The Magic of Saida (5 page)

In Kilwa, the roads upon which the crooked black lines of slaves passed were called the “places of the skulls” by the locals. The beach was strewn with skeletons. In the preceding two months, wrote Elton, at least four thousand slaves had been trafficked north, and he freed fourteen hundred who were owned by Indians, who used them as concubines, their womenfolk not having joined them, and as servants, and they sold them to pay debts.

That was the pain and humiliation concealed behind Mama’s silence about herself, Kamal explained. Her mother had been used for pleasure, had been traded by men. And she herself, Hamida, his Mama, had been as easily abandoned by her husband. She must have been barely thirty, as he recalled her, yet to him she was as ancient as the continent.

All those years while he practised in Edmonton, Kamal had collected a small library on the subject of Kilwa, all that could be possibly known, expecting that one day, like many an immigrant whose past is slipping away from him as he grows older, he would write it all up for his children. A family history, and a people history. His bequest to them. And surely a tribute to his own mother and his African past. His children would know where they came from, who their ancestors were. His passion started with a visit to a used bookstore in Toronto, where he bought a cheap library discard. It was the memoirs of a district commissioner who had spent some time in Kilwa. Imagine his delight to see his hometown described in a modest chapter, illustrated by a couple of line drawings. He waved it at his family, took it to work. “Look—this is where I was born. This official was in my town when I was running around in shorts! I must have seen him! I
know
I saw him—there was only one white man there—in the boma, the old fortress! Here—he’s drawn it!” Kilwa had an actual existence outside of his memory. Later, during a visit to London, he embarked on a frantic treasure hunt, visiting the antiquarian bookstores, and spent a small fortune. Then there came the Internet. A bit of Kilwa here, a bit there, bought at a steep price with the click of a mouse.

His wife Shamim had been wary of this new African obsession and his outbursts of euphoria, which she would counter with unnerving silences. For a brief period his children had indulged him, calling him Ancient Mariner, and paused to humour him whenever he emerged beaming from his study with an old book in his hand. And then—what came over him?—he had brought out his one and only family photograph, of himself (in those awful shorts), Mama, and his father. The shock on Hanif’s face—he was eleven then—was cataclysmic. “Me, African? That black woman in that weird outfit, my grandmother? You’re lying. No way.” Utter rejection by his private-school
son. And Kamal had not brought up the slave ancestors yet. Who wants to be reminded of that? The kids had their own battles to fight, as children of immigrant parents, who could blame them from shunning this rather iffy connection? “But give them hip hop any day,” he observed wryly to me, “they’ll gladly spit rhymes about the Detroit projects.”

And so in the interest of peace in the household, he shelved his ambition to write a family history and restricted his hobby to the confines of his private study, far from everyone else, obsessing over bits of information like a stamp collector over postmarks and perforations. Shamim would not hear or speak of Africa unless it was expedient—once a year she ran for the benefit of AIDS victims in Africa. His negroid features were already an embarrassment to be explained away. He fought off a suggestion to lighten his skin and straighten his hair.

Some nights as he lay on his mat in the dark, listening to the mango tree rustling outside, he would think of his father. The tree was ancient, gigantic, easily shading two houses on either side of the road. The barber, Bakari, sat on the ground under it during the day, next to a rickety chair for customers’ use and a mirror hanging from a nail in the scraggy bark; a vendor came by at noontime every day to sit down for a breather on the other side of the broad trunk, and there would follow a chatter, a soga, that was part of the day’s noise and ambience. But at night the tree stood by itself, its waving branches echoing the distant waves of the sea. Kamal imagined the Indian man of the photograph, the doctor with the parted hair and double-breasted suit, picking him up, putting him on his shoulders and carrying him outside to watch the sea and the waves, the dhows anchored, the fishermen drying fish or repairing nets, the occasional mysterious steamer in the distant mist. Once a manwari—a man-o’-war—had anchored, a grey ship of iron far in the distance, where the ocean was deep, and the town had started a celebration for the sailors of the British Navy, who arrived on shore in boats with plenty of money to spend. There was music and food and a football match. But when he was older Kamal could never tell how much of this scene was real, or whether it was simply his fantasy given wing by his desire to have a father. He didn’t even know when his father had left for India. Perhaps Baba had perished at sea, on his way back? He imagined a ghost emerging from the sea’s depths, riding the waves, wading to the shore carrying a chestful of treasure, returning home to his son. No, said Mama. Perhaps he will return, but not as a ghost. Perhaps he will send for you.

She knew even then that she would send him away?

Sometimes at midnight footsteps could be heard shuffling softly down the streets. They belonged to an evil. She even had a name: Mariamu. People smacked their slippers on the ground when she approached, shouting, Weh, Mariamu! God curse you! and the steps ran away, but no one had actually seen Mariamu. What did she come for? It was said that she dug holes for little children to fall into, and came by at night to collect those young ones she had caught. In German times she would pick off corpses hanging from trees. Shouldn’t the sheikhs speak with her? Couldn’t the district commissioner drive her away? When he suggested this to his mother, she got annoyed. “You’ll bring bad luck here, why do you have to talk about shetani?” But she reassured him that before his birth the town had been swept of all evil by the famous sorcerer Akilimali, so the old hag could do no harm.

Kilwa is a thousand years old, a haunt of spirits. All those who died and never made it to the house of God, all those suicides and all those murdered and the infant deaths; the djinns who accompanied the Persians and Arabs who came here long ago. The first sultan of Kilwa was Ali bin al-Hassan, the Shirazi. He made his city on the Island and it had mountains of riches, so they say. They say London in those days of zamani za kalé long ago was like Kilwa is now—nothing. But Kilwa then: big mosque, big castle. Houses of stone and marble—no bandas like this one where I live with Mama, making a racket when it rains and leaks through. Ai, but we are poor! But Kilwa of old! Gold from Rhodesia! Silk from India! Perfumes from Arabia! The white men are now digging up treasure from the old city and shipping it away to London. Gold coins. Bi Kulthum has seen one. Arabic coin with the name of Sultan Ali bin al-Hassan. There was that time the police came searching houses, beating men black and blue, searching for coins stolen from the white men’s iron safe in their ship. The police came out empty-handed, and how people laughed behind their backs! Then the district commissioner offered a hundred shillings for each coin. A hundred shillings! And afterwards you could pick out a hundred-shilling man walking a little too stiffly on the road—wearing brand-new leather shoes, or brilliant checkered socks, or a stiff-collared white shirt—having turned in a stolen coin. Thieves are rewarded and the Indian in his shop makes
profit selling shoes and socks, Mama said, while we honest people burn our bare soles on the hot earth.

His night thoughts made him so excited he would be breathing hard. In his nervousness he would edge closer to Mama, sleeping beside him on the mat, her deep, even breathing a comfort, her body radiating a delicious warmth.

One day Saida brought him an old coin. “Here,” she said shyly. “Take. I have brought you a present.” Perhaps she was hoping he would make the lessons easier. It was a small black disk, inscribed, “1 Heller. Deutsch Ostafrika. 1908.” He smiled, patted her woolly, oily head. But the next day she came back sobbing, her calves beaten red with a broom. Bi Kulthum could be hard. With a heavy heart Kamal returned the German coin. It belonged to Mzee Omari, and she had pilfered it. Mzee Omari knows about the Wadachi. They say he went to a German school. Those pictures on his wall are of him standing with Germans, and that certificate with weird letters, that too is German. He has many stories about the Germans. How they came from Berlin in the land of the Kaiser to dominate this land. They were fierce but they were just. But most of all, they were unbeatable. Brave men had tried to fight them, their reward only a hanging from a tree. And they were called mkono wa damu, hand of blood, for they wielded the whip hard!

He knows dawn is approaching when from the mosques one after another come the calls to prayer: Hayara sala! Who has the time but the old men. They walk silently to go pray, if you listen carefully you can hear the shuffling of feet in the distance. And then comes the Shamsi Indian going from house to house waking people up to go to pray. Once he wandered by on this street and Mama shouted at him: “Go wake up your brothers, don’t bother us!” After the Shamsi disappears, the Banyani start singing in their temple, and the sound is sometimes like kinjin-kinjin … Kinjikitilé: is she awake, that one? Should I marry her when I grow older? But first she must act more like a woman, she is too much a child.

Bi Kulthum wakes her up early to fetch water, and help fry vitumbua. The Swahili from the mosque will buy them. The Shamsi and the Banyani will buy them. And Khalid Restaurant, too, from which shortly blares out the radio. Quran.

Mama gets up, picks up the sheet from her mat and says her prayer.
She never demands it of him, but gives him a look and sometimes he joins her. Side by side, they pray, he following her motion: on the knees, prostrate, straighten up, hands to the ears.

Kamal says to his mother he wants to have vitumbua this morning. “Go,” says Mama, “go and buy three from Bi Kulthum, while I make the tea.” She strides off to the backyard to light the fire.

He ambles along their narrow street that’s just waking up, people standing or crouching outside, brushing teeth with miswaki, spitting on the ground, the litter on the road more exposed at this hour. The smell of woodfire. The early goat out rooting. As he crosses a street, a breeze from the ocean wafts over him, sudden and reckless, pungent and deliciously cool; he shivers with pleasure. The pounding of the waves in the distance, Indians standing at the square, watching the sea. Bi Kulthum’s house is across the main road, beyond the monument. As Kamal arrives, outside on the porch sits Mzee Omari, in kanzu and cap; he must have returned from prayer.

“Shikamoo, Mzee,” Kamal says in polite greeting, I touch your feet. He takes the old man’s hand in a formal gesture of kissing it, bowing to it, and Mzee Omari responds by saying, “Marahaba.” But Mzee Omari does not let go his hand, keeps holding it firmly, and gazes at him with half-seeing eyes, and Kamal awaits the inevitable list of formal queries, and responds as required: I am well. And my mother, too. We both are well. Thank you. Studies are good, thank you. Yes, I have come to get vitumbua. They are sweet. Yes, I am well. Released, finally, he scampers off inside the house, down the long dark corridor, on either side of which are the rooms, to the backyard where Bi Kulthum sits on a low stool, her face glowing before the fire. Opposite her sits Saida, staring intently at the sweet vitumbua frying. She looks at him and smiles. He’s her teacher.

Three little woks filled with oil, into which Bi Kulthum pours the batter, which sizzles and puffs up into the sweet little floating tummies, the vitumbua. She prods them with a long metal rod. When cooked on one side she turns them over using two rods and there they are, enticingly golden brown, Kamal’s mouth watering. A man stands to the side, also staring at the spectacle, awaiting his batch. He leaves, then Saida leaves with her full tray to take outside and sell on the street, and then Kamal puts his thirty cents into Bi Kulthum’s hand and takes away three vitumbua wrapped in a newspaper.

Outside on the porch Mzee Omari is still seated, now with a cup of tea, staring straight ahead, chatting with a man in the house across. His ears perk up as he hears Kamal come out.

“Umevipata, Kamalu?” Did you get your vitumbua?

Kamal hesitates, says, “Yes, I got three …,” and holds up his package and waits for the inevitable farewell process. These old people are all for slow formality.

“Good,” says the old man. “What class do you study?”

“Four.”

“You study English, sio? Good. Very good. You will go far with English. The language of the rulers. I studied too, you know—in Deutsch—German.”

Kamal stares in silence. German is from another age, though he is aware that some among the old ones know it.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” asks Mzee Omari, his sardonic smile broadening only a little. “Go then with your vitumbua. My salaamu to your mama. Auf Wiedersehen!”

“Ahsante, Mzee. Thank you! Kwa heri!”

“He teaches English to our Saida,” Mzee Omari explains to the man across. And as Kamal speeds away, he hears Mzee Omari say, warmly, apparently for his benefit too, “Anampenda.” He likes her! “A Majnoon, that one. A Romeo. He’s an Indian, but …”

He doesn’t hear the rest. On Khalid’s radio, on the way back, the news booming out, receiving all the town into its intimacy.

What a joy when the town awoke!

And the news?
Yesterday, speaking to the Legislative Council, the Governor of Tanganyika Mheshimiwa Sir Richard Turnbull said that Tanganyika’s peaceful struggle for self-government should be an example to other African countries. And Bwana Nyerere, our leader, said, Tanganyika will never be like Congo, from which dreadful stories of killings come every day. We are peaceful and we are united
.

Something like that. A new governor had arrived, and the country was headed for independence. After the Arabs, and thirty years of German rule, and forty of British, this was the time of the African. We will now rule ourselves; tutatawala.