“Wow,” says Jaafar. “This is something.”
“Is it?” Mumtaz is staring at the sun, low on the western horizon. “It means nothing to me.”
PART THREE
The Last Years
1971–1975
17
MUMTAZ IS WALKING ON A DIRT ROAD. SHE IS alone. She has dropped Karim at school and has decided to get some fresh air.
A week earlier, Mumtaz had an IUD inserted. After her miscarriage six months earlier, she began taking birth control pills. For months this made her sick, nauseated, almost as though she were pregnant again. When she asked the doctor to perform a tubal ligation, he laughed. “You are only twenty-six years old. You have no idea yet what life will bring.” She did not know there were other options, more easily reversible options. With the IUD, Mumtaz feels in control. She feels no longer afraid of her body, of what it can do, what it can cause her to do.
After seeing her son off at school, she didn’t want to rush home. She wanted to be away from home, where she has hidden for months, and move freely. So she has begun to walk on a dirt road, the BMW parked in front of Karim’s school.
As Mumtaz walks, aimlessly, she finds herself at the Mbarara Country Club. Karim’s English nursery school is located next to the club’s golf course. A year ago, when his teacher at the Aga Khan school told Mumtaz that her son was a slow learner, she did not say a word. The next day, she removed him from class, forfeiting the term’s fees, and enrolled him at the English school. Within days, his new teacher told Mumtaz that her son was clever. “We have found the right place for him,” Mumtaz said. The portly Englishwoman smiled.
Mumtaz begins to walk towards the clubhouse. She is wearing a pale yellow tunic. It is embroidered with matching thread and reaches just below her hips. After she bought the tunic, she stitched darts into it so that it fits her snugly, so that it does not hang on her small frame and hide it. Her white fitted trousers reach mid-calf. She is wearing brown leather champals. The leather of the champals is distressed, worn out; Mumtaz wears them only at home. But this is the first day she has driven Karim to school in months and, without thinking, she left the house wearing them.
A man wearing a dirtied white hat, the mshamba presumably, is crouched in front of a hedge near the clubhouse. He is pruning flowers. She stops and stares at him. When he looks up, she smiles. He lowers his eyes and nods and then continues his work. Mumtaz prunes the flowers in her garden, though the family has a gardener. This man’s work is careful. He is not pruning more than necessary, which Mumtaz often does, cutting the healthy with the sick in her desire for neatness, for order.
The sound of voices draws her attention away from the mshamba. Two Englishwomen emerge from the clubhouse. They are wearing short, pleated white tennis skirts. The skirts are crisp, as are their white shirts. The clothes have been pressed, carefully ironed. The women are engrossed in a conversation and, as they walk, their faces are turned to each other, animated, only inches apart. One of the women has long brown hair she has pulled into a ponytail. She is holding her wooden racket, balancing it on her shoulder. Mumtaz can see that her fingernails have been painted pink. The other woman has black hair cut to her chin. The hair is parted to one side and an invisible pin holds it off her face. She is swinging her racket beside her, tapping it, sometimes, against the side of her bare knee. Both of the women are thin, too thin. They appear unhealthy, undernourished. Their skin is tanned but it looks weathered, old, though the women must be young, Mumtaz thinks, no older than she is.
Behind them, an African child walks out through the clubhouse door. He is wearing an oversized brown T-shirt and red trousers that are too short and tight for him. The clothes are faded. His feet are bare. He is holding a pailful of white tennis balls. He is a small boy, not much bigger than Karim, who is four and tall for his age. But Mumtaz knows this boy must be older. The threesome walks by Mumtaz. The women don’t notice her standing next to the hedge, next to the mshamba. The boy sees her. He does not smile, though she smiles at him. But he keeps looking at her. It is aggressive, challenging, this gaze he holds on her. Mumtaz feels her body stiffen. She is frightened, but she does not know of what she is afraid. Surely not of a child, a poor African child? He smirks. She lowers her eyes. When she looks up, he is still looking at her, his head turned back. He keeps looking at her, until he is forced to walk backwards, until he stumbles and drops the pail, the white balls tumbling onto the grass. He stops and quickly picks them up. The mshamba looks at him and shakes his head. The women do not appear to notice and continue to walk towards the courts. Once the balls are collected, he gives Mumtaz one more long glance. Then he springs up, turns around and runs to catch up to the women.
Mumtaz walks back to her car. She regrets going for the walk. She regrets going to the clubhouse. She does not know what drew her there. She has never liked it. She has never liked walking through its doors and watching Jaafar become awkward. She cringes when she sees him wearing the ridiculous white shorts that make his thin, brown legs look thinner, browner, when she hears him speak English with a forced accent, trying to please, to impress, to belong. Each time Jaafar brings her into the building, with its wooden dance floor, its walls lined with plaques showcasing unpronounceable English names, its bar stocked with bottles of liquor and its shelves holding piles of Life magazines, she feels her lungs constrict and her throat dry up, as though if she were forced to remain in this place she would die, like a blood-red ixora in the pale, parched desert.
After jamat khana that evening, Baku and Khatoun come for dinner. Once the meal is eaten, Raju, Jaafar and Baku remain at the dining table. Mumtaz brings out cups and saucers and begins placing them on the table. Khatoun is in the kitchen with Rehmat, boiling the tea and preparing sweets.
“I think Idi Amin will be good for us,” Baku says. “Already, he has reduced government shares in nationalized companies. He isn’t a socialist, like Obote or Nyerere. He loves the British. He loves business.”
“Obote only nationalized large foreign-owned businesses. He didn’t bother us,” Jaafar says.
“But who is to say he would have stopped there?” Baku asks. Khatoun enters the dining room and sets the teapot on the table.
“Idi Amin made a lot of promises,” Jaafar says. “Elections, a return to civilian rule. In six months, he has fulfilled none of them.”
“He may yet,” Baku says. Mumtaz looks at Raju, who is quiet. He is watching Khatoun pour tea into his cup. “He brought King Freddie’s body back from England for a state funeral.”
“But he was the one who led the attack on his palace,” Mumtaz says, turning sharply to look at Baku. “And now he is honouring him with a funeral?”
“He was Obote’s general then,” says Baku. “He was following orders.”
“Was he ordered to kill hundreds of innocent Baganda as well?” she asks.
Baku shrugs. “You young people expect too much from karias.”
“Idi Amin will do anything for power,” Mumtaz says, ignoring Baku and sitting down beside Jaafar.
“They all will,” Baku says, laughing.
Khatoun clears her throat loudly. Mumtaz looks up at her, standing behind her husband. “Ma and I need your help in the kitchen,” Khatoun says, her voice clipped.
“In one minute, Bhabi,” Mumtaz says, looking at Baku again. “Obote, Nyerere and Kaunda stood together to demand Britain stop selling weapons to South Africa. They demanded Rhodesia become independent. Idi Amin opposes them and sides with the British. He says the British have every right to sell weapons to racist South Africa. How could he say such a thing? This is not an ordinary power-hungry man. This is a power-hungry man with no beliefs.”
Mumtaz watches Khatoun walk back to the kitchen. She knows her place is with the women, but she cannot bring herself to join them.
“We all know Britain was behind the coup,” Jaafar says. “They didn’t hide their dislike of Obote. And right after the coup they accepted Idi Amin as president. If he spe
nds his time trying to please Britain, things should remain okay. What’s good for Britain is good for us.”
Mumtaz shakes her head. She sees Jaafar watching her. He clears his throat.
“It’s true, he did give the kabaka a state funeral,” Jaafar says. “It made the Baganda happy. Like them or not, they are the biggest tribe in Uganda. They need to be happy.”
“One day he is letting his soldiers kill Baganda for sport. Another day he is giving Baganda a grand show to please them,” she says, becoming exasperated, her voice getting higher.
“Mumtaz—” Jaafar says.
“A funeral is easy to plan,” she says, cutting him off. “Will he actually give power back to Buganda and the other kingdoms?”
“He is stupid,” Baku says. “He says anything and everything because he likes to hear himself speak, though he speaks so badly. A big, bumbling kario. As long as he leaves us to live our lives, he can bumble.”
“The truth is we don’t know much about him,” Raju says. “We can only wait and see.”
Mumtaz opens her mouth to speak.
“Mumtaz,” Jaafar says sharply. “Help Bhabi.”
She turns to see Khatoun holding a large glass bowl of gulab jamun through the small opening in the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. Mumtaz stands up, walks towards her and takes the bowl. She turns to set it on the table. But her hands are sweaty and the bowl slips from her grasp so that it bounces and rolls on its side, the sweet balls and syrup pouring onto the tablecloth, slow, thick, relentless.
Raju opens the front door of his house and steps outside. The day is clear. He begins to walk as he always does, as he has done every day for more than two decades, through Mbarara, its main roads paved now with tarmac, a shining new jamat khana greeting him at the end of the street. He walks past Rajabali Auto Repairs. He will stop in on his way back, when the morning chai and nasto have been delivered by Yozefu. Then he will sit with customers and talk; he will go through receipts and update the books. He walks along the road leading out of the town’s centre, smiling at all who know him, all who expect to see him at the start of their day. As he walks on these roads, these well-trod footpaths, Raju’s thoughts go back to his first days in Mbarara. But he cannot go back completely. For much of his life, for most of his life, Raju has walked on red earth; he has seen all around him green plantains hanging on small trees or tied onto the sides of rusty bicycles; he has stared up at crimson flowers dotting nandi flame trees; he has watched cows with horns the colour of sweet tea twisting out of their heads; he has looked down at ebony-skinned children running along the roads, waving, smiling, their clothes ill-fitting, their feet the strongest, most solid parts of their lithe bodies. He cannot remember what it felt like before, when all this was new, when all this was alien.
He comes to the Rwizi and walks to its bank in what has become a daily ritual. “The river water helps my circulation,” he has decided he will tell anyone who asks, though no one has asked. He crouches down to remove his shoes, preparing to dip his feet in the water, when out of the corner of his eye he sees something in the muddied water. He shakes his head at the filth that has begun to make its way into the river and proceeds to remove his shoes. Once he has done so, his attention is pulled again towards what he initially thought was some old tires. His throat feels thick and his breathing becomes laboured, as though a slab of concrete is pressing down on his chest. He stands, his bare feet sinking into the cool mud, the bottoms of his trousers, not yet rolled, picking up the wet earth. Arms entwined, heads face down and cheek to cheek as though sharing a secret, float two grey, bloated corpses.
“They didn’t find anything.”
Raju stares at Jaafar, trying to make sense of his words, of his sudden appearance on the verandah in the middle of the afternoon. Raju was rolling a cigarette with a machine when Jaafar appeared. Amir brought the new machine from London last year so that Raju could add filters to his cigarettes. “Who? What are you talking about?”
“At the river, where you said to look. The soldiers found nothing. No corpses, nothing. Just some garbage.”
Raju did not expect to hear “nothing.” It was the last thing he expected to hear. And he did not expect to hear anything from Jaafar.
“The soldiers found a small tarp, Bapa. Maybe that’s what you saw. It was bunched—”
“They—you—think I imagined two human bodies? I’m a foolish old man?”
“No, of course not. Maybe they floated away.”
“Impossible. They were stuck in reeds, almost on the bank. The current isn’t powerful there. I saw them this morning only. They looked in the wrong place.” He stands up, wiping his hands on his trousers to clear off bits of tobacco. “Let’s go. I will show you myself.” He stops moving.
“What is it?”
“Soldiers? Why soldiers?” asks Raju. “I called the police.”
“Major Al-Bashir came to the garage to tell me. The police must have called him.”
“Why would the police call the army if they found nothing?”
“Asad Al-Bashir comes often to chat, even if his car isn’t in for repairs.”
“This doesn’t answer the question of why the police would inform the army of some old man’s silly visions. Why involve another authority for nothing?”
“I don’t find it strange. Al-Bashir must have stopped in at the police station for something and they got to talking. This came up in conversation.”
Raju sits down and fixes his eyes on the back of the house, on the paint he applied himself, when he was younger, when he was not yet old.
“Al-Bashir mentioned it to me because he knows me and he knows you are my father.”
Raju is silent, his eyes fixed on the white of the wall.
“Bapa?”
He looks at his son. Jaafar’s brows are knitted and he is smiling weakly. It is a look of pity.
“Go back to the garage,” says Raju. “I was tired. My mind played tricks. It must have been a tarp.” The lie leaves his mouth quickly. He cannot tolerate the expression on his son’s face.
Jaafar lowers his eyes and leaves. Raju watches him walk to the side of the house. He is moving quickly, purposefully, as young men do. In a moment he disappears around the corner. Raju turns back to the table and picks up a sheaf of cigarette paper. As he pulls the tin of tobacco towards him, he feels something in his stomach, flying, flitting, poking. It is small. It is not powerful. But its edges are sharp.
18
RAJU IS WATCHING R?HMAT’S HEALTH DETERIORATE. She is weak. Some mornings she cannot grasp her prayer beads in her hand. Her skin is sallow. She labours to walk. She no longer cooks, though she prepares chaas for Raju every day. She spends most of her time resting on an armchair in the sitting room, a shawl wrapped around her. Raju calls Amir, who comes to meet with the doctors at Mbarara Hospital. He tells Raju he will oversee the tests done on his mother. One week later, Amir and Raju meet with her doctor. While Amir sits quietly, the English doctor tells Raju that his wife’s heart is enlarged. “It has been failing for years and now it is compensating by growing in mass. But still it is not able to meet the needs of her body. Eventually, her heart will give out.”
Raju looks at Amir. “She is dying?” he asks in Gujarati.
“Slowly, very slowly,” Amir says. “It will take time, years even, if we take good care of her.” Despite the Gujarati words and the attempt at comfort, Amir appears to Raju as distant as the English doctor. What does he know of her? Of caring for her? He looks at Amir’s face, at the transparent mask of pity, the weak painting of love. He was easy to love as a child. They all were. And then Amir his child disappeared. Like Bahdur. Like Mumdu. And now he comes when summoned, like a loyal family doctor. It is fitting then that he is the one to tell Raju this news. That he is the one Raju will always think of when he remembers this moment: the precise second that the earth beneath him began to weaken.
A few days later, Raju hears Rehmat laughing in the kitchen with her dau
ghters-in-law.
Later, in their bedroom, he confronts her. “You are so weak that you cannot speak to me. You cannot do things for me as a wife does. But then I hear you laughing and talking with others.”
Rehmat lifts herself from her bed and walks towards him, but he turns away before she reaches him and walks out of their bedroom.
Raju begins steadfastly to ignore his wife, staring absent-mindedly at anything but her, the wall, the radio, the newspaper, a plate in front of him. He will not look at her, though he can hear her voice, low and soft and clear as it always is, as it has always been.
Raju is standing in the doorway to his bedroom. He sees Jaafar sitting by his mother’s bedside, talking to her, holding Shama on his lap. Shama is struggling to break free from her father’s grasp. He begins bouncing his knees and she giggles. “Dadima,” she says, looking at Rehmat, “why don’t you get up?”
For three days, Rehmat has been so weak she cannot leave her bed. She will eat small bites of plain chapati soaked in tea only when Mumtaz pleads with her.
“Dadima is sick,” Jaafar says. “She has to rest so she becomes well again. Why don’t you sing to her?”
Shama shakes her head. “No. I want to go outside.”
“No.” Jaafar’s voice is firm. “Be nice to Dadima.” The child angrily folds her arms. “Please, Shama,” he whispers. “For Daddy?”
Rehmat smiles. “Let her go. The sun is shining.”
Raju walks into the bedroom and stands behind his son. Jaafar releases Shama and, like a bullet shot from a gun, she is out the door. He remains seated on his mother’s bed. Raju pats him on the back. Jaafar stands up and walks towards the door. He does not leave the room. Raju can smell his cologne.
Where the Air is Sweet Page 13