That same afternoon, after the miserable lunch in Khalifa’s house, Hamza went to the market to spend the five shillings given to him as an advance. He bought a candle for his room, and a roll of thick straw matting and a cotton sheet. He stretched out on the matting and groaned as the familiar sharp pain ran through him. After a few minutes its intensity eased and he let his body find whatever rest it could. He ran his hand over the ugly scar on his hip and massaged the healed muscle. It will get better. It was better. There was nothing else to be done. This town that he barely recognised was the nearest place to home he had. The pain will get better.
In the mornings Hamza left the house early and went to the mosque to clean up, perform a grateful prayer and then buy a jug of sweet tea at a café. After that he went to the warehouse to wait for Khalifa. Almost every day something came or went from the yard to the warehouse, and sometimes from the warehouse to the docks as the merchandise was gradually dispersed to its destinations, slowly emptying the warehouse. Almost every day, Idris and his sidekick drove up in their rattling van to deliver or collect. It seemed that whenever Idris opened his mouth something obscene came out of it and his sidekick Dubu dutifully convulsed in laughter.
It was Hamza’s duty to sweep the clearing in front of the warehouse, and on windy days to sprinkle water on the area to keep the dust down. Sometimes he had to accompany the van to the yard or other locations, to help Idris and Dubu with the loading and unloading. It still left a lot of time for Khalifa and him to sit in the shade of the warehouse staring out into the empty clearing and talking. Khalifa liked to talk and Hamza was a dutiful and tireless listener. He suspected that Khalifa thought he was owed this deference. He never mentioned Hamza’s encounter with Bi Asha.
‘Idris is an ugly man,’ Khalifa said. ‘He makes my flesh shiver when he comes around. He’s a filthy cruel bully, always talking dirty like some kind of oversexed beast. He treats that Dubu of his like a slave. Do you know why he is called Dubu? It’s because when he was a child people thought he was stupid. He had such a big head, you see, as if he was deformed. It doesn’t look so bad now but when he was a child … Sometimes mockery like that never ends. Idris might not have given him the cruel name, but he makes him live up to it. He makes fun of him and does who knows what else to him in their spare time. He is a stupid weak man, that Dubu.
‘And do you know what Sungura does in his spare time? The little rabbit is a pimp, did you know that? Did you guess? How could you not see what a little creep he is? Of course he’s not one of those violent ones, but one look at him and you must have thought: He is up to something disgusting. There are two women he works for, everyone knows it. If a man wants to have one of them, he just has a word with Sungura who arranges it all. That’s why he is called Sungura: small and cowardly like a rabbit, but wily. Nobody dares to touch him because those two women protect him as if he is their baby. He calls them his mothers. They’re loud-mouthed shameless women who can strip a person naked with their tongues. Keep away from him as well, he’s a bad influence.’
Hamza lived quietly in his store room, slipping in and out with the minimum fuss he could manage. He was not invited inside again although he could hear Bi Asha’s voice, now that he knew it, whenever it rose in exasperation or urgency. Khalifa came to look for him sometimes in the evening and asked him to sit on the porch with him and whoever had stopped by for a chat. There were two men in particular who were regular callers, his baraza, Maalim Abdalla the school teacher and Topasi, a laundryman who lived nearby and was a childhood friend of both men. The porch floor was covered with a thick plaited straw mat and was lit by an oil lamp, a kandili, suspended by a hook from a ceiling beam. It shone with a soft golden glow that turned the open-sided area into an interior space. People walking past in the street murmured their greetings, as if to call them out loudly would be to intrude. All three men loved their gossip.
Maalim Abdalla was usually the last to speak. He was the wise one, often offering calming words after Topasi had delivered the latest rumours. That was why he was called Topasi, the garbage collector, because of his love of rumours. After Topasi had delivered the latest story, Khalifa did his outrage about how everything has gone to hell. Then it was Maalim Abdalla’s turn to bring sagacity into their conversation.
Maalim Abdalla had started school in Zanzibar and then went to the advanced German school in the town, to train as a teacher. He knew someone who worked as a messenger at the District Officer’s office, the headquarters of the British colonial administration in the town, and through him he was able to read old newspapers after they were filed away. These were copies of the government’s Tanganyika Territory Gazette and the Kenya settler newspaper the East African Standard. Maalim Abdalla’s knowledge of English was rudimentary, plundered from his early schooling in Zanzibar, but he made it go a long way, both in his profession and at the baraza. His sporadic access to what he called international publications gave his opinions and judgements incomparable weight, at least in his own eyes. The men’s discussions were opinionated and often melodramatic, accompanied by much laughter and exaggeration. Hamza was not required to participate but they knew he was there because one or other of them would break off what they were saying to explain a detail to him. That was how he learned how Topasi had earned his nickname. More often than not Hamza was the butt of their teasing because of his reticence, but he sat with them for the company and he knew he provided a harmless distraction for them.
After the call to the isha prayers, to which none of the three friends responded, the door to the house opened slightly and Khalifa rose to accept the tray of coffee pot and cups. Hamza did not see who delivered the tray, it would have been bad manners to stare, but he guessed it was the servant girl he had seen when he went inside. He could not imagine Bi Asha, the bad-tempered mistress of the house, doing something as menial as delivering a tray of coffee to the chatterboxes on the porch. The first time the tray came out there were only three cups on it and Hamza made that the excuse for his departure.
‘He is a little saint, that one,’ Khalifa said. ‘Off to the mosque, I expect. Well, you won’t get there in time.’
‘I expect he’s tired of listening to your stupid talk,’ said Maalim Abdalla. ‘Go, young man, go and earn some blessing.’
Some evenings later when he was at the baraza and just after the muadhin’s call for the isha prayers, the door opened slightly as it had done before. Khalifa glanced at him and Hamza rose to fetch the tray. He had forgotten about his hip and could not prevent himself from uttering a small gasp of pain as he got to his feet. He reached out for the mangrove post to steady himself and moved quickly towards the door before any of the other men had moved or spoken. He took the tray and looked at the woman who stood in the shadow of the door, and saw surprise and perhaps concern in her eyes. He smiled slightly to reassure her and murmured his thanks but he was not sure if any words came out clearly. As he turned away with the tray, he saw that there were four cups on it. He set it down in front of Khalifa but he did not sit down again.
‘Stay and have some coffee with your elders,’ Khalifa said. ‘You can catch up with your prayers later.’
‘Hey, you kafir,’ Topasi said. ‘Don’t discourage a man from saying his prayers. You are making even more trouble for yourself. You’ll earn a bucket-load of sins for that and you already have a huge pile against your name.’
‘Never come between God and man,’ Maalim Abdalla pronounced.
Hamza smiled and did not respond, did not say that it was not for the prayers and blessing alone that he went to the mosque. It was often a relief to get away from their chatter, to get away from everyone. No one had to talk even in a crowded mosque. As he walked away he dwelt on the look of concern in the woman’s eyes and wondered at the surprise and mild agitation it caused him. He had seen in his brief glimpse of the slight figure someone whose eyes and face had the clean look of honesty. He would not know how else to describe it, he knew that was what he saw. It made him feel sorry for himself in a way he did not understand, made him feel sad for the loveless years of his own life, and for the episodes of gentleness in it that had been so brief. He had assumed she was the servant girl, and maybe she was, but she was a woman of about twenty, not a girl. He wondered if, after all, she was Khalifa’s wife. It was not unusual for men of his age to marry again, and to choose women who were much younger. Hamza walked the streets for an hour or more, and in that time upbraided himself for his naïve sentiment and nostalgia. It all came from his loneliness and self-pity, as if he had not seen enough in his brief life to understand that keeping his head clear and his body safe required all the wit he possessed.
Some days later he was sent for by the merchant and was asked to accompany Idris and Dubu to the port to collect a consignment. Some equipment he had been waiting for had arrived. It was Hamza’s first visit to the docks since the morning he had arrived back in the town. The time had passed so quickly and somehow felt so full it was as if he had been back in the town for months. Idris was driving the van, proud as an aristocrat sweeping by in his gilded carriage past a crowd of adoring serfs, one arm resting on the open window, the other on the wheel, bouncing along the earth roads and waving to the odd acquaintance. In the meantime he kept up a slow-wheeling chatter that was mostly dirty talk. Dubu, who was sitting in the middle of the bench seat in the driver’s cab, was chuckling dutifully while Hamza looked away, staring out of the window. He did not feel as repulsed by them as he had at first, although he had yet to find a way to disengage from Idris’s filthy babble.
The equipment the merchant had ordered turned out to be a large propeller. Idris drove right up to the gates of one of the quayside warehouses where they found Nassor Biashara waiting for them. He was smiling, standing by the shiny propeller which stood on layers of gunny sack. All the paperwork was done, he said. Let’s get the machinery to the warehouse. They put the propeller in the van and climbed in after it. The merchant rode in the front cab with Idris. Nassor Biashara was excited about his new acquisition, and he supervised its storage personally, in a space he had had Khalifa prepare in the middle of the warehouse, protected and camouflaged by less glamorous merchandise. After the equipment was stored away, he dismissed the van and waved Hamza to follow him outside. Khalifa looked annoyed and disappeared into the gloom of the warehouse.
When they were outside, standing by the warehouse door, the merchant looked around as if making sure that they were unobserved. He reached into his jacket and pulled out some folded-over banknotes. ‘These are your wages for the last three weeks, and I will pay you again three weeks from now,’ he said, his voice stern as if expecting a truculent response. ‘I’ve paid you generously because you have worked well. I thought you would. From now on I want you to be the night-watchman in the warehouse. I want you to spend every night here and guard the valuable merchandise inside. You will do that for the time being and then later we’ll talk about what else you can do. You will work here in the day as usual, and then you’ll bar yourself in for the night. Do you understand?’
He handed over the banknotes, which Hamza accepted without a word and pocketed without counting them. The merchant smiled and nodded, no doubt amused by the pauper standing on his dignity, Hamza thought. Nassor Biashara took his cap off, rubbed his head in that characteristic gesture of his and then strode away. Hamza expected Khalifa to come striding out at once to complain about being excluded from these instructions but perhaps he was even more wounded than he had appeared. Hamza sat down on the bench by the door to wait for him and after a minute or two he called to him. When Khalifa came out Hamza held up the notes. Khalifa reached over as if to grab them and Hamza put them back in his pocket. ‘I’m to be the night-watchman from tonight, and to work in the warehouse during the day,’ he said.
‘He is a stupid man,’ Khalifa said. ‘How much is he paying you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hamza said. ‘I didn’t count.’
‘You are a stupid man too, but I feel sorry for you because you do it from some confused idea of being well mannered or dignified. I know the type, believe me,’ Khalifa said. ‘But that one is just a silly man who has never properly grown up. Why is he getting so excited about this propeller? He thinks every boatman and fisherman in the town is waiting to steal it from him. That’s his new project. He spent thousands buying a boat a couple of years ago. It was going to make him money freighting cargo in the area. It didn’t, and now he has spent thousands more buying a propeller because that will make him money, which it may well do, but in the meantime he acts like an idiot and he puts you in danger. You must bar yourself in after dark and don’t open the door to anyone. There are drunks and hashish smokers who come to sleep in these abandoned old places. Do you understand? Whatever you hear outside, don’t open the door. Let them do whatever they are doing to each other and stay inside.’
Khalifa seemed so worried for his safety that Hamza stopped himself from saying that he had seen much worse than drunks and hashish smokers in his time, instead nodding and saying he would take care. That afternoon he collected his things from Khalifa’s store room, stopped at the café for a small loaf of bread and a piece of fish, and returned to the warehouse. In the night he heard cats scurrying over the roof and yowling in the lanes, and just before he fell asleep he heard someone singing drunkenly and then sobbing, calling out a name as if in an agony of yearning. He woke up in the dark and lay thinking, waiting for the dawn.
Early every evening before it got dark, he made a bed out of layers of gunny sacks on top of which he laid his straw mattress, his strip of busati. The spring and give in the sacks absorbed some of the ache in his side, except when he turned over in his sleep. Then he went to the café for something to eat, goat curry or fish or sometimes just buttered bread. Afterwards he went to the mosque to wash up and pray and then back to the warehouse, by which time it was properly dark. He lit the oil lamp he had asked the merchant to provide, barred himself in and lay down to sleep. When he could not sleep he took out one of his books from the bag and browsed through it. The lamplight was a little too gloomy for him to read the old print of the Schiller volume comfortably and he could only go over the pieces he already knew. He took the book out as much for the pleasure of handling it as for what he could read.
Then he lay in that golden lamplight and tried to ignore the tiny scurryings of mice he could not help hearing among the sacks and crates. At times he felt like a man of primeval times when the end of daylight meant a retreat to a burrow in the ground, a caveman hiding from the terrors of the night. He kept the lamp lit all night to keep those terrors at bay but he had no defence against the whispers that crept up on him on sleepless nights. Many nights he fell asleep without a struggle but on others he saw torn and mutilated bodies in his dreams and was hectored by loud and hate-filled voices and glared at by transparent gelatinous eyes. As the nights in the warehouse turned into weeks he slept for longer, even in the end until first light. Every morning he woke with surprise that he had slept so long and counted the hours of undisturbed sleep like a miser shopkeeper counting the pennies as they accumulated in his cash box. He was grateful for the benefit of the rest.
*
It took nearly a month for the mechanic who fitted propellers to get round to Nassor Biashara’s dhow. The work was to be done on the sandy headland at the edge of the creek behind the port where boat repairs were usually done. The tide in the creek went out all the way to the sea, and then came surging back in late in the day. It only reached the sandy headland when it was a full moon. The mechanic’s appearance was announced and then postponed four times. Several days before his actual appearance, the boat was pulled up on the headland at low tide. The crew laid lengths of mangrove logs on the beach and waited for the tide to rise when all available labour, including the merchant’s workforce and any interested passer-by, joined in to haul the boat on to the rollers and as high as they could up on the sandy headland. There it was tied to sturdy posts to prevent it from rolling back and there it stayed while the mechanic delayed further. Khalifa played no part in these efforts, only asking sarcastic questions about the elusive mechanic. The merchant paid no attention to the progress of his enterprise either, not even bothering to be exasperated by the man’s continued non-appearance, as if none of it was anything to do with him. Hamza found the merchant’s behaviour puzzling, but then thought that perhaps it was his way of maintaining his dignity, refusing the mechanic the satisfaction of being indispensable. The boat waited like that for several days, like a beetle stranded on its back. On the day the mechanic was available, the van came to collect the propeller and Hamza who was to go along and help. Even Khalifa could not resist the drama of the mechanic’s definite appearance to fix the propeller and he too came along to observe the final rites.
Unlike the merchant, the nahodha of the boat was not concerned to maintain his dignity, and on the day the mechanic was finally available, the two of them spent the first hour hurling denunciations and abuse at each other while Dubu and Hamza sat in the meagre shade of the boat, and Idris and Khalifa remained in the cab of the van. The nahodha, who was a short, grizzled man in his fifties, with skin darkened and tanned into tough leather by the sun and sea, told the mechanic he was an ignorant idiot and a disrespectful fuckhead for wasting everyone’s time. The mechanic, who was about thirty or so with a trimmed beard and a peaked cap, and who arrived on a motorcycle and knew his own importance, told the nahodha to watch how he spoke to him because he was not one of the pretty boys he liked to play with. He had his own business to attend to and if the nahodha did not like that he could go find himself another mechanic. Since there was no certainty that another would turn up any more quickly, this threat was a potent one. After a while, the bile diminished and they proceeded to install the propeller while continuing their abuse more sporadically. When the tide was in, they hauled the boat back into the water where the mechanic finished the installation. Idris drove the van back to the yard to fetch the merchant so he could be present when the mechanic fired the propeller, which he did to cheers and exclamations. By this time the nahodha and the mechanic were talking and laughing together in self-congratulation as if they had known each other all their lives, which they very likely had.
Even as they celebrated the installation of the precious propeller, the merchant’s smiles were anxious, perhaps for the future of his new venture. He called Hamza over and as they stood on the sandy headland by the creek, he told him that since the propeller was now safely installed, there was no need for him to be a watchman at the warehouse and he could get his things and go back to his home. Tomorrow morning he should come and see the merchant with the warehouse keys so he could be paid off, and then maybe there might be something else for him to do but the merchant was not promising anything.
Hamza had not expected to be dispensed with so promptly. He was sorry that his warehouse duties were over. It had been a mostly peaceful time despite the lonely and anguished moods that sometimes overcame him: working in the warehouse during the day, talking with Khalifa or rather listening to him when he felt like talking, then sleeping quietly at night in the golden glow of the oil lamp and in the must and strange heat of all the merchandise … it had given him time to rest and think and bring a little calm to his life. It had also made him live again through many regrets and sorrows, but those were with him in any case and were perhaps never to be reconciled.
The next day he told Khalifa that he was no longer the watchman. ‘He has asked me to return the keys to him this morning. I think he was telling me there was no more work but I’m not sure.’
‘He is a weasel, a conniving and deceitful little opportunist,’ Khalifa said, delighting in the merchant’s meanness. ‘I expect you thought he’d give you a uniform and make you a proper security guard and build you a bathroom annexe so you could do your ablutions and say your prayers in the warehouse. You’re an idiot to trust that man.’ Then after a moment he growled softly and said ‘Well, you’d better come back to your store room then. Maybe another job will turn up.’
Hamza found Nassor Biashara in the furniture workshop. He was talking to the man Hamza had seen embroidering his cap several weeks ago in the timber workshop. He had been to the workshop a few times while on errands to the yard, when he had looked in to see what was going on and just for the pleasure of the smell of wood. He now knew that the old man’s name was Sulemani and that he was the master carpenter in the workshop. Everyone called him Mzee Sulemani although he was probably only in his fifties. There was a younger man who worked for him, the one with the slicked-back black ponytail he was vain about and which he stroked frequently, but he was not there this morning. His name was Mehdi and he usually smelled of stale alcohol as if he had woken up after a night of drinking and had come to work without so much as rinsing his mouth. Sometimes he pressed his fingers to his temples as if his head was hurting, and Hamza thought that doing the work he did with a hangover would be a nightmare, banging and hammering and sawing. He remembered how the officer’s hangovers had tormented him after the heavy-drinking sessions the Germans had indulged in. There was also a teenaged boy called Sefu in the workshop who did jobs like sanding and varnishing and who cleaned up at the end of the day. His younger brother came to help sometimes, just for something to do and perhaps to show willing in case a job came up in the future. They were the two Hamza had seen carrying a pot of varnish on his first day in the yard. Nassor Biashara himself also worked in the workshop at times. He designed all the furniture in his office but he often put the finishing touches to the small ornamental items himself.
When Hamza found them in the workshop, Mzee Sulemani was listening to the merchant with a small frown on his face when normally his brow was unlined and his expression was deadpan and aloof. The merchant finished talking to him then turned towards Hamza and held out his hand for the keys. Come with me, he said and walked away without waiting. Hamza glanced at the carpenter who looked back expressionless.
When he caught up with Nassor Biashara in his tiny office next door to the workshop, the merchant said, as if the thought had just occurred to him when it was clear to Hamza that he had been waiting to do so all along: ‘You’d like to work with wood, wouldn’t you? I’ve seen you going in there from time to time. I can always tell people who like wood. I’ve seen you sniffing the timber – always a giveaway. Anyway, you’ve finished there in the warehouse. I was just helping you out because I liked the look of you and you needed work, but you did well. How you managed to cope with that old grumbler Khalifa I don’t know, but it seems he has taken quite a liking to you, which is not a habit of his. Now how would you like to work in the workshop? You can help Mzee Sulemani and he will teach you things. He is a very good carpenter. He doesn’t say much but he’s dependable, and you can learn a lot from him, even become a carpenter. Vipi, what do you say?’
The offer was so unexpected that for a moment Hamza could only grin with surprise. The merchant smiled back and nodded. ‘It suits you much better when you smile like that,’ he said. ‘So it seems the idea appeals to you. Mehdi will not come back now. He has lost himself completely … all this drinking, staggering around the streets picking fights and then going home to beat his wife and his sister. I wouldn’t have kept him here this long but his father was a friend of my father’s so I had no choice but to keep him for their sake. This time it seems he picked one brawl too many and someone threatened to cut him with a knife. His mother has now begged him to go to Dar es Salaam to some relatives there, as if that will save him from himself. Anyway, I don’t know what you’re waiting for, go to the workshop and get started.’
Mzee Sulemani gave Hamza simple jobs at first, asking him to move the pieces of furniture to another part of the workshop, to hold one end of a plank while he planed or drilled, and in the meantime he watched him and instructed him. Hamza did as he was asked and apologised for the smallest mistake. The carpenter named more woods for him: mkangazi, mahogany, mvinje, cypress, mzaituni, olive. He made him smell the wood and stroke the planks so he would know them again. Hamza asked questions and allowed his enthusiasm to show, and within a few days he knew that the old man was less suspicious of him than he had been at the start. At the end of the day’s work Mzee Sulemani put all the tools away in a trunk himself, then padlocked it and pocketed the key. He shut all the windows and explained how he wanted the workshop left. When he called Hamza by name as he locked up at the end of the day and said, Hamza, tomorrow inshaallah, it felt like a kind of welcome: come again tomorrow. They always stopped for lunch so Mzee Sulemani could work on his embroidery although he did not eat anything. The thought of his new occupation of carpentry filled Hamza with more enthusiasm than he could remember for any other work he had done.
He told Khalifa about his new job in such excitement that he laughed and repeated the story to his baraza friends who teased the young man and called him fundi seramala. He installed himself in the store room in Khalifa’s house as before and resumed his old routine: washing himself in the mosque, eating his evening meal at a café and on some evenings sitting on the porch with Khalifa and his friends while they mulled over the state of the world. That only lasted for a few days, though. One morning he was called to the door of the house by Bi Asha who sent him on an errand to the café. The young boy who usually brought their early-morning loaf of bread and buns had not come so she asked Hamza to go to the café for her. It was the first time she had spoken to him since her outburst in the yard but she acted as if nothing like that had happened between them. Take this money and fetch the bread and buns from the café – off you go. That became his job every morning. He knocked on the door and the younger woman gave him the money for the café and a basket for the bread and buns. When he came back he knocked on the door again and handed the basket over. In return he was given a slice of bread and a mug of tea for his breakfast. The woman called out his name and he went to the door to collect it. He did not think of her as the servant woman any more. She told him her name was Afiya.
He was sent on other errands: to take a parcel or a basket of food or a message to neighbours or relatives. Sometimes Bi Asha called him and lent his services to a neighbour who needed a hand with something. She was often angry with the same neighbours behind their backs, recounting their endless slights of her and their repeated blasphemies. She was surrounded by blasphemers, so it seemed, and she recited scraps of the Koran as she lent Hamza to them, to provide him with some protection he hoped. She sent him on these errands in her habitual abrupt way as if she had every right to make these demands on him. Khalifa would not take rent for the room, which made Hamza a dependant of the household and under an obligation to them. He found this comforting, as if he belonged, and he did not mind being summoned back and forth. He even became used to Bi Asha’s sharpness, which showed no sign of softening. It was still an improvement to be obliged to be useful rather than to be greeted as an impending disaster: Balaa. Hana maana.
*
‘Mzee Sulemani is pleased with your work,’ Nassor Biashara said. ‘I just knew it. I knew you would be good at this. He says you have manners, which is a big word for him. It doesn’t just mean politeness, it means much more than that to him.’
Nassor Biashara paused and waited. Hamza felt that he was being tested but he was not sure in what way. He waited for the merchant to explain. Nassor Biashara said, ‘It’s not that he has talked to me about this but it’s what I think. I’ve known him for a long time. He never uses strong language. I don’t mean bad cursing language, he does not even use the name of God the way everyone else does, wallahi and so on when we want to say we mean something. He will shush you if you say wallahi, as if you are cheapening God’s name. The worst thing he can say about someone is, I don’t believe him. He puts great faith in the truth, though that sounds more pompous than I meant it to. Perhaps it would be better to say he has faith in frankness, openness, something like that, without noise or show … you’re like that too. And courteous – he likes that. That is what he meant when he said you have manners. He won’t say any of this to you himself so I’m telling you.’
Hamza did not know what to say. He was moved by being so well thought of and by the merchant’s kindness in telling him. He felt his eyes smarting with emotion. Sometimes it troubled him that Khalifa found the merchant so abhorrent. He did not seem so bad to Hamza.
‘He tells me you’re living in Khalifa’s house,’ Nassor Biashara said, bustling with his books, his tone less confiding, less approving. ‘You didn’t tell me that. You’re settling down nicely then. Mind you, I am not sure I would want to live with that old grumbler.’
‘I don’t live in his house exactly,’ Hamza said. ‘They let me use an outside room that used to be a barber’s shop.’
‘I know the house very well, and it’s not really his. Or hers. How do you find Bi Asha? A bit gruff, hey? I don’t know which of them turned the other the most sour but I expect it was largely her to blame. She is a woman full of grievances. You won’t go and tittle-tattle about this, will you? We’re related, you know. Well, I’m related to the household,’ the merchant said, and then waved away any further conversation on the subject as he settled down to his paperwork.
‘I hear you’re related to Nassor Biashara,’ Hamza said later to Khalifa. ‘Or rather, he said he was related to the household.’
Khalifa considered this for a moment and then said, ‘Is that what he said? That he is related to the household?’
‘Why does he say household?’ Hamza asked. ‘Does that mean Bi Asha?’
Khalifa nodded. ‘He is a weasel man, I told you that. He is a devious double-speaker who likes that kind of old-fashioned flourish talk. People like him think it’s bad manners to talk about the women of the house.’
Hamza sensed that Khalifa was hesitating over saying something else so he poured him another coffee – they were sitting out on the porch that evening on their own – and asked: ‘How are you related?’
Khalifa took his time, had a sip and gathered his thoughts while Hamza waited, knowing that he would get the story in due course. ‘I told you I worked for his father, Amur Biashara the pirate merchant. I worked for him for many years. It was during that time that Bi Asha and I were married. Bwana Amur was a relative of hers and he … arranged … well, he brought us together.’
‘How did you end up working for him?’ Hamza asked after a long pause when Khalifa remained unusually reticent. He did not often need prompting.
Khalifa said ‘Do you really want to hear all this old stuff? You don’t tell me anything about yourself and then you ask me and I can’t resist. That’s the curse of getting old. I can’t keep my mouth shut.’
‘I really want to hear about the old pirate,’ Hamza said, grinning because he knew Khalifa was not going to be able to resist telling him.
*
It had been in the early stages of the kusi, the summer monsoons, when Hamza arrived in the town on that swiftly darkening evening. By then the traders from across the ocean had made their way home to Somalia and South Arabia and Western India. He did not remember much about the weather from his time in the town many years before, and many of the years after he left were arduous and spent far in the interior a long way from coastal winds. Everyone told him that these months in the middle of the year were the sweetest but he did not really understand that when he first returned. The land was still green from the long rains and the winds were mild. Later in the year, in the last third or so, it became drier and hotter, and then with the beginning of the winter monsoons, the kaskazi, came rough seas and high winds at first and then the short rains, and finally in the new year the steady winds from the north-east.
That wind brought the traders’ ships back from across the ocean. Their true destination was Mombasa or Zanzibar, prosperous towns with rich merchants ready to trade, but some of them straggled into other port towns, including theirs. The arrival of the ships was anticipated weeks in advance, and popular legends of captains and crew were revived and circulated once again: the chaos they brought as they sprawled over any empty space and turned it into a campsite, the fabulous merchandise they hawked through the streets, a lot of it trinkety but some of it valuable beyond the vendors’ awareness, the thick rugs and rare perfumes, the shiploads of dates and salted kingfish and dried shark that they sold as job lots to the merchants, their notorious hunger for fruit and for mangoes in particular, and their unruly violence, which in the past had led to open battles in the streets and forced people to lock themselves in their houses in terror. The sailors filled the mosques to overflowing, and perfumed the air with their sea-salted, sweat-stained kanzus and kofias, which were often tarnished brown with grime. The area around the port bore the brunt of their excesses. The timber yard and Khalifa’s house were some distance into the town, and the only travellers who came their way were the street hawkers with their baskets of gum and spices and perfume and necklaces and brass trinkets and thick-woven cloths dyed and embroidered in medieval colours. Sometimes high-stepping Suri merchants who had lost their way came marching through the neighbourhood, swinging their canes high as if they were crossing enemy territory. Children trooped behind them, calling out mocking words the strangers did not understand and making farting noises with their mouths, which the Suri were reputed to find especially insulting.
If the timber yard and Khalifa’s house were a little out of the way for the traders and sailors, the open ground in front of the warehouses was not. They congregated there every day, and some of them camped there during the night. Sellers of fruit and grilled maize and cassava and coffee followed them there and transformed the area to something like the buzzing tumultuous marketplace Khalifa had so longingly described to Hamza so many months before. The warehouse had been emptied of its merchandise over the past months and weeks and was now empty and ready to receive new supplies. Nassor Biashara shifted his office from the cubbyhole in the timber yard for the morning and set up another small desk just inside the warehouse doors. In the afternoon he returned to the yard to put his paperwork in order, leaving Khalifa to take charge of the delivery and stowing of the merchandise. It was a hectic time for him and he often had to work late, bustling around self-importantly with his clipboard, keeping track of the new stock. Hamza thought he was back in his element, as clerk to a pirate merchant, despatching Idris and Dubu back and forth to the port and supervising the porters who had been hired to stack the merchandise.
This was quite unlike his normal working day. Usually Khalifa locked the warehouse in the early afternoon, dropped off the keys at the timber yard and went home. If his work was light in the workshop, Hamza went with him to have lunch, which he ate in his room or on the porch. Mzee Sulemani stayed in the workshop and did not eat lunch. Hamza returned after lunch until the muadhin called the afternoon prayers when they swept the workshop and locked up. If he did not go back to the house for lunch, his portion was kept aside and he had it later on when he went home. In this way, he had become part of the household while remaining outside it in his store room. He did not go inside the house again after that first time, and when Bi Asha summoned him from the interior courtyard to run an errand as she sometimes did, her voice easily carrying to him and beyond, he waited by the outside door. When she snapped irritably at him and told him to come in, he stepped just inside the doorway and waited there until she came to him. He tried to maintain a line between being a servant, which he did not wish to be, and a dependant who had obligations to the household but who made no presumptions.
One day, during Khalifa’s prolonged absence at the warehouse, Hamza knocked on the door for his lunch as was his practice and Afiya opened it. She passed him a mug of water and a dish of rice and spinach. When she did not shut the door immediately as she usually did, he sat down on the porch by the door and started to eat. He felt her presence in the shadows just inside the door. He had been living in the store room for several months by then and had not exchanged more than a few necessary words with her, although he often thought of her. After eating a few mouthfuls, sensing her nearby all the time, he said softly so that Bi Asha inside the house would not hear, ‘Who gave you that name? Your father or your mother?’
‘Afiya? It means good health,’ she said. ‘My mother gave it to me.’
He expected her to shut the door then but she did not. She stayed because she wanted to speak to him too. It had become so that he thought about her often, especially while he was alone in his room. Sometimes when she walked past and his window was open she would call out a greeting without looking in and then he would hurry to catch a glimpse of her as she walked away down the lane. Sometimes she walked past without greeting him and he caught sight of her and was stirred nonetheless. Whenever he was called to the door or when he saw her in passing, he spoke the few words it was possible for him to use without causing her offence just so that he could hear her voice, which was throaty and rich in a way he found moving.
‘She called you that to wish you good health,’ he said, prompting her when she did not say any more.
‘Yes, and herself perhaps. She was not well,’ Afiya said. ‘That’s what I was told. She passed on when I was very small, maybe two years old, I’m not sure. I don’t remember her.’
‘And your father, is he well?’ asked Hamza, not knowing if he should, not sure if he should stop.
‘He passed on many years ago. I didn’t know him.’
He muttered condolences and addressed his bowl of rice. He wanted to tell her that he had lost his parents too, that he was taken away from them and did not know where they were and they no longer knew where he was. He wanted to ask what happened to that father she did not know. Did he pass on while she was a baby as her mother did or did he just leave her to her fate after her mother’s death? He did not ask because it was only to satisfy his curiosity, and he did not know what sorrows he might release with his question.
‘Does your leg hurt? I have seen you wince in pain before and I noticed that again as you sat down just now,’ she said.
‘It hurts, but it’s getting better every day,’ he said.
‘What happened to you?’ she asked.
He chuckled, made a brief snorting noise, trying to keep his answer light. ‘I’ll tell you one day.’
After a moment he heard her moving away and was sorry that he had not given her something in return for what she had given him. She came back a short while later to collect his empty bowl and to bring him segments of an orange on a small plate. ‘You can come inside to wash your hands when you’ve finished,’ she said.
When he finished he called out and went inside. He waited for her to appear at the courtyard doorway before offering her the empty plate and following behind her. She pointed to the sink against the left-hand wall of the courtyard and he went there to wash his hands. There was no sign of Bi Asha. He had guessed she was absent from the way Afiya felt free to talk to him and to invite him inside. He washed his hands at the sink and then looked around in open curiosity whereas before he had hurried to get away from Bi Asha’s tetchy welcome. On the same side as the sink was the tap in the corner where he had seen Afiya washing the dishes that first time. Now he saw that the washroom was over on the back wall of the yard next to the awning and that two rooms ran along the right-hand side. He had taken one of them to be a store, in front of which stood two seredani braziers, one of which was charged with charcoal ready to be lit. The other was more substantial than he remembered it and had gauze netting and a curtain across its open window. Its door was shut. If that was her room then it was decent enough compared to customary practice. Servants sometimes only had a mat and a corner of a hallway, if anything at all. Perhaps she was not a servant and was after all Khalifa’s second wife as he had at first assumed.
She followed the direction of his gaze and nodded slightly. Her kanga had slipped to the back of her head and snagged on a hairpin or a brooch there, and he saw more of her than he had seen before at such close quarters. Her hair was parted in the middle and pulled back into two braids joined together at the back. She held her kanga loosely so that he saw something of her upper body and her waist. After a moment she pulled her kanga together and adjusted it on her head. It was a familiar gesture of modesty but he wondered if she had relaxed the covering for a moment for his benefit. They exchanged smiles as he thanked her and left, but he thought she knew how he felt about her. It excited him. If she knew how he felt and smiled back at him in that way, then she could not be Khalifa’s wife. That she sat with him and then invited him in to wash his hands when Bi Asha was not there, meant she was entering into a small deception. By his reckoning, which was not extensive in such matters, the situation had all the makings of a courtship and Hamza returned to the workshop in a mood of small elation.
There was an undertow to his joy however. He had little to offer her: a job that was not secure, a home that was a room granted in patronage and which could just as easily be withdrawn if his attentions offended, a bed that was a busati on the floor. His body was damaged and abused. He brought neither past joy nor future promise, just a sorry tale of abjection to add to hers when she might have looked forward to some relief from her own. There was still a chance that she was someone else’s wife and he was about to become entangled in dangerous and indecorous matters. There was no talking himself out of his excitement, though, even as he also feared he did not have the will to fulfil his desire. He might in any case have completely misread the events that had just occurred. So much had been knocked out of him that at times he was paralysed by a sense of futility about anything he might wish to undertake. It was a sense he resisted daily and which the workshop and his work with wood, and the daily benign company of the carpenter, somehow helped to dissipate.
That afternoon Mzee Sulemani was in a quietly joyful mood too, humming his favourite qasidas as he worked. Perhaps he had received news that cheered him or had just completed the embroidery of his latest kofia. It added to Hamza’s own sense of elation and he could not suppress his smiles, so much so that the carpenter noticed the difference in him and looked at him wonderingly without saying a word. On one occasion Hamza dropped his drill absent-mindedly and later mislaid a square, looking around irritably for it when it was right before his eyes. These were mistakes he did not usually make. On another occasion Mzee Sulemani caught Hamza’s eye as he was smiling to himself and raised his eyebrows as if to ask what was pleasing him. Hamza laughed at himself for his light-headedness. After his usual fashion, the carpenter did not say anything but Hamza saw that he too was suppressing a smile. Had the old man guessed his secret? Were these things always so obvious?
‘Leuchtturm Sicherheitszündhölzer.’ Hamza found the box of matches tucked away in one of the drawers in the workshop and read the brand name out loud. Mzee Sulemani looked up enquiringly from his sanding,
‘What did you say?’ he asked.
Hamza repeated the words, Leuchtturm Sicherheitszündhölzer. Lighthouse Safety Matches. The old carpenter moved over to where Hamza stood and took the matches from him. He looked at the box for a moment and then handed it back. He walked to a shelf and took down a tin which they used for nails that needed straightening. He brought that over to Hamza who read, ‘Wagener-Weber Kindermehl.’
‘You can read,’ the carpenter said.
‘Yes, and write,’ Hamza said. He could not keep the pride out of his voice.
‘In German,’ the carpenter said. Then pointing to the tin, he asked, ‘What does that say?
‘Wagener-Weber Baby-milk.’
‘Can you also speak German?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mashaalah,’ Mzee Sulemani said.