Amriika

by M G Vassanji

“What’s his name?” he asked. “It’s a boy?”

  “Basheer,” she said, accepting from them the two packages they’d brought. She offered them Seven-Up or tea.

  They opted for tea and she went to the kitchen to make it. Nabil went and sat on the stuffed armchair in front of the TV, Ramji sat on the bed. The child crawled up in front of them and they started playing with him. Nabil picked him up, put him on Ramji’s lap.

  The room was narrow and crowded. The two windows were both completely curtained. On the table, across from Ramji and against a wall, was a framed picture of Alicia and Abbas, and another one of baby Basheer. Ramji put the baby down and went up to take a closer look. In the first one, Alicia wore the blue uniform of a security guard and was sitting on a chair; beside her stood Abbas in shirt sleeves and jeans. The baby photo was close up and charming, taken professionally soon after birth. There was a third photograph, evidently of Alicia’s family, taken a few years ago, judging by how much younger she seemed to be in it.

  “My folks,” Alicia said to Ramji, as she brought in the cups of tea. “They’re in New York.”

  “They’re close, then. That’s good.”

  “Yes. My mother was here last week — but it’s not easy for her to get away, you know, she works.”

  Ramji and Nabil stayed a little over half an hour, during which time they watched part of a news broadcast, the baby’s sagging diaper got changed, and, twice, police sirens went howling past on the street below. According to Alicia, her husband’s murderers had still not been captured.

  “I know them,” she said, “I see them on Chestnut — by the taco place and —”

  “And the police?” Ramji asked.

  “It seems the two cops who saw them are on undercover assignment on a much larger operation,” Nabil explained to him. “Don’t worry, they’ll be captured eventually,” he told Alicia. “But we want you to come and visit us. We’d like to see more of the two of you.”

  Alicia gave him a sullen look.

  “Jamila will call you,” Nabil said, the accusation in her look not lost on him. “Then you can come and visit. You should even think of moving closer to where we are — I am serious.”

  It was such a depressing and lonely scene they walked out of that afterwards on the way back they did not have much to say to each other. Even the walk to the parked car in the dark had seemed like a hazardous venture in that area. How easy it had been, Ramji thought, to lose sight of this brutalized world from the heights of sheltered suburbia.

  But Alicia and her son were real and they now had a patron in Nabil. He felt envious of Nabil, with his family and his newfound faith, and now this cause. And here he was with his own life a shambles.

  When they returned, their families were back. Zuli had excused herself for the night. And once more, as on the first night, Ramji found himself at the kitchen table with Jamila. This time she offered him brandy, saying, “You look terrible.”

  “So … what did she — what did Zuli say?” he asked.

  “I’ll be honest: she’s raging — mad as hell and insulted. But give it time,” she said. And after a while: “And this Rumina business — I gather it’s over?”

  “It’s over,” he said wearily.

  “Good.” She put out her hand and he took it.

  “And you — all right?” he asked.

  “Me? I think I’ll be all right,” she said and squeezed his hand.

  It was much later that night, when everybody had gone to bed, that Ramji called Rumina.

  For more than an hour beforehand he had sat by himself, trying to think. Most likely his marriage was broken. Zuli would never forgive today’s humiliation, even if he crawled back to her on his hands and knees. He did not see himself doing that, though he was sorry he had hurt her. The fact was, he hadn’t been able to help himself, he had seen a vision of happiness for himself and made a grab for it, come what may. And what a fall he had taken.

  “I thought you’d forgotten about me,” she said, sounding very pleased. “Are you alone there? I mean, can you talk freely?”

  “I learned today your father was Sheikh Abdala,” he said, his voice quivering with emotion.

  “Oh. I meant to tell you.…I was only waiting —”

  “That’s not enough. You should have told me first. I feel horribly cheated. It’s not something you keep secret — it matters.”

  “But why? I am still me.”

  He was silent.

  “Ramji?” Low voice; pleading.

  “Yes? … Look — I can’t handle this … this history … any of this … not now, anyway, it’s too much for me.…” Pleading, also.

  “Tell me when you’re ready then,” she said.

  After a moment’s pained silence, they hung up.

  How to continue with this narration, when on one side myriad reminders constantly tug at me, to take me away to relive every moment of the bliss, dwell upon every tender word and sigh and gesture of the love that became my prize; and on the other side, at the end of it all, bereft of that love, I am confronted with a visual reminder of a tragic killing and exhorted to understand it. And understand it I must, that is my responsibility.

  Still life, post-destruction: a snapshot of a dwelling above a bombed-out bookstore in the Midwest, in ruins, portions collapsed, contents flung about, a gash in the far wall, shafts of daylight from outside; the vantage point is probably from a corner still supported. In the midst of the debris, the upper portion of a woman’s body, the dress olive green, the hair golden, a hyphen of red lipstick on a smudged pink doll’s face; the rest of her body could be under the broken masonry but isn’t, I know; it’s been blown off by a bomb. Also dead, her husband and child, nowhere in this picture.

  The question arises again and again: How did a person like me get involved — however obliquely — with a horror such as this?

  That’s what he has to find out, says my interlocutor, Federal Agent Will Jones. He eyes me intently as if to gauge my thoughts, then quietly takes the photograph from my hand and slips it back into his collection.

  He is the investigator who arrived one morning a few weeks ago, not long after the bombing depicted in the photograph and the events that followed, in the aftermath of which I found myself amidst the shambles of my own life. He is a psychologist, but his job is not to cure me. Rather, he comes with the belief that by digging deep into my background and my mind, he will find some answers to what makes a community of normally law-abiding citizens produce acts of reckless violence. Our interview, he says, by shedding light on the background to that bombing, will be our little contribution to greater peace and harmony in the world; and I have little doubt that I and what he thinks I represent are destined for the government’s data bank of global malcontents and malfunctionaries. Open a window into your mind, says Will, show us your loves and hates, your fears and despairs, your beliefs and history; only then can we understand you. He lumps me with a people, among other small rootless people of the world with grievances. Is he wrong? Can I talk about myself without reference to a group?

  He is not unresourceful. In the initial days of our interview, he brought with him a tome or two in his briefcase, reference books on foreign peoples, but he’s given up, having realized perhaps that these groups can cause as much trouble inside books as outside them.

  “Why does each people think they are so special?” he once asked. A question more appropriately addressed to my friend Sona, whose life’s mission it has been to study the distinctiveness of just one community.

  “To themselves, they are special, aren’t they?” I said. And when they fear annihilation … I almost added, but didn’t. When they fear annihilation, they are apt to take measures into their own hands? … Isn’t that why we are here, you asking and me answering?

  Over the weeks, I’ve come to be fond of Will — we seem to understand each other, and talk like contemporaries, which we are. He is a boyish-looking man, with sandy hair and a red face, a tight build. A Yale man, in fa
ct, a year younger than I. “Like you, I was on scholarship,” he says. His father was a baker. Not good enough a background for the CIA boys? — I smirk knowingly. He bites into an apple: Our success rate is greater, and you can see why: we have patience and time — and resources. We deal with people, not ideology, unlike those other, much-maligned guys.

  Let’s see, he once said, when he was trying to find out if I was of revolutionary pedigree: Were your people — family, if you insist — involved in the Indian Mutiny of 1857? The Indian independence movement? Any relation to the Assassins of Persia? Not involved in the African independence struggles either? …

  Quite off the mark, of course. I said, We are a peaceful people; all we’ve ever wanted is to be left alone; ninety-nine per cent of us have never seen an actual gun, let alone held or fired one —

  Will pulled out the picture he’d just showed me from the stack, pushed it towards me, saying, “A lot of people who do this sort of thing say the same thing, that they are a peaceful people, all they want is to be left alone.”

  I look at the picture: Still life, post-destruction: broken torso of a woman in olive green.…Why me, how did I come to be connected to this?

  Regular as a pendulum, twice every week he’s arrived at my door, and prodded and probed my memory, asked me questions about my background and ancestry, taken away my impressions about people I have known and whom he finds interesting. And I have indulged him, partly because I don’t think I have much choice. Partly because I am lonely and his company is congenial. He is a good listener and does not jump to easy judgements. But also, I must admit, talking to him has helped me draw out from my mind details I had quite forgotten, and his questions have suggested departures which I might not have taken on my own.

  He has in his possession statements from people from my past … he let that drop one day, quite inadvertently, it seemed then, but perhaps it was deliberate needling on his part.

  “What do you think your friends at the Tech thought of you,” he asked, “your former roommate Shawn Hennessy, for instance?”

  “Well, as someone who was naive at first, but who learned fast; idealistic but unwilling to resort to just any means … a little nerdish perhaps —”

  “And a jerk-off, in bed? Sorry —” he said, but he looked, if anything, amused.

  If I could, if my complexion had allowed it, I would have turned beet red. “There’s nothing wrong with self-gratification, as nowadays we’re admitting,” I blustered, “it’s not a sin —”

  “Who’s talking of sin?” Will said.

  It began dawning on me that Will Jones — or someone else in his organization — had spoken to Shawn; and others, too? Our interview would surely be only a part of a larger file; this friendly but persistent fellow from the agency, my companion for a couple of days every week, Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons, must know things about myself even I don’t. And so I said to him once: “You must know — who called the cops on Lucy-Anne. Was it anyone we knew?” We were sitting at my dining table, with its yellow and green and brown khanga tablecloth and desk lamp, which also doubles as my writing table. Will smiled slyly at me, reflected a while, then replied: “I’m surprised you have to ask. You must not have read his book.”

  “Whose book?”

  “You mean you really don’t know,” Will said. “Your roommate. Shawn Hennessy.”

  I felt, that instant, like one might after a sudden checkmate, being one-upped mentally and abruptly, with a tightness in the pit of the stomach it takes minutes to get over. I got up to pour more coffee for us, which I did with some effort to keep a steady hand, and I said, simply, “That f—– traitor.” I recalled to mind Shawn’s subsequent academic career, our one exchange of letters, and thought, But not surprising, after all, is it…

  Will had raised an eyebrow, watching me as I returned to the table. “Traitor to what, though?”

  “His friends.”

  I could have guessed: the most likely suspect, if you gave the matter some cool thought, someone who knew precisely Lucy-Anne’s and my whereabouts that Friday evening. But that’s in retrospect. To have guessed then about such a casual betrayal would have been to admit to the flimsiness of the radical movements and their causes — a cynicism that is more modern and sinister.

  “Why would he turn informer?” I asked. “Did he believe in the war after all?”

  Who else had he informed on? Was there ever a file on me, for instance, to which he had contributed?

  “The fact that his brother Pat went missing in action in Vietnam. That might have been sufficient to turn him into a patriot. Perhaps he stopped believing in the extremist element of the peace movement.”

  “What ever happened to Pat? Did he return safely?”

  “No. He was sent up in space by the Russians, that’s what a psychic told his mother.” Will smiled.

  If he was expecting a smart comment, I didn’t give him one. I asked:

  “And Lucy-Anne? You must know where she is?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know if I’m allowed to tell you.” He paused, then added: “Perhaps it’s best not to think of her — at least not yet.”

  I walked with him to the end of the block, then he left, saying, “Till Tuesday, then.”

  And what of this man Darcy, who had once come to my grandmother’s house for a pain in his back and helped me decide my future? A hero of sorts to me then, he would again play a part in changing the course of my life.

  One evening we sit on a bench across from his apartment, the black ocean in front of us, the sky clear and starry, listening to the waves coming in, and he says, “If I hadn’t invited you here, you would not now be in this situation.”

  Nor would I have met my Rumina again. And to think that it was she who had reconnected us in the first place, after all these long years. The Rumina present now in every rush of the waves upon the beach, every break, every swish and gurgle of water on sand …

  Darcy smiles thinly, and continues. “In any case, it was not a good idea to involve a young person in an old man’s causes.”

  “I’m hardly a young person.”

  “You were still in your teens when I was the age you are now.”

  Old? Yes, he’s old and defeated now; he was defeated even before he landed on these shores two decades after I did; only I hadn’t realized it. To me, when I met him again all those years later, though he appeared somewhat marked by age and frailer, he was still the awesome, fearless Darcy. The original, genuine dissident.

  Will says, another day: “This young woman — this Rumina, did she lure you into coming here to California or was she used to lure you? …”

  It had been quite straightforward, really.

  One day a phone call came to my office in Chicago.

  “My name is Darcy, I am calling from Santa Monica. I don’t know if you remember me from Dar es Salaam …”

  Mister Darcy! My heart was racing. How could I not remember. “Of course,” I said, “you used to visit my grandmother —”

  And after asking questions about me, my well-being, he said, “Yes, it’s been a long long time.”

  He’d been given my name, he said, as someone who could assist him. He had recently taken over a political magazine with an interest in the Third World called Inqalab, and he was looking for marketing ideas. And so we talked.

  At the end of the call I realized he hadn’t told me who had given him my name, and I asked.

  “I believe she’s a friend of yours,” he said, “Rumina Abdala. She’s in Los Angeles, I came to know her in Dar.”

  What was Rumina doing in California? When did she go? … But I didn’t ask.

  A week later the phone rang, a sweltering July midnight. Rumina.

  “Oops — what time’s it there, I clean forgot the time difference —”

  And so we had an innocent chat, on the surface. She had a pretext, a question, could I suggest publishers who might be interested in publishing her thesis? I gave her two names in Amster
dam; what was she doing on the West Coast? She’d been invited to a conference there and had decided to stay. She liked the climate, and had found a part-time job teaching Swahili at a university. She had been there eight months already and would probably stay for the time being. We made no reference to our past intimacy — it had been almost exactly a year since Jamila’s reunion — though it hung heavily behind each calculated response we uttered. In that intervening year I had come to think of that brief and happy time we spent together as the prelude to an impossible dream and, therefore, best forgotten. Now there was fear at broaching the subject, and uncertainty, and of course the dark shadow of her past, which I did not believe I could ever feel neutral about. She called one more time, and again there was that sense of uneasiness, of fear stalking our conversation, despite the outward cordiality. Nothing might have come of these tentative gestures — except that Darcy rang again, two weeks to the day after that first time.

  “Look, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Why don’t you come and join us here at Inqalab, help us reach out to more people. You have knowledge of the market —”

  “I’m flattered.” And I was thrilled, too. To be invited by the old warrior to join him!

  He explained his plans for expansion, concluding with: “I’ve made inquiries about you … and you’re what we used to call a ndugu. We need you, the cause needs you.”

  Rumina called a couple of days later: “Do you think you will take up Mr. Darcy’s offer?” Unable to hide the excitement in her voice, the tremor of happiness, and reminding me with a pang of the girl I knew in Glenmore — her freshness and youth and surprising boldness.

  So who used whom? Did Darcy use Rumina to entice me to come over, or was it the other way round? In either case, it doesn’t matter now.

  The Swahili term ndugu that Darcy used for me — it seems to disturb Will. In the seventies, this word became the equivalent of the “comrade” of communist countries. But, I tell Will, its first meaning is “little brother,” which always takes precedence. So ndugu from Darcy was no small tribute. Will smiles quizzically, indulgently, as if to say, Whatever pleases you. But we are back to the photo of the bomb scene: the debris and the victim.