Ali closed his eyes and trailed his hand in the water. “Too many desires is like too many children for an inheritance. No one gets enough money. Every child is left wanting, hating the other children for taking the money that could have been theirs. I know, this happened in my own family. Desires are like that, like greedy children, jealous of each other. Mean sometimes. Sometimes they even want to kill each other.”
“Maybe not everyone has as many desires as you.”
“No? On this island I see strong desires. Fighting desires. The desire to pray and the desire to fuck, for instance. These desires fight.”
“Is that the word they use here, ‘fuck’?”
Ali shrugged. “I myself like the word. It’s a strong word for a strong act. Like the verb nataka, ‘to want’ in Swahili. Ninakutaka. I want you. Ninakutaka fuck. Ha ha.”
“And Western women respond to this approach?”
“They love it. Western women like savages. They like bad words and crazy fucking all night with savage African boys.”
“You know this firsthand, I assume.”
“I know it but I am a good boy. Don’t worry. You are a little frightened, you think you should be a little cautious, but you don’t really want to be safe. Maybe it’s because you are not often with men, not often fucking like a savage.”
Ingrid laughed. “Now, how would you know that?”
“You can see these things. A woman fucking every night is very different from a woman fucking once a month or never fucking. It is the difference between a mango and a coconut. The coconut is hard and dry but if you work hard there is sweet milk deep inside. A mango, well, you know mangoes. You just have to smell a mango to know how sweet it is.” Ali straightened. “Ah, you hear that humming? That is Wicks’ powerboat. He will arrive shortly from around that corner.”
A boat swept around the sandbar, angling with speed. Ali stood ceremoniously and raised a hand in greeting. The two men in the speedboat, one black and one sunburned white, waved back. Ali sat down and watched the boat pass. “Wicks is going to his hotel. He’s a rich man. His children will fight over his money.” Ali’s dhow rocked suddenly with the wake of the speedboat. “You see, this is the problem with powerboats. They make noise and they make waves. It is hard to sail calmly past such a boat.”
It was two days before Ingrid saw Finn Bergmann. They made way for each other on the seawall; she going to the hotel, he leaving. High tide slapped against the stones of the wall, spraying mist into the air. His eyes met hers for a moment and she smiled in recognition. He looked down quickly as he continued past her. She turned to watch him walk away, jolted by the possibility that she was a stranger to him.
That night she put on her white dress and lipstick and went to the hotel bar. She sat at one of the dimly lit tables with her notebook and an envelope full of receipts and began to detail her expenses to date. Templeton had said in his letter that he would be at the hotel for Christmas. It had been a mistake, Ingrid now realized, to expect him on arrival. She had been forced to recognize that she knew little of his methods in the field—too little to respond appropriately to his absence. She had ten days until Christmas. In that time, she would establish a basic outline for her course.
She was beginning to understand that the Swahili saw themselves as morally superior to the peoples of the mainland, a bastion of godliness in a land of heathens held high with the pillars of prayer, ablution and proper family and community behavior. At the center of it all was the Koran. Though few Swahili spoke Arabic, it was still regarded as a sacred tongue. Even without comprehension, its words strengthened and purified the listener. It was the language of the Koran that even Ali claimed he would speak on the Day of Judgment, when his soul was called up from the grave.
Ingrid was penning numbers into her receipt book, wondering if Ali really believed his soul would be saved, when Danny cajoled her into joining him at the bar. People came and went, a blur of good-looking men and women: sun-bleached blondes with brown skin, a few with darker coloring. An exquisite woman sat on the other side of Danny, dangling her bare legs from the barstool. She wore no shoes. Carved mangrove sticks secured her long brown hair. A petite blonde was passing out jasmine flowers from a basket. “Put it on your pillow at night,” she whispered in Ingrid’s ear. “You will dream of a prince.”
Danny explained that a small community of mzungus, or whites, had taken up residence on the island. Some were European-Kenyan, some just European. Some lived there year-round, some just for the season. Danny knew them all. Names floated around the room, circulating with the smoke and the sweet smell of jasmine. Ingrid felt displaced, a prude in the land of the lotus-eaters. When she heard Finn’s name spoken, the molecules in her body churned. “Where’s Finn?” she asked Danny.
“Finn? Finn isn’t here.”
Before she left she put her hand on Danny’s arm. “Is there anyone here who might know Professor Templeton or where he lived—anything about him?”
“Anyone know the professor gentleman or where he lived or anything about him?” Danny boomed to a response of blank stares and silence. “He’s a bit out of our age range, you see. Doesn’t come here much—and when he does, I have noted with regret that he is neither a talker nor a drinker. Spends most of his time in the office, doing what, God knows. It’s a mystery to us barflies.”
“It’s curious,” Ingrid said. “That there can be any mystery on such a small island.”
“A matter of attention!” Danny declared. “And mine isn’t generally directed toward elderly gentlemen.” He planted a messy kiss on her cheek. “Come by tomorrow. There’s a chance I could rustle something up for you. I do know a thing or two about your old professor.” He smiled and turned back to the bar. “There is an advantage, you know, to spending so much time here.”
Ingrid woke with the second prayer call, the sour taste of alcohol in her mouth reminding her of why she had slept through the first. After covering herself, she walked through the village toward Danny’s house. The cool morning air buoyed her spirits and she boldly smiled at an old woman who paused to stare at her with distaste, her knuckles tightly gripping her walking cane.
Ingrid continued past her (somewhat chastened), slowing again as she approached an unmarked structure that murmured with voices too controlled to be conversation. Through barred windows she could see rows of boys sitting on the earthen floor, fingers traveling right to left across scripture, small bent heads whispering the Prophet’s words into memory. She lingered until a small boy saw her there and nudged his friend. The two started giggling and she left the window, stooping to pet one of the cats that lay resting in the shade of the building. The other cats eyed her distrustfully while the one she stroked seemed too tired to purr. They were strange, sinewy creatures that looked both sickly and strong. “You’re very tired,” she said, picking the cat up and holding it to her. “Aren’t you.”
Hamilton was outside Danny’s house, sitting on his coconut stool, a surprisingly strong structure for its size. His heels were dug into the dirt for leverage. He held the coconut to the ground like an animal that might escape. “Miss Ingrid,” he greeted her with a wide smile. He was younger than she had expected, with a pleasant, open face. “Danny told me you would come.”
“Is he all right?”
“Don’t you worry about Danny.”
“Does he need anything? He was drunk last night. Very drunk.”
Hamilton looked up from his perch. “You are a nice lady, Miss Ingrid.” She watched him husk the coconut, shaving out the tough white meat and piling it into a stone mortar. “He’s cut his feet again,” Hamilton said. “It’s because of the cats. He is trying to kill these cats by throwing dishes. The dishes break and five minutes later he has forgotten he has thrown the plates and there are broken dishes on the floor and he steps on them. He cannot learn from this mistake. Every year it is the same.”
“You have been with him a long time?”
“Many years.”
A bell rang from
inside the house. Hamilton held up a finger and trotted inside. His bare feet slapped across the stone floor and up the stairs. Ingrid picked a shaving from the mortar and laid it on her tongue.
Hamilton reappeared with a chipped ceramic bowl. “He knows you are here,” he said, transferring the shavings to the bowl. “I think he hears your voice. You have somewhere to be this morning?”
Ingrid smiled. “I’m fairly free today, actually.”
“Then you are to follow me. Danny wants me to show you something.” He set the bowl inside. “Fish curry tonight,” he said, closing the door behind him. “It’s what brings the cats.”
Hamilton was a foot shorter than Ingrid. He wore what must have been an old T-shirt of Danny’s with a Trinity College emblem embroidered on the chest. His shorts were tattered; white threads hung down against his muscular brown legs. Ingrid kept her eyes on his bleached heels as they padded down streets and between houses, deep into a part of the village she had not yet seen.
Hamilton paused at the entrance to an empty courtyard, veiled on all sides by thick foliage. A trickle of water fell from the mouth of a clay fish arched in a fountain, an otherwise comforting sound made somehow ominous in this deserted place. The rooms on both sides of the courtyard had numbers carved into their painted doors. Hamilton motioned for Ingrid to stay put. He crossed the courtyard and slipped into a side room marked off by a faded curtain. A moment later she heard his voice, suddenly authoritative. He returned with a worn wooden block in his hand. Painted crudely in white on one side of the block was the number three. Attached was a key.
Ingrid stood behind Hamilton as he opened the door. “Templeton’s room,” he announced and then made his way to the room’s only window. He opened the wooden shutters and stood silhouetted by light.
Ingrid’s eyes immediately darted to a dark figure on the sunken bed: a wooden statue of a fierce man with African features. She stepped deeper into the room. Hamilton traversed quickly to the bed to inspect the statue. Even from a distance, she could see it was some kind of warrior totem with a spear and shield, and teeth filed to points. Resisting the pull of the statue, she squinted in the uneven light at the rest of the room, which was larger than hers but just as plain. The walls were white and peeling in some places, the floor cool and bare. Opposite the bed was a bureau that Ingrid gratefully began to rummage through while Hamilton continued to eye the statue uncomfortably. Most of the drawers were empty. Outside of a handful of shirts in the top drawer and a scattering of old papers, Templeton had left few traces of his occupancy. She looked around skeptically.
“How did you know he was staying here?”
“Not long ago I brought him something, a letter from the hotel. He was not here. I put the letter under the door. But now it is gone.”
“Who was the letter from?”
“I don’t know. America maybe.”
On top of the bureau was a pen she recognized from his office in Michigan. “I know people here talk,” she said, turning the pen slowly in her fingers. “What do they say about him?”
“That he is a mwalimu. That he—” Hamilton hesitated. “That he has special powers.”
“Don’t worry, Hamilton,” Ingrid said with a smile. “I know he does.”
“Yes?”
“We call it something different where I come from.” She allowed her mind to wander back to their last meeting and then finally turned to the bed. “What about the statue?”
“Maybe a guard.”
“You’re guessing,” she said sharply.
“Yes, but it’s from the mainland, not here.”
“Professor Templeton was looking for evidence of an African king who is said to have brought Islam to this coast. Have you ever heard of such a king?”
Hamilton shook his head. “I know nothing of kings.”
Ingrid joined him at the side of the bed and dropped to her knees. “Where are his things?”
Hamilton crawled around to the other side of the bed, peered under it, and emerged empty-handed. “I think we should go now,” he said. “This room is not wanting visitors.”
Ingrid reached under the mattress with her hands, her eyes now level with the statue, and searched from just under the pillow to the bottom of the bed. Near the foot of the bed she felt something hard, and hesitating only momentarily, she pulled out a thin leather briefcase. Hamilton whistled. She sat down on the floor and placed the briefcase in front of her. The leather was scratched and of poor quality. The sides were sewn loosely together with thick cord. Ingrid rested her fingertips on the briefcase, noting the marks on the leather, where it had worn thin. Then, watching Hamilton, she slipped her hand inside and withdrew two notebooks.
“Those are from Habib’s shop,” Hamilton pointed out. “They’re for schoolchildren.”
Peering inside the now empty compartment, Ingrid found an interior side pocket and pulled out a passport. “He’s still here, then,” she said, flipping through it. The photo had been taken years ago, long before she met him. His face was not wholly familiar to her. She glanced at Hamilton, her hand on the notebooks. “I have to look at these,” she said. He nodded reluctantly and sat on the edge of the bed as she leafed through the notebooks.
The first one opened with a sketch of an amulet that made her think of Templeton’s “grail.” Only instead of stars, she could make out the faint outline of an inscription and, beneath it, rows of symbols. At the bottom of the amulet were three uneven lines.
On the next page he had begun his notes. They started with a row of numbers that quickly dissolved into text. Ingrid passed her fingers over the words, feeling the slight indentations on the paper where he had pressed his pen.
In the creation of the heavens and earth; in the alternations of night and day; in the ships that sail the ocean with cargoes beneficial to man; in the water which God sends down from the sky and with which he revives the earth after its death, disposing over it all manner of beasts; in the disposal of the winds, and in the clouds that are driven between sky and earth: surely in these there are signs for rational men.
She read on, entranced by the bold insistence of the lines, not knowing what it was she had found.
By the dust-scattering winds and the heavily laden clouds; by the swiftly gliding ships, and by the angels who deal out blessings to all men; that which you are promised shall be fulfilled.
We opened the gates of heaven with pouring rain and caused the earth to burst with gushing springs, so that the waters met for a predestined end. We carried him in a vessel built with planks and nails, which drifted on under Our eyes: a recompense for him who had been disbelieved.
He stood on the uppermost horizon; then, drawing near, he came down within two bows’ lengths or even closer, and revealed to his servant that which he revealed. He beheld him once again at the sidra tree, beyond which no one may pass. (Near it is the Garden of Repose.) When the tree was covered with what covered it, his eyes did not wander, nor did they turn aside.
The Lord of the two easts is He, and the Lord of the two wests. Which of your Lord’s blessings would you deny? He has let loose the two oceans: they meet one another. Yet between them stands a barrier which they cannot overrun.
This is a declaration to mankind: a guide and an admonition to the righteous. Take heart and do not despair. Have faith and you shall triumph.
Ingrid flipped through a dozen or so blank pages after this before coming across what appeared to be a diary—a scribbled assemblage of brief and disjointed notes. The first entry was undated.
F tells me leaders are sent from God to mend the tears between men. My king was not the first, will not be the last. This with a puzzling smile: I can’t possibly understand the great pattern God weaves with our lives. I am only a single thread. Unattached, subject to winds. But winds come from God, I say. Like currents. God is the air, F says. He is the ocean—
July 15
The Persian sailors were terrified to be blown off course to the land of Zanj because Zanj in
those days was thought to be ruled by Barbarians. But what they found was generosity and food such as they had never tasted—a hospitality and readiness to trade that suggested these were not the first visitors from afar. A banquet was prepared with tender fish cooked in the milk of coconut and fruits with delicious nectars, all in abundance springing forth from the arid land. And at the center, handsome and well-formed, a born leader to whom trust came naturally. Come aboard our ship, the Persians said. He went with delight. He had never seen a ship so large.
This is the story they tell of his abduction—always the banquet, always the ship, and the false promise of trade. It was only as an afterthought that they took him and his men with them. He didn’t utter a word of protest, but was silent for the entire journey. Silence cleared his soul for the task of faith.
Years later, the same ship was blown off course to precisely the same shore.
July 31
Softened by his kindness, how quickly they moved from terror to greed. Instead of gratitude for trade and safe passage, they rewarded him with captivity. They knew he would fetch a fine price in their markets and carried him off, unafraid of trading in the lives of men.
His pilgrimage would start with a new language and eventually lead him home, along the Nile, through a desert where men found water by the stars, back to his own kingdom, where his people were waiting for him and where a new god was waiting to be born.
Aug. 20
The second hotel is here to stay. M tells me there is nothing to prevent. His denial burns like a prediction of fire.
I tell him the enemy has changed its face and his methods and God has been traded in for the false idols of money. The place must be protected, with or without his consent. Evil is that for which they have bartered away their souls.
At this point, the dates broke off abruptly and the entries became harder to read. Ingrid drew the notebook closer to her and continued.
Humankind is made of haste. I will show you all My signs, so do not try to hurry Me.
An Obvious Enchantment Page 11