Memory of Departure

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  I spent the rest of the week chasing around Nairobi with Bwana Ahmed. Everywhere he went, he argued with people, and swore as we departed that he would never take his business there again. He spoke of me as his nephew who had come to work for him. I began to feel as if I was something of his, something he owned. The managers of his three businesses treated me with an obsequiousness I found hard to understand. I had heard Bwana Ahmed say to them in my hearing that I was to take over their jobs. He encouraged a habit of dependence, and persuaded the people who worked for him to be grateful for the patronage he granted them by giving them work. I knew that I would not stay to work for him, but he tempted me with unexpected kindnesses that came in moods and spasms, and spoke of the beginnings of a warmth towards me.

  There was also Salma. I saw the pleasure she took in the account her father gave of our day, and the easy manner with which she admitted me into a kind of family intimacy. It was not the kind of intimacy I wanted, and I found myself resisting being cast as a member of the family. I was hardly ever alone with her, but I still found myself playing the hazardous and complicated game of making sure she understood that I was attracted to her. I wonder now where I found the nerve for such boldness.

  Bwana Ahmed went out on Saturday afternoon to visit a friend in hospital. I felt a tension as soon as Salma and I were alone. She talked freely, it seemed, but our eyes seemed to meet more often than usual. I found myself getting hot at the reassurance that her manner offered me. I felt myself leaning back with some relief, thinking that I could let things take their course more gently. She went to her room and brought out her record-player. We spent the afternoon listening to old records while Salma told me of times and events connected with them. She taught me how to do the waltz. At least, she held me while I tried to remember where to put my feet. We were careful that our bodies should not touch, but I thrilled at the warmth of an angled arm resting on mine, and the gentle pressure of her hand as it shifted on my shoulder and accidentally brushed the nape of my neck. At the end of the dancing lessons, we shared little smiles of complicity, which Salma accompanied with merciless analyses of my dancing potential.

  It was Ali who came in and put an end to our little game. His arm was in a cast, and his wife came to help him in the kitchen, but he still insisted on doing the chores in the house himself. He had come in to draw the curtains. When I noticed him, he was standing in the archway watching us. He smiled and shook his head at our silliness, but I saw a hard, suspicious look in his eyes.

  ‘Is there a party?’ he asked, doing some quick and surprisingly elegant dance-steps. ‘Bwana will be home very soon.’

  He walked to the windows to draw the curtains and glanced over his shoulder at Salma, his face turned away from me. She looked a little guilty, and I could guess what his look said to her. I knew I had not vanquished him, that even in my new acceptance in the household he still treated me with ill-concealed dislike. To him I was still the unwelcome guest, and my dancing with Salma was overweening presumption.

  I thought about her all the time, and wove detailed fantasies about our coming together. I feared she would have been recalled to her senses by Ali’s look, so every time she looked at me and spoke without embarrassment, I took new heart. There were times when it all seemed foolish and dangerous, but there seemed no way of stopping what had been started. I tried to think of myself as the conquering hero, who would ravish the daughter of the proud lord and make her love me, and then abandon her. It was a safer fantasy than the others I entertained, but the least truthful. If I made love to her, I would be wrong by any understanding of how a guest should act. If I left her too soon, I was afraid I would lose her for ever, and I would never know what it would have been like to know her. Make love to her! I would not even have known where to start. I don’t think that my desire for her was as concentrated and hard as that. I wanted her to be with me, smiling in my face, leaning her warmth against my body. I wanted to please her with my cleverness, and have her reward me with her affection.

  In the twilight, we would sit in the garden. The slanting sun would set her hair on fire and burnish her skin with red. Every day things became more difficult, and I dreaded the passing of each day. I told myself that it was foolish, cowardly, to deny the fulfilment of what I felt, that I should not resist but lunge joyously into the flood and live the consequences as I could.

  Ali watched us now. Sometimes I glanced up to find Bwana Ahmed looking at me, with a thoughtful and worried stare. At those times I felt like leaving, to escape the suspicion and return later under different terms. I did not trust enough in luck to risk that, and I could not leave while so much was still unspoken. As the days passed, this stew of excitement and guilt grew thicker and more enervating. Bwana Ahmed was beginning to find it difficult to talk to me again. It made it worse that I felt I could sympathise with him.

  On a Wednesday, during the third week of my stay with them, she asked me to go to town with her. She had arranged to meet Mariam again, and Mariam had asked that I should come too. Bwana Ahmed excused me from accompanying him as usual with a casual wave of the hand. He would have loved to forbid it, but I understood enough now to know that that was not how they lived. I wanted to tell him that I would not be staying, because I thought that he regretted that offer too. I had not found the opportunity yet, and did not want to be rushed away from Nairobi before I was ready. He still talked as if I would stay, but with less satisfaction at his own generosity.

  She took me to the bookshop where she worked two days a week. It was a tiny shop in the shadow of a church, crammed with translations of religious works and school textbooks. The manager was young, and very busy, but he still found time to be welcoming and friendly. After that we wandered the streets, looking into shops and stores.

  ‘I don’t understand why we’re going into these shops,’ I complained. ‘You don’t buy anything. We go in and look at things, and then you argue with the shopkeeper and then we leave. What’s the point of it?’

  ‘The point is I enjoy it,’ she said, not in the least cast down. ‘I like to see what there is.’

  I had an unhappy collision with a fruit-seller and his barrow. The man abused me with fierce relish and venom. He gave a historical account of my lineage that left me trembling with real rage and shame. I insisted that we went to Mariam’s after that. We found her in her room at the University. She looked tired and unhappy, and explained that the work was not going well. ‘However radically I think things out, as soon as I sit down to write, all that comes out is the same competent, safe crap. I want to argue the link between art in Africa and the social reality of its context. And all that comes out is the same pseudo-religious bullshit. I’m just not good enough to do it.’

  We made encouraging noises. I wished I could understand the difficulties, that they were my difficulties, that I too could be made unhappy by such failures. I think things became very clear to her very quickly, and the arch smile that she gave me was reassuring. Salma told her about the offer of the job. ‘Will you stay?’ she asked.

  I waited for what seemed a long time, uncertain how openly I should speak. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

  Mariam nodded approvingly. I did not dare glance at Salma.

  ‘Why not?’ Salma asked. She did not sound distressed or disturbed, and I felt slightly hurt that she was not more upset. She just sounded interested.

  ‘Because he wants to go and do things for himself first,’ Mariam said. ‘Why should he want to work in a butcher’s shop or run endless errands for your father? He’s got better things to do, haven’t you? Find out about Picasso and Tolkien for a start!’

  ‘I was just interested, Mariam,’ Salma protested. ‘Anyway, there are better things in life than finding out about Picasso and Tolkien.’

  ‘Like what?’ exclaimed Mariam, amazed by this heresy.

  ‘Like learning to waltz,’ said Salma, smiling at her friend. ‘I’ve been teaching him how to waltz.’

  ‘Hmmm! I see I’m
behind the times here,’ said Mariam. ‘Are you taking him to a ball or something? Is there anything else you’ve taught him? I hope underneath all this new sophistication there’s still the nice country boy that I met a few weeks ago.’

  ‘You sound like two witches discussing a morsel that one of you is about to eat,’ I protested.

  ‘About to?’ said Mariam, pretending to be surprised. ‘I thought that the meal was all over . . . ’

  ‘Mariam!’ groaned Salma.

  ‘Listen Hassan,’ said Mariam, talking with a cooing maternal voice. ‘If they’re nasty to you, come to me. There’s always a home for you here.’

  We went back to the Indian café for lunch, and Mariam was like somebody let out of prison. She talked endlessly, teasing Salma and manufacturing stories about the other customers. She told us about her brother, who was expected back from America any day. He had married an American woman, and her parents, shocked and grief-stricken, were awaiting his return without any of the joy that they hoped to feel.

  ‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ she said to me. ‘Don’t complicate your parents’ lives. In your wanderings around the globe, remember just to use the women that you find there. Don’t bother to marry one. That’s just dirty. I presume you will be wandering the globe?’

  ‘How?’ asked Salma. There was just a hint of plaintiveness in her voice, and my heart warmed at the sympathy.

  ‘He’ll find a way. Won’t you, Picasso?’

  We said goodbye in the street. Mariam made comical faces as she talked about returning to the dissertation. She told me I should go and see her on her own sometime.

  It seemed that we walked for hours, only talking now and then: past parked cars and hotel doorways, past shops selling records of Jim Reeves and Elvis Presley, and everything else from shoe-laces to television sets. Past newsagents and magazine stands that sold pictures of Castro and Idi Amin. We saw old men lying drunk in the streets. We walked under green trees, past trinkets displayed on pavements, past fat nannies pushing prams. A man was forecasting the end of the world from the roof of a bus. A policeman stiffened to salute a passing minister’s car. A motor cyclist thundered past, dangerously near the kerb. Finally we sat down on a park bench, within sight of the government buildings. We were shielded from the roads by flowering bushes and ornamental trees. She took my hand, raised it to her mouth and kissed it. We traded shy smiles. She released my hand, far too soon. I was too surprised to do anything.

  ‘Why won’t you stay?’ she asked. She asked gently, not demanding but asking to understand.

  ‘Because I don’t want to be owned. I don’t want to be dependent on how your father feels about me. I don’t want to become like those managers who work for him. I’m not just being unkind about your father. That’s how he’s done things, and that’s how he’s succeeded. I don’t think I’m the right person . . . Do you understand? I haven’t explained very well, but I don’t mean to be unkind. I wish I could stay.’

  She wanted me to say more, but I could not get the words out. I had no experience of scenes like these, and when I had tried the words out in my mind, they had sounded cloying and untrue. ‘I wish I could stay,’ I repeated.

  ‘I wish you could stay too,’ she said, smiling at my failure. ‘But you don’t have to go yet, do you?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘It’s been . . . wonderful meeting you. I’ll miss you.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll come back,’ she said.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘You asked me something a while ago,’ she said, leaning away from me. ‘And I didn’t answer you.’

  ‘About your mother,’ I said.

  ‘She died when I was a child,’ she went on. ‘She poisoned herself.’

  ‘Oh no.’ I held her in my arms and felt her sigh and lean against me. After a moment she pushed herself off and sat up.

  ‘I don’t know why,’ she said. ‘Let me talk about it. My father never speaks of her. I used to ask him when I was younger. Oh, he told me things like she, came from Malindi . . . and that . . . God took her away when I was small . . . that kind of thing. He has been very good, my father. I know he seems harsh and impatient, and he’s irritable and sometimes cruel . . . but he’s been very good. He’s a good man,’ she said, her eyes beginning to water.

  ‘Yes I know,’ I said.

  ‘Ali and him. Ali has been with us for a long time. You must have wondered, the things he does . . . He’s almost one of the family. Well, I’m sure that’s not how he sees it. He’s still the servant.’

  ‘How did you find out? About your mother?’

  I asked. ‘Mariam found out. We’ve known each other since we were children. She was always like an elder sister. They kept it from her as well, all these years. It slipped out. Her mother told her. You know how secretive people are about these things. She said she couldn’t get very much out of her mother. And I just don’t know how to ask my father about it. It probably sounds spineless to you.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

  ‘My mother poisoned herself and I don’t know how to ask about what had happened. I’m very afraid of hurting him more. I’m even more afraid that he won’t tell me, and he’ll turn away from me. He gets so angry sometimes. He goes into these rages . . . ’

  ‘My mother warned me,’ I said, smiling.

  ‘Did she?’ asked Salma, laughing. Tears were running down her face. ‘It’s not that I need to understand her more. I can’t do anything about her. But to understand him . . . and us . . . between us. He’s hiding this misery, and he won’t even . . . let me know about it. He’s been like that all these years, and only last year I began to understand why. He won’t let me ask him, and I feel I should.’

  I took her hand and held it between both of mine.

  ‘And now you’re here to make everything even more complicated,’ she said, reaching out and touching my face with her hand. She laughed. ‘He told me you’d be coming. We made such fun of you. He told me about your mother, when they were children. All the old days . . . ’

  ‘Did he tell you about my father?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He told me.’

  ‘Did he tell you that he was in prison?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He told me everything.’

  ‘Did he tell you that my father had buggered a little boy? And that the little boy had nearly gone mad? And that people say that he used to sell little boys to the Arabs? And that he’s a drunk and spends as much time as he can in brothels?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘God, what you must have expected!’

  I felt suddenly very sorry for them, and for all the misery I had added to their lives. It must have seemed a terrible betrayal that their own child should think of them so unfeelingly.

  ‘We expected a clown,’ said Salma. ‘We expected somebody we could laugh at. But you came.’ She laughed and touched me again. ‘Now he feels guilty. He shouldn’t have asked you to come. He can’t help you. You know that, don’t you? He’s had a very bad time. What you were saying about the managers . . . They’ve cheated him. All those managers are new. They all steal from him. He shouldn’t have asked you to come. He knows that.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I knew as soon as I came here. You both made that clear.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, looking comically contrite.

  ‘No, I was a clown when I first came. Not for the reasons you expected. All that biriani performance . . . I think I was doing all that for myself, being such a crass creep that I could pretend that I was not being serious, that I was superior to the begging mission I was on. Something like that . . . But I’m glad I came. I met you. And I’m glad in other ways that I came. I’m only sorry that I’ll have to leave, and not see you.’

  ‘But you’ll be back.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be back,’ I said.

  ‘What will you do?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll go back home . . . and find some way .
. .’

  It was beginning to get dark when we decided to move. She suggested the cinema, reluctant as I was to return to the house. I was worried what Bwana Ahmed would do if we were late, but she did not seem anxious about that. ‘When you go, you must write,’ she said.

  ‘I will,’ I said. The streets were too brightly lit for me to embrace her. The cinema was showing The Confessions of an English Opium Eater. We decided that it was too dreary, but we were both desperate for the toilet. We were forced to buy tickets just for the pleasure of using the lavs. It was worth the money. There were carpets on the floor, air extractors humming gently overhead, subtle perfumes scenting the air.

  I felt foolish holding hands on the bus, and our elbows seemed to get in the way. The bus was almost empty but we talked in whispers. In the end, casting caution to the winds, she rested her head on my shoulder and I put my arm around her. We arrived only too soon. As we strolled down the path she moved away from me. It must have been eight or nine in the evening, pitch dark everywhere, except for the squares of ground lit up by the light from the windows. I stood behind her as she struggled with the lock. The door was yanked out of her hands, and her father stood before us, a squat lump of rage.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he shouted through gritted teeth. ‘Get in here.’

  He motioned sharply for us to enter. As Salma walked past him, he cuffed her powerfully on the back of her head. She staggered forward then turned round to face him, her mouth open with shock and hurt. Tears formed in her eyes. He stepped forward and slapped her across the face. She staggered again, crying out with pain. ‘How could you do this? After everything how could you do this?’ he shouted.

  He held his head and groaned. She shook her head, her eyes now streaming tears. ‘Daddy,’ she said, moving towards him. He looked up, then stepped forward to meet her and punched her full in the mouth. Her whole face leapt with surprise and fear. Blood spurted out of her mouth.