by M G Vassanji
He had a theory about African literature. ‘It is at present digging up the roots,’ he said. And that’s what he was trying to do. Dig. ‘So you can understand my obsession with authenticity. Even my name is a burden, an imposition.’
At The Matumbi, where they went that evening, she had her first sikisti. She talked about her background.
‘My father was a pawnbroker,’ she said, ‘but pawnshops are no longer allowed, so now he has a tailoring shop. Hardly a westernised background …’
He smiled. ‘Aren’t you ever going to forgive me?’
‘Tell me, do you think pawnshops are exploitative?’ she asked him.
‘Well, they tempt the poor and they do charge awfully high interest.’
‘Yes, but where else can the poor get loans? Would the banks give them? And as for the high interest – do you know the kind of things they bring to pawn off? Old watches, broken bicycles, clothes sometimes. We have three unclaimed antique gramophones at home that we can’t sell.’
‘Is that right? Can I look at them? I might buy one. I like old things that are out of fashion.’
‘Sure you can.’
He played badminton with the Asian girls one day, bringing along a shy young man from Norway. It was at a time (though they did not tell him) when they usually went to the mosque. After the game there was a heated discussion about China. And they arranged to play the next time a little later in the evening.
One afternoon, as agreed previously, Yasmin took him to her father’s shop to show him the antique gramophones. They went in his car and he dropped her off outside the shop and went to park.
When he entered the shop her father met him.
‘Come in, Bwana. What can I get for you?’
He was a short thin man with green eyes, wearing a long white shirt over his striped pyjamas.
‘I came with Yasmin,’ Akoto explained in his broken Swahili.
‘Yes? You want to buy something?’
‘I came for a gramophone –’
‘Ah, yes! The professor! Sit, sit.’
Akoto sat on the bench uncomfortably and waited, looking around inside the shop. The shelves lining the walls were filled with suiting, the glass showcases displayed shirts. Yasmin’s father went about his work. The girl soon arrived from the back door carrying an old gramophone. Behind her was a servant carrying two, one on top of the other, and behind the servant followed a tall thin woman: Yasmin’s mother. While her father showed Akoto the gramophone, Yasmin and her mother went back inside.
‘How can you bring him here like this?’ said her mother angrily. ‘What will the neighbours think? And the servants? It’s shameful!’
‘But Mummy, he is a professor!’
‘I don’t care if he’s a professor’s father!’
When they went back to the store the purchase was completed, Akoto and her father were chatting amiably about politics. Akoto was grinning, carrying a gramophone in his arms. He looked enquiringly at her.
Outside the store a few boys and girls from the neighbourhood walked by, throwing quick curious glances inside at the guest.
‘Yasmin will stay with us tonight,’ said her mother a little too loudly from the back doorway where she stood. ‘She’ll come back tomorrow. But she won’t miss her classes – I hope that is alright.’
‘Don’t worry, Mama. It’s perfectly alright.’
It was more than a week before they met again, briefly, in a corridor.
‘Where do you eat lunch these days? You’re the perfect salesman,’ he said in good humour. ‘You sell me an old gramophone and disappear. You afraid I’ll return it?’ She gave some excuse.
Later she returned the books she had borrowed from him and declined an invitation to The Matumbi.
The sight of Akoto in her shop that day had driven her mother into a fit. By the time he had left the shop hugging the gramophone she was raging with fury. ‘There are no friendships with men – not with men we don’t know …’ She said to Yasmin.
‘The world is not ready for it,’ her father said quietly.
‘You stay out of it!’ screamed his wife. ‘This is between us two.’
He remained quiet but stayed within hearing distance, measuring out cloth for his tailors. If Yasmin expected any understanding, or even a reasoned discussion with an adult, experienced voice, it was from her father. But ever since she could remember, she had been her mother’s business. And her mother, she believed, hated her for this, for being a girl. Yasmin was not the only child, there were three brothers. But ever since she could remember her mother was always admonishing, chiding, warning her – as if believing her capable of the worst. Now it seemed that all the horrors she had imagined possible from her daughter – against her, against the name and dignity of the family – were on the verge of coming true.
‘What do you know of him?’ She had been uncontrollable, obsessive, had gone on and on until she was hoarse and breathless. ‘With an Asian man, even if he’s evil, you know what to expect. But with him?’
At the end of the day the girl felt as if her bones had been picked dry.
Yasmin did not go to the end-of-year dance on campus. From her friends she heard of the one notable event that took place there. Professor Akoto, after sitting at a table all alone for some time and apparently after a little too much to drink, had got into a brawl with Mr Sharp of the Boys’ School, calling him a CIA agent. Then he’d staggered out.
India was not just the past, or the community, or even the jealous Indian communities of Dar. India was a continent, a civilisation, a political entity in the world. Only recently it had emerged from a long struggle for independence.
During the holidays Yasmin discovered her world. She read avidly about India, quizzed her father about it. India came as a revelation. Here in Africa she was an Asian, an Indian. Yet she had been a stranger to even the most recent Indian history. All she had received from her people about India were ancient customs, unchanged for generations, remotely related to the world around her. At first her acknowledgement of her origins seemed to her a reaction against Akoto, the African; yet it seemed to be harking back to the authenticity he had been talking about. In a strange and diabolical way it seemed to be bringing her closer to the man, as if what she was discovering was at his bidding, as if she had to go and discuss her findings with him, answer his challenges.
The world seemed a smaller place when she went back to the University. Smaller but exciting; teeming with people struggling, fighting, loving: surviving. And she was one of those people. People, bound by their own histories and traditions, seemed to her like puppets tied to strings: but then a new mutant broke loose, an event occurred, and lives changed, the world changed. She was, she decided, a new mutant.
Yasmin’s father collapsed with a heart attack under the weight of two bolts of suiting in his shop, one month after the University reopened. A servant was dispatched to fetch a doctor, who arrived an hour and a half later. By that time the former pawnbroker had died.
Daniel Akoto attended the funeral. He sat among the men, initially on the ground, trying to fold his legs, sweating profusely, pressed from all sides. A black face in a sea of patient brown Asian faces. He was not wearing a suit, just a very clean white shirt, but this time some of the other men were in jackets. A servant saw the discomfited man and placed a chair for him against the wall adjacent to the door. Now Akoto could see clearly across the room. The body was lying on a low table behind which two men sat on the floor administering the last rites to the dead. The widow sat beside the dead man, sobbing, comforted by her daughter, occasionally breaking into a wail and joined by other women. Mrs Rajan looked away from Akoto when their eyes first met. She moaned and started weeping. She saw him again through a film of tears, lost control and gave a loud wail.
‘You!’ she screamed, ‘what are you doing here? What kind of man are you, who comes to take away my daughter even in my grief … Who asked you to come? Go away!’ She wept.
Akoto, un
derstanding only partly her speech but fully the intent, tried to smile apologetically at the men and women now turning to stare at him.
‘Go!’ said the distraught woman pointing a finger at the door beside him.
No one else said a word. Akoto stood up, gave a respectful bow towards the dead man and left.
A week later Yasmin knocked on his door late in the evening and caught him in.
‘Come in,’ he said, putting away his pipe.
‘I’ve come to apologise about that day.’
‘It’s all right. A funeral is not exactly where people are at their best … perhaps they are more honest though.’ He eyed her.
‘You could have us arrested! You could …’
‘Don’t be silly! Take a hold of yourself. What do you think I am anyway – the secret police?’
‘You must despise us,’ she said more quietly. ‘You are educated, learned … your government has loaned you to us … You are a great man …’
‘No, I don’t despise you. And don’t call me great for God’s sake.’ She began to laugh, a little hysterically. They both laughed.
‘And you, I respect you.’ He spoke calmly. ‘You are brave. You left that gang of girls that day at the dance and since then you’ve done it again and again. It takes courage, what you’ve done, trying to break away from tribalism – that’s all it is ultimately … Even coming here like this. I realise that and I like you.’
‘Well, I like you too!’ she said, too quickly. There was a silence between them. ‘You know, it’s not going to be easy … with my father dead, this will be the greatest shock to my mother … it will kill her, it will …’
‘Now, now.’ He went up to her, put her wet face on his shirt. ‘We’ll have to do the best we can, won’t we?’
What Good Times We Had
At two o’ clock she sent the servant upstairs to the flat to wake Ramju up. He came down fifteen minutes later, still drowsy from his nap. She turned towards him a look of exasperation which melted ineffectually into one of concerned affection. What would become of him when she left, she wondered, this uncouth, uncultured fish barrel of a man, her brother?
‘I have to go see that bank clerk,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be back in an hour or two.’
She felt a pang of guilt as his eyes sought hers for an instant. There was no choice, she told herself, as she had already done a dozen times before. She had waited too long and perhaps it was already too late. She had to go, as the others had done: her several younger siblings, whom she had helped to bring up, had gone on to study and then had stayed. She had to go and try to remain there. If possible to send for Ramju. But he was a hopeless case. A good businessman here but completely inept and destabilised when confronted with a sentence in English. He could not even get a tourist visa to go abroad. Alone, how would he fare? He was so dependent on her she even had to remind him to shave. A bachelor now in his forties. They had tried so hard to get him a wife. First their mother and father and then she herself – looking around, enquiring, sending proposals. But invariably he picked the smart and pretty ones, who took one look at him and turned up their noses.
She took the car. On the way she wondered how she herself would fare, not many years younger than him and equally unmarriageable. If she wanted to remain abroad she had to get married then, she thought, one way or another. And if she did … what would become of him, this man who had run a duka, a small shop, all his life, who knew nothing else, had no family in the country? Would he die here a lonely old man with his shop?
There was a fair amount of traffic in people and cars outside the bank. She turned into the driveway and parked at a spot outside the main entrance. The building was new, erected a few years after Independence as the headquarters of the national bank after the foreign banks were nationalised. Its modern expansive structure, grey and concrete, rose up a few storeys high to preside over an array of white-washed colonial buildings spread out around it. Applications to buy foreign exchange to send money out of the country were considered here. There was a ruling now that airplane tickets for foreign travel could be bought only with the bank’s permission, which was not easy to obtain.
Clutching her handbag under one arm she took the front steps to the main reception area, a petite figure with dark features and thin long wavy hair, often mistaken, much to her consternation, for an Arab or half-caste. The bank clerk was waiting for her in the hallway.
‘Ah – you’re late!’
‘Yes, I had a little work to do. Do you have the ticket?’ she said, a little breathless.
‘Yes – but there’s a small problem.’ A round fleshy face, a big body, clumsy gait. In a dark grey Kaunda shirt. He did not at all look like a bank officer. ‘I gave it to my brother for safekeeping; we have to go and pick it up from his house. A small drive …’
She was piqued. ‘I’m not your chauffeur to drive you around! Do you want the money or not? You should have asked him to bring it. Pick it up tonight, then, and bring it to the store first thing in the morning.’
You had to be tough with them, otherwise they would walk all over you. Even the price he’d asked was far too high. But there was no alternative.
‘Look, Mama, I’ve run a lot of risks for you. I risk my job even talking to you like this. The CID know what’s going on. Now, do you want to go? Tomorrow is another day. This ticket is all stamped and waiting, if you want it.’
‘Okay, okay. Where, now?’
‘Take the road to the University. I’ll show you …’
She strode towards the car; he followed. She got in, closed her door and unlocked his from the inside. They drove out past the iron gates.
She drove aggressively, hooting at pedestrians and cyclists impatiently as she deftly dodged potholes and passed other cars. They left the city limits behind them and sped along the coastal road northward. The ocean was to their right and occasionally appeared as a glimmer through clearings in the trees and shrubbery. He sat comfortably beside her, the thought of which irked her. Like a husband, or a boss, arm resting on window, stomach pushing out. Enjoying the cool sea breeze. The sooner this was over with the better, she thought. Another price to pay. Soon however there would be no more prices to pay. Not such prices. Life wasn’t easy where she would soon be but it couldn’t be so bad. There was a price for everything here. And after all that, there was no peace to be had even at night time for fear of robbers. They lived on the edge, not knowing if they would be pushed off the precipice the next day – or if the hand of providence would lift them up and transport them to safety.
‘Soon you’ll be in Canada, Mama. Will you stay there for good or will you be returning to us?’
‘Oh, no – I will leave this land for good only if they take me by the hands and feet and throw me out,’ she lied, repeating an oft-quoted line. ‘It’s not easy there, you know. What’s wrong with this place anyway?’
‘True, true – you speak the truth Mama! Some people will never be satisfied. But this land gives enough.’
‘Besides, this is my country. I was born here, my father was born here. So was my mother.’
What times they had had here, she thought with bitterness. On this very road they used to go on picnics in open trucks, cauldrons brimming with Sunday’s choicest, singing, playing, laughing at the breeze that would blow their hair and muffle their voices … Food was abundant, fruit almost free, servants plentiful … violence, real violence, unknown … Who had ever seen a gun? …
Gone, wiped clean. A dream had passed. And now even if she were to describe those times to someone who had not been there he wouldn’t believe her. Sometimes she wondered if what her mind remembered could really have happened.
‘Slow down,’ he said, ‘turn right, there at that road.’
The University towers rose up dimly in a haze like a mirage further ahead in front of them. She waited for the traffic to clear, then took the turn quickly and drove some distance along the access road which was a clearing in the bushes partly la
yered with sand. It led towards the beach, a picnic spot. She could see the roofs of huts in the distance, hidden behind trees, and drove with difficulty over the uneven terrain that was covered with muddy potholes and clumps of grass.
‘What does your brother do here?’ she said in exasperation as the car jolted violently several times and they bounced on their seats. ‘Do you know what spare parts cost these days?’ He did not answer. ‘What you can get of them …’ she added grimly, peering ahead.
When they drew closer she saw the huts were burnt down, gutted with fire, the roofs just a bunch of sticks. There was no one in sight. She turned to look at him and recoiled with horror at the inane smile on his face, the gleam in his large, yellow eyes. The hatred she saw there she had never seen in a pair of human eyes before.
And she thought of all the black men she had presided over almost all her thirty-seven years with scorn. The houseboys, the tailors, the customers, the hawkers, who came with the dawn, subservient, and disappeared into the night. Who no more belonged to her community of men and women than the flies on the walls. She thought of the thief who had threatened her with a knife after she had caught him stealing, who had put the fear of death in her; the choras – boys – she had been taught to look out for in the streets, who would touch you if they could; the one proposal she had ever had in her life, and that from a former chief, which she had spurned in rage, grieving a whole week afterwards at the insult …
Was this revenge, or plain avarice?
They found the body three days later, naked and abused, hanging by the feet from a tree branch. Her head was in the dirt, and her black hair, now caked with dust, spread out from it in a circle.
Ebrahim and the Businessmen
The house stood on a wide lot in Upanga, well away from the congested developments up the road. It was new and fairly large, divided into four apartments, one for each of the Teja brothers, building contractors. There was an extensive garden in front, with rose and jasmine bushes in the centre, periwinkle scattered at the hedges along the sides, banana and pawpaw trees in a corner, and bougainvillaea at the wire fence in front. Four cars were parked in the gravelled driveway. The curtains were drawn in the front rooms, letting through a faint and enigmatic glow from the light inside. Against the shrilling of insects in the garden came the occasional distant-sounding ejaculation or child’s cry. Parties were often held here but this was the first time Ebrahim Kanji had been invited – not for a social but for a business meeting.