Amriika

by M G Vassanji

  “Do you know which way the wind blows?” a guy called out, as soon as Shawn finished introducing Ramji at the front door. There was a moderate buzz at this, and all eyes were on the guest.

  “Uh.…” Ramji turned to look behind, towards the door, as though he should have noticed the wind direction, and there was laughter. “Oh — that’s Bob Dylan,” he said, recovering, and grinned at the one who had spoken. But who are these guys?

  He was in the living room of the Student House, a low-budget coed co-operative he had once considered as a residence but rejected because it had looked too informal in the brochure. He had been right. The room was crowded with college types sprawled out on the hearth rug by the fireplace, crammed in on the stairs and the landings, and overflowing into the kitchen. There were no chairs around. Three people sat on an old sofa, which had been turned away from the fireplace to face the meeting: a strikingly pretty girl in miniskirt and boots, a rangy, bearded guy wearing a red beret, and between them Professor Linda Hodge, who taught a course called Imperialism and History. She was in a red sweater and black skirt, beautiful as always, brown hair falling loosely to the shoulders. She was beaming, apparently waiting for the room to come to order once more before she continued her spiel.

  “This country is at war, we all know that. We also know that wars have always been fought by young people, but made by politicians and the industries they serve. And so it is an appropriate irony that this struggle against the war machinery and American imperialism is being carried out mainly by young people on the home front. You are the true war heroes, you are the vanguard. No more will young people take up arms simply because their greedy elders tell them to — and use them against the people of the Third World, be they in Chile, in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, simply because these people refuse to acquiesce to the demands of Uncle Sam and his multinational henchmen. But imperialism is far from beaten. As Lenin said …”

  Later food and drinks were served in the kitchen, and people milled about. Ramji learned that Linda would be on her way to Berkeley the next day. She had been denied tenure by the Tech because of her antiwar sympathies. There had already been two demonstrations to show support for her. He watched her from a distance. At one moment she looked up from her conversation and waved at him. He remembered uneasily that one day in class he had told her that it was fine to talk of large events, but he came from a small people and thought the study of history should take into account the lives of such people. She had smiled charmingly and told him that indeed some historians believed as he did. But Ramji had never been able to engage her for long. Her interest is in large systems; history à la Tolstoy and Lenin. Civilization and its discontents, imperialism and capitalism, declines and falls. And I tell her of the woes that befall shopkeepers … small people.

  As he made his way through the room, he was surprised and flattered by the attention he got. He was quite exotic to the others present there. He was the man from Africa, an authentic Third Worlder, to whom they were sympathetic, yet it seemed to him that they could not quite understand him.

  “Don’t worry. There’s revolution going on everywhere. Imperialism’s on the retreat.” The miniskirted girl, who had been sitting beside Linda Hodge before, had come to stand close to him. He stared, not comprehending, wondering what she thought he was worried about. She was bra-less, he noticed, and he blushed. “You don’t have to be shy,” she said. “You’re in America.”

  Her name, she said, was Lucy-Anne Miller.

  Her tall companion from the sofa came and stood beside her. “We should — you know …” he said.

  “Excuse us, we’re having a discussion,” she told him sternly.

  “Aw, all right, see you later then,” he said awkwardly and sauntered off.

  “Actually, I’m through with that jerk,” she said to Ramji. “Say, let’s move over there.”

  They went and sat against the wall under the stairs, their shoulders touching.

  “I bet you know imperialism inside out — experienced it?”

  “You mean colonialism?”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. And don’t spare the details, please. The racial stuff.”

  “Well, there was more of that in Kenya —”

  “Must have been where you were, too. Whites-only stuff, segregation.”

  “Well, the public toilets …”

  He was playing up to her, but what he was trying to say was true enough: public toilets designated “Europeans Only,” “Asians Only,” and “Africans Only” when he was growing up.

  “Hey, listen to this stuff,” she called out. “You want to know colonialism? Here it is, from the horse’s mouth.”

  A small crowd gathered around him and he told them about the public toilets, and the “Europeans Only” clubs and restaurants.

  “But after independence we didn’t have segregation any more,” he concluded.

  He looked around him. They were listening to him. American guys and girls, holding plates of cheesecake or ice cream or lemon meringue pie, mugs of coffee, cans of Coke or Dr Pepper, slices of pizza, bagels. Long hair, beards, faded jeans, boots, sneakers, bare feet. But their heart is in the right place, at least they know about the Third World, have sympathy.…The girl sitting close to him, Lucy-Anne, was different from the rest: strikingly well-dressed, hair parted in the middle and combed down to frame her face, giving it a heart shape, the look of a saint. She drew him helplessly in like a magnet.

  “You belong with us, man. You know what it’s like out there, the battlegrounds —”

  “You have to educate us, to authenticate us —”

  “Yeah, all we know is hearsay —”

  “Speak for yourself, man. I’ve been to ’Nam, I know what it’s like there. Fucking cesspit —”

  “Yes, but do you know the Vietnamese side?”

  “And you think he does?”

  “What’s this group?” Ramji asked the girl.

  “We are the Freedom Action Committee. We are bringing the war home. And we join in solidarity with the Black people’s struggles in this country and Third World struggles in Angola, South Africa, and Mozambique.”

  Don’t forget Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, he thought. In National Service, less than a year ago, during the early-morning jog we would sing, “Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill Ian Smith, and kill Verwoerd; kill Salazar and down with the Americans!”

  “You must know of the Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal?” she said.

  He was now alone with the girl, more or less, the crowd having drifted away, though he felt they were keeping him in sight. He caught a whiff of marijuana in the air, sniffed a couple of times, nervously. If you got caught here.…She was staring at him.

  “Wasn’t Bertrand Russell one of the organizers?” he asked finally. There had been some hubbub back home because Russell had included the names of African presidents in his tribunal without asking their permission.

  “Then you must know of the war crimes — the antipersonnel bombs, and napalm. It’s a jelly that sticks to the body and burns, at two thousand degrees; burns babies and small children. And American bombers are doing to the environment what it will never recover from. The sheer arrogance of this country in the world.…The sheer arrogance of power —”

  “I read that book,” he told her.

  She stared at him. “I’m sorry I didn’t —”

  “By Senator Fulbright. I got it from the United States Information Service. I’m afraid I didn’t understand it.”

  He smiled ruefully at her. She smiled back. “You’re an interesting person, you know, you’re an interesting person. Not like those foreign-student nerds, who are trained here to go back and rule as American stooges and oppress their own people.”

  “Well.…” He didn’t quite know what to say. The thought was somewhat disturbing.

  “Do you think America should decide who rules Vietnam? Or your country?”

  “No,” he said. “Actually, America put pressure on us — my country — trying to dictate to
us who our friends should be. West Germany stopped aid because we recognized East Germany. And one American ambassador recently wrote a book called The Reds and the Blacks because he thought we were becoming communists —”

  That should please her. It did.

  “There, you see. You are one of us.”

  “I just don’t …”

  “Yes?”

  She was really close to him, their legs were touching. There was a faint smell from her, but not perfume. She is the type who uses Ivory soap, all natural. And she stares into my eyes all moony-moony, how could one possibly disagree? Only …

  “I just can’t belong to organizations. For one thing I may agree with you on one thing and disagree on another —”

  “That’s perfectly all right! None of us agrees entirely with the other. We’re all ready to learn from each other. We sit down together and discuss our disagreements and what we don’t like about each other, and our friends point out our faults to us. The revolution should always be kept fresh, as Mao said. There’s no room for complacency. We’re all against the American empire and the military-industrial complex.”

  “But still — I don’t believe for one thing that all Americans — even Republicans — are bad, even if I happen to disagree with them.”

  That took some doing. And there was silence.

  “Gandhi, eh. You believe in Gandhi,” observed a bystander.

  “Anyway,” said the girl, “think about it. You are welcome to join our meetings, Saturdays, and criticize us, say whatever you feel. But remember, if you join us, you’ll also have to face up to criticism. All this Republican stuff …”

  She smiled at him — she’s nice, you’ve got to hand it to her — and got up and went away. Soon everyone ignored him, the presumed Gandhian. This would be the time to push off, though he didn’t relish walking back alone.

  As he stood around listlessly, Shawn came by, a powdered doughnut in his hand, and told him, “You’d best be leaving now.”

  Ramji looked up in surprise, opened his mouth to say something, shut it without a word.

  “The rest of the proceedings may not be to your, er, taste,” Shawn said, with a smirk.

  Kate came by and grinned. “Hey — you missed a great chance with that Lucy-Anne …”

  Ramji thought he understood. He had heard what these meetings sometimes degenerated into.

  As he walked out and turned onto the sidewalk, he heard laughter coming from the house, felt envious of those who found it so easy to have fun. Somewhat tentatively at first, then with determination, he walked towards one of the windows, stepping on a flowerbed to get closer. The window was a foot too high, so he moved a garbage can over and climbed on it to peep inside. A guy and two girls were groping each other in the middle of the room, and stripping. A door opened, and a girl with flowing golden hair came in clutching sleeping bags in her arms. One of the two groping girls, now naked to the waist, began French-kissing the guy, the other girl bent low to cup and suck at her breasts. The girl carrying the sleeping bags in saw all this, then dropped her load, and looked up suddenly to meet the peeper’s eyes through the window. He jumped down, walked hurriedly away. Shame, shame, shame, Ramji; if you don’t do it, at least don’t lick your chops watching others do it.

  He walked back alone across the river, eyes wet with painful tears. In the distance, the fraternity houses along the river; the Charles Street Station; the imposing, impersonal dome and columns of the Tech bathed in a cold light.

  Summer arrived and the university became a quiet, almost idyllic place. Ramji found work at the physical plant, spending his mornings with a gang of workmen, going about with ladders and scaffolding and cleaning windows. There was time also to wander about and sit outside in the sun and read and to catch up on correspondence. He wrote more frequently to his grandmother, almost once a week now, though his letters were very brief and there was hardly anything new to say in them. Although their relationship had always been one of love, they had never shared their inner lives. But he did enjoy receiving her letters, which always began and ended with long prayers for him, and sandwiched between these would be some news from their neighbourhood. The Friday “musical mosque” was kept going, though it was relatively quiet. Some evenings Ramji and Sona would spend together, going out for pizza in Central Square or a movie in Harvard Square. Sona was wrapped up in his studies, and even his summer job involved research in his field. The Ethiopians were away on tours arranged by their sponsors. Shawn had found a job in some factory outside Boston, where he hoped to radicalize the workers, and Kate went to New York, where her folks lived and where the antiwar protests proceeded nonstop.

  Towards the end of July he spent a few days with the Morrises, going there on Friday and staying past the weekend. The boys were not home. On the Monday he’d accompanied Ginnie to the hospital for a checkup. On the way back they bought sandwiches and sat down on a bench at the local park to eat. As they watched the ducks paddling placidly on the small lake in front of them and a jogger intermittently come into sight through the thickets on the other side of the water, he had reached out his hand and she let him hold her.

  “I’m a very sick woman,” she said in a quiet voice.

  “But the therapy … it’s working?”

  “We’re not sure.”

  Then she said, “You should have a girlfriend — I’m sure you do,” and he was hurt. She sensed this and leaned over to place her head on his chest. His heart was beating wildly, and he leaned back to make her more comfortable and very softly put a hand on her waist.

  He realized, then or perhaps a little later, that he was a bit childish in his yearnings; he had refused to put his head to what he felt. Did he expect her to elope with him? She had a home and family, was twice his age — and dying of cancer. Still, he could not stem the love he felt for her, or forget the New Year’s Eve they had spent together.

  6

  It was October in the new academic year. Chilly winds blew eddies of dust about on Mass Ave, and the student movements were back in full swing on the campus.

  “Will you be coming for Christmas?” Ginnie asked him over the phone.

  “No,” he said. “Not this time.” Just tell me, and I’ll come running, he prayed, pleaded in his mind.

  “It’s going to be a quiet Christmas,” she said, “but the doctor has ordered rest. Junior’s spending it with his girlfriend, and Chris has got plans of his own, I’m not sure what.”

  “Won’t you be lonely,” he asked.

  She changed the subject.

  You couldn’t forget that several hundred people died each day in that terrible war far away in a poor country; you could not but be confronted by that fact in the corridors and streets, over loudspeakers, in flyers and newspapers, on TV; you could not but form an opinion about it. And once you did?

  Do you believe America should be in Southeast Asia? Do you believe America should decide the future of Vietnam — and the rest of the world? No. Then why don’t you join us?

  America, this land of multiple choice, where ice cream came in thirty-one different flavours, and every city had a colourful baseball team, and there were a dozen television channels to flick through (and Johnny Carson or Dick Cavett for the late show), had yet another choice on offer: to join or not to join the protest. On one side Chomsky, Dr. Spock and Peter Bowra, Mailer and Lowell; on the other, Nixon and Agnew, John Wayne and the store owner on Central Square who said on TV, Send these kids to concentration camp.

  Every day the picketers begged, beseeched, argued, and leafleted on the front steps of the Tech on Mass Ave, and, holding hands, they walked around in circles and in between the fluted columns — massive, intimidating, and as cold as the immoveable enemy — and they chanted.

  If you’re against the war, say it! If you oppose university investments in South Africa, say it! If you denounce CIA-sponsored assassinations, say it! Don’t wait for McGovern — the next election is three years away — force the hand of that bum in th
e White House! Join the protest!

  One morning he did not just walk by the picketers with a smile of sympathy but joined their line.

  Sona was one of those who couldn’t be sure, who couldn’t take sides, to whom this war didn’t matter so much. He was possessed by his twin manias: the running of the music mosque, which he did with devoted care and theatricality Friday evenings, and his pursuit of the study of their sect of Indian Muslims, founded a long time ago by an elusive Sufi saint called Shamas Pir. In his quest for their origins, Sona had found an ally and sponsor, Marie Lundgren, formerly of the Sorbonne and currently at Harvard, Professor of All Things Mystical, especially Islamic, who, in a rose, a stone, a brook, saw the manifestation of God …

  “It’s not all like that, Ramji — not all mushy and mystical love — though I admit Marie’s a little like that.”

  “Oh, so now it’s Marie, is it?”

  “In America everyone calls profs by their first names.”

  “I’ll be damned if I call any professor of mine merely Noam or Victor —”

  “And yet you demonstrate against the mighty American government!”

  Yes, Sona was immersed in the past, reconstructing, as he put it, all the byways taken by a small community of Indians over four or five centuries, who simply, and seeing no contradiction, had extended their customs and beliefs and love for their gods to embrace Islam. His excitement would get feverish, catchy, as he explained his arcane discoveries — “Look, Ramji … this word … there’s no dictionary in existence that has the meaning even close to what we had.…It’s a fossil, it’s our very own, a clue to our past!” He was the scholar, the easy chair in his room surrounded by a wall of books, half-read, unread, read-but-still-needed, books bought cheaply from the religion-and-mysticism basement of the Harvard Bookstore. And in his exciting world of Sufi and Hindu mendicants walking the busy highways from Punjab to Maharashtra in the medieval India of small rajas and Mogul emperors … Vietnam? It was a little remote.