Baby Khaki's Wings

by Anar Ali

  The precious diamonds, escorted by a fezzed Tanganyika police force, and contained in plastic bulletproof boxes, arrived at the entrance of the sports ground. People craned their necks and shook their heads in awe. But when the Imam entered, accompanied by his two sons and his wife, Her Highness the Begum, who wore a sari studded with fifteen hundred diamonds, people let out sighs and clapped. Many people wiped away their tears. They would cherish this moment forever. The Imam wore a robe of white and silver brocade studded with stars and a beautiful headpiece woven with gold thread. He waved at the crowd, then climbed to the stage, where He sat down majestically on a brocaded swivel chair. The chair was attached to a weigh scale the size of a small clock tower. Dignitaries sat on the stage floor just below Him. After a missionary recited a passage from the Koran, people who had donated the highest amounts were given a chance to place the first few boxes of diamonds on the scale. Slowly, the boxes of diamonds piled up. The Imam weighed in at over seventeen and a half stone, worth more than £640,000 in diamonds. The crowd stood in ovation.

  Shamshu searched the rows of dignitaries for Councillor Sahib. He didn’t want to miss the pearl-gifting ceremony, but he couldn’t see the Councillor anywhere.

  There were several other ceremonies before the Imam spoke. One presentation involved an eighteen-month-old boy, the son of a dignitary, who was brought to the stage and introduced to the gathering as a child of ideal health and physique. (Later, the boy was showcased in a special stall where his mother lectured crowds of other women on health issues.) Other presentations included ones by the Scouts and Guides, who bore banners from all the African territories, as well as individual gift presentations to Her Highness the Begum.

  Finally, the Imam rose to the microphone. He thanked His spiritual children. “As everyone is well aware, the value of these diamonds has been unconditionally presented to me on this occasion. I do not wish to take this amount for myself but to use it for any object that I think is best for my spiritual children. After long reflection, I have come to the conclusion that the very best use I can make of it is that, after the expenses of these celebrations have been paid for, the whole of the residue must be given as an absolute gift to the Diamond Jubilee Investment Trust. This is not an ordinary investment trust such as you find in the City of London. While a considerable part of its capital must be used for investment in the ordinary sense of this term, a greater part goes to the building up of a totally new financial outlook among the Ismailis. Cooperative societies, corporations, and building societies will draw from the Investment Trust sums equal to their capital but at a level rate of three percent interest, and they are not allowed to charge more than six percent under any condition from their borrowers.

  “Now one word, if I may be allowed to say it, of general advice to inhabitants here, whatever their race, colour, or creed. I have had some experience of the causes of strife and I was a very active member of the League of Nations and of the Disarmament Conference for some seven years. Why did it fail? Ultimately because of hate. And yet why did people hate each other? Fear. Where there is fear there is no love, but hate easily enters through the windows even if the door is shut. I appeal to all of you, Africans, Europeans, and Indians—do not fear each other. There should be none. Thanks to the atom bomb and the progress of knowledge and science, and if things take a turn for good instead of evil, then the new forces of nature, we are certain, will make human relations easier and give each and all security.”

  The community felt so fortunate, and many decided right then and there to name their future sons Diamond. The Imam’s generosity and wisdom never ceased to amaze them. That day, His Highness also conferred high titles like Vizier, Allijah, and Hazur Mukhi on deserving members. The Imam also married hundreds of couples, some whose families had made hasty wedding plans when they heard the Imam was coming.

  After the ceremony, everybody lined up under the mandap and helped themselves to plates of pilau and kachumber, dhar, ladoo, and ghatia, and sipped on ice-cold sherbet. Shamshu and the boys chose not to eat; they were eager to find Councillor Sahib.

  They found him trying to calm Mr. and Mrs. Noorani. “Listen, she must be here. You have searched everywhere?”

  “Of course. We’ve looked and looked and can’t find her.” Mrs. Noorani clutched her handkerchief tighter between her hands. “Please, Councillor Sahib, please do something.”

  “Bai, I will definitely take up the matter after the ceremonies. Let’s wait some. I suspect she’s just lost in the crowd somewhere.” He handed Mrs. Noorani a glass of sherbet. “Come now, have some. It will make you feel better.”

  Mrs. Noorani refused, saying she wasn’t thirsty. “Something has happened to my Fatima,” she said, wiping her nose with her handkerchief.

  “No, no. Don’t worry. I’m certain it’s all just a misunderstanding of some sort.”

  The Nooranis left, still upset.

  Latif turned to Councillor Sahib. “Tell us! Tell us. Were you able to give the pearls to the Imam?”

  Councillor Sahib coughed, then looked away, waving at someone in the crowd before he reached into his pocket. “Of course. In fact, as with the diamonds, He has gifted these back to you.” The Councillor handed the pearls to Shamshu. “Think you should be the one to keep these, no?”

  Nizar watched from a distance as the boys clapped and cheered for his brother. “Shamshu! Shamshu! Shamshu!”

  Shamshu took the bag of pearls, but his hand was unable to hold the weight and the bag slipped and fell to his feet. Several boys bent down immediately, and like servants in a king’s court, they scrambled to pick it up for Shamshu. Latif prevailed. He placed the bag of pearls securely in Shamshu’s hands.

  Despite exhaustive search efforts, Fatima was never found. “If only…” Mrs. Noorani would say to anyone who would still listen, “if only we knew the truth.”

  People tried to reassure her. “Probably the work of an African. You know how they are.”

  —

  OVER THE YEARS, each time Shamshu heard this story, it calcified inside him, creating layers over layers like an oyster to a pearl, until he forgot the truth and believed the story himself. Shamshu never remembered Fatima struggling to break free of his grip—a grip that even he hadn’t realized was so powerful; he didn’t remember the bubbles escaping from her mouth, the terror in her eyes, and he certainly never felt her body go limp in his arms before slipping away and sinking down like a pirate’s treasure. All Shamshu had been able to think about was his pearls, his precious pearls. And when he eventually surfaced, he became so engrossed with the task of counting the day’s harvest that he forgot about Fatima completely. Although he did remember, and would repeat the story over and over again to his children and later his grandchildren, that he was a champion pearl-diver, capable of unheard-of feats. He was also able to recount the exact number of oysters he collected on each and every dive, and the praise, word for word, that had been showered on him (and still was).

  By and by, Shamshudin Karmali Jiwa ended up a happy and successful man. Not only did he marry a beautiful woman and have three beautiful daughters and three ambitious sons, but he also ascended rapidly in the community and eventually became a Councillor himself; and despite Nizar’s protests, Mr. Jiwa made Shamshu the primary heir to the family empire. The company was renamed S.K. Jiwa & Sons Inc., which although not intended, served as the final blow to Nizar, who left Dar es Salaam soon after and took a job as a porter at a shipping company in Dubai.

  It was only on occasion that something niggled at Shamshu, like a fish bone caught in his throat, and he felt as if things were somehow off balance in his life, but then he would promptly conduct an inventory of all his accomplishments, which would, thankfully, remind him of who he truly was: S.K. Jiwa, business tycoon, community leader, family man. This put his mind at ease, for a while at least.

  A Christmas Baby

  As Layla Visram waited for the washing machine to complete its spin cycle, she rubbed her hand over h
er plump belly and wished she wasn’t pregnant. She did not want another child. She was almost forty and her husband, Mansoor, was forty-three. They were, she felt, much too old. Besides, they already had three happy and healthy children: two daughters, Farzana and Sikin, aged fifteen and sixteen, and a boy, Ashif, who was ten. But more than anything else, Layla knew that they couldn’t afford another child.

  The economy in Alberta was in full recession and interest rates had skyrocketed to almost twenty percent. Local newspapers called it an oil bust and blamed the federal government for creating the National Energy Program—a policy that as usual, they said, unfairly favoured other provinces. In a matter of only months, oilrigs were shut down and construction companies abandoned their sites, leaving behind communities filled with skeletons of partially built structures—as if a monster-sized wrecking ball had swung through Alberta, smashing buildings and crushing thousands of people under its weight.

  Visram’s Speedy Gas & Convenience was one of the only stops on the lonely stretch of highway between Rocky Mountain House and Red Deer. Mansoor had purchased the business three years ago in 1979, and until last year, they had attracted a constant flow of customers—truckers delivering pipeline, oilmen on their way to a worksite, construction workers from nearby projects, tourists on their way to the Ice Fields Parkway, even motorists caught in a snowstorm. But nowadays, hours went by without a single customer, and for several months now, they had been unable to make their loan payments on time, prompting the banker, Mr. Snelgrove, to request a meeting.

  The washing machine whirled to a stop and as Layla transferred her family’s wet clothes into the dryer and set the dial to permanent press, she asked herself, as she had so many times before, Why didn’t I have the abortion when I could have? Layla was now seven months pregnant; the baby was due on Christmas Day, which only added to her worries. Instead of being at school, the other children would be home.

  —

  MANSOOR PULLED open the interconnecting door that separated the store from their house in the back, and joined Layla at the kitchen table. The doctor’s office had called earlier this week with the pregnancy test result. Mansoor was ecstatic about his new child. It was due on Christmas Day, can you believe? A Muslim child born on Christmas? Wa! What great blessings! Mansoor took this as a good sign—a sign of his family developing deeper roots in this new country of theirs. He turned to his wife and tried, once again, to reassure her.

  “Please, you mustn’t worry so much—especially now. It’s not good for you or the baby. I’m telling you, Layla, we’ll be just fine. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to worry about.” Mansoor craned his neck toward the living room to make sure that his children had not heard. The girls were sprawled out on the green shag carpet watching Gilligan’s Island. Ashif was kneeling in front of the coffee table, his hand swooping through the air as he made a small plastic Superman fly around a building made of Lego bricks. Watching his son at play gave Mansoor tremendous joy and reminded him of his own childhood in Uganda.

  Every Sunday, the entire family would pile into a caravan of cars made of Peugeots and a sleek new Ford, the trunks packed with huge sufurias of curried potatoes, sticks of spicy mishkaki, and chapatis. They sang and laughed the whole way to Lake Victoria. There the children would scatter, but always under the strict warning not to wander too far into the jungle or too close to the water. Once, when Mansoor was swinging on a tire roped to a tree, a crocodile emerged from the swampy lake and snapped its jaws at his heels. The other children ran away screaming but Mansoor pumped his legs faster and faster until he soared above the beast. Eventually, the crocodile tired and retreated back into the lake. When Mansoor returned to the other children, they clapped and cheered him on. The next day, he told and retold the story to all his friends, who shook their heads in awe as he boasted about his exceptional courage and prowess, and then pronounced himself The Master of Crocodiles.

  Mansoor turned back to the kitchen table and anxiously reviewed a calendar on which he had mapped out his priorities, first for each week and then each day. At the top of each day’s list, Mansoor would write an inspirational quote from one of his many business books, including his current favourite, In Search of Excellence. This week’s quote said, “What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” It was almost May month-end and he still had so many items under column A (Urgent): Reconcile Accounts, Prepare Balance Sheet, Revise Cash Flow, Develop New Budget. Mansoor was determined to make the loan payment on time this month. He adjusted the paper ribbon on his massive calculator, licked his index finger, and turned to the next page of the accounting ledger. He started by writing the auspicious numbers 7–8–6 on the top corner of the page—a practice his father had taught him in Kampala—and sure enough, he had always been able to balance the books to the exact penny.

  Layla pulled her teacup toward herself, creating a line of wrinkles on the prairie wild roses of the tablecloth. “Please, just listen to me for once. I can’t…” She stopped and looked down into her filled teacup, the steam swirling at the rim. She knew he wouldn’t listen to her reasons for wanting an abortion. But how in God’s name could she take care of a baby in dire circumstances, yet again?

  Only days before the expiration of General Idi Amin’s November 8, 1972, deadline for all Asians to leave Uganda, Layla had arrived with the children at the Royal Air Force refugee camp sixty miles outside of London. Ashif was five months old, the girls, five and six years old. Months before, the Jewish community had been thrown out. Then the Asians, even the Muslims, were given ninety days to leave. Mansoor, like so many, had refused to believe the decree. “As if he’ll throw us out! We were born in this country for God’s sake.” At jamatkhana, many leaders echoed his view. But then, as each day passed, more and more stories of Amin’s terror began to emerge: two men murdered as they filled their cars at a petrol station; a man thrown into a car boot and never seen again; twin sisters, students at Makerere University, kidnapped from their dorm room and gang-raped for days by army officers before one sister finally escaped, her nipples still bleeding when she was found on the side of a road. Panic spread and the community started to pack their bags; the United Nations organized airlifts out of the country. They were allowed to take £50 with them, but Layla also managed to smuggle out some of her wedding jewellery by rolling necklaces into sweets like ladoo and concealing earrings in Ashif’s milk bottle. The children’s ayah, Rose, had cried as she handed the baby, wrapped tightly in the blue blanket she had knitted for him, back to Layla. “At least you have a way out,” she had said, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her kanga. “What, Mamma, will the rest of us do?”

  Layla had begged Mansoor to come with them—surely the British would show some compassion when they arrived in London. “Please, they will kill you,” she said.

  But Mansoor refused. He wanted to stay as long as possible, hoping like so many others that he might be able to salvage some of their fortune. Besides, he reminded her, the British Consulate had strongly advised against attempts to enter Britain without proper documentation. Illegal entrants, they warned, would be detained indefinitely, no matter if your wife and children were British subjects.

  It is terrible, the consulate had said, this expulsion of eighty thousand Asians, but we have no choice: we must stand by our Voucher Quota System. City councils, like Leicester’s, placed adverts in Ugandan newspapers like The Argus, urging Asians to stay away from their city. We have quite enough of them, thank you very much, quipped one councillor. Layla countered Mansoor’s refusal by naming many other men who didn’t have British passports but who were still going with their families.

  “I’m not like other men,” Mansoor said matter-of-factly. It was only when she started to cry that he took her in his arms and patted her back. “Be strong, darling, for the children’s sake. Everything will be fine. We’ll be together before you know it.”

  For many months, Layla had no idea where Mansoor was. Had he even been able to get out of
Uganda? Why hadn’t he listened to her? Yes, many of the illegal entrants were detained at the camps, but at least their families were together—and really, what else mattered? Layla would watch enviously as families clustered together at the camp cafeteria, eating and joking. Eventually, many of them even managed to emigrate successfully to countries like Sweden and Argentina, after spotting ads posted on the camp’s bulletin board with the headline, HAVE YOU CONSIDERED EMIGRATING?

  Mansoor’s three sisters and their families had been on the same flight to London, but in the crowd at Heathrow, Layla lost track of them. She assumed they had been sent to another camp. Layla had two brothers, but both had settled in Kenya many years ago. She had even suggested to Mansoor that they could go to Nairobi. But by the time Mansoor agreed, all countries surrounding Uganda had sealed their borders. In London, Sikin and Farzana would constantly ask Layla when their father would be joining them. “Soon, bheta, soon,” Layla would say as she tried to stretch her mouth into a smile. After a few months, the girls stopped asking.

  The Uganda Resettlement Board urged everyone to get jobs quickly; London newspapers reported that many refugees were getting much too comfortable. Soon, representatives from various factories visited the camps and Layla was offered a job at a dressmaking factory in Bolton, near Manchester; the job also included accommodations at a nearby boarding house. Before accepting the position, Layla tracked down Mansoor’s sisters to ask for help; she was not yet willing to sell her wedding jewellery. Her sisters-in-law encouraged her to take the job. They said they would have gladly helped her, but their husbands were detainees and were therefore unable to work. Years later, Layla found out that their husbands had all successfully smuggled their fortunes out of Uganda. They had purchased tickets at Sabeena Airlines that went around and around the world, as if spooling the earth with miles of golden thread. Once they were in England, they quietly arranged for refunds.