by Hafsa Zayyan
They drive down the rolling roads of green hills interrupted by flashes of small mud homes; dirty, round-bellied toddlers chatting to one another quite seriously on the street; people pumping at wells into plastic containers; men herding cows with long, curved white horns; and the precarious gait of cyclists with bundled long grass the size and width of men strapped to their backs.
It takes over four hours to reach the town where they stop for lunch and (having made only bathroom breaks up to that point, or ‘short haul’ stops as Imran had put them, warning Ruqaya that there were to be no ‘long haul’ breaks in the ditches along the side of the road) Sameer is glad to stretch his legs. He sits next to Maryam as they eat at a small restaurant with outdoor tables, laughing and talking in the late-morning sun. She is the most relaxed he has ever seen her, and when she throws a cheeky glance in his direction before stealing a chip from his plate, he is almost stunned by the intimacy of this seemingly innocent act. (There had been a moment of indecision when, after Sameer ordered a burger and fries, Maryam and Imran had ordered local food. He had wanted to change his order; but then, deciding it was better to resign himself to the fact he was undoubtedly a muzungu, he left it, supposing it was better to look like a muzungu than a sheep.)
Lunch is followed by prayer in the town’s local mosque. Sameer had noticed, when passing the little villages of tin roofs and mud huts, almost all had a beautiful, well-maintained brick building, a mosque crowned with a crescent moon and star; Muslims were less than 15 per cent of Uganda’s population; how had they infiltrated to such an extent? As he takes his place next to Imran, he tries to imagine what it would be like to try to incorporate daily prayers into his life back home. Prayer was rhythmic to these people; a part of their life, like breathing, or sleeping. Unobtrusive and unavoidable.
Their journey continues to the park entrance, where hundreds of baboons appear from the depths of bush on either side of the wide red road, scattered in small groups, watching the jeep. ‘You need to be wary of the baboons,’ Maryam warns. ‘They’re very intelligent and all they want is food. They’ll do anything they can to get it.’
Ruqaya gasps, craning her head to get a better view from the window.
At the entrance to the park, a khaki-clad ranger exchanges jokes with Imran, laughing heartily as his long rifle smacks against his leg. Money changes hands while Sameer looks through the window at a baboon that has approached the car, wondering at the exposed red buttocks which look raw to the point of infected. The baboon stares at him, its small, lined eyes so human-like; Sameer pulls a face, half expecting the creature to copy him; it continues to stare, deadpan, and then scampers away.
Through the park they roll, past long grass savannah, acacia and palm trees, waterbuck and warthogs, and now the road is bumpier and they jolt and jerk, while Imran points out the midnight-blue starlings and yellow-bellied weavers, stopping to allow them to look through his binoculars, flicking through a pocket-sized book to tell them the names of birds that he has forgotten.
The jeep eventually reaches the banks of the Victoria Nile, where it meets several other jeeps and a few vans. Imran seems to know all the other drivers and they chatter away, while Maryam holds Ruqaya’s shoulders to stop her from running down into the water, where Sameer can see the ears of hippos so still just beneath the calm reflective surface. The ferry that finally arrives to take them across the river is not a boat but a flat metal rectangle that Sameer is amazed can even float; the vehicles board and their passengers stand between the cars as the ferry breaks the water, Sameer gripping Ruqaya’s hand quite tightly in his own, Maryam on his other side, their shoulders brushing.
Across the river, the diversity of wildlife increases: Sameer yelps more than Ruqaya as he sees elephants, cape buffalo and giraffes. The roof of the jeep has been raised and Imran stops the car to allow them to stand and watch the animals stalk gloriously beside them. Maryam is quiet, and Sameer wonders if she is amazed; when he asks her how many times she’s been to Murchison before, she reveals that it is her first time. ‘We have ten national parks,’ Imran explains. ‘In my line of work, I have been lucky enough to visit all of them, alhumdulilah. My family, on the other hand, they have no time for our country! My grandson, you did not meet him yet, but when he is back for the school holiday, I take him with me if the tourists don’t mind so he can learn about his country. It’s good you came,’ he adds, ‘Maryam had no excuse not to visit.’
There is just enough time to drive up to see the waterfall before the sun sets. At the top of the hill, where the Nile suddenly plunges into thundering white foam, orange marbled rock of the cliff side juts unrestricted by barriers or railings; get too close and one small slip would send you crashing to a certain watery death. Imran holds Ruqaya a safe distance from the edge and shouts to Sameer to go and ‘take a shower’; he follows other muzungus down some crudely cut stairs and (finally) past a suspect-looking railing, through to a small opening in the cliff where the spray of the falls is so heavy he can barely open his eyes. It soaks him through.
‘Shit,’ he hears Maryam mutter next to him; it is the first time he has heard her swear. ‘My shirt!’ She is wearing white and it has gone see-through. Sameer tries not to stare at the outline of her bra (black? lace?) and shouts, over the din of the falls, ‘I can’t see anything anyway!’ but she has already disappeared.
Back at the car, Maryam has thrown a shawl around her shoulders. She throws Sameer an embarrassed grin and he can’t help it, he starts to laugh. A moment passes, and then she starts to laugh too, until they are both laughing uncontrollably. Ruqaya stares at them as if they are crazy. ‘What’s so funny?’ Imran asks as they get back inside the jeep.
‘Nothing, Taata, nothing,’ Maryam says, gasping for breath.
The lodge where they are staying is located in the park on the banks of the White Nile; Sameer did not know the Nile had so many names, but apparently Victoria and Albert come before the merger of the White and Blue. After they have checked in (Sameer and Imran sharing one room and Maryam and Ruqaya sharing another), he stands at the restaurant balcony overlooking the river.
The sun has started to fall rapidly from the sky, leaving behind a blazing trail of colours that, against the tree-scattered horizon, moves him to silence. When Maryam walks past, he reaches out to touch her shoulder and she stops and turns. Her skin glows, illuminated by the fading light. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ he whispers, nodding towards the sunset.
‘Don’t you get sunsets like this at home?’
‘I’ve never seen anything like this before.’
She laughs. ‘I’m going to the room – see you at dinner.’
‘Stand with me for a few minutes?’
She shakes her head. ‘It’s maghrib,’ she says. ‘I’m going to pray.’
‘Oh. Right.’
And then he is watching the back of her as she walks away from him, feeling slightly guilty that he hasn’t rushed to pray, but also having no intention of leaving the balcony. As he stands there, he thinks about the way she moves – with such steady grace – it’s not so much a physical thing, but it’s in the way that she carries herself. He admires her sense of self, her sense of sureness, almost to the point of envy.
There is a boat cruise the next day – a real boat this time, complete with top deck, toilet, tour guide and bar. The four of them take a seat on a bench on the lower deck, Ruqaya squashed (much to her disappointment) between Imran and Maryam, Sameer on Maryam’s right. He relishes the sensation of their thighs touching; if she is conscious of it, she does not move away; if she is not, then he wonders why it is that he can feel the heat of her body searing through her dress and into him. As the boat hums along, the tour guide points out the red-throated bee-eaters nesting fastidiously in the cliff edges, the black kite swooping above their heads, the deathly still crocodiles waiting patiently for the semi-naked black silhouettes paddling in long wooden boats to shore up on the banks of the river.
‘Sameer, would you l
ike to go to the top deck?’
This offer from Maryam is welcomed; they leave Ruqaya in Imran’s company and take the stairs into dazzling sunlight.
They stand at the front of the boat, hands clutching the railing, eyes on the horizon. Cruising down the Nile in peaceful silence, wind in his hair, Maryam by his side, Sameer realises he is happy. There’s no tightness in his chest, no need to check emails or worry about what is happening at work. His life in London is already a distant, fading memory, like it might never even have happened.
He reaches into his pocket and takes out a folded piece of paper. ‘Will you read it?’ he asks, handing it to her. A mixture of emotions – shock, intrigue, excitement – flicker across her face but is quickly suppressed; she pushes the letter back, surprising him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘It’s not mine to read. But if you want to, you can read it and then tell me what it’s about. If it feels too strange, just stop.’
He can’t argue with that. ‘OK,’ he says, unfolding the paper slowly, hands trembling slightly.
When he is done, he folds the letter carefully and puts it back in his pocket. She turns to him and touches him gently on the arm, voice tender: ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ he says, and then – because he likes the sensation of her hand on his arm: ‘I think. It’s a letter about loss.’
There is a short silence, during which she doesn’t remove her hand from his arm.
‘My grandfather’s first wife,’ he says. ‘He loved her so much. Their eldest son – my uncle – had just got married. They’d just moved into the house your family lives in now. They were doing really well,’ he pauses for a moment to watch a pair of birds with large orange beaks skim the surface of the water in front of them. ‘And then she died.’
‘That must have been very hard for your grandfather,’ Maryam says.
‘I think it was.’ He wants to tell her more – that he could feel his grandfather’s sorrow dripping from the pages, about the longing, the regret – but then he remembers what happened to her mother and that her father never remarried, so he says instead: ‘It was the end of the Second World War, and they had no troubles in the world,’ he laughs incredulously. ‘Can you believe that? No wonder they thought Uganda was a paradise.’
Maryam removes her hand from his arm at last. ‘You know the Second World War didn’t escape Uganda though,’ she says. ‘Jjajja’s brothers fought in the KAR.’
‘The KAR?’
‘The King’s African Rifles. The colonial government’s army?’ Maryam looks at him and he raises his eyebrows, as if to say: Of course! King’s African Rifles! ‘They rounded up any man they believed could fight, trained them and sent them off to Burma for more than a year.’ She looks back to the horizon. ‘Not all of Jjajja’s brothers came home,’ she continues in a toneless voice, ‘and those who did were never paid properly for their service …’
Sameer swallows. ‘My grandfather doesn’t mention –’
‘Your family weren’t affected by the war. It’s a good thing,’ she says, quickly turning to face him, smiling to show she means it. He smiles back, encouraged. But the moment passes and she turns away. ‘The British didn’t ship off any of the Asians living in Uganda at that time, you see. They were too important.’
This is just a fact and there is nothing to be said to it, and so he says nothing as they stare out at the horizon together.
18
To my first love, my beloved
28th February 1973
I have been in Belgium for three months now and have not written to Shabnam once. In the beginning, I didn’t even know where to write: no one thought to tell me where they were taking my family. It did not occur to them that I might want to know.
There must be five hundred of us here, and most of them are families: sharing rooms, eating together; young siblings fighting with one another only to reconcile; tired fathers with their arms around the shoulders of their weary wives. I have watched them enviously and tried to imagine my own family in Britain, all of them together; the picture almost, but not quite, complete. Has Farah’s youngest learned to walk now? Is Leila going to school? Has Tasneem been able to find the right ingredients to make your warm guar curry? Have my sons found jobs? Is Shabnam, my wife Shabnam …
I could not bring myself to write to her. I could not put on paper to her what it felt like to be here without all of them, knowing that they were together, knowing that I may never join them. The outcast. The idiot. Were my sons woefully shaking their heads, thinking: if only Papa had decided not to become a Ugandan citizen, like the rest of us? Was Shabnam pursing her lips and tutting, thinking: if only he had listened to me? Were they all thinking: I told you so, Papa, I told you so?
In the end, she wrote to me. She knew where I was, and she found a way to get a letter to me. I sat alone on a bench in front of the coast and read her letter. First, they went to Hobbs Barracks, Surrey; then, they made it to Leicester. There, Shabnam said, they sleep four people per room, can you imagine!
But even after I received her letter, I did not write. She wrote to me again, asking for a reply, asking if her letter had reached me. Still, I did not write. Instead, I sit here and write to you, because I know that this letter is between us alone, that its contents will never be read, that its secrets remain safe. But I have learned something about Shabnam these past few months. She possesses more determination than I had thought. Her letters had mentioned a petition to the British to allow stateless husbands like myself to join their families. Well, my dear, it seems that the petition worked. The British are allowing me to go to their country.
I will not be sorry to leave Belgium; I regret only that Britain will no doubt be as cold. My boys who had been to London for university had warned us, but I did not take heed: it penetrates through your coat and layers, and then your skin, until it reaches your bones. I shiver constantly, skin like a plucked chicken’s, teeth chattering.
It is worse near the sea; here, the bitter salt-wind slices through you like a guillotine. The building that we inhabit is a holiday centre, conveniently located on the beach. As if this were a holiday for us, a fun little outing. But there is nothing remotely holiday-like about Belgium’s coastline in February. Everything is gloomy; pale sands stretch out bordered by mounds of faded long grass, the colour drained from the scene. Tower block buildings behind you and the choppy brown sea in front. The water is so dull, nothing like the green-blue coast of Mombasa. But I take long walks along the coast, particularly at dusk. Just across that sea are the unyielding white cliffs of Dover.
I have had a lot of time to think here, you see. Time to reflect. ‘Allah increases rizq for whom He wills, and straitens it from whom He wills, and they rejoice in the life of the world, whereas the life of this world as compared with the hereafter is but a brief passing enjoyment.’ Did I do something to displease Him? Or is this all a test, a lesson to show me that our time in this duniya is so fleeting, so temporary, that what we have here is insignificant, meaningless?
I think a lot on Abdullah, and I wonder what he is doing now. I wonder if Ibrahim has made his way home, what has happened to Saeed & Sons. I wonder what has happened to all of our shops, the shops of the Asians, Market Street trussed up in all our colour, inviting you to come in and spend your money. We amassed so much wealth in the end. We were the backbone of the whole economy. Uganda, you cut off your nose to spite your face. Without us, it is surely in ruins. How will it cope?
How are you coping? That is what the counsellor asks me. I do not want her pity. I may have nothing to my name, but I demand dignity. I would not wish for anyone what I saw on our way to Belgium, when we stopped in Nairobi airport: one of my fellow passengers, a mother, alone with a small child, waiting for a table at a cafe, and immediately upon its occupants vacating, she began to rummage through their leftovers. I looked at the few notes I had in my possession and I bought her a sandwich and a bottle of water. But I could not look her in the eye, so em
barrassed I was.
It is a strange feeling to have nothing.
Lately, I have suffered some kind of guilt-induced torment of images of those emaciated African children – begging at the side of the road, approaching you with only one arm, or one eye, moaning softly: saidia, bwana, saidia. I recoiled from those children; pretended not to see them. It would annoy me greatly when you used to stop to give them money or a little food – I had warned you so many times that it was likely a pretence; that they had probably been sent out to work by their good-for-nothing fathers who could not stop going to bed with every woman in the slum. But a niggling doubt remained: for the ones squatting at the side of a stinking gutter, sifting through the brown-green water, black faces pale with the crust of dried mud. God only knows what they were searching for. I always hurried past them quickly, as though if I did not see them, then they would not exist.
It is not fair of me to say we have nothing.
When we disembarked from the plane, we were received by a line of white people. You would have laughed to see them waiting on us like that. Apparently, the coverage of our story has prompted some sympathy: these were volunteers, Christians, charitable organisations. They fussed over us, escorting us to the holiday centre, where everything had been prepared for our arrival. A man, perhaps my age, perhaps older, handed me a tan-coloured coat and said something like: Here you go, you look like you’ll be needing this, I hope it fits you well. I took the coat (checked the label: it was made of fine wool!) and had to look away. Kindness is painful.
We are never short of food here either. Downstairs in the canteen, there are fridges full to the brim to take from as we please, and we are fed three meals a day. Those meals are very bland, but I am never really hungry, so I cannot complain. There are so many things here that we can take at no cost, and I have filled my pockets with it all: napkins, plastic cutlery, packets of ketchup. You never know when it will come in useful.