Where the Air is Sweet

by Tasneem Jamal

  Two days earlier, Idi Amin announced that non-citizen Asians have ninety days to renounce their British nationality and become Ugandan citizens. If they do not, they must depart Uganda, leaving behind their property and accumulated wealth.

  “Since these people are not citizens of this country, Uganda has no alternative but to direct that they go to their country of nationality.”

  The logic of Idi Amin’s words hits Mumtaz with such force that she feels a sharp pain in her head, behind her left eye.

  Raju shakes his head. “What garbage. He says Asians keep money in British banks. This is nonsense. Two or three rich families would be keeping some money abroad, as rich people in all countries do, but the rest of us own a house, a small business, maybe a car or two. We don’t have money to send to Europe. We need our money to eat.”

  “They won’t give Ugandan citizenship to Asians in ninety days,” Mumtaz says, her hand on her forehead. “People have been waiting years and they haven’t got their papers. It’s a lie. But he’s pretending to be reasonable.”

  “It is not reasonable. Asians pay almost all the taxes in Uganda. We employ hundreds of thousands of Africans. Of all of the stupid ideas this man has had, this might be the stupidest.” Raju waves his hand dismissively. “It’s so stupid, it’s not worth worrying about.” He stands up and heads to the door. It is time for his daily walk.

  She does not move. Mumtaz, who was born in Kenya before independence, is a British national. Jaafar, like Raju, is a Ugandan citizen. She turns to look at the newspaper beside her. She has read and reread Idi Amin’s words: “Asians have kept themselves apart as a closed community and have refused to integrate with Ugandan Africans. Their main interest has been to exploit the economy of Ugandan Africans. They have been milking the economy for years and I say to them all, Go!”

  When she hears Jaafar walk in the front door, she stops midsentence, at the word integrate. But her mind completes the sentence, even after her eyes have left the newspaper, even while she looks at her husband. Jaafar has been in Kampala for the weekend on business. She has not yet talked to him about what has happened.

  She waits for him to speak. When he does not, she does. “What should we do? I’m not a citizen.”

  Jaafar laughs. He sits down on the sofa beside her and unties his shoes. “Tomorrow, he’ll get over the Asian girl who rejected him and we’ll be his favourites again.”

  “In March, he threw out Jews,” Mumtaz says. “And they left. He didn’t change his mind.”

  “Mumtaz, how many Jews lived in Uganda? They were expatriates on contract with construction firms and the military. He broke off with Israel and threw out their companies, ripped up the contracts. This is not the same thing. He can’t throw Asians out. We’re Ugandans. We helped build this country. We help to run this country.” He pulls off his shoes and leans back on the sofa. “The man is a fool. Every day he says something crazy.” She opens her mouth to speak, but Jaafar continues. “I’m surprised you are taking it seriously. You’re smarter than this.”

  Mumtaz is quiet. She carefully folds the newspaper, again and again, until it becomes a small bulging book on her lap.

  “I wish we had tried to obtain my Ugandan citizenship when we were first married,” she says. “Even if we had just tried, no one could have looked down his nose at me and called me a foreigner.”

  “It was complicated, Mumtaz. I thought about getting your Ugandan citizenship a few years ago. But then, watching what was happening in Kenya, I decided there was no point. A Ugandan citizenship is important when you run a business. But otherwise, for Asians, it doesn’t guarantee equal rights. In Kenya, Asians who were Kenyan citizens lost their jobs in the civil service. Do you know why? For the simple reason that they are not African. They call the policy of replacing Asians with Africans Kenyanization.”

  “Because Asians, even when they are citizens, are not Africans,” Mumtaz says quietly.

  “It doesn’t matter how long we have lived here, how much we have contributed, when this idea of Africa for Africans takes hold, we are outsiders.”

  “And now it has taken hold here.”

  “You were young when Kenya gained independence,” he says, ignoring her comment. “You probably don’t remember, but at that time, Britain offered a status they called ‘British Protected Person.’“

  “I know,” she says. “But they altered it for Asians a few years later when too many Asians were leaving Kenya and settling in Britain.”

  “Still, it does offer some protection,” he says.

  “But now those of us with that protection are vulnerable.”

  “Asians have always been vulnerable here. But our strength is our contribution. We are too important to the economy. Idi Amin is not clever but soon enough he will realize, or be made to realize, that he has gone too far. Mzee Kenyatta has been much smarter. He uses threatening language against Asians; he makes life very difficult for Asians, but he doesn’t do something that will destroy Kenya, which is what throwing out Asians will do to Uganda.”

  The pain in Mumtaz’s head becomes sharp. She leans forward and presses her fingers into her temples.

  Jaafar rubs her back. “He is attacking us to please Black nationalists. He is always looking for support, for cheering crowds. The British are already saying they won’t accept it. With their immigration quotas, do you think they will ever allow fifty thousand, sixty thousand Asians into their precious country?”

  Mumtaz smiles, though the pain has not diminished. Jaafar puts his arm around her shoulders. “He needs the British. And he needs us.”

  She turns to look at him. She wants to ask him if he really thinks she’s smart. She wants to hear him say it again. But she knows such a question would be childish. And she is afraid of the answer.

  In the following days, Jaafar and Mumtaz listen as the inarticulate president explains that God asked him in a dream to launch an economic war against the Asians, the “exploiters.” That God asked him to seize their properties, their businesses, their homes and then to send the Asians to Britain, to the very people who had used them to build a railway so they could rob Uganda of its natural riches.

  “It’s true,” Mumtaz says. “They’ve been exploited. Africans are the poorest, the lowest, in their own country.”

  “It’s my country, too,” Jaafar says.

  She doesn’t say it isn’t.

  “Why not? I’m not black enough?” He is angry.

  “We Asians keep to ourselves. We speak our own languages.”

  “And we speak the local languages. Everyone keeps to themselves. A Muganda doesn’t marry an Acholi. A Mutoro doesn’t marry a Munyoro. They have lived side by side for centuries and they don’t mix. Look at how hard it was for Obote to build a nation out of their tribes. We’ve been here for a generation or two and we are expected to marry their daughters and hand them the keys to our shops. Why?”

  “They have been humiliated,” she says. “They have watched others prosper. Maybe they don’t believe they are good enough. Not as good. As us. As the British. Jaafar, be honest, we believe we are better than them. Don’t we? Have we showed any interest in how they live? Have we showed any interest in learning from them?”

  Jaafar is staring at her through squinted eyes, as though he is listening to a lunatic.

  “They had no choices,” she says, trying to explain herself.

  “Others came to their land and brought their ways.”

  “No choices? If Blacks don’t like being poor, don’t like their lives, then why don’t they work? Work hard. Build businesses. Build better lives. Educate themselves. Like we have done. Who is stopping them? Me? My father?” He runs his hand over his face. “He says we milked the cow without feeding it. Then why isn’t the cow dead? Uganda is strong. The economy is strong. Or it was until Idi Amin stole the government and poured millions into his bloody army. Throwing out Asians. What an idea. What the country would lose in tax revenue alone is unthinkable. It can’t happen. I
t won’t happen.”

  “I’m not saying it’s right. None of it is right,” she says. “But they have become servants in their own homes. Why wouldn’t it make them angry? Crazed even?”

  Jaafar does not look at her. He is fumbling through his pocket, pulling out a cigarette, looking for his lighter. When he finds it, he grips it tightly and looks at her. “I am not perfect. We are not perfect. But we don’t deserve this.”

  “I am not changing my mind that the Asians who are British will have to go to England and he has accepted that. My decision of 90 days still stands.”

  It is one week later and Mumtaz is reading the latest words of Idi Amin. He uttered them after meeting with British special envoy Geoffrey Rippon for two hours. They stood together after the meeting and spoke to reporters. It all seems to her for a moment, real, but the moment passes. Over the previous week, Amin had said some non-citizen Asian professionals, including doctors and lawyers, could stay; but then, almost immediately, he reversed himself and said they could not stay.

  Four days later he says Asian Ugandan citizens, too, must go. They are committing “acts of sabotage” he explains in justification. But they will leave after the deadline, in a second phase, after the non-citizens have been cleared out. University student leaders implore him to reconsider throwing out citizens. Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere calls him a racist. Commentary appears stating Uganda has no legal authority to expel citizens. Though it appears he has some grounds to expel aliens, to expel her, Mumtaz thinks. It never occurred to Mumtaz to obtain Ugandan citizenship when she moved from Nairobi to Fort Portal. From one city to another. From one person’s home to another. She didn’t think of nationality. She was a child and her father said nothing. And when she married Jaafar, no one suggested she become a citizen like the rest of the family. She became a wife and then a mother. Nothing else entered her mind. Now she is called a British national of Asian origin living in East Africa, a second-class British citizen, one who cannot assume she has a right to live in Britain; now she is called a privileged alien who is exploiting a country; now she is called a saboteur who is destroying its economy.

  Three days later, Idi Amin reverses his latest edict. Citizens of Uganda are exempt from the order. But non-citizens must still leave. Citizens’ documents must be in order. He will not accept forgeries or citizenship obtained through corruption. Since his order, Asians have been told to visit the immigration office to verify their citizenship. Mumtaz reads that many are found not to meet the standards. And they are given no reason for being stripped of their citizenship. They are rendered stateless. Amin continues to insist that a second phase of expulsions will occur. “Asian tactics are not in the interests of the people of Uganda,” he says. Then he announces that certain Asians will be specially invited to stay, non-citizens who will help the transition from the Asian to the African economy. He does not say who these Asians are.

  Jaafar shakes his head, laughing. Mumtaz cannot laugh or shake her head. She feels dizzy. She is beginning to lose track of who can stay, who must go.

  “It’s as though he is a spoiled girl planning a party and she wants to use invitations to exert her power,” Jaafar says. “Who to include, exclude? Each moment her mood shifts and so does the invitation list. It’s ludicrous.”

  “Why a spoiled girl?” Mumtaz asks. “Why not her insane father?”

  Jaafar laughs and nods enthusiastically.

  Mumtaz hears on the BBC that the British are wringing their hands at the huge numbers of Asians being thrust on them and their tiny island and their high unemployment. Canada steps in to offer help, to accept refugees. But still, Mumtaz does not believe they will have to leave.

  He is crazy. He will change his mind. He changes it constantly. This becomes her calming refrain, her mantra.

  A ban is placed on airfreighting of Asian possessions. Until checks can be put in place to ensure Asians are not sending out expensive goods in an effort to skirt foreign-exchange controls, the crates will remain in Uganda. East African Airways, Idi Amin announces, must fly the Asians out. It is the airline of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. He is, he says, “duty bound to support it in every way.” He is a patriot.

  He is crazy. He will change his mind. He changes it constantly.

  Radio Uganda is devoted almost entirely to describing the president’s activities: his constant verbal attacks on Asians, the “economic saboteurs”; his threats to destroy Kigali for, he says, harbouring Israeli operatives; a twenty-minute operation he undergoes to remove warts; his warnings to a group of African traders not to consume so much alcohol, lest they become the laughingstock of the expelled Asians, who did not touch alcohol and ran successful businesses. Idi Amin, the man who supported Britain’s right to sell arms to South Africa shortly after toppling the staunchly anti-apartheid Obote, now calls on his army to liberate South Africa. He offers to solve the Northern Ireland problem. He says the United States asked for his help in ending the Vietnam War.

  He is crazy. He will change his mind. He changes it constantly.

  Mumtaz listens as an announcer on Radio Uganda reads a telegram from President Idi Amin to United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim days after Israeli athletes are murdered at the Olympics in Munich: “Germany is the right place where, when Adolf Hitler was the Prime Minister and supreme commander he burned over six million Jews. This is because Hitler and all German people knew that the Israelis are not people who are working in the interests of the people of the world and that is why they burned the Israelis alive with gas in the soil of Germany.”

  The same day, the foreign minister, Wanume Kibedi, announces Asian non-citizens who do not leave by the deadline will be kept in concentration camps. Those whose citizenship is valid will have to carry an identification card at all times.

  The spinning in Mumtaz’s head begins to settle into something. Something heavier than disorientation. Something more painful. The mantra becomes less and less effective in calming her. Soon it frightens her. Soon it becomes truncated. He is crazy. He is crazy. He is crazy.

  “Canada is accepting Asians who are Ugandan citizens,” Baku says. Raju, Baku and Jaafar have just sat down to eat lunch. “It is a good opportunity to go to the West.”

  “Go?” asks Jaafar. “Who would go?”

  “Things are becoming bad here for us. Some boys today walked past me and shouted, ‘Bloodsucker!’“ He laughs. “Imagine.”

  “This is too much,” Raju says. “Even for Idi Amin. He can’t carry out this threat. It’s too much. It will destroy Uganda. He will stop or be stopped.”

  “But if he is not,” Baku says, “we should be prepared.”

  “Fewer than three months,” Jaafar says. “We would never be prepared, even if we started preparing this minute.” He smiles. “Bakubhai, why are you talking like this? Ready to run? Come now. I didn’t know you were such a mouse.”

  “Baku has always readily accepted things,” Raju says, looking at him. “It is both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness.” Baku nods, his mouth full. He is smiling, but his cheeks are flushed.

  “Mgeni iko?” The soldier is looking at the ground in front of Mumtaz’s feet, even as he speaks.

  She pulls Shama against her, her hand flat and firm on the child’s chest. “Hapana,” she says, shaking her head.

  It is evening and the sun has set. Mumtaz, Rehmat and the children have finished eating dinner. Jaafar drove to Kasese this afternoon and is due to return later tonight. Raju is playing cards at a friend’s house. Three soldiers are standing at the threshold of the family home and one of them has just asked, of all things, if there is a guest inside. The soldier points into the house with his flashlight. Mumtaz tells him her husband is not home. He nods and steps over the threshold, past her, without looking at her. He stands in the sitting room, his black boots on the rug. The beam from his flashlight is weak in the dimly lit room. Two other soldiers walk in behind him. They begin pointing their long guns throughout the room, as tho
ugh they expect an animal to suddenly leap out, as though they have stumbled into the bush. Mumtaz glances at the weapons and then quickly lowers her eyes, as if she has glimpsed an obscene photograph. They point the guns behind the curtains, in the dining room, under the table. Two of them get down on their knees and point their guns under the sofa, moving the weapons slowly from side to side.

  Rehmat walks into the sitting room, her eyes on Mumtaz. “What’s happening?” she asks in Gujarati.

  “They’re looking for someone.”

  “Here?”

  Mumtaz shrugs. She tells the soldier with the flashlight that she needs to call her son from the bedroom. He nods without looking at her. She calls Karim in Punjabi. He comes running out of the bedroom he shares with Shama. When he sees the soldiers, he stops running. Mumtaz lifts Shama into her arms and gestures for Karim to come closer to her. The men move into the kitchen, where Esteri is washing dishes. Karim walks towards them, stopping in the hallway, staring into the kitchen. Mumtaz moves slowly to stand beside him.

  The soldiers emerge and walk into Raju and Rehmat’s bedroom. Mumtaz follows. One soldier opens the wardrobe. He points his gun inside, using it to push the clothes aside. The second soldier bends down next to the bed and shoves his gun below it. He proceeds to move down the length of the bed, the gun pointed underneath. They move to the window, where one soldier presses his hands against the curtain while the other stands with his gun pointed at the lace fabric, ready to fire. They repeat all of this in Jaafar and Mumtaz’s bedroom. In the children’s bedroom, one of the soldiers kneels beside the bed and lifts up the blanket. There are two small dolls lying on the sheet, staring up at the ceiling with wide, blue eyes. He replaces the blanket, using the flat of his hand to smooth the creases he has made. One of the soldiers enters the bathroom, peering into the tub as he points his weapon towards the tiles. In the hallway, another soldier asks Mumtaz for keys to the two cars parked in the driveway. The soldiers go outside and look inside the cars. They search in the backyard and in the front yard. Mumtaz sees them pointing their flashlights and then their guns behind bushes, up towards the branches of the trees. They enter the servants’ quarters and emerge a minute or so later. They return to the house and hand the keys back to Mumtaz. Then they are gone. Not once did the soldiers raise their eyes to Mumtaz. They were deferential. They were polite.