent an hour with him in the kitchen before we went out. We had been invited to dinner by one of his friends. It turned out to be an Ethiopian business man and his family. Bwana Ahmed introduced me as a nephew who had come to work for him.
The mother supervised the servants as they laid the food out on the large, shiny table. She did so without saying a word to them but by hovering a few feet from them, her arms folded across her chest. She was silent all the time we were there, and the father egged his two sons and one daughter on, encouraging them to show their paces. The elder brother paid much attention to Salma, promising to visit her at the bookshop the next day. As we were leaving, the mother brought a small packet containing sandalwood and gave it to Salma.
Bwana Ahmed was very pleased with the evening and teased Salma about expecting a proposal from the elder brother. ‘They’re a very rich family. They have all kinds of businesses. And the young man seemed very nice. I’ll get a big dowry out of them. What do you think, Hassan? What shall I tell them when they come to ask for her?’
‘Tell them to ask her,’ I said, hearing myself speak after hours of silence. Salma applauded me sarcastically.
Bwana Ahmed owned not only a used-car business, but also a fridge and freezer store, and a butcher’s shop. We spent the day driving from one to the other for no clearly discernible purpose. He had managers running all three businesses, but he treated them as if they would be lost without his abrupt and barely polite questioning. In between journeys, he made many phone calls cancelling orders, chivvying suppliers and counting huge piles of banknotes.
‘I can’t trust any of those managers,’ he told me, as we raced off with the money to catch the banks before they shut. ‘They cheat me all the time. That’s why I would like you to come and work here. You could keep an eye on things for me, and then when you’ve got enough experience, I’ll make you one of my managers. You can’t trust these Africans. They either steal from you or they let the business go to hell. You go near any of these big shot Africans. First thing in the morning you can smell booze on their breath. You can’t trust them.’
When we got to the bank he disappeared into an inner office for an hour or so. I waited in the car, watching the traffic of cars and bicycles rush noisily past.
‘They won’t give me enough foreign,’ he said when he came back. ‘Let’s get a Coke and then we’ll have to go and buy some dollars.’
We tried several places. At all of them Bwana Ahmed was treated with great respect and taken to inner rooms while I waited outside. In the end he said we would have to go to the tourist traps, the big hotels. He had got most of the money changed, but he was still a few hundred short. I asked him what he needed the foreign exchange for.
‘Where do you think those cars come from? Do you think my suppliers will accept this Monopoly money we use here?’
We drove into a palm-fringed car-park of a large tourist hotel. Sitting on a bench under one of the palm trees was Moses Mwinyi. My uncle walked directly towards him and I followed. Moses recognised me at once and rose to greet me as if we were long-lost friends.
‘How are you, my buddy? What do you think of the great city? Is this your father?’ He took my hand and held on to it, talking and grinning, while Bwana Ahmed waited. When his joy at seeing me had subsided, he turned to Bwana Ahmed with a more serious, business-like manner. They talked prices and amounts, abused each other with an intense persistence and agreed details of collection and delivery.
‘You must come round another day, bro,’ Moses said as we were leaving. ‘I will buy you some chicken this time. And I can take you on that tour I promised. I’m always here, just ask for Moses Mwinyi.’
From the car I saw Moses being joined by some of the other money-changers who had been watching our transaction from a distance. They slapped hands and laughed as they congratulated Moses.
‘How do you know that jackal?’ Bwana Ahmed asked as we drove away. He was greatly amused when I told him. ‘He’s a flunkey, a nobody. He gets a few shillings for taking the risk with somebody else’s money. He probably works for some ambassador or something. He’s a pimp, he gets women for these tourists. I know him.’
We went back the next day to collect the dollars. Moses chatted happily as we followed him to the hotel curio shop. It was there that the money changed hands. There were no furtive looks around, no bundles of money wrapped in brown paper. The notes changed hands openly, within sight of the hotel reception desk and the two armed policemen lounging near the hotel entrance.
‘Don’t forget,’ Moses insisted as he saw us to the car. ‘Any time . . . I’m here. Come round for that tour. You promise me now, my bro. Goodbye daddy, don’t forget me in your will.’
‘Somebody should fuck that man’s mouth. Do you know what he means by that tour? Do you understand . . . ’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said, jumping out of the car and hurrying after Moses. He stopped when he heard me approach and turned to wait for me. His face wore the empty grin of the pitiless hustler.
‘I looked for you at the University,’ I said.
His grin broadened, but his eyes hardened with suspicion. I wondered if I had
done the wrong thing, if he would now mock me for my innocence. Or he might think that I was mocking and chastising him for his lies.
‘I go there sometimes,’ he said and laughed with the ugly cynicism of the big-city pimp.
‘What about killing the tribals? Is this where you are going to do it from?’ I laughed too, to make him understand that I was not just being righteous, that I wanted to know.
‘Listen,’ he said as the grin disappeared from his face. ‘This is what I do, and people like you are my customers. I say what I like, and you believe what you like. I don’t know what you think . . . You want to come and meet me, you’ll find me here. This is where I do business.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I just couldn’t believe it was the same person I’d met.’
‘Fuck off!’ he said. ‘You don’t know anything . . . Go back to big daddy. He’s waiting for you.’
He called out as I was walking back. He called me a blood-sucker, and I understood what he meant. He meant that I was making him guilty for doing what people like us wanted him to do. That is what he meant by describing me as his customer. As I reached the car I wished I had not just left, but had told him I understood what he meant but that he was wrong to think that. He shouted something else, but I did not hear it. When I turned to look as the car drove away, I saw him standing with his hands on his hips, head thrown back, laughing. I knew the hollowness of that laughter even though I could not hear it.
‘What made you go back?’ Bwana Ahmed asked. I could tell that he was not angry. His voice was even sympathetic, careful not to cause offence.
‘I couldn’t believe that that was the same man I had met. I didn’t want just to go away . . . ’
‘You liked him,’ he said after a long silence. ‘It happens sometimes, and then afterwards you can’t understand how you could have been so foolish.’ He glanced at me and smiled. ‘It happens to all of us. Don’t worry about him. Let’s go and finish this business. I want to put the order in today.’
Memory of Departure Page 13