by M G Vassanji
There was Timbi Ayah the fat mama, Boy Manda Kodi the notorious loafer, Tembo Mbili Potea the mad Goan, Chapati Banyani the mad African. This latter would stand outside and sing:
Chapati Banyani, nani kula?
Shamsi, Shinashiri, Khoja, nai?
Akili potea kama ngombeeee!
Who eats the chapatis of the Banyanis?
Shamsis, Ithnashris, Khojas, no?
They lose their senses like cows!
He would peep inside at the cowering kids all huddled together, making wildly suggestive eyes, before stepping back into the darkness, into which his cackle then lost itself.
This was Dar es Salaam, frightening until you knew it, mysterious until you grew with it.
Before Kulsum’s reminiscences, before Edward bin Hadith, before Ji Bai … there was my cousin Shamim. Small, dark, grubby Shamim, who was two years older than I, who seemed to be everywhere and knew everything. She was the daughter of Bahdur Uncle, Kulsum’s younger brother, who was away in the interior trying his luck at business.
At the back of the shop was the large room where the majority of the family slept. From it, one door led to a small annex where my grandmother slept, and another door led into the courtyard, which was a patch of beaten earth with odd bits of litter lying about. There was a large lorry tire on which Shamim and I would sit for long, engrossing minutes deep in conversation. Shamim was my guide to the world of the Kariakoo shop, my protector and informant.
There were two darknesses that terrified me in Kariakoo: the darkness that lurked outside, that could stretch out its fingers and take you away, and the darkness that was hidden away inside, in the outhouse at the back, the hell that awaited you if you made a false move.
There were in the courtyard, besides the lorry tire, a drum half-covered with a piece of wood and pieces of plank to step over wet patches where the sewage had leaked out and the rainwater not dried; on one side was an open shed that was the kitchen, and to the other was a crude structure of brick and cement with a raised metal roof that was the lavatory. This was the other darkness, and it reeked. The floor was of smooth cement but wet near the pit, which the light from the crack in the door barely illuminated. Everything surrounding the pit was in darkness, except near the raised roof, where basking in the sunshine large lizards lurked, ready to pounce on unfortunate victims. The roof creaked and banged violently sometimes and when it rained water fell on the occupant. The pit loomed large and menacing; large flies buzzed at its mouth and down below you could just see the shit stewing in its juices and the myriads of maggots crawling about on its surface. This was hell. This was where bad boys were thrown away, this was where unwanted babies landed. This is hell. How can there be a worse fate? What fires not more welcome than this acrid pit? I think of all the unwanted kids eating shit in a postnatal abortion. Even if there were suspicions, who would be willing to dig in the muck … They did that of course, one day, and the police later dragged out an African woman screaming her innocence, “She fell in, she fell in, I tell you,” and the old shehes with their tasbihs rolling in their hands, throwing curses at her and expostulating to Allah, “He only is the Giver, He only takes away …”
Shamim would take me there, waiting outside, holding the door half open, talking to me, periodically asking, “Are you ready? You are taking awfully long today … is your stomach clean? We must talk to ma about that …” (Ma, the dispenser of purges every Sunday, holding you down on her lap, thumb and forefinger locking your nostrils, pouring homemade purgatives that themselves reeked, down your paralysed open mouth, leaving a residue that you washed down with a shudder: all ailments she could trace to an unclean gut.)
There are some instances we care not to remember, not to think about, and when they swim up to the surface we pretend that that’s all there is, the vague shape … We dare not recall further, pull them up beyond the surface … except when we sit like this with our bag of wares and dig up the depths … In other words, Shehru the Kariakoo hag that dispenses memories with much more flourish and style than Hirbai dispensed purges, has no bourgeois qualms about the quality of her contents; all the hesitation is mine. Sometimes in the morning, brushing our teeth on the stone step that led to the lavatory, Shamim and I would go in together, and Shamim at the door and myself near the pit, pass water. Once she produced a matchstick. “Take,” she said. “Now give me the burn.” The burn was more of a threat than a reality. It was what happened to little boys and girls in certain circumstances. A private punishment for a private crime. “Where?” I asked eagerly. “Here,” Shamim explained, taking my hand, “where we pee from.” At this point Rehman Uncle walked in. “Why, what are you doing in there together?” he asked, genuinely surprised. “Ur-ur-ur …” he pressed his nostrils at us. We came out and he went in, confused. Uncle Rehman was quite a simpleton.
Timbi Ayah was the evil woman of Pombe Shop. At night as the drums of the shop started beating we would huddle together in Grandmother’s home, in the big room behind the store, mentally tracking her, telling ourselves where the mad woman would be at that moment. “She is outside Aunt Fatu’s shop, now she is banging on Ali Rajan’s door … she is chasing Chapati Banyani … Boy Manda has come out …” Timbi Ayah took away bad children. And what did she do with the children she took away? She made them work, Shamim said. They would feed the chickens, milk the cows, plough the field, sweep the yard, wash clothes and dishes … And when food was scarce, when she had eaten her chickens and the cow and the vegetables, she ate the children. Did no-one escape her then? No-one—except those who knew her name.
Timbi Ayah had a secret name. Listen. Once on a fine, sunny day a brother and sister were stolen away from their homes by big, fat Timbi Ayah. Their names were Janet and John. Every day Janet slaved away for Timbi and her little brother helped her. Timbi Ayah returned from the Pombe Shop every night and demanded food, which Janet brought for her. If she did not like the food or if she was very drunk, she beat them. Every night in secret, when Timbi was asleep and snoring, the brother and sister cried and prayed. One day when Janet was milking the cow and weeping with sorrow, the cow looked at her pitifully and said,
“Listen. You can escape from the Fat Evil One if you can find out her real name.”
“How can I find out her real name?” asked Janet.
“Ask the cat,” said the cow, “she stays inside with the Fat Evil One at night. Perhaps the Fat Evil One has told her.”
So Janet went to look for the cat, whom she found near the tree, sunning himself, and asked him.
“Ask the dog,” said the cat, stretching himself. “She talks to the dog. Me, she tells nothing.”
The dog was chasing crows. “Ask the hyena,” he said, “the hyena travels at night and he is wily. He hears things.”
So Janet waited the next night at a pile of bones she had collected, and when the hyena came by, she said, “I know, I have not been considerate of you, Mr. Hyena, and not kept bones for you, but if you do me this favour I will always remember you with the choicest food.”
“What is it you want, little girl?” asked the hyena.
“Tell me Timbi Ayah’s name.”
“I know many names, little girl, but that one I don’t know. Ask the owl. During his flights he must have heard it somewhere.”
But the owl only shook his head. “Ask the rabbit,” he said, “he is resourceful.”
But the rabbit, who is the cleverest of all creatures, cleverer even than the hyena or the lion, only scratched an ear. “No, little girl, that one is a hard one.”
Finally, Janet gave up, and was very sad. There is no hope, she thought. We will have to wait until Timbi Ayah is dead. As she went to feed the chickens, she saw the cock, standing proud and handsome behind a fence, his feathers red and white and black and brown, all puffed up, his golden crown rising high, and he eyed the girl sternly.
“Why are you sad, little girl?” he asked.
“I would like to know the name of Timbi Ayah,” said Janet, �
�no one knows.”
“Have you asked me?” asked the cock.
“Can you tell me, please?” The cock stretched himself further and he looked right and left. “Who is the most beautiful of the animals?” asked the cock.
“You,” replied Janet.
“And who is the wisest?”
“You,” said Janet, “please tell me, Bwana Jogoo …”
“Hear this,” said the jogoo. And he puffed himself still more and he raised his proud head even higher, and he cried out: “SHOKO-LOKO-BANGOSHAAAAAY!”
“So you shouldn’t be afraid of her,” said Shamim, “now that you know her name.”
My mother had four brothers. The oldest, Kassam, was upcountry, and so was Bahdur, Shamim’s father. Hassan Uncle lived next door to Grandmother and Rehman Uncle, who was the youngest, lived with her. My grandfather Mitha Kanji had died some five years earlier.
Hassan Uncle and Zera Auntie, his wife, lived under the same roof on the other side of a corrugated iron partition. They had five children. Inside the shop there was a small, square hole in the partition, through which gifts sometimes fell to us, Kulsum’s and Bahdur’s dispossessed children. Zera Auntie was a compulsive giver. Were it not for Zera Mami, Hassan Uncle’s brothers and sisters—all at the receiving end of the charity—all averred that their brother would have been a wealthy man. She would hover near the hole, in the evenings when the shops were closed and Hassan Uncle was inside, and as soon as she spotted one of us, she’d yell out, “Hey, you! Come here, come here!” And we would go, hesitantly, expecting a chore but hoping for more, and lo! a half-shilling would be pressed in the hand, or a toy. They sold toys as well as clothes, and their children had plenty of both. Their son Mehboob was about the same age as Begum. He had a film projector, which he used to show films to the neighbouring children for ten cents, which his sister Parviz collected at the door. Once Sona and I, aware that a show was soon to start, went to their home and as we entered were accosted by his doorkeeper. “The ticket is twenty cents for two,” she said. “My mummy said I can go and watch,” I began. “My mummy said—” she started in imitation, twisting her mouth and shaking her head.
“You!” came a shout from inside. It was Mehboob. Several of Zera Auntie’s children had developed her habit of saying things twice in succession. “Let them in, let them in, I say!” he commanded from behind the projector. “They’re poor, they’re poor, don’t you know their father is dead?”
Inside, a bunch of wide-eyed children sat cross-legged on the floor in expectation as Mehboob fiddled around with the projector. A white bedsheet hung from a wall in front of them. Finally, when everything was ready, the first clip was shakily reeled onto the screen. Charlie Chaplin in Kariakoo. The Chaleh. We were never quite sure if it was the quality of Mehboob’s equipment that made Chaleh move in his peculiar way, but we all laughed, watching him fall all over the place, our heads moving side-to-side keeping time with him.
In the evenings Kulsum would put me and Sona to bed. We slept on the floor, eight or nine of us in parallel like tinned fish, in the room behind the store. I came first, on the side closest to the common wall, then Sona and then Kulsum. The two of us were put to bed early while the elder kids and other commoner kids, as Kulsum would have it, played hide and seek in the backyard, amidst the sounds of thumping feet and calls of “Thapo!”
It was dark and gloomy on the side where I slept, cobwebby and dusty. There was a huge wooden closet on one side, always open and dark, and a pile of our baggage with clothes strewn on it close by. There was no ceiling in the room, just wooden cross-beams from which hung a single lantern.
“Why are we poor, Mummy?” I said. When she didn’t reply, I started my well-rehearsed tantrum, which had never yet failed to get me what I wanted, and which usually created a minor turmoil in our bereaved family. “I want Daddy!” I bawled. Kulsum began to look a little helpless. And then I saw an ominous sign, a future portent: her lips pressed, the fingers on one hand come together, the hand stiff. “Haram Zadah! You ill-begotten one, why do you make me cry, and him cry, and …”
A small incident, this. Perhaps. The smack across the cheek was well deserved or wasn’t … what does it matter? But it marked the new Kulsum—the Kulsum of the pressed lips, the efficient business-minded Kulsum bringing up between five and eight children, the single mother of modern parlance. Daddy was relegated to the past, a memory, happy, something to look back to, to return to, while the more immediate problems of the world received attention from day to day. Sure, she despaired sometimes and remembered him and cried on the more happy occasions because he wasn’t there to share them. And when Sona or I slept close to her and were locked in the tight embrace of her fleshy white arms hearing sweet nothings from her … who is to say she was not missing him then? But as the days wore on she toughened, became less sentimental—the flesh sagged, the bones thickened, the lips thinned, the lines on the face set permanently, the hair greyed—until she turned into the hardened, marmalade-guzzling old woman she is today.
A small incident, perhaps. A child crying for his father and the mother spanking him for disturbing the peace … and the dead, for the dead don’t rest easy with children bawling for them.
Mchikichi Street was not far, a few shops from Grandmother’s you turned right to Tandamti and came to the market and turned left. There in the mattress shop she was waiting, Ji Bai … resolutely … perhaps seeing my tantrum in her mind’s eye, the witch, imposing her will upon me like a magnet, guiding me to that union with the past, while comforting me: “Later, later …”
Now the dead speak, from the depths of the gunny sack, Shehrbanoo speaks.
I remember a beautiful Japanese fan. The vanes were threaded with a white silk ribbon and were themselves of imitation ivory, an intricate pattern cut three-fourths of the way up formed an arc of frieze when you opened them. At the closed end they were also threaded with silk, and there was a bob of silk thread there.
This fan was a gift from Jenny Auntie, and it fell into the way of darkness …
Rehman was my educated uncle. He had reached the Junior Cambridge level, although he failed the examination, like most boys who sat for it, and worked as a book-keeper downtown. He was engaged to Jenny Auntie. She was fair and pretty with short boycut hair, bright and chirpy, in smart clothes and high-heeled shoes. She lived downtown and was a typist. Everybody agreed that Rehman was lucky to get her. And everybody wondered exactly how she would fit in to the Kariakoo household. But she loved me, intensely and exclusively, for no other child in the house received the barest attention from her, even when they were thrown at her feet. Every time Rehman Uncle brought her home, I would run up to her sweet perfumed embrace, sit on her lap, stand pressed to her knees and receive gifts of sweets and boxes of chocolates.
One Sunday afternoon they took me to the seashore with them. We took the bus from Msimbazi, which dropped us outside the cathedral, and then we walked along the front lined with trees and filled with crowds of people. Vendors on foot hissed by with their peanuts and popcorns, others clinked coffee cups, still others sat in rows along the sidewalks calling out their wares—fleshy, yellow mangoes cut up enticingly and sprinkled liberally with red chili powder, khungus and guavas and thope-thopes and oranges and jackfruits whose wild odours shouted promises of tastes out of this world … We walked past the cathedral, saw the famous Lutheran church, and the high court. There were ships anchored in the harbour, the tugboat racing gracefully but purposefully on the blue water, ngalawas bobbing up and down or pulled on shore, fishermen mending nets, yachts sailing out from the yacht club, the ferry inching its way to the opposite shore. This was Dar es Salaam on Sunday: hundreds of Indian families on foot, men leading the way, women bringing up the rear; men playing whist on sidewalks; boys and girls making houses and waterways in the sand; men in suits and women in white walking to church.
When we returned it was dark, the bus dropped us a little way before the Pombe Shop, and Jenny Auntie’s reass
uring forefinger pulled me along at a brisk pace on the side of the road as I strained my eyes to avoid pedestrians and potholes. We were late, and I could sense the urgency in her step and was almost running. There was the sound of drums, and a stench of brewing liquor, of woodsmoke, and roasting maize, meat and cassava. From time to time my eyes would fasten on the halfwall of the Pombe Shop from which the stench steamed out thickly and the drum-sound called. We reached the break in the wall, which was the entrance. Smoke filled the air inside, yellow flames rose up at the back, licking the sides of huge cauldrons, large shadows danced and people shouted.
At the entrance I saw her.
I knew her name but couldn’t make myself say it. She was fat and immense, moving up and down to the rhythm of the drums, her huge belly jiggling against the khanga, her arms raised sideways, their flesh rippling with pleasure, her eyes gleaming. She jiggled forward and then backward, but all the time she kept approaching. My uncle and aunt had stopped, and stood there as if mesmerized by those drunken eyes approaching, and even when I cried and pulled at Jenny Auntie’s finger, she did not move. And then Timbi Ayah was upon me, pulling me by my other hand, so that I was between her and my aunt in a tug of war which the black woman won as Jenny Auntie’s tight grip slipped, and I was dragged screaming into the warm brewing darkness with its fires and dancing drunken people, its squeals and laughter …