The Last Gift

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  When they were children, and Ba was in the mood and they were not being too boisterous, he loved to tell them stories. (He would think about that Ba, the laughing storyteller who lost himself in his tales.) He just started and they immediately fell in. He sometimes even shouted fallen to hurry them to their places. Fallen was what children said when they played soldiers, he explained. Fall in. What children? Where? But those were questions he did not bother to answer. He just hushed them and motioned for them to come closer. They sat as close to him as they could and stared with wide-open eyes while he revealed his little wonders. He told them the most absurd incredible stories, and they swallowed them whole, Hanna and he. He knew how to draw them in, and they could see in his face that the stories were true. They were not, but he told them like that and they believed him, and perhaps he believed them himself as he told them. There was one story in which he was chased for hours by a troop of laughing elephants. He described them to his children, the great beasts thundering behind him, lumbering leather-cheeked pachyderms laughing their trunks off, their double chins and their huge bellies swinging as they trotted after him, cackling and snorting. Do you know why they are called pachyderm? Because they have such thick skins. He outwitted them in the end by lying flat on the ground. They stood around him not laughing any more, but puzzled and sad, and then wandered away. You have to understand, their Ba told them, that it offends elephant sense of fair play to stamp on something lying flat and still on the ground. Only you have to lie completely still otherwise it’s curtains, the end, squelch.

  Another time their Ba was forced to play hide and seek with a hungry shark in a coral reef in Sulawesi. The sharks in Sulawesi are famous, he told them. They are big bullying brutes with a huge appetite. They just love their work, swaggering in the ocean and barging into whatever gets in their way. If you watch them carefully, keeping your distance, of course, you’ll see them smile as they open their huge jaws to chomp a little friendly parrot fish that’s swimming by. But they are not very clever, they can’t resist knocking into things, so as long as you don’t let those huge teeth get too near, you have a chance. In the end, after being chased by the Sulawesi shark for ages, their Ba tricked him by swimming through a narrow coral alley, and the shark barged in and wedged himself in there while Ba escaped.

  There was another time when he spent a week in a tree while a pack of barking hyenas patrolled beneath him, raising their bums and firing streams of their poisonous shit towards him. Did you know that hyena shit scalds? It’s one of their deadliest weapons. Hyenas fire shit into the eyes of their prey and then pounce. Their Ba had no choice but to climb as high as he could on that tree and hope that the hyenas would empty their bellies and run out of ammunition. He did not even dare doze in case he slipped off the tree, because then those powerful hyena jaws would crack his bones with one snap.

  Their favourite was the one about a talking camel. Their Ba was a sailor before he met their Ma, and he went everywhere, and in India he met a talking camel. Everything fabulous is to be found in India: unexpected and magical creatures, ladhoo and halwa badam, precious stones that hatch out of birds’ eggs, marble palaces and rivers of ice. The talking camel told their Ba stories, and they became such good friends that Ba invited him to come and visit. So maybe one day they might meet him, although India was a long way and it might take the talking camel a long time to walk all the way to England. In the meantime, Ba told the children some of the stories the camel had told him. They were endless, because the camel’s supply was infinite. There were no hyenas or sharks in the camel’s stories, but baby camels and monkeys and swans and other small friendly creatures.

  Sometimes he told them proper stories, ones that he knew from childhood. He only told them on special occasions, when they were younger, on their birthdays or at Christmas. Birthdays were a problem at first, because Ba said celebrating birthdays was conceited, something foreigners did to spoil their children. What was so important about them that their birthdays should be celebrated? He did not celebrate his birthday. Their Ma did not celebrate her birthday. He did not know anyone apart from these European foreigners who celebrated birthdays. Were they more important than their Ma and Ba and everyone else in the world who was not a European? No birthdays. But he had to give in in the end, because their Ma made them a cake every birthday and put candles on it, and cooked them special meals, and one year he came home from work to find the kitchen decorated with balloons and a little party in full swing. So he had no choice but to grin in defeat and watch the solemn happiness of his children. Yallah, we have become civilised, he said. Christmas was just as troublesome at first, a wasteful festival of pagan drunkenness, he called it, but one year he secretly bought a small silver tree and some lights, and he laughed with them when they leaped around him with surprised delight. Then after the frenzy, they sat on the floor in a circle, their Ma, Hanna and Jamal, and he began. Hapo zamani za kale. In the old days of antiquity. He had different voices for all the characters. When the cruel man laughed, Ba was raucous and ugly, twirling his pretend moustache and swaggering his skinny shoulders like a brawler. When the beautiful young mother begged for help, he was piteous, wringing his hands and fluttering his eyelids. When the good man put the world to rights, he was commanding, his chin held up in determination and his eyes flashing. It was the crudest play-acting but they loved it, and when he finished he and Hanna applauded and showered him with kisses. He loved it too, their Ba, and smiled and chuckled and called to Ma to rescue him from the children.

  Jamal smiled as he remembered the performance, and leaned forward to touch his father on the arm. What made these moments so funny was that their Ba was not a jolly or loud sort of person. He did not join in and laugh when they were playing their games as Ma did, and he did not like it when they were noisy. Perhaps that was because he was so much older than her. Ma did not mind playing the child, but it seemed a long way for Ba to come down to that. When it was time for TV, he left the room and went upstairs, although it has to be said that it was children’s TV or old musicals on weekend afternoons that drove him away. He stayed for the news. Often he was tired from work, and he was not at home during the day, so perhaps he was not used to having them around so much, yelling and tugging and bickering in the sweet way of children. But he was quiet anyway, and perhaps became quieter as time passed. As he grew up, Jamal sometimes felt that his father’s silences meant that he had disappointed him in a way he was not sure of. How tiresome offspring must be, so you can’t even sit quietly without them thinking that you disapprove of them.

  Anyway, Ba did not like to talk that much. He never answered the phone, or almost never. If he was alone in the house, the phone could ring and ring without interruption until the caller got the message. There’s nobody here, my good sir. Their Ma devised a code to get him to answer when she needed him to. A couple of rings then hang up, another couple of rings and then hang up again, then the third time let the phone ring until he answered. He always answered that call. When they were all at home and having a bit of fun, he would sit there with them but did not usually join in. It was not that he grumbled or disliked it, or not much, he just sat there in his own place, sometimes smiling, maybe throwing in the odd remark, or occasionally grumbling. Unless he had one of his bees in his bonnet, and then you could not stop him until he had had his say. He just talked over any attempt to interrupt him or change the subject, the way you see politicians do when they are asked a question they do not want to answer. Otherwise he sat with his newspaper, or a crossword or a book, when it was quiet enough for him to read, not saying much. That was it, not saying much. He loved reading books about the sea, histories, novels, marine life, stories of wandering and travel and endurance. That was why they loved it when he threw himself into the stories and acted up. It was so funny when you knew what he was like at other times.

  When they were little, up until about the time when Jamal was ten or eleven, they went on a lot of outings. Their Ba loved that. He found
events in the local paper and said: Children, how about an outing to see whatever this Sunday? When Sunday morning came, they cleaned up and got dressed as if they were going somewhere far away, packing a spare blanket to sit on for their picnic, a towel to mop up any spills, and raincoats in case of rain. They never went far, but the previous evening Ba would have studied the road map as if they were headed for an expedition and he was the leader. They visited ornamental gardens, animal parks, old churches, market shows, even caravan exhibitions. Ma never contradicted his choice. Outings were his thing. She just packed some snacks, tomato sandwiches, which Ba loved but everyone else hated, cheese sandwiches and grilled meatballs and yoghurts and crisps and lemonade, and a thermos of milky sweet tea for Ba. They always had the same picnic, and Jamal knew that for the rest of his life he would always remember those outings whenever he ate a meatball. When all was ready, they got in the car and off they went. Sometimes they had to turn back after a few minutes because Ba asked one of his questions: Did you lock the back door? Is the heating switched off? Have you got my wallet? Once on their way, Ma always drove while Ba looked around him like a tourist, drawing the children’s attention to the most ordinary sights: sheep in a field, a windmill, a line of pylons marching across the countryside. Even if his choices of outings were sometimes strange, Hanna and Jamal made faces at each other and had fun anyway. There were always treats during an outing, sooner or later. Ma sometimes led them in raucous songs and Ba did his best not to mind the noise.

  Hanna used to say to Jamal that they were a strange family, an odd family. Their mother was an abandoned baby who had no idea of her real parents, and their father never spoke about his. Jamal did not really think they were strange or odd, although he agreed with Hanna when she said that. She made them sound odd. He couldn’t remember when he first heard his mother’s story, and whether he heard it first from Ma or from Hanna. Hanna was always telling him things when they were small. He seemed to have known that story all his life though, and as time passed the meaning of it seemed to grow, as did the oddness of his father’s silence. He didn’t know if they were told not to speak about their mother’s story to other people, but he didn’t. He never told anyone about it. Over the years, their Ma spoke about it now and then, and sometimes he learned a new detail he had not known before. It was not told as one of those stories their parents returned to and recounted to each other as part of their shared history, laughing at memorable set pieces that may not have been accompanied by laughter when they happened, tales of their courtship and love, of fortitude and absurdities and near disasters. The stories of their Ma’s childhood came out in bits and pieces, an episode recalled or a feeling recollected in the middle of telling another story or driving home a scolding, or an incident she drifted into as her mind wandered. And Jamal too had his own way of listening, not one he learned or practised, but one which came to him without thought. He listened in silence. He did not ask for any details and he did not interrupt. He wondered now if that is how children listen to stories, or if he was just a docile and solitary little boy, and what his Ma was telling him was curious enough and did not require further questions. His mother sketched a moment and he pictured it, and found a place for the image among the others he already possessed.

  He was not sure if at first he thought the story of his mother’s abandonment was real. Probably not. When he was a child everything felt so unlike the world he knew in some other place in his mind, that he did not know how to disbelieve anything. But at some point he must have realised that it was a real story and he clutched at any new detail that his mother released. By the time he was a teenager, and could be spoken to with greater openness, his mother had settled into her own style of disclosure. Jamal was nervous of disrupting the pattern, of making her wary of speaking about such things to him. Hanna was less obedient, more confident of getting what she wanted from her Ma. She asked for events to be made clear, for names to be repeated, and to be told what happened to people who figured in the stories. How far is Exeter from here? Where were your mum and dad living now? How did Mauritius get its name? Her questions forced their mother into asides and explanations and out of the confiding tone in which the most intimate details emerged. When Jamal was on his own with his mother, he let her speak uninterrupted, relishing the deliberate way she added depth to the picture, pausing to allow a forgotten detail to emerge, surprising herself with something she had forgotten to remember before. And Jamal did his best to make no challenge when he noticed any contradictions. He did not know then that stories do not stand still, that they change with new recollections and rearrange themselves subtly with every addition, and what seem like contradictions may be unavoidable revisions of what might have happened. He did not know this consciously, but he had an instinct for listening, which amounted to the same thing.

  Once, while he was still living at home, Ma was talking about Exeter and a bad winter there when everything froze. One thing led to another and she began to reminisce, and as she talked she grew sad: about how she never visited there since they left in 1974, about friends she had lost touch with, about Ferooz. Ba was also in the room and he looked up from his crossword as he sensed Maryam’s mood and boomed out, It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr Boots, which was one of their jokes about when they first met.

  Ma smiled. ‘I do wish I could find Ferooz, though,’ she said, looking at Ba.

  Jamal knew that her mother had tried to get in touch with her adoptive parents but could not find them. They all knew that, she often talked about how after Hanna was born she had wished for a reconciliation more than anything, how she regretted losing touch with Ferooz. She did not talk in this way in front of Ba, at least Jamal had not heard her do so. Then when she did, he looked at her with a discouraging look.

  ‘Why do you worry yourself about those people?’ he said, snapping at her. He must have heard the snap, because when he spoke again he made his voice sound sane and persuasive. ‘They did not treat you well. At least you tried to find them, which is a great deal more than they will have bothered to do for you, I can assure you of that. You tried to find them and you failed, so now there’s nothing more you can do. Forget them.’

  It was a tense moment, and Jamal saw that his mother held his Ba’s look for a moment before he dropped his eyes to his crossword. He understood that the look she had given Ba was a kind of challenge: I don’t want to forget them. I don’t want to be like you. What could have happened that was so bad that it made her run away, yet was not bad enough to prevent her yearning for reunion? Maybe nothing in particular. Perhaps she had just been impetuous, a girl of seventeen making a romance of her life, and then she waited too long to admit her regrets. It was in such moments that they seemed a strange family, these moments they approached and then retreated from, these stories and events which made brief unexpected appearances and then disappeared amid long looks and drawn-out silences.

  Why was Ba so silent about his time before? Jamal gently patted his father’s thigh as he lay there on the hospital bed. ‘What did you do? Can you hear me? You can’t be that ill, or they’d have punched holes in you and filled you up with tubes and hitched you to a machine,’ he said aloud.

  Abbas opened his eyes suddenly, stared blankly for a moment and then shut them again. It shook Jamal, that sudden bloodshot stare, as if the dead had spoken, and then he felt unkind for the thought. You’re not that ill, look at you, huffing away like some pasha in his hammock, he said softly. But then he noticed that his breathing had changed, had grown slightly agitated. Should he call someone? He could hear staff moving about the other side of the curtain that surrounded the bed. After a moment, Ba heaved a small sigh and his breathing gradually became regular again. It was strange to be sitting beside his sleeping father, who lay there defenceless as he had never known him to be before. Usually he was such a light sleeper that, should you by some unusual chance have caught him dozing, he stirred as soon as you approached. Maybe those taut nerves of his were still working, and
Jamal’s voice had penetrated through the drugs and made him open his eyes.

  Jamal patted his father on the thigh once more. Don’t scare me like that again. Just rest now. Why do you never talk about your family? Because he never had, at least never to do much more than draw a sketchy picture of a miserly father and a put-upon mother. Sometimes, often, he talked about being a sailor and the countries he visited, or the various bad jobs he had had to do over the years before he settled into the one he did for the rest of his life, as an engineer in the electronics factory. But never about his family or even about where he came from. When they were younger Hanna or Jamal asked, in the uncomplicated way of children, about where their grandparents were or what they were like, or other questions of that kind, but most of the time their father brushed their questions aside, sometimes with a smile and sometimes without. You don’t want to know about that, he would say. Now and then he would tell them things, precious little things as they seemed to Jamal, but nothing very precise, nothing very concrete. It was as if he spoke out of a reverie, unguarded for a few moments, holding up a fragment of a whimsy before letting it float away into the blinding light.