Desertion

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  Amin had other ways of tormenting his younger brother, but most of them gradually became known only to the two of them as the intervention of their parents or Farida forced these tortures into secrecy. They were not really tortures, no bruises or contusions, no degradations, just mocking words and laughter, or sometimes a brutal shove or daylight robbery (marbles or sweets), and an unrelenting desire for primacy which was non-negotiable. Rashid understood very early that the torments were unavoidable, the price he had to pay for his brother’s love, necessary to the ritual of intimacy. It was not always enough that Rashid was compliant and obedient for the most part. There were times when Amin wished to make a display, to make an exhibition of his omnipotence, to have his every demand met, even if for most of the time he was satisfied with having the upper hand. This regime was at its most brutal when they were very young. As they grew older, and Rashid became less pliant, Amin became more composed, more subtle and more adept at disguising his dominion, adroitly dispersing the moment of revolt. Other people made it harder for Amin to give up his complicated ascendancy because they treated the two of them as if they were utterly unalike. For a while, Farida tended to do the opposite and at times pretended to mix them up. Everyone else, from their parents and relatives to the most distant neighbour and the vaguest of street acquaintances, treated them as if they were unlike each other.

  It was a small place, and no neighbour was that distant nor were any acquaintances that vague, and everyone knew who everyone was. In any case, none of them were willing to give up their right to talk about and interfere in other people’s lives, to be aghast at that one’s infraction and the other one’s dereliction, and to expect yet another one to bring calamity down on his family, you mark my words. Some of them were merely familiar faces in the streets to the two brothers, without names or connection, yet even these people did not hesitate to offer an opinion or discriminate between them. They were different, no doubt, in the little ways that make us speak about our individuality and uniqueness while we trot with the herd, but there was something of a crude formula in the treatment they received. Amin was the elder and Rashid was the younger. Farida did not count in this equation since she was a sister, and therefore had to be spoken about differently and to a different timetable of change and expectations. For the brothers, that was what it amounted to at first, the elder and the younger, but out of it grew a story of their difference whose consequence was a tight body of petty entitlements and prohibitions which became awkward to change as they grew older.

  At home Amin was always Amin, but Rashid had to answer to a variety of diminutives. When he was very young, he was Shishi or Didi, or even Rara, all carelessly coined by his own thick tongue when required to pronounce his name. From an early age he learned to supply the means with which to burden his life and invite mockery. Then he became Kishindo, which means a commotion, because he was thought noisy and restless. Kishindo kishafika. To some, such names are an expression of affectionate kinship, and those who have never had to answer to some such may even envy ones who have, seeing themselves as unloved or loved reservedly. But Rashid chafed under them, felt the mockery in them more than the affection, and hated the orchestrated laughter that followed any protest he made. Most of all he hated that he could not shrug the names off, or laugh at them too, join in the fun. He had to struggle to restrain the impulse to run out of the house in a wail when they started. Later, he was Mtaliana, the Italian, which was the name that stuck the longest.

  This was how he acquired that name. His Uncle Habib, his father’s brother, worked as a consignment clerk in the Customs House on the waterfront. Amin and Rashid sometimes stood in the great doorway of the Customs House just to see him sitting there at his section of the counter, the great clock on the wall behind him, the ceiling fans whirling into a blur high above them. It would be on a detour from Koran school, perhaps, taking the long way home through Forodhani and along the waterfront. Or it would be during school holidays, when idle children and youth wandered into every nook and cranny of the town. Then, if the doorway was not choked with merchants and scribes, they would go in and stand in the tiled hallway, dwarfed by the pillars and the huge windows that filled the chamber with an underwater light. If it was quiet, and he saw them, Uncle Habib beckoned them over and leaned over the counter to shake their hands while they grinned with pleasure and self-importance.

  They had several uncles, but he was the most glamorous because he had been to war with the British forces in Abyssinia. At home they had a framed studio photograph of him in his KAR uniform, the brim of his hat folded back against the crown like a European settler, the chin strap biting into his cheeks. It was he who gave Rashid a pocket Italian phrase-book.

  It had been given to Uncle Habib as a gift by the agent of a motor company that was beginning to specialise in the Vespa scooter. This was in the days when such a trinket was adequate to win the goodwill of petty officials, when such offerings were made openly, standing under the green pillared canopy of the Customs House itself, in front of its huge studded doors, in sight of the main waterfront promenade. (The Customs House is still there, I should think, though by now it is probably a café for tourists called The Blue Parrot or the Blue Marlin or the Blue something else.) In those days, the agent from Kapadia Motors could offer an Italian phrase-book, and a poster of a Venetian canal, or one of cypresses on a Tuscan hillside, and expedite his dealings with the customs official. If there was any furtiveness in such exchanges, it was because these trinkets were valuable. They were tokens of the big world, which was always cleaner and brighter than the dark, familiar one of every day. This big world did not have to be European. It could be a Japanese calendar, with pictures of delicately-lit paper houses and miniature bushes of blazing azaleas. Or it could be Lebanese grapes nestling in tissue-paper, in fruit boxes stamped with a silhouette of a cedar tree, or Iraqi dates in packets illustrated with a painting of an oasis. Nothing Indian, that was part of the odorous every day. European was best, though. The European world was remote and intimidating in a complicated way, and these tokens were like parts of its sprawling body, handled and consumed with some hunger. The agent did not want to be relieved of these valuable trinkets by any bright-eyed passer-by who would do nothing for him.

  In our hungrier times such gifts would be offensive. They would only expedite irritation and delays. The official would remember urgent business elsewhere, and when at last he was available, he might be awkward. He might undertake a deliberate and meticulous search of the consignment, and observe a punctilious adherence to the bureaucratic form, perhaps even muse over a threat of prosecution for customs infringement under a previously unknown regulation. This is not to say that the gift required had to be substantial enough to deposit in a numbered Swiss bank account, not for a ustoms clerk, although that depended on where you were and what you were consigning. It did not need to be that substantial at all, and often was only expected to be a gracious offering, a gesture of gratitude, a hand-out, which was necessary for the official’s self-esteem and for the petty luxuries which his meagre salary made impossible. For, of course, the extended family never ceased in its demands, and even cigarettes were expensive.

  What has changed so much that our times are so unruly now when they weren’t before? What is so different that Uncle Habib could accept a phrase-book and a poster with a thrill of pleasure then, and expedite the business of Kapadia Motors with a smile, when now he would be greedy and probably mean? The British have gone, that’s what. When they were here everything was run like a school for monkeys. This is not allowed, that is not allowed. Wrong, wrong, off to jail. Backward, corrupt, childish, only us British are honest and intelligent and efficient. The most honest, most fair, most efficient rulers since the dawn of time. Then they left to go back to their own unmanageable corruptions and the monkeys took over. The petty greed of the customs official is nothing like the flagrant syndicates which the President and his Ministers run, of course, but the example is there for all
to profit from.

  In any case, in those more moderate times Uncle Habib accepted the Italian phrase-book and shook hands with the agent of Kapadia Motors on the steps of the Customs House, in view of anyone who might have been strolling by the sea. Then later that afternoon he gave the book to his nine-year-old nephew, Rashid. He kept the poster of cypresses on a Tuscan hillside for himself.

  Rashid was not sure what it was exactly, but something about the phrase-book appealed to him. Perhaps it was the idea of a box of statements that could see you through all of life’s contingencies that appealed. Or perhaps it was the look of Italian, or what sounds he was able to make from the phrases on the page, for there was no one there who could tell him how to say the words he saw there. No one he knew spoke Italian nor had ever heard it spoken, except for Uncle Habib himself, who must have heard several Italians begging for mercy. Perhaps it was the association of the book with Uncle Habib’s glamour as a soldier against the Italians that made it attractive. No one could ask Uncle Habib anything about the war. If anyone did, he frowned or laughed or ignored the question, so Rashid could not try out the phrases on him.

  Rashid practised and learned several of the phrases, and when he could, replied to questions in Italian, or what he thought Italian sounded like. It was a spectacularly popular trick. At first he only spoke Italian at home, making everyone laugh at his incomprehensible gibberish. Then as his fame spread, people would fire questions at him in the streets just to hear him spouting off. He became tedious at home when he refused to answer questions except in Italian, but everyone still laughed despite their irritation. Once Farida stole the book and hid it somewhere (under her mattress as it turned out), because she said she could not take any more of his gabble, but Rashid made such an irresponsible fuss, refusing to speak, refusing food, refusing to look his mother in the eye despite the most dire threats, that the book had to be produced. Then the torrent of Italian resumed, now delivered with triumphant malice whenever Farida was around and there was someone else nearby who would offer protection from her irritable pinches and smacks. His father took the book from him sometimes when he was in this mood, to see if he could identify the phrases, and to see if Rashid was really saying them or only making noises. He announced to the family that indeed he was speaking Italian. That was how he became Mtaliana. But even that, which was a name he brought on himself for his exhibitionism, and which for so long made him smile, he came to hate when he was an adolescent, when little children shouted it after him in the streets.

  But it wasn’t only names and teasing. It was the way he was made to feel irresponsible and feeble by everyone. If there were instructions to be given, they were addressed to Amin. If there was money involved, to go to the market or to convey to someone, it was entrusted to Amin. Sometimes it was even money for Rashid, but still it was given to Amin: this is for your brother, to buy his sandals, to go to the cinema, to pay for something at school. Look after the dreamer.

  To make matters worse for him, and perhaps to justify these reservations about him, the very first time Rashid was trusted with money, he lost it. He was only eight at the time, but still, he should have done better. He should have realised that his reputation was at stake, that history was made up of such continuous moments and that everything counted. It happened like this. His teacher gave him a note to take to his mother. No, he didn’t think it was anything to do with what he might have done wrong at school. That was not how such things were done. For a start, most parents probably could not read, so it would be the culprit himself who would have to deliver his own denunciation. Even children would know the wise thing to do in that circumstance. For another thing, the teacher was capable of letting a child know of any wrong-doing himself, in no uncertain terms. In fact, teachers often seemed to enjoy this part of their duties most of all. No, Rashid didn’t think there was anything suspicious about taking a note from a man to his mother. He was too young for that, and in any case, the teacher was known to write notes to selected parents to ask for a loan now and then. Usually it was towards the end of the month, and he paid back promptly, using the children as his messengers. Also, the children were terrified of this teacher, who never smiled at them but sometimes laughed unnervingly, and at other times raged at them unpredictably, whirling his arms in exasperation and landing knuckly blows on the backs of nearby heads. So it never occurred to any of them to wonder about the meaning of his instructions, ever. They knelt and obeyed, which was how the teacher wanted it.

  In addition to the loans from parents, the teacher had other ways of augmenting his income. Every school morning, he instructed the class to stand up and chant a times-table first thing, one of those delightful practices that came unchanged from the English elementary school system. The chanting may have been done in a different language, but the moral effect was the same. The children stood up behind their desks, their arms by their sides, and waited for the teacher to announce the number for the day by saying the first line, for example Tatu mara moja, Three times one. Then he stood facing the class while they sang the numbers, smiling with pleasure at their taut childish voices, shutting his eyes briefly and swaying slightly as if to the rhythm of a sonorous qasida. If a voice uttered the wrong words, his eyes flew there unmistakably, and fixed the offender in a glare that promised pain. Tatu mara moja tatu, Tatu mara mbili sita, Tatu mara tatu tisa and so on. Sometimes, if he was not satisfied, or if he had not had enough of the straining little voices, he ordered another number. Then he took a collection.

  As he called the names out of the class register, each child had to walk up to the teacher’s desk and put a five-cent piece on the plate there. He was then marked present. The teacher never said what the money was for, but you didn’t need to be a child prodigy to guess that those precious pennies were going straight into his belly. He knew that most of the children were given a few cents to take to school, for a fruit juice at break, or a small cone of nuts, and to feel good about school. He relieved them of some of these cents before they became a nuisance to them. If a child had no money at all, he was instructed to borrow from another child, one of the rich ones. There was always someone who would be too frightened not to hand over his spare cents. The biggest boy in the class ran a syndicate of his own, every week forcing someone to buy something useless from him and requiring a payment of five cents a day, which he duly handed over to the teacher at registration as his own contribution to their teacher’s happiness.

  Five cents is nothing these days, or even less than nothing. The coin for it does not even exist. Then, in the early 1950s, you would have bought a handsome mango for that money, and for ten cents you would have bought a loaf of bread or a plate of spinach or a roast cassava or a dish of Adnan’s potato na urojo, or even a small stick of grilled meat. Five cents was not a pittance to an eight ear-old at that time. Now a small mango costs twenty shillings. You would have bought four hundred mangoes for that then, and the fruit-seller would probably have added another dozen as bakhshish for your custom. Never mind. By the time the teacher had made his daily collection from forty or so children in his class, he had more than enough money for his dinner. Usually, immediately after the collection, he picked out a few coins and sent one of the children to a nearby café to fetch him a glass of milk, so he could make a healthy start to his working day. Other teachers knew he did this, the parents knew he did this, every day, yet no one said a word. He was a teacher, a figure of respect. He was allowed to be eccentric, and the stories of his whimsies and idiosyncrasies would swell into a myth that would seem less oppressive with time. All the teachers were like that, famed for one quirk or another. The quirks were sometimes cruelties or oppressions they inflicted on the children, insult and intimidation and violence, no laughing matter when you looked at them closely, but none the less everyone laughed, or at least smiled, at these excesses and somehow made them seem harmless. That was how things always were. For a parent to confront one of them over such matters was to show ingratitude, to humiliate
the teacher, and to do so over a few cents would have been unbearable.

  Anyway, Rashid was given a note by this teacher to take home to his mother, and the next day his mother gave him an envelope with some money in it to give to the teacher. A few days later the teacher called him back at the end of classes and gave him two folded notes to give back to his mother, whispering his gratitude. For despite the way he was with the children, he was a man of courtesy. If you only saw him in the streets, you would see a smiling man of manners, as we have a way of saying. You would not imagine the charge of terror he generated in class.

  It was a Friday afternoon, when school finished half an hour earlier so that the children could go to prayers. Rashid hurried home, threw his school shorts on the heap of dirty washing without a second thought for his mother to wash, and then changed into his Friday mosque clothes and went to join the other boys under the banyan tree at the waterfront until it was time for the Juma’a prayers. He only remembered about the money when he came to put on his shorts on Monday morning and felt a coagulated lump of paper in his pocket. He had not mentioned the errand to Amin. He wanted to do the errand himself, without Amin’s interfering advice. If he had mentioned it, Amin might have reminded him about giving the money back and he would not have had to shuffle up to his mother with the dried pellet of paper in his hand and with tearful and pathetic excuses. ‘What did I tell you?’ his mother said. ‘This boy would lose his head if it wasn’t attached to him.’ Mothers are the same everywhere in this respect. They use the same clichés and say the same hurtful things to their younger children. After that it was back to business as usual: Amin, make sure Rashid hands in his homework, goes to the barber, comes home immediately after school, and so on.