Amriika

by M G Vassanji

  She giggled when he gave another look around as if to check out her surmise, then stopped abruptly and blushed a little, her hands clasped in front of her on the table.

  “I see you’re in a naughty mood today, on the day you’re leaving. I think we look quite respectable, though.”

  “I think so too,” she said.

  She beamed. Her hair was now gathered back from her face and held with a barrette, a red and white beaded disk. She wore jeans and a long white and green cotton shirt, the front of which was decorated with a solid black map of Africa facing a silhouette of Nefertiti in profile.

  The waitress came, they gave their orders, he a large espresso, she a “frostino.”

  “Look, I brought your stuff. I’ve read it and made some comments, for what they’re worth. But read them only after you’ve left. I don’t know what you expected of me.”

  “Let me be the judge of that. You are too modest. Sona warned me …”

  “Yes? What?”

  “Never mind,” she replied, and he flinched at these words, which his kids sometimes used, to cut him off, to his great annoyance.

  “Well,” she gave in, watching him, “that you were diffident and modest, that’s all.”

  What’s she really like? She’s just a girl and I’ve brought her here under false pretenses; a Muslim girl … a lovely girl, really, with a string of admirers I bet ready to jump to attention with a blink of those big round eyes of hers.

  The poem she had edited was called “Enerico na Fatima”; it told the story, set in medieval times, of the love of a Portuguese commandant for a young Arab widow in Mombasa. Every afternoon for a few days Enerico would go to sit across the street from the widow’s house, and gaze up at the latticed windows of the women’s quarter; with him would sit an old Swahili poet he had hired to recite verses relating his love for Fatima. One afternoon the poet arrived alone, but this time, his love verses also told the tale of what had befallen Enerico. The mreno had been arrested by his superiors and put in prison. When the poet had finished his recital, a servant appeared from the house and paid him a silver coin, which he accepted as a token of Fatima returning Enerico’s love. In the story, Enerico died shortly afterwards in the prison, from fever.

  In her introduction to the manuscript, Rumina had narrated the story with quite a bit of pathos, assuming rather naively — in Ramji’s opinion — that it had a factual basis.

  She was eyeing him.

  “Why did you take the hijab off — did you wear it always?”

  That caught her by surprise, she coloured, paused, then she answered him softly: “Since I was a teenager …”; and then, speaking up but just a little more: “I guess I was ready to take it off.”

  “I guess you were.” He shouldn’t have asked, not now, but perhaps that was simply in self-defence — to maintain a safe distance?

  “You’re leaving today,” he announced jovially, to make up, and sat back like a proud uncle, watching her.

  “Yes,” she answered brightly. Then, leaning forward, she said earnestly, to his unbelieving ears: “Listen, why don’t you come along? How long will you stay in Glenmore; aren’t you tired already of this suburbia?”

  He felt a tremor in his hand; he put his cup down. This was an actual invitation he’d just heard. There was nothing better he would have liked, then. Nevertheless, …

  “The suburb’s nice, actually,” he said, sounding confident and strong, “but anyway, I’m going to New York later in the day. Just pounding the pavement there again will be worth this whole trip. Zuli and the kids are already there — I’ll join them, and then, after we return, Jamila’s party. Then home.”

  That seemed to deflate her for a while. He watched her sit back and sip her iced concoction through a straw, having stirred in three sugars — gathering strength, as it were. Then once more, intensely, she implored him: “Look — come to Washington. Seriously, why don’t you come? There’s a taarab concert, at a private house; you do like taarab?”

  The restaurant across from their house in Dar es Salaam used to play taarab on the radio — lively coastal music, with harmonium, tambourine, drums, and Swahili lyrics sung to Indian film songs, about the wiles of women for one thing …

  “Yes I do, though I’ve never exactly been to a concert.”

  His heart was leaping. He had not expected this … hoped, maybe, for something … and here it was. This invitation to do something crazy, something that would liberate and rejuvenate — revivify — him. He wanted it, and he didn’t. But he had lost control over himself, it was all up to her.

  “You can take a train to New York tomorrow, early in the morning. It’s called —”

  “The Early Bird, or something like that.” He laughed.

  “… and meet your family,” she continued, on a lower note, watching him expectantly. Victoriously.

  They stared, eye to eye, gauging each other. And he thought: Well, why not? “Perhaps we can ask Sona to come along, surely he loves taarab,” he said, unconvincingly.

  “Yes, we’ll ask him,” she replied with a smile as they got up to go. “And thank you for looking at this,” she said, picking up her manuscript. “That means a lot to me.”

  He dropped her off at the suburban train station, promising to meet her at the main railway station in Philadelphia in the afternoon, where they would catch the Amtrak to D.C.

  Is this how flimsy a man’s resolve is, like a tattered rag, that at the slightest come-on from a pretty young woman it shreds to pieces risking all? And how far would I go? Would I give up everything, if the moment were right? …

  “From what I’ve seen around me in this neighbourhood,” Jamila said, “children don’t always mind break-ups. Sometimes they even come to expect it from their parents.”

  She and Ramji were sitting together in her kitchen having lunch, and, somewhat disconcertingly, the subject of marriage fatalities had loomed up. It was curious that, from among their generation of Shamsis, they knew of only a few divorce cases, way below the touted national average. All their friends were still with their original spouses, except for Sona, and he only half-counted, having married an American.

  Ramji said, “I think it’s because we Indians would rather go through a painful marriage than see our children suffer the grief of a broken home.”

  “But that’s nonsense,” Jamila replied. “And anyway, why are we talking divorces? Do you know anyone who’s getting one?”

  “Not really … and I thought you had brought up the subject. Listen — I’ve decided to go to Washington this afternoon. Rumina has invited me to a taarab concert, and Sona might come along too. I’ll call Zuli when I get there, but if she calls in the meantime, please tell her … and that I’ll meet them in New York tomorrow.”

  Jamila caught herself gaping, then said slowly, “Certainly …,” finally recovering with an upbeat “Don’t worry, I’ll tell her. You go ahead and live dangerously for a day — haven’t we all done it?”

  “Oh?” Ramji said.

  She gave him the briefest but most telling look and he wondered what mischief she had been guilty of.

  On the train, they chatted animatedly about themselves. Absorbed in the moment, Ramji would find himself forgetting why he was there. A train ride was the ideal escape, into a provisional state of existence beholden only to a constant mind-numbing rhythm, a clacking and rumbling beat that was out of ordinary time altogether.

  An escape — is this what he was up to? Escape … into what? This girl had simply invited him to a concert, admittedly to embark on a little escapade, something out of the way, a detour, but what else had she offered? What did he expect?

  And what did he know about her?

  Tomorrow he would go to New York, having flirted a bit, having been a little unfaithful, and he would join his family and embrace them tightly, the more so for having courted danger and survived.

  There was something indestructible about the family experience. It was bonded in blood — the blood spilt
together, in all those pains and sorrows. There was joy, too, of course. But joy was relief. Pain was endured, wept over, overcome, and it made you stronger. Together.

  For Ramji there had been one long bloody moment of such bonding, one night in particular.

  A normally strong-willed and accomplished woman, exposed in that most open and vulnerable of postures, wet and wide-eyed and clutching at anything with her long fingers, whimpering — with pain, with fear, with grief — and pushing, pushing out dear death from inside her.

  Ramji grasping her hand: Oh God … let this end now.

  Never mind — if you feel it’s coming, give it a push, give it a push. Otherwise it’s all right, the doctor will soon be here. Don’t fret, it’ll soon be over.

  She gets up, with help, goes to the toilet. Call me if you need me, yes, and she waddles in, door half open. And then, Oh God, she shouts, I think it’s come, the head, the hair, it’s coming!

  Ramji runs and presses the emergency button, the Barbadian nurse comes instantly, Good, she says, good, it’s over, my dear, and goes in and pulls out the dead body, the tiny little corpse, and the placenta, carries it out in a basin, Ramji helps Zuli to bed —

  Then she weeps, Oh God, I saw the hair first, thick black hair, and head, it was so real, it was my baby —

  The next day Ramji, her father, who had come with her mother from Toronto, and the mukhi from their Chicago mosque took baby Adam for his burial.

  Beside him Rumina had fallen asleep, was leaning sideways against his shoulder. He recoiled, inwardly. If he moved she would wake up. Surely I felt the pressure of her head all along, why feign surprise?

  Can she be as sweet and innocent as she looks?

  There was still a chance. As soon as the train reached the destination, he would simply take the next one back. And nothing would be lost. He had succumbed to temptation — almost; all right, his hormones were still raging, and that was good. But it takes courage to admit to foolhardiness, think of others, one’s responsibility …

  He simply didn’t have the will to turn back now.

  She unlocked the door, went in, held it open for him. “Karibu, karibu sana,” she said, a little shyly, the traditional Swahili greeting.

  “Ahsante,” he replied, and entered, and heard the door close behind him. There was a slight smell of perfume in the air, something Eastern, he thought, perhaps Zanzibari, but only a trace. How so like her, he thought, and realized he was presuming to know her.

  Rumina’s apartment was in downtown Washington. It consisted of a large room which had been partitioned by a shelf into a bed and a living area, together with a small kitchen and a bathroom. It reminded him quaintly of places he’d known in his younger days, though it was a lot neater than anywhere he had lived on his own. There were hangings from Africa and a poster on the walls.

  “Small, but it’s sufficient for my needs,” Rumina said, and he nodded.

  She put on a cassette of taarab music for him, as she’d promised on the train, and its lilting, joyful sounds, which he had not heard in years, seemed to relieve the restrained mood that had suddenly come over them inside the apartment.

  Your voice is heavenly, like a santuri, I beg of you let me hear you, over and over …

  “I’m going to lie down for a while,” she said, watching his face light up at the nostalgic melody, the lyrics. “You can do the same, if you want to — this is your bed —” she pointed to the sofa on which he was sitting.

  “I’ll be all right — you go ahead and rest. I might even take a shower.”

  “Sure. Make coffee or tea or whatever.” She slipped off her shoes and went to her bed.

  Ramji sat and flipped through some magazines, then put them aside. He glanced towards Rumina and saw that she had fallen asleep as she had lain, in her travel clothes, on her back. Her full lips were open, her breathing was light. He turned away and lay down on the sofa for a while, but felt uneasy; he wasn’t used to naps for one thing. The music stopped. He picked up the towel to go for a shower.

  Walking to the bathroom, he glanced in her direction again. He stopped and stared. The face was flushed, the curly hair dishevelled. If I go to her bed and kiss her, she can’t possibly stop me, he thought. But why am I thinking this? … Just let it be, Ramji.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “Oh, you’re awake.”

  “Yes. What were you thinking all that while you stood there in silence?”

  He paused. “Nothing … I forget what it was, actually …”

  “How convenient!”

  “Yes, isn’t it.” He slowly went to her bed and sat down beside her. She sat up. “You want to know what I was thinking,” he told her.

  “Yes, tell me,” she said, eyes flashing a challenge.

  “I was feeling a little bit like Enerico sitting outside Fatima’s house, in that poem in your thesis.”

  “But you’re inside!”

  “Well, it felt like outside … the distance — you wouldn’t understand.”

  “But I do.” Just like that — flat, no inflection, and with all the confidence in the world.

  “Oh. Do you?” he said quietly. He took both her hands in his, held them, played with them. They felt warm, and small, and quite limp. “What do you understand?”

  “Enough …”

  Her eyes had a tender expression; they would always caress him in that manner, and embrace him; the memory of them would continue to haunt him when she was no longer with him.

  He said, “I was thinking, as I stood there, that if I came and kissed you on the lips you couldn’t …”

  He put a hand on her forehead, swept back a few locks of hair. He caressed her on one cheek, saw her mouth tremble, then he leaned forward and he kissed her.

  “Ramji,” she said after a moment, pushing him gently away.

  “Did I take advantage?” he asked, not quite sure he’d done that.

  She paused for a moment, then said, “You have to be sure it’s what you want —”

  “I am sure!”

  Am I? Sure of what, what exactly do I want? But these and other questions remained as yet unarticulated, existing only as a painful, anxious feeling in the pit of his stomach, a mixture of guilt, excitement, desperate yearning.

  “Are you sure you’re sure?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He couldn’t help himself. In a barely controlled voice, he went on, “Sona told me that he brought you for me — humorously, of course — but little did I know …”

  She took his hand. “I feel so happy … but what does it mean, for Enerico and Fatima?”

  “Let’s hope he doesn’t die of fever.”

  The little room could not contain the excitement they felt. They went out for a walk, and they talked, they sat down for coffee, and they talked and talked. They did not quite know what they meant, working out impossible logistics for other meetings, choosing unlikely places for future trysts, as if it was the most innocent and casual deal in the world, not something that would cause pain and disruption in the lives of those who depended on him.

  That night, though they’d lost interest, they went to the concert. It had, after all, been his excuse for being here. And by going there he felt he could still legitimize his escapade.

  The concert was in a narrow old house in Georgetown, an old two-storey red-brick structure. The front door was wide open, a harmonium was being tuned somewhere inside the building, and the corridors were jammed with loud, cheerful people in a variety of national costumes. There was a distinct exoticism to the place, a happy alien-ness.

  Welcome Rumina, he heard called out several times, in the Swahili manner, and she answered, Ahsante, thank you. He himself received a few quizzical looks. Some of the women took Rumina aside to chat, some of the men flirted with her. She was clearly quite well known here. She spoke in Swahili or English, and her fluency and manner with the former brought home to him with a pang how long he had been away from it, how distant from him had become the typic
al humour and grace of the language, which had once been so familiar to his ears.

  The concert began in the front portion of the house, a living room and adjoining dining room. The area was packed to overflowing, the air stifling with heat and the mingled odours of sweat, perfume, and beer. There were five musicians, including two singers, a man and a woman. Ramji and Rumina found a place to sit on the floor, not far from a fan. The music, though a little too loud, was accomplished, and in other circumstances they might have been thrilled with the performance. But their hearts were elsewhere, and so during the intermission they agreed between them to leave.

  Outside it had rained and the night was warm. He felt as if he had stepped out from the world as he knew it — as if he had jumped off a moving train onto a station platform. And did he expect that the train would be sufficiently long that he could jump back on it when he was ready? It didn’t matter, tonight.

  Back in the apartment, on the sofa, they continued to talk, his head on her lap, inhaling her presence, aware of her flesh, his fingers intertwining with hers. He revealed everything about himself to her — his childhood; his dreams, fears, and disappointments over the years. Her mother and father were dead, he learned, but she seemed reticent about her past, encouraging him instead to unburden himself. There was pain buried inside her somewhere, he sensed, and he hoped she would let him in eventually, let him comfort her.

  He could have gone on all night in that mode, dreamily, meanderingly revealing details of his life to her, but she was tired and it was time finally to sleep. She helped him make his bed on the sofa, and as they kissed goodnight, he said, “Let me be with you … let’s.…” And she told him, “Not this time, Ramji, but next time — promise.” It seemed, in spite of his intense desire, that this was right.

  But as he lay in the makeshift bed, he was besieged by all manner of thoughts, memories from the past, fears about the future, doubts about the present. He thought of his relationship long ago with Jamila, in whose room he had also slept on a sofa. How different Rumina was, how free of affectation. And Zuli? — they couldn’t have made a greater mistake than to have married each other.…He heard Rumina get out of her bed, anxiously waited while she walked around the partition behind which he lay. She came and knelt beside him. “Come,” she said.