The Gunny Sack (21 page)

To this window I would be drawn at four in the morning, when the air felt cool and unspent and the street below was deadly still and the street lamps burned with a steady glow like breaths of life suspended in the darkness … the deadest time of night, when only the gods could be abroad, and those seeking the gods. A little before four, Jogo’s father approached, limping on the street, calling on people to wake up and remember the Eternal, except that his voice grated so much and what it spoke was so ridiculous, it reminded you of anything but the Eternal. A little after four-thirty came a shuffling sound from a long way off on the street, accompanied by murmurs. This was the gang of Kulsa Thauki, all women, except for the watchman in a blanket leading the troop, that left somewhere from Msimbazi and marched in the middle of the street all the way to the mosque, picking up more of the faithful on the way. There was a time when Kulsum was hit with the meditation bug, then the troop would shuffle to a stop right below the window and Kulsa Thauki would yell, not too loudly, “Kulsum Bai, are you coming?” If I was at the window, I would shout, “Wait!” and if not, Kulsum would get out of bed shouting, “Yes! Yes! Wait a little while!”

By the time the pack had left, something had been lost from the night’s mystery …

The scissors. I see Mehroon chasing her sister Yasmin with the scissors, through the bedroom, the sitting room, the dining room, round and round through the three doors. There were times when all order broke down: tears, screams, warnings and threats. And Kulsum tearful—

Go on, Shehru. There’s no holding back, now.

Kulsum would be in tears—

Shehru!

She too broke down … at the end of her tether, she would give a whimper … and then … one-two-three she would beat
her white chest with her hands, she would beat it until it was a painful, smarting dull-red and say—“I give you my life, I give you my life, I give you my life”—and weep uncontrollably.

Then the imprecations would begin, “No, Mummy! Please, Auntie. We are sorry. Never again. No, Mummy!”

And peace would return.

Thank you, Shehru.

Five years—half a lifetime—passed, gradually the memory of my father, Juma, was receding behind the overgrowth of fresh memories that were appearing with the density and vigour of a jungle. He became part of a glorious, idyllic past framed for us in his picture on the wall, stored for us in the locked glass cabinet that housed our former toys. Beside Kulsum’s bed was another glass case, long and rectangular on a round table, in which stood a rust-red and black, two-feet-long model steamer given him by a shipping agent for some service. It looked so real, this SS
Nairobi
as we called it for want of a better name, its four-blade propeller and its rudder heading it straight towards the heart of Kariakoo—we would look at it admiringly, every time discovering something new and delightful about it: three lifeboats suspended on either side, decks protected by railings, the exquisite little cabin doors and ladders
and cargo hatches that opened. No guest left without being suitably impressed. But no-one knew what ship it was, its
real
name. At the seashore our eyes became used to fruitless searches among the numerous cargo liners that hooted their way in and out of the harbour, jostled by one of the two tugboats. Only once, on my own, I thought I saw the real thing—rust and black, long with white cabins, three lifeboats on each side … it was so much like the model in our sitting room. I ran home in great excitement to report the discovery. There were many believers. I was chided for not having thought to look for its name, and the next afternoon after school Mehroon and Yasmin and I were sent off to the seashore on a mission to confirm my find. It was as though we were in some sense going back to the past … or if not actually going back then touching it in some way. All the way to the shore Mehroon and Yasmin would talk of nothing but the old days in Desai Road, of which they of course remembered much.

But there was no ship of that description in the harbour … nothing rust and black … in fact nothing but a white passenger liner, like a plastic toy ship with holes punched at the windows. My ship had sailed away …

We should have known—we knew it—but what’s wrong with hoping … in case Time makes a false move … it doesn’t, of course. The past is just this much beyond reach, you can reconstruct it only through the paraphernalia it leaves behind in your gunny sack … and then who would deny that what you manufacture is only a model …

At first the SS
Nairobi
was kept locked in its case and treated with extreme care. It was the star show in our sitting room. Kulsum sometimes hid banknotes behind the ship. But then one day the key got lost, the hundred-shilling note behind the ship was urgently needed, and the lock had to be forced. After that, important pieces of paper like electric and water bills found shelter behind the ship, and then in front, and sometimes on the funnel. Some time later the glue
inevitably came off a cowl and it toppled; then the cable supporting a lifeboat broke; a ladder slipped; the main antenna broke, a cargo boom became detached and hung from a mere pulley thread … until finally we had a capsized ship, a memory burdened by day-to-day worries like unpaid bills and unanswered letters …

Among the toys in the toy cabinet was a chubby, red plastic doll in a round frame on which it rolled with a tinkle. It was my baby-show prize. One December Begum brought it out, gave it a cotton-wool beard, put a red cap on it and put the finished Father Christmas in our shop window. It drew crowds of kids for two Decembers, before it too bit the dust, dented, punctured, fly-specked.

 … The clutter of memory that eventually finds its way into a … gunny sack. She smiles, Shehrbanoo. And throws out three knives.

Oh yes, there were the three Kashmiri daggers, of course, whose blades were now rusted. No-one knew what to do with them, where to put them. And there was a sword with a red scabbard. My father Juma a closet pirate? And what about the six rugby balls? Juma, a fence? But, six
rugby
balls, for God’s sake!

One day Kulsum had a dream. She saw Juma in his grey cashmere suit returning home from a night out. “He walked in and then seemed to recede, approaching and receding, and I said, ‘Aré, listen, where have you been? The children have been crying for you, they want to go out for ice-cream at night and here in Kichwele there’s no-one to take them, there’s no-one to relieve me in the shop and sometimes when I want to go for pee or water I ask Parmar to wait there and I go up …’ and he said, ‘Don’t complain, Kulsum. I would so much like to eat an apple,’ and he sat down on the chair and I went to bring him an apple, but the next instant, when I had returned, there was no-one on the chair, it was empty. I woke up with my heart beating thur thur like a fan.” The solution was clear. Begum and Mehroon concurred: apples had to be sought.

You found apples mostly in story books, where they hung from trees in leafy orchards and sandy-haired boys in shorts and stockings and pretty girls in blue frocks climbed to retrieve them. The apple was the prince of fruits, second only perhaps to that fruit which Roman princesses with soft undulating bodies like Elizabeth Taylor’s in soft silky gowns indulged in while lying lazily at a pool or on a raft: a bunch of grapes. It was difficult to find these fruits in Nairobi, how much more so in hot, humid, Dar! In Dar you could buy apples and grapes and chocolates at the Lushoto Garden Store downtown, frequented by the pretty and smart mothers of those sandy-haired children whom we saw on our way to Government House to celebrate the Queen’s birthday.

Idd was approaching, it was Ramadhan. The best part of Ramadhan was that shops stayed open late and we could play on the sidewalks way after dusk. The best time to play hide-and-seek is after dark on the street when there are spots of light and many shadows to hide in. The nice thing about hide-and-seek is that boys and girls, old and young, can play. Inside the shops about this time stocks were running low and cashboxes feeling solid. My father up there had perhaps realized that it was the time of year when he could expect a treat from his loved ones on the ground and had put in a request.

On the supposed last day of the fast, Begum and Mehroon went to Lushoto Garden Store to buy some apples. It was not as easy as they had thought. You have to
order
apples, they were scornfully told. How many do you want? Four, they said, not a little intimidated. Hunh. Not only did the Europeans have their orders; it turned out that my father was not the only one in the spiritual domain who loved apples. After much pleading and repetition of Kulsum’s dream, it was decided to deprive some European children of their share. Begum and Mehroon returned with four large apples.

These four large apples, not quite as red as in story books, but with shades of green and orange and yellow and purple
that gave them more character, more mystery, were placed on a plate on the dresser in our bedroom, beside the customary plate of sweet, fried vermicelli to be taken to mosque the following morning: only if the moon was sighted before then. But the moon was not sighted that night, Idd was delayed another day, the vermicelli was taken away and distributed for breakfast, and the four apples stood enigmatically on their plate, high up on the dresser, sending out a glorious aroma.

What must Eve have suffered as she watched the forbidden apples hanging temptingly in front of her … It is not simply the taste … it is also the mystery … the
knowledge!

At ten that morning the coast was clear, Begum was in the kitchen, Mehroon in the store. Without a conscious thought in my head, like a hawk, I picked up an apple and raced out of the bedroom, through the dining room and up to Sharrif’s roof where I ate it in breathless large bites, core and all. And when I’d eaten it I sat there, still breathing loud gulps of air, watching the charcoaled stumps on one of the walls. Tears of guilt fell down my cheeks.

Between four apples and three apples, there is a quantum of difference—that of a crime committed. Between three apples and two apples, the difference is not as great. Slowly I got up, dusted myself, and walked down to the flat. The coast was still clear, the crime undetected. I took the three remaining apples and this time walked to the roof and ate them all.

Inevitably, it was Begum who detected the crime, saw the empty plate, and gave a scream of rage. Immediately Ali was fetched, but the servant indignantly denied the crime and was believed. He did not even know what this new-fangled fruit was. That left four juniors, Shamim being presumed innocent, and Begum Sherlock got to work. It was right up her line.

The four of us were lined up in the bedroom, in front of the empty plate. All acknowledged the gravity of the crime, against God and the Dead, all denied having committed it. But she was nobody’s fool. “Confess now,” she said, “and you’ll be forgiven.
At least you were honest.” Silence. “This is your last chance, I am warning you. Then I’ll show no mercy. Mummy will write a letter to your teacher. You’ll be put to shame before the whole school!” Still, silence. “All right, I’ll show you who’s clever!” She had already told us the story of the short straw, how the thief broke his in half for fear that it would grow. So what could she do now? Plenty. She illustrated with another story.

“One day a king wanted to test his three sons. He showed them an apple and told them, ‘This is a magic apple. Whoever eats it will succeed me to the throne and live for ever. But I don’t want you to touch it until I tell you to.’ He left the apple on a table. In the morning it was missing. When the king asked the sons about it, they all denied eating it. So what do you think the king did? I’ll tell you. He asked each one of them to drink a glass of
ve-ry
salty water. The water was so salty it made them vomit. And from the vomit he found out who was guilty.”

“Who?” asked Sona, a legitimate question, but he narrowly missed a slap for his impudence.

Salma was the prime suspect. Salma, who wet her bed sometimes and was the root cause of bedbugs in the home against which Begum valiantly and constantly battled. Bravely Salma went forward and downed a gulp of brine. Her stomach gave a violent spasm, “Aargh,” even Begum looked a little startled, and the contents of her stomach came out in contraction after contraction of yellow, slimy liquid with floating debris of the day’s ingestion, mainly peanuts and peas, but no apple as a stern Begum went to confirm. Salma stood there, her face a horrible grimace, a thin stream of sticky saliva joining her mouth to her fingers in front of her, and she gave a loud howl.

Begum’s eyes fell on me next and there extracted the truth. “It was I,” I sobbed in terror, “I don’t want to drink the—”

“So!” In one lightning move, first a backhand slap on the face then thumb and forefinger closed on an ear in a tight grip that only she could manage, twist, twist, twist, this way and that, and by my now red, swollen ear I was taken down one
agonizing flight of stairs then another and another to be presented to Kulsum. She said nothing. All afternoon I sat behind the glass counter, out of sight of customers, crying, “I am sorry, Mummy, I’ll never do it again.” Only Edward, who had seen me dragged down the stairs, would come periodically and ask her, “What is the matter? What did he do? Surely, mama, it cannot be that bad if he is crying.”