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Admiring Silence

Page 20

by Abdulrazak Gurnah


  Ira stirred when the video ended and the lights were turned down even further, but it was only to rearrange herself before going back to sleep. The fat man on my other side was asleep with his mouth open, and as is only to be expected of someone whose insides were putrid, more foul smells came out of that orifice. At one time Ira leant lightly against me in her sleep and her head dropped almost on to my shoulder. I could feel her warmth against my arm and thought I could sense her hair grazing my neck. I wanted to lean towards her too, allow myself to relax against her, but I was afraid that would make her jump away, so I settled for the minor comfort. The plane droned on in the gloom, and though my body ached and twitched with exhaustion, I could not get to sleep. So I tried to sit still with my eyes shut, and to keep my mind blank (fat chance!).

  They lectured me some more when I got back, telling me not to sulk and take things badly. Or at least Akbar did, while my mother sat in silent rebuke, and Rukiya bustled about all afternoon. It had been hard for them to listen to such distressing news, and to know the embarrassments that would now follow with Safiya’s parents. Could I not understand that? I made conciliatory noises in return, which only seemed to invite my mother to begin her lecture again. Hadn’t I given any thought to anyone else? What could I have been thinking of to do such a thing? To marry an English woman after everything that had happened! I wondered what that could mean, but I didn’t care. My father, I guess. And why had I not told them? Had I not thought how abandoned the child would feel?

  Amelia abandoned? Because she had been denied knowledge of their scintillating existence? Listen, Ma, she has the TV, her CD player and an army of boys with whom she can, if she chooses, indulge most of her excruciating fantasies. The young woman is in her element, she belongs. But I didn’t say any of that. I just wanted to get away from all the drama, get back while there was still time, and I could not imagine how I would get through the two days before my flight.

  There was no announcement on the news that evening, and the branch chairman’s rumours of the Prime Minister’s fall were obviously exaggerated, for the virile chief himself appeared after the news with another speech full of noble words and synthetic indignation. As before, he said nothing about his crisis, just an occasional ambiguity accompanied by a misunderstood look, a self-pitying pause and a drooping lower lip. I was beginning to become quite fond of him and his ability to keep confounding predictions of his demise, and his nightly appearances in the room made it seem as if we were in the middle of an intimate family quarrel. I tried to remind myself that these were people who sentenced their opponents to one hundred and fifty years in jail, who made them walk barefoot on broken glass, and who pushed garden hoses up their arses and then turned the tap on. But I could not help admiring his unsmiling insincerity, and the utter callousness with which he delivered platitude after platitude with such heavy-handed angst, as if what he was telling us required thought or conviction or unflinching self-exposure.

  I like stubborn, wily survivors, and wish I could be one myself. So the next day I walked to his office, to extend my appreciation of his doggedness and to wish him a joyful time of it. I didn’t expect to be allowed in, just appearing like that to call on the chief of the nation (and the man had things on his mind, for God’s sake), but of course I was. His office was in Vuga, near the hotel with the missing elephant-foot umbrella stand that Akbar spent his working hours planning to restore to its full tourist potential when the funding came through from the donors. There was a kiosk opposite the hotel selling browning postcards of the beautiful sites of our island, some of them buildings and gardens which have since turned to rubble and vegetable patches. I lingered there, breathing in the aroma of stasis and suspension, of a time kept stubbornly whole like insects that have fallen into ajar of oil and been preserved, like nerves twitching in cooling amber.

  The office was a large villa set back from the road and surrounded by a low, white wall. Between the wall and the villa was an orchard of full-grown fruit trees: oranges, tufaa, pomegranates. It had been confiscated from its true owners years ago. I forget who they were now, some rich parasites who had built it by looting the people, though I remember the terrible temptation of those fruit trees when I was a child, and the restless dog which prowled beneath the trees just on the other side of the wall. Even if you stopped to take in the fragrance of the fruit and blossom that dog became demented with fury, a comprador lackey of the ruling oligarchy. But now there was no dog, just a man with a gun, his face scarred in a way that made it clear that he was not a native of our shambles, but from the mainland. We talk like that, or used to. He’s not one of us, like Lord Jim, though Lord Jim was one of us, of course, which was where the whole story turned. How could someone who was so much one of us, the son of a vicar in Hampshire, for Christ’s sake, turn against us to the extent of abandoning a shipload of pilgrims to save his own miserable life? It was true that the panic to abandon ship was instigated by the blustering German captain, but none the less, who would ever believe that we had the right to rule over the world if we were capable of such petty concern for our tiny lives? And no one even bothered to tell the pilgrims that the ship was sinking and they were being abandoned on it. And then the ship didn’t even sink, was rescued by the Royal Navy and taken to Aden. Shame on the White Man’s Burden!

  But the soldier at the Prime Minister’s villa was not one of us, and he unhooked his automatic rifle from his shoulder with such casual lack of concern that it was obvious that he did not think he would have to use it. I thought I’d have to tell the Prime Minister about that. It might matter to him one day. Anyway, I told him that I had an appointment to see the Prime Minister, and gave him a big smile. He grinned back and asked me where I was from. I said London, which made him grin even wider. Then he hooked his automatic back on his shoulder and nodded. For a Prime Minister in danger, he certainly had chilled-out security arrangements around him. Don’t write lies about us, he said. Who would believe them? I replied, which made him frown and stroke the strap of his rifle. Which newspaper do you write for? he asked. The African Pioneer, I replied and strode on. The guard made no fuss, and I could imagine him shrugging to himself. I was past him and was somebody else’s responsibility now.

  Inside the villa door was another guard, and he was much more stern with his enquiries, which made me feel relieved for the Prime Minister’s sake. He was a well-built man in his late thirties, with a firm, well-fed face and a glossy moustache: a man of experience, no doubt, with a family of his own and relatives who depended on him. When I said I had an appointment to see the Chief, he telephoned his secretary, who of course said I was telling fibs. The Prime Minister has no appointments this morning, the guard said, and became even more stern, and seemed quite uncharmed by my wide grin. He remained just as unmoved when I said I had come all the way from London for this appointment. Well, not quite unmoved, perhaps his eyebrows quivered fractionally, but he remained just as firm as before, and if anything his jaw sharpened and his voice hardened and acquired an irritable edge. There must be some mistake, Officer, I persisted.

  What would he do if I got on his nerves? Shoot me? Have me thrown to the sharks? Expel me from the country? Persona non grata. I remember that we learned that new phrase after independence as foreigners discovered how sensitive to insult our government could be: one European joker was expelled for going to a fancy-dress party in a grass skirt and with a bone through his nose, an American teacher on a peace corps assignment was sent home for having a live-in rent boy, someone at the British High Commission was discovered to have copies of the bills for furnishing the Minister of Commerce’s new villa, which was a bit much, I suppose. Away they all went, personae non gratae. So I reflected whether by my insistent behaviour I could become subject to this phrase. That would make me an exile rather than an immigrant, and give me the credibility to sit on platforms and harangue people to give up their small comforts and join in the political struggle. If I cared to.

  ‘Could I have a wo
rd with the secretary?’ I asked, making one last try for the sake of it. The guard, if anything, seemed to be winding himself down, so there seemed little danger of being martyred. Also, up to now I had been speaking to the guard in English, hoping that this would make me seem more interesting to the Prime Minister in his eyes. But now I spoke in Kiswahili, just a little experiment. He gave me a sharp glance and then grinned, and I couldn’t help grinning back. ‘Can I see him? Perhaps I can explain.’

  ‘Ala, mtu wetu,’ he said. You’re one of us. ‘I thought you were West Indian or an American, one of those black Europeans. Give me your name, and I’ll speak to the secretary again.’

  When I gave him my name, he considered it and then looked at me for a long moment. I knew what was coming. We were in Darajani Primary School together, he said, his face glowing with joy. Don’t you remember me? Mohammed Khamis, I was four years behind you. It’s been a long time, brother, but now you say your name I can see it’s you. So what was that speaking to me in English, some kind of disguise? Karibu, bwana, welcome. I hadn’t heard that you were back, or I’d have come round to greet you. Alhamdulillah, it’s good to see you again.

  Now that he mentioned it, I thought I recognized him too, but I felt that about so many faces, to which I could not put any names, that I had begun to think that I was just over-compensating for the way time had cheated me of memory, had addled my past after such a long absence. In any case, I was soon in the hands of the secretary, who was such a young man he seemed a mere boy, and who was swept away by Mohammed Khamis’s enthusiasm for his reunion with an old schoolmate, and had no choice but to ring the chief and ask him if he had time to see me.

  So at last I got to meet the man whose shameless (because so transparent) antics for survival I had been watching every night on TV with reluctantly increasing admiration. He stepped out of his office with a hand outstretched, a broad secure smile resting firmly in his face, his tall athletic body striding effortlessly towards me. I was struck by how much, in this mode, he resembled the school prefect I had known years ago rather than the ranter on the box I had come to know more recently. I remembered at that moment a school sports day many years ago. I had the honour of belonging to the photographic society. At that time I had visions of becoming a world-famous news photographer, though for the moment I did not mind taking passport photographs of my schoolmates for a few shillings, or developing and printing their films at a cut-price rate. In any case, the photographic society ran a competition to see who could come up with the best action photograph of the sports day. It was a project ideal for exhibitionism and the triumph of the will, so I decided to go for farce. I would concentrate on the losers and strugglers, capture their agony and despair as their strength failed them and they anticipated the jeers that would greet them as they gasped and spluttered to the finishing line. Or better still, catch a revealing image of one or two of the fakers, the non-tryers (I would have been one of them if I hadn’t been exempted because of the photo competition) who huffed and puffed while they jogged along contentedly half a mile behind everyone else. When I came to process my film, I saw that I had succumbed to the athleticism of the Prime-Minister-to-be and had snapped him winning a thrilling 1500-metres race, his arms flung out in triumph, his head thrown back, an impossible grin on his upturned face. I put that photograph in as one of my entries, but of course it didn’t have a chance. Nobody had a chance, and the prize was duly won by the president of the society, who was a sixth-former, a prefect, and a cousin of the headmaster (who was the sole judge of the competition).

  As I walked ahead of him into his large, airy office, with important-looking papers scattered over his huge desk, I reminded myself of the young man who had accepted a blown-up copy of that photograph with embarrassed pleasure, and tried to forget his cynical endeavours to remain chief of the country’s empty food-stores and its blocked toilets by persuading us that our betters were on the point of showering us with agreeable funding so long as he was there to receive it. Then we could renovate our hotels, bring in the tourists, enter an era of prosperity and justice for all, and live happily ever after.

  ‘Amur Malik told me you were back,’ he said when we were sitting opposite each other in huge chairs. ‘I’m honoured that you could spare the time.’

  ‘The honour is mine,’ I said.

  ‘Then we are mutually honoured,’ he said with an easy, practised smile. ‘Do you know the first thing that came to mind when he told me you were here? What a pleasure it was that our best minds were coming back home. That’s what I thought. There is so much to be done here, and I remember what a brilliant student you were when we were at school together, and how much you’ve achieved since then. But it’s here that we need all that brilliance, not to have it wasted on the English. I asked Amur to tell you that, and to suggest something to you that you would find impossible to resist. I hope he succeeded.’

  I smiled back and waited. Really, I couldn’t see what they were up to. Brilliant student was an overstatement, but I was willing to accept it, especially under the present dire circumstances when curses and abuse and heartache were my lot, but the achievement-since-then stuff must be a mockery, or politeness, or just waffle, something to say to pass the time. Why aren’t you getting the toilets fixed instead of chatting me up? Why did you agree to see me at all? Don’t you have work to do, a country to run, tonight’s speech to ponder over?

  ‘I can see he did not completely succeed, then,’ he said, courteously failing to disguise his disappointment. ‘I would, if I may, add my entreaties to his. Not only do we need you back, but there are opportunities here for dedicated cadres. Do not abandon us.’

  ‘I have been watching you on TV the last few nights,’ I said, wondering if I was about to do something crass and foolhardy, something that would result in a bumpy flight from my homeland. I am not sure, but I think his eyes began to move sideways before he stopped them, as if he was expecting someone over his shoulder to be listening to our conversation. ‘They have been inspiring performances. Will you be doing another one tonight? The funding prospects look good.’

  He waved the subject away genially, but his eyes were hard and watchful. I was not surprised. I would have been ranting at the impertinence if I were him, and I knew he could rant. He was, after all, the chief, even though there were bigger chiefs above him, the Rais and the Federal Rais, who could snuff him out between meetings or orgies or whatever they did when they weren’t giving speeches at the UN or addressing international conferences on the future of Africa.

  ‘Let me tell you. Sometimes this is a thankless task,’ he said, straining at sincerity. ‘We do our best to move the nation towards progress, to change things for the better. We do this with our best effort and our utmost dedication. Do you think our efforts are appreciated? Well, by most of the citizens they are, I think. I sincerely believe that – but there are always malingerers, people who would rather wreck our whole future for their own petty gain. I am only trying to renew that enthusiasm for progress that is so characteristic of our people, to persuade them to hold on, not to give up but to labour for the future that we know we deserve.’

  ‘So there is going to be another appearance tonight,’ I said, smiling at his hard eyes.

  He waved the subject away with a synthetic smile. ‘I hear you’ve married an English woman,’ he said, smiling in that arch and crass way that men do when they talk about women on their own. ‘I also hear that you turned down Safiya Hilali. She is a lovely woman, much sought after. It’s your choice, of course, but I can’t say that I think it’s a wise one. I understand that your parents are very distressed, and I’m not surprised. Still, everyone has his own life.’

  I knew then (not that I didn’t really know before, but some lessons have to be learned and relearned, and even then we forget them so easily and talk ourselves into something ameliorating and hopeful) that the food-stores were going to remain empty, and that schools would be without books, and the air would be filled with crue
l, duplicitous promises, that justice would be just another word brayed from the mouths of the donkeys who rule us, and of course the toilets were going to remain blocked for a long time. If, with all that was waiting for him to do, our chief found time to concern himself with the intimate and pathetic doings of my existence and the unthinking meannesses of my family, then there was little else to do but hope that the funding from the Scandinavian cultural institute would turn up and keep the ramshackle ship of state afloat. If our chief, who was rumoured to be the best of them, could only fill his head with such gossip, nothing could be expected of the rest. They had long ago turned into organs of consumption and penetration, prehensile tools of self-gratification.

  The sky was just beginning to lighten when the airline crew began to bustle around us: turning the lights back up, distributing face towels, promising breakfast. Unfortunately, they also woke up the fat old man, who shut his mouth and began a fresh assault of poisonous fumes from his nether end. Perhaps fresh is to misdescribe it, but potent and energetic, in any case. Have mercy, I whispered, but he only glanced round with loathing, parting his sneering lips for a moment to release more stale perfume. No question, the man was serious. It suddenly occurred to me that the man might not have been farting at all, but carrying a colostomy bag round his belly, and that all night long I might have been sitting with a purse of shit by my right hand. I rushed off to the toilet to gag and brush my teeth and generally freshen up in the yeasty atmosphere of an aeroplane lavatory after many hours in the air. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Mashaallah, I didn’t think I had seen anything uglier for years.

  ‘You asked me something earlier which I never got round to answering, but I was thinking about it in the night,’ Ira said when she returned from the toilet, and had climbed over the stinking old man, who refused to move a muscle to let either of us in or out which was just as well. Perhaps it wasn’t a colostomy bag, but a meanness and bitterness which had corroded his body and made it rot. ‘You asked what it was like for me when I came to England. I would guess there can only be one answer to that question. How would a ten-year-old Indian girl who had grown up in Nairobi feel about coming to England in the late Sixties?’

 

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