by M G Vassanji
‘You may have uncles in America who would help you,’ Mother told him, ‘but no one here will.’
Aloo’s shoulders sagged and he sat there toying with his cup, close to tears. Mother sat drinking from her saucer and frowning. The evening light came in from the window behind me and gave a glint to her spectacles. Finally she set her saucer down. She was angry.
‘And why do you want to go away, so far from us? Is this what I raised you for – so you could leave me to go away to a foreign place? Won’t you miss us, where you want to go? Do we mean so little to you? If something happens …’
Aloo was crying. A tear fell into his cup, his nose was running. ‘So many kids go and return, and nothing happens to them … Why did you mislead me, then? Why did you let me apply if you didn’t want me to go … why did you raise my hopes if only to dash them?’ He had raised his voice to her, the first time I saw him do it, and he was shaking.
He did not bring up the question again and he prepared himself for the agricultural college, waiting for the term to begin. At home he would slump on the sofa putting away a novel a day.
If the unknown bureaucrat at the Ministry of Education had been less arbitrary, Aloo would not have been so broken and Mother would not have felt compelled to try and do something for him.
A few days later, on a Sunday morning, she looked up from her sewing machine and said to the two of us: ‘Let’s go and show this letter to Mr Velji. He is experienced in these matters. Let’s take his advice.’
Mr Velji was a former administrator of our school. He had a large egg-shaped head and a small compact body. With his large forehead and big black spectacles he looked the caricature of the archetypal wise man. He also had the bearing of one. The three of us were settled in his sitting-room chairs staring about us and waiting expectantly when he walked in stiffly, like a toy soldier, to welcome us.
‘How are you, sister?’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’
Aloo and I stood up respectfully as he sat down.
‘We have come to you for advice …’ Mother began.
‘Speak, then,’ he said jovially and sat back, joining his hands behind his head.
She began by giving him her history. She told him which family she was born in, which she had married into, how she had raised her kids when our father died. Common relations were discovered between our families. ‘Now this one here,’ she pointed at me, ‘goes to university here, and that one wants to go to America. Show him the documents,’ she commanded Aloo.
As if with an effort, Aloo pushed himself out of the sofa and slowly made his way to place the documents in Mr Velji’s hands. Before he looked at them Mr Velji asked Aloo his result in the final exam.
At Aloo’s answer, his eyes widened. ‘Henh?’ he said. ‘All A’s?’
‘Yes,’ replied Aloo, a little too meekly.
Mr Velji flipped the papers one by one, cursorily at first. Then he went over them more carefully. He looked at the long visa form with the carbon copies neatly bound behind the original; he read over the friendly letter from the Foreign Student Adviser; he was charmed by the letters of invitation from the fraternities. Finally he looked up, a little humbled.
‘The boy is right,’ he said. ‘The university is good, and they are giving him a bursary. I congratulate you.’
‘But what should I do?’ asked Mother anxiously. ‘What is your advice? Tell us what we should do.’
‘Well,’ said Mr Velji, ‘it would be good for his education.’ He raised his hand to clear his throat. Then he said, a little slowly: ‘But if you send him, you will lose your son.
‘It’s a far place, America,’ he concluded, wiping his hands briskly at the finished business. ‘Now what will you have – tea? orange squash?’
His wife appeared magically to take orders.
‘All the rich kids go every year and they are not lost,’ muttered Aloo bitterly as we walked back home. Mother was silent.
That night she was at the sewing machine and Aloo was on the couch, reading. The radio was turned low and through the open front door a gentle breeze blew in to cool the sitting room. I was standing at the door. The banana tree and its offspring rustled outside, a car zoomed on the road, throwing shadows on neighbouring houses. A couple out for a stroll, murmuring, came into sight over the uneven hedge; groups of boys or girls chattered before dispersing for the night. The intermittent buzz of an electric motor escaped from Mother’s sewing machine. It was a little darker where she sat at the other end of the room from us.
Presently she looked up and said a little nonchalantly, ‘At least show me what this university looks like – bring that book, will you?’
Mother had never seen the catalogue. She had always dismissed it, had never shown the least bit of curiosity about the place Aloo wanted so badly to visit. Now the three of us crowded around the glossy pages, pausing at pictures of the neoclassic façades and domes, columns towering over humans, students rushing about in a dither of activity, classes held on lush lawns in ample shade. It all looked so awesome and yet inviting.
‘It’s something, isn’t it?’ whispered Aloo, hardly able to hold back his excitement. ‘They teach hundreds of courses there,’ he said. ‘They send rockets into space … to other worlds … to the moon –’
‘If you go away to the moon, my son, what will become of me?’ she said humorously, her eyes gleaming as she looked up at us.
Aloo went back to his book and Mother to her sewing.
A little later I looked up and saw Mother deep in thought, brooding, and as she often did at such times she was picking her chin absent-mindedly. It was, I think, the first time I saw her as a person and not only as our mother. I thought of what she must be going through in her mind, what she had gone through in bringing us up. She had been thirty-three when Father died, and she had refused several offers of marriage because they would all have entailed one thing: sending us all to the ‘boarding’ – the orphanage. Pictures of her before his death showed her smiling and in full bloom: plump but not excessively fat, hair puffed fashionably, wearing high heels and make-up. There was one picture, posed at a studio, which Father had had touched up and enhanced, which now hung beside his. In it she stood against a black background, holding a book stylishly, the nylon pachedi painted a light green, the folds falling gracefully down, the borders decorated with sequins. I had never seen her like that. All I had seen of her was the stern face getting sterner with time as the lines set permanently and the hair thinned, the body turned squat, the voice thickened.
I recalled how Aloo and I would take turns sleeping with her at night on her big bed; how she would squeeze me in her chubby arms, drawing me up closer to her breast until I could hardly breathe – and I would control myself and hope she would soon release me and let me breathe.
She looked at me looking at her and said, not to me, ‘Promise me … promise me that if I let you go, you will not marry a white woman.’
‘Oh Mother, you know I won’t!’ said Aloo.
‘And promise me that you will not smoke or drink.’
‘You know I promise!’ He was close to tears.
Aloo’s first letter came a week after he left, from London where he’d stopped over to see a former classmate. It flowed over with excitement. ‘How can I describe it,’ he wrote, ‘the sight from the plane … mile upon mile of carefully tilled fields, the earth divided into neat green squares … even the mountains are clean and civilised. And London … Oh London! It seemed that it would never end … blocks and blocks of houses, squares, parks, monuments … could any city be larger? … How many of our Dar es Salaams would fit here, in this one gorgeous city …?’
A bird flapping its wings: Mr Velji nodding wisely in his chair, Mother staring into the distance.
Breaking Loose
The rock band Iblis was playing. The lead guitarist and singer was a local heart-throb, a young Asian with fairly long hair and bell-bottom trousers now in the midst of another brisk number from the foreig
n pop charts. Close to the stage danced a group of modish, brightly dressed girls, proclaiming by their various excesses their closeness with the four band members.
Yasmin was at the far end of the dance floor with her girlfriends. Three of them occupied the table with the only chairs available, Yasmin and the other two stood around. Occasionally she would look up to take in the dance scene, the band, the modish girls, hoping to catch a vacated chair she could bring over. The band was loud, the room hot and stuffy, and the men were drenched with sweat and the girls fanning themselves with handkerchiefs or anything else they could find. A well-dressed black man, somewhat odd in a grey suit, his necktie rakishly loosened, emerged from the throng of dancing couples and went up to her requesting the dance. She went.
Of all the girls here, why me? I don’t want to dance. I can’t dance. From the centre of the dance floor where he’d taken her she threw a longing glance at her gang chatting away in the distance.
‘I’m sorry,’ he smiled, ‘I took you away from your friends …’
‘It’s okay … only for a few minutes –’ she began and blushed, realising that unwittingly she’d agreed. After all it’s an honour, she thought. He’s a professor.
It was a dance that did not require closeness or touching – and she was grateful for that mercy.
‘Daniel Akoto. That’s my name.’
‘I know … I’m Yasmin Rajan.’
It’s all so unnecessary. I’m not the type. He should have tried one of those cheeky ones dancing barefoot. Now that would have drawn some fun.
She looked at her partner. He was graceful, much more – she was certain – than she.
She was a head shorter than him. Her long hair was combed back straight and supported with a red band, in the manner favoured by schoolgirls, and she wore a simple dress. This was the middle of her second year at the University.
‘Good music,’ he said.
‘Yes, isn’t it? I know the lead guitarist …’
‘But too western, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know …’
She felt oppressed by the ordeal, and the heat, and the smoke, the vapours of sweat, beer and perfume. There was the little worry too – why had he picked her and would he pursue her. He was looking at her. He was offended by her attitude and going on about Asians.
‘… truly colonised … mesmerised … more so than the African I dare say.’
She didn’t reply, trying her best to give a semblance of grace to her movements – feeling guilty, wholly inadequate and terribly embarrassed.
Just when she thought the rest of the dance would proceed smoothly – the music was steady and there was a kind of lull in the noise level – the leader of the band let out a whoop from the stage. There were whoops of rejoinder, followed by renewed energy on the dance floor. Akoto shook his head, and Yasmin watched him with dread.
‘Look at that. Beatniks. Simply aping the Europeans … not a gesture you’ll find original. Your kinsmen, I presume?’
She forced a smile. I hope he doesn’t raise a scene.
‘There are African bands too, you know,’ she said.
‘But the beat, my dear, the music. Now take that song. Rolling Stones. What do you call Indian in that … for instance?’ he persisted. ‘Perhaps I’m missing something.’
Oh why doesn’t he stop, for God’s sake.
‘What do you mean we’re colonised?’ she said exasperated. ‘Of course we have our own culture. Come to our functions and see. We have centuries-old traditions …’
She had stopped dancing and there were tears in her eyes. She felt trapped and under attack in the middle of the couple of hundred people twisting and shaking around her. She could feel curious eyes burning upon her, watching her embarrassment.
She left Akoto in the middle of the dance floor and walked stiffly to her friends.
The next day she waited for the axe to fall. A call to the Vice Chancellor’s office, a reprimand for publicly insulting a distinguished professor, a visitor from another African country. Perhaps she would just be blacklisted: a rude Asian girl, who doesn’t know her place.
During lunch in the refectory one of her friends pointed him out to her. He was standing at the door, throwing sweeping looks across the hall searching for someone. She drew a deep breath and waited. His eyes found her and he hurried forward between tables, pushing aside chairs, grinning, answering courtesies on the way with waves and shouts. When he arrived, a place was made for him at the table at which he sank comfortably, putting both his hands in front of him. He looked at her.
‘About last night …’ he began. The other girls picked up their trays and left.
She laughed. ‘You pushed them out,’ she said. ‘They’ll hate you for that.’
Where had she found her confidence? He was in a red T-shirt – expensive, she thought. He looked handsome – and harmless.
‘But not for long, I hope,’ he began. His grin widened as he looked at her. ‘Again I’ve removed you from your friends – but this time I’ve come to apologise. I’m sorry about last night. I asked you for a dance and then played a tiresome little radical.’
‘It’s okay. I’m at fault too. You see …’
‘I know, I know. An innocent Indian girl in a den of wolves. But tell me – surely you expect men to come and ask you to dance in such a situation?’
She smiled, a little embarrassed. ‘Usually the presence of girlfriends is enough to deter men one doesn’t know …’
‘Trust a foreigner not to know the rules.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘You came to have a good time with your friends and I spoilt it for you. Honestly I’m sorry. Look: let me make up for it. I’ll take you for a drink. How about that?’
‘But I don’t drink … alcohol, I mean.’
‘Tut-tut! We’ll find something for you.’
He should not, of course, have pressed. But, as he said, he didn’t know the rules. That’s what she told herself when she found that she had accepted his invitation without any qualms.
‘I’ll take you to The Matumbi,’ he said when they met later that afternoon. The Matumbi was a teashop under a tree, half a mile from the campus. It had a thatched roof that only partly shaded it, and no walls. She went in hesitantly, feeling a little shy and out of place. But apparently Akoto was one of the regulars. He motioned to the owner who came up and wiped a sticky table for them, and then he pulled up a rickety chair for her, dusting it with a clean handkerchief.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.
‘No. I will just have tea … perhaps a small cake …’
‘Righto! Two teas, one cake and one sikisti!’ he called out.
She raised an eyebrow when the sikisti arrived. It was an egg omelette between two inch-thick slices of bread.
‘It’s called sikisti because of its price. Sixty cents!’
She laughed.
‘That’s the truth, believe me!’
Akoto was a professor of sociology, on loan from the Government of Ghana.
‘What is your major?’ he asked her after some time. ‘What subject are you taking?’
‘Literature.’
‘Literature?’
‘Yes.’ Now he thinks we are all shopkeepers.
‘Tell me: any African writers?’
‘Yes. Soyinka … Achebe …’
‘Things fall apart …’
‘The centre cannot hold.’
He laughed. ‘Ngũgĩ? Palangyo? Omari?’
She shook her head. She hadn’t heard of them.
‘Local writers. Budding. You should read Omari. Nuru Omari. She writes about the Coast – your territory. Wait for Me: that’s her first book. I could lend it to you if you want.’
‘It’s okay … I’ll borrow it from the library.’
He looked astonished. ‘But it will take time before the library acquires it!’
‘I’ll wait … I don’t have much time right now.’
‘All right.’ He was miffed.
‘Now
that I have made up for my rudeness,’ he said at last, seeing her a little restless, ‘I hope – having apologised and so on – perhaps we can go.’
I am studying literature and I have no time to read the most recent books. She felt guilty.
When she saw him again it was after several days and he did not appear to notice her. He’s got my message, she thought. I am not interested. Why did I go to the teashop with him, then? … Because he’s so different. What confidence, what grace … so civilised, such a gentleman! That’s it! she thought. He said we Asians are so westernised … aping the Europeans … mesmerised … what about him? All that external polish: he was a proper English gentleman himself! She would tell him so!
‘Dear Professor Akoto,’ she wrote, ‘I wanted to tell you something. I thought I should tell it to you before I forget it completely. You called us Asians colonised. We are mesmerised with the West, you said. Well, have you observed yourself carefully lately? All those European mannerisms, language, clothes – suits even in hot weather: you are so much the English gentleman yourself! Yours sincerely, Yasmin Rajan. P.S. Could I borrow Omari’s Wait for Me from you after all? Thanx.’ She slipped the note under his office door.
He repeated his previous performance at lunchtime the next day, edging out her friends from the table.
‘Your point is well taken,’ he said. ‘Touché and so on. But I thought we had forgiven all that. Still, I don’t quite agree with you. And the reason is this: I know my situation. I struggle. In any case … Let’s not argue. Let me show you my library. You can borrow any book you like.’
‘You have your own library?’ she murmured.
When she saw it she was dazzled. Three walls were covered with books. She had never before seen so many books belonging to one person – in a sitting room, part of the furniture as it were.
‘You’ve read all these books?’ she asked.
‘Well … I wouldn’t …’
‘I envy you. You must be so knowledgeable.’
‘Let’s not get carried away now.’
‘Do you also write?’
‘Yes. But nothing out yet.’