by M G Vassanji
There was an awkward silence, and then Naseem added, “… unless you have made plans, of course.”
“I have prepared a guest room for him,” Rumina began slowly, then hurried out with, “and there’s an apartment going near where I live, that he can look at tomorrow morning …”
Her voice trailed off, and Ramji hesitated. Around him they were all waiting for his response: Jump, Ramji, jump: jump left, jump right, which way will you fall? There was Zayd, watchful as a hawk; and Basu, bemused; Darcy, indulgent as a parent; and Naseem, holding her breath as though watching an intimate scene unfold on TV. They must all have known something was going on between them, and they had probably all wondered, exactly what manner of relationship?
Ramji said, “Yes, I think that’s what I’ll do, thanks. Besides, we have some catching up to do.”
“Yes, you go along,” Darcy said. “You need a rest too.” And to Rumina: “He’s all yours!”
All right then, the rest of them said, cancel the dinner plans for tonight, some other night perhaps, and then they said their goodbyes. Ramji looked at Naseem and said he would let her know tomorrow — regarding where he had finally decided to stay — and she said, Anytime, you’re welcome.
As he left with Rumina she pointed out the yellow warehouse building outside in the complex. “That’s the Shamsi mosque,” she said with a smile, “in case you need to go and pray.”
He hesitated, then said, “I stopped praying a long time ago. I thought you knew that.”
A thin drizzle fell as they drove to her place, taking her car, leaving his Company parking area. The evening traffic was thick and the going slow through the kaleidoscope of reflected city lights. They were on Sepulveda Boulevard, she went on chattily; along this stretch it coincided with the Pacific Coast Highway, which went all the way to San Diego. She lived in Hermosa Beach, in the South Bay area. Of course Santa Monica was more fashionable, but she liked where she was. It was full of young people, very informal, good for cycling and volleyball. The beach was close. The library was excellent. There was a Borders, and another bookshop she really liked, called Maktaba’s, which had books on Africa.
He was unresponsive and broody, and soon she stopped talking. Then after a while she said, “I’m sorry for hijacking you, I suppose you would have liked to have dinner and relax and chat with the rest.”
He looked up, surprised. “Not at all,” he told her. Quite the contrary, he might have said, I wanted nothing more than to get away with you.…But am I sure this is right for me, even as I desire her so terribly, too much perhaps? Is she my inevitable end, my conclusion?
“About this apartment — what’s it like? How far from you?”
“We can think of an apartment tomorrow … if you like.”
Eyes agleam — but I’m only imagining that. There was always a great deal of mischief in her. She could be a djinni, a temptress, he mused. Zanzibar had always been full of them.
Neither of them spoke after that. Left to his thoughts, he recalled their time together in Glenmore, then Washington. She probably had the same thoughts flitting through her mind. Same? Wouldn’t it be interesting if two people could share the same memories, experience exactly the same images? That would need a hard-wiring of the brains, wouldn’t it …
She turned right, off the main road, into one of parallel streets sloping to the beach, then took another left into a residential street called Salal Avenue. Her apartment was the upper level of a blue duplex with white window trimmings. It was reached by an external staircase at the side of the building, leading up from the front to the back door.
He followed her in, and let the door click gently shut behind him.
She turned to face him, her cheeks flushed. And as she had done once before, months ago in D.C. — but now her eyes were aglow, hands clasped in front of her at the chest, a questioning look on her face — she said, in Swahili: Welcome. And he replied, exactly as he had done that time, Ahsante, thank you. They stared at each other for a moment. Then, overcome by a rush of emotion, they fell into a desperately tight, silent embrace.
Later, in the bedroom, amidst tender caresses, bodies gratified but hearts still craving, there were answers, assurances, excuses.
“The last time you said you were sure — doubly sure …”
He said softly: “Yes.”
She lay on her back, arms behind her head, he facing her, raised on one elbow beside her, drawing patterns with his finger on her midriff.
“And after that? Cold, stony silence. Mister Heartless. Did it matter so much to you that I was Sheikh Abdala’s daughter?”
“It did, then. But I can handle it, I think.”
“I don’t think you were really angry that I didn’t tell you. You just got cold feet, admit it.”
“That too,” he said, after a pause.
She turned on her side, asked: “How are the twins — they must hate being called that — Sara and Rahim?”
“They’re doing fine.”
Two faces loom in his mind, a girl with a ponytail, a boy with tousled hair … what would they be up to now … returned from school and snacking, and perhaps bickering as they eat …
“Yes. I tell myself they’d have distanced themselves in a couple of years, and would have left after three more years.” And Zuli — would they have moved closer as he’d hoped so often, if Rumina had not happened?
They had a late dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant down the street, which even at this hour, 10:30 p.m., was moderately full, then strolled along the beach. A three-quarter moon was out, a free spirit slicing through clouds, and the tide was high and the waves lashed gently at the shore. A few other people were out for a walk, and in front of a house there was a gathering of young people chatting in low voices. As if in celebration of openness and the elements, most of the houses they passed had full-length windows and glass doors, through which they could see tidy living rooms and kitchens, in darkness or flickering with the shadow-play of a television still on.
“When was the last time you walked by the sea?” she said.
“Twenty-five years ago,” he said. “I thought I had got it out of me, the sea.…Reminds me of home, a bit, but home’s on the other side of the ocean, straight ahead of us.”
“Only it’s not home any longer.”
“And we’re not who we were.”
They walked on in silence, she clutching his arm, he saying silently to himself, It will be all right. It will be all right.
2
Afterwards, when he would recall this brief span of a few months, and when it seemed to him there was nowhere to turn but to the writing paper or the computer screen in front of him, it was his time together with Rumina that became the most vivid, the most painfully real: tender moments of love, a romance opening like a fairy tale; her touch, her smell of fresh soap or, in the evening, of a faint perfume or (to tease him) a seductive Zanzibari attar — the eyes twinkling, a sarong hugging the contours of her body —, her various hairstyles, the dimples on her cheeks … all the pleasurable details of her presence and being. What else was she to him besides her sensual presence, which so thrilled him? After a long time, and perhaps for the first time, he felt actually loved, by a woman. He adored her for that, and he was grateful. And also, with Rumina he was finally living an existence which he did not feel was alien to him, and so, in a manner of speaking, she had brought him home.
In their spare time he and Rumina would sometimes drive around and explore the vast metropolis that is Los Angeles in all its diversity. So many of the places had a mythic feel to them, simply from their names, long familiar to him through movies and television and the detective fiction of his youth. And yet here they were — Sunset Boulevard, the soaring office towers of Century City (in one of which he went to visit an old classmate of his, a lawyer), the palatial properties of Beverley Hills.
They loved to cook together, elaborately: something traditionally Zanzibari — a rice bread and coconut-based curry with cilantro,
green chillies, and ginger, or a vegetarian Gujarati thali with an assortment of greens and daals elaborately served with pickles on gleaming aluminum trays, or a lush saffroned biryani or pilau, or goat trotters, or brain fried in the richest spices.
Their landlord was a Swede with the large proportions and bearing of the stereotypical Nordic woodsman: Svend Nilsson — also gruff and good-natured — had an occupation not far off the mark either, that of a designer of furniture. He occupied the floor below them, with his French girlfriend Josie, using the backyard and its shed for his practical work space. The apartment was small, opening at the back where the kitchen was; it had two bedrooms on one side of the main corridor, which opened into the living room in front, with a four-foot bay window that gave an unhampered view of the western sky and portions of the beach. Between the kitchen and the living room was a partition of half-height shelves. Rumina had been induced by discounts into furnishing this room with Svend’s designs, some still in their provisional stages, using Scandinavian pine and glass, and black and white veneers — a starkness she had cleverly subverted by using appropriately placed African hangings with warm greens, yellows, and reds. Svend would visit, to check out the wear on his hinges and joints, he said, but also to chat, and he would never turn down an invitation to a meal.
Twice a week Rumina went to UCLA to teach Swahili, which she loved with a passion. Three days a week she did the morning shift at an espresso bar run by a women’s co-operative in a quiet part of Santa Monica where the only steady clientele came from the nearby daycare centre and supermarket. A partnership in the enterprise was hers for the asking. In her spare time Rumina pursued another passion, a study of traditional Zanzibari door designs. Meticulously, while Ramji read or watched television, she would reproduce, with pencil on paper, from photographs and from memory, and from drawings she received by mail, doors covered with intricate floral and abstract motifs.
On Fridays she would come to the Company offices in Santa Monica after work, and if it was late they would sit outside on a bench and watch people emerge from the Shamsi mosque next door. A couple of times, if it was early enough, she urged him to go in — saying, They are your people — and he did. At times she brought food for the mosque, this being the Shamsi tradition, though quite alien to hers. The prayer hall had been converted from a warehouse, using wood panelling, broadloom, and drapes, and minimalist furniture consisting of low tables for ceremonies, and a podium; at the entrance were display cabinets, a notice board, and a book table. Sometimes, as Ramji and Rumina sat watching, older folks in their walking shoes would emerge from the mosque and gather outside, then walk around the parking lot a few times, to practise for a walkathon that was scheduled for some weeks away. This was a far cry from the little mosque they used to run in the music library at the Tech in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when a presence of twelve was considered a crowd, and Sona was mukhi, the presider. Nowadays a presence of a hundred was considered paltry and lamentable. People of the Community all over America were questioning their identities, reading up on their history, and even — as Sona claimed — rewriting it.
Is one entitled to this happiness? I was taught of second chances but only when the outcome was spiritual. The world is a prison, we were taught, existence is bondage to the body. Those who are wise opt out of involvement in it, and so they escape the endless cycle of birth and rebirth. That was your second chance — to opt out. But a happy rebirth, a second chance to a life of this world, to sensual, homely happiness? It goes against everything we believed in.
But one cannot completely detach oneself from one’s previous existence, he knew that. He had had a wife, and a home, for thirteen years, they had a set of twins who would soon reach their teenage years. He could recall vividly the first news of their conception, the first sight of them on ultrasound, their first day in school. He could not pass by a sporting or a children’s clothing store without, instinctively, thinking of their needs. They were a part of him. He now called them on Sundays; Zuli would pick up the phone and, answering his query with a curt, “I’m fine, thank you, and you?” hand over the phone to Sara or Rahim. He hoped he would be able to spend some time with them before they grew up, that Zuli would not come in his way. What influence he’d had she had not much cared for.
Gradually over the weeks Ramji and Rumina began to reconcile themselves to that past, which had once caused a painful rift between them — a past involving the violent revolution in Zanzibar and her father Sheikh Abdala, who had been one of its leaders; together they began to undo the potency of their memories of that terrible episode of the forced marriages, which had installed the Sheikh as an embodiment of evil in Ramji’s mind.
When Ramji was growing up, the island of Zanzibar, although it had exotic associations elsewhere, did not capture the imaginations of those who lived on the mainland across from it, in Dar es Salaam. Its importance had been in the past, in the days of its slave market, when it was an urban commercial centre, while the mainland was still tribes and villages. When he was a boy, Zanzibar, Jungbar, was a laid-back kind of place, an island in the sun some fifty miles away, where the ships stopped on their way to Mombasa, Aden, and Bombay. It had the distinction that its Indians spoke a curious blend of Swahili and the Indian language Cutchi. There was the vague knowledge around that it had an American tracking station, and it was a free port. But it was basically a backwater, which routinely got trounced in soccer by the other East African countries. Then one morning in January 1964, Zanzibar — tiny, friendly Jungbar — was on everybody’s lips: it had become the site of a bloody revolution, every radio station had carried that news. And the amiable voice on Zanzibar Radio itself had been replaced by the harsh tones of someone calling himself the Field Marshall, giving notice: All you imperialists, your days are numbered.
Worried faces appeared everywhere on the street where Ramji lived — a lot of people had relatives on the island. Many of the older folk, including his grandmother, had in fact immigrated to Zanzibar from India, before going on to Dar and other places on the mainland. What Ramji recalled clearly of that January morning of the revolution was that the Arab restaurant down the road where he went to buy bread or maandazi for breakfast did not open.
The days that followed were filled with news and rumours about the revolution. The new government was African; the ousted one had been backed by Arabs, who had ruled the island for more than a century, so there seemed to be some justice to the change that had taken place. But the refugees who came pouring in to their relations’ homes brought stories of rapes and killings and plunder. According to the newspapers, Cubans, East Germans, and Russians had been sighted on the island. Not long afterwards, Tanganyika, the neighbouring mainland country, formed a federation with Zanzibar, perhaps to neutralize a communist threat, but the new country so formed, Tanzania, rapidly turned socialist. The Chinese soon arrived and were best friends. And the American ambassador in Nairobi, William Atwood, wrote a book called The Reds and the Blacks to explain the situation back to his people; it was banned in East Africa.
One of the leaders of the Zanzibari revolution was Sheikh Omari Abdala. Ramji remembered reading the issue of Time that had given the Sheikh’s biography and called him one of Africa’s most brilliant politicians. Apparently Sheikh Abdala had gone to university in Moscow, and a few days prior to the revolution he had returned home with a Russian wife.
And then, some years later — after so many people had fled the island in fear (and when so many still continued to flee it), after the seizure of so many properties and businesses by a dictatorship, and when so many languished in jails — that happened: the forced marriages. It was 1972 and Ramji was in Boston when he read about them in the newspaper clippings his grandmother sent him. Five members of the Revolutionary Council had each claimed for themselves, by decree, a young teenage girl from the Indian community as a bride. The youngest of the men was Sheikh Abdala, in his thirties; it was he who had announced this first bold step in a bid to integrate the
races. The oldest of the men was in his sixties. All were married, some had more than one wife. In the weeks that followed, two of the girls, including Abdala’s coerced bride, killed themselves. Finally, some months later, Sheikh Abdala was assassinated by a brother of the girl he had married by force; the killer was shot dead by bodyguards.
Sheikh Abdala left behind a daughter. Her mother, Elena, had gone back to Russia in 1967, when Rumina was two.
Late one night, they were sitting on the sofa, side by side; she with her back against the cushion, her legs crossed under her, and he having turned to face her, caressing her knee.
The past swirls in dark eddies around us, he thought, but we have to take the menace out if it …
I don’t believe in murder or assassination for any cause, but when I heard of your father’s killing, I quietly celebrated: a warm feeling in the heart, like a glass of eggnog on a chilly December night. Can you believe that, Rumina? I could have stood a round of drinks were I so inclined, I felt like running out into the street and shouting for joy, O my wish has been fulfilled, someone finally went and got one of those lecherous bastards. And it is his daughter I’m making love to …
“He loved me,” she said of her father. “He played games with me and told me stories. And I loved him. I remember him clearly — I was six when he was killed. It happened at the airport, he had just returned from Dar es Salaam. They rushed me to the hospital, from home. I had never seen him in pain before, and there he was, helpless on a hospital bed, doctors and nurses around him, and tubes coming out of him. He held my hand and I climbed on a stool so we could see each other.”
“And …?” Gently — we’re talking of Sheikh Abdala, but he was also her father.
“I looked into his eyes. They were wet, gleaming … I knew my father was crying. I still wish I could know what he was trying to tell me.”
