We Are All Birds of Uganda

by Hafsa Zayyan

  ‘This is now probably the most famous of our Ugandan street food,’ she says, as she peels back the paper wrapping. ‘But it would never have existed if it wasn’t for you guys.’

  Sameer laughs: it is a chapatti filled with eggs, tomatoes and onions. ‘But why Rolex?’ he asks. He cannot see any relation to the watch.

  ‘Roll, eggs … isn’t it obvious?’ she says, laughing as she takes a huge bite.

  She takes him down dusty, winding backstreets where he has to dodge ditches filled with putrid green water, past stalls with squatting women selling colourful stones, tailors wielding traditional printed fabrics. The smells are an assault on his nose: the fragrance of citrus and peanuts is punctuated at random with the aggressive stench of sewage – and something worse. His shoes are no longer white – he tried, at first, to avoid the dust, but this distracted him from what he was seeing, and so he embraced it. It is chaotic and discordant, yet somehow comforting – he is reminded of London. She asks him if he wants a muchomo – meat skewer – warning him that his stomach might not take it well, and he says yes; from a street stall, she orders two and roasted maize. They walk further into Kampala, through alleyways and backstreets, where skinny children shriek ‘Muzungu, muzungu!’ and point at him, running away laughing.

  ‘What does that mean?’ he asks.

  ‘Muzungu is white person.’

  ‘I thought I was a muhindi?’

  Maryam laughs. ‘You are a foreigner, that’s all you need to know,’ she says, dodging a football rolling towards them from a group of young boys kicking up red dust nearby. ‘Now, a very serious question: do you have a sweet tooth?’

  She takes him to a stall where a man is deep-frying what looks like small pasties. She orders two and hands one to him. ‘Mandazi,’ she says. He takes a bite – it is like a doughnut, but lighter, fluffy, and not too sweet. He orders another two and she laughs.

  ‘I guess you like it then …’ she says. Sameer nods enthusiastically, mouth full. The sun is streaming between the buildings, illuminating her from behind. He realises that he is watching her lick the sugar off her fingers and looks away quickly. She checks her phone: their time is up. ‘It’s good to try the street food, that way you get to see a bit of Kampala too, but I’ll take you to a real restaurant next time.’ He finds himself smiling at this.

  He declines her offer of a lift home. She tells him to download the Safe Boda app to get around the city and laughs when he offers to walk her back to her car. ‘I think I’ll be OK – it’s you I’m worried about, muzungu!’ she calls in that melodious voice, waving, and disappears into the crowd.

  Sameer stares at the spot where she had stood just moments ago, trying to hold on to the memory of the places she had taken him, the new experiences she had shown him. People are staring openly at him now – were they before, when Maryam was there? – he can’t remember. He suddenly feels very alone. The city is different without her next to him, directing him around and whispering history into his ear. He knows he will get lost if he tries to take the backstreets like she did; surreptitiously, he retrieves his phone to direct himself to the nearest main road, and finds himself climbing a hill that leads to the Uganda National Mosque. According to Google, you get the best views of the city from its minaret. Perhaps he will make it in time to pray asr, the late-afternoon prayer, in congregation.

  14

  To my first love, my beloved

  10th July 1972

  We rejoiced in the beginning.

  The streets of Kampala were wild with music and dancing as Amin announced that he had secured the return of the Kabaka. My dear, I do believe these people initially thought that the Kabaka would return alive! I have never taken much heed of the local politics of the African, but everyone knew that the return of the King (even if it was only his body) meant a lot to the Baganda, and we were swept up in the excitement that gripped the city. Kampala was sick with Kabaka fever; for some days it was crushed with the weight of an additional hundred thousand from all over the country; the excitement infected us all. ‘Long live Amin Dada,’ we cheered. They said that the queue to see the King’s body stretched over five miles.

  But it was not to last. My sons and daughters, my wife, my employees, my community: they look to me to provide guidance in times of trouble. But what happens when the one person, the only person, to whom you turn for counsel is no longer here? Are you watching over me? Whilst your body rests in the darkness of your grave, has your soul floated free of its sweet enclosure – and I do pray that your soul rests in sweetness – to watch over me?

  Within weeks of the coup, Amin’s promise of fair and free elections was ‘postponed’ – by five years, he said. If we thought at first that he would be good for us, for this country, we were wrong. He is not a politician. He is a military man.

  I shall confess, I did not truly understand the meaning of that term until one late-summer evening, when Farah arrived at our house, the baby wrapped in her arms and her elder daughter Leila clinging to her legs. Farah was trembling uncontrollably; she had the look of a person about to go mad. The ayah took the baby from her and Shabnam sat her down with a mug of chai.

  ‘Where is Noor?’ I asked, as I opened my arms for my granddaughter to come to me. Leila sucked her thumb and dug herself further into her mother’s legs. Farah’s mouth opened and then closed. She tried again; nothing came out. I called for Tasneem. If Farah was having marriage difficulties, then she should talk to the ladies first. I stood to leave.

  ‘Papa,’ Farah croaked, halting me in my footsteps.

  ‘What’s the matter, beta?’

  Her lip quivered momentously, like a moth fluttering dangerously close to a flame, before she burst into tears. Leila began to cry too, in earnest.

  ‘Your cousin has a doll’s house – do you remember it?’ Tasneem said to Leila, leading her out of the room.

  It took Shabnam and me twenty or so minutes to calm Farah down and coax the story out. ‘We were just sitting at home, doing nothing, you know, relaxing. Suraj was managing the store; it’s the first weekend since the baby was born that Noor and I have had together. The next thing we knew, there was a bang, coming from the kitchen, and gruff voices – we could tell they were karias by their voices. It was so horrible, Papa. Noor told me to stay put and that he would go to investigate – but he had nothing, no weapon, no way of defending himself. I just knew it was going to be awful, I could just sense it, I’d been feeling uneasy all morning. I’d broken my favourite dish that morning, as if Allah had been trying to warn me, you know.’ She paused, wiping her eyes; Shabnam passed her a tissue and she blew heavily into it. ‘Before Noor even had the chance to get up they stormed into the drawing room – carrying axes and machetes. Have you ever seen a machete up close?’ She shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. ‘It’s such a cruel instrument, the way it glints. Anyway, there were three of them and they were wearing military uniform – Amin’s men! The baby starts screaming, Leila starts crying, Noor stands in front of us all bravely and asks the men what they want, why they are in our house. The way these men are standing, swaying, from the smell, the look in their eyes, Papa … they were completely drunk! I’m thinking to myself, we’re about to die.’

  ‘Ay, Allah,’ Shabnam breathed.

  ‘It’s OK, I’m here, na?’ Farah stood up quite suddenly, looking out of the window hopefully, and then sat back down. ‘Where is he …?’ My palms were throbbing. I hadn’t realised it, but as our daughter’s story had unravelled, I had begun to clench and unclench my fists rapidly. My face was hot with anger. Believe me when I say that I have never felt such fury as I did in that moment: how dare these people do this to my family? How dare they?

  ‘What happened then?’ I pressed Farah. ‘How did you get away?’

  ‘They wanted money, didn’t they? They wanted our things,’ she reached her hand up instinctively to her neck, which was bare. ‘They ripped my gold from my neck and my ears. Noor told them we didn’t have any money
in the house, that we kept it all at the bank, but they wouldn’t leave. The leader of the group kept shouting at Noor: we know what you cunning wahindi are like, you think you can fool us? We control this country now – not you.’ Farah recalled, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  I wanted to find these people, to hunt them down and rip their tongues from their throats.

  ‘Noor begged them to let me go. You’ve taken what you want from her, and these are just children, he said. Let them go and I will go to the bank with you if you want, give you all the money we have. They said they weren’t willing to go anywhere with him, but they would release me and the children. I cried, protested to Noor, but he firmly pushed me out of the room. I walked out of the house with nothing but my baby and my daughter. My hands were shaking as I put the children in the car, Papa,’ she said, looking down at her hands as if she could not believe her own eyes, ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about what they might be doing to Noor in the house. I drove like a madman to the police station, but the police were useless. You know what they said to me when I told them our house was being robbed?’ she looked at us, red eyes wide. ‘They said: are you sure, madam? I screamed in frustration and begged them to come with me. But they wouldn’t come. I went to the store, told Suraj what was going on and asked him to come back to the house with me. He is a good man, Papa, may God bless his soul. He told me to wait at the store with the children and he went alone to the house with – can you believe it? – just a baseball bat. The next hour was the most excruciating wait of my life.’

  Farah stopped talking. Shabnam and I looked at each other and then back at her, dreading what she was about to say next. I could hear Shabnam reciting the Quls under her breath. Farah stood up and went to the window. ‘Alhumdulilah, alhumdulilah,’ she mumbled, pressing her hands to the windowpane and sinking to her knees. ‘He’s here. It’s Noor.’

  It turned out that Noor did in fact keep cash in the house – 20,000 shillings under the mattress in the bedroom. He handed the intruders the money and they promptly departed; by which time Suraj had arrived and Noor was clearing away the broken glass in the kitchen where the intruders had smashed their way in.

  It is not safe for Farah and her family to stay in Mbarara any more. They have lived with us since then, their house abandoned, the Mbarara branch of Saeed & Sons closed until further notice.

  After that, I gathered up all the cash we had in the house and deposited it in the bank. The same went for Shabnam’s jewellery – to the bank’s safe. I wanted nothing in the house. I knew that it was only a matter of time before they would come, and our ascari and security dogs would not be enough to scare them away. If they wanted anything of value in this house, they would have to take what they could carry: our furniture, the television, the ornament cabinet.

  So, it is business as normal. Except it cannot really be business as normal. We went to Mbarara a few times after Farah and Noor arrived, to collect their things. There are checkpoints every few miles, and the army will stop you and harass you, taking everything they can except the clothes on your back. I have stopped travelling for trade.

  I am sorry to say it, but it seems the notion that Africans are kondos – a word you hated so much for it meaning loathing and public executions – is proving to be true. They are bestowed with a single, initial opportunity – a first chance to taste power – and they completely abuse it. Gone from the military ranks are the educated, like Abdullah’s son, Ibrahim, replaced by the stupid, drunken brutes of Amin.

  Ibrahim has been missing for three months now and Abdullah is distraught. Our Sunday catch-ups have become infrequent; Abdullah continues to manage the retail stores, but I see him perhaps only once a month. Since Ibrahim disappeared, Abdullah has aged in a way in which I did not know it was possible for Africans to age. ‘I can feel it in my heart,’ he says, shaking his head.

  ‘We must be patient,’ I tell him. ‘We need to keep praying, keep making dua.’ But, in truth, the words sound hollow even to me.

  The way we are being treated by the military is nothing short of awful, but the way they have treated themselves has been worse: carving themselves up into pre- and post-Amin men. There are stories, shared in hushed voices and passed on at the mosque, whispered hurriedly over tea, murmured only to those strong enough to take it. Stories too terrible to repeat.

  Clearly, Amin is a madman. His bloated, wet face blots out our television screens, his eyes hungry. His official title, we are told by the newspapers, is His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular. Is that not ludicrous? A man who proclaims himself to be a Muslim, and yet calls himself Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth. To be in his favour is to be in a precarious position indeed: for one moment you are loved, and the next, utterly loathed! In the beginning, he loved the Jews, who supported his coup, taking his first ever diplomatic visit to Israel. And then, when they refused to fund his crazy ideas, he promptly broke off diplomatic ties and demanded that the Jews leave Uganda. In the end, it’s always about money, isn’t it?

  It was around the time that Farah came to us that Amin announced Asian citizenship status would be reviewed. In retrospect, it was naive of me to believe that this was the opportune moment to straighten matters with respect to my somewhat fragile citizenship. A headcount of Asians followed, and we were all given green cards, which we have to carry with us at all times.

  Then, at the end of last year, the government held a two-day conference of Asian leaders in trade to which we were invited, and I finally saw clearly what worth we Asians are considered to have in this country. The Asian leaders gave a presentation setting out our hopes for a new Uganda under Amin, a future in which the Asians and Africans of Uganda worked together and in peace; showing the Defence Minister in attendance just how critical Asians are to every aspect of life in Uganda – education, trade (of course), finance, among other things.

  On the second day of the conference, Amin himself appeared. I had seen him many times in grainy black-and-white footage, but never before in real life. He is an enormous man – both in stature and weight; such that his clothes appeared to be bursting at the seams, giving the impression of a man seeking to escape the structure his attire imposed. He spoke carefully and his words were measured, taking great pauses to allow us to digest what he was saying, referring back several times to his notes.

  For so long I have closed my eyes to the difficulties we have been facing; for so long I have tried to believe that the actions of the government were well intentioned. But it was at this conference that I realised that the truth is that Amin despises us. He accused us of being corrupt, of keeping all of our money to ourselves, of being shrewd and cunning, of being disloyal to Uganda. Blow after blow he landed. That we have used Uganda’s money to obtain degrees and then refused to share our knowledge with the country; that we are guilty of ‘economic crimes’.

  Is that how Abdullah sees us? Is that what he thought of us when Papa first employed him, when Abdullah was just a child? When he had nothing and was a nobody; when no one would have cared whether he lived or died; when he had no name, no faith; when he used to sleep on the floor of our small kitchen above the duka, curled up like a dog; when he ate our leftovers for his supper?

  It is not fair for Amin to accuse us of such an array of crimes. We have done so much good. Look at how we brought Abdullah out of the bush and into the success he now enjoys; out of the darkness of ignorance and into the light of Allah. I have treated him well – and I have been forgiving. For Amin to suggest that we have sucked Uganda dry, like hungry parasites, is to do us the greatest disservice. This country needs the Asian. It would not survive without us.

  What, then, of Amin’s announcement at the conference that he was cancelling all pending applications by Asians for Ugandan citizenship? What will become of us? What will become of me? The leade
rs of the conference tried to appease him by offering a significant number of shillings but it made no difference at all.

  What, my dear, in all this, is Amin’s key grievance? What, according to Amin, lies at the core of our willingness to commit economic crimes, our inability to give back to the country in which we and our forefathers were born? It is that apparently only six of our girls have married Africans. And so I stand corrected: in the end, it’s always about money or sex. Amin revealed these statistics towards the end of the conference with all the rancour of a disillusioned fanatic; he read out a letter, alleged to have been authored by an Asian woman married to a native Ugandan, claiming that the couple had been reviled by the Asian community and shunned.

  What is one to say to that? Of course, it is not right.

  We are not meant to intermarry. Look at how our community has flourished by keeping to its own; how we have preserved what we brought from India generations ago. Why would we dilute what Allah has blessed us with naturally? Just think of those confused, chotara children, not knowing if they are black or if they are brown.

  15

  Sameer wakes up to the remnants of a pleasant dream. He swings his legs out of bed, opens the blinds, and then – seeing the soft hazy rays of the morning sun – opens the window, savouring the warmth on his body. He is energised today; he is lightweight, untethered. Today, he is good. Then his mind drifts to home and to Rahool. He picks up his phone, scrolling to Jeremiah. Last WhatsApp:

  Sameer (02.00): I’m going to Uganda for a couple of weeks.

  No response.

  Sameer (08.30): Hey, mate, how’s R doing? I’m in Uganda now btw.

  Downstairs, breakfast is served in the kitchen on an island loaded with an assortment of cereals, oven-hot croissants and toast. Mr and Mrs Shah both get up from their bar stools to greet him; he returns the greeting, motioning for them to stay seated. There is no sign of Aliyah.