by M G Vassanji
Not that anyone cared. The rich have few friends except the rich. And not many were as rich as Hassam Punja.
Four years later all of Hassam Punja’s buildings were taken, to which event everyone attributed the heart attack from which he died. This blow he could not avoid, they said of our dancing millionaire as they pored over the newspaper pages to see who else had been hit, and how badly. None of the big commercial buildings were spared: from the lofty IPS building which the President himself had opened a few months before, to Hassam Punja’s pyramid built from peanuts, to Hassan Uncle’s modest Ushirika House built from medicines.
It was Hassan Uncle who brought the news to our home. Bringing his bike to a tottering halt outside and leaning it against the wall, he stumbled in.
“Did you hear? Washed out!”
Kulsum was at her sewing machine, deep in thought. She simply looked at him.
“Did you hear? Washed out, I said. We are washed out—”
“Washed out what, brother?”
“Aré, in which world do you all live? Haven’t you heard? Our buildings, our property, our houses, all gone. Saaf! Clean! Nationalized. Mali ya uma. Property of the masses. He’s betrayed us, this stick-wielder, Naranbhai, Kalidas—”
Hassan Uncle having listed the Indian nicknames of our president, sat down and buried his head in his hands. It was the closest he could come to sobbing. Kulsum got up and went to him.
One day in Membeni in Mombasa Hassan Uncle, tired of the hopeless poverty in his father’s home, due in part to his father’s ridiculous business sense and lack of worldly ambition, went to him and said, “I want to go to Dar es Salaam. I will look for a job.” My grandfather Mitha Kanji put his hand inside the cashbox and gave him money for a third class fare to Dar on a steamer. Hassan Uncle tried his hand at several businesses. He first worked for his father’s brother, a wholesaler, as a salesman, then he opened his own piece-goods store in Msimbazi. Later, for a brief period, he opened a pawnshop, which was a mistake, for the only successful pawnbrokers in Dar were Nuru Poni and his brothers, a family of pawnbrokers. Who all had to change trades when a new law closed down the pawnshops. One day Hassan Uncle went to the dispensary on Swahili Street to be treated for a septic foot. The dispenser, Ramzani, as he was dressing Hassan Uncle’s foot asked him in Cutchi, which he spoke fluently, for a loan. Hassan Uncle gave him ten shillings. From there grew a lasting and lucrative friendship. For Ramzani knew all the prescriptions that had come his way by heart. APC for fever, Paludrine for malaria, Galloway’s cough mixture (which could be diluted), iodine, “lotion,” MB for dressing wounds, belladonna, Zambuk for backaches, insulin injections for diabetes. Ramzani became the consultant for Hassan Uncle’s Ushirika Medical Store, which opened close by. And when Ramzani went freelance, a travelling pharmacist on a bicycle, dispensing to all his previous patients, Hassan Uncle supplied his medicines.
Hassan Uncle treated African patients, Ramzani treated Asian grandmothers. Every day Africans from the neighbourhood flocked to Hassan Uncle’s store, holding their sides in agony, their heads with pain, pointing to stubbed toes and ingrown nails, rubbing their stomachs, coughing and sneezing, carrying screaming infants and holding weeping pubescent girls … and went away with a remedy. Thus had gone up Ushirika House.
My uncle Hassan, no Albert Schweitzer or Mother Teresa; but, “Ask how many people I treated, how many miseries I took away …”
Wait, Shehrbanoo. You who know as much about the Kariakoo mind—to use modern parlance—as anyone. How much did a bottle of Galloway’s cost? Two shillings? Two-fifty? And how many bottles would they make out of one? Four, five?
—Yes, but hold your smug socialism there: they did not sell these diluted medicines at the price of the full bottles.
Still, one shilling? That’s still more than two hundred percent, not counting profit on the original bottle—
—Which is ten percent. But how much profit did Mr. Galloway make in London, to support his lifestyle? Or the makers of Toyota and Ford? At ten percent where would he have been, like Mad Mitha his father, from whom he escaped … Where is Ramzani, his mentor?
—No-one knows, the last Ji Bai saw of him was when he came to pick up her urine sample, and his foot was swollen. His profit margin was low.
In Kichwele, Mzee Pipa, who didn’t even own a bank account, was heard to say, quite nonchalantly, “What else now? Let him take me too,” referring not to Naranbhai, as many called our leader, the President, but to God. God heard him, because Mzee Pipa died a few months later, followed in a matter of weeks by his wife. After the second funeral, lights burned in Mzee Pipa’s second-storey flat up until the wee hours of the morning, but no sounds came, no sign of a squabble—which neighbours, spending a sleepless night, had prepared to hear—from the six daughters who were closeted there, presumably occupied with the treasure hunt and dividing the spoils. There must have been enough for all. For, as the sign in Mzee Pipa’s store had said, “I sold for cash.”
It must have been the same God, on a rampage, who spoke a few months later to Uganda’s Idi Amin in a dream. Allah told him that the Asians were sabotaging the economy, hoarding to create shortages, smuggling sugar, coffee and currency, not paying taxes … and they were not integrating, not allowing their daughters to marry Africans. Therefore, Allah concluded, the Asians must go.
Ugandan passports were confiscated from the Asians. Lines grew outside the British High Commission and the Canadian and American embassies in Kampala, stretching as far as the eye could see, men and women holding their valid or defunct blue British passports, birth certificates, letters from relatives, evidence of assets, affidavits, diplomas for sewing, plumbing and hairdressing … anything to make themselves more attractive, well-dressed prettified orphans queueing in sun and rain, waiting to be adopted.
Do we want these Asians? No, said a majority of the British public in a poll. No, said newspaper articles and a certain MP whose pronouncements on such matters have made his name a household and dreaded word among Asians in East Africa. If Amin can do this, some said in England, then so can we. The Nigerian Star, quoted by Nairobi’s Daily Reporter, lauded Amin’s “final solution.”
This beautiful fertile country, let it become the America of the Hindu, a British governor had pronounced at the turn of the century. He had invited Indian dukawallahs to help open up the interior for trade, to buy African cotton for British ginneries and sell British-made cloth and shirts back to the African. This pearl of the African crown, as we later found out, became an inferno, a butchery from which the Asians were lucky to escape in time …
They left ignominiously, and in a hurry. The last three months had been terrifying. The army knew that goods were being liquidated, money being collected for the getaway—hidden in cupboards, cookers, attics, car chassis and buried in the ground until the time of departure—and troops descended upon the dukas to loot, kidnap and extort. Girls had been kidnapped, never to be seen again. It was this, more than anything else, they feared … a cowering bunch of dukawallahs with prayers on their mouths, against an army let loose in the name of God. They left penniless, except for what they could hide on their bodies without discovery. There was an inordinate number of women in period, Red Cross reported.
A few weeks after Amin’s dream, a few hours before the first plane load of Asians was scheduled to depart, an East African Airways plane was hijacked from Dar airport and left for Kilimanjaro Airport to pick up Obote’s troops on their way to Entebbe. But the Ugandan pilot—a slacker in flying class, witnesses were quick to testify in retrospect—broke one of the cardinal rules taught to the EAA pilots: he slammed the brakes too hard and crashed. At the same time more of Obote’s soldiers were on their way to Uganda by land. One half of this contingent, it was said, consisted more of politicians—former students—than soldiers, who first started to convert Amin’s soldiers instead of shooting. It was as if Amina’s intellectuals had gone to fight. It returned, badly mauled. Gaddafi sent “tough Libyan
commandoes” to Uganda; they never reached there; and Idi Amin bombed Mwanza, Musoma, Bukoba, Kaboya … and at home went on a blood-spree of revenge against his enemies.
In Dar, at Amina’s house, we said Tanzania is different, its Asians more truly African. Indians have been on the coast for centuries, and they speak English—Amina attested, having come from abroad—quite differently from Indian Indians. There is a distinct Swahili-ness to their English. And ask them, she exhorted, the Indian term for bakuli, or machungwa, or ndizi, and you’ll catch them at a loss. As for their brand of Swahili: first, there are several brands, from the bad (kuja-ne! or kuja-to!) to the good—which if you want to hear, go and talk to Mama Ji-Ji opposite the market; and second, have you heard the Swahili the Africans speak in Nairobi (eti, kula maji! or: mutu mubaya!)? And who would deny that a chapati, or a samosa or a curry were not Coastal food? Even biriyani. And have you seen the furniture of a traditional Swahili home? There you’ll see Indian influence. And have you heard a Zanzibari taarabu? Hum it for an Indian and he’ll give you the words in Hindi. There.
Thank you, Amina, I said.
In Zanzibar, Vice President Karume had been assassinated while playing cards … an Arab’s revenge, or an insurance for his daughter? … and there were sighs of relief from many corners, which the air blew away and kept secret … A twin-engine plane flew low over Dar one day, scattering pamphlets calling for the President’s overthrow … Kambona, people said, who had flown to exile in London, whom Idi Amin had invited to begin operations in Uganda, who had not liked the Asians.
The Asians trembled. I never owned a building in my life, Ji Bai—Mama Ji-Ji, as Amina called her—said, what do I care? Nationalization of commercial property; its rationale—making money and not working—made sense to her. The simple socialism of the folk: it’s all ours, what’s there to quibble about? As for Uganda—Ask anyone, she said, take anyone from the street, go on, and ask him, does this mama belong here or not? And she demonstrated, calling out, Weh Nassoro! Njo hapa! Come here. Nassoro came, a young man working in the vicinity, a black and yellow scarf tied stylishly round his neck, a grin on his face and obviously in a hurry. Am I not your mother? she asked. No, said Nassoro, my grandmother! and ran off, she giving the chase.
But elsewhere, where there was money, a new language had developed.
“How much is a hundred?” meaning, the masai, the hundred-shilling note.
“Depends. Where?”
“Kenya.”
“Sixty. Sixty-for-a-hundred!”
“And Ibrahim Bhai? What does he go for?”
“Forty.” For the dollar, the code name referring to Lincoln’s picture on it.
“Sterling?” The pound. “Sixty.”
Even a child could tell you the rates.
There are those who made their fortunes on them, and others who lost theirs, trusting too much, relying on a code that no longer existed. Into this uncertain climate happened the SS Shree Dhana, named auspiciously, for wealth, which it would have carried, nicknamed SS Mowlana, “Saviour.”
But first: it could not have happened, this tragicomedy, without the Uganda expulsion, the “exodus,” which cracked our world open like an egg. There was a world, outside this egg, that you could escape to. Previously, even less than a year ago, going there was like going to the moon: only a few brave souls went to its alien loneliness and survived precariously. Only a few months ago the pious would tell you of the moral degeneracy of the West. Now there were Ugandan Asians in India and Pakistan, UK, US, Canada and Australia.
It started with a rumour. There is a certain ship. It can take you to Pakistan. And, with the proper bribery, all your goods and assets. The rumour circulated and soon became fact, passages on this mysterious saviour of a ship were sold like lottery tickets, through private agents and a certain travel agent. Over a few days, old heavy furniture, closets, refrigerators, radios, even TVs from Nairobi, were lowered into the ship. Hassan Uncle and Zera Auntie came to say goodbye. Where will you go? Karachi. Do you know anyone there? No. Will you be all right there? God willing … our people are there. From where this blind trust? “Our people” were certainly there, many of them ready to scalp these African Asians who, they had always believed, were rich and proud. But this contingent did not make it. One day before departure, at about eleven in the morning, an old Ignis refrigerator hung suspended from a crane making its way into the hold of the saviour ship. But some silly passenger had secured the door of the fridge with a tape … which snapped at one point and then rapidly at several others and the door swung open. Out dropped manna for the dock workers below, notes in several currencies, and jewellery. The police were called, impounded the ship and found: fridges overflowing with currency, iceboxes stashed with dollars and pounds and rupees, butter and cheese compartments containing jewellery. Come and claim your property, said the police.
It was now, not before, when Ushirika House was nationalized, that Hassan Uncle was wiped out. Not completely, shopkeepers are indomitable, Hassan Uncle had other assets, but positively his last. He had five children, three of them overseas, including Mehboob, who had shown Charlie Chaplin films on their bedroom linen in Msimbazi so many years ago, for ten cents a show per person. Mehboob, after several false starts in Toronto, had rediscovered his vocation; he showed Indian films, first in school halls on weekends, and later in a full-fledged cinema house. And with the new name of Mehboob Khan, he came to claim his parents, one of whom, my uncle, had suffered a nervous breakdown.
The last time I saw Hassan Uncle.
The family had come to say goodbye. The sitting room was almost empty, except for two rows of chairs which had formed from a broken circle, and a table with tea and snacks. It was after the tea, Fatu Auntie had been going on and on about her life in Zanzibar forty years ago, and everyone was now in the mood for discussing the past. Hassan Uncle was silent, listening with a long serious face, arms folded. He wore, as always, a long-sleeved shirt with tails hanging out. Then Kulsum started talking about her Kariakoo shop, and naturally Hassan Uncle’s name came up, and his face lit up with a smile and he joined in. He got up and said, “Remember, I would go on my bicycle from Msimbazi to Kichwele like this …” And standing up, he went around the room, and then between the rows of chairs in figures of eight, his two hands in front of him as if he were walking the bicycle, which he had often done instead of riding it. At which point Mehboob Khan got up and brought his father back to his chair, and the goodbyes and the tears started, the loudest and the most prolonged naturally from Fatu Auntie.
Zera Auntie went around making elaborate goodbyes, telling long stories, and slipping hundred-shilling notes into hands and bosoms, in a last extravagant act of charity. She looked rather odd, in fact aged and toothless. There was a simple reason for this. Zera Auntie had been due for several fillings and a couple of extractions. Mehboob Khan came up with a simple, one-stroke money-saving solution: since all the teeth would go some day, anyway, and dentures being expensive in Canada, why not have the dentures fitted before departure? At the time of goodbye, poor pink-gummed philanthropic Zera Auntie, her hair in curls, was still waiting for her dentures.
As I was leaving, and he stood at the door shaking hands and giving hugs, Hassan Uncle said, in his usual cryptic fashion:
“Like the king.”
“What king, Hassan Uncle?” I asked, half expecting: Aré, what world are you all living in? and a contemptuous glare from the stony face. But he was kinder.
“Bruce … Bruce! The king with the spider!”
The tube light clicked on, as they say. “Yes, yes, King Bruce!”
“Like him, we’ll make it.”
Shamas Pir had promised the Shamsis a saviour from the west, and they had waited for hundreds of years. Now it seemed to some that he had come, not a pir, but a Pierre, Trudeau of Canada, promising a cold Eldorado in the north. He will take us, they said, as he took the Ugandans, leave it to Pierre True-do! And they, who had renounced the Queen’s rule for a n
ew future, abandoned hope and returned to her, still close but separated by an ocean.
MARRIAGE OF MINDS: ALLIANCES.
Sona left, and Amina returned. A triumphant Amina, full of the world: a sober, mature Amina, a feminist Amina, still a Marxist-Leninist; a bigger, heavier Amina, hamburgers and chips had gone well with her, but for that a more imposing Amina, Amina who came with a man, and note this, not a black but a white American, Mark, of slight build and full red beard, the same politics, soft-spoken and very attentive and caring. They had come via Cuba.
Amina attracted neophytes, men and women to sit at her feet and learn about the reality and all-pervasiveness of politics. Life without politics was an illusion; so was commitment without activism, for this woman who had been through peace marches and campus occupations. She gave two lectures when she came; one on politics and the African novel, the other on feminism and Africa. So radical she looked, so eclectic was her knowledge, so much authority was exuded by the kitenge maxi dresses and the Afro hairstyle—immediately, she established a following.
She took a job as a teacher at Jangwani, and set up house on Viongozi Street, not far from where Jogo used to live. (Jogo, of course, had moved up, to Upanga.) The house became famous, and was filled with visitors. In the reception room books lined the walls and newspapers lay on the floor, where also Amina sat, on one of the pillows. It was impossible to go there without meeting someone coming out or preparing to leave after an audience. The outside door—old, wooden, discoloured and twisted by the ravages of alternate rain and sun—opened into a long corridor on each side of which, almost immediately you stepped in, were two large bedrooms with very small windows. At the end of the corridor was the sitting-reception room.