The Idol of Mombasa

by Annamaria Alfieri

  She laughed, a liquid noise like the water in the fountain in front of the Treasury Building. “You are a very desirous man,” she said, still laughing.

  He did not know if she meant that he desired her, or that she found him desirable. He lay back and took her in his arms, wanting nothing for the moment but to lie next to her and breathe in the air of the ocean that was soft and tasted of salt.

  “How old are you?” she asked after a while.

  “I am twenty-five,” he said.

  “And yet you are not circumcised.”

  Her words froze his heart. Suddenly nothing was right with this night. “Why do you say that?” He could hear his own voice shaking.

  She sat up. “I am sorry. I should not have said it. Please don’t be angry. I only asked because I am not cut either. You know that the Somali cut their girls before they marry.”

  “The Kikuyu and the Maasai do that too.”

  “I ran away to find my sister before they cut me. I want you to know this, even though I think it will make you not want me anymore.”

  “Nothing will stop me from wanting you.” He wanted to add especially not that, but he did not know what that would mean to her. Instead, he explained that being half Kikuyu, half Maasai meant that neither tribe accepted him as a warrior. “That is why I was never circumcised.”

  She kissed him with her lips, with her tongue, and gently with her beautiful teeth. “You are perfect,” she said.

  Because he could not do or say anything else, he loved her again. When he felt her body respond to his, he rejoiced that they had not cut her. He wondered why any man who truly desired a woman would want her not to respond as Aurala did to his touch.

  When the horizon became visible where the sea met the sky, he knew they must soon go. He offered her some water and drank some himself.

  “This is a good place for us,” she said. “I like to be here where we can hear the sea and feel its breeze and smell its clean breath.”

  “Any place I can be with you is a good place for me,” he said. “I am sorry to leave you, but I must report for duty.”

  “Can we walk together into the town?” she asked.

  As they did, she told him about her sister and the silk shop. That her sister did not want her to do such work anymore. “She never wanted me to. But Majidi said that I must or he would kill us both.”

  “I am happy he is dead then. I would kill him if he were still alive.” He said it with conviction. But he wondered if it were really true.

  “With the extra money that my sister and the other girls are keeping, we have enough to take a little house in the native village, but most of the Swahili are Muslims. They will not have us near them. We are the worst of sinners. We cannot live among them. So we are still living in the souk.”

  He took her hand and held it as they walked along. He did not want her to live there, but he did not have enough money to pay for another place to live. He was required to live in the barracks. They had only the fishermen’s shack for the times they could make sex together in the night. For the first time since he had seen her, he longed to be back in his home country, where the tribal people could be cruel but did not have such rules about boys and girls.

  “Perhaps,” she said, “after the Grand Mufti leaves, things will calm down. It is since he is here that the people are trying so hard to be holy.”

  “The G.M. is very important. All of the English are very worried that he will be hurt. Or even just displeased.”

  “I think he is a good man,” she said. “I don’t think he knows how the men take his words and turn them into things they think they must do. I, of course, have not heard him with my own ears, but they talk about his words. Then they twist them into commands. The next thing you know they are talking as if the Grand Mufti told them to kill someone.”

  Suddenly, Libazo thought that what she was saying was important, not only to her but to him, the sergeant. “Tell me the things he says and the things they do.”

  “I have heard them talking as they walk in the souk. They say that the Grand Mufti spoke in the mosque and said, ‘Take yourself seriously as followers of the Holy Prophet.’ And then they begin to discuss Majidi. That he worships only money. That he does things that are against the Shari’a law only to get money.”

  “Shari’a?” It was not a word Kwai Libazo knew.

  “The law of Islam,” she said, “the law of my people. They speak as if that is what is important to them, but I think that many of them hate Majidi only because he has so much power over them.”

  “Where does his power come from?”

  “I do not understand exactly.” She stopped now. They were near the bazaar. “I have to be careful not to be overheard,” she said. She lowered her voice but went on. “Majidi had a lot of people who did what he wanted, who made money for him. He did not do the evil things. He forced others to do them.”

  “How?”

  “Leylo says that he tempts them to do something bad, to do it for a great amount of money. He keeps the proof that they did this bad thing. Then he threatens to expose them for what they have done if they don’t continue to obey him.”

  “What sorts of things could be so bad that they will do his bidding against their own beliefs?”

  “I don’t know. Bad things. He gets them into debt and then forces them to earn their way out. Many have gone to capture Somali girls up in the north, Muslim girls, to bring them here to work for him. Spoiling them for a life as a woman of Islam. That is how he got Leylo.”

  “He did that?”

  The dawn had broken. People were beginning to move in the streets. In the pale light, he saw her bring her finger to her lips. She whispered. “Not to me but to my sister and to the other girls at the shop.”

  He saw what it meant. “So Majidi told the bookseller that he must stop the Grand Mufti’s preaching.”

  “I think he was afraid one of the men he commanded would be inspired by the Grand Mufti’s words, that he would betray Majidi to the Shari’a court.”

  “But someone killed him instead. And I think it must have been for his disrespect for the laws of your religion.” It was an impulse Kwai understood. Once he had joined the British police force and begun to work with A.D.S. Tolliver, he had devoted himself to serving the rule of law and justice. He understood fully how a religion could be based on the law. But this would mean here in Mombasa there were two kinds of law—the law of the Arabs and British law… And they did not move men in the same direction. Not in the same direction at all.

  She gripped his hand and looked into his eyes. “My sister says that those men of Majidi’s, to prove how holy they are, have also sent word to my father, telling him where Leylo and I are. That means my brothers will come after Leylo and me. They will want to kill us.”

  Kwai believed her. Suddenly his heart was beating as fast as it did when he kissed her. “When? Do you know that they are coming? I must hide you. They must never find you.” Every bit of him was suddenly alert, as if he were prey near a hunting lion in the wilderness. As if he were about to be eaten alive.

  “Leylo told me they were just saying those things to frighten us. But I saw true fear in her eyes. She is the one who is lying, to stop me being afraid.”

  He looked up. The sky was already bright. He would be late reporting for duty. If he was dismissed from the police force, how could he keep her safe? But he did not want to go from her. He did not want to let her out of his sight.

  “You must go to your work,” she said. There was not a hint of hesitation in her voice.

  “I will find a place for you to hide. I will—you must—”

  “Go,” she said. “I will hide in the Hindu shoe seller’s stall if they come today. But I am sure it is too soon. They will not get here so soon.” She put her hands together and bowed her head to him, turned her back, and walked away. She did not look back, and he did not follow. He had no place to hide her. He wished he could put her inside his own body and keep her
where no one could hurt her.

  ***

  A couple of hours later, Inspector Patrick put down his magnifying glass and turned to Justin Tolliver, who had been forcing himself not to pace while he waited for the result. Patrick picked up the glass tumbler and handed it to Tolliver. “You can return this to your clever wife,” he said. “The fingerprints on this glass do not match the fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

  “Well, that’s a relief! Now I won’t have to arrest a missionary woman for murder.”

  “That is if those truly are her fingerprints on the glass,” Patrick said rather drily.

  Tolliver opened his mouth to express his indignation. He had told Patrick that it was Vera who had obtained them. Did this fingerprint expert think Vera would lie about such a thing? But Tolliver bit his lip. Would Vera lie about such a thing?

  “Please don’t take offense,” Patrick said. “It’s how a chap in my line needs to think. Narrowly about the observed facts.”

  “No offense taken,” he said as lightly as he could. “I will do what I can to confirm.” He turned away to hide his grimace. He did not want Patrick to think his wife would fabricate evidence. He wouldn’t want any other sort of wife than the one he had, but he preferred that the men of the force think her just another British woman, which she certainly was not.

  He left Patrick to write his report, went to his own desk, and wrote out a request to the district commissioner at Malindi for any evidence about the shipping of contraband ivory or slaves. He thought he might interrogate Hastings again, to see if he could get him to come clean. But then Egerton arrived looking like the wrath of God. He closed the office door with a thump.

  “Tolliver,” he said, “the commissioner tells me that you have arrested an Englishman.”

  Tolliver indicated the chair next to his desk, but Egerton remained standing and paced the small space like a tiger in the zoo. “You know full well that you must report such an action to me. I hope you have a good explanation for why you did not do so before the commissioner’s question caught me by surprise.”

  “It happened very late last night, sir. I have credible evidence that he and Majidi were dealing in illegal ivory and worse—trading slaves out of Malindi. I have just finished sending off a letter by runner mail to District Superintendent Longworth up there, asking him to look into it from his end.”

  Egerton placed his fists on the desk and leaned over it. “I have it that your so-called evidence is the word of an African.” Egerton’s voice was full of exasperation.

  Tolliver forced himself not to pull back. “A freed slave named Juba Osi, sir.” He’d be damned if he would let Egerton force him to drop this investigation. “Sir, the rules say we are not supposed to use a double standard. Yet we arrest blacks for using abusive language on the mere accusation of a white. Hastings is alleged to have committed egregious crimes. We have to take what I have learned seriously or we will look like a passel of fools instead of a competent police force.” He closed his mouth and held his breath.

  Egerton glared at him from mere inches away. Justin looked into his eyes calmly, without challenge. Egerton shook his head and sighed. “Your file says you are sensitive to native relations. I did not take that to mean that you preferred the word of a black to a white.”

  “I prefer the evidence that seems to point to the truth, sir.” Hearing what a prig he was being, Justin realized he’d better let the D.S. save face. “Really, sir. I do believe we have a good case against Hastings. When I confronted him with what I had been told, he did not deny it. He merely said that I would not be able to prove it. I am taking the opportunity to try.”

  “But you are holding him in prison in the meantime, on the word of an ex-slave.” Tolliver did not wince, though Egerton’s tone was accusatory, as if Tolliver had burned down the town to rid it of a mouse.

  “He had bought a ticket to Uganda on today’s noon train.”

  “We can’t look as if we prefer the blacks to the whites.”

  Tolliver bit back an oath. “But we must prefer truth to lies, and the rule of law to everything else.” Tolliver no longer cared how sanctimonious he sounded.

  At that moment, Kwai Libazo arrived looking as if he were bursting with news.

  “I promise, sir,” Tolliver said to Egerton, “that I will clear up the issue of Hastings as quickly as possible. I will release him if I don’t have a corroborating report from Malindi within a few days.”

  “See that you do,” Egerton said, as if he had the upper hand, which by virtue of his rank he did.

  As soon as he had gone, Libazo reported what he had learned about Majidi and his machinations. “Given Mr. Majidi’s evil actions, I think, sir, that it must be one of the Arab men who killed him. Do you not think this could be true?” He looked to Tolliver as if he expected to be congratulated for what he had found out. But Tolliver had no idea how he would go about discovering who among the men in the Arab community had done the deed, if in fact one of them had.

  In a flash of insight, it suddenly occurred to him that if the fingerprints on the murder weapon were a woman’s and if Majidi actually had captured the women of the brothel and forced them into that way of life, one of them might have taken her revenge against her captor. Prostitution was against British law. But as long as the women did not disturb the peace or break other laws, the British police left them to themselves. The story would be very different if the charge were murder.

  “We will have to arrest the women in the silk shop,” he said to Libazo. “Take a detachment of men there and bring them all to Fort Jesus.”

  He expected Libazo to be angry, unwilling, expected him even to rebel against the idea. Instead, he looked entirely happy at the prospect of arresting a woman in whom he seemed to have a love interest. There were times when Tolliver thought he was beginning to understand his sergeant. And then, in one stroke, the man would destroy that illusion.

  ***

  Kwai Libazo obeyed orders. In this case he was more than happy to do so. Aurala would be safe from her father and her brothers while she was in police custody. It was an answer to his prayers.

  For extra protection while transporting her and her sister and the other girls, he went to the police barracks and chose four askaris, making sure that none of them were Somali. As he marched the men in the direction of the bazaar, his mind raced. He had to make sure that Aurala Sagal was not convicted of a crime. In prison, women were supposed to be separated from the men, but all too often they were not. He did not want to think about what the guards made girls do.

  For now at least, being under arrest would mean that, if her brothers came intending to defend their family honor by killing her and her sister, they would have to break into the prison to do so.

  ***

  Tolliver had Inspector Patrick waiting at Fort Jesus with his fingerprinting apparatus as soon the silk-shop girls arrived. The women found the procedure curious, but they cooperated, as he would have expected.

  While Patrick went off to his laboratory to compare their fingerprints with those on the murder weapon, Tolliver proceeded to question them one by one. Leylo Sagal, the eldest, quickly confirmed that she had been kidnapped from a coastal town called Shaka, just over the border in Somalia. She had been a young wife, married only a few months. She was happy to speak at length of the meanness of her husband’s first wife, of the mixture of fear and relief when she was taken away from what would have been a lifetime of misery. She said her life in the silk shop was neither better nor worse than she would have had, but when he tried to prompt her to describe her life after the abduction, she pursed her lips and looked away. No amount of coaxing on Tolliver’s part could persuade her to look at him, much less open up.

  Nyah, the second girl, would tell him nothing at all, not even to confirm that she too had been kidnapped.

  Aurala Sagal was entirely cooperative. She had not been kidnapped, but had followed her sister of her own accord. But when Majidi discovered her arrival, she b
ecame his captive. She told Tolliver the names of more than twenty men who had been in thrall to Majidi, any one of whom might have wanted to kill him. “The Grand Mufti is one of the highest persons of the law of Islam. I hoped very much that the Grand Mufti would learn how evil Majidi was and kill him.” She raised her head and looked Tolliver right in the eye. “Every night of my life here, I prayed for the courage to kill him myself.”

  Her defiance made her all the lovelier. Tolliver saw exactly why Kwai Libazo was so taken with her. She was beautiful, with chiseled, refined features and a melodious voice, all animated by her lively spirit and the sparkle in her eyes. But he wondered at her lack of guile. She was here being questioned about the very murder that—by her own statement—she had wished to commit. He could not blame her for longing to free herself from captivity, to escape from a life that debased her. Sheltered from the world as she must have been as a girl child, she had had the pluck to run away from home on her own to find her sister and try to save her. When he questioned her in the silk shop, she had told him she was only fifteen. She seemed so womanly much of the time. But now she had revealed her thoughts as no canny adult would. It seemed a childlike thing to do.

  Almost as if she had read his mind, her determination deepened. “Majidi deserved to die,” she said.

  Tolliver did not know what to think. Girls her age were considered children in England. Not so in Africa. Yet how, at such an age, could Aurala Sagal have been condemned to work as a whore? That was how he was supposed to think about her. Every ounce of his English mores and morals called out for him to throw her to the dogs. The prevailing culture among the British in the Protectorate, staff and settlers alike, was that the savages they had found here were little better than beasts, and that a girl like this deserved neither pity nor protection.

  Tolliver had written to his sister that he felt as if his soul had expanded here in Africa. What he had not admitted to anyone, not even to himself, was that in the course of that expansion, his soul had taken on a new shape, new subtleties of color, that dispelled rigid assumptions of his childhood. Vera called into question much of what Tolliver had been taught about the people in this lovely, often violent land. And he had seen that her gentler, more understanding approach was the better one. The people here, while they might seem uncivilized at first, had just as many good and bad points as any Englishman.