Gravel Heart

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  *

  Baba was lying back on the bed, smiling at the memory. I was smiling too as I pictured them at their happiness. He was content to stay there for a while and I was in no hurry. I knew now that Baba was reliving those times himself and that he would not hold back in describing them. I just had to let him do it his own way.

  It was late by then and I realised that I would be staying until he was too tired to continue talking. His eyes were blazing with life, and I guessed that I was going to be there all night.

  *

  We were young when we married, like grown-up children really, but not unusually young by our ways. In those first few months we lived in a paradise of our own. Nobody bothered us. Bibi came round every few days to see us, and Bi Maryam made her presence felt in her interfering way. Saida was offered temporary work in the office of a Norwegian organisation that was studying our education system, God knows why. One of her former teachers was employed by the Norwegians and was hoping for a scholarship to Norway, and it was she who got Saida the job. So although money was short we were comfortable compared to many people. Amir also came round a lot. He was living with Bibi but I knew from Saida that he found that difficult and wanted to come and live with us, though Saida persuaded him that Bibi needed him with her.

  You never knew Bibi. She was an angel, everyone said that. She was getting old then and struggling. Saida said she had been struggling for years, groaning with pain in the night and taking minutes to get up from all fours in the morning. They had partitioned a corner of the room for Amir and shared the rest of it between them, Saida on the rope-bed and Bibi on the floor. They had got rid of the bedbugs by putting the bed out in the backyard every day until the sun burnt them off, and they replaced the coir mattress with a kapok one. Every morning Saida was awakened by Bibi’s groans as she struggled to rise. She refused Saida’s help in getting up, saying it was God’s will that her body should be so stiff and feeble, and she waved away all talk of seeing a doctor. It’s only a little stiffness, she said, it will soon wear off. When Saida left to come and live with me, she felt like a deserter, an ungrateful wretch, but Bibi would not hear of any delays. I want to see my grandchild, she said, I’ve got my handsome young man here to look after me.

  That was Amir. Bibi did not know how difficult he found it living alone with her. He complained to Saida about how she groaned and snored and had no control of her body. As she grew weaker she cried so much and he did not know what to do to make her stop. She forgot things, including the location of the toilet, and sometimes made a mess of herself.

  He told Saida it would be a mercy for her to go. Hush, she told him, it sounds bad to talk like that. But Bibi lingered on: waiting for you, that was what she said. We tried our best and after a year and some earlier mishaps, Saida fell pregnant. Bibi lingered on until you were born and a few days afterwards she died. She waited until you arrived before slipping silently away some hours before dawn. God took her away suddenly and swiftly. May He have mercy on her soul, people said, but they did not know the many months of feebleness she had to endure first. Dying is such a degrading business.

  That was when Amir moved in with us. He was almost seventeen years old, handsome and friendly and full of joy. When he smiled everyone smiled back, and he smiled a lot. Saida told me that he had the same elegant looks as their father and the same fair complexion, although he was taller and leaner and laughed more loudly. Whatever he wore hung well on him. It had taken a while after the death of his parents for him to acquire the poise he now had, Saida told me, to grow from the edgy and frightened boy he had been to this friendly and confident youth, although you could see that promise in him even as a tense little boy. He liked to do things, he had energy and a determination that even the tears could not obscure. He also had Saida. The tragedy of their lives brought them closer in an urgent way, made her obsessively protective of him, and made his demands on her absolute and undeniable. He did not hesitate to ask and she did not hesitate to give, and because he was so tender and in need of her, she loved him more for it and tried not to deny him any request. They both understood that their bond of grief and love would be everlasting. Saida used to say that she would do anything for her brother.

  He had also had Bibi, whose regular reminders to both Saida and Amir had been that they should mourn and love their parents forever, but that they should also learn to live their own lives with virtue and eagerness. This is the burden we all have to bear, to live a useful life, she said.

  It all took time, but Amir probably learnt Bibi’s lesson more completely than Saida, who was sometimes helplessly overcome with the memory of her grief, even in later years. When Amir came home after a troubling encounter at school or at play, his sister and Bibi listened and soothed and condemned the source of his misery. Amir thrived and grew strong on this love and in time he grew into the open and self-possessed youth who came to live with us. He had a way of behaving with anyone, people of his own age or older, that flattered and pleased them. He was quick to laugh at people’s pleasantries and jokes. He listened with humble attention to what was being said to him by his teachers, at least before their faces. He was quick to offer assistance, and had a graceful agility that was like a kind of glamour. He was a good athlete, sang well, and was somehow able to express strong opinions without antagonising his friends. To all appearances, he was a handsome and becoming youth.

  To me he was like a beloved younger brother. When he was talking I listened to him with a smile on my face. His smile was at times too wide, trying too hard to please, but I took that for naivety on his part and I smiled back anyway. In time he would learn that he did not have to try so hard. When Amir lamented the lack of music in the house, I bought him a second-hand radio-cassette player. I would have bought him a new one, if one had been available at a reasonable price. Amir searched the wavebands into the early hours and recorded the music he liked, which was mostly British and American pop, and played it again and again in his room, sometimes for hours on end. If the mood was right in the house, he performed the songs for us and taught us to sing along, writing out the words for us and conducting us like a band-leader. He began learning to play the guitar at school, in informal classes organised by one of the teachers, Maalim Ahmed, who otherwise taught them biology. How good it would be if he had his own guitar to practise with at home, but that was beyond our resources. I could spare a small allowance for Amir, though, who saved the money to buy clothes. Music and clothes were his greatest pleasures.

  He did not have the same enthusiasm for his schoolwork, although he always did well in examinations and reminded us of that when we tried to persuade him to complete his homework or revise for tests. It will be all right, he said, I know this stuff. At times, Saida completed his work for him because she could not bear the wrangling and the nagging. He could not wait for his time at school to be over and told that to everyone who cared to listen. The teacher who organised the guitar classes asked him one day if he would like to come along to the rehearsals of the band he played with. They did not really need another guitar player but were desperate for a singer. Did Amir want to come along and try? In the meantime, he could improve on his guitar by learning from the others. By the way, the teacher’s band name was Eddie, not Maalim Ahmed, but Amir’s name was good, it sounded showbiz. When he reported this conversation to his sister and me, he put much emphasis on the anticipated improvement. He was not going to be just hanging about but improving on the guitar. He could not help grinning when he told us about his fine showbiz name. The band played at a dance club on weekends, and after the rehearsal Amir was invited to join them for their next show at the club.

  ‘But you’re still at school,’ I told him. ‘Shouldn’t you wait until you finish your examinations?’

  He made a face and turned towards his sister, who made a face with him and then they exchanged smiles. It was their way of telling me that I was being bossy, laying down the law when it was not called for. I remembered how my father
used to be with his rules and prohibitions and I said no more. They did that sometimes, looked at each other and turned against me. I could not resist the feeling that Saida had rejected me at such moments, but I tried not to be hurt and reminded myself that I was a newcomer in her affections. In any case, Amir was nearly eighteen years old by then, quite old enough to go and sing with a band on a Saturday night if that was his choice, and he would be singing in the same band as his teacher, Maalim Ahmed Eddie. When he came home in the early hours, he knocked on our bedroom window and I unbolted the door for him. It had gone really well, he told me every time.

  In the months that followed, Amir became a regular singer with the band, rehearsing several evenings a week and sometimes doing two or three sessions over the weekend, playing those British and American songs that he loved so much. He still came home in the early hours and knocked on our bedroom window for me to let him in while Saida pretended to be asleep, not wanting to know how late it was, not wanting to hear in case I complained. Apart from the lateness of the hour, which was worrying because it was irregular and somehow unsettling, there was nothing to complain about, I persuaded myself. Amir’s attendance at school for those last few months was normal, and he made enough effort to hold his own and complete his examinations. He did not pretend any enthusiasm for the schoolwork but he did what was necessary. After the examinations he was finished with school, he said with a swagger. He was now a singer with a band. It was not, in any case, that he was spurning any brilliant academic opportunities.

  The regulation assigning all school-leavers government employment for minimal pay was no longer in operation. There were no government jobs left. Amir was earning a little from his share of the band’s fees so he had money coming in. I offered him some work at the market stall but he said no, he needed the time for rehearsals regardless of the meagre return from the band. Some nights now he did not sleep at home, and some mornings he did not bother to wake up until it was time for lunch, yawning and laughing at himself for sleeping so late. His clothes smelt of smoke and alcohol, although I could not smell alcohol on his breath. I talked to Saida about him and only succeeded in annoying her.

  ‘He is wasting his life,’ I said. ‘He was such a nice boy. Something will go wrong.’

  ‘What do you mean, wasting?’ she said, although she knew what I meant. ‘There is nothing for him to do otherwise, except sell okra in the market for you. Let him play in the band, what harm can it do?’

  ‘He could turn out to be a musical genius but I hope not of the lawless short-lived kind,’ I said, making peace, knowing how protective she was of Amir. ‘And here I am, trying to interfere with his growth. But I don’t like this business of him not coming home some nights. I worry about him and I cannot make myself not care.’

  Saida nodded silently and we left it there for a while. In the end I said something to Amir, and when I did so he too nodded silently at first and then he said that he understood why I would worry about him but there was really no need. He only stayed overnight when they were playing at a wedding or an event like that which was far to get back from, especially when there was nothing to rush back for, was there? He would try to warn me beforehand if he could but it was that kind of business. It often ran late. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t bring shame to your house,’ he said, smiling, and I thought he was mocking me.

  For a while after that conversation, Amir stayed away on Saturday nights but came home the other nights of the week. Saida and I tried to restore our previous ease together, asking about the band’s fortunes, flattering Amir’s singing, but the joyfulness was diminished. We were all more watchful now about what could not be said. I started to feel a mild sense of foreboding.

  Perhaps I was just worrying about money, I told myself. The Housing Department had returned the house we lived in to its owner, who was now talking about the accumulated unpaid rent of years. Several other previous owners of houses had appealed successfully to get their properties back, after offering money as goodwill and doing a bit of grovelling. When the landlord spoke to me about the rent, I told him to be reasonable. Where did he expect me to get that kind of money? It was his right to ask for the back rent and mine to delay and negotiate but it was a worry. I had many reservations about the landlord, who was a Hadhrami rumoured to have acquired several of his properties by lending money to the owners and then demanding the house when they failed to meet the repayments. He had now moved his main business to Dar es Salaam, where he had invested in a drinks manufacturing factory and was apparently making a fortune. He left one of his sons behind to run the dry-goods shop in Darajani, which had always been the visible face of his many commercial interests. The landlord preferred that we should leave, in which case he would forgive part of what he was owed and then put the house out for rent at current prices.

  These worries about the rent caused me real disquiet. Saida’s Norwegian job was over and I did not earn enough as a clerk in the Water Authority to feed all of us, let alone have anything over for the back rent, and I was not sure if I had enough of the law on my side without having to pay for it. I also knew that the landlord had the money to arrange for our removal if he really wanted to. I told Saida we should sell the jewellery my mother had left in my safe-keeping. She had given it to me as a way of insuring me in case of need. Saida said no, we would get a pittance for the gold bracelets. We should just hang on and manage. Until life returns, I said, and she smiled because that was what I always said when things looked bleak.

  Perhaps it was this feeling of crisis looming that was giving me a sense of foreboding, something worse than the usual disquiet with the general shortage of everything we lived with all the time. My whole life from childhood had been hand to mouth like that. My father had never earnt enough for us to be comfortable while he lived here, although if reports of fabulous salaries in Dubai were true, that would no longer be the case. What I earnt myself was barely enough when the scarcity of essentials made life so expensive. Amir kept whatever he earnt. I would not have accepted anything from him anyway, but I would have liked to have been able to say so. It would have made the burden of it a little easier to bear. But I really feared that something would befall Amir that would cause Saida pain. She took too much responsibility for him, and saw her obligation to care for him as unconditional and undiminishing. I did not say this to her, nor did I say anything to Amir about finding regular work. His singing with the band had made a name for him and given him a thrill, and perhaps it might lead to something. The band had already featured on a live radio programme. But I feared and dared not say that Amir now lived by rules very different from ours, and that I thought I would find repellent. I felt I could smell that life on him, see it in the hardened look in his eyes and the scornful glances that sometimes betrayed his feelings. When I spoke about my worries to Saida she defended him angrily, and I hated the venom of these exchanges so much that I hardly dared to mention his name to her again. Amir must have sensed this atmosphere in the house, and guessed that it was to do with him, but it just became another thing we did not speak about.

  It was around that time that we had a conversation about television. Despite food shortages, crumbling houses and the lack of every conceivable luxury from toilet soap to chilli pepper, the government decided it was time there was a television service in the country. Not only would there be a television service, but it would be the first colour broadcasting anywhere in Africa south of the Sahara. It was, no doubt, the President’s whim to grant his subjects this luxury while denying them others, and also to have a laugh at all those other big mouths north and south of us who did not yet have colour television. It seemed to many people a frivolity in those hard times. Amir, however, began to agitate for us to get a set.

  ‘We don’t have the money for that,’ Saida said. ‘They bring us televisions when there is no rice or onions or flour, when sugar has become like gold dust, and we’ll soon be eating grass and weeds like goats.’

  ‘You can ask your fathe
r to send you one from Dubai,’ Amir said to me, ignoring Saida. ‘I hear they are really cheap there, and top-quality Japanese models as well. Why didn’t you go with your family when they moved there? I hear everyone is living a life of luxury in the Emirates.’

  I could tell that Amir was teasing me, provoking me, yet it was not a question he had asked me before, not straight out like that: why didn’t you go with your family when they moved there? Because I did not want to live like a stranger, like a vagrant in someone else’s country. I did not want to live among people whose language I did not speak and whose wealth would allow them to despise and patronise me. I wanted to stay here where I knew who I was and knew what was required of me.

  Now Saida too repeated Amir’s question. ‘Why didn’t you go with your family when they moved there?’ she asked, glancing at her brother and smiling with him.

  Because of you. I had already told her that. The words would not come, though. I sat frozen in front of them, my tongue the size of a fist while they exchanged glances again and laughed. After a moment they moved on, assuming perhaps that I did not wish to reply, and my terror slowly subsided. I felt foolish and rejected and did not know how to explain my ineptitude. I thought I had seen a glimpse of Amir’s dislike in those exchanged smiles. I thought I had seen a glimpse of his contempt.