Manhood arrived largely unremarked: no slaying of a ram, no staff and scroll and the command to go seek God and fortune. There were occasional jokes about finding me a wife. My father made the jokes, my mother scotched them with a fierce look.
The boys at school knew that they were now men. If we could, we refused to obey a teacher who commanded too brusquely. We all began talking seriously about the future. Independence was just round the corner, and we spoke of the opportunities that it would bring to us. That was not the way it turned out, and I think we knew that even as we deluded ourselves with visions of unity and racial harmony. With our history of the misuse and oppression of Africans by an alliance of Arabs, Indians and Europeans, it was naïve to expect that things would turn out differently. And even where distinctions were no longer visible to the naked eye, remnants of blood were always reflected in the division of the spoils of privilege. As the years passed, we bore with rising desperation the betrayal of the promise of freedom.
After three years of independence, it was clear that the future had to be sought elsewhere. On the verge of leaving school, I lay in wait for my father one afternoon. I had to wait for him to rise from his nap, wash and get changed. It was late by the time he was ready, looking smart and carrying a subtle scent of prosperity. He stood smiling for a while, repeating the word England softly. I thought he would laugh and walk away, throwing an apt proverb over his shoulder.
‘Are you thinking of a scholarship?’ he asked at last.
I nodded. He smiled and shook his head.
‘You won’t get it,’ he said.
I nodded. He sat down and crossed his legs, leaning back in the chair, chin in hand.
Since independence he had found himself an office job in the Ministry of Works. He had recast himself as a respectable and relatively eminent member of the community. He had not abandoned his old friends entirely, but now saw them discretely and less regularly. He dressed the part now and perfumed himself with sandalwood. He still chased whores, though, and still staggered home drunk on some nights.
We were sitting in the guest room, which I can never dissociate from Said’s death, our legs almost touching. He carefully brushed dust off his cuffs, sighed patiently and raised interrogative eyebrows at me.
‘So . . . where will you get the money?’ he asked. ‘This government won’t give it to you, be you as clever as the devil. They don’t waste their money on Arabi rangi rangi. Unless you want to go to Cuba to learn to be a freedom fighter. Or you want to go to Bulgaria to learn Esperanto. How will you get there?’
‘I can find a job when I get there,’ I said. ‘Work and study.’
‘And I can put my head in a bucket of water and gurgle,’ he said. ‘But where will that get me? You don’t know how hard these things are. I asked you how will you get there?’
He looked at me expectantly but I said nothing. How did I know how I would get there? I would find a way.
He made an impatient clucking noise. ‘You have to be very tough for this kind of thing,’ he said.
I nodded meekly. I was relieved that he had not laughed me out of the house, or accused me of abandoning them. I suppose I had also thought that he would be angry when he found out, and I had wanted to get the unpleasantness over with. So I was prepared to listen dutifully to any advice. He grinned at me and shook his head. The dust was beginning to settle on his cuffs again. The screams of children playing outside came in through the open window. The heat was coming in waves off the whitewashed walls.
‘Wait a minute,’ he said.
He got up quickly and went into his bedroom. He returned with a large map of Africa. He hitched his trousers up and got down on his knees. He adjusted himself and then spread the map out in front of him.
‘It’s an old map,’ he said, and glanced at me as if he expected me to say something. I removed from my mind the thought that he looked foolish down there, for fear that it might show in my face. He pointed decisively in the region of Lake Nyanza. We’ll make camp here and attack the enemy at dawn. He traced a route from Kampala – who would think of going there now? – through the Bahr el Ghazal and down the Nile. I pictured myself on Cleopatra’s barge, glinting with bronze and gold leaf, with its fountains and leviathan leitmotifs leaping in the equatorial sun. ‘All the way to Alexandria,’ he said.
He traced the route back. Alexandria! The city of the great conqueror! And here the Ruwenzori: two-headed Mountains of the Moon, rumbling storms in their coming. And here is Adowa where the Ethiopian monks deflowered the pride of Italy. Near the mouth of the Tana was where the Shirazi princeling, fleeing the wrath of his master, sat to wipe his arse before discovering the Blue Nile. He laughed as he mocked his own excitement.
‘Yes, you go,’ he said with a sigh as he came back to his chair. ‘Show them that we’re not all finished. The things they do to us in this place . . . ’ He leant forward and laid his hand on my thigh: ‘Only one thing. Don’t lose your faith in God. When you go to these foreign places . . . ’
He grinned and leant back. Suddenly he chuckled and shook his head: ‘You’re a secret one,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell your mother. She’ll start to cry or something. You leave this to me. First you need a passport. I know someone in the Immigration Department. He’ll help us.’ He made a sign to indicate that money would change hands. He glanced at his watch and made a face of surprise at it.
‘You leave the passport to me,’ he said. ‘I must go now. It’ll be a great journey. I wish I was young too.’
He flicked his cuffs, glanced at his watch again and left. He left me feeling more optimistic than I thought I should. It became a small conspiracy between us, and we would talk about it when we were alone. My optimism did not last. I suspected that he was playing a game with me, that his enthusiasm and tales of attempts to bribe officials were a fiction, an elaborate hoax. Sometimes a look of amused malice would pass across his face. I was reluctant to believe that he would play with me in such an elaborate and cruel way. Then one afternoon, several weeks after our first conversation, he came home from work in a terrible temper. He did not speak to anybody, but this was not unusual. Every now and again he caught my eye, and I knew that I was part of his anger in some way. I left the house and wandered the afternoon streets to keep out of his way.
I went back to the house to find him waiting for me in the guest-room. He beckoned me in as I made to walk past. He was the scowling, gruff-voiced tyrant again. It was very hot in the house, and the dust had risen from multitudinous corners so that the air rasped with grit.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked, the sweat standing in angry bubbles on his forehead. I saw that he had not taken his habitual shower and afternoon nap, mortifying himself into a rage. I waited in silence, hoping that he would continue talking without an answer from me, hoping that he would burst out with his grievances and anger and then leave me in peace. He scowled, waiting for an answer.
‘To the docks,’ I said.
‘I’ve been waiting here,’ he burst out. ‘I haven’t even had a wash, and you’ve been playing at the docks. You want this, you want that, but you want somebody else to do it for you. You don’t care what humiliations you put people through. I went to all this trouble . . . and you’re playing in the docks.’
He stood up suddenly and I tensed, thinking that he was going to hit me. He pointed to the chair he had been sitting in, and I sat down. He paced in front of me, turning to glare at me now and then. I’m getting tired of this, I thought. I’m a man now.
‘I had no one to look after me,’ he said suddenly. ‘I had no father. Did you know that? But you . . . you expect me to see all these people, suffer all this . . . disrespect. And what do you care? You go and play at the docks.’
He stood at the window, a hand gripping one of the bars. ‘I spoke to the Immigration man today,’ he said, speaking more softly and looking away from me. ‘He told me there’s a new law. He said I can’t apply for a passport because I’ve been in prison. Did you know that I’ve been in prison?’
His face did not change, and the question came casually. He cleared his throat and I watched him swallow the phlegm that he had brought up. I had pictured him standing in the dark of the tailor’s junk-yard, the smell of rotting fruit turned sour by goat droppings and piss, while at his feet the little boy whimpered. I pictured him gloating over the shattered body: Have you had enough?
‘It’s better you should know this from me,’ he said, frowning. ‘I committed no crime . . . but people never forget.’
The boy walks the streets now in rags, clean out of his mind. Little children taunt him and pull his trousers down for a joke and put old mango stones and bits of cassava up his anus. He was searching my face, looking for signs, looking for sympathy.
‘They accused me of assaulting an eight-year-old boy,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘A half-wit boy that slept in the streets.’ He waited for me, but I made no sign. I knew I was rejecting an appeal but I was too young then to understand the cost of such things. He walked back to the window and stood there for a moment.
‘I was innocent,’ he said, looking at me with wide, appealing eyes. ‘They just wanted some nobody to blame. Do you understand?’
I nodded. He sighed.
‘They let me out after three months,’ he said. ‘That proves it, doesn’t it? Then we came to live here, with thieves and prostitutes, in this dirt. These people don’t forget.’
He glanced at his watch and looked out of the window, looking down the street. ‘I must have a wash,’ he said, sighing. ‘Your mother . . . she was a great comfort to me. She was beautiful. She was really beautiful,’ he repeated softly. ‘Did you know she was about as old as you are when I married her?’
He nodded and muttered something I did not hear. He leant against the wall, looking out of the window and saying nothing for a long time. A warm puff of air came into the room: the land breeze, slipping swiftly, bringing relief to our dusty cell. Twilight gloom was beginning to gather. He turned back to me and I saw that he was smiling.
‘She was a great comfort,’ he said.
A car stopped outside and hooted twice, its radio blaring. He looked out of the window and waved. ‘I must change. Go and tell him to wait for a few minutes,’ he told me.
She was beautiful and he turned her into a creature that lived on pain. Said, you wounded little fucker, did you know that she was a great comfort to him? Now he found his comfort where he could. I did not believe him, and I feared that the truth of what had happened did not matter any more. For as long as I had known him he had spent his nights whoring and drinking, and we all acted as if we did not know where he went while he was out. We ate and lived as if nobody was absent. And when he came home in the early hours, stumbling against the door, shouting obscene abuse, beating my mother, we all acted asleep. At times I thought I should do something to stop him. I was the eldest, and only a few inches shorter than him. Perhaps we were all as pathetic as he thought we were, but I was afraid to shame my mother. Even little Saida knew what was expected of her. Nobody had taught us to do this. We did it to save our mother from the shame that we knew she felt, and that we felt with her. In the day, nothing was said of the nights. It was as if they never happened. We did not speak of his drinking or his violence even in passing. He did not often bruise her where it showed – and even then all that we did was avoid looking at it. During the day, our father was the wrathful master, whose word had the authority of the sanction of God. I think our fear of him, and the pretence of respect, only made him loathe us more.
I wondered what he would have done if he had discovered Zakiya’s pregnancy. His sense of honour would have demanded some retribution. It was what would have been expected of a father – and a brother, come to that. As it was, they kept it all from my father. Bi Mkubwa, my grandmother, took her away for a few days, to stay with a friend, she said, and Zakiya came back cleansed and chastened, at least for a while.
Zakiya had been precocious. At an early age she had abandoned her role as the household skivvy, the customary lot of the girl child. The first hints of her budding womanhood had come when she was only nine. She had then been forced into a buibui, the black shroud of modesty, and been forbidden to play in the streets. My grandmother started to talk about atomic bombs and men in the sky. She started talking about finding a husband and Zakiya had laughed in her face, running away from her as she tried to smack her for her disrespect. None of this was enough to suppress her obvious and aggressive charms, and she found ways of escaping the attentions of my grandmother and my mother, her chaperones. She wanted to act in a school play but my grandmother forbade it. She wanted to ride a bicycle but she was refused permission. She was told she should learn how to cook first. When she was twelve she was taken out of school, because she failed to gain a place in a government secondary school and my father did not see the point of sending her to a fee-paying school. Sometimes she borrowed my books. I remember she cried while she read Romeo and Juliet.
It was only later, after her pregnancy was discovered and quickly disposed of, that she told me of the man who had become her lover. He was one of the teachers at her old school, a boy from the country in his first job. He was no older than I was at the time. Zakiya said she did not know what had happened to him, and she was afraid to ask. She asked me to find out for her. I wonder now that she did not think that I would seek to protest her dishonour by taking a stick to him, or at least giving him away. I asked for her, and discovered that he had requested a transfer to the country.
They kept it from my father, but for Zakiya it was as if all self-esteem were lost. Now, at sixteen, she moved from one affair to another with the cynism of a much older person, abandoning all discretion. As my initial shock at her behaviour lessened, I began to see the pleasure she took in what she did. In the streets she was brazen with her beauty and was proud of the admiration she aroused. In quiet moments she knew the consequences of her freedom. I tried to find a way of speaking to her, but what was there to tell her that she did not already know? That her actions were as close to self-destruction as a woman could manage? That her maddened rage would eventually leave her rejected and abused? She brushed my attempts away, and smiled with the flush of her conquests and the joy of her new powers. Her future was already mapped. Sooner or later, when times were hard enough, she would become somebody’s mistress, if she was lucky.
My mother pleaded with her. Some evenings as I lay sprawled on a mat in the backyard, revising for the examinations, I heard them whispering, huddled over the light of a hurricane lamp, in another part of the yard. My mother would start to sob in her misery, and in the end Zakiya would join in. I wanted to go and be with them, but I was afraid they would reject my offer of comfort. Zakiya became something else we did not speak about.
They tried to keep all this from me because it was not the kind of thing men should involve themselves with. They were afraid of any affection I attempted to show because it made me seem soft and suspect. I had seen the suspicious glint in my grandmother’s eye when I had once stroked Zakiya’s hair in her presence.
The passport conspiracy between my father and me ended with our afternoon conversation. There were no more meaningful looks and whispered reports about immigration officials. I put in an official application for a passport, knowing that there was little chance of getting one. The examinations, in any case, were drawing near and overtaking all other anxieties. I spent my afternoons at school, revising and then going for exhausting runs on the track. There was contentment in the rigour of the regime. Time was accounted for and given over to one narrow purpose. I did not dwell on the futility of this labour, that our results would probably not even be published, for fear that we might decide to seek better fortunes elsewhere. At school, examination students strutted around, indulged by the teachers and held in awe by the younger boys. Our revision times were monitored by the younger boys, who created myths about our diligence, as we had done with those who had gone before us.
I came home in the early evening, and often the house was empty. My mother and Bi Mkubwa usually went visiting in the afternoon, or were attending one of the endless women’s functions. Saida, my youngest sister, sometimes went with them but more often would be playing with the other children in the clearing. I would sit on my mat in the backyard, reading or leaning against the hot wall in an exhausted stupor. My grandmother liked to creep up on me when I was in such a state and say something charming and encouraging. You’ll fail.
With the passage of years, her cruelty had become ridiculous, clownish. Nobody took any notice of her any more, and she crept round the house, all eyes and ears, alert to any disrespect. They’ll put you in a madhouse, she liked to say. I used to think it was too cruel to laugh. Sometimes she wagged her finger at me, then retreated to her room, smacking the door against the frame before bolting it. Yet whenever she came back from the functions that they attended, she brought me a piece of cake or a sweet. Feeding the animal, she used to say, laughing the strained wheezing laughter of ailing lungs.
The functions and the visits were important to my mother. They were part of the respectability that my father’s new job had given us. She took trouble over her clothes now, at least when she went out. And there was Zakiya to chide her into excess. Aa-ah, don’t make me ridiculous, girl, she would say, but now she wore perfume and darkened her eyelids with kohl. She visited a dressmaker with her bundles of poplin and taffeta and silk that she had acquired from the door-to-door man. In the evenings she would change into her rags again and fuss about the yard with our supper. At the end of the long day, she said her evening prayers on a mat in the yard and then rolled over into an exhausted nap. It was then that I would hear her moaning in her sleep, while I lay a few feet away, peering at my books in the light of the oil lamp.
When she woke, after an hour or so, we talked for a while. She would ask me deliberately leading questions about school, insultingly obvious in their intent, but I could not resist showing off my knowledge. Sometimes she dozed while I talked, and I mercilessly shook her awake because I had not finished recounting the laboratory process of manufacturing chlorine or some such. I knew I had to talk to her about leaving but was always consumed with cowardice when the moment came to speak. I waited for an evening when she had not been out in the afternoon, and would not be so tired and preoccupied.
I found her in the backyard one evening when I returned from school. She was squatting on the ground, lighting the fire. I squatted near her. It seemed the wrong moment. The thought of leaving to seek a better life elsewhere had started to seem an irresponsible ambition, and in any case, unlikely to be realised. She glanced at the sky then busied herself with the pots.
‘Will it rain do you think?’ she asked eventually.
The skies had been gloomy for several days, and during the day the humidity was unbearable. We had had one dry storm already, when the wind had whipped the dust into angry devils that hurtled frenziedly in all directions.
‘No,’ I said. ‘A few more days yet.’
She glanced again at the sky then looked at me.
‘It will rain tonight,’ she said. ‘What do you know about it? All this dust and heat has been with us for such a long time. It’s the season for rain now. They’ll be praying for it in the country. It’ll rain, I know about such things,’ she said with a hint of teasing in her voice.
‘What are you cooking?’ I asked her.
She blinked with long-suffering slowness. Bananas again. Was it that times were that hard? She had by then lost interest in making ends meet, in producing clever meals out of tripe and sardines. On some evenings she gave us a few pennies each to go to the tea-house for some buns and beans. She accepted any complaints we made with silent and guilty resentment. She rarely ate anything herself at night, but always cooked something if my father was in. I don’t think I minded the buns and beans quite as much as the bananas, and I don’t think I blamed her for refusing to skivvy for the rest of us. Sometimes, though, as the heavy banana stodge rumbled its way through the coils I wondered if the money could not be better spent than on clothes and perfumes and booze.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked. ‘You’re always hungry.’
She pulled the bunch of green bananas towards her and started breaking them off. She paused to clean something off the skin, as if it mattered. Her head was low over her work, tilted slightly towards one side. I was sorry about making her feel guilty about the food.
‘I like bananas,’ I said.
She looked up and smiled. Liar!
‘Have you prayed tonight?’ she asked, clicking the conversation into a different gear. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had time. These days you’re too busy to spare any time for God.’ She looked again at the sky and sighed. ‘They used to make sacrifices for rain. The old people in the village took rice, or flour, sometimes an animal, to the shrine on the cliff. You could hear the spirits at night. That’s what we used to think when we were children, my brother and I. Sometimes we heard them walking through the village, dragging their baskets for offerings behind them. My brother wanted us to go and spend the night at the shrine, to try and see them. I told him we would be struck blind. My father said they were just savage customs.’
‘Did the rains come?’ I asked.
‘Eh?’ she asked, looking at me from a long distance. ‘It’ll rain tonight. Look at the sky.’
She peeled the bananas with a sharp stick and threw them into a pot of water by her feet. Every time she threw a banana in, the splash wet her feet. She did not seem to notice.
‘Have you heard about bin Said?’ she asked.
My resolution was weakening, and I was tempted to give up the conversation and wander the streets. She seemed so vulnerable, so sad, and I was reluctant to add to her misery with talk of departure. That was the explanation I gave myself for my cowardice.
‘He killed his dog today. He drove his car right over it and it popped like a tomato. I saw it, I was there. It got up and dragged itself away . . .’
I stood up to leave. She looked up and smiled. ‘You were always soft-hearted,’ she said, laughing at me.
‘What will happen to him?’ I asked, preparing an exit.
‘They’ll put him in jail,’ she sneered. ‘They’re just like animals, his whole family. Look at the bastards they’ve produced between them.’
There was a rumour that bin Said had pursued my mother for years, had written letters to her – she who cannot read – which she had passed on to my father. There was good blood in bin Said. He was descended from the Busaid family, the rulers of Zanzibar until the revolution, and the sultans of Oman until this day. He was the grandson of the original slave-drivers, a man of distinction. In his youth he had terrorised the streets, and the colonial authorities had turned a blind eye to him, not wishing to damage their relations with his powerful family. He even killed a man once, an English sailor. The authorities turned a blind eye to that too. But times had changed, and bin Said had turned to having long conversations with his gin bottle and leaning out of his window shouting abuse at passers-by. His forays into the outdoors always ended with some act of unprovoked arrogance. The new authorities were still indulgent with him. They assumed he was mad and only locked him up in the madhouse overnight to calm him down.
‘I’ll just go out for a while,’ I said.
I walked down the alley by the side of the house. The old man brothel-keeper was at his window, sitting behind the bars, looking out into the dark alley. He often did that, sitting with the window-shutters open, staring at the wall of our house. His window was at an angle to the window in my grandmother’s room. His vigils angered my grandmother to distraction. At times he burnt incense, and often played bagpipe on record.
When I was a child he used to pamper me, hold me in his arms and stroke my cheeks. My mother was too afraid of him to express her horror. She warned me off him, telling me he was a dirty man, and making me swear that I would not tell him what she had said. In the end she had told my father of the old man’s fondness for me. My father had ranted at me first, calling me a little whore. What does he do? Tell me the truth! Then he had gone round to the old man and threatened him with everything from castration to God’s vengeance. He came back angry and humiliated, for the old man had not been silent and the customers had come to his aid. The old man never spoke to me after that, and I avoided the alleyway whenever I could.
As I walked past the window the old man sniggered, as he always did. Once I turned to look after I had walked past and had seen on his face a grimace of such loathing that I had never dared do it again. I dreamed of those fierce, watery eyes gazing out of the darkness of the dank alleyway.
In the clearing under the old mzambarau tree, tilly-lamps were spluttering to life as people prepared for the evening. Under one of the lamps, the interminable card game was still going on. Scattered round the edge of the clearing were the trolleys of the kabab-sellers and the peanut- and sweet-vendors. The radio of the Adusi Restaurant was blaring its mixture of songs and endless best wishes to friends and relatives. Saida came running out of the shadows and took my hand.
‘Where you going?’ she asked, making childish faces of pleasure at me. I did not answer but instead tried to pull the two wiry bunches of hair that thrust out on either side of her head. She beat my hands away and belted back into the knot of children from which she had appeared. She was then nearly ten years old, just the age to be hidden away from the gaze of men. It was her childishness that still saved her from that fate. She was the luckiest of us. She had always been able to withdraw herself from the turmoils at home, and always with a kind of contentment that had nothing to do with what was going on around her. My mother called her dreamy and often became frustrated with her inattention. Saida would be hurt by this, and for a day or two would remember to help with the washing. She would fold her school uniform, put her books away and offer to make people cups of tea. It would only last for a short while, then she would revert to her careless self, too preoccupied with the joy of her inner dramas to worry about being good.
The night was very quickly in control. Shadows stretched out on the road. Street-lamps glowed dimly, dotting the road through the township. Kerosene lamps threw squares of light out of barred windows. The shadows that I passed moved and flickered, staring. In the pallid glow of the lamps, the world seemed like a plain of rubble and boulders on the sea-bed – not the real world. As I walked past empty garage yards and locked-up warehouses it seemed as if I was strolling round the abandoned camp fires of a great host . . . a place that had been arbitrarily and expediently picked for a bivouac on the road to other places. I caught sight of a fleeting image of a half-clad girl, moving away into the early evening shadows. Her head swayed gracefully as she hurried, her step so certain.
I re-entered the clearing from the opposite end, by the Adusi Restaurant. It was bathed in light. The sign-post above the entrance was covered with insects that whirred frantically for a touch of the lamps. Outside the restaurant a man was standing behind an aluminium-topped table making chapatis. Round the corner from the restaurant was a long, narrow alleyway, where customers went to relieve swollen bladders. At the end of the alleyway was the branch office of our People’s Progressive Party. Daubed in black paint above the doorway were the words FREEDOM NOW. The lettering was inelegant, done in the heat of the struggle. It was faded now, a leftover from a time when such slogans had meaning.
The office was crowded with people playing card games and draughts. In the inner office, the chairman of the branch was holding court, sipping coffee out of a tiny cup and listening to the animated sycophancy around him. He was one of the new men. He represented us at the councils of the notables and the powerful. We had already learnt not to choose one of ourselves for such tasks, not one of those who had for centuries, and against all visible evidence, persisted in calling themselves Arabs. Independence had taught us enough of the violent hatred that the rest of the country felt for the history that we had been part of. We had strutted our miscegenated way through the centuries, making monkeys out of our half-brothers and half-sisters, while those that we claimed to be part of, where they knew of us, disclaimed and despised us as some bastard offspring of energetic and uncouth sons. So now we chose a chairman who did not speak like us, and magnanimously, did not speak too often against us. He was the only person who could persuade the hospital to send an ambulance if somebody was seriously ill. He could, with a few whispered words, persuade a policeman from an excess of zeal. He could put in the decisive word for the student who looks to have failed his exams, or for the business man who seems certain to lose his licence. So he was paid court, and languidly accepted the homage. The walls of his office were covered with slogans, and photographs of the party notables. There was a large photograph of our Leader, embarrassingly fat and with eyes hooded with malice and booze, standing next to the Queen of England.
It had been different during the struggle to rid ourselves of the British. We had then revelled in our oneness, speaking words of tolerance for past wrongs, forgiving ourselves for the horrors of our history and fooling only ourselves. We had stormed the streets in excitement and delight, yelling the pleasure of our approaching freedom. We became frantic with patriotic joy in the days leading up to independence. I remember a man wandering the streets playing a saxophone, and all the children followed him round the town singing his tune. Voti mpeni jogoo. There were torch-lit school demonstrations, athletics meetings, sports tournaments . . . and the whole nation was on the march. It was like nothing we had ever seen before. The new riot-police, brought into being by the preindependence caretaker government, was rehearsing for the parade. Fishermen were cleaning and painting their boats, making ready for the boat race. PWD workers were making floats for the costume parade. Neighbourhoods were putting the final touches to their carnival acts. Boy Scouts were out camping, refining the skills they would display, practising their battle-cries: kaliba kaliba yahoo! And at school we were asked to write an essay entitled: What Independence Means To Me. A jamboree!
Now we are free. Our leader stands next to the Queen of England with no loss of face. He is obese, filled to bursting with the rotten fruit of his power: corrupt, debauched and obscene. He is protected by the riot-police, which has now grown into an army with tanks and machine-guns, and which only has one enemy. Soldiers don’t have to knock any more before they enter a house.
I stopped at the cinema to look at the stills. My Fair Lady had been retained for the third consecutive week, playing to full houses. I took a step back to get a better view and bumped into a man standing behind me. I turned to look, words of apology leaping to my mouth. I could not speak. The man looked calmly back at me. I mumbled something and walked away, surprised by the fear I had felt. I turned to look, and the man was still standing there, looking after me.
I heard the muadhin calling people to prayers. I followed, impelled by a need for communion. I washed at the water tanks, glancing into the concrete trough to see if the frayed tooth-brush was still there. The water ran off my hands and fell in a torrent into the slimy gutter. The latrine was at one end of the wash-room, and a man was coughing vigorously in there, covering up the noise of his ablutions.
I said the proper words out of habit, marvelling none the less at the sense of cleansing I felt. There was a calmness in the mosque that made the heart feel that here all its rackings could come to rest. The congregation buzzed gently as it murmured private prayers. Then one man near the front stood up and walked towards the alcove that faced Makka. He raised his hands in the air, spoke the nua and led the rest of us in prayer. At the end we all shook hands with our neighbours. I moved from my place in the line and went to sit at the back of the mosque, relishing the gloom and the congregation’s measured chants of praise to the prophet.
I walked to the junction of Kisa Street, and wondered whether I should continue or turn homewards. A man came out of one of the houses. He looked at me cautiously and then smiled as if he had recognised me. He was a short man, tubby and genial, his trousers well down his belly.
‘Are you lost?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m just on my way home.’
‘Don’t hang around the streets then,’ he said, a subtle unease behind his genial voice. ‘Aren’t you afraid? Are you mad?’
When I walked back past the Adusi Restaurant, the old man himself was at the table by the door. Juma Adusi worked in the kitchens at the busiest hours, and then came out later in the evening to count the money. He had a reputation for meanness and his appearance did nothing but enhance it. He was thin and always dressed in rags. His hands were disfigured by taut patches of skin that were hideously pink and raw. His customers endlessly speculated on the hoard he had hidden somewhere.
The benches outside the restaurant were crowded with people listening to the news on the radio. Among them were the serious students of world affairs. They had left their homes to come and listen to the news in this nightly observance. They sipped their coffee in silence and exchanged glances as conspiracies revealed themselves in the newscaster’s words. When the bulletin ended, they unfurled their theories on the true state of affairs. Soon enough, the point at issue became one of the few things they really cared about: the Arab–Israeli wars.
It was agreed to be beyond argument that Israel did not win the Six-Day War on her own. One man claimed to know that Adolf Hitler was the rais of Israel, and that King Hussein had sold him the battle plans. The general opinion was that the Egyptians were winning in Sinai. They had the Israelis caught in a pincer movement, and were drawing them farther and farther in before slamming the door and annihilating them. With victory in the grasp of the Arabs, the Americans intervened. The Russians, who had promised to help the Arabs, did nothing. Instead of dropping an atomic bomb on America, they made speeches at the United Nations. The subject was full of variations, and some very strong views were held, but on the whole the view prevailed that it was these bombs that were responsible for giving little girls big breasts.
I found my mother stretched-out on the mat in the yard. The lamplight softened the contours of her face, fleshing the bones to fullness. As I approached, my movements disturbed her and she jerked suddenly awake.
‘It’s all right,’ I said, crouching down beside her. ‘It’s all right . . . but you’d better go inside. I think it’ll rain at last.’
She sat up slowly, grimacing with pain. She massaged the shoulder she had been lying on, tried to stifle a yawn and failed. The lamplight threw ugly shadows on her face as her mouth yawed for air. I sat behind her and kneaded her shoulders, pressing with the palm of the hand as she had taught me. She shook her shoulders to dismiss me and smiled as I came to sit opposite her. ‘Where have you been?’ she asked. ‘You should be revising for your examinations. And you haven’t even eaten your supper yet.’
‘Was the meat all right? You said it smelt a bit bad.’
‘If you buy cheap meat you can always smell the saving that you’ve made. Ask your father about it, not me.’
‘I talked to him about leaving,’ I said. ‘After the examinations . . .’
She waited for me, then nodded.
‘I have to think about that,’ I said. ‘He told me about the prison . . . why they sent him.’
She hissed in alarm and put her finger across her lips. ‘Not so loud!’
‘How old was he?’ I asked in a whisper.
She did not reply for a while. When she looked up there was guilt and fear in her eyes. ‘It wasn’t his fault. They just wanted somebody to accuse. He would not have done that. You must believe me.’
She looked at me as if she had wronged me. Yes, I said to comfort her. ‘You could have been a better son to him,’ she said. ‘You could have helped him more.’
That accusation caused me pain. I remembered the time of Said’s funeral, and how my father had tearfully accused me of Said’s death. Somebody had picked me up and whisked me away, and spoke kindly to me and made me ashamed of my father. Who could think to blame him for the death of his first-born?
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But perhaps there was nothing I could do to help him.’
‘Don’t say that,’ she said, looking down.
‘Was that when he started drinking? When he came out?’
‘You don’t know the things that happened,’ she said finally. ‘The things they did to him . . . When he came out he was different. You and Said were just little babies. It was then he started drinking. It wasn’t his fault. They hurt him. I mean they beat him. They broke his heart.’
‘He goes out to women . . . and he beats you.’
She shut her eyes and then sighed. She bent down to adjust the lamp, lowering her head towards the light so that her face seemed burnished with a metallic hardness.
‘You want your father to be a monster, don’t you? Don’t you understand? He finds things very hard. It was all too much for him . . . the prison and Said.’
‘He still beats you,’ I said.
‘What do you want me to do?’ she shouted. ‘Why are you like this?’ She glared at me for a moment. She sighed, then smiled. ‘Playing the hero now. You shouldn’t take any notice of the things I say. I thank God for a son like you. Just ignore the old woman.’
‘You’re not old.’
‘I feel old,’ she said.
‘It’s the grey hair,’ I said. ‘I’ll buy you some dye and show you how young you look.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ she said, grinning. ‘People will think I’ve got a man after me.’ She hauled herself to her feet, groaning and muttering about children who wandered the streets until all hours of the night as if they did not have a home. I did not like the sound of that children but I let it pass. She went into the tiny shed that served as our pantry and came out with the cooking pot that contained the remains of the bananas.
‘They’re making a lot of noise,’ she said. Sounds of drunken revelry came from the old man’s brothel. Somebody was laughing hysterically to the sound of bagpipe music. I nodded, addressing myself to a stodgy lump of congealed banana. She watched me struggle for a while, looking at me with increasing astonishment. ‘Get a glass of water before you choke,’ she said.
I went to the tap and cupped my hands under it, pouring the water into my mouth. I felt the heaviness sink lower into my stomach. Dutifully I went back to the pot. A strong breeze suddenly picked up and the lamp guttered. I sensed her looking up as well.
‘There’ll be rain tonight,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘God has mercy.’
She took the pot from me when I could eat no more. She ran some water into it and left it to soak overnight. ‘So what will you do?’ she asked when she came back.
‘I want to study . . . but the problem is money.’ There was a sudden yelp in the darkness, and a dog scurried across the yard, disappearing into the shadows. ‘Maybe I should just try to get a job.’
‘I think we can find the money,’ she said. ‘If you know what you want to do.’
Yes mummy. I smiled at her, determined to be tolerant of her maternal optimism. Where there is a will there is a way and all that crap. She grinned as she divined my thought, and for a moment looked really happy.
‘Your uncle Ahmed in Nairobi, my brother,’ she said. ‘We’ll go to him. He’s a rich man now. You’re his family. He must help you.’
‘Very funny. You’re making a joke.’ Although I had not really expected her to come up with anything astonishing, I was still disappointed that uncle Ahmed was all that she could think of.
‘Who’s joking?’ she asked, laughing. ‘He owes me money. When our father died, your uncle Ahmed sold the shop and the business and kept everything. He told me if I ever needed money I could go to him. He robbed me to make himself rich, so now we’ll take it back.’
‘And how are you going to get it back? Steal it?’
‘We could,’ she said, still laughing. ‘Well, we can try anyway. What’s the matter with you? It’s a chance.’
‘Ma, what kind of chance. He doesn’t even know you exist any more. He doesn’t write to you, he doesn’t even send word to you.’
‘It’s a chance,’ she repeated stubbornly. ‘You must go and see him in Nairobi. I’ll tell your father to write to him and explain. He’ll be difficult, your father I mean, but he’ll do it. Then you go to Nairobi . . . ’
‘And uncle Ahmed will find me irresistible.’
She pealed with laughter. ‘He’ll like you. I know Ahmed . . . he likes people to look him in the face and tell him what they want.’
‘I’ve come for my mother’s money,’ I offered.
She slapped me on the knee. ‘Go to sleep now. I’ll talk to your father tomorrow. And you must revise hard and pass your examinations. Every night you disappear, when I ask where you’ve been you say you’ve been for a walk. You’ll bring a pregnant girl home one of these days.’
Yes mummy . . . me big bush-goat. In the gloom I sensed her settling herself back on the mat, waiting for my father to return.
I slept on a mattress in the corridor. During the day the bundle of kapok was stuffed into the space under the food cupboard. At night I drew it out, complete with the rag that served for bedding, and stretched out on it. I turned myself round to try and read by the light of the electric bulb in the corridor. Three of the rooms in the house had been electrified, but we were only allowed weak bulbs, unless we had visitors.
Around me were signs of ruin. The floor was pockmarked, the concrete perished. The whitewashed walls were smeared with grease. The food cupboard was infested with cockroaches, and at night they came out foraging, roaming the house and the yard at will. My nightmare was being woken up by the feel of their rasping claws on my face. For years I had lived with this filth, but now it was difficult to do the simplest thing without worrying about it. I had to work myself up into a state to enter the bathroom, where a green slime grew all over the floor. The walls in the pantry were covered with the spores of black fungus, and filthy skeins of old spider webs trailed across the ceiling beams. Zakiya complained bitterly about the filth but always declined my mother’s invitation to do something about it. None of us did anything about it.
Every night the mosquitoes came. With unerring cruelty they came for the tender skin of the ear. Even though I slept with the sheet over my head, I could not escape the feeling that their long-stemmed mouths were puncturing the sheet and drinking my blood.
Those last days before the exams were filled with anxieties about failure and with dreams of uncle Ahmed’s largesse. There had already been casualties among the students, some of whom would go down in legend as having worked too hard or taken too many stimulants to keep themselves awake. On the eve of the exams I could not sleep. I could hear my mother out in the yard. My father was still out.
There was a moment when I thought I was still dreaming, but the blows on my shoulder were real enough. It was a slow process to drag myself from the clarity of the dream to the confusion lowering over me.
‘Come outside,’ whispered my mother.
I followed her out, anticipating something to do with my father. The street-lamp threw a diffused glow across the yard, not enough to illuminate anything but sufficient to scatter the pitch-darkness of the night. A man coughed in the darkness and panic leaped through my mind. My mother was fumbling with the lamp. Eventually she struck a match, and the flame lit up her cowering body and flooded the space around her with light.
‘Who’s there?’ I asked. I tried to remove any challenge from my voice because I was certain it was my father looming in the shadows. A prolonged giggle was the only answer I received.
‘Step into the light,’ my mother said, her voice trembling.
The man sighed but did not move. As my mother moved the lamp nearer to him, I saw that it was Khamis, one of my father’s friends. He was leaning against the corner of the house, one foot in the yard, the other in the alley. He made an effort to lever himself off the wall but gave up with a sigh. ‘You must come,’ he said.
He closed his eyes and did not seem inclined to elaborate. I went back for my clothes and hurried out half-dressed. Khamis was on the ground, his head hidden by the corner of the house.
‘Did he say where he is?’ I asked my mother.
She shrugged and pointed at Khamis. Ask him. His eyes were closed but he was smiling contentedly. He was only a slight man and it was quite easy to drag him up. He responded limply, and I understood the temptation to hit and hurt people in such a state. He smelt of something rotten, something abandoned. He growled cheerfully when he recognised me. He swayed in front of me, eyes closed again.
‘Where is he?’ I asked.
He shook his head as if he was having trouble understanding. ‘He’s making trouble,’ he said, speaking with a struggle. He sounded as if he was talking with his mouth full. ‘He wants to fight. He’ll be beaten. He’s drunk.’
He said the last word with loathing, then chortled and slapped his forehead at the absurdity of it all. He shook his head again and began to cry. My mother pushed me aside and slapped Khamis across the face. I pushed her back. Khamis was now sobbing like a child.
‘Where is he?’ I asked him again. I held him across the shoulders to stop the wild rocking that accompanied his sobs.
‘At Sood’s,’ he cried, his voice small like a child’s.
‘I’d better go,’ I said to my mother. Her face was hard with anger. She seemed to be waiting for me to say something, to gloat or complain.
‘Do you know what time it is? You have an examination tomorrow.’
‘Yes, I know, but I have to go.’
Khamis groaned and pushed my hand away as I went to help him off the wall. The sight of my mother, holding a jagged piece of firewood, alarmed him enough to move. He staggered ahead of me, muttering and spitting. I left him in the clearing. When he realised what I was saying, he allowed himself to slide to the ground with relief. I was tempted to search him, to see if he had any money. I had heard stories of fat wallets found in the pockets of sleeping drunks. Khamis farted loudly and without warning. I hurried away as he strained to repeat the performance.
It was a dark night. The emptiness was eerie. There was a touch of dampness in the atmosphere, a tang in the air. The rains had started, but only in a desultory, tentative way. Any day the real rains would start. I reached the sea front and followed the old cobbled pavement that ran all the way to the docks. The hissing of the sea drowned the frightening sound of my footsteps. Customs guards were lounging near the dockyard gate. I thought they would stop me, but they stared blankly and left me alone. A footpath ran alongside the wire fence that skirted the dock area. I passed pyramids of sacks and crates. We had played here as children, making hide-outs and caves.
The path branched away from the fence and headed towards the warehouses that now stood silent and huge in the emptiness of the night. Beyond the warehouses was a grotto of mango trees. In the clearing between the two stood an old, low building, surrounded by pieces of junk that had been salvaged from elsewhere and dragged here. This was Sood’s, dirty and disreputable, tolerated by the law because it attracted those whom events had already defeated.
Two men were lounging on the steps. They stirred as they saw me approach. As I came nearer, I saw them relaxing again, smiles on their faces. I stopped some distance from the steps. One of them, the man wearing a sleeveless shirt open to his navel, moved forward. The other man looked older. He leant against the wall, stroking his patchy beard. They both looked tough and unpleasant men, grizzled by a lifetime of living hand to mouth. The man who had moved forward tilted his head, pointing his chin at me.
‘I’ve come for my father,’ I said humbly. ‘I think he’s in there.’
They both laughed. I suppose it sounded childish. The older man moved quickly, rattling down the steps. I stepped back, legs tensed for flight, heart hammering. He stopped suddenly and I realised that I had raised both my fists. He eyed my fists and smiled, flicking a hand at them.
‘You fuck off home before I stuff your little penis in your mouth,’ he said. ‘Come on, before I change my mind. Bloody swine! Get out of here.’
I lowered my arms slowly, as if I was having an internal argument about the wisdom of such leniency. The younger man laughed, then beckoned his friend. A fit of shaking passed through my limbs. The younger man spoke angrily and abusively at his companion, calling him a shit-eater and a cannibal. ‘He’s come to get his father,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what that means, never having had one. Leave the boy alone.’ To my eyes now he seemed a kindly man, a noble savage. ‘There’s no one in there,’ he said, addressing me. ‘He might be over there, in that junk. Now fuck off out of here, huh?’
He nodded his head once and winked. I tried to spot a human form among the old car seats and broken bed frames. There was enough light to see by, but the shadows confused the landscape. I found him lying in a boxed settee whose stuffing had been removed.
I thought at first that he was hurt. His legs were splayed out at odd angles. The arm of the settee hid the light from his face. I touched him on the arm, tentatively, but he did not move. He was still wearing his jacket, and his walking stick was leaning against the settee as if someone had carefully placed it there. I tried to shake him awake. Fuck my arse, he shouted, rousing himself into a thrashing of arms and legs. I leaned forward and slapped him as hard as I could, and felt a tingle of cruel pleasure from the pain that I knew I was inflicting on his senseless body. I hit him again, feeling shame for the pleasure that it gave me. He groaned.
‘Come on,’ I shouted, ‘It’s time to go home.’
I shook him violently. He thrashed out again and this time landed a blow on my chest. Then he saw me. He struggled to a sitting position, as if trying to hide his drunkenness. He leant back with a groan, smiling mockingly at me. ‘You see how I am,’ he drawled.
There was a noise behind me, and I turned to see a man crawling out of a steel drum lying on its side. He smelled of urine. ‘I’m a tough guy,’ he muttered as he crawled on all fours.
‘I fucked his arse many times,’ my father said, pointing his stick at him. ‘He falls down in the streets and little children fuck him.’
The man slowly subsided, sinking flat on the ground. My father leant forward and spat at him. It did not seem to matter. The man sniggered and rolled over, suddenly looking very vulnerable. My father felt this and struggled to his feet, changing his grip on the walking-stick. I put an arm around him to shield him from the man. The touch of him was disgusting, flabby and loose. He directed us towards the man who now seemed asleep. Suddenly, with unexpected strength, my father leant forward and swung the walking-stick onto the man’s back. I let go of him. He struggled to regain his balance, took a sudden breath and threw up.
I waited until he had finished, waited while he groaned and wiped himself, and only went to him when he seemed ready to go to sleep again. It took me a long time to persuade him to move and we made slow progress. It started to rain as we walked across the clearing. There were only a few drops at first, heavy and separate, landing on the skin with a squelch. It was the start of the big rains. I could tell by the size of the drops. The rain was getting heavier by the minute, spitting dust at our feet. Soon it was pounding furiously on our heads exhilarating in its violence. We stumbled towards the shelter of a warehouse. A great sheet of water surrounded our narrow cover, pouring off the gutterless roof. I could hear my father breathing heavily next to me.
‘They’ll be dancing in the country,’ I told him. ‘Assuming you’re interested . . . or care.’
‘Fuck off,’ he mumbled.
I groped for him in the dark and found his arm. I yanked it and set off. He came without protest. The lumps of water stung as they pitted the flesh, and I felt his arm slip out of my grasp. I swiped around me but I had lost him. The stupid bugger. I’ll fail my exams. Ahead were the Customs gates, and the lamps on either side of them were throwing wide refracted beams on the ground. I yelled out for him, hoping he would hear me above the rumble of the water. Ba, where are you? Ba! A song answered me, or it may have been a scream of delight. I ran towards the light, hoping that I would not collide with one of the rusty skeletons on the waste ground. I saw the wire in time to break my rush with outstretched arms. A cry came from behind me and I yelled out where I was. When I saw him he was grinning, his arms open to embrace the water that was sheeting all around us. I reached for his shoulder and pulled him towards me. He huddled to me, reciting in a whisper lines from the Koran.
The path was now very slippery and we had to walk with care. At last we reached the metal road, the refracted beams travelling far ahead of us to light our way. My father was absorbed by the sight of the rain falling across the beams of light. I started to jog away, to encourage him to follow but he called out for me to slow down. ‘It won’t hurt you,’ he shouted. I walked ahead of him, anticipating his every movement forward, and having to go back often to persuade him to hurry. The rain had cleared his head a little and he was not staggering and falling as much as when we started out. He turned to look at the light once more, walking backwards. He toppled over very gently, as if he was carefully letting himself fall on a bed. He lay in the puddles of water, clapping his hands and laughing.
‘A long time ago,’ he sang, making his voice deep and croaky like an ancient sheikh reading the tajwid. ‘When I was only a baby. And sailed the seas, searching for my rizki. Our ship was sunk by a reef, and we swam to the land of Socotra. The king there held us captives . . . ’
‘You haven’t been anywhere to be sunk,’ I said, bending down to him and offering an arm.
He looked at me for a moment, still grinning and blinking the rain out of his eyes. ‘Once upon a time,’ he said, waving an oratorical finger, ‘I was a man of honour. Do you know what happened?’
‘Let’s go home,’ I said. ‘Come on, old man. I’ve got an examination tomorrow.’
‘They know about you,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve told everybody that you’re going to run away.’ He held on to my arm while I pulled him up. ‘You dirty bloody traitor!’ he screamed at me. We walked in silence along the waterfront, stopping only once for my father to urinate. We were nearly home when he drew alongside and leaned on my arm.
‘This is the best place for you,’ he whispered. ‘I told everybody that you’re going to run away. They’ll put you in prison, you fucking traitor. You’re too good for us, anybody can see that. They’ll put you in prison.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, meaning that the authorities knew that I wanted to leave. I had applied for a passport.
‘My dear son, my brave young genius,’ he said in a high-pitched voice of mockery. ‘You’re afraid of nothing. What a son! Who hates his father and his mother and his people and his God . . . ’ I could see the hate on his face. Water was dripping off his hair. We were in the open ground under the mzambarau tree. The rain was beginning to slacken. He let go of my arm and walked away, meandering across the clearing. He stopped in front of the old man’s brothel and blew an enormous raspberry at it. He waited for me to catch up, and then let me pass. He poked me in the back with his walking-stick, once, twice. I let him go first into the alley. I heard him curse as he slipped. I stepped over the half-prone body and turned into the backyard.
I started to undress while I was still outside. He appeared round the corner, his shadow looming and wavering in the darkness. My mother appeared at the door, holding a lamp above her head. She looked at me first, running her eyes the full length of my sodden, half-naked body. I smiled at her appraisal, and that seemed to reassure her, for she nodded and swung the lamp towards my father. His eyes were closed and his clothes were covered with mud. She put the lamp down by the door and went back inside. He staggered after her, rumbling with suppressed laughter.