Uhuru Street (5 page)

‘In these matters all men are old fashioned,’ said Mother.

‘What about the others?’ asked Razia.

‘Oh!’ Alzira got up. ‘Next time – I’ll tell you about them next time!’

‘There were many then?’

‘Yes, lots!’

‘How old do you think she is?’ Razia said to no one in particular when Alzira had left.

‘Twenty-five,’ Mehroon said knowingly.

‘Mummy, do you think it’s too late for her?’

‘It all depends on her kismet,’ Mother answered broodingly, picking her chin. ‘She will get whatever’s written for her, good or bad.’

We knew what she meant – birth, marriage, and death were
preordained, as she often said. You had many choices in life: but not with these three.

When next time Alzira came down and was cornered we found out that there had been only one other suitor. A dealer in tusks and hides, she said, who operated from Goa. He wrote to her in a long sloping hand, as she showed us. But she didn’t believe he would come for her. ‘He can’t leave his old mother, you see,’ she said. My sisters tried to convince her that she should go and fetch him herself.

‘No, no,’ she said, ‘I’ve given him up.’ She looked at me with a smile and announced: ‘I’ll wait for
him
to grow up!’

‘Take him now,’ Mother said, ‘I’ve had enough of him!’

I liked Alzira and was flattered by her remark. There was something in her that deeply touched me and warmed me to her. She was plain but jolly, and deep, kind, not frivolous.

All of the two months allowed for Maria’s engagement passed without the wedding date being set. The flurry of activity which had begun to enliven their home subsided, and then the preparations ceased altogether. People stopped asking questions. Roshan Mattress humphed when she passed Alzira, and Maria was not to be seen. ‘Gone to become a nun,’ Mrs Daya reported. ‘Gone to visit our aunt,’ said Alzira. She admitted that the wedding had been called off. The man’s mother had been against it all the time. ‘It’s all for the better, he was too much under her influence,’ she said.

It was Sunday afternoon and Mother was waiting for Alzira to leave before giving the servant the signal to begin the elaborate preparations for closing. Sunday was half day and it was past the time. Mehroon and Razia were upstairs, cooking and cleaning, and only I was with Mother. There was a silence inside the shop, and Mother was staring out, deep in thought. Alzira was busy
darning. At this point a sudden commotion arose outside on the pavement, with much shouting and laughing. ‘Tembo-mbili-potea!’ one voice called out, and then another.

Apparently Tembo-mbili was passing. He was one of Dar’s several crazies, a small, thin Goan man. He had recently taken to passing our street on Sunday afternoons, dragging a foot and being jeered all the way by the Africans in the street. It was said that he had landed from a steamer in delirium one day, muttering ‘Tembo-mbili-potea’ – ‘Two elephants lost.’ The elephants, they said, only referred to the brand of beer that came with the picture of an elephant and the man was drunk, but the name stuck. He had close-cropped hair and always wore a crumpled and dirty ‘khaki and white’. With downcast eyes he shuffled along, looking tired and docile. ‘Tembo-mbili-potea!’ men would jeer when he’d passed them, ‘Tembo … mbili … poteaaa!’ He would ignore them. After some time, his patience worn out, wearily and without a word he would pick up the closest large stone he could find and hurl it at some offender. He would have made a mean fielder. He could throw cleanly across a block, from one end to the other, and the stone would land with a crash on the pavement, sometimes bouncing off walls and doors. No one dared to tease him from up close.

But this time some bold rascal had stolen up behind him and hitting his arm had dislodged the stone from his hand. Tembo-mbili stood weaponless and flustered in the middle of a loud and jeering crowd outside our store.

‘They’ll beat him up!’ I said frantically from the doorway and turned to look out again. As I did so I noticed Alzira’s anxious face. She was straining to look outside from where she sat, unaware in her agitation that her needle was pressing her thumb. I continued to look out, uneasy and dejected.

A constable walked up and started dispersing the crowd. Then Alzira’s brother Pius arrived stiffly on his scooter, drove it on the
pavement and picked the unharmed man up, and without a word they rode off.

Alzira stood up and left, shaken, almost in tears; Mother and I stared after her and then looked at each other without a word.

He comes out from the shadows and stands beside the solitary service pole at the corner and watches the boy intently. A stocky old man in a checked loincloth and a tattered white T-shirt. His face has a tough leathery texture and is wrinkled at the eyes. He is black. Across the street the boy gets his change from the Arab shopkeeper and walks away with a can of milk in one hand and a Coke bottle in the other. The street is dark, except for the light that falls from the shop; a few pedestrians are about. The man watches the boy’s shape blur and enter the darkness which arrives before the paved and lighted Kichwele Street further ahead. He takes a few steps to follow and halts when the boy, as though afraid of the dark, breaks into a run. Soon the patter of footfalls subsides and the man walks back into the shadows.

A while later he emerges again and crosses the street to the Arab’s store. It has a wide serving window open to the street, behind which its owner sits. ‘Give me some water,’ the man says gruffly, standing outside. The owner looks up from behind a kerosene lamp at the one-armed man and points to the red clay pot at the doorway. The man shuffles to it. The Arab turns his gaze outside once more. The radio, turned very low, gives the news from behind him.

Having had his drink the man wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and starts walking towards the main street, whose pavements will be kinder to his feet. The night is warm and the air
is still. The shopkeeper watches the stocky figure disappear in the dark, holding a cane in the one hand.

Last night the one-armed man saw the boy escorting his older sister on Kichwele Street. He followed, keeping his distance. The girl walked fast and the boy had trouble keeping up. He tried talking, to slow her down, but she kept her pace and the boy had to trot along beside her. Finally they reached an open store, where he left her and then retraced his way back. Hands in his pockets, face turned downward, kicking stones on the pavement. For a moment the man thought their paths would finally cross, he would get his prey. His face tensed up and set into a wry bitter smile, his eyes gleamed. But then the boy started walking along the road behind parked cars and in a quick motion crossed to the other side. A bus hurtling along and two cars later the man had lost his quarry, who disappeared in the shadows of the buildings across. He turned back.

I will get him. I will get this chubby Indian boy even if I have to walk this street up and down every day
 …

At regular intervals green government trucks suddenly appeared in the main streets at night and a general chase ensued, policemen jumping out and checking African pedestrians for their cards. Those who couldn’t produce them were carted off to the police station, and if not claimed by employers the following day were sent off to their villages.

A month ago he had found his way back to the city after six months upcountry. And a few days later on the morning of Eid, he had come across the three boys, returning home from prayers, all in crisp, new clothes, polished shoes and slick hair. They were in a jolly mood. He stood aside to let them pass and stretched out his hand, respectfully, with a friendly grin. They took no notice, continued to play. One of them tickled the other, the thin, bony one, at the sides, who turned around with a shout and gave chase. The two boys ran around a parked car several times, chasing and
provoking each other in turns. The chubby one stood back, calling after them and laughing.

The man stood watching, ignored and hurt. Then in a final effort, he turned on the grin and started walking towards the chubby one, his only hand held out once more to beg. The cane protruded upwards and sideways from the hand. The boy, doubled up in excitement and pleasure, saw the raised cane and the man’s grinning face and straightened up. With a look of terror he let out a cry and started to run. The other two gave up pursuit of each other and with a look at the man, followed. The man stopped in his tracks and watched them. Then, in a fit of anger he ran after them, giving them a good chase for a few hundred yards. They jumped over gutters, pushed aside people and ran into each other in their fright. They kept running even after he had stopped and turned back exhausted.

What cowards they are, these Banyanis. Three boys like that … and an old man like me. Even their fathers – all faggots. Hanisi! When I was young I stopped them, walking home nervously across Mnazi Moja Grounds. A gruff ‘Give me money’ and a shove in the chest was enough to produce a coin …

Two weeks after he first chased the three boys, he came across one of them again. Not the chubby one, or the bony one who got tickled at the sides, but the other, the sly one. This time he was walking along Selous Street which goes straight up to the school. It was late afternoon, school was over and the boy was walking home alone in the opposite direction, swinging his satchel. The man did not recognise him at first. But a few yards ahead of him the boy stopped and giving him a fearful look crossed the road and started running. The man turned and gave chase. This time he ran farther, for a full mile or so, and he ran with all the strength he had. The boy took several corners but he followed. People sitting outside their houses, old men playing bao, looked up unperturbed. Several times the boy looked behind and tried to gather more
speed to lose his pursuer. He was getting tired. Then he reached the potters’ village and ran in through the gates. The man went and stood behind a small baobab tree, exhausted. His sides ached and his head pounded. The soles of his bare feet hurt and the stump which was his left arm throbbed with pain. A few minutes later an Indian woman came out through the gate, wiping her hot face with the end of her veil. She checked both ends of the road and then motioned the boy to come. The boy returned the glass of water and started walking home. The woman stood watching after him, glass in hand. The man did not follow.

Why do I scare them so? Am I the devil, now? Or a djinn?

A week later he saw all three of them again. Early in the morning at sunrise out for a stroll. They stayed in the middle of the street and moved away only when a car or a bus appeared. Chattering in low tones they first walked up the long Kichwele Street all the way to the seashore. They walked along the shore for some time, their voices louder, there being no residences there. Then they started walking back. By this time the sun was higher and there were people and cars on the road. On the way two of them started a fight. The chubby one and the sly one. They exchanged a few shoves and got ready with their fists. The bony one intervened. He pulled the chubby one aside and talked with him while the other looked away and sulked. Then the bony one and the sly one talked, and peace was made. They walked home in silence, the peacemaker in between. It was while following them back that morning that he found out where one of them, the chubby one, lived. At the corner of Kichwele and Livingstone Streets.

It is evening. There are people on the pavements. The man is walking up Kichwele Street and the boys are returning home on the same side. They are talking excitedly in loud voices. When they reach the shoemaker’s store they stop and chant something in
unison and laugh. The shoemaker, sitting on the floor, his feet pressed to a shoe, waves a hammer and swears; the boys go on. Now their paths will cross, the man is sure. They are too much involved in themselves to decide suddenly to cross the street, or to see him walking in their direction. He keeps as much as possible in the shadow of the parked cars. The chubby one is to the outside. He sees the man at the same time as the others, only a few feet away. They start to run. The chubby one catches his foot in the broken pavement and lurches forward. The man, arm raised, brings down the cane heavily on the boy’s left shoulder. The boy gives a loud howl and lands flat on his stomach. The man, whom they had made into a devil, walks on.