by M G Vassanji
There were other girls like me, in London. One had run away to marry a Hindu from South Africa; she lives in Harrow now and they own a grocery store. Another girl, from Kariakoo, ran away with a boy from the Jafferi sect — a crime much worse than mine. She is divorced and lives with her daughters in Toronto. We used to meet and talk sometimes — go for coffee after Friday mosque. All of us bred on Schoolgirls’ Picture Library comics and Enid Blyton and Indian films, with visions of Big Ben and the friendly bobby. Well, the bobbies were friendly, in the 1950s, and the postmen honest — you could post a letter with tuppence-ha’penny taped in place of a stamp, and the next day it would be delivered! There was a nice sort of innocence then. And we were still from the colonies, we were no threat. But we were coloured.
I took shorthand-typing and had work within weeks. They treated you like servants, then … but I don’t think we minded, not at first, not that much, we were too thrilled to be in London, too honoured. We worked late, were asked to clean up, had our bottoms pinched; a girl was raped, another became pregnant. And then we learned to speak up.
But he — Ali — had it much worse … in the beginning. He worked as a waiter; the proud, handsome Ali, who had the bearing of a prince. He would leave at six in the morning — neatly dressed in suit and tie, full of high spirits, whistling — and return all dishevelled.… All the stories of London we used to hear — how many would have gone had they known the truth beforehand? And yet those who returned home kept coming back, couldn’t stay away … from the cold winters, gas-heated bedsitters, in which a few even gassed themselves … in error or deliberately, who knows? Did I have regrets? Yes. Who wouldn’t? From Dar’s favourite girl, coddled and pampered, to this — a drudge. And he? He never looked back, not once even in the most difficult times.
So this was the once-glamorous Ali and Rita in London.
But you made it eventually, didn’t you, Rita? You would always have made it, anywhere.
Ali finally had a decent offer: managing the Museum Café near Great Russell Street. It required both of us to run the place and it paid well. But it was hard work. We opened at five for the deliveries; there was the first rush at six-thirty, when the cleaners and lorry drivers arrived. Then, at eight-thirty, there were the secretaries and clerks and telephone operators; later the students. Then lunch, and tea. Oh yes, I saw everything, the grease pans, the scullery, the mop. Out in front, Ali. He was indomitable. However tired and defeated and broken down he was in the evening, the next morning, there he was, the prince — or deposed chief’s son, as some believed, he never made it clear. Oh, he could have sold them the Taj Mahal. Especially when he wore his astrakhan. That wasn’t often, of course; he was into Homburgs. He learnt the English accent, the real thing; proper. And he was learning Spanish. That almost undid me.
I had had our daughter, Rehana, by then, and I was expecting Hadi. Ali took his lessons on Fridays when I went to mosque. He was out of the community by then — more or less … it’s never complete, is one thing you learn; that was okay with me. It was over coffee after prayers when one of my friends said, “How do you know he’s learning Spanish, Ri?” “He’s learning quite a bit,” I said. In all innocence. They all looked at me as if I was out of my mind. “On Friday nights? Do you know the teacher? What is he learning besides?”
How I wept, made scenes. Wrote home. Her name was Alice. She came from Spain but had an American mother. At LSE, and a little older than me. If I had heard from my family, I would have left. But I didn’t. And he gave her up.
We ran the Museum Café for five long years. They were not all as bad as the first year. But still. My children were my inspiration then. And I went to mosque on Friday evenings — what a solace that was. Ali took courses and tried one or two business ventures on the side, which failed. We didn’t know what else to try. There was talk of going to America, or Dubai.
And then our luck changed in the most fantastic way. A few families made their fortunes in property; you know, one day grocers on Stanley Street, the next, millionaires in London — unbelievable, isn’t it? Those who came later, those younger than us, made it in hotels and nursing homes, and also in property. But our luck came knocking at our door — and it seemed that he was right, Ali was really chosen by fate. Well. There was this Jew who every Thursday was the last customer in the café, at five. Mr. Eisen. He looked old but actually he was only in his fifties; he was a big man. Sometimes he brought with him his wife and daughter. Always had a light supper — we served no dinners. He liked Ali … and me … very much … would stop him as he walked past. “Mr. Ali,” he would say. “How is the missis — tell her the soup, it was good. Thank her for keeping it for me … I know she did …” He, of course, didn’t believe for a minute that we owned the café. “Why don’t you work for me?” he said to Ali one day. “Your missis can then stay home with the children.” Just like that.
This was shortly before you arrived in London. I saw you, of course — that day when you sneaked into the mosque — and I wished so much to meet you, discuss my problems with you. Ask you about home, how my parents were, give you letters to take back. Ask you to talk with them, intercede for me — did that occur to you? No, you stayed away, nursing a wound that had no right to be there in the first place.
The wound had healed, Rita. So well, only a nice memory remained, I simply didn’t want to reopen anything. You say Ali was indomitable; to me, you were so. I was afraid of what you could do to me. Perhaps I should have come to you. A faint heart …
Mr. Eisen — I can’t remember his first name, the relationship was so formal, though friendly — had his own finance company, the Athena. He was a refugee from Germany, leaving as a young man. He had a strong accent. We were fascinated with the history — from the films and magazines. The first time we invited them to our flat, we asked them a lot of questions about Germany; his parents and so on … and the war. As students we had read of the brave Maquis in berets and the girls in pigtails on bicycles who helped them escape through France. Anne Frank. And the films those days were all about the war, weren’t they? … But of course we soon realized it was a subject not to be discussed. There would always be that distance between us, we were too naïve. They looked poor — which they were not — and outcast, but there was so much culture, things we could only get an inkling of. They were so European. They had a son, who was an artist, who was touring in the States. He had absolutely refused to join the business. The wife and daughter helped, but I don’t believe they had a knack for it. Perhaps it was too much a man’s world. Mrs. Eisen — Ela — was undergoing therapy. Migraine, she said, but I think it was depression. A young typist was the only outside person employed in the office. When Ali joined it he came like a breath of fresh air. The prince — even they called him that. And he took to the new business, the new life, like a duck to water. It’s what he was born for.
“What do you do — what is the business?” Ali asked Mr. Eisen when he made the offer that first day.
“Say the boss wants to sell this fine restaurant and invites you to make an offer. You don’t have the money, of course, so you come to Athena Finance Company — to me.”
“For a loan — but I could go to Lloyd’s Bank.”
“Would they give you it — give it to you … you know what I mean!”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
Should I be telling you this — a family secret? Behind many an immigrant success-story there is a guardian angel somewhere in the background. Mr. Eisen was ours. Where would we have been without his help. He was a good businessman, too, of course, and many immigrants and refugees ended up at his doorstep for loans to start again. Some of the new real-estate multimillionaires — including a few from East Africa — bought their first properties through him. He could take risks with them, he knew their mentalities. “They are not riff-raff where they come from,” he would say. “They are workers, builders … sometimes crooked, but we won’t say that aloud and we are not fools, are we
?”
The night Ali’s half-brother, Amin, died, Ali was phoned from Pipa’s house. We could hear the wailing and screaming in the background — it was dreadful. And eerie, over such a long distance. And Remti blaming Ali for it — what had he done? We were of course shocked; we knew what the boy meant to his parents. Such a darling, everyone had so loved him. Having come after so long a time, when there was money and time to lavish on him. Ali was not, after all, Remti’s son. And when she had her own son, it was a triumph, over Ali, over … Mariamu, that woman. He’ll be a bigger prince, Remti had boasted, he’s the real prince … and so on. Amin Mansion was built, then the signs of affluence, prestige — car, telephone, fridge (we can laugh at it all now; we were poor, weren’t we?) — all because of Amin.
Ali caught a plane out of London that same night we heard the news. A strange thing happened when he arrived in Dar. He had automatically put on his astrakhan and he was wearing a white suit. He took a taxi from the airport. When it got into town, driving along Independence Avenue, he realized the car had a train of young men running behind it. He was amazed, thought he was being attacked; or that he’d arrived in the midst of a revolution. But these were Indians — Shamsis mostly — who were mobbing him. Finally, when the car turned in to Uhuru Street, the young men knew their mistake: he was not the real prince Aly Khan. It rather unsettled him. This was not the Dar he knew, he couldn’t wear the astrakhan as nonchalantly as he used to.
He stayed a week, living in a hotel. In that week he became his father’s chauffeur. They had long chats. They sat at the seashore … or outside the new Upanga mosque with its beautiful garden … or in the shop, where the two had spent so much time together. Ali was genuinely touched by this closeness. The old man, coughing and sickly now, opened his heart to him. When Ali returned to London, he was changed. Before, he had seen himself as somehow chosen. Now he was driven, and quite ruthless. His face had darkened with a seriousness.
Ali asked to buy into Athena, and Mr. Eisen offered him twenty-five per cent, this being his artist-son’s share. And Ali began bringing in international business. That was his knack, he could make contacts fast, he dressed well, he spoke well, and he impressed. “Forget about real estate, and bed-and-breakfast affairs in Victoria, and typing schools,” he would say to Mr. Eisen, “international finance is where the real money is.” Of course there was glamour in that, and travel, and the contracts were huge. The first large contract was from some Arab businessmen. A ship was chartered for East Africa … there was quite an uproar about it later — all kinds of claims, not true really, but it was turned back by the Royal Navy on its way from Aden …
The time was 1963-1964; there had been a violent revolution in Zanzibar in which the Arab monarchy was deposed, with the assistance of the Russians, the Cubans, and the East Germans. The chartered ship, the Seyyid Said, was suspected of carrying weapons and European mercenaries. There was a Russian submarine in the Indian Ocean, the three East African countries were nervous about coups d’etat, and the tense situation was very much the cause of the Royal Navy’s turning back of the Seyyid.
Athena, of course, did not lose anything, everything was paid for in advance, but it was close. Mr. Eisen got very nervous and told Ali to go easy from then on. Ali, too, had got a bit scared; things had gone a little too fast. He’s always been cautious since then.
Mr. Eisen died in 1966. His wife and daughter sold us their share and went to live in Israel.
Overnight, our fortunes had changed. The children, Rehana and Hadi, went to public schools; we moved to Eccleston Square and from there to Beech Grove in Hampstead. And yes, when Beech Grove was fixed up it was all over the community newspapers — yes, gold taps, antique-raj chandeliers, a Rolls-Royce used by Pandit Nehru at Harrow, and so on. As I said, there was no stopping Ali; such publicity didn’t daunt him. Nouveau riche, so what, he still says; it is still riche; weren’t the Normans nouveau once? And didn’t the English live in caves once? But of course he was conscious, we were conscious, of who we were; in England, how you speak, how you dress, how you sit — it all matters, is what you are.
Athena Finance Company is rather unique, I think. It has its offices on Carlton Place, near Trafalgar Square. From the windows you can see the parade of the queen’s Horse Guards in the morning. That never fails to impress clients, all dignitaries of foreign nations. The company undertakes international projects. It is a bank and contractor. It facilitates governments in buying services overseas. First, by offering financing, when required. And then by overseeing the project — secondary contracting, shipping, and so on. Of course risky loans are guaranteed — by a government, or an aid agency; another bank.… There have been projects in the Shah’s Iran, in Manila, and in South America. Once the company became known, projects kept coming in — Ali knew princes and ministers. And he, of course, was our prince; many — all — of his clients believed that. Even the English media believe something of the sort. When the tabloids reported Rehana’s engagement, they called Ali a son of an oriental chieftain.
Arms: he may have dealt in them if he thought it safe; he is a cautious man. There was a scientist from Qatar who wanted to build a Qatari bomb. It was to be called Algebra I; “algebra” is apparently derived from Arabic. Athena didn’t bite. Then a Quebec man wanted to build a long gun. Ali wouldn’t touch him. The man was later assassinated. Coffee from Uganda. There was a blend we drank in those days, which we laughingly called Ugando-Colombian. Idi Amin was in power then, and the coffee was smuggled …
It’s difficult to say what, exactly, came between us … many things, I suppose. Marriage is a kind of death, isn’t it — the end of youth and freedom, everything that made you attractive and beautiful — the beginning of responsibility. With me the bitterness and disappointment of my parents’ rejection; the hardship and toil when we began in London. A dingy room, a crusty landlady, cold winters, used and ill-fitting winter clothes, and, to top it all, a baby. Nothing like hardship to kill a romance double quick, is there? And then when the breaks came, we thought we’d begin anew. You know when I was a schoolgirl my friends and I wrote in each other’s autograph books: Friendship is like china. Well, love even more so. He drifted away … a simple home life was not exactly where he wanted to stop — he wanted more, and more, until I think even I was not enough.
Even after all the tuition in etiquette, I don’t think I quite measured up. I was still the same old me … couldn’t take to wearing hats … couldn’t quite act the princess; and I was still religious. With the political problems back home, the confiscation of property, my family had finally made contact, needed my help, and I helped them, sometimes brought them home — those nieces and nephews visiting London — which didn’t go down well, I tell you.
Ali was derisive of Indian ways by then. He began more openly to have flings with women, and he travelled a lot. It was in Peru that he met Rosita. I knew the moment he returned that this was something special. She’s Argentinian, with some British ancestry; and she’s somewhat younger than I am — of course — with two children by a previous marriage. A very nice woman. And, yes, glamorous — ideally suited to him. She was brought up in the European way, you see. She insisted the settlement with me be generous and amicable. So I am still one of the family. It’s as if he has two wives.
Beech Grove is mine. It’s a splendid house of white stucco exterior with dark oak inside, built in the 1930s. It has a long gravel driveway and a simply beautiful garden. The kind of house we saw in magazines when we were young. When you look out on a summer morning, especially after a rainfall, it’s a sight to fill your heart with calmness and the joy of living. There are always offers to buy it, from embassies. Rehana and Hadi would like me to sell it, too, to be closer to the City. But I shan’t sell it.
It is like a mother, Jackie says — she is my Filipino maid — because you always come back to it, it is there, and it is nice and warm. I have a small car that I do my shopping with, and go to mosque.
Jackie
and I have long talks sometimes. She keeps me up to date on all the Filipino girls in the neighbourhood. Who’s having an affair, who’s been fired, who’s going back, who’s got a job offer in the Gulf, or Japan, or Canada. I don’t want to lose her, but sooner or later she’ll go. Saturdays, I have lunch with Rehana and accompany her shopping. Sunday afternoons, Hadi comes over and spends the night.
Last year Ali was on the New Year’s Honours List — finally, quite a few years after the Falklands. Only then did I feel denied, and hurt at not being at his side. But that’s not everything, is it? I am still Mrs. Ali.
Ever a traditional Indian wife, you like to call your husband “he,” Rita. And what about the Falklands, Rita? Was this the Argentinian connection through Rosita, some service rendered in the war?
She declines to comment.
Miscellany (iv)
From the personal notebook of Pius Fernandes
May 1988, Dar es Salaam
She’s bought khangas for Jackie, her Filipino maid, a large Makonde carving for Ali, and gold jewellery for herself. (“I just can’t resist.”) The coffee shop is crowded and sticky, but a welcome refuge from the blazing Somora Avenue outside. The street curio-seller from whom she’s promised to buy something takes an occasional peep in at us through the window where we sit. He’s so desperate, I’ve concluded, he’ll wait a week if he has to. It’s a pity, in terms of quality he just can’t compete with the Indian wholesaler on Market Street.