How people described the stature of Ali Kondey depended entirely on where they stood in relation to the Gulf of Guinea. Right on the coast and in the forest regions he was considered tall. In the sparse grasslands of the middle belt, they thought of his height as ‘medium’. In the upper regions and Sub-Sahel, he was seen as not being so tall. In fact, in such areas some could say he was short. But there was no such doubt anywhere about his skin. It was smooth and black, and not a layer of fat between that skin and his flesh. His teeth, which he occasionally, deliberately and fashionably discoloured by chewing kola, were beautifully even and white. He wore kohl around his eyes, moved like a panther, and was very good looking. He knew all this himself, including the fact that he was the most effective advertisement for Linga Hide A ways, the travel and tourist agency he had established soon after his country became independent.
All’s country? Which one was that?
Ali was a son of the world. He had dropped out of his mother’s womb absolutely determined to come and live this life. As his other mothers on both sides of his family would later let him know whenever they had the chance, the burden of bringing him into this world had been too much for his mother. Poor Fatimatu.
‘Was she not fifteen when Ali was born?’
‘That was all she was.’
‘Then how could she have lived?’
‘She could not live. She did not live.
I saw it all. She looked at the baby Ali very well.
You would have thought she just wanted to be sure that everything was fine with him.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Ah my sister, may Allah preserve us. She sat quietly and bled to death.’
In the commotion that had followed that catastrophe, Ali had been nearly forgotten. Indeed, the only one who seemed to have remembered his existence had been himself. He yelled and kept yelling until someone had picked him up, cleaned him and found him some breasts with milk in them. He never forgot the experience ever! And for months he never really stopped crying, completely convinced that if he stopped, he would be forgotten again.
Like most men everywhere and from time immemorial — who have been able to pay for the luxury — Ali’s father preferred his women young and tender. They had to be virgins, of course. And he had acquired one such woman for a wife in each of his eight favourite stops on his trade routes. At the time, and at fourteen, Ali’s mother had been his youngest and his current favourite. He had tried to have her travelling with him, something he had not done with any other woman before her, and she turned out to be the last. For, much to his disappointment, she soon became pregnant and there had been nothing he could do about it. What he had done, however, was take her to his sister, who was living in Bamako and married to a tailor. She was known as Mma Danjuma, after Danjuma, her oldest child, who was about two years old when Ali was born.
Ali’s father left him with Mma Danjuma, and for the first eight years or so of his life, Mma Danjuma looked after the orphan so well, people did not think they should even try to find out whether he really was her son, or whether what they had heard was true. Ali was Mma’s child. That was why, when he had come to choose a home, he had decided on Bamako. Not just because that’s where he had been told he had been born, but that was where Mma lived. Bamako was home. Then, having settled that question for the convenience of his heart, he had proceeded to claim the entire Guinea Coast, its hinterland and the Sub-Sahel for his own. In any case, since he had learned that his grandfather’s house had stood on the exact spot where Burkina Faso, Ghana and Togo met, he had assumed the nationalities of Ghana, Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Nigeria and Togo. Naturally, he carried a passport to prove the genuineness of each.
Ali’s father had lived, travelled and traded through them all: Ghana when it was the Gold Coast, Burkina when it was Upper Volta, and even earlier, from the days of Trench West Africa’. He had gone on horseback; camels; deathtraps that called themselves taxis; the back of ancient lorries and all other things that moved and could carry a fully-grown man — including his own two feet.
‘My father bought everything from everybody, and could sell anything to anybody,’ boasted Ali, laughing and touching his heart, while his eyes danced clear in their pools of kohl. And if it ever occurred to Ali that the women he seduced so easily fell more in love with the picture he painted of his father for them, and not so much for himself, it didn’t bother him too much. Ali loved his father completely, and was very proud of the part of himself that met his father’s approval, as well as that part of himself which he knew, secretly, resembled his father. Above all he was aware that establishing Linga was just continuing the family trade, with a little more organisation, modernisation and a whole lot of elegance. Of course, he had offices in all his countries, with the headquarters in Accra.
The only way in which Ali was not like his father, and did not seem to care, was in the area of women. Ali liked his women mature, and he had no special use for virginity, especially in very young girls.
Musa Musa had been the name Ali’s father had been known by throughout the whole of West Africa before Ali was born. Of course, after Ali was born, and became old enough to travel with him sometimes, Musa Musa quickly came to be known as ‘Ali Baba’, and that stuck. Musa Musa’s father, Musa Kondey, that is Ali’s grandfather, who was long dead by the time Ali was born, had been quite rich. He had owned an impressive number of sons, cattle, horses, sheep, goats, wives and daughters. All definitely in that order of value. Since he had not been the head of his clan, he could not have owned the largest numbers of any of those commodities. But he had been a minor prince, which also meant that he would have been much wealthier than those of his contemporaries who had not been princes. Musa Musa had been one of several children from one of his father’s middle wives.
One day, when he was about twelve years old, he had taken his share of the sheep and goats out to graze, as was expected of him. Early in the afternoon he had eaten his packed lunch and drunk his day’s ration of water. Soon after, he had felt sleepy, and had walked into a thicket that had become something of a favourite spot, and dozed. Just for a short while. Sleeping on the job was something his father punished most severely, if caught. On that particular afternoon, Musa Musa had been startled awake by the barking of his dog. He had looked around and realised that what appeared to be a small lion was running away with a goat. He was too frightened even to come out of his thicket until a while later, when the baby lion was long gone. When he did emerge and counted his animals, sure enough one kid was missing. He burst into tears. After the tears, he asked himself what he was to do. He knew that at the end of the day the animals would be counted. He knew the loss would be discovered. He also knew his father and his punishment for losing an animal. So what was he to do? The kid was gone. By evening, when he was ready to return the animals home, he had decided. He drove the animals close enough to the kraal so that it would not be difficult for the dog to take them home. Then he disappeared.
The next time Musa Musa ventured home, he was over forty and greying from his temples. In the meantime, he had become one of the biggest door-to-door traders of the entire sub-region. There was nothing he did not carry to sell: from safety pins, hair pins and zips to giant funerary masks and statues of gods and goddesses — some phoney and newly created, others old and authentic. These last were stolen by his enterprising contacts from royal mausoleums and sacred shrines. Later, much later, when all the countries had become independent and tourism to that part of Africa was very much in fashion, Musa Musa had set up his own group of carvers. These were his youngest brothers and nephews. The latter were the sons of his numerous sisters, and more than anything else, it was his intention to set them up in business that had taken him back to his village. His father was already dead, so there was no chance of anyone expecting him to come up with an explanation for anything … especially a goat lost over thirty years ago!
It had been established without doubt that it was indeed him, Musa Musa. His mother, now an old woman, had remembered the tragedy of losing him and cried, and then cried some more for the joy of having him back. The next day a great feast of welcoming had been organised so that everyone could celebrate and have a nice time. A lost person does not find his way home every day.
Depending on where he himself was heading, Musa Musa’s carvers would make any piece of wood yield any desired image. Sanufu antelope dancing headdresses, Akuaba dolls, Igbo, Yoruba and Baluba masks. He had added to his carver’s skills the art of curing wood in such a way that freshly sculptured pieces felt, looked and smelled more real and much more old than the really ancient pieces Ali used to buy.
‘I’m grateful to my old man,’ Ali would later say to Esi. ‘Leaving me that group and their skills is worth more than a million dollars in the bank, you know.’ He would laugh, touch his heart and continue: ‘Besides, knowing my father, he would have hated the tiresome business of having to put a good story together to explain how he could suddenly have come into such money, since all his life he had avoided the banks.’
‘Was he into currency deals?’ the listener would ask.
‘But what a very rude question. In any case, how do you think people like my father could have managed to keep commerce and other economic activities thriving in this area if they had played in the white man’s bank with their money?’
‘But after independence?’
‘What are you talking about? … My father keeps telling everyone openly that he will take his money to the bank the day something changes properly. As far as he is concerned, these independences have proved to be nothing more than a trick! You should see him imitating African leaders when they are with the heads of Western governments or their representatives, as they tremble and grin with great effort to please! And Allah, he can do them all! Francophone, Anglophone, Lusophone, any kind. No, he is convinced that nothing has changed, so he sleeps on his money.’ ‘So he is still alive?’
Of course. And still marrying the fourteen-year-old girls.’ Ali always pretended great shock at any suggestion that his father might die. He thought any discussion of that subject was in very bad taste, and Musa Musa agreed with him. Indeed the only opinion Musa Musa could possibly have shared with African heads of state is that any discussion of our mortality is treason and punishable, by death of course, if the circumstances are right.
Allah be praised.
Ali’s house was a big structure at the entrance to Nima, from New Town. It had been built in the middle of the 1940s by a local man who had made a lot of money in the Second World War. None of the children this man had sent to England to be ‘properly educated’ had bothered to come back. So out of sheer frustration he had driven their different mothers out, and for several years had lived alone. Then, once he knew he was about to die, he had put the house up for sale to spite his family. He knew they were just waiting for him to die to begin harassing one another over the property. The only condition to go with the sale was that whoever bought the house should wait for him to be laid in his grave before taking possession. Which is exactly what happened. Ali had then thoroughly renovated it and built a proper wall around it.
Early in his sojourn in the south, Ali had decided that he would always live in the zongo of the cities in which he found himself. He had not tried to analyse that decision into its parts except to say that, ‘for one, zongo is the only area in these places where one can be sure of always getting some decent tuo’. If the house he had bought was not exactly in Nima, he could at least console himself with the thought that it was near enough. From his favourite corner on the balcony upstairs, he could hear and see that city- within-city buzzing with maximum activity during the day, and winking all over at night — also with maximum activity. Nima never slept.
Ali had first come south with his father when he was about four years old. Musa Musa always stayed in Nima, with different friends and relatives, deciding on which household, according to how he felt on each trip. When he began to take Ali with him on a regular basis, there was a routine he always followed — in Nima as well as in all the other cities and towns on his routes. As soon as he arrived, he would promptly put Ali in a Koranic school. By the time he was eight, Ali could recite more than double the verses normally expected from one his age. This worked out to about ten chapters of the Holy Book. From Bamako down through Ouga and Kumasi, from Abidjan across Sekondi, Accra and Lome, all his teachers proclaimed him an exceptionally bright pupil.
One day, when Ali was nearly nine years old and they were in Bamako, his mother Mma Danjuma did ‘one of her things’. After the whole family had returned from the mosque and her brother and her husband were swearing by Allah that they would surely die any minute from hunger, Mma disappeared into the huge kitchen which she shared with the other tenants’ wives. Then she called her two older boys, Danjuma and Ali — but not, as the boys expected, because she had heated the food and she was going to dish it out for them to take to where the men were. Instead, she just pulled a chair out and sat down. Then she gave the boys some francs and told them to go to Monsieur Abdoulayi’s and get the family some kola. The boys were very surprised. It was a most unusual command. The one thing they never ever ran out of in their corner of the compound was kola. Indeed, every now and then Mma herself sold kola to the other residents, since her brother always brought her a small sackful whenever he came from the south. Musa Musa meant the kola for her and her husband’s use. But it was always a lot. Too much.
‘How many mouths does Musa think we have, eh?’ Mma would ask no one in particular. She would then proceed to give several away to her women friends, until one of them, a much more realistic somebody than Mma could ever be, asked whether Mma didn’t think that if she sold some of the nuts, she could find something else, like salt, to buy with the money? That was a hint Mma took.
So to go and buy kola from someone else, especially when Ali and his father had just arrived from the south the night before, sounded very strange indeed. But then, grown-ups are always strange and unpredictable. Both boys said, Oui, Mma,’ and left the house.
The boys were right. Mma didn’t need the kola. She just wanted them out of the house for a short while. That was why, in her haste, she had named the first commodity that had come into her head.
‘Ah-ah, there are things you don’t discuss with young people listening in. Especially if it’s about their future. Since they never forget, if they overhear you making decisions about them which later turn out to have been unfortunate, they would never forgive you …’
Mma adjusted her veil and approached the men. To their cries of ‘Where is the food?’ and ‘Where is the tuo?’ she asked them to be patient and wait. She knelt. Another surprise that afternoon. Mma never knelt.
‘It’s about Ali.’
‘Uh … huh,’ grunted the men.
‘Musa, no one is a better father than you. The boy doesn’t miss his mother. Allah be praised.’
‘Ei,’ exclaimed both men, ‘what mother are you talking about now? Are you not the boy’s mother?’
‘Please forgive my words,’ said Mma, nervously. She realised immediately that she had almost gone too far in her attempt to oil them up for what she was about to say. ‘But the boy is growing. Now he knows enough Arabic to improve on his verses himself with the reading of the Holy Book.’
‘Woman, woman, be short,’ her husband, Baba Danjuma, cut in. ‘What is it you want to tell your brother?’ Baba Danjuma was trying to hide his fury that whatever it was, she had not discussed it with him first.
‘Musa,’ said Mma, Ί want you to leave Ali with us properly. No more travelling for him. So we can put him into a French school. Please? These days, that is very important. Koranic schools are all right. But
Musa and Baba Danjuma were already laughing a great deal and calling on Allah to come bless this good woman, their wife and their sister. But that was what they had been discussing all morning! Strange ... Allah is great. They had thought they would tell her what they had agreed about Ali after she had fed them. Since, may Allah protect us all, if she did not hurry with the food, she might have two corpses to deal with … Ah no, there was no problem. Of course, Ali would go to the French school.
Mma Danjuma was very surprised, and relieved. She had nothing more to say. There was just no need. She rose up.
‘Ah... yah,’ she said, ‘I shall bring the food now.’ She went back to the kitchen.
A little while later, when she took the steaming bowls in herself, Baba Danjuma thought there was something odd about it.
‘Where are the boys?’ he asked.
‘I sent them to Abdoulayi,’ she replied. Why explain further?
Oh … oh, both men murmured. They too were quite anxious to eat, they didn’t feel like probing. Since they had already done their ablutions, they immediately attacked their food.
As Mma turned to return to the kitchen there was a smile on her face. Ah men, how easy that was! Had they really discussed sending Ali to the French school? Or had they just agreed quickly so that she, a woman, wouldn’t have the credit of being the ore to have brought out a good idea? Or was it just because they were anxious to eat? Mma knew she would never know the answer to that one. But what did it matter as long as they did not stand in her way and ruin her plans to get the boy properly educated? They are men. They must have their little self-deceptions.
In time, Ali went to the junior French school, and later, the lycée. Much later he continued to Ghana and went to a teacher training college, where he met Fusena his wife. Later still he gave up teaching and got himself to England, where he acquired both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Sociology and Economics.
When Ali was in an English-speaking environment, people found his language ‘quaint’ with its French accent and philosophical turn to everyday phrases. When he was in a Francophone environment, people thought his language enchantingly ‘simple, comme les Anglais!’