Memory of Departure

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  ‘Well, that’s an honour.’

  ‘Don’t be cheeky,’ she said, slapping me on the arm. ‘Go and wash. Go on, my father, and I’ll get your food ready.’

  The bathroom recalled with pungent force the comforts I had left behind. It did not take much effort to pinch my nose and close my eyes to the squalor, and think of the warmth of my welcome. When I came out, I saw that my mother had spread a new mat in the yard, a busati. Saida was already stretched out on it, dozing. She stirred as I sat down beside her.

  ‘She said she wanted to wait and greet you properly,’ my mother said. ‘She should be in bed. Bi Mkubwa is groaning again. The poor little one finds it difficult when she’s like that, but your grandmother insists that she stays in there. She says she gets frightened on her own.’

  Saida sat up with her eyes still closed. My mother took her by the hand and smartly yanked her to her feet. Saida whimpered in protest and turned back to me. ‘Have you got a present for me?’ she asked.

  ‘For an ugly thing like you? No, of course not,’ I said.

  She made a face of indescribable ugliness as she was being dragged away. My mother came back out looking harassed and unhappy. ‘She’s groaning again. It’s not right for a child to have to sleep with her,’ she said in a whisper.

  ‘Then don’t let her. If she’s as ill as you say, suppose something happens. Suppose she . . . ’

  ‘Don’t say it,’ she interrupted me. ‘I’ll have to go and sleep with her. Saida can sleep in our room.’

  She dropped her eyes as I looked at her. I was thinking of the time when I had been accorded that honour. ‘Let her come and sleep in with me,’ I said. ‘We can move a mattress or a bedspread in tomorrow.’

  ‘All right,’ she said in a small voice, assuming that I was blaming her for past wrongs. ‘You haven’t had a very cheerful homecoming.’

  ‘I’ve had a wonderful homecoming. I’m very glad to be back.’

  ‘Was it very difficult in Nairobi? You didn’t get into any trouble, did you? No wait, let me just get the food,’ she said. She made me an onion omelette, and brought me three slices of boflo. ‘We don’t have any milk. Do you mind dry tea or shall I make you some coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘Dry tea will be nice,’ I said. ‘Can you put some ginger in it? Do we have any?’

  ‘Dry tea and ginger! Is this what the Europeans in Nairobi drink?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘They drink coffee with milk and sugar in it. You should try it. It’s what civilised people drink.’

  She knew that things had gone wrong. She was making it clear to me whose side she was on, trying to make me feel better about talking. ‘How’s Ba?’ I asked when she came to sit with me.

  ‘He’s the same,’ she said, turning her mouth down in that familiar gesture of long-suffering resignation. ‘He still thinks he’s a young man. You know how he is. Perhaps he’s a little worse, I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘How worse?’

  ‘You know how he is,’ she said, rubbing her temples with the tips of her fingers. ‘He drinks too much and then swears that he’ll get better and that he’ll stop . . . He means it, and he weeps and swears . . . ’ She stopped and stared at me, surprised at how much she had told me. She nodded and continued. ‘He’s going through one of his times. He didn’t come home last night. When he comes he’s so drunk . . . They’ll sack him from his job, and then God knows what we’ll do. He goes out like this and does all these dirty things. He thinks I don’t know.’

  She looked at me silently for a long time, her eyes large with an old pain. Then a faint smile started to appear on her face. ‘That’s your strength,’ she said, her smile growing. ‘You hold steady with your silence. You don’t let it weaken. At the back of it I can hear the small little noise of your heart beating. And it’s only when you were not here that I knew I had heard it all the time. Do you understand what I mean? You hold steady while we tire and weaken, and all the time your heart remains true. What a homecoming you’ve had! I wanted to say that, and to thank God that He has brought you safely back to us.’

  I ate in silence, struggling to hold back the tears that threatened to destroy my new image as a strong, silent man.

  She had shut the window of the guest-room and sprayed it with insect-killer. The smell of the DDT mingled with the smell of dust and new whitewash to produce a rasping atmosphere that seemed to be tearing the lining off the back of my throat. She had gone to check on my grandmother, saying that she would not be long. When she came in, she sat in the chair next to me. The room was so small that we were sitting barely inches apart. She sighed, and gathered the kanga tightly round her shoulders, expecting not to find any pleasure in what she was about to hear.

  ‘I’m ready,’ she said.

  ‘He did not intend to help me,’ I said. ‘He had decided even before I went. He told me himself later, but I knew it anyway as soon as I arrived there. They thought I would be a clown and they would have a laugh at my expense. Don’t look like that, mama. That’s true. Even the servant treated me like a . . . beggar when I first went there. So I decided I would at least have a holiday.’

  ‘He told you himself that he had never intended to help you?’ she asked. I knew she believed me, and I don’t think she was really surprised. ‘Did you remind him about the inheritance?’

  ‘He would’ve liked that,’ I said. ‘Then he really would have had something to laugh at me about. You don’t know how they live. He convinces himself that he’s right about everything. He thinks everybody wants to cheat him. He offered me a job. He asked me to stay and work for him, but I didn’t want that kind of life . . . bustling around doing nothing, and suspicion all the time.’

  ‘But you should have, you should have mentioned the inheritance,’ she insisted.

  ‘I couldn’t. He was treating me like some poor relation from the sticks who’d come to ask a favour. If I’d started to demand your inheritance he’d have assumed I was being presumptuous and kicked me out of his house sooner than he did.’

  ‘He kicked you out?’ she asked, suddenly looking angry. ‘That Ahmed with the big mouth! He was always like that, always big big big man, even when we were children. How dare he?’

  ‘You didn’t tell me he had a daughter,’ I said, trying not to smile but failing.

  I saw her anger deflating. Her jaw slackened and her mouth fell ostentatiously open. ‘What did you do?’ she asked.

  ‘I like her. I’m going to marry her one day.’

  ‘Oh my God. Couldn’t you just do what you had gone there for? Couldn’t you just leave that alone? What did you do? What did you do to her?’ she demanded, getting angry with me.

  ‘I didn’t do anything. He thought I did, that’s why he threw me out.’

  ‘Your family is cursed,’ she said, panting now with anger. ‘You couldn’t leave that alone for a few days? You had to go there and behave like a ram when you know what he thinks of us. I would’ve thrown you out too if you’d come and done that. Don’t you have any respect for yourselves, any of you? You’re all the same, just like your father, all of you. Then you pretend that he had already decided not to help you.’

  ‘I’m not pretending. It’s true. He really was not going to help,’ I said. ‘And she’s beautiful. Her name is Salma, and she likes me too. Her eyes are grey, and her face is . . . a little round, and cheerful. She speaks softly and is always kind. She is very thoughtful and clever. And one day I’m going to marry her.’

  ‘You went there to ask for help, so that you could do something useful with your life. You didn’t go there to play Prince Qamar Zaman, and dishonour your uncle’s daughter.’

  ‘I did not dishonour anybody,’ I said, speaking calmly and smiling at her. I wanted to convince her about Salma, to show her that things were not as they seemed. ‘Nothing happened. We just went to town together a few times, and we talked. If it wasn’t for her, I would’ve been treated like a dog in that house. She argued with h
er father, persuaded him that what they had done was wrong. You wait until you meet her. You’ll like her, mama.’

  ‘All right, she’s wonderful,’ she said, raising her hand to stop me. ‘But it wasn’t right what you did. To go into somebody’s house as a guest and do something like that. You were wrong to do that.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I told myself every day. I went this way and that way . . . but I was afraid that if I left I would never see her again.’

  ‘And nothing happened?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing happened. Except that I told her . . . and I know that she loves me too.’

  ‘How do you know?’ she asked, as if suspicious that I was making too much of what I knew of her.

  ‘She embraced me. And she asked me to write.’

  ‘To write! Don’t write. Your uncle might find the letters,’ she said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I told him I was going back for her one day.’

  She chuckled, and then laughed. ‘You must be serious,’ she said. ‘What did he say?’

  I had hoped that she would not be able to resist the thought of a girl I had found to love. I told her of what happened when we came back from Nairobi that night. I did not tell her the things that Bwana Ahmed said about Ba.

  ‘Did you know about her mother?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said after a pause. ‘I knew that she died badly.’

  ‘She poisoned herself,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Salma doesn’t know why, but other people do.’

  ‘Because of the man?’ she asked.

  ‘Because of what he did to her afterwards. And perhaps it wasn’t true about the man anyway.’

  ‘It must have been,’ she cried.

  ‘Like it’s true about Ba? People have been saying that too.’

  She winced a little, and then nodded to show that she understood what I meant. ‘Perhaps it isn’t true about the man,’ she said. ‘I knew her as a child. She came from a very rich family in Jinja.’

  ‘That’s why he was so angry. He thought I had done the same thing as this man, come into his house and dishonoured him. Salma doesn’t know. He hasn’t told her. He won’t even talk about her mother. She’s known that something is wrong, but he won’t say anything. She found out what little she knows from somebody else. Why are parents like that? You wouldn’t tell me about Ba either. I thought it was something I was, something I did to you, that made you that way to me. And all the time the two of you were going through the misery of all that talk.’

  ‘Don’t start that again,’ she pleaded with her eyes shut.

  ‘I’m not starting that again. I’m just sorry for all the misery I added to your lives. Because I didn’t know, and I didn’t think.’

  She started to cry. ‘Leave it now. Leave it,’ she said. ‘Tell me more about your beloved. What is she doing? Is she working? Does she speak our language or does she only talk in English?’

  ‘Of course she speaks our language. She likes ice-cream,’ I said.

  ‘We can get ice-cream here,’ she said.

  We talked late into the night. Now and then she went to check on Bi Mkubwa, and then I would find myself dozing with tiredness. On each occasion I roused myself in time, so that she should not see how tired I was. I knew she was waiting up for Zakiya and my father, and I did not want her to be alone with those worries and with all the additional ones I had given her. She began to take heart as her anger with Bwana Ahmed increased. She was quite pleased, she said, that I had turned down his offer of a job. ‘It’s God’s judgment on him. He denies you a little money which is your right anyway, and God takes his daughter away from him.’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate,’ I said.

  ‘It serves him right.’

  ‘I haven’t taken his daughter away from him yet. I have to find a way of making a fortune first. By that time I might be an old man, and she might have married somebody else.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘Something will turn up.’

  ‘Especially if God is on our side on this one.’

  ‘Don’t blaspheme,’ she said, her eyes flashing at me.

  In the end we both got too tired, and we sat dozing in our chairs. ‘It’s very late, past midnight. They won’t be coming home tonight,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and lock up.’

  ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘You go to sleep . . . I . . . I’ll lock up.’

  I knew she was lying, that she would go and sleep outside in the yard as she had been doing for years, and wait until they both turned up before locking the doors.

  ‘I must talk to Ba tomorrow . . . about all this. He’ll be getting a letter from Uncle Ahmed,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not afraid,’ I protested.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of you,’ she said. ‘I was thinking of him. Let me do it.’

  Neither of them came home that night. They both turned up in the mid-morning of the next day. They had heard from other people that I was back. My father looked worn out, and I could see that his eyes were hurting with lack of sleep. He greeted me heartily, as if nothing was the matter, and I had only just arrived. I asked after his health and he replied at length, too preoccupied with dissembling the shame he felt to enquire after my adventures. My mother took him away before he had the chance to recover. I heard his oaths and his anger, and then I heard him laugh. I thought my father would appreciate the poaching of the rich miser’s daughter. When he came out he was trying not to grin. He made as if to pass me by, and then turned suddenly and slapped me on the shoulders.

  ‘So that’s what we paid the fare for,’ he said, laughing. ‘So you can go and seduce respectable people’s daughters. It was wrong what you did.’ He dropped his voice, ‘But it served the fucking miser right. He thinks he’s too good for us, but you showed him.’

  ‘Ba,’ I said, trying to interrupt him.

  ‘That’s two women he’s lost now, that stupid penis. One maybe you can understand, it’s bad luck, a tragedy . . . but two. What kind of a fuckhead is he? He invites you all the way up there just to make a joke!’

  ‘Ba,’ I said, putting my hand on his arm. ‘Bi Mkubwa is very ill. She was very bad last night. We must take her to hospital.’

  ‘She won’t go,’ he said softly, squeezing his eyes to ease the pain. ‘I’ve tried but she won’t go.’

  ‘We must try again,’ I said, lowering my voice. ‘She might be dying.’

  He looked as if he would stop me, and then nodded. He looked old and very tired. He nodded again and looked away from me. ‘We must take her today,’ I said. ‘Tell her whatever you want, but we must persuade her to go to the hospital.’

  ‘All right,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll go to her now.’

  Zakiya came while he was with her. She came to look for me in my room, dressed to kill. She stood leaning against the door, looking casual and sophisticated.

  ‘I hear you’re getting married,’ she said, mocking my innocence.

  I stood up and went to her. She lifted herself from the door, looking frightened. I put my hands on her shoulders and squeezed them. ‘What are you doing? What’s happening to you?’ I asked.

  Her face puckered like a child’s and she began to cry. I pulled her into the room and held her while she sobbed. She clung to me, pressing her face into my shoulder. I felt the tears and saliva soaking through my shirt. When she had calmed down a little, she disengaged herself and left without saying a word. I called to her but she did not return. I ran after her but my father called me back, to say that Bi Mkubwa would go. I said I would go and call a taxi. I looked for Zakiya but I had lost her.

  My father and I carried Bi Mkubwa to the car. I had not seen her since coming back. She looked drawn and very old. Her eyes were shut and she was panting for breath. My mother tried to clean her before we took her out, but she had the unmistakable smell of death, the smell of old faeces and urine. We sat on either side of her, supporting her when
she rolled over. She mumbled and wept, and neither of us comforted her.

  They turned us away at first, insisting that we join the long queues of the waiting sick. My father raged at the nurse while the crowds watched us. A woman warned the nurse that if the old lady died, her death would be on his head. The nurse looked frightened for a moment and then became very angry. He abused the woman so viciously that the crowd turned against him. Assailed from all sides, he went to call the charge nurse, who admitted Bi Mkubwa at once.

  I stayed behind while my father went back to work. I followed the trolley to the ward, and waited while patients were rearranged to make room for my grandmother. The ward was like a vision of hell. The walls were covered with grime. Windows faced the door of the ward, and all the window shutters had fallen off. The beds were crowded in, separated from each other by narrow alleyways, which were cluttered with pots and bags. Lines of string criss-crossed the room, from some of which hung mosquito nets. The ward smelt of pus and rotting bodies, and old vomit and dirty laundry, and every combination of the most vile stenches. Sick bodies sprawled on the metal beds. Some were leaning up to watch while most lay abandoned.

  The nurses forced one of the women to get out of her bed. She was a thin and shrivelled old woman, and she complied without protest. She gathered her torn bits of bedding and dragged herself wearily towards the door. Her hands and feet were twisted and knotted with rheumatism. Her neck was bent as if she was carrying a burden, her shrunken head pointing at the ground like the beak of a scavenger. The nurses made a face at the bed she had vacated. The bare mattress was marked with stains and streaks of slime. They turned the mattress over and put my grandmother on it.

  I asked them when the doctor would come but they said they did not know. They told me I could stay and wait if I wanted. I asked them what would happen to the old woman they had removed from the bed. The two nurses glanced at each other.

  ‘Shall we bring her back then?’ one of them asked me.