by M G Vassanji
We are poor and despised, our land was taken away, confiscated by the Bilitis, the British, given to the Humungati, the dreaded Home Guard, as payment to hunt and kill us; now where is the compensation promised to us, where are the European farms we were told would be ours after uhuru, where are the big houses, where is the wealth?…
They couldn’t have seemed more irrelevant or sounded more naïve.
At the artificial lake to our right, reflecting a deep copper sulphate blue, a few children ran about under the watchful eyes of their minders, their sharp bright voices just audible where we stood. Skirting the park along one side, lines of automobiles ran smoothly on the Uhuru Highway like columns of ants, breaking up at the nodular crowded roundabouts and then reconverging and moving along. Roads left these nodes for the hub of the city—from where, in the distance, the clock tower of the yellow and brown Parliament building indicated the time as a little past ten. In the opposite direction, tall orange Nandi flame and broad yellow cassia trees and multicoloured bougainvillea bushes lined the avenues that rose gently toward the green suburbs of Ngong and Hurlingham, with their cosy colonial bungalows nestled neatly behind hedgerows. This was beautiful Nairobi, it was an African city now.
The bystanders in the distance, beyond the police cordon, watched the proceedings in silent amazement; even the minister looked a bit cowed in the presence of these mostly middle-aged retired guerrillas who had once given up all to live in the forests, to rule the nights, to draw blood and terrorize in the name of freedom, and to suffer and risk death for themselves; who with homemade guns and machetes had sorely tested the military might of the British, thus hastening independence. It did feel awesome standing among them; it was impossible not to let the mind roam away from the issue at hand, not to stare at this one and that one and wonder what kind of men they were. But they did not look like heroes now; they were here to plead.
A strange, dry musty odour took to the air from this shiftless crowd. Most of the men, their clothes, had not been washed in days and weeks. They scratched themselves, drew patterns on the ground with their feet in irritation, emitted throaty Kikuyu interjections that sounded like Hear, hear. They did not look very hopeful.
I looked at Njoroge beside me, wondering how hopeful he felt for them. I saw sympathy in his face, and admiration. But even then, as a young student not wise to politics, I couldn’t help feeling that my friend was as naïve as the fighters he admired.
Some of the intransigent among the former Mau Mau had resorted to banditry in the townships and when captured had been sentenced to heavy jail terms, ironically by the same judges who would pronounce similar harsh punishments on suspected Mau Mau before independence. Not long ago Mau Mau General Mwariama had been sentenced to a stiff jail term for brandishing a sword stick and causing disturbance; General Baimunge was captured and paraded naked in Meru township. Such news reached our bustling, euphoric capital as a curiosity from the townships. There was grudging respect but not much sympathy for Mau Mau who sought compensation and recognition as heroes of the nation; this was a time of reconciliation and progress, we had been told, a time of forgetting the past, not picking at it.
And yet now a spectre from my own past had stood up, was speaking at me—
The man was small, thin, and wiry, with a deeply lined black face, a thin mat of grey hair; he wore black trousers and a grey tweed jacket. His voice, old and crackling, rose thinly—
We gave up our property, we gave up good jobs with our English bosses who were generous for the times…Why do our politicians call us outlaws and bandits, aren’t we the army of the people? Even now we are ready to defend them…
I didn’t know the voice, but I knew instantly that short figure in the worn tweed jacket; the face, scenes from the past, emerged in memory like photographs from a developing film. The venerable-looking elder making his plea for justice was no other than Kihika, the Bruces’ former servant long wanted for their murders.
…we gave up all that for freedom, for uhuru, he was saying.
He gestured with his left hand and with his right clutched, close to his chest, a thick black book that I guessed was a Bible.
Steady, man, Njoroge said, gripping me tightly behind the shoulder, as if to squeeze out my vision of the man with a teddy bear in his hands, a tender look on his face, walking protectively behind the little white girl whom he would eventually slaughter. Was it so simple? I have never been able to see the murders as anything else. I felt dizzy from the blood pounding in my head; I don’t know if Njoroge sensed the extent of my discomfort, but he kept his hand pressed on my shoulder for a long time.
The meeting of the Mau Mau ended with a long hectoring lecture by the minister. The government is a just government, he said, thanks to the wise leadership of our President. All cases for compensation will be heard, no one will be turned away. But!—he raised a stern finger—unruly behaviour and banditry will not be tolerated, even from freedom fighters. Hear this!—the war is over, old grievances must be laid aside! Freedom has come and we must build the nation together! He concluded with the national rallying cry: Uhuru! Harambee!
The crowd echoed its response, slowly began to disperse. The Mau Mau shuffled away.
Some of them, however, turned and came toward Njoroge, to shake hands with my friend, the young educated man who was their saviour who would speak on their behalf with the government of Jomo. They took his proffered hand in both of theirs, or embraced him, and he introduced me to them as their friend Bwana Vikram. Kihika came by too, and I remember shaking a small scabby hand, hearing a dry raspy voice saying to me in English, I am pleased to meet you, sir…
I could not meet his eye.
Later, the two of us having strolled over to the Ismailia Tea Room downtown, I asked Njoroge, What would satisfy these Mau Mau?
Land to farm on; some money as compensation. To be treated like heroes wouldn’t be bad either, after all the hardships they’ve suffered…some acknowledgement of their sacrifice.
He paused, then said: I know what’s gnawing at your mind, Vic. Kihika.
What is he now? Where is he?
Njoroge took a deep breath, before replying,
He’s a counsellor to the fighters and their spokesman. He is an elder of the church and has been negotiating between them and the government. Those people we saw today, they came out of the forest and all surrendered to him a few days ago. He is indispensable.
They are evil, those who kill children!
I spoke this with a vehemence and a breaking voice that surprised even me, and Njoroge gave a start.
Your grandfather Mwangi said that, I said to him more calmly. They are evil, those who kill children.
And those who go about killing grandfathers?—his voice gruff, flat. It was war, Vic, innocent people die in war, everywhere. We should leave the excesses of the past behind us, that’s what Jomo has said. He has forgiven even those who put him in prison. We can’t keep on grieving the past, for God’s sake!
I know that well, Njo. It’s only that I can’t always keep those other images out of my mind.
Look around you, Vic, it’s all different now.
As if to comply, we both let our eyes wander around the restaurant in silence. The tables were filling up, as noon approached; waiters hurried in between them with plates of hot snacks and lunches. The smell of steaming rice and spicy curry filled the air. Mr. Mithoo, the owner, stood behind the till, unshaved, owl-like in thick round glasses. The Ismailia was a modest place with good basic fare and because it was so centrally placed, just outside the university area at the intersection of busy Government and River Roads, it was a favourite snacking place for students. Soon a group of them arrived and joined us, including an American couple known to be doing research on the freedom struggle, and the daily session of potato pakoda and politics began. Should Kenyatta be President for life? Whither the East African federation? The United States of Africa? Was socialism a good thing for a poor country? For a developing nation
, was China a better model or India?
The clamorous crowd at our table had grown to two deep, when Njoroge, noticing my discomfiture, said, Do you want to go? I nodded and we left.
I am not much for politics, I confessed to him once we were outside.
As I’m noticing, he said. I should have remembered. I hadn’t realized that those events in Nakuru…I’m sorry, Vic, I didn’t know they still meant so much to you. I guess we never had a chance to talk about them. To me the Mau Mau murders were reprehensible—they were not many to begin with—but I always knew that they were for a cause and necessary, and that my people had suffered. But we must leave the past behind us.
We all carry the past inside us in some way, Njo, I said. We can’t help it.
He didn’t reply. What I meant, and he must have known, was that he too carried that past inside him, as did Deepa; how else could they have sparked off their relationship so easily, after all these years?
But Njo, Deepa told him pointedly once. You must have come to Nairobi a dozen times—Alliance High is so nearby!—and you didn’t look us up? Or perhaps you already knew where we were, you had seen us!
He returned a grin, told her: Sometimes near Eastleigh I would look at the Indian girls walking home from school, with their long pigtails, in their school skirts and blouses, and tell myself, Now perhaps that one is Deepa; or perhaps she is that other one! Lord forbid, she could be the fat one with glasses—how she loved to eat gulab jamuns!—or she could be the buck-toothed one like a rabbit! And each time I came to the city, I would be looking at girls a little older than the time before. Because I was getting older and I knew you were too! And so was Vic!
We had a merry laugh, but the truth was not so very different. When he came to the city, it had been usually with other boys, on a school trip. And whenever he saw Indian boys and girls on the streets, they would look alien to him, forbidding, and he was afraid that that’s what Deepa and I had become—alien Indians with whom he would never be on intimate terms again. He thought of making inquiries, and one Saturday morning he actually did a round of the shops in Indian Bazaar. But he felt too timid to ask about his Asian friends, and instead came away with a flimsy Japanese shirt and a pair of cheap Hong Kong socks—one of which, it turned out, had the heel missing. I’m not joking, he insisted, at Deepa’s delighted face. Then finally, after a few more years had passed, he fell into a chat with Mr. Mithoo of the Ismailia and asked, Do you know the Lalls from Nakuru? And the man said, Over there, across the street and opposite the Jivanjee Gardens, above the motorcycle shop, that’s where Mr. Lall the estate agent has his office.
And?
As I was walking over to the motorcycle shop—guess what I saw? A lovely Indian girl had come down the stairs followed by her father—whom I had no problem recognizing, though he was older.
She blushed.
I was too nervous, I decided to come back another day. I couldn’t believe that it was you, little Deepa, after twelve years. Will she want to know me, I asked myself, will she talk to me?
Gradually the three of us began to talk about our days together in Nakuru, even about Annie and Bill; it took Njoroge, like a magician, to break the glass barrier behind which we had sealed that past.
Deepa once said, making a face: And Vic even has a picture on his dresser of himself as Rama and that girl as Sita—
That girl, is she now, I uttered bitterly.
She whitened. Her excitement had turned her callous and I, jealous but all-important chaperone, had brought her to task.
It was so long ago, Vic, she said in a whisper, almost in tears.
But why that girl?
Annie, then—Annie, Vic.
And Njo put his hand on mine and said: Annie, of course. And Bill, Field Marshal Montgomery…vroooom!…and Kit Carson…and pow! pow!
We couldn’t help but break out laughing at our memories of warrior Bill in his various guises, the funniest of which had been Hanuman bounding monkeylike behind me as Rama, and fighting Njoroge the ten-headed demon Ravana. Even from such a remove, pompous Bill could entertain.
One day soon after we had arrived from Nakuru, Mother proceeded to remove one by one all the pictures from our family photo album that would remind us of that terrible period, that bloody episode. She was in the living room, the album on her lap, and I stood like a shadow behind the sofa watching over her shoulder. When she was finished, the dismembered album on the armrest, and was quietly looking through the culled photos, lingering ever so long a moment over each, I took from her hand one of these pictures, went to my room, and put it on my dresser. It was the one of Annie and me. When I was in school one day, Mother placed the photo inside a frame which Papa had brought from River Road for the purpose. There it stood, on my dresser, in front of a little brass statue of Ganesh, until later Mother put it away in my top drawer, where it stayed with my handkerchiefs, socks, and ties. I brought it out on the dresser only on Christmas, on Diwali, and on her birthday, March 4. Yet no one at home had ever spoken a word about this little fetish of mine.
During those holidays I worked doing odd jobs for my father. It was my task to take prospective tenants around the rental properties he managed, and on certain days to take the plumber, the carpenter, the electrician, and the mason to wherever they happened to be required. Outside of these duties, my time was my own, and I had set some of it aside to catch up with my academic work.
Njoroge’s job took him to the countryside around Nyeri, and whenever he returned to the city the three of us would spend time together. We would soon part, we knew, and were already making plans of how to stay in touch, when to visit each other. We met for coffee during the day, and sometimes in the evenings went to the movies or the theatre or to listen to a public lecture. Prominent Afro-American figures were often visiting our city and speaking at one venue or another. In the afternoons we might sit at the lively bar of the Donovan Maule Theatre, where university students discussed politics and art late into the night. One day Njoroge took us to a house in the African working-class area of Pumwani, where he said his parents had had a room. His father was arrested here during the massive Operation Anvil in 1954; his mother disappeared a few weeks later. Neither of them had been heard from since then. I recalled him telling us in Nakuru that his father was studying in Uganda. Did he believe that then?
When Njoroge and I were together by ourselves, we were like old friends; among the three of us I was the third one, the odd one out, the chaperone. I would wonder if Njo and I would have met so often had Deepa not been in the picture. Deepa, of course, already had several admirers in Parklands, two of whom were rather faithful, accompanying her home from school and buying her snacks whenever they got the chance, and phoning her on flimsy pretexts. Deepa had always enjoyed the attention; but recently, when I brought up these two suitors in a conversation, my attempt at humour had misfired. A deeply blushing Deepa kicked me under the table.
She couldn’t wait for Njo to be back in town from his journeys. Her problem was that she was too transparent—as was Mother, who was frantic with worry. Mother, so happy to see him, little insecure Njoroge-William now a big man who would go on to become important some day, and yet so worried that he would compromise, or worse, marry her daughter.
Vikram, bété, do something, say something to her, Mother pleaded with me one day.
What, Mother? She’s still young and just an excitable girl. She’s simply happy he is back, that nothing bad happened to him. We are old friends. Even you’re excited that he’s back in our lives!
Rabba! I hope you are right.
My sister’s situation was the first instance I noticed a certain detachment in myself. Whether she would finally marry Njoroge or not did not bother me. I personally did not favour circumstances—the possible outcome of the relationship—to turn out one way or another. I found myself waiting passively for the situation to resolve itself. I would watch my sister and Njoroge flirting and feel only a bit saddened that I was alone; I would
witness my parents’ anxiety and comfort them. If I felt saddened by my own loneliness, I did not wish to get involved in a relationship either. Mother called me her brahmachari, a Hindu man who has taken a vow of celibacy for religious reasons, or teased that I had entered early sanyas, the fourth stage of life, renunciation, undertaken after one’s householder responsibilities are over. I was very close to her, especially now that she and my father had somehow detached themselves from each other. Deepa, on the other hand, was a firecracker, as both my parents sometimes called her.
And so they had agreed privately that it was time she settled down into a staid, happy family life, with a burden of her own responsibilities.
It was time to call the Sharmas and cash in an old promise.
FOURTEEN.
The Sharmas, Harry (actually Hari) and Meena, were among our close family friends in Nairobi. Harry Uncle, like my mother, was a native of northern Punjab, an area that became a part of Pakistan, and this fact created a special affinity between the two. He had met and married Meena Auntie in New Delhi, where he had arrived after the partition of India. He had hinted to Mother once that he had lost his only brother to that bloody event and was only too happy to be out of the subcontinent. Meena Auntie was a science teacher, and the couple easily obtained a visa to come to Kenya. Harry Uncle set himself up in the real estate business, into which he later brought my father, rescuing him from his unhappy foray into Indian groceries. The Sharmas had a daughter, Reshma, who was sixteen and a son, Dilip, who was now in his third year at university in England, studying pharmacy. Soon after Papa joined Mayfair Estate Agents, Harry Uncle left the business to start a development and banking company. We did not see the Sharmas very frequently nowadays, therefore a sudden invitation to dinner at their house came as a surprise to Deepa and me, until Mother’s designs revealed themselves.
