Memory of Departure

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  ‘Now I know what it’s like to be rich,’ I said, grinning at my host.

  It was the wrong thing to say, graceless and carrying a hint of blame. Bwana Ahmed smiled unhappily, accepting the attention I had drawn to my poverty. Salma looked at me as if she had just noticed me. That made you sit up, didn't it poppet? Smelling the revolution in the air. Ali moved away from me at last, and I realised how tense his presence by my shoulder had made me. I glanced again at Salma and found to my surprise that she was still looking at me. I looked guiltily at Bwana Ahmed. He was staring at her. She wiped the smile off her face the moment her eyes made contact with his. She returned his gaze, and I saw her thrust her chin forward the way she had done with me earlier. I watched the little drama with anxiety. I did not want my uncle to start becoming suspicious of me. Surely there was no cause! Surely my charm and stunning looks had not wounded her heart already! I wanted him to think me a harmless, ridiculous young man, an idiot worthy of his generosity. Surely no cause for alarm! The girl turned to me again, sitting straight in her chair. Her eyes were animated with anger. He laughed softly and made a small gesture of defeat. He had conceded the point, and she glanced back at him with an aggrieved look. I wondered how they thought I was taking all this. I tried to imagine my father making that small gesture of defeat, and the image was so unlikely that I was unable to restrain a chuckle. They both looked at me, and I saw in their eyes that they thought I was laughing at their little drama.

  ‘Will you be staying with us long?’ Salma asked after the briefest of silences.

  I looked towards Bwana Ahmed, hoping he would provide a hint of my prospects. He looked away, glancing towards the kitchen door. ‘Why don’t we go to the living-room? Ali will bring the coffee in there, when he remembers. Come.’

  As he rose from the table he glanced at my hand, caked now with grease and saffron. They had used spoons. A brief look of disgust crossed his face. ‘Excuse me,’ I said and hurried away to the bathroom to wash. I looked in the mirror and wondered how long I would have to put up with being a guest at Bwana Ahmed bin Khalifa’s house and home. They were talking about Ali when I went back.

  ‘He likes you,’ Salma said. ‘You were in favour, I think . . . ’

  ‘He’s been smoking hashish again,’ Bwana Ahmed said impatiently. ‘He smokes every evening.’

  Ali came in with the coffee. He seemed to be in a hurry, depositing the tray on the table and leaving without a word. Father and daughter exchanged a look, and Bwana Ahmed shook his head. ‘He’ll go and beat his wife now. When something happens . . . your arrival today . . . he smokes too much and behaves like a fool. Then he beats his wife, poor woman. That’s all they know . . . hashish, women and violence. Then they think they can govern the country.’

  Salma rose and poured the coffee. ‘Black or white?’ she asked in English. I must have looked mystified. She smiled, remembering as I did the way I had introduced myself in the morning. ‘Do you want milk in your coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘No thank you,’ I said hesitantly, anxious not to fail another test.

  ‘Try it,’ uncle Ahmed insisted. ‘Milk and sugar – it makes coffee taste very nice. Not like that bitter stuff you drink on the coast. Try some . . . Give him some, Salma.’ She gave me a cup containing a murky, revolting-tasting liquid. I smacked my lips and hummed with pleasure as I sipped it. She smiled while her father raised his eyes to heaven at my ignorance.

  She rose to select a book from the shelf behind me, and stood behind my chair, turning the pages slowly. I was thrilled by her intimacy as she casually performed such an ordinary action. She returned to her chair, moved it a little to catch the light, and busied herself with her comfort. From where I was sitting the title looked like Selected Plains. She spread the book out on her curled-up lap, slotted her fist under her chin and buried herself away.

  Bwana Ahmed hissed tunelessly through half-closed lips, looking ahead of him. Then suddenly, like a man inspired, he rose and switched on the radio. He rummaged among a pile of books and brought out a photo album. He gave it to me without a word but with a broad smile. We spent what was left of the evening looking at the photographs. There were no pictures of Salma’s mother, and Bwana Ahmed made no references to her.

  It was still early when Salma decided she would go to bed. She passed out of the room with a quiet goodnight. I was sorry to see her go. Even sitting quietly in her chair she was a comfort. I found it more diffiuclt to repress the yawns after she had gone. In the end, Bwana Ahmed apologised for keeping me up so late after a long journey and insisted that I go to bed. I left him cradling his photo album, absorbed in the search for his pipe.

  I woke up with the sun in my eyes. A window was open and I smelt the moisture in the air. Whichever way I lay, the bed was soft and yielding. The sheets were still a little stiff with newness, and had faint traces of perfume. A muted bird-call drifted through the mesh on the window. The air was filled with the smell of green sap in the growing plants outside. I was reluctant to move, drifting through the memory of the dream I had woken from.

  The fine mesh across the window broke the force of the sun, scattering the light around the room, adding to the room’s unreality. I turned over and closed my eyes. A car drew near, crunched across the front of the house and raced past. I felt I could lie there for ever, hiding from the business that had brought me to this sanctuary.

  I could not imagine myself asking Bwana Ahmed for money. I had seen enough to guess that he would not give me anything. I knew that he held me in some contempt, not so much for something I had done or said, but for what I was there for, for what I was. I did not imagine that my clowning at the table had made any difference one way or another, except perhaps to make him suspicious of me. His anger with Salma’s brief interest in what I had said was not because he feared for her virtue, or that he assumed that I had come secretly to court my rich cousin. If he had feared that he would have asked me to leave immediately. I think he wanted to maintain an atmosphere of hostility and rejection, to be hospitable and correct, but to close off the routes that would allow me to ask the favour I had come for. That was why Salma had pretended ignorance of my arrival. I could not believe that it had all been planned, but I could imagine Bwana Ahmed saying to Salma He’s come here to ask for money. So don’t encourage him. And I could imagine Salma, in her composed and self-confident way, relishing the prospect of gently cutting country boy down to size. Why had he not just said no?

  I had thought that if my uncle proved difficult I would have to mention – though it pains me, ami yangu, to raise the matter at all – my mother’s inheritance. Having seen the man, and had a taste of his smug superiority, I did not think I could do that now. Perhaps it was because of the inheritance that he had invited me, to see if it was still an issue, to see if I would raise it. I could picture the contempt with which he would dismiss such presumption. The poor relation had not come to ask a favour, after all, but to demand some imagined right of inheritance.

  Then I began to think that perhaps I was being unkind to them. What else could he do with my father’s letter? Perhaps he thought I would enjoy the holiday. I began to feel guilty for the trouble I was causing them. I was an embarrassment, and all that my clowning had done was to make them pity and despise me. They could have treated me worse. I had no illusions about that. I think I would have gladly left had I known a way of doing so without seeming foolish to my parents.

  There was no one in the kitchen when I got there. The room was brightly painted in shades of blue. Cupboards ran along the walls, and an aluminium sink glistened under the window. Two tall fridges stood side by side just inside the back door. I marvelled at the cleanliness and order in everything, and smiled to myself as a picture of the smoke-blackened hole in the backyard of our house presented itself for comparison. It did not surprise me that I had seen no sign of any cockroaches in the house. What would they eat? I could not see any food.

  Stoppered glass jars stood on a shelf by the window,
reminiscent of the rows of specimen jars on the laboratory benches at school, containing what looked like lumps of corpses pickled in murky brine. I wondered if a search through the cupboards might yield some bread. I found a tin of coffee. I was sitting down at the checked formica table, more shades of blue, waiting for the water to boil, when Ali came in through the back door. He looked coldly at me for a moment, too surprised to have decided on a face. I saw him consider whether to take umbrage at my presence, and then he grinned.

  ‘Some more biriani?’ he asked.

  He offered me eggs for breakfast. He was wearing ragged bermuda shorts and an aged tennis shirt. The back of his left calf was disfigured by an enormous scar, and I noticed that he avoided putting his whole weight on the left leg. He bustled around me, emptying the pan I had put on the stove and filling up a kettle. He brought out a carton of eggs from the cupboard and asked me if I wanted cow’s-eye or scrambled. Cow’s-eye, he explained, was a fried egg with the yolk unbroken. It was a rare pleasure to eat eggs and my mouth watered in anticipation.

  ‘They’ve gone to town,’ he said, turning to smile at me. ‘They waited . . . but you were sleeping. You like sleeping, eh? It’s late. Two days a week Miss Salma goes to work and Bwana does not like to be late.’

  He smiled again, understanding but not absolving me of blame for having stayed in bed late. ‘The journey must’ve been tiring,’ he said. I guessed he must be nearly forty, thin and wasted, but with a reserve that gave him some dignity. I could not imagine him beating his wife. He seemed that morning such a hopeless, defeated man, affecting an interest in a guest he was allowed to dislike. He was frying the eggs with a jaunty air. There's nothing I like better than to fry up some eggs for a young guest who stays in bed until after eleven o’clock. He showed me half a face now and then, eagle-eyed at the greasy, sweating pan.

  ‘I’ve never been to the coast,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard a lot . . . It’s only a day’s journey but I can never find the time. Do you want your eggs turned over? I’ll bring your breakfast in the dining-room if you want.’ He talked in a mixture of English and Kiswahili, the Kiswahili gradually gaining the upper hand.

  ‘I’ll eat in here,’ I offered. ‘If that’s all right? Can I have some bread?’

  ‘Ehe, ehe,’ he said, moving swiftly to turn off the kettle. He poured me a coffee and placed it in front of me. He sliced a whole loaf and put it in front of me before serving me my eggs. ‘I’ve heard a lot of things,’ he said, glancing at me from under heavy eyebrows. ‘Very interesting.’ He said this kindly, reassuringly, moving away towards the sink.

  The eggs were delicious. Ali had poured milk in the coffee. I sipped it with resignation. ‘I’ve heard that people on the coast are civilised,’ he said, beaming an obsequious smile. I laughed. His face twitched, as if an internal pain had flashed across it.

  ‘People say things like that,’ I said, thinking I had wounded him.

  ‘But it’s true, no?’

  ‘These eggs are lovely,’ I said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said, offhand. ‘A friend told me. He said people are very civilised. He said they are never rough or rude.’ I wondered if he was playing a game with me. There was so much that was not being said. He must have met people from the coast, must have known that his friend was being too generous. Perhaps he simply meant that the people on the coast were foreigners, and he was performing the kindness of telling me how much better foreignness must be in order to put me at my ease.

  ‘Does your friend come from the coast?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he said, grinning as if he had caught me out in an argument. ‘No, no, no. He comes from Tororo, but he was on the coast for many years. He told me there were some rogues’ – brushing away a minor blemish – ‘but he said the real coast people are different . . . kind and civilised.’

  ‘I think your friend was lying,’ I said.

  A small frown of irritation passed across his brow. I sensed him withdrawing, looking at me again. Then a new look of malice came into his eyes. ‘You say he tells lies. He said some bad things.’ He hesitated, not with the pained uncertainty that he was trying to suggest he felt, but with caution, testing the ground before approaching his victim. I smiled encouragingly, inviting his malice, eager for the humiliation. He cleared the dirty plates, stoking his grievance. When he turned back to me, his smile had a theatrical anxiety, as if in apology for the hurtful things he was forced to say.

  ‘He said they are clever people. They cheat you all the time but you can’t call it thieving.’ He smiled again, and I waited. I suppose I knew what he was going to say. ‘There are many Arabs there.’ He hesitated again, revulsion rising on his face. ‘He said men and men have sex. You know, they enter each other through the back, like dogs.’

  He was sitting down now, across the table from me. He shook his head slowly, angling his face away from me. ‘It’s dirty . . . like animals!’ His brow was furrowed as if he was filled with horror and amazement, but his eyes were bright with pleasure. He looked at me for an explanation. When I gave none, he shook his head, mouth slightly open. ‘Men are not like that,’ he said. ‘What do they do with these men? Do they put them in prison?’

  For a terrible moment I wondered if Ali had been instructed to do this. I thought of my father and his shame, and I wished I could leave that house and return to them, and tell them that we deserved no better. The whole world holds us in contempt. Ali went back to the sink to do the washing-up, smiling to himself. I made myself another cup of coffee, without milk this time. ‘I hear,’ he said, his voice lowered, ‘that the white woman does it with her dog. I hear they let them lick their bodies. A friend who worked for a European told me that. Do you think it’s true? He said she had marks all over her.’

  I shrugged and smiled at him. His huge eyes stared blankly at me. The brief spell of abandonment to malice was now over, shielded behind this blameless neutrality. ‘It’ll rain today,’ he said.

  The memory cut through to the bone. There'll be rain tonight, she had said, as we sat in the backyard that night making up this fantasy. I went outside into the garden. The hills rolled away in front of me, rising and receding into the far distance. The light was less brazen here than at home, more subdued. I strolled towards the trees, following the chalked lines of the badminton court. Over the back fence were large fields covered with tall, brown grass. In the distance the hills seemed to disappear into a haze, as if they became part of the sky. Near the fence, unconcerned by my presence, were two crown birds. I stopped for a long while, looking at them. In the end their eyes grew suspicious. As their necks moved agitatedly, the light fell off their shiny, grey plumage in sparklets of yellow and green.

  I walked back to the trees and stretched out under the shade of a sufi tree. I woke up with a start, surprised that I had fallen asleep yet again. The sky above me had changed. The sun was no longer shining through the trees and the playful, scattered specks of cloud had gone, swallowed up by a huge, dirty mass, threatening in appearance. The air was heavy, like the breath of a hothouse. Like ectoplasm, the clouds were in motion. There was an expectant silence in the air. A sharp scream floated in from the distance. It seemed to be coming from the hills.

  I waited for the rain. I felt an overpowering lethargy, defeated. When the rain came, it was sudden and malevolently intense. I let it hit me for a few moments, drinking strength from its power. Then I rose and ran for the house, taking the steps to the terrace in two bounding leaps.

  I was in my room when they came back late in the afternoon. I saw Salma walk round the corner of the hedge and down the path to the house. Her hair was out of its tight knot, and was combed back. It made her face look leaner, harder. I think she glanced at my window out of the corner of her eye, and perhaps she saw me there. Bwana Ahmed drove up a little later. I went out to the living-room so they should not think me solitary and rude. Bwana Ahmed was in a bad temper. I heard his voice coming from the kitchen. Salma was on the terrace, sipping a soft dr
ink and looking out across the rain-sodden fields.

  ‘Had a good rest?’ she asked. She looked tired and miserable.

  ‘Excellent,’ I said, sitting on the terrace wall beside her. ‘I went out there this morning and I fell asleep under that sufi tree. Look, you can still see my coffee cup out there.’

  She shook her head at me and smiled. ‘You must have a disease or something,’ she said.

  ‘It’s the air up here.’

  ‘I must go and have a wash,’ she said. She put her glass down on the terrace wall and walked away. Bwana Ahmed walked past, calling out a greeting. ‘Hassan, you’re awake at last.’

  ‘I’m on holiday, aren’t I?’ I called back.

  Bwana Ahmed said he would have only a light supper, and Ali had to go back to the kitchen and rethink the meal. It was quite early when he called us to the table, daylight still filtering in through the dining-room window.

  ‘Where is he? He rushes us in here and then keeps us waiting. That man’s an idiot. Ali!’ Bwana Ahmed leant back in his chair, waiting for Ali to answer his call.

  Salma rested her face on her hand, her elbow on the table. The light from the window threw the faint down on her upper lip into relief. I sensed that Bwana Ahmed’s eyes had come to rest on me.

  ‘The rain seems to have stopped,’ I said to her.

  She nodded but did not say anything. Bwana Ahmed’s fingers were drumming furiously on the table. He clucked angrily, on the verge of rising. I glanced at Salma. She was sitting up, poised to move. At a second, explosive cluck, she stood up and hurried round the table. Ali strolled in through the door, carrying a tureen pressed to his chest.