Uhuru Street

by M G Vassanji

  He had parked his small Fiat on the main road under a street lamp. As his feet went crunching along the gravelled path, there was in Ebrahim a feeling of anger and bitterness mixed with curiosity and triumph. So now they need me, he said to himself, these petty bourgeoisie, dukawallahs: because their world threatens to crumble around them. The men he was going to see belonged to his father’s generation, and his anger was directed at them for the way they had treated his father.

  Nurali Kanji – Ebrahim’s father – had been an intellectual: idealistic and impractical. In the 1940s he had incurred the wrath of the businessmen of his Indian community, for being one of the group of young men that had distributed a pamphlet laying down a general charge of mismanagement of community funds, calling for an open accounting system and for the money to be spent on local social projects. Three young men were principally involved; all three were punished and lived thereafter on the fringes of the community. A gang of loyal youth accosted the youngest of the three and threw a bottle of acid at his face, scarring him for life. The other two escaped lightly and were simply beaten up. One afternoon when Nurali Kanji was returning home for lunch, having reached the narrow alley in which he lived, he found four big women veiled in black waiting for him. They were armed with brooms, sticks and rolling pins.

  ‘Bastard!’ they shrieked. ‘Satan! Where’s the bitch that bore you?’

  Nurali Kanji took his punishment in terror and went home weeping. It became a community joke later that one of his assailants was in fact a disguised youth who had been there in case Nurali turned hostile and attacked the women.

  Nurali Kanji never found a respectable job after that, could never raise the loan to open his bookstore. He would receive odd accounting or clerical assignments and be asked to draft petitions to the government or to assist with the community newsletter. His son Ebrahim received free education as charity. His wife sold samosas to support the family. Until the last days of his life he showed supreme contempt for the businessmen and harboured a resentment at their growing successes.

  Ebrahim now knocked on the door of the Tejas, one of Dar’s leading business families. After being peeped at through the spy hole he was received by their daughter.

  ‘Why, Ebrahim! Come in. So nice to see you.’

  ‘I’ve come to see the businessmen.’

  ‘Big shot, eh?’

  Ebrahim remembered the days when he walked barefoot, when this girl would pass him in derision. Now he had a reputation with the girls for his machismo and his daredevil ways. He was tall and powerfully built. His hair was combed flat in the traditional way, but this act of defiance, together with his moustache and black fiery eyes, only served to enhance his reputation. He was shown into the sitting room.

  ‘Ah, Minister! Come in, come in, please!’ Jaffer Teja greeted him with typical exaggeration and escorted him in, seating him prominently on a sofa. Teja was a middle-aged man with a pockmarked face and, like many of the businessmen present, wore a Kaunda suit.

  ‘Our boy Ebrahim,’ he announced exultantly, ‘is with the Vice President’s Office. This is a proud moment for all of us.’ He looked up as if to offer thanks to God.

  ‘What can I do for you, gentlemen?’ Ebrahim asked, sipping the tea that had been offered him and helping himself to a savoury from the serving table that had been placed in front of him. They are grovelling at my feet, he thought with satisfaction. If only Father had lived to see this day.

  ‘Ebrahim … Ebrahim …’ Jaffer Teja, who was obviously the spokesman of the group, began, shaking his head. He was sitting in a chair close to Ebrahim and facing him. ‘You know what has befallen us, our people … all their life’s savings … the savings of their fathers …’

  What Teja was referring to was the recent take-over of properties that were let out for rent in a socialisation move by the government. Only the houses that were occupied by the owners were exempt from the take-over.

  ‘You know how they made their money … They came as paupers, sold peanuts, popcorn, seeds … and little by little, through hard work, morning and night, they earned and saved. They did not put their money even in banks! They were too scared to do so. All they dreamed of was a piece of land, to build something on it, something they could call their own, the prize of their hard labour.

  ‘This government has betrayed us. We put our trust in it …’ He looked sadly at Ebrahim.

  ‘But what can I do?’ asked Ebrahim, waiting for the punch line.

  ‘You have influence, Ebrahim … or should I call you Minister Sahib?’ Teja smiled and the other businessmen smiled politely. Some took the opportunity to clear their throats.

  ‘But I can’t give you back what the government took from you!’

  ‘No no no no no! … But there are ways, Ebrahim …’

  ‘Ways there certainly are,’ spoke someone from the side.

  ‘What ways?’ Ebrahim asked.

  ‘Take Thobani here … we call him Raju … Raju has two houses, his brother Shamshu has none. One of the houses can be transferred to poor Shamshu.’

  ‘And poor Shamshu pays Raju a handsome rent,’ Ebrahim said.

  ‘But it’s their family wealth! That’s not stealing.’

  ‘Does Raju really have a brother?’

  No one spoke a word.

  Ebrahim got up. ‘Gentlemen, you are asking me to betray a trust. I don’t know what exactly it is that you want me to do but obviously it’s illegal.’

  ‘ “Illegal” is only a word, Ebrahim,’ said Alibhai Teja. He was the eldest of the brothers, obviously their leader, a man with an enormous belly and a pendulous chin. He was flanked on both sides by businessmen and the girl who had let Ebrahim in had come to sit on the armrest of his chair.

  ‘Many people have genuine grievances. Do you think the government will listen?’ He spoke with authority. ‘And what about the civil servants … they do nothing without bribes. To whom can one go with legitimate complaints?’

  Ebrahim left the meeting, Jaffer Teja accompanied him to the door.

  ‘Raju has a genuine complaint, Ebrahim. Only listen to him – give him five minutes of your time. Let me bring him to your office.’

  Ebrahim left without a word.

  Ebrahim Kanji had been a much disliked boy. He had been dirty, rowdy and a bully. In school he had always been placed in the stream reserved for the dullards. But he was bright. From his father he had absorbed a love of learning, of arguing and of asking pointed, pertinent questions. The fact that such questions came from a scoundrel offended his teachers the more. In his final years in school his rowdiness transformed itself into extrovertism; his outcast status from the community left him open to friendships outside it. He took part in debates and drama, he was elected an official of the Party Youth League. His final examination result was among the best in the school and he was selected by the government to study political economy at the University. This success owed not a little to the changing face of the school in those years when it was converted from a community school to a public high school.

  He had always been a radical, and at the University he had been a founding member of SNAFU, Students for a New Africa (Union), a political organisation that was in general agreement with the government’s policies. Its influence was such that when an argument arose between the University students and government over the military training of the students, its members were among those selected to meet with the President. Ebrahim Kanji was one of those.

  Two days after his meeting with the businessmen, a little before lunchtime, Ebrahim looked up from his desk to see Jaffer Teja and Raju Thobani escorted into his office by a clerk. He was not surprised: he had not expected the businessmen to give up so easily. He wished, though not very strongly, that he had spurned their first approach. But the desire to see them grovelling had been too tempting.

  Raju Thobani was a small mousy man whose distinguishing feature was his near baldness. He had obviously put himself under the patronage of the Tejas. Ebrah
im indicated the two chairs across from him and the two men sat down respectfully and braced themselves to speak.

  ‘Well,’ said Ebrahim, having eyed them in turn and now looking at Jaffer Teja.

  Jaffer Teja motioned to Raju. ‘Tell him,’ he said.

  Raju began with an apology. ‘Mr Kanji, you are a busy man, learned and distinguished … I am sorry for bringing you my troubles …’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Ebrahim.

  ‘He agreed to listen,’ said Teja, not quite accurately, and met Ebrahim’s eye, as if willing to argue the point. ‘Proceed,’ he told Raju.

  ‘Mr Kanji, it’s like this,’ said Raju, no longer hesitant. ‘My father left all his property to me because I was the eldest in the family … you know how our families are traditionally … the eldest brother is the father … and he takes care of the rest of the family. So the two properties were put in my safekeeping for the family. Now does that mean my younger brother Shamshu should miss out because of that? My father worked hard for these properties … not that they are large buildings. Just two flats. Now one of them is taken away.’

  ‘What can I do?’ Ebrahim said. ‘It’s not in my hands. You have to go to the Ministry of Housing.’

  ‘Just tell me,’ pleaded Raju, ‘simply tell me – is it fair my younger brother should be deprived?’

  ‘You should file an appeal; there are procedures.’

  ‘Ebrahim, you are laughing at us,’ Jaffer Teja shook his head sadly. ‘The Ministry-wallahs won’t listen but all it takes to remedy the situation is a small change in the deed.’

  ‘What small change?’

  ‘Well, the ownership of flat number 9 on 66 Ushariki Road is to R S Thobani: “S” for Samji their father. If we erase the “R” we will have “S Thobani”: “S” for Shamshu. A small price for justice.’

  ‘Small for you,’ said Ebrahim in a dismissing tone. ‘I’ll make enquiries at the Ministry,’ he said to a grateful Raju.

  Jaffer Teja stayed behind as Raju left. ‘My brothers and I will consider it a great favour if you help this poor man. He is hardly a capitalist exploiter as you clearly see.’

  The next morning at coffee break Ebrahim strolled over to the Ministry of Housing and demanded the deeds for flat 9 at 66 Ushariki Road. He was handed the file deferentially and took it with him. Back in his office he went over the deeds. The present ownership was marked on a single sheet which contained all the particulars of the property. It was made out to R S Thobani as the two men had claimed.

  He held the piece of paper in his hands for a long time, musing over it.

  Long before this moment – the like of which he had anticipated many times before – Ebrahim Kanji had come to a conclusion regarding his future. His ambition, all his drive, he realised, had been directed towards a single end: he would never be satisfied until he had gained respect and awe from the men who had violated his father and humiliated him all his life. There were only two ways in which he could do this. He could become powerful in government and make them respect and fear him. Or he could become one of them, only better: richer and more powerful. He had never reached a decision as to which it would be. Now he dearly wished he had spurned the businessmen’s initial overture and spared himself the choice.

  At the same time as on the previous day, Jaffer Teja was shown in. Ebrahim handed him the deed and Jaffer Teja took it with him. He returned it in less than an hour, inviting Ebrahim to a music party at the Tejas’ later in the evening.

  That night Ebrahim Kanji collected his first payment.

  The London-returned

  We still went back for our holidays then and we formed a rambunctious group whose presence was hard to miss about town. We were the London-returned. For two or three joyously carefree months the city became a stage for us and we would strut up and down its dusty pavements parading overseas fashions, our newly acquired ways. Bare feet and Beatle-style haircuts were in then, drawing conservative wrath and doomsday prophecies. We sported flashy bell-bottoms, Oxford shirts and bright summer dresses. And fat pinkish-brown thighs below the colourful miniskirts of our female companions teased the famished adolescent eyes of our hometown. Come Saturday morning, we would gather at a prearranged rendezvous and conscious of every eye upon us, set off in one large and rowdy group towards Independence Avenue. There to stroll along its pavements a few times over, amidst fun and laughter, exchanging jokes and relating incidences in clipped, finished accents.

  The acacia-lined avenue cut a thin margin at the edge of town. It looked out at the ocean a short block away, black and rust red steamers just visible plying in and out of the harbour. Behind it was crammed the old town, a maze of short dirty sidestreets feeding into the long and busy Uhuru Street, which then opened like a funnel back into the avenue. From here Uhuru Street went down, past downtown and the Mnazi Moja grounds into the interior: the hinterland of squat African settlements, the main-road Indian stores, the Arab corner stores – in which direction we contemptuously sniffed, suppressing a vague knowledge of our recent roots there.

  On Saturday morning you came to Independence Avenue to watch and to be seen. You showed off your friends, your breeding, your money. It was here that imported goods were displayed in all their glory and European-looking mannequins threw temptation from store windows. And yes, hearts too were on sale on these pavements. Eyes could meet and the memory of a fleeting instant live to fuel one’s wildest dreams …

  We walked among tourists and expatriate shoppers, civil servants and messengers in khaki. And we passed other fugitive groups like ours, senior boys and girls (always separate) from the high schools, who somehow had managed to walk away this Saturday. Our former classmates, many of these. With some I had managed to keep up a brief correspondence. Now some exchanged short greetings, others pretended not to see, and a few turned up their noses with the moral superiority of the uncontaminated. Yet they stoked our merriment no end – these innocents – by their sidelong glances at our mini-skirted companions, or their self-conscious attempts at English accents and foreign manners while sipping iced capuccinos in the European surroundings of Benson’s.

  It was at Benson’s where it began.

  She was sitting with a group of friends sipping iced capuccino. They were all in uniform, of course. How can I forget, the green and white, the skirt and blouse? For a brief instant, between two intervening sandy-haired tourist heads, our eyes met. And lowered. And then again a fleeting, fugitive appointment. She had me then.

  I think of her as she was then. A small figure, not too thin, with a heart-shaped face: a small pointed chin, high cheekbones, a large forehead. Her hair was tightly combed back and tied into a plain pony tail. She sat sipping through a straw, stirring the frothy contents in the tall frosted glass to turn them more liquid. I hadn’t heard her voice and I didn’t know her. Yet I sat there a few tables away, flustered, self-conscious, saying silly things, laughing uncertainly.

  At her table an animated conversation was underway. They talked in Cutchi, not too loudly nor timidly. How self-contained they looked, how comfortable with each other! I felt a little envious, looking in from outside. My subject never looked up again although she must have known I was watching. Presently they waved at the uniformed waiter and went out through the frosted glass door.

  We had a word for the kind of state I was in in the few days that followed. Pani-pani: liquid. It means, perhaps, melted. With stylish and refined company – at least as I saw it then – beside me, what made me turn pani-pani at the sight of so plain a figure? The mating instinct, I tell myself a little cynically many years later; how surely it singles out and binds! Kismet, our elders called it. You could walk to the end of the world and not find the right partner, they told you, until your kismet opened up for you. And when it did, as surely and beautifully as a flower, no amount of reason could dissuade you from your choice. In our case it sought to bridge our two worlds. And where else should it strike but on Independence Avenue where these two worlds met.


  She lived in what I called the hinterland; not in a squat mud and limestone dwelling but a modern two-storey affair that had replaced it. They were newly rich and moving up; they owned the building and ran the bustling store on the street floor. It had a perpetual sale on, announced by huge signs painted on the walls, pillars, and display windows. And periodically leaflets would be distributed in the area, announcing ‘Sale! Sale! Sale!’ This much I knew as soon as I came home and gave her description to my sister; it was common knowledge. I learned that she was the daughter of Amina Store. Four times a day an elegant blue hydraulic-suspensioned Citroën sailed smoothly over the potholes and gravel of our backroads, carrying the daughter of the house and her neighbourhood friends to school and back.

  On Saturday nights, after a rest from our frolics of the day, we partied. We met on the rooftop of a modern residential building called Noor-e-Salaam in our new suburb of Upanga well away from the bustle of the downtown shops and streets. The latest from the London hit parade wafted down from here. We swung to the rhythms of the Mersey beat while our former friends still drooled over the lyrics of Elvis and Jim Reeves. And to friendly locals we dispensed some of the trendier scraps from our new lifestyles. We talked about nights out in London and trips to the Continent. We introduced new words and naughty drinks.

  The Saturday night following my first sight of her I managed to get Amina invited, and also her gang just to keep talk from spreading that I had been stricken. Yet how long can one hide the truth where even the slightest conjecture or suspicion could become truth merely by the force of suggestion? The blue Citroen dutifully unloaded its passengers outside the garden of Noor-e-Salaam and sailed away. They had all come. But I paid attention only to her and what pleased me was that she let me. I had come prepared for the kill, to sweep her off her feet before anyone else realised that she was available. With these unspoilt maidens who haven’t left home, I told myself, you can’t go wrong with books. And so on the dance floor under a modestly bright series of coloured lightbulbs, while the Rolling Stones sang ‘Satisfaction’, while we sipped Coke and looked down over the sidewall at the rustling trees and the few people walking on the dark street below, we talked in soft tones about nothing but books. Books!