Where the Air is Sweet

by Tasneem Jamal

  Jaafar insists they visit the officers’ mess regularly. “It is the best restaurant in town,” he says.

  “And you need to stock up on alcohol,” Raju adds. But Jaafar does not hear him.

  Raju sits having dinner in the officers’ mess one evening, Jaafar beside him. A young second lieutenant has joined them. The officer is fond of listening to music. He is telling the men about stereo equipment in the shop, equipment that he will keep in the house he will soon own. Raju looks at Jaafar. He is staring into his glass of beer. Raju cannot look at the officer. He knows the house he speaks of may be his house, his son’s house, any number of his friends’ houses. Jaafar begins talking quickly, about his stereo, his Lenco turntable, his Sansui receiver, his Akai reel-to-reel and speakers. “My elder brother wanted all of it,” he says, lying. “So he had it shipped overseas.” Jaafar does not tell him that he has sent it to his wife so that he can use it when he lives in his new home in Canada.

  The officer begins to laugh. “It won’t reach your brother.”

  Early the next morning, Jaafar and Raju drive to Entebbe. As Jaafar pulls the car up to the cargo side of the airport, Raju sees boxes, crates and packages strewn about. It looks as though a typhoon has ripped through the area. Jaafar parks the car. They step out and find a Uganda Transport Company employee at the counter. Jaafar hands him a wad of shillings. “I want my crate returned.” The man shakes his head. “Then I want to ensure it is sent.”

  “We have been told to send nothing.”

  “Not one parcel was posted?” Jaafar asks.

  “Some parcels were sent earlier, but nothing for months,” the man says. “The army, customs officials, State Bureau men open them, take what they want, when they want.”

  “I brought mine only one week ago. It may be untouched.”

  “These people are dangerous. I don’t want trouble from them.”

  Jaafar steps closer to the man, his face flushing. “For God’s sake, man,” he says. “I paid air-freight fees to have my crate flown out and I’m paying you now, again.”

  The man takes the cash. “On the west side. Those arrived in the last days before the deadline.” He does not look at Jaafar or at Raju when he speaks.

  They walk through the rows of empty, ripped-open crates. Raju helps Jaafar look for the address label, to the Uganda Resettlement Board in the United Kingdom, to Mumtaz. Like other Asians, they had no forwarding address, no destination. They cannot find the label. And they cannot find one crate, one parcel that has not been opened and emptied.

  Ten days ago, Raju watched as Mumtaz packed her Singer sewing machine, their clothes, shoes, Rehmat’s shawls, Jaafar’s record collection, the stereo equipment, wooden vases, wooden spoons and bowls, zebra skins, Ankole cattle horns, ivory tusks, drums and masks that have decorated their house for years, and hundreds of photographs. Finally, Mumtaz packed her camera. Raju watched her hold it, stare at it.

  “Pack it in your suitcase,” he told her.

  She shook her head. “There isn’t enough space.”

  Raju looks around at the shattered, empty boxes and sits down in the midst of them. “There’s nothing here. Only garbage.”

  “I thought some parcels wouldn’t make it,” Jaafar says. “Some things would be taken from others. Some would be lost.” He looks at Raju. “I did not imagine this.”

  Before returning to the car, Jaafar tells Raju he wants to stop at the counter.

  Raju shakes his head. “It is pointless.”

  Jaafar ignores him and walks towards the employee. “Why did they take our photographs?” he asks the man.

  “It is a rush when they come,” he replies. “They are not selective. They hardly even look at what’s in their hands.”

  Raju sees the small girl again. When she reaches him, she stops, looks up at him and holds her hand out. Two boys stand behind her. They are older, ten or eleven. Her brothers perhaps. The three children wait, staring at Raju, the girl’s hand suspended in the air. But Raju’s pockets are empty. He smiles and shakes his head. They walk past him. One of the boys turns around and sneers, pulls out the twig that was in his mouth and throws it on the ground. He does not throw it at Raju or near Raju. But Raju becomes enraged. He wants to pull the boy back and slap him, throw him to the ground. He wants to kick him and beat his face until it is bloodied, until it cannot be recognized. Instead, he returns home and resolves never to walk on that footpath again, never to walk through the streets of Mbarara alone again.

  The days stretch endlessly. Raju dreads the mornings now. He sleeps longer to pass the time. His sons spend their days either on the verandah or in the sitting room. Amir has begun to drink liquor with Jaafar. Raju sits quietly while they talk, slurring, swearing, laughing. After a while he begins to notice them press their mouths shut when he walks into the room. He sees them exchange looks. He spends more and more time alone on the back verandah, writing in his small notebook, recounting the faces of his childhood friends, the details of his cousin’s wedding, his own wedding. He struggles in the kitchen to make chaas. Yozefu cannot make it the way Rehmat or Mumtaz made it, no matter how much Raju tries to direct him. But Raju cannot either. The men eat lunch later and later. Raju spends the afternoons lying on his bed, unable to sleep, thinking of the times he turned away from Rehmat, the minutes, the hours, the days he refused to speak to her. One day, he counts each moment he withheld his love from her, each moment he rejected hers. If he could have them back, he would have months with her. He would have years. He reaches his arms out to the empty side of the bed, begging silently, foolishly, for those moments. For her.

  Four weeks after the deadline, Jaafar tells Raju the Asian shops have begun to open again, their new African proprietors working behind the counters.

  “The shelves in all the shops are mostly empty. Asians bought up everything before leaving and no one ordered new stock in the last days.”

  “The new owners are not ordering more?” Raju asks.

  “Even if they knew how, there are no suppliers. Manufacturing has stopped. Almost every factory, warehouse, tea estate, coffee plantation, sugar plantation, refinery, mill, pharmaceutical business has shut down. Owners, managers, foremen and technicians have left. Skilled labour is gone.”

  “Soon, there will be no soap, sugar, medicine,” Raju says.

  “They’ll need to go to Kenya for supplies. It’s good for the Kenyan shilling. A disaster for the Ugandan. For everything Ugandan.”

  “Who are the new owners? People who applied through that Departed Asians Board?”

  Jaafar laughs. “From what I see, the businesses and houses are all being handed to soldiers and their relatives. They walk down the street and take this and that. Whatever they want.”

  Jaafar has yet to receive any of his remaining payment from Mubinga for the garage. “Next month,” Jaafar tells Raju. “Maybe six weeks.” Mubinga is not holding back, Jaafar explains. It is difficult to do business, to turn a profit. “But we are running out of cash. I must think of a way to make money to meet our day-to-day living costs.”

  Not since he was a small child has Raju depended on another to feed him. “What if he can’t pay us for months?” he asks.

  “He’ll pay it.”

  “But if it costs us more to live here than what he owes us, perhaps it is better—”

  “Things are safer here than we thought they would be,” Jaafar says quickly. “Maybe we can find a way to stay.”

  Raju is quiet.

  “Do you really want 50,000 shillings to be all you have to show for your life in Uganda?” Jaafar asks.

  “Would it be?” Raju asks. “Would it be all I have to show?”

  Raju sees Jaafar’s nostrils flare, his eyes widen momentarily. He is annoyed. He has grown impatient.

  Raju nods, feeling for the first time in his life a need to please his son. “All right,” he says. “Let’s give Mubinga some time.”

  The next day, Jaafar tells Raju he stopped in at Barclays and foun
d he could access his bank accounts. They have not yet been frozen. The personal and business accounts have little money. In the three months before the deadline, business at the garage dwindled to almost nothing and the cost of airplane tickets and airfreighting and all the spending frenzies depleted much of what was in the bank. But he tells Raju that he can take money out for others, those who had substantial amounts of money they were forced to leave behind. He starts making phone calls, asking around.

  23

  JAAFAR IS IN NAIROBI SELLING GOLD.

  A handful of African salesmen, deprived of their customer base after the expulsion, approached Jaafar and Raju one morning holding matchboxes filled with gold nuggets. Jaafar bought them and drove to Nairobi, where he showed them to Asian jewellers. The gold was 24-karat and solid. Good quality. Back in Uganda, he sold the Kenyan currency the jewellers had paid him at a premium.

  With the rising Kenyan shilling and the falling Ugandan shilling, Jaafar can make money with money. He has found a source of income. Two times, Jaafar told Raju, the jewellers told him he had been duped; the nuggets were brass. The loss is small. Most of the time the gold is authentic and the jewellers pay him well for it.

  “We should buy things, goods we can sell abroad. It’s the best way to get money out of the country,” Jaafar tells Raju. He suggests they visit the shop in the army barracks to buy a new stereo system. He tells Raju to shop as well, buy anything he wishes. As they walk out to the car, Raju looks across the street at the house that belonged to Gopal Sharma. The locks are broken, the new owners, soldiers from the barracks, hastily moving in. He knows it is only a matter of time before Baku’s house is taken over, his own house is taken over.

  Raju has decided he will buy Mumtaz a new camera. As he is looking at some in the barracks shop, a corporal walks up and points to a camera with a handle. “It’s a Super 8. It makes films,” the corporal says. “It’s very modern. We have a projector as well.”

  Raju nods. Mumtaz would enjoy making films. “I’ll take the camera,” he says.

  Jaafar approaches them. He suggests buying the projector and a screen to watch some films. “We need entertainment, Bapa,” he says. “Do you have any films, any reels?” Jaafar asks the corporal. “So we can check to make sure the projector works?”

  The corporal walks to the counter and rummages through a cardboard box. He lifts three reels out and hands them to Jaafar. “These are marked to be thrown out. We don’t need them back.”

  That evening, Raju, Jaafar and Amir sit down to watch a film.

  “The army’s rubbish,” Amir says. “This should be entertaining.”

  Yozefu turns off the lamps.

  The film is a series of images so overexposed Raju cannot guess what they are.

  “It really is rubbish,” Jaafar says. “Let’s try another one.” He removes the reel and places another one in the projector.

  At first, Raju does not pay attention. He is staring at the screen, a cigarette between his fingers. But his thoughts have turned to the sofa he is sitting on, to the furniture Jaafar told Mubinga he could eventually have. When Jaafar bought it, new, imported, Raju hesitated to sit on it because it was so precious, so valuable.

  The black-and-white images on the screen penetrate Raju’s mind slowly, as though they are being formed in the moment he sees them. Army exercises? He lifts his hand to cover his mouth. Twelve, maybe fourteen men are lined up, side by side in the dirt. Their limbs are bound in unnatural positions, so that their breastbones jut forward, their rib cages push against their skin, their heads are pulled back, the tendons in their necks protruding. Their feet and hands are intertwined behind them, as though someone knotted together their wrists and ankles. They are in shorts, underpants or shorn-off trousers; he cannot tell. Otherwise they are naked. Their faces are puffy and dark blood rolls down their bodies. Their eyes are closed tightly. Their mouths are open. Raju can hear only the clicking of the reel in the projector. Soldiers line up behind them and begin pounding their backs, their heads with the butts of their rifles. More blood appears. The soldiers aim their guns at the backs of the men’s heads. They fall, their limp, bound bodies hitting the ground sideways, bouncing slightly, like tires. The projector is turned off and the lights switched on. Jaafar, who is standing next to the lamp, tells Yozefu to go, to take the rest of the night off. When he leaves, he sits down beside Raju.

  “What is it? Is it real? Is this real killing?” Jaafar asks.

  Amir unscrews the lid of a bottle of Johnnie Walker and begins pouring. Except for the sound of whiskey falling into a glass, it is silent. Raju puts out his cigarette in the ashtray in front of him. He stares at a plate of nsenene on the coffee table. Suddenly, the fried grasshoppers he had been eating only minutes earlier look revolting to him. His stomach lurches. He looks up, breathes slowly, deeply, until the feeling passes.

  “These men are tied up, tortured,” Amir says. “And Ugandan soldiers are killing them. You can see their uniforms clearly. But where is this? Who are they killing?”

  “Other soldiers? Guerrillas? Langi peasants?” It is Jaafar. Raju cannot speak. His brain is moving quickly to process what he has seen. Still, it cannot move quickly enough. Jaafar draws the curtains. The lights are turned off and the film begins again. Raju does not know which of his sons turned off the lights, which one restarted the film.

  A bulldozer is digging up earth, mounds of it. Raju cannot recognize the place. It is open land. Tilled. A farm? Where? It is not familiar. Bodies, forty, fifty of them, are pushed like piles of dead grasshoppers by the bulldozer into a mass grave. He closes his eyes. The light is on again and the film stopped.

  “What the hell is this?” Amir asks. “This is what the army does?” He looks at Raju and then Jaafar. “And they film it?”

  “We have to do something,” Jaafar says. “Get this to the BBC or someone, anyone.”

  Amir is shaking his head. “No. Leave it. What if we get caught? It’s not worth it.”

  “But we should get this out—”

  “It’s too risky,” says Amir, cutting Jaafar off. “We’ll bury the film. If Amin is overthrown, maybe we can dig it up. In the yard. I’ll do it. I’ll put all the reels in the ground.”

  “Karim played football today. It was so cold, I absolutely refused him. But he begged me and I backed down. Some police cadets organized games. It’s a huge property here. He was happy, his cheeks and nose all pink, his trousers muddy. And last weekend they held a tea party, with games and dancing.”

  “Did Shama dance?” Raju’s voice sounds hollow to him, as if he is in a tunnel.

  “Oh yes, and she sang. She was a hit. They are making us feel welcome, really welcome. It feels less strange. Some women are helping with cooking, so we have tastier food nowadays. We all look after cleaning our own rooms and we take turns cleaning the washrooms. I posted a schedule on the wall. Lots of grumbling and complaining about that. But everyone follows it. I’ve become the sergeant major of toilets.” Mumtaz laughs. Raju closes his eyes and listens. He does not want her to stop.

  Jaafar and Amir begin to drive to Kampala in the evenings. They have eaten everything on the menu in the barracks and Yozefu has limited cooking abilities. Besides, Jaafar tells Raju, driving to Kampala takes time, passes time. They eat dinner at the few restaurants and hotels functioning in the capital: the Phoenix, the restaurants at the Speke Hotel, the Imperial and the Apollo Hotel. Diplomats, expats and the few Asians still in Kampala frequent these restaurants. Once, Raju agrees to join them. When they reach the city, Amir leaves Raju and Jaafar to visit a friend in Old Kampala.

  In the restaurant, many of the Europeans recognize Jaafar. They are keen to help; they are sorry, they tell Raju, for their situation.

  After Raju and Jaafar are finished eating, two men, the managers of the local offices of the Sabena airline and Air France, join them at their table. They speak with French accents. Though one is Belgian and one French, Raju can detect no difference in their English. They
are young men, Jaafar’s age. They are alone in Kampala, both unmarried. Neither intends to return to Europe until their employers demand it, until the situation under Amin becomes worse. They lament that their offices are always short of Ugandan shillings. They have to pay their overhead costs in local currency, but airline tickets are purchased in US dollars. The airlines are permitted legally to send foreign money to their head offices in Europe. The men both shake their heads and pause before stating the official rate of exchange, of which Raju is well aware: 7 shillings and 14 cents per dollar. Raju sits quietly, his eyes on his hand, which is resting on the table. He hears Jaafar offer to sell them shillings at the black market rate of 50 shillings per dollar. Readily, they agree.

  On the drive home, Raju tries to recall who brought up the subject of currency first, the Belgian or the Frenchman? They brought it up together, in perfect unison, like singers performing a harmony. They must have discussed it earlier, Raju tells himself silently, turning to look at Jaafar’s profile. They must have planned to bring the subject up.

  Jaafar takes the dollars to Nairobi, buys Kenyan shillings and then returns to Uganda, where he sells them. With the increasing demand for the ever-strengthening Kenyan shilling, Jaafar makes money, more and more money. The borders have become lax since the expulsion. But the amount of cash Jaafar regularly ferries would tempt even an honest customs agent, if one existed. Raju watches as Jaafar rips open the upholstery of his Renault and stuffs in bills. Then he sets off for the Tororo-Malaba border.

  More than nine weeks have passed since Mumtaz and the children left for Britain. Mubinga has still not come through with his payment. Jaafar tells Raju it is time to go to London, to fetch Mumtaz and Karim and Shama and travel to Canada. Jaafar will come back to Uganda alone. Amir will remain behind. Raju’s sons do not discuss these plans with him. They inform him, politely, respectfully.