The Gunny Sack

by M G Vassanji

  “Why do you object?”

  “It’s not proper, Salum, it’s not time yet … Africans and Asians are different … its like the story of—”

  Edward propounding his theory of separate development of the races.

  “You talk like Verwoerd! Like Smith! Salazar! It’s because of people like you that the Africans are screwed in South Africa …”

  “Ah Salum, weh! Stop it.”

  A few months later, that August, Alu Poni left for Massachusetts to study engineering. His departure was kept secret until the last few days because he was leaving without permission of the Ministry of Education. Someone could always go to the Ministry and say, “But so-and-so is going to America, why can’t my daughter go?” “Which so-and-so?” the officer would ask. “That so-and-so.” “We will not let him.”

  The National Service turned Alu Poni into an avowed anti-Communist. Perhaps it merely affirmed a tendency in him … and the change I saw in him was partly a mirror image of how I myself had deviated. The six months in Service, away from our families and normal ways, changed all of us, not only into boys who could now easily run a few miles or grow a moustache, but also into boys who asserted themselves and their ideas, boys who thought about the world. The world came to the Poni household via Newsweek now. The Vietnam war was raging. America was bracing for a presidential election, and the race to the moon was on … One Sunday, a few days before he left, Alu’s mother invited all his friends to lunch, to wish him goodbye. There were Jogo and me, his bosom buddies, Hassam, of the rock group Iblis, Walji who had got a place in Dar to study law, Nathoo and Bandali who were going to Nairobi to study engineering.

  From the head of the dining table Alu gave us his vision of the world which he would be taking with him to America. The Domino Theory: if Vietnam goes, so will Cambodia and the rest of Indochina, and there would be one huge Communist menace in the East, ready to pounce upon the rest of the world. There was a certain personage, he said, learned in the books, who had definite proof from the scriptures that the last great battle between God and Satan would be the coming Third World War. The Devil will rise from the East, he said. “And which great power is rising from the East?” he asked. “China! The Devil will have an army of six-point-six million men, it is said—and which country could possibly have that many people? China!” China, he said, and therefore Communism and its godlessness were the dreaded Daitya.

  Daitya, by which name Kulsum would curse at Sona and me sometimes. Alias Azazil, Iblis. His coming would mark the climax of Kali Yuga … he would raise the dead, make bread from air to feed a starving world … and the people would flock to him in error and abandon God … The Kali Yuga was already upon us, said Alu. Soon we would be faced with the great war between the powers, the forces of good and evil.

  “But where will this great war be fought? In Africa? The Middle East?”

  “It could be anywhere, bana! Even in space …”

  All this while his mother served samosas and lapsi and biriyani. Discomfited, Nuru Poni simply grinned from the side of the table, showing his teeth, at the sight of the apocalyptic Alu. Nuru Poni, who by Government decree could no longer do business as a pawnbroker, but a staunch party member who happily sold Chinese polyester suiting, drank tea from a pink Chinese thermos and wrote with a Chinese Parker pen look-alike.

  Nuru Poni had kept up with the times. In slow sure steps he had progressed and departed from traditional beliefs, becoming more rational and political, so that he admired Mao and Tito, Nkrumah and Nehru. A progressive man in a progressive country. But that day, a lonely man: an Asian, out of step with his community. His two older sons had aspired to nothing more than Kariakoo shops and Kariakoo brides immediately after high school, and now his favourite and brightest son was going off to America thinking that the CIA were God’s emissaries.

  We sat at the table, all envious of Alu. He was so sure of himself, going out into the big world to fight big problems, to join the forces of good against the forces of evil, while we remained here in a small country fighting our small problems. We saw him in America making rockets, at Cape Kennedy, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

  Alu Poni, he was simply pulled into another orbit and never came back.

  After lunch, Hassam, former Elvis and now Beatle fan, sang us some songs. To bring us back from the apocalyptic mood he sang with a grin “May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You,” with which we had wished Miss Penny Mrs. Gaunt goodbye, and now we sang it for our friend, not as fairies but as young men recently returned from service. After which Hassam went into a Beatle medley, refusing to sing Elvis or Jim Reeves, but agreeing to end with “Kwa Heri.”

  It was a month after Alu Poni had left. A Monday morning. At five o’clock people found themselves looking out from their windows. What had woken them up? The sound of voices this early, of doors opening or shutting, of too many vehicles on the road, a scream perhaps. Outside the Ponis’ store were parked four Land Rovers. The voices were low and all activity was hidden behind the shadows of the vehicles. No-one went back to sleep and sufuriyas of tea were put to boil.

  The next morning word was abroad about the “passport detentions.” Eighteen people had been taken into preventive detention for frauds involving the immigration office. That morning the Ponis’ store remained closed, as if somebody had died in their home. But Nuru Poni’s detention was a mistake, as everyone on our corner could have sworn. That afternoon a little after lunchtime he wearily stepped off a bus, in his crumpled white drill pants and white shirt and opened his store. The keys, it seemed, were with him.

  When Nuru Poni returned he found that his own son Firoz was in detention. Firoz was married and had his store a little down the road on Kichwele. Under his bed were found blank passports already signed and endorsed by the immigration office, which he could simply make out in the names of whoever could pay him. The fee was 200 shillings. Alu Poni probably left carrying one such passport.

  The greatest thrill of being young and at university is the discovery of your own mind and thoughts, the limitless possibilities; and the belief that what you think matters. We thought the country was listening, Africa needed us. We formed SNAFU, Students for a New Africa. Every Friday this think tank met in the Nkrumah Room. We considered papers, examined the week’s news, issued communiqués, organized debates and seminars, published bulletins. Yes, we did stir up the campus while we lasted, and the membership reflected a cross section that would encourage anyone who had hopes in the new Africa.

  Aloysius Mbogo, chairman. He played Mr. Turton in A Passage to India, when it was produced at Boyschool with black actors playing the whites and Indians playing Indians. His one love was to preside. “Gentlemen, gentlemen! Now this is a serious matter. We will settle it by consensus.” And settle it he did.

  Amina Saidi, chief thinker. The fiery Amina of Kaboya fame, whose anti-imperialist and humanist ideas were now steeped in the colours of Marxist-Leninist theory. Amina called the shots: scrutinized the politics of suggested speakers, quizzed the speakers after they spoke, especially when she was disappointed, wrote the draft editorial for the newsletter: in short, the life of the organization. She skirted rather dangerous territory sometimes, even then: “Is African Socialism all romantic hot air without theoretical (i.e. scientific) underpinnings?” This debate drew a huge crowd, including local officials, and she was not quite ready to go all-out in support of the motion (“It is said that all peasant societies have some form of joint ownership in theory, but in fact—”). The motion was soundly defeated. “Industry or Agriculture?” was the heading of one editorial. Her vision then was of a modern, small industrialized African nation along the lines of one of the Soviet satellites.

  Geoffrey Umbulla, a thin wiry fellow, a self-styled party watchdog. He came in the full Youth League uniform, a mannequin in green and black drill shirt and pants, and yellow scarf and beret. His name appeared prominently in our communiqués, in case anyone doubted our loyalty. But he was opposed to the concept
of a public debate, which was a “foreign import.” Quietly disliked. Several years later he was detained for seditious activity, distributing Kambona leaflets at the university: he was also in a hurry, as we of course knew.

  Ali Tamim, also called “Shehe,” who came in kanzu and cap because we met on Fridays, wise in human affairs, who made the final peace whenever a meeting broke up into squabbling factions.

  Salim Juma, one-eighth African. I was made treasurer and business manager (talk of stereotyping) of The Voice and before every issue toured the Indian dukas for donations, taking a 100 percent African with me, and never failed to raise enough money. Also in charge of raising membership, which was lagging.

  Zuleika Kassam, from Zanzibar, who came to Dar after the revolution. Of whom more later …

  These, and a few others—Ogwell, Raphael, Walji, Washington—out to influence the world.

  Amina and Ji Bai. They simply fell in love. They met twice, when I took Amina with me on the rounds of the Indian dukas. Old, bony Ji Bai could match Amina word for word. Among her friends were more Africans than Asians … old men in kanzus would stop for a chat, women would go inside with her to tell her secrets, boys would shout a greeting … sitting at the sewing machine all day, except for a few trips inside, was how she passed her time. “Nyerere is my son,” she once told us. “Wé Mswahili, nini?” Amina asked, another time, to which she said, “Yes, I am Swahili … and Indian and Arab … and European,” at which point she walked stiffly up and down as she thought the Europeans did, and sat down giggling. “Taratibu,” she once told Amina, “taratibu,” carefully. But Amina had heard the story from me. “Oh no,” she said, misunderstanding (but only partly, she later conceded), “no taratibu for me.” And Ji Bai, looking closely at her all the while, as at a specimen, simply said, “Live. Live, first, then start hurrying to wherever you are going.”

  One day Amina asked her about the Maji Maji war. “Oh, the Germans,” she said, “bad, bad. For a small mistake, khamsa shirin, faap, faap. A bigger mistake, fifty strokes. Or a hundred. A thousand or more strokes given in a day … One day there was a revolt.”

  She went outside and brought back a twig from a weed growing at the steps. She held it to her forehead and with the long reach stick held like a spear she started dancing and chanting “Maji maji, maji maji, maji maji, maji maji …” Amina of course joined her and the two did some “maji maji” before a few young men joined in from outside, and the whole shop was going maji maji …

  To have met in the jungle and fallen in love there, among people we did not know, on the banks of a stream, under a tree, how easy it was. No sooner were we back in the city than we started carrying the burdens of our races. In the dead of night, when no eyes could see, Asian or African, I would go quietly to her room. Or, sometimes on Saturday afternoons, when the others were in bars or in town, we would meet behind the football field, chewing grass, talking, trying to remain intimate.

  But our world was pulling us apart.

  To uproot a healthy young shoot—a lively sapling with a lot of energy and promising many new things—and transplant it in an uncaring soil … that is what returning to Dar meant. For me, it was simply to be doing the unthinkable; to be the subject of discussion for anyone in the community, from the precocious ten-year-olds to the senile: the children, religion, the differences, it’s not easy, nothing to do with racism, of course … And what words did Dar say to her … to have fallen in love with one of the exploiter class, a dukawallah, mere agents of the British, these oily slimy cowardly Asians, what future did they have … the world had so much to offer a bright young African girl.

  Kulsum eyed me suspiciously every time I returned home, as if I had come with hands soiled by the vilest deed, so that she would purify me by inviting people over, by observing special rites for my father, by taking me to watch Indian films at the drive-in with her friend Mrs. Daya, by talking about the past when there were Begum, Mehroon, Yasmin, Shamim, Shiraz and Salma with us, when times were hard but there was a real closeness, a bonding, among us.

  One day Edward went to see Amina at the University. “Weh Amina,” he said, “listen. You have it in your power to kill another woman.”

  Amina did not know who he was and gave a characteristic reply: “Are you telling my future? You are a mchawi? You gaze at stars?”

  “If you go ahead and marry this boy Salum—”

  “Who said anything about marriage? And what business is it of yours?”

  “This woman’s husband died when she was young—”

  “Weh mpumbavu, nini? You fool, do you think one can turn off love for an expediency?”

  “It is possible to control it.”

  For Edward love was something you could give and take at will. Even if you had it inside you.

  “What do you know of love? You who have slaved away your life at a Singer telling stories—”

  “I have known love but I have controlled it.”

  “What love, you … working for an Indian woman and telling stories to her son!”

  “I have known love but I have controlled it.”

  She told me her mouth opened to hurl another contemptuous epithet at this fundi, but then his words clicked. Amina’s eyes opened with new respect … pity perhaps. “You know, Salum,” she told me. “There were others before us.”

  “You’re telling me …”

  To get back to Dhanji Govindji. Did he know love, before those missives started coming from Junapur urging his good sense, and the mukhi sent him to Zanzibar? Did he tell Bibi Taratibu before he sent her away, This won’t work, our worlds are too far apart, they won’t let us? And Bibi Taratibu, the Gentle One who later ran a tea shop at the end of the village, watching her half-caste son grow up into a loafer, did she love, or did she simply put up with the pawing of this lonely Indian? And my grandfather Huseni escaped from this intolerant world but left behind a pining woman … did he also love and control, as Edward would have it? But whom, another woman, or the pining Moti? There was Uncle Goa, who in another scenario would have run away with my mother and now, as Amina told me, Edward … unrequited loves, because we catch the world unprepared for us.

  She announced one day she was going to New York on a scholarship. It was a chance too good to miss. The two years would fly, she said, meanwhile we’d test our commitment and let the world get used to the idea. To see her off came two West African professors and one British, some American friends, black and white, and her local friends. SNAFU was put in abeyance, except on the day we saw her picture in the Herald and there was talk of having regular meetings once again. She wrote a few times, long descriptive letters full of her experiences, the exuberance of black power and the student movements against the American involvement in Vietnam, the fight for the third world. Things are happening here, she said, there is a feeling that you can really change the world, the numbers are on your side … can this be real? When Martin Luther King was shot I stopped hearing from her altogether.

  But when she left, I thought she would come back to me. By then the world, moving at breakneck speed, would be ready for our revolution … when the evidence before my eyes since childhood had always told me, a journey overseas changed you indelibly. In that hour of grief in America, what could I have offered her, what did I possess which could hold her … She was in another world, and I knew I had lost her.

  The Bee Gees were singing “Massachusetts” from all the radios on Kichwele on Sunday mornings, and Alu Poni’s few cryptic notes from Boston sounded as distant as those from the moon. He knew, of course, of his brother’s arrest, and assumed his letters were being read.

  Try explaining gravity to Edward bin Hadith. The news of the moon landing thrilled him, although he did at first put forward the hypothesis that all the pictures had been taken on earth and the Americans were simply fooling the world. But the news bombardments and the colour photos outside the USIS library were simply overwhelming, Quran- and Bible-thumping traditionalists notwithstanding. But t
hen, how do the rockets leave the earth? Here, I braced myself to explain Newton’s laws. To which Edward’s response was a sungura story, with the sungura-rabbit playing football against the hyena. But the sungura was on the moon and could use its low gravity to give a whamming kick, a mkwaju like the ones the legendary Ali Kajo and Kadenge from Mombasa had never seen … Try protesting on the side of science against a gleeful, orbiting deaf Edward bin Hadith, for whom the moon is only a stepping stone …

  BRITANNIA’S CHILDREN.

  We were living in Upanga, in the cooperative flat on Upanga Road that comprised Kulsum’s second investment, using half of her husband’s insurance money, the first half having gone towards key money for the defunct The Fancy Store, now replaced by a very ordinary Kariakoo shop, its showcase that once drew crowds to watch the Father Christmas display in December now simply a storage area for excess stock. The flat had a long history of defaulting tenants, one after the other, whom the lawyer Kulsum hired could not evict because he was working for both plaintiff and defendant, a fact that emerged when the police went looking for him one day and he escaped to India. The one tenant she could successfully get evicted was her own brother Bahdur …

  Bahdur Uncle had to vacate his Kariakoo shop opposite the market to make way for a two-storey building and busstop. Kulsum had a flat available, but she did not trust him. So she took a signed statement from him to the effect that he would vacate after a year. Twelve months later Bahdur Uncle would not leave and Kulsum got a court order. Bahdur Uncle, when the police arrived with the order, moved to a slum in the same general area, slated for demolition, and then Kulsum, Sona and I went to live in the Upanga flat.

  (Shamim, my cousin … the image simply intrudes itself … she had become fat, but attractive-fat, with short hair, a younger Roshan Mattress with a reputation for excessive flirtation … but history does not repeat itself, not yet. She was studying in Uganda at Makerere and Bahdur Uncle was anxiously waiting for her to return and lift him out of his misery.)