by Hafsa Zayyan
‘Fair enough.’ They drive along in a comfortable silence for a while, Sameer’s mind whirring. Then he says: ‘It might not take as much time as you think, you know. And even if it did, it might be worth it. I think you’d make a lot more money in the long term.’
‘Mmm.’
‘I could have a look into it for you?’ Sameer suggests. ‘In fact, I’d love to – a little project for me over the next few days.’
‘I don’t think there’s any need for that,’ his father shakes his head. ‘We’ve got a lot of other things going on that I’m going to need your help with.’
Sameer suppresses a smile. His father has no real idea of the kind of hours Sameer is used to working. He will make enquiries, model the costings and projected profit, and propose it formally. Come to think of it, Sameer realises that he doesn’t know who in the family to propose it to. Who are the directors? The shareholders? He doesn’t even know how much money the business is making.
‘Dad, can I look at the company accounts?’
‘Why?’
‘So I can get a better understanding of the business.’
His father thinks about this for a moment before saying, ‘You know, I still don’t know exactly what you earn.’ Sameer does not respond to this. ‘Really, it’s all one pot. You should be sharing your income with us to help this business, which is your business, to grow. That’s the way our types of families work. All of this and everything it’s earned will come to you eventually.’
‘What do you mean, sharing?’
‘Put that money into our account, so we have one joint family account. You don’t need a separate account. I’m sure the Patels’ son is doing it.’
Sameer imagines asking for permission to spend anything out of the account; imagines his father sitting down on a Sunday afternoon trawling through his weekend expenditure: What?! The boy spent £120 on dinner! What is this Hakkasan?; the boozy brunches, the cost of Yeezys …
‘You should be on the family credit card,’ his father adds.
‘The family what?’
‘We’re all on it,’ his father says as they pull into the drive. ‘You should be too.’
Sameer is surprised to learn of this, and slightly hurt that he has not been asked before. Then again, he doesn’t want to spend his family’s money. He doesn’t want one big joint account with the family.
Zara gets her A-level results on Thursday. She missed out on the one A she needed to get into Edinburgh: she will go to her back up, Leicester. The family are thrilled – Zara can live at home; exactly what they have always wanted for their daughter. Sameer had searched Zara’s face as she announced the results in the morning, but her expression was inscrutable, the news delivered matter-of-fact. Afterwards, he had tried to catch her alone, but for the rest of the day she had been absent, out with her friends.
In the evening, they go out for a meal to celebrate: Yasmeen Foi and Haroon Fua, Shabnam and her husband and their son Ayaan, even Mhota Papa and Mr Shah. The only people missing are Samah and John. They go to the best curry house in town and the usual chaos ensues: they order, change their minds and reorder; Ayaan begins to cry uncontrollably after being reprimanded for spreading mango chutney on the walls. The waiter looks perplexed as he attempts to comprehend what’s going on.
At the end of the meal, Sameer’s father proposes a toast: To my daughter staying home, and to my son coming home. We couldn’t be prouder of both of you. Sameer groans at this remark, but his discomfort is drowned out by the sound of applause and clinking glasses. Now is definitely not the time to tell them about Singapore. When the bill arrives, Sameer sneaks a look – as he suspected, the waiter has got it wrong, the total is less than it should be. He doesn’t say anything: his parents will scrutinise the bill, as they always do when it comes to paying for things. They will only say something if they have been overcharged.
Zara, Sameer and Mr Shah stay up after everyone has gone to bed. Mr Shah, sitting comfortably in an armchair in the front room like a fat, lazy cat, pulls a small bottle of amber liquid from the inside of his jacket pocket. With one hand, he takes a swig; with the other, he pulls out his cigars. ‘You won’t say anything, will you?’ he says, winking at them.
‘Please may I have a cigar?’ Zara says boldly. Sameer thinks about asking for a sip of the whisky, but doesn’t want to in front of his sister, even though he could really do with it today. Mr Shah nods at Zara, his chin somehow retreating deeper into the folds of skin under it, and gives her what Sameer recognises to be his own half-finished cigar.
‘Don’t smoke too much, sis,’ he says feebly, wondering again whether she is as happy to stay in Leicester as the family are. He wants to ask her, but not in front of Mr Shah. Instead, he says: ‘Tell us more about your business in Uganda, Mr Shah.’
Mr Shah leans back into the chair so that he almost becomes a part of it, and smiles lazily as the effect of the whisky begins to travel through his bloodstream. He tells them of red earth sprouting sweet, turgid sugar cane, the crunchy juiciness of eating it raw – no, they have never tried it – of how easy it is to run the planation and the factory in a country where there are so few people exploiting opportunities, markets are not saturated like they are here and there are limited labour laws; he tells them that it is like living in the past with knowledge of the future.
‘We could have gone back,’ Sameer posits, eyes shining.
‘You know, your grandfather wanted to,’ Mr Shah says, tapping his cigar into a small plate. ‘He was very attached to Uganda. It was all he had ever known. And trust me,’ he adds sombrely, ‘to go from there to here, with all the grey and cold … well, it felt like you were going from paradise to hell. So when we had the opportunity to go back, your grandfather wanted to take it with open arms.’
‘Why didn’t we go?’ Zara asks.
‘Well …’ Mr Shah pauses uncomfortably. ‘As I understand it, the rest of your family were very opposed.’
‘But why?’ Sameer presses.
Mr Shah sighs deeply and pinches the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and thumb. ‘Look, beta,’ he says after a while, ‘to be turfed out of the country in which you were born, the only country you’ve ever known, like you’re no one, like you’re nothing … it’s a betrayal. God willing, you kids will never know what it’s like to experience that. But for people like your father and your aunties and uncles, what was done to them at such a young age, it was very painful. After that, they grew up in this country and it became home for them. Why would they choose to return?’
Sameer nods, trying to imagine what it would have felt like for Yasmeen Foi, Haroon Fua, for his father. But then he thinks of the dreary concrete of London and the grey interior of his office building and all he can see is the jungle-green dollar signs of Uganda.
There is not a moment in the following week where Sameer stops: the regular 2 a.m. finishes continue; it turns out he can’t rid himself of the drive to work, it lives in him. Mornings are spent visiting the hospital (where Rahool still views him with suspicion); the afternoons are spent at the new Kampala Nights site with his father. In every spare moment, Sameer looks into the cost of renovating the petrol station to establish new retail units. He talks to builders about converting the forecourt space and researches the Costa franchise, drawing up a table comparing costs with projected growth. In the evenings, he talks to Mr Shah late into the night, telling him of his plans. Mr Shah spurs him on, agreeing that it’s all a very good idea: ‘Now you’re thinking like your father’s son! Think big and go for it. With your heritage, you can’t fail.’
Sameer wishes that Mr Shah would stay longer, but, by Friday, it is time for him to leave. They swap phone numbers and, gripping Sameer’s hands in his podgy own, Mr Shah says: ‘You must come and visit me in Uganda.’
‘I will,’ Sameer replies, and he really means it.
10
To my first love, my beloved
15th December 1967
You were not a beli
ever in karma, my darling, were you? That what goes around comes around, that you reap what you sow. You would have said that what is given to us in this life is a trial for the next. Yet life has a way of being ironic to the point of design sometimes, doesn’t it?
Ever since we were forced to sell the ginnery to the cooperatives, we turned our attention to the retail stores. And here is Irony Number One: the ginnery in the hands of the corruptible African has resulted in such crippling inefficiency that the government has had to intervene to establish an investigation into the cooperatives’ workings. Their mistake was to assume that they could just take us out and replace us with the African. I must admit, I found this rather comical, with the sort of nonchalance that comes with no longer caring what happens: let them suffer for what they have done. In the meantime, whilst we focus on the retail business, I present to you Irony Number Two: the government, in attempting to control the price of foodstuffs, has ended up selling those foodstuffs almost exclusively to Asians! It is us who ended up with a monopoly on the goods, and us who can inflate retail prices as we wish.
Whilst this is all mildly amusing, I do concede the government one victory in their attempts to trouble me, a win perhaps that matters above all else: my legal status in this country.
I went with Shahzeb and Abdullah’s son Ibrahim to the Immigration Office to try to negotiate with them. My son, Shahzeb Saeed, with a first-class honours degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Abdullah’s son, Ibrahim Atek Adyang Okide, member of the 106th Battalion, reporting directly to the brigadier of the Fourth Division – recently promoted in the current state of emergency. Brain and brawn. Intellect and power.
Abdullah did not come with us – by offering us Ibrahim, there was no more that he could do. Abdullah, my oldest friend, as close as a brother, my substitute mother; the son of a servant, a servant himself. And look at him now. The most senior Saeed & Sons employee (and the most well paid!). Dare I say, he is as good as you were at managing the business. Indeed, you would have made a fine team together.
It may not surprise you to hear that Abdullah told me that he had thought about starting his own business; that he had an idea whilst the boycott was ongoing. I smiled when he relayed this. I did not want to tell him how we had struggled during the six long months that he had been gone; that not only had the business suffered as a result of the boycott, but that the store had also suffered; that Nazir’s son, whom I had employed as a replacement, was no comparison to him. If Abdullah wanted to leave us for pastures new, I would not stand in his way. When he asked me how the business had fared in his absence, I simply said, ‘You know, the boycott was not good for any of us.’
You were always so supportive of him, that – to tell you the truth – it grated on me at times. Telling me that you felt uncomfortable that Abdullah was sleeping in the boys’ quarters and you wanted him to have a room in the house. The fight we had, when I told you that if it mattered to you so much, you could swap places with Abdullah and he and I could sleep together in the master bedroom, and you could take his place outside. It all seems so senseless now, thinking back to those early years. Abdullah has not lived with us for such a long time now, and for even longer he has not used the boys’ quarters. To imagine him there now is utterly peculiar. We become used to the existing state of affairs so quickly, don’t we, my dear, that we forget that there was a time when things were so very different.
For a while now, Shahzeb has been expressing his growing unease with our status in Uganda. This coincided with his marriage; perhaps a new sense of responsibility for our welfare, for the welfare of his wife and children. He says that we cannot ignore the warning signs to which our East African neighbours alert us, where an unsettling pattern of Asian flight has begun to occur. Business and land nationalised overnight in Tanzania. Mandatory work permits in Kenya for which Asians must show, as a condition of such permit, that there is no Kenyan citizen who could do the work they do. Tens of thousands of Asians have fled – back to India or Pakistan, some to Britain.
The intention is not to put us out of business, the government says, but to make trade more balanced; to achieve integration. But, my darling Amira, if Saeed & Sons is not the prime example of integration, then what is? Abdullah is the manager of our retail stores. He is paid a salary that I would pay any one of my sons for doing the job. No, he is not a shareholder or a director of the business, but that’s because it is a family company.
Abdullah does not know how lucky he is, to belong without effort. We were divided in the house when independence came. Shabnam wanted – of course – to remain British. How beauteous it was at that time to have the luxury of choosing – we had everything we could have wanted, and we had a choice of who we wanted to be! To tell you the truth, prior to independence, I had never given much thought to the matter. My Indian ancestors had sailed, unhindered, across land and sea to arrive in Africa many decades ago. There was nothing to stop them from aligning themselves with this country – to the contrary, everything about this country appealed to them, it begged them to come. Who knew then that the creation of passports would allow one to question the very existence of oneself?
Shahzeb helped me to prepare the papers. I was to apply for Ugandan citizenship, and Shabnam would remain British – once I obtained my citizenship, she would be my dependent, as would our young children. It is far better to have a British passport, Shabnam warned me. ‘What else do you need a passport for other than to travel? It will be easier to travel on a British passport than a Ugandan one. The world respects the British.’ But she was wrong in thinking that the only function of a passport is to facilitate travel. It is much more than that; it is a mark of identity: for the first time in its history, we would be able to identify ourselves as citizens of Uganda. An independent Uganda, birthed from the departure of the British with very little blood. An allegiance of a kingdom and political party, a democratic election: each concept, new to Uganda – but anything to get the British out.
I thought of you, my darling, and my dear papa, when I made my application to become Ugandan. As I swore before a magistrate that I would no longer be British upon receipt of my new nationality, I smiled, recalling your disaffection with the British. As I renounced my British citizenship before the British High Commission, I thought fondly to myself that Papa would have taken Ugandan citizenship if he were still alive. But I would be lying if I did not admit that it felt rather peculiar to let go of Britain. After everything, as I signed the renunciation papers, I thought: if only we could have both. It seemed so solemn to have formally to say goodbye.
But then that was it: I had relinquished Britain, and she had relinquished me. I was free to be who I chose. I took the Certificate of Registration to the Immigration Office, manned by dozy karia clerks with vacant expressions, and finally: I became Ugandan.
Shortly after I obtained my new passport, Samir, Shahzeb and I travelled to Tanzania and Kenya. With each marriage, our family grows; we now have family in various locations across the East African subcontinent and for some time we have been discussing expanding Saeed & Sons into these countries. A Saeed & Sons superstore, for all your household needs and more. One superstore per country, run by the members of our extended family. The boys had retained their British citizenship, even Shahzeb – which surprised me – but he seems to have become somewhat disillusioned with Ugandan politics in recent years. I travelled proudly, however, as a Ugandan citizen.
So you can imagine what a shock it was to receive a letter from the Ugandan Immigration Office just last week, advising me that my passport was no longer valid.
The letter said that I had not renounced my British citizenship ‘within the mandatory time limits prescribed by the law’. I spent several hours frantically searching my office for documents I had received more than four years ago – and finally, after scrambling, removing drawers, papers everywhere, I found it: a letter dated 6th September 1963, curling at the edges, from the Immigration Off
ice, enclosing my Certificate of Registration. I gave it to Shahzeb to inspect. ‘The letter says you needed to have renounced your citizenship within three months. When did you renounce your citizenship, Papa?’ It had been sometime in November, I recalled. It was at the end of the rainy season and the nsenene were out … ‘OK, Papa. So you did it within three months of the date of the letter. That should have been enough. We’ll visit the Immigration Office, we’ll explain everything to them.’
It was Shahzeb’s idea to bring Abdullah’s son – Shahzeb said that he was sufficiently high ranking in the military to warrant it: ‘Trust me, Papa, the power of this government lies in the army.’ Ibrahim towers above both myself and Shahzeb. I liked the idea of his physical presence on our side, lending us more weight in the negotiations.
So off we went, the three of us, to the Immigration Office, and produced the letter to the clerk behind the counter. Lazy eyes scanned it. ‘We need to speak to your seniors, sir,’ Shazheb said calmly. ‘Something is wrong, because my father did make his renunciation within three months of this letter.’
The clerk jabbed at the papers with one finger and spoke slowly, as if he was talking to idiots. ‘Certificate of Registration dated April. Three months after April is July. You did not do it in time. You must now apply for non-resident permit, please, I will give you the papers,’ and he began to turn his back.
‘But he did not receive the Certificate of Registration until September, so it would have been impossible for him to renounce his British citizenship by July!’ Shahzeb pointed at the covering letter which had enclosed the certificate.
The clerk shrugged. ‘That is not my problem.’
‘It is your problem,’ Abdullah’s son spoke up, banging his fist on the desk. ‘There is obviously a problem in your system if this man did not receive the Certificate of Registration until after the deadline had passed.’