‘Good fortune is never permanent, if it comes at all,’ Khalifa said on the third night of Idd as they sat on the porch. ‘It’s only months that you’ve been with us but it seems that I have known you for longer. I have become used to you. I knew from the start that there was something alive behind your zombie appearance. You looked as if you were about to collapse in a heap in front of me when you first arrived. Now look at you. You have found work that suits you and you have even pleased that slow-witted miser of ours, only you need to ask him for a pay rise now that you’ve turned out to be a competent carpenter. Oh, no, you’re going to be the saint who will wait humbly for his desserts to come to him!
‘But listen to what I am saying: good fortune is never permanent. You cannot always be sure how long the good moments will last or when they will come again. Life is full of regrets, and you have to recognise the good moments and be thankful for them and act with conviction. Take your chances. I am not blind. I have been looking and I have seen what I have seen and I have understood, and some of what I have seen has made me anxious. I thought I would wait until you were ready to speak to me, that I would not rush you or embarrass you, and that in the meantime nothing unseemly would happen. Now that Ramadhan is over and all the holiness is behind us, now that Idd has arrived and a new year has begun, it may also be the time for you to show some conviction. If you wait too long you may lose the moment or else be drawn into something regrettable. So I am giving you a little nudge.
‘Bi Asha also has eyes in her head and a mind to work things out with and, as I am sure you have noticed by now, a tongue with which to speak about them. I don’t know if she has spoken to Afiya, though I expect we would know if she had. She has ideas of her own and they may not suit you. I have some idea of your feelings for Afiya, you told me of them yourself. It could be this is one of those decisive moments I am speaking of, and which I am eager for you not to miss. Am I talking in riddles or do you understand what I mean? I can see you do. I do not mean to rush you, nor am I in any hurry to get rid of Afiya. I asked you before if you’ve spoken to her and you said you have. If it is agreed between you, then I am happy. I like the idea, but you will need to tell me something about your people so we can be sure that no harm is done. Why don’t you speak about yourself? Your silences look suspicious, as if you have done something bad.’
‘Why shouldn’t I lie just like you told me to before? Why should I not just make something up?’ Hamza asked, provoking him because he knew where he was heading and he was confident of the outcome.
‘Yes, I know I said you should just lie but this is different. This is not something to joke about, this is not about keeping the peace and moving things along. Perhaps you think I am being a meddlesome patriarch, interfering in the way a young woman might choose to live her life. I am not her father or her brother but she has lived with us since she was a child and I have a responsibility to her. It is important that we know about you so our minds can be at rest. You don’t have anywhere to live, and it is likely you will continue to live here with us. I would like you to continue to live here with us, so that too is another reason we need to know more about you. You could be anybody. Of course, I don’t believe for one minute that you did something bad before you came here, or no worse than the rest of us have, but I need you to tell me that. Look me in the eye and tell me. If you tell me a lie about yourself, I’ll see it in your eyes.’
‘You have great faith in your powers,’ Hamza said.
‘Try me. Tell me the truth and I’ll know it at once,’ Khalifa said so vehemently that it wiped the smile off Hamza’s face. ‘All right, let me ask some questions and you can answer as you wish. You said you lived here many years ago when you were quite young. Tell me how that came about.’
‘That’s not a question,’ Hamza said, not yet able to give up the provoking tone.
‘Don’t be irritating. I know that’s not a question. All right, how did you come to live in this town when you were young?’ Khalifa asked irritably, not at all amused by Hamza’s playfulness.
‘My father gave me away to a merchant to cover his debts,’ Hamza said. ‘I didn’t know that was what he had done until after the merchant took me with him, so I don’t know what my father owed or why it was necessary for him to give me away. Maybe the merchant was punishing my father for being a bad debtor. The merchant lived in this town and he brought me here to work in his shop although he was not a shopkeeper. The shop was only a small part of his business, which was the caravan trade. He was like your merchant pirate, Amur Biashara, he did all kinds of business. He took me on one of his trips to the interior, which lasted several months. It was incredible. We went all the way to the lakes and beyond to the mountains on the other side.’
‘What was his name?’ Khalifa asked.
‘We called him Uncle Hashim but he was not my uncle,’ Hamza said.
Khalifa thought for a moment and then nodded. ‘Hashim Abubakar, I know who you mean. So you worked for him. What happened to you?’
‘I didn’t work for him. I was bonded to him to secure my father’s debts or something like that. The merchant did not explain anything or pay me. He treated me like I was his property.’
They sat silently for a while, each absorbed in his own thoughts. ‘What happened to you?’ Khalifa asked again.
‘I could not bear to live like that any more so I ran away to the war,’ Hamza said.
‘Like Ilyas,’ Khalifa said disdainfully.
‘Yes, like Ilyas. After the war I went to the town where I had lived as a child with my parents but they were no longer there, and no one knew where they had gone. The merchant who took me away from them, Uncle Hashim, told me that several years before I ran away. He told me that they no longer lived there, but I wanted to be sure. For a long time I did not want to find them. I thought they had thrown me away and did not want me. Then after the war I tried to find them but I couldn’t. So I don’t have any people to tell you about. I’ve lost them. I lost them when I was very young and I don’t know what I can tell you about them that will be of any use to a grown-up person who feels a responsibility for another person. You want me to tell you about myself as if I have a complete story but all I have are fragments which are snagged by troubling gaps, things I would have asked about if I could, moments that ended too soon or were inconclusive.’
‘You’re already telling me a lot. What brought you back to this town where you must have suffered such shame?’ Khalifa asked.
‘Shame? What shame?’
‘To be bonded to another, to have your body and spirit owned by another human being. Is there a greater shame than that?’
‘The merchant did not own me body and spirit,’ Hamza said. ‘Nobody owns anyone body and spirit. I learned that a long time ago. He had use of me while I lacked the wisdom and the skill to run away, only even then I did not know enough to keep myself safe and ran away to war. If I felt shame it was for my father and my mother, but that only came later when I was older and knew more about shame myself. I came back to this town because there was nowhere else I knew. I wandered everywhere, doing work that was slowly killing me, and in the end I just drifted back here, I suppose.
‘I made a friend while I was first here. When I think back to my years, I think that he was the only friend I ever made in my life, and I felt a tug to return when I was lost and sad about many things. He was bonded to the merchant too, but when I came back the shop was gone and I couldn’t find him. I didn’t dare ask people about Uncle Hashim in case my father’s debt had passed on to me.’
‘That was wise of you. It’s always best to be cautious, I know you know that. I can tell you what happened to your merchant Hashim Abubakar,’ Khalifa said, smiling, happy as always to be the bringer of news, the vendor of gossip. ‘The young man who ran the shop for him absconded with all the cash the merchant had hidden in the house. He ran away with the merchant’s young wife too, his second wife. The pair of them disappeared, have never been heard of since. That was just before the war started so who knows what might have happened to them? So many people were lost in the war. For the merchant it was a great scandal and he sold up and went off somewhere. The last I heard of him he was in Mogadishu or Aden or Djibouti or somewhere in those parts. He was one of the last of those caravan merchants so his time was up anyway. The Germans wanted to put an end to all that and control everything themselves. What was the name of this friend who worked for Hashim Abubakar?’
‘His name was Faridi,’ Hamza said.
‘That’s exactly the young man,’ Khalifa said, slapping his thigh with delight as his story was growing even more nicely viscous. ‘What a rogue, hey! The money and the wife! He must have been a proper rascal, this friend of yours.’
‘I was so young when I was first brought here and he looked after me like a brother. Neither of us knew anyone really, we just worked in the shop day and night. Sometimes we went to town but he did not know where he was either. We wandered around. If he absconded with the money just before the war then it must have been soon after I ran away too. The young wife he ran away with was his sister. She was also bonded to Uncle Hashim.’
Khalifa sighed at this new detail, which was now going to make his story so impossibly rich that no one would believe it. ‘So that’s who you are,’ he said. ‘I was here working for my pirate merchant and you and your friend were at the other end of town plotting the downfall of another pirate. I don’t know why but it makes me happy to think of your friend Faridi running away and leaving the merchant to face the shame. We all thought it must have been the young wife who planned it. How else could he have known where the merchant hid his money? They must have been rogues, both of them, to take it all. Well, for their sakes, I hope they are never found because it was wrong to take that money, even if Faridi was a friend of yours.’
‘What happened to the house? It used to be there at the end of the shore road. It had a lovely garden. I do remember that right, don’t I?’ Hamza asked.
‘An Indian businessman bought it and demolished it to build the mansion that stands there now. Not everyone loves a garden. The businessman came with the British. When they took over from the Germans, the British brought in their own people to do business here. They brought them from India and from Kenya, and those new Indians sank their teeth in here fast and sure, and here they still are. They are taking over all the commerce and telling the government that they are British citizens and must have the same rights as the mzungus, and not be treated as if they are no better than us natives.’
*
On the fourth and last day of Idd, while there was still a trace of celebration in the morning air, Afiya pushed open the door of Hamza’s store room to bring him his breakfast tray with a slice of bread and cup of tea. Because it was still Idd, she brought a festive slice of bread soaked in beaten egg and fried. He took the tray from her and put it down on the table and she was then free to slip into his arms. That was when he asked her. He had told Khalifa that he would ask her himself, because he wanted her to say that it was something she wanted too. Khalifa said that was not how things were done. He, Hamza, should speak to Khalifa who would speak to Bi Asha who would ask Afiya. Then her reply would travel back the same route. That was how things were done, and that was how things will still be done after Hamza had spoken to her, but if he wanted to ask her himself as well, he should go ahead and ask.
Afiya was in his arms when he said, ‘Will it suit you if we marry?’
She pulled back to look at his face, perhaps to make sure he was not joking. When she saw how sombre his expression was, she smiled and held him tighter and then said, ‘Idd mubarak, it will suit me very well.’
‘I have nothing,’ he said.
‘Nor do I,’ she said. ‘We’ll have nothing together.’
‘We won’t have anywhere to live, just this store room without even a mosquito net. We should wait until I can afford to rent somewhere more fitting,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to wait,’ she said. ‘I did not think I would find someone to love. I thought someone would come for me and I would have no choice. Now you have come and I don’t want to wait.’
‘There is nowhere to wash. Only the mat to sleep on. You will live like an animal in a burrow,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘Don’t exaggerate,’ she said. ‘We can wash and cook inside, and make love on the floor whenever we want. It will be like a journey together and we will find our way even if our bodies smell of old sweat. She has been wanting me to go for years. She said she did not like the way he looked at me. Ever since I became a woman. She said he wanted to make me his wife – Baba Khalifa. She said men are animals like that. They have no restraint.’
‘I didn’t know,’ Hamza said. ‘You told me this is your home.’
‘Bi Asha has a bitter heart. She hated that I was a young woman. She wanted me to go but she hated when a young man looked at me. Even a glance in the street was enough to start her accusations. She said it revolted her, the way men looked at me. She said I encouraged it when I did no such thing. She wanted me to go but she wanted an older man to come and take me for his second wife. She did not want me to feel attractive and young, but to be taken by someone who would use me for his pleasure, who would degrade me with his cravings. It’s the bitterness in her, it makes her mean. She was not like that to me when I was a child. She was fierce as you see her now but she was not mean. It was when I grew into a woman that she became like this.’
‘I didn’t know,’ he said again. ‘Did someone come for you?’
She shrugged. ‘Twice. I didn’t know one of them. The other was the manager of the café on the main road. He saw me walking by. He has seen me walking by for years, ever since I was ten years old. That’s how they are, men like that, they have money and they want a young woman to play with for a few months. They see you walking in the street, and they say who is that woman and they come for you because they can. That’s what Baba Khalifa said.’
‘But you said no.’
‘I said no and Baba Khalifa said no. She said it was because he wanted to keep me for himself. That was when she first came out with it. She accused him of that, for many days. When he brought you that day, when he brought you inside, I think he wanted me to see you. I don’t know if he really meant to do that, maybe he just liked you. But I saw you, and each time I saw you I felt a little more longing for you. I didn’t know it would be like that. That’s why I don’t want to wait, and why this room is not a burrow.’
‘Has she spoken to you about us? Khalifa said he did not know if she had.’
‘Two days ago she said don’t bring shame to our house, but she has said that before.’ Afiya smiled at him. ‘Too late now.’
When he found out from Hamza that they planned to live in the store room, Khalifa would not hear of it. Hamza could not repeat what Afiya had told him about her persecution, and after stuttering helplessly he said Bi Asha’s name. Khalifa shrugged and then shook his head emphatically. ‘You will come and live in the house with her, with us,’ he said. ‘Not out there like vagrants. Inside will be more comfortable for you. That room may be adequate for a jaluta like you who is used to wandering like a hooligan. It is not suitable for a daughter of our house.’
‘We will find our own place to rent,’ Hamza said. ‘Maybe it’s best to wait for a while until I can afford something better.’
‘What is there to wait for?’ Khalifa asked. ‘You can move in here now and when you are ready to rent, off you go.’
‘Well, we’ll see,’ Hamza said, reluctant to be forced inside, to be forced to live intimately with Bi Asha’s distemper.
The couple married fourteen days later. Their wedding was so quiet that the merchant Nassor Biashara and the people at the timber yard did not know about it until after it happened. Khalifa invited the imam and his baraza friends for a meal, and Bi Asha did the same for her women neighbours. They hired a cook to come to the house to prepare a biriani and he took over the backyard for that. The women were in Bi Asha and Khalifa’s bedroom, with the bed upended and pushed against the wall. The men gathered in the guest room where the imam invited Hamza to ask for Afiya in marriage. Since the ceremony was an agreement being entered into in front of witnesses, it was customary at this point to state what mahari or dowry the man intended to offer and for the bride or her representative to consider whether this was satisfactory. Such matters would have been discussed well beforehand but were confirmed in front of witnesses. Hamza had nothing to offer as mahari. He told this to Khalifa who said the decision to take him without was up to Afiya. Since she waved that conversation away – we’ll have nothing together – this part of the ceremony was quietly ignored, and Hamza simply asked if Afiya would accept him for her husband and Khalifa accepted in her name. The news was conveyed to Afiya and Bi Asha’s guests in the other room who welcomed it with ululations. They were then served the meal and that was the end of the festivities.
Khalifa allowed them no choice but to move in. He was utterly insistent, and Afiya shrugged and said they could try it. There was always the store room if it did not work out. Hamza moved his few belongings into Afiya’s room: his small shoulder bag, which contained the copy of Musen-Almanach für das Jahr 1798 the Oberleutnant had left for him, another book by Heinrich Heine, Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, which the Frau gave to him as a parting present, his mat and his clothes.
Afiya’s room was bigger than the store room, and it was comfortable and within easy reach of the washroom. There was a curtain across both the window and the door, which she often kept open for the breeze to enter until bedtime. The head of the bed was pushed hard against one wall, with just enough room left for them to slip in on either side. A rectangular wooden frame was suspended from the ceiling for the mosquito net. There was an old rickety thin-panelled cupboard against the opposite wall, and when he saw it for the first time Hamza told her he would make a new cupboard for them in the workshop. That would be her mahari. Inside the cupboard there was a small locked box painted in green and red diagonal stripes. She opened it for him and showed him its treasures: the notebooks she had used when her brother taught her to read, the marbled ledger that Baba gave her, a gold bracelet Ilyas bought for her for Idd during the one year they lived together, now too small for her to wear, a picture postcard of the mountain overlooking the town where he had worked on the German’s farm and then gone to school, and the tiny scrap of the Schiller poem Hamza had translated for her.
Afiya’s room opened out on to the yard, which was where the household’s cooking was done, and where they ate and washed, and where the women of the house spent several hours of the day. It was their part of the house and male strangers did not go there. Hamza was not a stranger any more but he did not feel like a member of the family either. After what he had heard about Bi Asha’s bitterness, he was nervous about the arrangement and how she would take his presence in the yard. He greeted her when he came upon her and she made some kind of acknowledgement without eye contact but there was no conversation between them. He felt her resistance in the air and cringed with discomfort and self-dislike. He did not want to be there. As soon as he was up in the morning he used the washroom, drank his tea in the yard with Khalifa who joined him and insisted on this arrangement, and left the house together with him. When he returned in the afternoon the yard was unoccupied and Hamza went straight to their room where Afiya was waiting for him. In the evening Bi Asha and Afiya prepared supper in the yard and sometimes women neighbours called so he made sure to be out of the room so they could talk without being overheard. That was what he understood manners required. After several days of these unsettled jitters Afiya told him to stop scurrying out of the way.
‘Usijitaabishe,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry yourself. He asked you to live here, so just ignore her and she’ll get used to it.’
‘She doesn’t want me here,’ he said. ‘Balaa, remember? She thinks I will bring disaster.’
‘She was just being cruel,’ Afiya said. ‘She is not that cranky.’
His anxiety about Bi Asha did little to diminish his pleasure in the new intimacies Afiya and he now came to know when they were alone together. Luck had preserved him through the war and brought him into her life, and the world always moves on despite the chaos and waste in its midst.
Nevertheless, living in the yard was a tense affair. Even when he made casual conversation with Bi Asha he was always aware of an edge to her words as if she were likely to say something wounding the next moment. When she spoke sharply to Khalifa he ignored her, as if she had said nothing. Even when she spoke about everyday matters, the price of fish or the quality of the spinach available in the market, it seemed these things too caused her bitterness and discontent. He did not know how long he would be able to bear such ill-tempered patronage.
The merchant Nassor Biashara said to him, ‘Aha, why do you look so gloomy? My wife told me that you married a few days ago, and you did not even invite any of us to the wedding. You should be looking joyful! Or is it maybe you’re not getting enough sleep? He-he-he. I know Afiya, or I did when she was young. My wife tells me she is now a very lovely woman. My congratulations. It’s all working out for you, eh? You deserve it. Look at you. You have a good job and now a good woman to help you bear the burdens and it’s me you have to thank for it. I’m not asking for gratitude, you have worked hard, but it was all down to me. I saw you and I thought: Why not give this dopey young man a chance? He looks like a loser but maybe given an opportunity he could come good. I have an intuition about people, you see. I saw something there in that shambles you presented to the world. Now look at you. Are you still living in that store room? I hope not, not with your new wife. I hope you’ve found yourself somewhere decent to live … You live with those two grumblers! That is not a sensible start to your married life. What do you mean, you can’t afford to rent a place of your own? What are you talking about? Do you need to rent a mansion with a steam bath and a walled garden and a latticed veranda? What do you mean, you would like a pay rise? I pay you enough, don’t I? I treat you decently. I am not made of money, you know. You are not going to become greedy now just because you have a wife. Has Khalifa put you up to this?’
When Mzee Sulemani heard about the wedding he said to Hamza, ‘Ask the miser for a pay rise. It’s the least he can do after all the work you have been doing here since that drunkard Mehdi left. Alhamdulillah, may you be blessed with many children. Can you say that in German?’
‘Mögest du mit vielen Kindern gesegnet sein.’
Mzee Sulemani chuckled with pleasure as he always did when Hamza delivered one of his translations.