The Gunny Sack (28 page)

“You are going? Where?”

“Bharat! Desh! The old country!”

“Do you own many buildings there, Madhu Bhai?”

“Lots. Plenty. But don’t forget to look me up when you come there! My son will tell you where I am.”

The young Ashok, whom I had never seen before, never had any news from Madhu Bhai, except to say, “He’s well!” He was soon joined by a partner. It was Kulsum, who said with a smile, much later, “You know, eh Kala, that Ashok is as much Madhu Bhai’s son as you are!”

Alu, Jogo and I started wearing kofias, which were taken from the unredeemed stock at A. A. Raghavji’s pawn shop. Kulsum did not object too much, her father had worn a fez, and some old men from our community still wore them, and the neighbours said it’s a good thing for the boys to integrate a little. But she looked at Begum and Mehroon and said, “The next thing, you two will come home wearing buibuis!”

Mehroon and Begum had finished secondary school and were working as machine operators, one at TANESCO and the other at the main branch of Barclays Bank. Mehroon had acquired a string of admirers and now travelled in style. Every morning a young man picked her up in a Peugeot and in the evening another one dropped her in his Volkswagen. The curtains in Mrs. Daya’s apartment would start fluttering excitedly at these hours. She called the two men Ashak and Mohbat, lover and friend, although which was which she could never say with consistency. The Volkswagen owner, Alnoor, was the favoured contestant, and Mrs. Daya already saw the day when Kulsum would go nowhere except in the “Volksie.” “Give us a ride now and then,” she would tell Kulsum, “don’t go waving at us like Queen Victoria!”

Alnoor was bandylegged and chatty, a former opening batsman of the Boys’ School. He wore loose white shirts with sleeves partly rolled and two buttons open, revealing a hairy chest, very much the sportsman. He would leave the car and come in to greet Kulsum, putting back his comb as he entered, with, “So how are you keeping, Auntie? Did you have your vitamins? The legs all right?” Mrs. Daya, having spied him, would sometimes walk in with a pretext (“I have misplaced my needle”) and start bantering with him. “Well, cricketer, how many sixes did you hit on Sunday?” It was a switch to his motor. “Aré, Auntie, this time a clean bowl! All stumps down. Solanki threw a fast bowl, I never even saw it coming! Clean bowl! I tell you Auntie—I’ll have to shape up!” “And this without even being
married, you! Your back should be strong, yet!” Mrs. Daya would say. “But Auntie, it’s not the back—that’s still strong, God be praised—it’s the eyes!” “Ah, you’re blinded! With what, now I wonder!” Her only regret was that her daughter was not old enough yet. “Kulsum,” she said. “If your Mehroon doesn’t like him, tell her to hold on to him until my daughter is ready. But don’t give me the spare tire. You keep him!”

The spare tire was Amin, with the Peugeot, well dressed and proper, with a crisp, narrow moustache. Every morning he waited patiently in his car for Mehroon to come down, reading the
Herald
. Mrs. Daya reported on his movements. The day he first met her, he gravely shook her hand and immediately earned her lasting contempt.

The expert fundi, Omari, showed no intention of leaving, still accumulating in his mind the thousands due to him in arrears, and Kulsum still dreaded the day of reckoning. And when he started asking about the rent of the store, she knew the end was near. “What business is it of yours?” she asked in annoyance, and he merely grinned. Idi, Pipa’s former chauffeur, still came around occasionally, and one day his uniform was sewn on our machine. With this provocation the situation reached a head and Kulsum sent for Edward. “Ask him how much he wants. I’ll give him five hundred.” Half of what she had put away for this eventuality. Edward went away, and after work stayed behind. “He says he wants the shop.” She said seven hundred, Omari said no. She said one thousand and no more, he said he would wait.

One afternoon when Alnoor came to drop Mehroon, Kulsum got in the car with him and they drove to the Labour Union offices, which were in a two-storey concrete structure that had sprung up in a block of African mud houses off Viongozi Street. With her she took all the long, black ledger books, the red tapes wearing off at the binding, containing the tailors’
accounts for the ten years. Under each name, for every working day, the day’s work, the amount earned. At each month-end, the accounts cleared, with a signature in Roman or Arabic, a blunt cross or an inked thumbprint, and the date. A combined lesson from husband and brother: don’t trust anyone, a signature for everything. The Union officer looked at her books and told Kulsum: “Mama, you don’t owe them a cent. We told them to join up, not to work piecemeal, they laughed at us. Send him to us now.”

“I don’t need your work from tomorrow,” Kulsum told Omari.

“I will want my rights.”

“I have been to the Union office. What you were paid is enough.”

“We shall see.”

He came back the next day and pleaded. “Please, mama.” “No,” she told him, “my children are still in school, and we don’t have enough.” “Please,” he said, “I would like to buy my own machine and work from home. Please help me. Your daughters work. You have enough.” “They will soon be married, and I will have no-one then. The boys must finish school.” “Please, mama.” He would not leave. She gave him three hundred shillings.

It was a triumph for Kulsum. “And Idi, the one with the big head, the educated one with the newspaper: he just stood there, silent. You know what work he does there? He is a driver!”

A postcard came from Uncle Goa, not from Lourenço Marques but from London. It was addressed to Kulsum, and said, “Our plans changed. Regards to the family, Mrs. Daya, Parmar, Mama Roshan (Mattress), and others.” Kulsum beamed at the picture of Big Ben. It was the first postcard she had received in her life.

My cousin Yasmin, who had spent eight years with us before going to live with Bahdur Uncle, was admitted for a nursing course in London, and we all took her to the airport.
She sat with Mehroon and Begum in Alnoor’s Volksie and they cried all the way. I sat with Alnoor in front, both of us with the grave looks of those driving in a funeral procession. Occasionally we exchanged masculine looks of understanding. Kulsum and Sona came in Amin’s Peugeot, and Bahdur Uncle drove his family in Fateh the Coalseller’s Chama Chetu.

Yasmin had her hair set and wore everything new. She carried a sweater and had a BOAC bag slung around her shoulders, very much a picture of the seasoned traveller. We stood in a circle around her, making small talk as we waited for departure time. Other travellers, students, were similarly the centres of family attention, dispersed all over the big room. Hearts were heavy, the families eyed each other over the distances with curiosity, and acquaintances only nodded at each other. There were Europeans going back: with what feelings? They all converged on the bar, it seemed so easy for them. Finally Alnoor set the farewell process in motion.

“So,” he spoke jovially to Yasmin, “think about us now and then. Don’t forget us little people completely. When you return, don’t walk around with your nose up in the air!”

Yasmin laughed. “Do I look like that kind of girl?”

Gentle Yasmin, with the plain but very white face and the very tight ponytail, how much we loved her, who bathed us when we were young, and set the food on the table, and sheltered us from Begum’s wrath. It was only Mehroon, her sister, she fought with …

“She will be a London-returned,” Bahdur Uncle, said, his voice breaking and lower lip trembling. Aunt Dolu was being brave.

“Take care,” said Kulsum, stepping forward, and pressed a folded currency note into Yasmin’s hand.

Then the tears started to roll. First Mehroon, then Begum, then Shamim. Bahdur Uncle wiped his eyes. Kulsum and Aunt Dolu both looked stern, not a tear between them. The rest of us looked appropriately serious and went to shake hands.
Yasmin laughed at this formality. Then Alnoor became frantic. “Photos! Photos!” he came forward with his camera. “We’ve not taken photos.” Photographs were then taken. Yasmin with Bahdur Uncle and Dolu Auntie, her official guardians. Yasmin with Mehroon and Begum: the original trio who had worn pinafores and ribbons and frolicked in Nairobi’s City Park, and then taken care of five children in Kichwele. Yasmin with the whole family. Yasmin and Kulsum. More goodbyes and tears, and finally a ruffled Alnoor: “Goodbye, eh,” with a small choke. “All the best”: Amin, shaking hands. Yasmin brought out her ticket and joined the queue towards Customs, the family waved till she disappeared and some more in case she still saw us, until Alnoor said: “Okay. She’s gone. Goodbye, Dar, good morning, London. She’ll be there in the morning.”

In January 1963, the president announced the introduction of a one-party system of government, with special powers. Beware! at once warned the
Herald
in its editorial: beware of the fate that befell Sylvanus Olympio of Togo! Sylvanus Olympio, once regaled in Dar from Kichwele to Independence Avenue as the nation’s first official visitor, had been assassinated only a few days before. But our Julius stood firm. The translator of
Julius Caesar
would yet outlive his opponents … and in the following months and years these fled to London from where they dispatched feeble pamphlets to be dropped on Dar from feeble two-seaters, or they cooled their heels in icy Sumbawanga on the border with Zambia until they had learnt their lessons. As Mr. Gregory was heard to remark, the Brutuses to our Julius were not made of the same stuff. Our republic was only one year old.

November 23, 1963. Dates become important: you realize now why they invented the calendar—to turn events into dates, the artefacts, the knickknacks of yesterday that you store away in your gunny somewhere … November 23, 1963—who, having seen it, can forget it? At 2 a.m. the president summoned his ministers to the State House and issued a statement. “He trod faithfully in the footsteps of Lincoln, with him he is now linked in death …” That morning Nuru Poni’s shop did not open, Alu Poni on the way to school told us why. “KENNEDY SHOT DEAD!” Nairobi’s tabloid the
Daily Reporter
screamed, “Africa loses a champion.” We all loved Kennedy—who didn’t love Kennedy?—we knew the names of his children and we simply adored his lovely wife … There were many photos of Kennedy in Dar, the biggest perhaps in the display window at the USIS library, with the caption, “Ask not what your country can do for you …” and others in many of the dukas with our own president … and a coloured photo, small but prominent, in Nuru Poni’s shop, taken from the cover of
Newsweek
and framed, because among his many heroes, handsome Kennedy was the pawnbroker’s favourite. So we knew our Kennedy, and the news of his death hit us hard. The following Saturday all government offices, all businesses and industries remained closed in a national day of mourning, a special High Mass was broadcast to the nation, all flags except the Chinese flew at half mast.

(How naive we were … even as nations we looked for heroes … only to learn later that in politics, history, there are no heroes. Were we conned, Shehrbanoo, by the greatest con artists of all, the packagers of Madison Avenue …)

In December of that year, Kenya and Zanzibar became independent. And, as naively, we looked forward to that long-forecast event, a federation—the United States of East Africa—and even betted on which of the three leaders would head it.

In January of the new year a local Sheikh formed the United Democratic Party and called on the president to
announce new elections or resign in favour of Chief Abdalla. “Let us remove Cliff and Elvis from our walls and put on them Chief Abdalla instead.” To which a British columnist in the
Herald
quipped, “Does the pious Sheikh have on his wall a picture of Elvis the Pelvis instead of the Kaaba? What next?” The chief, who had been previously tried for accepting bribery, whose acquittal Alu, Jogo and I had celebrated outside the courthouse (where Jogo had been caught by the
Ngurumo’s
camera with his hand in a peanut basket), later rejoined the party. The British journalist, who had also a few months before derided a member of Parliament for enquiring about mermaids in the Indian Ocean, and who later called visiting Stokely Carmichael “Stocky Carbuncle,” was sent packing and was last heard of from Australia. The Sheikh became a prominent astrologer, with a column in the
Daily Reporter
.

At 7 a.m. on January 12 those who were in the habit of listening to Zanzibar Radio in the morning, the patrons of Moonlight Restaurant, for example, and therefore—without choice because the radio blared right through their walls—neighbours like Nuru Poni, heard the announcement: “I am Field Marshal Okello! Wake up, you imperialists, there is no longer an imperialist government on this island. This is now the government of the Freedom Fighters.”

So we woke up to the presence of John Okello and his periodic pronouncements on the radio. Radio Zanzibar of course became popular, everybody wanted to listen to this field marshal. Arab-owned Moonlight Restaurant stayed closed for a week, while blood flowed in Zanzibar in the revenge of those whose ancestors had arrived in chains and filled the coffers of the merchants and the princes with their heartbreaks and sorrows.