Dance of the Jakaranda

by Peter Kimani

  * * *

  The requirements at the Bank of England were elaborate but Mariam had prepared adequately. She had every detail they sought to verify her identity. The parcel, wrapped in brown paper that had started yellowing, was not more than a foot long and a foot wide. Rajan signed to confirm he had witnessed the parcel was received intact. Mariam used the tip of the pen to rip the lining open. She took out the sealed envelope inside and opened it, reading briskly as Rajan sat and watched from across the table.

  If I Die, The Last Word from Reverend Richard Turnbull,

  Minister of the Gospel to His Beloved Family in Ndundori

  I know by writing this I am rewriting my own history, perhaps erasing a more venerated account that is likely to have taken root by now. I am motivated to write this by several things: Firstly, there is a war going on in the summer of 1952. The armed Kiama kia Rukungu insurgents have warned me and other ministers of the gospel against carrying on with our work. I am not afraid of death, but this is not a quest for martyrdom. I have been dead for a long time.

  My last word, however, should not be read as a statement on larger things about life. Rather, it is a simple confession, a gesture toward making amends for personal transgressions. By sharing the truth, I am subverting the prospects of lies that I have lived from being allowed to stand, least of all perpetuated by others. I am, after all, human. I am writing to seek my own redemption, to seek peace with myself. As I like to say, we have all come short of the glory of God.

  My daughter Rehema and my granddaughter Mariam both need to know the story of their lives. Like John the Baptist who foresaw the birth of our Savior, and delivered the truth from an ancient time, I convey to my daughter Rehema the truth of her birth. I am not just her social and spiritual father; I am her biological father.

  I confess to the despicable act of molesting her mother Seneiya, the daughter of Chief Lonana, barely a child herself, to gratify my own flesh. I regret my own lack of self-control, and even more, the lack of courage to own up to my failure. It is true I coveted not just the beautiful land of Kenia, but also her beautiful children as well.

  Moreover, I am ashamed for scheming, together with Ian Edward McDonald, to place blame on the young Indian man, Babu Rajan Salim. I am ashamed of having scared the young man away and pushed him into hiding. I was afraid his continued stay, awaiting the birth of the child, would expose my fraud. I am ashamed for hitting a man when he was down, instead of offering a helping hand and lifting him up, and for bearing false witness against him.

  As though my transgressions weren’t enough, I deployed schemes of deception to disguise my charitable act. I retained the suspected father’s surname in Rehema’s identity because I did not want to draw any attention to my own name. Like the biblical Cain, fated to bear a mark that distinguished him wherever he went, Rehema’s surname, Salim, bears a permanent whiff of scandal although she is innocent. I should have been man enough to name her appropriately after myself. It was for this reason that I gave Rehema’s daughter Mariam a different surname, unrelated to the Indian, though I admit still unrelated to myself or Mariam’s biological father.

  The identity of Mariam’s father was kept a secret all these years as well. Let it be known her father is McDonald. His affair with Rehema came to my notice rather late in the day, and it broke my heart that a dear friend would violate my trust. We have shared many milestones with McDonald, but having him as a son-in-law is the one aspect I resent the most. This is just about the only instance when two wrongs make a right; I feel redeemed that I’m not the only one who has fallen short of the glory of God.

  Rehema is not the only child I leave behind. The reason I deposited this note in a vault in Mombasa is to allow a bit of reflection on your journey back. Is this cardinal failure the only thing that should define my existence under the sun? Mombasa is also where my journey began; see the land anew and judge for yourself if I could have lived differently when such beauty abounds.

  But don’t travel with your eyes shut, be on the lookout for other big-nosed mulattos who dot the train stations. In all probability, some will be your relatives, descended from the loins of mubea, the minister of the gospel who failed his flock, although it wasn’t for lack of trying. If it’s any consolation, I have substituted the mounds of earth bearing the remains of men who died building the rail with living beings, made beautiful in the eyes of the Lord.

  As a final act of penance toward the Indian man, Babu Rajan Salim, whom I falsely accused and scapegoated, I offer the following: one quarter of any monies that may be paid by my mother church upon my death. It is not to buy his silence but to restore his losses against another injustice that I witnessed in broad daylight but never spoke out against. He was shortchanged by McDonald and his henchmen over a grudge they held against him, but which they could never prove: that he had instigated labor unrest on the coast.

  In this final act, I shall do what I have never done all my life. I shall go against the biblical teaching which promotes the idea of an eye for an eye. As recompense for bearing false witness against Babu Rajan Salim, I shall volunteer the following information in regard to the suspicious birth of his baby boy, Rashid. His wife Fatima arrived at our mission hospital on November 7, 1901, and soon went into labor. The nurses reported everything went well until she was asked to give the name of the baby’s father. She instantly said it was Ahmad Dodo. When she was asked to spell out the last name, she came to her senses and said that the name shouldn’t go in the register. The boy’s father should be registered as Babu Rajan Salim. I believe the boy’s true father is the man she named on the pain of birth and that is Ahmad Dodo. If Babu does not know it already, then he should know he was cuckolded. And if he’s aware of the deception but doesn’t know the man, then he should look no further than Ahmad Dodo. We have all fallen short of the glory of God.

  Written on this 20th day of October 1952 at Ndundori Mission

  —Reverend Richard Turnbull, Minister of Gospel

  When Mariam was done reading, she sighed and pushed the letter across to Rajan without a word.

  22

  Kihii kionire uriro mbere ya gukawe—a boy discovers the marvels of life before his grandfather—Nakuru residents say of things that spare the old and afflict the young. Across the seas, another sage said: The child is the father of the man. This succinct truism encapsulated Rajan’s travails. He now possessed knowledge of things that had eluded his grandfather all his life. Mariam now knew what her mother Rehema had never known. And Rajan and Mariam now knew they shared a common heritage: the Jakaranda was Mariam’s father’s house, and McDonald and Babu had a grudge that they had held for a lifetime.

  Rajan and Mariam returned to the train station soon after leaving the Bank of England, somewhat exhausted by what each had discovered. They wanted to catch the night train to Nakuru to escape the sordid details of their pasts. And night travel would at least spare them the sight of the long-nosed children that Reverend Turnbull had said they risked encountering along the way. The dark of night would hide their secret blight—shield their tearful faces from prying eyes. They both found the night comforting.

  They bought their tickets without incident. Rajan’s face, now ashen with worry, persuaded the attendant that he was white. They sat together, snuggling, not in the impassioned heat of affection, but the solidarity of war veterans. Each wrestled with a mixture of emotions: anger, denial, bitterness. But it was mostly the exhaustion that lulled them into a fitful sleep through most of the fourteen-hour journey. Overnight, they had grown from carefree young people to burdened adults, pushed to the edge of a tidal swirl that threatened to drown their world as they knew it.

  Suddenly, many things made sense to Rajan, like why his father Rashid, absent for half his life, was a taboo topic in Babu’s household. It made a lot of sense, Rajan recognized, that Fatima and Babu found crafty ways of deflecting any conversation about his father. The official narrative was that he had gone to study in England, and had chosen
to extend his stay after his studies. Now Rajan understood his father had been banished from the land possibly to save Babu the continued humiliation of being reminded of Fatima’s infidelity. That was the compromise the couple had reached—to dispatch Rashid to London as soon as he reached eighteen. Rajan had few recollections of his mother, save the scant information that she had joined Rashid in England when Rajan was three. He couldn’t put a face to the name, so he had come to regard her as an invention. Only that he was born of a woman—the proof of her existence was his own being.

  Then there was McDonald’s long-held grudge and his schemes of deceptions to deny Babu his just wages for honest toil. How much else had Babu been dispossessed? Rajan wondered, feeling his heart go out to his grandfather. Should he tell Babu what he had discovered? And if so, how much of it? Could he handle the truth that had eluded him for sixty years?

  The horn blasted, interrupting Rajan’s train of thought. They were approaching Nakuru. It was dawn and first light was struggling to shine through the dark clouds of dawn. Moments later, a wave of amber cracked open, suffusing portions of the water with a hint of soft orange so that it appeared as though Lake Nakuru was on fire. Mariam started to wake up. Rajan touched her face, planted a kiss on her forehead, and wandered to the window. He saw the sliver of light upon the lake, and the steam rising from the spring. But there was something wrong with the picture. Rajan had experienced the Nakuru dawn enough times to be able to sense that something was amiss. On clear mornings, one was able to see the silhouette of Mount Kenya, the mountain of God that had given the country its name. And depending on where one was standing, the snowcapped peaks melted into the sea as its shadow was superimposed on the Jakaranda. But the establishment was missing from the picture. So where was the Jakaranda? Where was the monument that defined the township? And how was his grandfather Babu faring? Would he be able to look him and his grandmother Fatima in the eye and reveal what he had discovered? Rajan shuddered at the thought, burdened by the family history that he knew he would have to bear alone.

  Rajan turned to Mariam. He was about to inquire if she had noticed something was different about the town’s landscape but quickly realized the Jakaranda now held a deeply personal meaning to Mariam. It was her father’s house. And she probably hadn’t spent enough time in Nakuru to notice the difference. Rajan disembarked with a mixture of panic and curiosity. He had an inkling that things would never be the same again for him and his family. He and Mariam were still holding hands, momentarily breaking their bond to upturn the collars of their coats to ward off the chilly dawn wind. A man stood in the way and they parted to avoid him. Another man roughly grabbed Rajan’s hand and pulled him to the side.

  “Wapi certificate of clearance?” the man demanded, producing a pair of handcuffs. They were plainclothes policemen.

  Rajan flashed a grin, mistaking this as a stunt from adoring fans. “What certificate?” he asked, smiling.

  “Don’t show me your teeth, you think I’m your grandmother? Wapi certificate? If you have none, then you must be an alien.”

  “What do you mean by an alien?”

  “Weee. I’m not your English teacher. I’m a policeman on duty. Twende! You will tell us more when we get to the station!”

  “What’s this nonsense? My grandfather built this town with his very hands. What kind of evidence do you need to know I belong here?” he protested as the shackles were put on his wrists.

  “Ala unanyeta? Let’s get going. You will tell those stories to your grandmother,” the policeman responded.

  Rajan grimaced as the grip on his wrists tightened. He was unsure if the man had used the line about his grandmother in jest, as it was a common slur among locals. Once outside, he was thrust into a waiting truck—the Black Maria, as locals called it—where other people had been consigned as well.

  “I will go with him,” Mariam said to the policeman, climbing into the truck after Rajan.

  “We are not arresting wazungu, but if you want to come with us, who could resist such a beauty?” the policeman said. “We are now a free country, aren’t we? Come one, come all!”

  “So this is the ladies’ man, eeeeh?” another policeman jumped in. “I will show you the real men around here.” He grabbed Rajan by the back of his pants and dragged him to a corner of the truck. Rajan tiptoed to minimize the sudden pressure on his lower abdomen. What’s going on? he asked himself for the umpteenth time. First, he could not locate Nakuru’s towering landmark from the train, now he was being told he needed a special document to set foot in the place he had learned to play. Rajan concluded that either something had gone terribly wrong in Nakuru since he’d left or something was wrong with his head.

  * * *

  News of Rajan’s sighting and subsequent arrest spread fast across Nakuru. And in keeping with the Nakuru tradition, those who witnessed Rajan’s arrest added a new twist to the story. They said he had been arrested over suspicion of involvement in the arson attack on the Jakaranda. How could one bite the hand that feeds him? some wondered loudly. Yet others claimed Rajan had returned to perform his swan song before migrating to India, where he was betrothed to marry an Indian bride. The latter assertion was attributed to the mass relocation of Indians as the government deadline approached. Who would have thought the king of mugithi considered himself an Indian? some whispered. This is betrayal of the highest order. And why had the Indian Raj only discovered his Indianness after getting through with our girls? yet others whispered.

  Regardless of which version, those who heard the news felt the need to visit the Jakaranda and witness what was unfolding. By midday, several hundred people had assembled at the ruins, adding to the number who had arrived earlier, the competing narratives giving way to even newer narratives, the latest version being that Rajan was being held after being caught in the act with a white girl.

  Those assembled attracted other passersby, who stopped to watch what others were watching. What, exactly, none could tell. By nightfall, thousands of Nakuru residents and the neighboring villages of Karumaindo, Meciria, and Ituramiro had descended on the Jakaranda. At this stage, the gathering had gained sociopolitical meaning. They said they were keeping wake over the loss of their landmark, from where it was rumored Big Man was about to address the nation. By midnight, those who could manage had made their trips back home or sent for blankets and torches, food and firewood. A bonfire was lit on the ruins of the Jakaranda as a song rent the air:

  Moto umewaka leo!

  Moto umewaka leo!

  Tuimbe haleluya, moto umewaka!

  A preacher rose to offer a prayer. Before long, word spread that a holy visitation had been sighted at the ruins. The fire may have ravaged the place, but it had also renewed and strengthened it. The spiritual rumor drew even more people to the Jakaranda as some claimed that Reverend Turnbull, long presumed dead, had returned in perfect health to address the gathering at the establishment. Haiya, wonders will never cease, many villagers exclaimed.

  On the second day, a contingent of armed police officers and army personnel were deployed to watch over the swelling crowds, issuing ultimatums for them to disperse before severe action was taken against them. But that only served to enrage the crowds who demanded to be addressed by Big Man. If their demand was not met, they said, they would march to the statehouse and seek an audience with him.

  This idea soon blossomed into a chant: Rajan for President! Rajan for President! Yes, the aspirations of the young nation should be entrusted to the young. Those assembled said they would install Rajan as the people’s president, and a group started its march toward the statehouse. A few politicians arrived to address the gathering. They said Rajan was too young to be elected to office, but he was certainly among the leaders of tomorrow. They pledged that once they were elected, they would lobby Parliament to amend the law and lower the age at which one could run for president from thirty-five to twenty-five. But that only spurred the roiling swirl of humanity to demand that the police produce
the Indian Raj or else they would invade the station and retrieve him.

  It was the latter assertion that threw the authorities into a panic and scuttled the plans to have McDonald address the crowd and issue an eviction order. He had been scheduled to speak to the crowd and order them off his land. Instead, the police considered the various options to defuse the gargantuan problem they had created for themselves. Releasing Rajan without charging him would leave them with egg on their faces, but when McDonald was consulted, he warned the authorities against underrating Rajan’s capacity to cause trouble. “The fruit does not fall far from the tree,” McDonald said, recalling the tribulations that Babu had occasioned him. He made no mention that the pretty young woman accompanying Rajan was his own daughter.

  The police, convinced that his supporters would invade any station to retrieve him, shuffled Rajan from one place to another. As hours ticked away, the crowd swelled, surging toward the police barricade. By the afternoon of the second day of protest, police bayonets were touching the throats of the assembled young men and women of different races. The procession had now spilled onto the streets of Nakuru. Not many understood why they were in the streets in the first place, neither did they seem to care. All they had was a hunch that what they were doing was important; they were participating in the making of history, what they would one day proudly narrate to their children or their children’s children. Yes, I was there on that day people descended on the ruins of the Jakaranda. I saw it happen with these very eyes . . .

  23

  From the Black Maria, Rajan and Mariam were led to a barely furnished room where a man in a blue uniform was hunched, scribbling furiously.

  “This is Inspector Hongo, he will take your statement,” said the plainclothes policeman who had not identified himself.

  Inspector Hongo looked up, placed his official police hat on his square head, and hissed: “Yes?”