by M G Vassanji
When our new friends the Bruce children entered our lives, Mahesh Uncle was no longer living with us. He had come as a teacher to the Indian school in Nakuru, but his indiscretions soon lost him the job. Finally Dadaji, through some contact, found him the post of manager of the Resham Singh Sawmills near Njoro, some twenty miles away.
As Mrs. Bruce drove off from our parking lot that day of the Innes murders, she almost ran over Mahesh Uncle, who had to jump aside. He often came to spend weekends with us, a mill lorry dropping him off on Saturday and picking him up on Sunday. He had gone to our home and missed us, then walked up to the store. He too had heard of the gruesome incident.
They’ll never learn, Mahesh Uncle said, looking in the direction of the pickup which had just barely avoided hitting him. Arrogant bastards, even as the forest fighters pick them off one by one…and they say they don’t understand why they are hated.
Must you now go and support those heinous murderers, my father muttered in irritation. Mahesh Uncle did not reply but looked away to meet my mother’s smile of greeting.
The dog had been hacked on the head with a panga, though he was still breathing when found, lying on his side on the back stoop. The front door was unlocked but shut; the back door hung wide open. One servant had the day off, the other had disappeared. Laundry was hanging out for drying. The lunch awaiting Henry Innes when he came upon the scene of carnage was macaroni casserole, with fruit and custard for dessert. Mrs. Innes, forty years old, was discovered in the sitting room where she had died from her wounds, one of them a blow to the neck. She was Kenya-born, and her husband had come to the country some ten years earlier. Their eleven-year-old girl, Maggie, was in her shorts when the attack occurred; she had run up to her bedroom in terror, where she was followed and met her end.
For the remainder of that day, right into the late evening when in Nakuru’s residential areas doors were fastened and alarms checked, the talk at home and over the phone and with neighbours was about nothing else but the Innes murders. The following day’s Sunday papers brought all the details and important opinions. There was a boxed message from the Governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, on the front page and a quote from Mrs. Innes’s father in England. There were calls for the Governor to resign for not being firm on terrorists. Special Branch officers were photographed in the wooded area outside the Innes house. Clara Innes, it was reported, had been an indefatigable community worker, a tireless dogsbody at the RSPCA and the annual flower show.
The Mau Mau are devils, I said, echoing my mother. Her term was “daityas” from mythology. Krishna had slain many daityas, even as a child. Rama had slain the ten-headed Ravana, and Mau Mau were like that wily daitya, changing shapes at will in the forest, impossible to defeat.
Njoroge and I were sitting in the backyard, having finished with our toy spear, bow and arrow, and gun. All were gifts, made for us from wood and string by Njoroge’s grandfather Mwangi. We always took strict turns on who was to be Indian and who cowboy, who cop and who robber. We never played Mau Mau and Special Branch. It was one of those times when, after involved play and play-acting, we sat beside each other and felt close. Perhaps our play provoked questions about our lives that we then felt the need to share but simply couldn’t. I do recall that his being different, in features, in status, was not far from my consciousness. I was also aware that he was more from Africa than I was. He was African, I was Asian. His black skin was matte, his woolly hair impossibly alien. I was smaller, with pointed elvish ears, my skin annoyingly “medium,” as I described it then, neither one (white) nor the other (black).
Yes, said Njoroge, in response to my observation, they are brave devils.
Brave, sure, brave—I said, not to be outdone in bravado—a daylight attack too, and the Europeans carry guns!
It was close to the time of our Sunday family lunch at home, and all my uncles, aunties, and cousins had already gathered, with our dada and dadi. Smells of hot ghee and spices filled the air in the backyards, ginger and garlic and chicken from one house, saffron and onion from another, fresh phulki chappatis and daal from yet another. Lilting melodies and sad lyrics from Saigal, Hemant Kumar, and Talat filled the air, courtesy of KBC’s Hindustani service on the shortwave. One song, a favourite among kids, went,
O darling little children, what do you hold in your fists? In our fists (sing the beggar children in chorus) we hold our fates!
Soon the songs would give way to the one o’clock news delivered in depressingly funereal tones. Whatever the news, it always sounded tragic. African music played in some of the servant houses. In one song, in Swahili, the singer lamented being sent to Bulawayo to the diamond mines.
Deepa came running out from our house and hurriedly sat down beside us, on her haunches.
Mrs. Innes was brave, wasn’t she? Deepa must have heard a snatch of our conversation, probably from the French window above our heads.
She died, Njoroge said.
I don’t want to die, Deepa said. I don’t want to be a hundred.
In her mind, at that time, to die meant to reach exactly a hundred years.
Njoroge’s grandfather Mwangi called him from their flat, a neighbour’s servant quarter, and our friend stood up to go. Deepa took a few steps to follow him, then stopped. He turned, smiled, and waved briefly.
Out in the distance, on the spit of land needling the giant lake, Joseph’s gone fishing with two young friends he has found, a girl of ten and a boy of eight from the neighbourhood. If he catches anything large enough he’ll bring it back for the barbecue. Sometimes he shows off to his young friends a few deft moves of soccer, and other kids from the few houses nearby come scampering down to join in the play. It is the boy who reminds me of Annie—the innocence with which he runs his hand up and down Joseph’s arm, for instance, to feel the black skin, is so reminiscent of my friend from long ago. It has occurred to me—how can it not?—that my picture of my past could well have, like the stories of my grandfather, acquired the patina of nostalgia, become idealized. But then, I have to convince myself, perhaps a greater and conscious discipline and the practice of writing mitigate that danger. I do carry my album of photos with me and my acquired newspaper cuttings and other assorted material, and there is always Deepa to check facts with. Still, what can ultimately withstand the cruel treachery of time, even as one tries to undermine it?
Joseph too has an obsession with the past, that of his people, the Kikuyu. Many peoples in East Africa resisted the European colonization, but they had early on been subdued by the superiority of rifles against arrows and spears. It was the Kikuyu, at least a large section of the tribe, who organized a systematic guerrilla war that struck large terror among the settlers. And it was the Kikuyu who paid the harsh price of British countermeasures and settler rage.
We may need their methods, Joseph says to me once, with a sparkle in his eyes and all the earnestness of his age, speaking of the Mau Mau. Even these days, right now, my people are being oppressed, they are being driven from their homes and butchered. But we will fight back—with guns, not machetes!
He is referring to the recent occurrences of ethnic violence back home, in which the victims have been the Kikuyu of the Nakuru region, whose ancestors were immigrants from across the Aberdares. The youth of his people, he assures me, are now ready to take on their enemies. But the government, as I well know, itself implicated in condoning the ethnic violence, has always been nervous and vigilant about new breeds of militants inspired by those heroes of the past.
Violence and civil war lead nowhere, Joseph, I tell him. Nobody wins. We all lose.
I don’t think I sound convincing. We exchange looks, and turn away from each other to face the lake lying still in the dark.
THREE.
Sunday silence, a ripened equatorial afternoon sated and senseless in the heat, and suddenly an abrupt whine and growl of trucks, and a thunder of many army boots ominous outside, proceeding at a pace in the gullies between the buildings; a halt and a pro
longed shuffle sounding like the rains. A woman’s rising query quickly chokes into a brief but painful scream. And then gruff, hectoring African voices call out, pitching venom and terror and rude, electrifying authority, right there, behind the houses, in the backyards.
Kikuyu!
Out, you hyenas!
Hands in the air!
Tokeni nje! Sasa hivi!
All Africans, come out!
And-if-any-of-you-fancies-hiding-away-inside, surely he is my meat…and I will eat his brains and wear his skin.
The last taunt muttered by the sinister Corporal Boniface, a jowly Idi Amin of a man, Grimm giant known to all.
And a theme emergent: a command or two uttered in high-pitched English accents, followed by the murmur of two like voices chatting casually.
Here they come again for the poor Kikuyu, Dada muttered from his armchair, opening his eyes but otherwise not stirring, just as Mother and Papa came hurrying out of their room. Mother looked flushed and soft, deliciously dishevelled, as she always did when she took a nap in the afternoon; she was still arranging her kameez, and I went to stand close to her.
A police raid, looks like, she said irritably. What Mau Mau can they expect to find here in this location?
The police regularly raided the Indian residential areas, expecting to find Mau Mau hiding among the servants.
It’s good they are vigilant, na, Papa replied.
Mahesh Uncle, who had earlier gone to my room to rest, was already out the back door and audible. My parents headed that way, followed by me, and Grandfather reluctantly got up on his feet also to go witness the clamorous proceedings outside. Dadi had gone to the Molabux household three doors down, to visit her friend Sakina-dadi, as she always did after the Sunday family meal.
She must be asleep, Mother answered when Papa inquired about Deepa. Let her be.
Outside, in our backyard, Njoroge stood wide-eyed, looking lost and nervous, a hare petrified before the hounds, praying for the earth to swallow him up right there under his feet, or my family to somehow do something for him.
Hide somewhere quickly, child, Mahesh Uncle admonished just as a European police inspector started coming toward us, in the company of an askari.
The Asian development in which we lived consisted of four rectangular buildings on either side of a small street, each with two adjoining homes and servant quarters at the back. The large French windows in the fronts of these homes and facing the street must have seemed modern and fashionably suburban once, but in the current fearful climate were a nerve-wracking security risk; our windows were heavily draped at night, the casements always checked and securely fastened. In the daytime, however, our street, lined with tall fern trees with swaying branches that rustled noisily in the wind, looked beautifully innocuous, contentedly residential. It turned off from the larger road which began at the railway station and alongside which, not far from us, was the shopping centre where my family had its business and Deepa and Njoroge and I went to play on Saturdays. Ours was the fourth home from this intersection, on the right side. There was a champeli tree in our garden, and bougainvillea bushes climbing at the hedge; the roses under the windows were evidence of an enthusiasm caught from the flower displays at the annual Nakuru Show, where the European ladies showed off their gardening skills.
Dada and Dadi lived in an apartment downtown, in the main street of Nakuru; Omprakash Uncle, my father’s older brother, lived in the same building as my grandparents and ran a hardware store; my father’s younger brother Mohan was a bookkeeper at the Farmers’ Association and lived in one of the houses across our street. My father had two sisters, both of whom had been married out of town.
That Sunday during the family lunch my uncles and father, all the adult males except Dada, had begun another of those quarrels, episodes involving far too much talk and erupting in shouts and abuses, which always began by startling us children and ended up amusing us.
There they go again—Dadi cried out shrilly, turning to all the women present, especially Mother. Politics, why do they discuss politics, what problems have they solved for the world with all their politics? Dada said nothing, looked both pained and peeved; he would suffer this one out, as he had done all the other ones. As usual, Mahesh Uncle, haughty, opinionated, and far more educated than the rest, wound up as the butt of his brother-in-laws’ jibes. He had spoken in support of African rule in Kenya, an idea extreme and idiotic to my father and his brothers. I remember him finally, big and burly as he was, pushing himself out of his chair, ready with raised fists to have it out with puny Om Uncle, and the slightly larger Mohan Uncle standing up ready to defend his brother, while my father looked up at the ceiling in mock helplessness and my mother screamed, Stop it, I tell you!
He dared call me a monkey, Mahesh Uncle spluttered, to which Mother replied, Why do you have to get into arguments with ignorant folk who know nothing? Om and Mohan Uncles stormed out of the house with their families.
They’ll come around, Dada said to my mother, and looked at her brother Mahesh with some distaste. Mahesh Uncle went to wash his hands and retired to my room, which he used as his base when he was around. Dadi said she was going to look in on Sakina-dadi. Dada retired to his armchair and, as on every Sunday, gave the children sweets, but this time there were only two of us, and so having given us double shares he leaned back and closed his eyes.
Not long afterwards the police raid on our area began.
There were two English officers in khaki drill, large tan holsters slapping at their belts. The African askaris were about twenty in number, in their khaki shorts and blue sweaters, some carrying rifles, and they proceeded to round up all the servants from their quarters. Out, out, out, toka nje! Any oaths given here, any Mau Mau hiding here? The Mau Mau recruited collaborators by ritually having them swear an oath in secret, and the police were perpetually on the search for those who had taken the oath and especially for those who had administered it. In a frenzy of angry, impatient activity, the suspects—for all black men were suspect—were pushed and jostled, slapped for replying, kicked in the behind for tardiness. I watched the gardener, Njoroge’s grandfather Mwangi, pick himself up from the ground with a wince. He was a short, stout man with a strongly lined face and some grey in his hair, a dignified man who always moved and spoke with deliberation. How could these men and women we knew, who spoke softly and served us so gently, who held our hands and looked after us when we were left in their care, be the dreaded Mau Mau? How could Mzee Mwangi, with the worry lines on his forehead and holes in his ears and a front tooth missing, be one of those killers who stalked the nights? He had made the toy weapons Njoroge and I played with, the pistol in particular carved and grooved smoothly and applied with black bicycle paint. He would sometimes call Deepa over and silently put in her hair a white and pink champeli flower plucked from our tree. I wanted to call out to them and say, Polé sana, I am your friend, I trust you all.
A patronizing attitude—how could I have helped it, risen above that? An Indian boy in shorts and a bush shirt, in socks and shoes, hair oiled and combed, secure in the bosom of a doting family, with a magnanimous thought for the pathetic servants—“boys,” as they were called, however old they were—rounded up and demeaned in front of him. I would like to defend myself against that charge, give a finer shade of meaning, a context, to my relationship with the Africans around me. I wish I could explain to Joseph, a descendant of those people, that that world was not of my devising. But I fear I already sound too earnest.
That was a sad day in my life.
Out with your karatasi, your tax receipts! Show your work permits, or you have explaining to do before you go back to Kikuyuland. Hiti! Fisi! Hyenas! Chop-chop!
Two men who had foolishly made a dash for it when the police arrived had been chased and captured and now, thoroughly dishevelled, were shoved brutally by Corporal Boniface into the ragged line of Africans awaiting inspection.
The entire population of our four blocks of flats
was now outside, it seemed, at the back stoops or in the yards, eyes fixed on the policemen; only Njoroge was nowhere in sight, as if the earth had swallowed him up. Where had he gone and hidden himself? He was always afraid of being caught and sent away. Suppose he was discovered now? Askaris were searching the interiors of the servant quarters, emerging now and again with whatever they found suggestive of possible Mau Mau ritual to show to their superiors. An ebony walking stick, a banana leaf, a newspaper with a picture of Jomo Kenyatta on the front, a sheepskin-covered Bible, a bicycle pump, a half-eaten joint of beef in a porcelain bowl. A drunk was dragged out and pushed into the line, given a couple of slaps. No Njoroge, yet. Beside me, Mahesh Uncle was muttering a stream of invectives in Punjabi—badmash salé…kaminé…neech…kambakht log…bastards—and my mother told him a few times to control himself.
One of the two English officers was coming by the houses with an askari, chatting up the Asian residents, peeping discreetly inside their homes. He was a man of compact build, with fine features under his peaked cap, and held a swagger stick behind his back. He looked friendly yet menacing, and beamed a smile as he approached us.
How are you, kem-ché, namaskar, salaam—you can never be too careful with the terrorists, this is for the safety of you and yours. Remember, even the most trusted boy can turn against you with a panga (makes a chopping gesture with a hand) if he has taken the Mau Mau oath, so you must report anything suspicious. Don’t hire Kikuyu. Safeguard your guns, get proper training in shooting, even the women, yes, you too, madam, and you, sir, have you installed your alarm…