Hamza slept by the doors of the warehouse that night because he had nowhere else to stay. He wandered the streets for a while looking for places he knew, but he recognised very little and often did not know where he was. He followed the movement of the crowds and after a while found himself unexpectedly on the shore road. He followed that with a small thrill of recognition and walked on to look for the house where he had lived in his youth, but he could not find it. He thought he had found the right area but perhaps the house was knocked down and something else built in its place. It was then a town of Deutsch-Ostafrika and was now a British colony, but that alone did not explain the disappearance of a house with a walled garden and a shop at the front. It was as if the town had grown beyond itself and some of its neighbourhoods had disappeared. He had only been away for seven years and the town could not have changed so much in that time. Or perhaps he was looking in the wrong place. He had rarely gone out of the house when he lived here before, had led a frightened life at the back of a shop, and perhaps he had forgotten the few streets he knew. Perhaps he had lost part of his memory along the way, overwhelmed by the cruelties he had lived through in the meantime. He was so tired and maybe that added to his impression that everything here was strange. Some people greeted him as if they knew him, with a smile, a friendly wave or even a handshake, but he knew they could not. They must have mistaken him for someone else. In any case, he did not know them.
He returned to the warehouse as it was getting dark. There was a streetlamp at the far corner of the clearing and although the light it cast was dim and multiplied the shadows, it also eased the unnerving emptiness to some extent. He knew there was a mosque down that far lane because he had heard the muadhin calling at noon. He went in there to wash and then joined in the prayers. People shuffled up to make space for him and he stayed for a while, for the company. When the mosque locked up for the night, he returned to the warehouse and stretched out by the door in the place he had swept earlier in the day, using the cloth bag with all his possessions in it as a pillow. He hardly slept despite his weariness. His side ached and the mosquitoes did not spare him. Cats prowled nearby, yowling out of sight and now and then glaring at him from the darkness. When he dozed he was unsettled by dreams: falling through dark emptiness, crawling over fallen bodies, hectored by a face twisted with implacable hatred. There were shouts, blows and distant hills overflowing with translucently red viscera.
He was often visited by disturbing dreams. It was a relief when he heard the dawn call to prayers and went to the mosque again to clean up.
When Khalifa arrived, he was surprised to see Hamza sitting dejectedly on the ground, leaning against the warehouse door. He stopped dead and stared, exaggerating his astonishment. ‘What are you doing here so early? It’s not even seven o’clock,’ he said. ‘Do you live nearby?’
Hamza was too weary to dissemble. ‘I slept here,’ he said, indicating the ground.
‘He didn’t ask you to,’ Khalifa said. ‘What are you? Some kind of hooligan, sleeping in the streets?’
Hamza did not reply. He rose carefully to his feet and looked away from Khalifa’s outraged stare.
‘He wants a watchman after the delivery arrives,’ Khalifa said, speaking precisely as if he was explaining something to a simpleton. ‘He’s starting a new line in fishing equipment and he’s afraid one of these fishermen will break in and steal it. They’re always half-crazy with hashish, the fishermen, but I don’t think they would do that. There was no need for you to sleep here. He didn’t ask you to, did he?’
‘I didn’t have anywhere else to sleep,’ Hamza said.
Khalifa glared in response, waiting for him to wheedle and moan, and when he did not, took a step towards the doors and undid the padlock while Hamza hastily moved out of the way. Khalifa opened one panel and stepped inside for a moment before he came bursting out again. ‘What do you mean, you didn’t have anywhere to sleep? Don’t you know anyone? I thought you said you lived here.’
‘Many years ago, outside of town. I don’t know if those people are still alive,’ Hamza said. ‘If they are, I don’t think they will want to hear from me.’
Khalifa was silent for a little while, irresolute, frowning, his eyes ablaze with questions. ‘So you just sleep in the streets, like a vagabond? Who are your people? You can’t sleep in the streets,’ he said angrily. ‘You’ll get hurt. Don’t you know anyone you can go to? Don’t you have any money?’
‘I’ve only just arrived,’ Hamza said as if that were explanation enough.
‘Why didn’t you ask him for money yesterday? Nassor, why didn’t you ask the merchant for an advance?’ Khalifa asked in exasperation, and when Hamza did not answer he asked, ‘When did you last eat? What are you, an idiot, some kind of a saint?’ He took hold of Hamza’s right wrist and slapped a coin in his palm. ‘Go find yourself a café and get a cup of tea and a bun. Go, go away from here, come back later.’
Hamza had been ashamed to ask, in case the merchant refused or withdrew his offer of a job. He had not even asked what his wages were to be. He did not say that to Khalifa but went to find a café as instructed where he had a bun and a large mug of tea. When he returned Khalifa ignored him – probably, Hamza imagined, because he thought him too pathetic to bother with. Later in the morning the contractor’s truck appeared and three of his men loaded up bags of cement and metal poles and then drove off, the driver leaning on the horn as if he was negotiating a crowded road. The Chinaman also turned up, fully dressed in shirt and trousers, and stopped to talk with Khalifa, who as they spoke glanced at Hamza, as if to say, Listen to him … just like one of us, no fong fong fong from this Chinaman.
The van from the merchant’s yard also came to deliver the crates of bowls and small cabinets Sungura had been busy packing the day before, and to collect some more timber. Khalifa showed Hamza where to stack the crates, and explained what other merchandise was stored in the warehouse and how it was distributed and organised. Here the timber, there the crates of ornamental caskets, over there the sacks of millet, and here on the shelves straw-wrapped packages of frankincense. He showed him the ledger where all the goods coming in or out were recorded. Can you read? he asked. Hamza nodded and Khalifa gave him a sharp look. Can you write? he asked. Hamza nodded again and Khalifa smiled bitterly, his suspicions about the merchant’s motives for employing Hamza now confirmed. He is lining you up to take over from me, isn’t he? One way or another, it was a busy morning on Hamza’s second day and the clearing was a place of work rather than a silent and deserted waste-ground. It was not until very late in the morning that things quietened down and Hamza was able to rest his aching legs.
‘What happened to you?’ Khalifa asked him, gesturing towards his hip. His eyes ran up and down Hamza’s leg, once, then went to his face. ‘Is it illness? Or an injury?’
‘Injury,’ Hamza said.
‘What happened?’ Khalifa repeated. ‘Were you in the war?’ As he asked, he tilted his chin forward impatiently, as if growing irritated with Hamza’s slowness.
‘An accident,’ Hamza said and looked away, ready to rise to his feet and leave if Khalifa persisted. He did not care to be interrogated.
But Khalifa laughed. ‘You’re a tight-lipped man with a dirty secret, I have no doubt,’ he said with a grin, ‘but I like the look of you. I can tell about people. Listen to me, this is not a safe place for you to sleep out in the open. You don’t know who or what wanders these empty places at night, or what people come here to do in the darkness. No one would come here at night to do any good. If anything happened there would be no one to come to your help. You should sleep inside the warehouse and lock yourself in, but Nassor won’t let you have the keys yet until he knows he can trust you.’
He paused for a moment, waiting for Hamza to speak but he said nothing. Khalifa sighed with resignation. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying to you? It’s not safe to sleep in the streets,’ he said. ‘I have an outside store in my house that you can use for a few days. I used to rent it out to a barber. He was there for two years or so and then suddenly he left. The barber’s chair and mirror are still in there. Poor fellow, I don’t know what happened to him. Maybe he’ll come back for them one of these days when he’s ready to resume his work.
‘You can use the room for a few days if you want – but only a few days. I know you’re not much better than a beggar so there’s no point asking for rent from you, or not yet anyway. You can stay there for a week or two maybe, until you work things out for yourself. Don’t think you can just stay there forever, and I don’t want you bringing women or crazy friends in there either. Just somewhere for you to sleep safely. And make sure you keep it clean, you understand?’
It made Hamza take another look at Khalifa, this generous offer, the coin earlier in the day, all that kindness alongside his irritable manner and sour looks. I like the look of you, he had said. Nassor Biashara had said that to him too. It had happened to Hamza before, that his appearance had won kindnesses for him in unexpected ways. The German officer had said that too, more than once.
*
Khalifa’s house was on one level, nyumba ya chini, without an upstairs. It was joined to a taller house on one side and a lane ran on the other. Kibanda chetu, he called it, our hut, although it was not that. There was a deep covered porch at the front with the set-back front door beside it. The porch roof was supported by two thick varnished mangrove posts. The store that was to be Hamza’s room was on the other side of the porch, its door opening directly to the street. It was a small room with a barber’s chair and mirror on a table as promised and a wooden bench set against one wall for the customer waiting his turn. Khalifa opened the window, which had solid wooden shutters, filling the little room with light. Hamza could easily imagine the room as a barber’s shop, with a customer or two sitting chatting while waiting, or a friend of the barber’s visiting to fill the day’s empty hours with talk. He thought he saw some hair mingled with the fluff of dust on the concrete floor but perhaps that was his imagination. Khalifa stood by the window watching him, one hand on the bars across the casement, his frown as censorious as ever but with a self-satisfied twitch to the corners of his lips. ‘Does it suit Your Eminence?’ he asked.
Khalifa handed over a key for the padlock and brought Hamza a broom. He swept the cobwebs and the floor, turned the mirror to the wall and rearranged the furniture to create a sleeping space. Then he sat down in the chair and leaned back against the shaving headrest, joyful at his good fortune. The street outside the door was shaded by the taller houses. Its unpaved surface was packed hard by human traffic and while Hamza sat there people walked past the window and glanced sideways through the open door. He shut the door and sat for a long time, for hours, without moving, relishing the feeling of safety he felt in the darkening cell.
He heard the muadhin calling for the maghrib prayers, the calls coming slightly out of sequence. He counted four different callers. There was always a profusion of mosques in this town, he remembered that from years ago. He thought he would go look for one, to have a wash and for the company. In so many places he had travelled there were no mosques, and he missed them, not for the prayers but for the sense of being one of many that he always felt in a mosque. He got up quickly before he lost his nerve, and went in search of one. He did not have to speak to anyone when he got there and sat quietly with downcast eyes until it was time to line up with the other worshippers. Then after prayers he silently shook hands with the men to either side of him and went on his way.
He passed shops and kiosks and cafés in the lit-up streets, with people strolling or sitting in small groups, talking or just looking at passers-by. They seemed at peace and content, and he wondered if this was because he was in a different and more prosperous part of town, or if he was walking at a different time of day when people were prone to be in this state, or if they were quiescent because they were simply bored. When he returned to the house he found Khalifa sitting on a mat in the porch, which was now lit. He motioned for Hamza to join him and poured him a small cup of coffee from his flask.
‘Have you eaten?’ he asked.
He went inside and came out with a dish of cooked green bananas and a jug of water, which Hamza accepted gratefully. When Khalifa’s friends arrived, Hamza greeted them and stayed for a few minutes out of politeness before retreating to his store room. He lay in the dark on the bare floor for a long time, unable to sleep, his mind wandering over his earlier time in this town and over all the people he had lost since and the humiliations he had suffered. He had no choice but to accept his share of them. The worst mistakes he made in his earlier life in this town had been the result of his fear of humiliation, through which he lost a friend who was like a brother and the woman he was learning to love. The war crushed those niceties out of him and showed him staggering visions of brutality that taught him humility. These thoughts filled him with sorrow, which he thought was the inescapable fate of man.
*
In the next days Hamza felt Khalifa becoming less abrupt with him and giving him advice, which he listened to without debate. One afternoon Khalifa insisted that Hamza should ask for an advance from the merchant. They stopped at the yard on the way home and Hamza found the merchant in his office and asked him for some money from his wages while Khalifa stood outside the door, within sight but apparently out of earshot. Hamza could see that the merchant was not pleased, but he was not sure if it was Khalifa’s presence or the request for money which irritated him the most.
‘You’ve been here for three days and you’re already asking to be paid. You get paid when you’ve done your work, not before,’ Nassor Biashara said, holding his ground. It was five days, but Hamza stood silently in front of him, adding neither plea nor supplication to his request, and in the end Nassor Biashara gave him five shillings and returned to his ledger. ‘Don’t make a practice of this,’ he said, head bent over his accounts.
Khalifa chuckled as they walked home. ‘What a miserable miser, bakhili maluun! He thinks he can treat people like dirt. He even owes money to the old lady next door who bakes millet bread. He has her bring him a mofa loaf every day and then he doesn’t pay her. You should see the work that old lady does to produce one of her little loaves. She has to soak the grain overnight, pound it in the mortar, mix and knead it, then bake it in a clay oven in her backyard. After all that work, she charges twenty cents for a loaf and that miserable tajiri waits until the old lady begs for her money before he pays.’
They arrived at the house with Khalifa in good humour after embarrassing the merchant, as he saw it. ‘Come in and have something to eat,’ he said, overflowing with generosity. ‘Hodi, we have a guest,’ he called out as he opened the door.
It was his first time inside the house, and Hamza wondered if this was too much hospitality too soon. It was not usual for a complete stranger, more or less, to be invited inside a home in this way. He was already learning that Khalifa was unpredictable and that their first encounter had been misleading. His outbursts of bad temper did not last long, and he had already shown surprising generosity to him. Hamza had hardly lived properly among a family, only briefly as a child. Later he lived in the back of a shop and after that for a long time he lived a fugitive and itinerant life, so he did not really know what was done and what was not done, only what memory clung to from early childhood.
Inside the house there were two rooms, one either side of the front door, and a hallway running all the way to the back and opening out on to an interior yard enclosed by a wall. He had seen the wall from the other side while walking along the lane. Khalifa showed him into the room on the left whose floor was covered with a plaited mat and some cushions resting against the wall. It was evidently the room for receiving guests. He left Hamza there for a moment, and when he came back asked him to come and greet the people of the house. Hamza followed him to the doorway of the yard at the back and waited there until he was called forward. A plump woman in her forties was sitting on a low stool under an awning, preparing food. A brazier with a pot on it was to the left of her, and on the other side at her feet was a clay pot covered with a straw food-cover. Her head was covered with a kanga which was tightly tucked around her brow and cheeks so that her face bulged under the pressure. It had obviously been recently tightened when Khalifa announced the presence of a guest. Some tufts of grey hair escaped this tight restraint. She looked at Hamza without speaking or smiling, staring at him intensely with a look of dislike. Khalifa introduced her as his wife Bi Asha and Hamza said shikamoo. She looked unmoved and made a noise to acknowledge his greeting.
‘Is this the one you were telling me about? The one to whom you gave a room that does not belong to you? You have brought us trouble,’ she said, her voice firm and querulous. She glanced at Khalifa as she said this and then returned her gaze to Hamza, her stare unwavering. ‘Where is he from? Do we know where he’s from? He is a complete stranger and you give him a room as if you own this house.’
‘Don’t talk like that,’ Khalifa said impatiently.
‘Just look at him. Balaa,’ she said, even more loudly and with unmistakable anger. ‘Nothing but trouble. You bring him here to sleep and to eat as if we are a charity when you don’t have a single thing to your name. First one thing then another. Now you bring him inside so he can have a good look at us and decide what he would like to do to us. You don’t know his people or where he has been or what mischief he has done, but that’s nothing to you. You still bring him inside here so he can do what harm he wishes to us. Your head is full of trash!’
‘Stop that kind of talk. Don’t wish ill on a complete stranger,’ Khalifa said.
‘I’m telling you, just look at him. Hana maana, a useless man,’ she said, her face twisted with rage. ‘Balaa, that’s what he is. Nothing but trouble.’
‘All right, just serve us our food,’ Khalifa said, and gave Hamza a nudge towards the inside of the house. ‘Go back inside, I’ll be with you in a moment.’
He went back to the guest room and sat down to wait. He was shaken by such unanticipated scorn – hana maana – but he did not examine the feeling further. He would think about it later. For now, he only wished for Khalifa to come back and ask him to leave. Perhaps Bi Asha was unwell and that made her ill-tempered, but more likely she was just a mean unhinged spirit. He thought he saw that in her eyes, a kind of frenzy. When Khalifa came in with two plates of rice and fish, he too was in a temper, as if he and his wife had had an argument. They ate quickly and in silence. Afterwards Khalifa went out to wash his hands and then called Hamza. Bi Asha was not there and he washed his hands at the sink as Khalifa instructed. When he had first looked into the yard he had noticed a girl or woman squatting on the other side of the awning, in a corner beside the door to a store or a room. He guessed she was the servant, and now as he washed his hands saw the same girl was scouring the pots by the water-pipe in the corner. Her head was covered and she did not look up, so he could not see her face. He said hello to her and she replied without looking up.
*
Khalifa and Bi Asha spoke like that to each other more often than they used to. There had always been some degree of hyperbole to her severity with him, making her seem more discontented than she really was, which gave her licence for the outrageous things she said. That was not to say she did not mean what she said or was not always after having her own way. She was, and had become accustomed to her dominance in most matters at home. Khalifa played his part as the tolerant, put-upon husband who was prepared to go along with things but who could put his foot down when necessary. Their disagreements sometimes ended in an exchange of tiny imperceptible smiles as if they had seen through each other’s performances. But in recent times her tone was often sharp and suspicious when she spoke to him, and he was defensive to the point of whining when he made his excuses, or else brusque and dismissive of her.
Afiya did not understand why Baba brought the man all the way inside. It was not something he had ever done before, or not since she had been living with them. When Ilyas came visiting he never went beyond the guest room, and it was Bi Asha who came out to greet him. Baba must have known that Bimkubwa would not be happy to have a complete stranger brought inside like that. Even the fish-seller and the charcoal man, who were regular callers at the house, did not step beyond the courtyard door. The only exception she could remember was the mattress-maker who was old and had known Bi Asha since she was a child and had been repairing her mattresses ever since.
Baba should also have remembered that Bi Asha had taken a dislike to the man. This was partly because of the stories he told her about the young man: how Hamza seemed unwell, how he did not reveal anything about his people or where he had been.
‘He sounds like a vagabond,’ Bi Asha said dismissively.
‘I think he has been in the war,’ Baba said.
‘Then he’s probably dangerous as well, a killer,’ she said, spitting out the words to provoke him.
‘No no,’ Baba said. ‘He must have had a hard time. It could be Ilyas.’
‘No yourself! Ilyas had people. You tell us this one has no people,’ Bi Asha said. ‘How can a decent person not have any people? He’s just a dreamer.’
Perhaps Baba had not forgotten her dislike of strangers. Maybe he brought him inside to say that Ilyas too may have survived and could be on his long way back. It was three years since the end of the war and there was still no news of him. Afiya did not say it to anyone but inside she felt her brother was lost. If Baba brought that other man inside to remind them of Ilyas, then he had made a mistake because it had only provoked Bi Asha into her malign prophecy of disaster. Balaa! She was turning strange and savage with Baba, and Afiya knew she herself contributed to Bi Asha’s impatience and agitation because she was nineteen and still unmarried, though it puzzled her why this mattered so much to her. Afiya suspected that Bi Asha had spoken to some of her acquaintances about her availability. She had received and refused two marriage proposals already.
The first was from a man in his forties who was a clerk in the offices of the new agriculture department set up by the British administration. Afiya had never seen him or heard of him, but he had seen her walking by and made enquiries and then asked for her. Baba said no, he was a man with a reputation, and what was the rush? Afiya was present when he said that.
‘What reputation?’ Bi Asha asked querulously. ‘He has a good government job. His proposal comes from respectable sources and he offers a good dowry. Tell me one good reason why I should not say yes to this proposal.’
‘One good reason is that the proposal is not for you but for Afiya,’ Baba said angrily. ‘So it is up to her to accept it or not.’
‘Don’t give me your big talk. It’s not up to her. She needs advice to make the right decision. What reputation?’
‘I’ll tell you later,’ Baba said, and Afiya understood it was something he preferred not to say in front of her.
Bi Asha laughed mockingly and said, ‘You want her for yourself, don’t you? You think I’m blind. You’re going to say no to any proposal because you’ve been waiting for her to ripen so you can have her for your second wife.’
The words thudded in Afiya’s chest. She glanced at Baba whose mouth had fallen open in shock. After a moment, he said in a subdued voice, ‘His reputation is that he has a great obsession with loose women … with women who will take money from him for … with prostitutes. That is his recreation. Spare our girl that misery and just say no.’
The second proposal had come just a few weeks ago from another older man, a café manager. Afiya knew about him because he was well known to many. His café was on the main street and she had passed it several times. Unlike the first suitor who had not married before, the café manager was fond of marrying. If Afiya were to become his wife, she would be his sixth although he never kept more than one going at the same time. He was a faithful husband to whoever was his current wife. His preference was for young orphans or girls from poor families who would be appreciative of the dowry he offered. He married them and kept them for a few years and then, when another young one caught his eye, he divorced and married again. He ran a successful café and could afford this hobby. Bi Asha did not need any persuasion to say no to this proposal.
‘That predator, that filthy man. We are not so distressed that we need his disgusting dowry,’ she said.
Her accusation against Baba hovered over them, and for Afiya it brought some of Bi Asha’s hostility into focus. It made her feel sorry that Bi Asha feared such treachery from her and her own husband. She could not imagine that she had any grounds for fear. After his wife had said those words, Baba got up and left the house and Bi Asha and Afiya sat silent for several minutes before Bi Asha too rose and went to her room. She did not make the accusation again, but nor did she stop her persistent campaign to marry her off. Afiya wondered if that was another reason why Baba had brought the stranger inside. She had resisted the temptation to raise her head when he greeted her, but had caught a brief glimpse of him when he first entered the backyard. She knew from Baba’s stories that he was a young man, so maybe he wanted to show her someone nearer her own age instead of the dissolute older suitors she appeared to be attracting.
She did not know how but word of the proposals got out, and Jamila and Saada teased her about them. Perhaps the matchmaker, whoever she was, let the word out to make mischief. Jamila was married now and carrying her first child. Khalida’s friends had a good laugh at the rejected suitors, telling Afiya she deserved better and should wait for the wealthy and handsome young man who was bound to appear and ask for her. Who wants to be someone’s second wife? When Khalida said that, Afiya’s heart lurched and she wondered if the accusation against Baba had also somehow got out. There were no meaningful glances to accompany the words and no pregnant silence after them, so she took them to be general disdain for the idea rather than that the words were meant against a particular person.