III
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BAGAMOYO
“Thy slave Kafur came to us, bareheaded with torn garments and howling:—Alas, the master! Alas the master! A wall of the garden hath fallen on my master and his friends the merchants, and they are all crushed and dead!”
“By Allah,” said my master, “he came to me but now howling:—Alas, my mistress! Alas, the children of the mistress!, and said:—My mistress and her children are all dead, every one of them!”
Then he looked round and seeing me . . . he cried out at me. . . . “O dog, son of a dog! . . . O most accursed of slaves! Get thee from me, thou art free in the face of Allah!”
“By Allah,” rejoined I, . . . “thou shalt not manumit me, for I have no handicraft whereby to gain my living; and this my demand is a matter of law which the doctors have laid down in the Chapter of Emancipation.”
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, volume 2, translated by Richard Francis Burton
The sounds of exclaiming laughter and excited chatter are loud enough to reach me at the top floor of my house. From the high window, I can see a crowd of people. They stop in admiration and wonder as they point at my door. Whenever I enter or leave the house, I often find that I have to work my way through a gaggle of onlookers. In their chatter, I hear my name, only now, it is not just plain Halima, Bwana Daudi’s cook, of whom they speak, but Bibi Halima, the freedwoman who has her own house.
My mother, Zafrene, and my little Losi are surely clapping with joy together with my ancestors when they hear me called “bibi” almost as often as I once called others “bwana.” I wish I could know for certain that Losi is with my mother. They are not bonded by blood, only by love. I don’t know if love is enough for the ancestors to make Losi become one with them. Perhaps she is with her own ancestors, and with her own mother. It is a thought that gives me some comfort.
When they call me bibi, I sometimes ask myself, is this you, Halima? Then I smile and tell myself, yes, Halima, it is you. And in my head, I talk to the departed spirit of my ancestors, and to my mother, Zafrene, to thank her for watching over me, for look at me now.
Who would ever have thought that a mpambe like me could ever own a house? Bwana Daudi’s son, the one called Zouga because he was born by a river, although he went by the name of Oswell, well, he honored his father’s word.
Instead of taking me as his property, he gave me property of my own; he bought me this house and gave me the money for my magnificent door. And sometimes I remember how Amoda would insist that there was no such thing as a bondswoman with her own house. Poor Amoda. But it is best not to dwell on these things.
Mine is one of the old houses that has been built up like new. And it is not just any house. It is a house with a door the like of which has not been seen before. Those who have traveled in many lands say that the doors of Zanzibar are the most beautiful on earth. There are doors that speak of destiny, doors that protect hard-won prosperity and that guard against evil. The more ornate doors do all three.
Mine is such a door. They say that mine is not an Arab door; they are entirely in accord that it is not an Indian door, and they also agree that it is not a Swahili door. It is like all these doors at once, they say, and yet like none of them individually.
“Look,” they exclaim. “There is the chain around the edges to protect against evil and keep safe all who are within. And there is a row of lotus flowers to show that all is open within. And will you look at the big golden brass knobs with their outward spikes, it is as though the owner is carefully guarding the house from an elephant attack, for what elephant would break through such a door?”
Truly, there is no door like it, they agree.
My carpenter thought the same. He scratched his head in puzzlement when I described the door I wanted. He had never made such a door, he said, nor had any other carpenter in the whole of Zanzibar. Of course, it is nowhere near as grand as the door to the Liwali’s old house, which is owned now by Ludda Dhamji, the customs master, along with half of Zanzibar, nor is it close to the grandeur of Tippoo Tip’s door—how can it be when they have grown rich and fat from selling slaves when I am just a freedwoman—but my carpenter did himself proud, I will tell you that for nothing.
Sometimes, when it is not too hot, I sit outside on the long low baraza that runs the length of the house, enjoying the chatter. Those who know that this house is owned by the woman sitting on the baraza listening to them turn to me and exclaim, “But this door, Bibi Halima, will you look at this door.” I laugh and tell them it is not a Swahili door nor an Arab nor an Indian door, it is a Halima door.
I am pleased more and more that I did not go with my very first thought, which was to buy the house on the street they now call Hurumzi. This house, with the special door, is just off that street, on a quiet corner in a little street called Kaonde, a street that no one knows. Or at least a street that no one knew before I came here, because it is getting more and more known, and that is all thanks to my door.
I wanted to buy a house on Hurumzi because it means “Freedman.” That is the street where the Arabs with slaves took them when the slave market closed. Yes, indeed, the slave market has been closed. They say that the news that Bwana Daudi sent of the Manyuema massacre so outraged people that the English forced the Sultan to close the market. But that won’t change anything for the poor souls who already lost their lives.
All the traders were in an uproar with all those slaves to sell and no buyers for them. So the English who had forced the market to close said, “We will buy your slaves for you if you bring them to this street on this and that day.”
It was the best way, the only way really, for although the market had been closed, the trade was continuing underground in cellars and at night. So the traders brought their slaves to Hurumzi, and there they were manumitted, their freedom bought for them, and they were told, you are wahadimu now, you own yourselves now, you are your own masters.
But not every one of them is like Halima, poor things. Freedom is a bitter potion when you don’t have the means to be free. It is a burden to be your own master when you have never been free. There are now simply hundreds upon hundreds of freed slaves roaming the streets with nothing to do because the Arabs won’t employ them for pay.
They wait until all households are abed, then they cram themselves into doorways and onto baraza. I have found more than a few outside my own door sleeping on the baraza, and I feed them when I can. For without the grace of my mother, Zafrene, and my ancestors who watch over me, I might have been one of them.
Many more have begged to be enslaved again, or to work for food instead of wages, but for the rest, it is a life of banditry, ruffianry, or starvation. All of the rich householders in Zanzibar are in uproar against the English and want the market back.
In the evening, I set up a fire outside my house. People come from all over to buy food. They ask me if the fish is fresh, as if I need to keep fish. Almost all the food is gone in one day. And what remains, I give to the poor freed wahadimu sleeping out on Forodhani.
Now that I live in Zanzibar again, I am getting used to the narrow familiar streets with all their filth and the stench of dead cats. Bwana Daudi was right to call it Stinkibar. The only problem with my house is that it is too close to the fish market. When the wind is high and blows the smell of the fish market this way, I curse the location; but better dead fish than the smell of dead slaves, which you don’t find so much now that the slave market has been closed. And oh, the noise, always there is a fearful din. It is a wonder that anyone can hear the muezzin when he makes his calls to prayer.
There are new things to get used to as well, like the Hamamni on the way to Mkunazini that Sultan Bhargash built. It is a place of wonder, and when you leave it, you are cleaner than you thought possible, for in the baths inside is hot steam that reaches even the inside of the ears, and the nose too.
The Hamamni is close to Shangani Point. I could have bought a house there, but I ca
nnot bear to be close to the sea. It is not the chunusi or vembwigo ghosts I dread, those fearsome creatures that Misozi talked of. I am afraid if I live that close to the sea I will always be at a window, looking at the sea and thinking of Susi.
On landing days, when the ships come into port, I go down with a dish of food, ready to sell. I go with a dish of food, and shout, chicken, chicken, good chicken, but all the while I am looking for him. I long to see him, and hide my longing in the shout of chicken, chicken, plenty good chicken. I am learning some English after all.
* * *
The ships from India and England brought newspapers that carried the story of Bwana Daudi’s funeral. I did not understand all the words but I saw immediately the illustration of Jacob Wainwright carrying on his shoulder, together with Bwana Stanley and the Bwana’s own sons, the coffin of Bwana Daudi to his final resting place. And I thought of Susi and Chuma, how it should have been them in that picture.
They did go to England, but not for the funeral. They arrived months after he had been buried, to help Bwana Daudi’s friends and children to write a book about his last journey. I wish I could have gone with them, if only to see Bwana Daudi’s favorite daughter, his Nannie, and tell her how much I tried to feed him up, even in his last days. And when they came back after a year, they brought me news of my good fortune.
Three days after they returned, I was called over from Bagamoyo, and all the others too, although many could not be found. We were to get medals, at least the men were to get medals, and they were to be presented in the garden of the consul. I also received a medal, but that was because they had made one too many and thought, well, there is Halima, she is there, the medal is here, and we may as well give it her. But best of all is that I received my house.
We all scattered after the awards were given out. Chowpereh and Laede are here in Zanzibar, with their children, and though Chowpereh still goes on expeditions, Laede has had enough of wandering. Majwara, Munyasere, and Saburi have joined Bwana Stanley’s many expeditions, as have a great many of the other pagazi. Farjallah Christie is back in India, together with the other Nassickers, all but poor John Wainwright of course, and Jacob Wainwright, of whom there are many rumors.
It is said he offered himself up as a dragoman with Bwana Stanley but was refused. Another rumor said he went back to that school of his in India, to be a teacher, but they would not take him. Yet another said a pot of boiling water fell over him, and in that way he perished, but that cannot be, for I also heard that he was employed in Mombasa by one of those busybody missionaries who want to make every person a Kristuman, and this a year after he had supposedly died.
It was also said that he was here in Zanzibar, working as a door porter, and that makes me laugh, I tell you, for I cannot imagine Jacob, haughty as he is, opening and closing a door for anybody.
Munyasere, who traveled with Bwana Stanley close to the land of the Baganda, is the latest person to bring further news of Jacob. He met him, he says, on the way to the kingdom of the Baganda, where he is to be a scribe in the court of the Kabaka.
Much joy may that bring him, if that is true, for all I have heard about the Baganda is that they eat bananas like nothing on earth. They stew them, and roast them in underground ovens, and make them into a mush that they drink with water. It will be bananas that he eats with bananas, and that every day too, if everything that they say about that land is true. Now, I am fond enough of a banana, I make very good fried bananas, they go wonderfully well with a bit of fish cooked in the juice of limes, but I could not bear a life of eating nothing but bananas, that I could not.
So I have not seen Jacob, but I have seen Ntaoéka. The first time, she was on her way from Zanzibar to Bombay, and the second time, she was on her way to the Cape. Her child, the one she caught on the horrible journey, was born here in Zanzibar. A babe in arms, he was, when they shipped off to India. Quite the madam, she has become, all starched skirts and shining shoes. And her hair is no longer in twisted twigs around her head, but smoothed back and tied to the nape of her neck.
“Ntaoéka,” I called out when I saw her.
She turned to me with a regal air, as if she did not know who it was. “If it is not Halima,” she said, as though we had only met a few times. “How pleasant it is to see you. But it is Maria now that you should call me. I am no longer called Ntaoéka.”
That business with Jacob Wainwright certainly stuck, the other business I mean, for she has remained a Kristuman. Married to Carus Farrar now, she said, and she even has a paper that says so, so she is not just his traveling woman. He came up at that point and was most cordial with me. They were on their way to Bombay, he said, where he was to be trained as a doctor.
I saw them again when they returned. It was six years later, it was, and they were now on their way to the new missionary establishment in Mombasa. Frere Town it was called; they were to build a new town out of nothing.
They had two children with them this time. The smallest was a little girl not far from Losi’s age when she died. It hurt me to look at her. The wound, though healed, is still there. I focused on the boy. You could have knocked me down with a chick’s feather when I beheld the older one, for it was as though it was Jacob Wainwright staring at me.
Ntaoéka was most keen to talk about all the work she and her husband would be doing in the Cape, all the healing of babies and converting heathens. The way Ntaoéka said “heathens,” you would not have believed that this was the same woman who had played the close buttock game with first one man, then another. As though a person can just shed who they have been, like taking off an old dress and putting on a fresh one. That person stays inside even under all the other new persons that you take on.
It was all the talk of the heathen this and the heathen that that did it for me. “You sound just like Jacob Wainwright,” I said, “and if I did not know better, I would have said that boy of yours was his child, for he looks exactly like him.”
The child looked at me with Jacob’s solemn eyes. His mother frowned as I spoke, but her husband gave an easy laugh and said, “Now that you say so, it does appear so a little.”
What a fool that man is, doctor or no doctor! Even in the old days, he could barely see what was going on under his very eyes. Perhaps all doctors are like this, for Bwana Daudi was a fool too, in many ways. Perhaps it is all that learning that drives basic sense out of their brains.
But she is lucky to have Carus Farrar all the same. That is Ntaoéka all over. She will always come right, that she will. She will come out all right because she has her eye out for what is most important in the world, and that is the skin of Ntaoéka.
I would like to be married again, although the only two offers I have received have been from men so old you could make paper for all Bwana Daudi’s maps and scribblings out of their skin. A woman expects a little more life in a man. And the burials would have cost me more than they were worth. No, better Susi or no man at all.
So I cook and wait, and cook and wait.
I do not know how long I will stay in this house. It won’t be for much longer. If I am to tell the truth, I am growing weary of Zanzibar. It is too full of the shetani of all the dead slaves. Voices whisper in the night, and shadows appear out of nowhere. And they say that the spirit of Popo Bhawa, the evil shetani who was cast out to Pemba many years ago, is preparing to come back here and wreak further havoc. It is true that the last time he appeared, it was the men he was after, not women, but still. Who wants to live in a place where that sort of thing is going on? And even if he does not come back as they all say he is planning to, the truth is that the air here is foul with the smell of too many people.
But perhaps it is a longing to leave that makes me see these things. Perhaps it is not Zanzibar that does not fit, but me that is no longer fit for Zanzibar. I have thought until my head is almost cracked, but still, these many years later, I do not understand what is to be gained from leaving your home to go tramping and sleeping in the wild, all in sea
rch of the beginning of a river whose waters have flowed since the beginning of time.
Just as I said to Bwana Daudi at Nyangwe long ago, when he was in despair over all the people massacred, there is nothing you can do now to bring them back. You were given this life, and one day you will leave it, and even so, people will live and die and be massacred just like this, and the Nile will rise and flow and flow and rise whether you find its beginning or not. And I am told that many years later, they are still looking for this place where the Nile flows from, for no man has found it yet.
But even though I will not go traipsing and gallivanting round in search of the beginnings of rivers, I know a little now of what they meant, the men, when they spoke around the fire. I understand now what it means when the urge to travel bites you like a mosquito that gives you a fever that means your feet are never still and your mind is always wandering.
There were many things that happened on that journey with Bwana Daudi, part while he was living, part when he was dead, but one thing that it left with me is the feeling I get sometimes: as though I am hemmed in all round, and all I want is to go somewhere no one has ever been, and gaze at the sky and look for miles around to see nothing but trees and hear nothing but birds.
Sometimes I think I would like to travel again, but this time, if my mother, Zafrene, wills, it will be without any person’s body. For it was, at bottom, a foolish business. I often think of Misozi’s words when she heard what the men had decided. Whoever heard of a party of people marching across a strange land with a dead body?
I even think sometimes that I will sail on a dhow with Susi, though the thought of living on the ocean is enough to turn my stomach. Sick as anything I have been, every time I have crossed to Zanzibar, but for him I would brave it, I think.
Out of Darkness, Shining Light Page 23
