The Gunny Sack (8 page)

There are three Indian stores and one Arab. The largest is two stores in one, selling cloth on one side, general produce on the other. The cloth store appears dark from the brilliant, sunny outside. Inside—rolls and rolls of cloth standing upright or lying on shelves; khangas of all colours hang neatly, partly folded, from wooden beams and pipes hanging horizontally from the ceiling; khaki and black shorts clipped to a board in
two rows for display; frocks hanging from a rack; a clump of baby knickers and bras hand-sewn and brought in from the city. P.T. Somji, says the Coca Cola board outside. P.T. Somji brings water in Coke bottles, from a refrigerator inside, which he normally sells at five cents apiece, and distributes it around. A thin, middle-aged figure in a fishnet singlet and a red and black khanga wrapped round his waist. Two hairy jungles under his arms. What news from the city, hein? Has there been a funeral recently? No—only that of—Hein?—Who? Oh yes, a sad event, that. Silence. Thus he measures the passage of time, keeping tabs on his generation. He is all hospitality. As the Swahilis say, mgeni siku ya kwanza … on the first day treat your guest like a king; to rice and meat. Of course, on the tenth day, when he’s overstayed his welcome, with kicks and blows chuck him out. It is our first day, and he’d love to feed us. We’ve had lunch. The invitation is politely refused, with a profusion of thanks.

At one time, there used to live and trade here nine Shamsi and seven Bhatia families, the two rival communities on either side of the swamp. Diwali and Idd were celebrated jointly and with great pomp, with processions, dances and feasts; surely a sign, as any, of prosperity and stability. The trade in gum and hides was brisk. To the south, about fifteen miles away at Kitmangau, was another similarly prosperous settlement of Asians. The caravans from Kilwa stopped for rest at either of these two stations, transforming the already busy scene into a bustling one …

Perhaps the only visible signs of that period are the ruins of a building, away from the main village. The roof is gone, as are most of the walls. Close by is a huge mbuyu tree, and behind, an old grass-grown cemetery with a few rounded remains of headstones. It is the part of the village no one ever goes to; there is at least one ghost resident there. An eerie feeling descends upon the whole town as grey twilight, grim
maghrab, approaches. Then the sun is behind the trees and the sea is dark—but not silent. It is a time that invokes fear in the young and inspires prayer from the old. Mbuyu trees abound in that area. And who doesn’t know the mbuyu, the huge mbuyu with its shade like a cool room under the burning sun, but alas picked by solitary djinns, especially of the variety who like to pray, for their special abode? You would not dare to pass under it at maghrab, lest you step on the sensitive shadow of the ethereal one and are turned into an albino, if nothing worse. And only the most ignorant or the most obtuse would stop to urinate in its inviting shade and risk letting loose a stream on that stern soul as it kneels in pious obeisance. The wrath of such a defiled djinn is terrible. Sometimes at night, at exactly midnight, it was said that you could hear the footsteps of someone walking on the road in that village. No mortal is around at that ungodly hour. My young grandmother Moti, sleepless in her lonely bed, would quietly lower one hand from the sheets, pick up a chappal and smack the floor once, twice with it. The footsteps would recede, hurrying away. I have often wondered: did she ever stop to enquire, before giving up hope, if the approaching footsteps were those of her husband’s ghost returning?

The building used to be the Shamsi mosque. In 1912, one December morning at five-thirty, Mukhi Dhanji Govindji left the mosque and set out for his house. He took a diversion to walk by the beach, as was his custom, lingered at the water for a while, looking out into the ocean: waves beat on the shore, the sun was rising on the horizon, the fishermen were preparing to set out. Having cast his customary glance at the elemental vastness, as though his earlier meditations at the mosque were not quite enough, he turned inland, walking along the street. It was still dark in the village. As he approached the house, men leapt out from an alley, carrying curved Arab daggers and, going behind him and in front of him, stabbed him in the stomach, in the arms, the chest, the back. He did not have time to
call out. A little later he was found by a vendor of breakfast delicacies who was preparing to set out from house to house, calling out her first “Eeeeeeeeeh vitumbuaaaaaaa!” Seeing the man crumpled up at the side of the road, blood and all, she ran up and down the street in panic, crying, “Aaiiiii! Sharriffu has been killed!”

The murderers were not found. The crime was attributed to three men who, it was said, had camped outside the village, or at a neighbouring village, committed their deed at dawn and gone back to Dar.

A few years before, the Shamsi community in India had been torn apart by strife. Various parties had sprung up, with diverging fundamentalist positions, each taking some thread of the complex and sometimes contradictory set of traditional beliefs, hitherto untainted by theologian hands, to some extreme conclusion and claiming to represent the entire community. The bone of contention among these Shia, Sunni, Sufi and Vedantic factions became the funds collected in the small centres and mosques. Faced with this situation, Dhanji Govindji had simply stopped sending the money on to any of the big centres and kept it in trust for the Matamu community. The strife had resulted in murders in Bombay and Zanzibar. And now, it seemed, in Matamu. But why unimportant Matamu, why Dhanji Govindji, no one could say. This was one year after his return from Mozambique in the
Mariamu
.

Mukhi Dhanji Govindji, Sharriffu to the Swahilis, was buried with full honours by the village of Matamu, carried in a procession of males headed by Shamsi, Bhatia and Swahili elders to the grave, grieved for by women ululating along the way.

A few days later, the widow’s daughter started disposing of her husband’s belongings. Ji Bai was entrusted with burning the bloodstained clothes. Which she did, except for the muslin shirt she would keep the rest of her life. And before the widow’s daughter or anyone else could discover them, she took Dhanji Govindji’s three padlocked books from behind a shelf in
the store and hid them with the possessions she had brought from her parents’ home.

Kala. Thank you so much for the copy of Book I (as I have designated it). God make you live a full hundred and one years! Unfortunately, it is rather a disappointment. It looks like a ledger, with entries for debits and credits. A typical entry: 20 rupees to Bhai Rehemtulla Sharif for potatoes! This one, my dear chronicler-brother, is the most
atypical
entry and should interest you: 30 rupees to Ragavji Devraj bai na maté, for the woman! A cut-rate price, I should think. But then of course the slave trade was over. Considering that both you and I are the result of that one purchase, not a bad deal, don’t you think? There are also two pages with only numbers on them, which he was using presumably for rough calculations. It’s a mystery, this need for the padlock. A theory I am working on is that in those days people liked to keep their business dealings secret. Perhaps the old man was afraid some djinn would read them—not as far-fetched as it sounds, why do you think children’s given names were not used? Sona
.

Dear Sona, you and your djinn theory! If you had looked carefully at the two pages with “only numbers” on them, you would have seen that they are not calculations, but entries—anonymous. I am willing to wager anything that they are secret records of community funds, which Dhanji Govindji held in trust, unwilling to send on to Zanzibar. Remember that community accounts have always been kept secret, sometimes with the aid of codes. What you call rough calculations are actually columns of entries—each column for a family, perhaps, each entry for a donation. I wonder where the money went. Your brother Kala
.

Kala
. Touché.
Sona
.

One bullet, they say, lime liliya, throughout Ulaya. The wits of Matamu. Every afternoon they emerge having said their prayer at the public mosque, a pair playing bao outside a house, a line of elders sitting on the stone bench outside the mosque, a group playing cards under a tree, in their immaculate kanzus and caps, sipping coffee or ginger tea, chewing tobacco or counting the tasbih; and discussing siasa: politics. Now it’s the war in Europe that’s on their minds. Close by, in an open room, an elementary Quran-reading class is under way, and the chorus of boys begins, “an-fata-ha-tin in-kisiratin un-zamu-tin …”

One bullet, they repeat, has reverberated throughout the length and breadth of the land where the Mdachi and the British are neighbours. It has killed a prince and Ulaya is burning. It has exploded like a keg of powder to which a mischievous hand
has applied a match. No, it’s burning like dry leaves in a forest. And even we can feel the heat. Yes, times are a-changing. Did you hear what this one here said?—Eti, the times are achanging: the times
have
changed, my brother. Did your grandfather ever trade in paper money? Ah, I have no use for paper money … since when has paper any value? But this one is guaranteed by the Government. It has the signature of the Governor himself, Herr Bwana Von Soden. The Indians like it, they are raking it in, they can fill their pillowcases with it. You can rake it in too if you go to M’logoro or Dar—Eti, is it true there is work—So it is. You can make bullets or sew boots—You can carry for the askaris—travel to Korogwe or Moshi or Tanga—Ah, I’m too old for that … but the young are going. They are fools; they go looking for excitement, but soon they’ll cry for their mothers.

In the class the chanting stops, and the old men raise their heads expectantly. The teacher is heard telling off a boy; a cane whistles thinly in the air, the sound of weeping starts and the boy emerges pathetically from the doorway clutching his kanzu, his nose running, as the class resumes, “Kan-fata-ha-tin …”

“What happened, my son?” asks an elder. “The mwalimu cane you?”

The boy, clutching his kanzu even tighter, nods forcefully and sobs like a grief-stricken woman.

“You wet your pants?”

Before he has quite nodded assent, he narrowly misses a cuff on the head (“Mpumbavu weh, shame on you!”) and escapes, wailing even more loudly than before.

He has to learn, the wise men nod to themselves. Times are a-changing, says the man who said it before. Times are achanging, mimics his companion.

Old Man, did you go to see the
Koniki
on the Rufiji? Ah, I have no time to walk forty miles just to view a ship and rub my face against an insolent askari. You have no strength, you
mean. That, too. They say the
Koniki
lies mouth open like a dead fish. A crowd goes there every day to watch; from Kitmangau, and Kisiju, even Kilwa. They say that the British manuari chased the
Koniki
on the ocean like a cat chases a mouse. The
Koniki
entered the mouth of the Rufiji, pye! and raced in. But then it went kwama: khon! and it got stuck! There it lies in the river, for all to see. The shame of the Mdachis. If you ask the askaris what happened, they threaten to shoot you. What worries me is that now there is no manuari to defend us … how long before the British cannonballs go flying through our roofs? The Mdachis have had it, you think? The Mdachis are trembling. To the north are the British, to the west the Belgians, and to the south are also the British. And in Zanzibar, and on the ocean … Yes, the Mdachis have cause for trembling. But what about us, Old Man? Ah, when two elephants fight, it is the grass that is injured … But the grass is persistent … when the elephants are gone the grass keeps on growing and proliferating …

It was August 1915. Gulam at twenty-four was mukhi of Matamu in place of his father, now dead more than two years. He and Ji Bai had a crop of five children, the youngest, Mongi, just over a year old. With them lived his younger unmarried siblings and the squint-eyed matron Fatima. News of the war reached them through word of mouth and gossip in the village, and dispatches from Sheth Samji in Dar es Salaam. Exports to India and Britain had stopped, there were shortages of food and stockpiles were being depleted, and the government had introduced the one-rupee note to conserve metal. Villagers had heard of the
Konigsberg
—or
Koniki
—how it was destroyed in the Rufiji, and they watched fearfully the grey silhouettes that were the British man o’ wars, manuari, patrolling the ocean like wild animals on the prowl. The prevailing mood among the Indian dukawallahs of Tanganyika was that of uncertainty; of being alien subjects in a time of war. India, Zanzibar
and Mombasa had become out of bounds, and families were not heard from. Cash and jewellery were at hand and ready to be moved; the rest was hidden away.

The closest German farm was that of Bwana Wasi. This gentleman had now lived in the area for twenty-seven years. One day he had gone north to the Usambara region, to the German town called Wilhelmstahl, and brought back with him a wife. Bibi Wasi was a schoolteacher, a laughing redhead in long skirts, with two pigtails and brown eyes. As soon as she arrived her husband set aside a banda and they opened a German school. Early every morning a file of boys in kanzus, ranging in age from eight to fifteen, snaked its way in and among the bushes outside Matamu to the school of Bibi Wasi. Bringing up the rear were Gulam’s brothers Nasser and Abdulla. For several years Bwana Wasi had done business at the store of Dhanji Govindji. An order was left punctually on the first and fifteenth of every month, which was then forwarded to Sheth Samji. When the goods arrived they were carried by porters to the farm; and Bwana Wasi who had previously paid only in produce now paid in cash.