by M G Vassanji
It’s taken me a while to adjust to where I am, but finally I turn and ask my father, How did that man know me by name?—he called me Mr. Lall.
Papa replies, I gave the game away a little bit, Vic, I introduced myself as Mr. Lall, and he guessed the rest. He was paid well, let’s hope he keeps quiet.
I had asked Seema to make a carefully worded phone call to Papa, with my travel plans and assumed name, and he had done the rest, arranged for my rush processing at the airport.
We agree that I should not stay with him in his apartment. It is where I would be expected to go.
Papa, you should act as if I am not here, I tell him. You’ve not seen me. In fact, you should go on holiday to Mombasa for a few days, until I have my business sorted out. This way you will not be bothered.
He agrees, too quickly.
Alright. But bété, Vic, be careful. Why did you return anyway? It’s completely foolhardy—
I would like to secure the release of Njoroge’s son, Papa. And I have plans to speak to the Anti-Corruption Commission and make my peace with them. Everything will work out. I promise.
He eyes me, doesn’t say a word. His look reminds me there are those who would have me silenced first. I have come here hoping to convince them that I pose no threat to them. They are people I know well, we have eaten and drunk together. One of them is Paul Nderi, the former minister, my old boss.
Papa takes me to the New Stanley, where I have no problem finding a room. I cannot stay here for long, though; the man at the airport will no doubt be seeking bids for his information, even now. Papa and I sit down at the lounge and exchange bits of family news.
He looks small and dark, elfin in a manner I had almost forgotten, though it’s been only a little over a year since I last saw him. My recent memories of him have been of a much younger and fuller man, when Mother was alive. He smiles as I watch him rub his bald pate, brush the sparse hair on the edges, dart curious eyes around the room where we are served our coffee. He asks for cognac with his.
There was a time when we couldn’t lay a step inside this place, he says to me. We would stand outside and watch the Europeans carousing.
I remember…and are you well, Papa, have you had the checkups we agreed on before I left?
I am fine. You just make sure you look after yourself. I don’t know what’s come over you, Vic, but you should promise me one thing—
What?
That you will leave the country if things get too hot.
I promise.
Deepa is well, I report, I spoke to her on the phone before I left. Shyam will soon finish his residency in Rochester, and Alka is studying journalism at Columbia University in New York. Deepa will go wherever Shyam finds a job, at least for now.
I don’t tell him that she cried over the phone when I said my goodbye.
He asks, You did not get a chance to meet Shobha and your kids?
No, I do not think she wants to see me. We are getting a divorce, Papa.
He nods. Sohrabji told me. She’s demanding equal share in the wealth—a goldsmith’s daughter after all, and pukka Gujarati on top.
Vintage Papa, in his prejudices, he beams back at me.
I have to speak to Sohrabji, Papa. And Papa—all the wealth, the money I have made over the years, I am going to give it up—most of it—part to the Commission and part to a foundation. I will start anew. I will come clean on the Gemstone Scandal. That should satisfy them and the Donors and the World Bank.
He’s turned quiet, thoughtful; I sense him taking his time, choosing his words. Then: I hope so, son. What’s wealth, so much of it, anyway? You know I’ve started going to temple—but occasionally, just to come to terms with myself; and to remember your mother…
He breaks off into thought again, then adds wistfully, You know, Vic…if we had kept British citizenship after independence, and gone to England, we might all be together in one place, she might even be alive.
There’s no guarantee of that, Papa. We stayed because this is our country. And Mother would have gone to India, not England—you know that.
He nods. But it’s hard, he says. You don’t know what troubles we’ve faced here in the last year. Water shortages, power outages, robberies. We would get up at midnight just to collect water for cooking and drinking and to wash ourselves. Nairobi!—it used to be the jewel of Africa. This is a city now where even to take a walk is hazardous.
We embrace, and he leaves, promising to call me as soon as he’s reached home safely.
The next morning I sit down for breakfast on the patio under a canopy and immediately realize my folly, for during my dealings in this part of the city hundreds of people have come to know me by face and name. A few startled looks go past me, where I sit close to a potted acacia—there is the manager of Land Rover, and a clerk from Barclays, and even the vendor of newspapers on the sidewalk eyes me familiarly. What made me think I had been gone a very long time? It will be perhaps only minutes before the Special Branch drive up. I hand in my keys at reception and step outside, walk over to Kimathi Street where Papa said he would park the car which he has hired from a friendly mechanic. It is an old Fiat in a somewhat dubious condition, but I nevertheless head in it for the Limuru road and the long drive north out of Nairobi.
The road along the escarpment edging the Rift Valley was constructed by Italian prisoners of the Second World War, one of whom was Sophia’s father. There is a lookout point on the way, an unpaved siding upon which stands a small grey stone church that the POWs built. I have passed this solitary church on numerous occasions but never stepped inside it. I decide to do so this time. I enter an empty room; there is no place to sit, the air is hot and dusty and the floor gritty with the red clay soil that’s blown in from outside. But there is a Madonna with child, made of limestone, on a pedestal up front and I stand before it a moment. I recall what Papa said last night, about coming to terms with oneself. In place of a Hindu murti, a Catholic one will do, I presume, and stare at it. Sophia comes to mind; she too must have stopped by here some time, this place where her father had worshipped and which perhaps he had even helped to build; few and far between but warm and precious moments of joy, that had been my Sophia from a faroff land. Annie, too, I recall, the little girl who in some inexplicably innocent way stole my heart when I was only eight, and the gentle Yasmin of Dar es Salaam, waiting for me, her books in her arm. Deepa comes to mind, and Njoroge; and even Bill, perhaps we had misunderstood him completely.
It is cool and drizzling outside, a mist overhangs the valley, covering a good portion of Mount Longonot in the distance. This is Kikuyu country historically, neat and ordered little vegetable farms fringe the highway; here and there produce has been laid out for sale. A young vendor waves sheepskins at passing cars, another holds up brown bags of peaches. We used to buy plums and peaches from roadside youth when we came to the escarpment for drives with Mother and Papa, and we always wondered what anyone would do with sheepskins. From the flask which Papa had placed in the car I pour myself some tea. A Masai youth comes by and gives me the traditional handshake, checks the time on his watch against mine, and asks me, for curiosity, what is my line of business. I was a railway inspector once, I tell him. My grandfather built this railway that descends into the Rift Valley…He looks at me in disbelief.
For lunch I stop over at Nakuru’s Bombay Sweet Mart, where the world’s best kulfi was made, or so I believed as a child. The street outside is cluttered with idle youth, giving it the feel of a wild-west town at High Noon, waiting to erupt. Actually, many of the young men have emigrated from the outskirts, following the recent ethnic strife, and I understand there to be many guns in town awaiting use. The Nakuru Club is right across the street, behind the brick wall topped with multicoloured broken glass, and my membership there is still valid, but it is vegetarian fare and anonymity at Bombay Sweets that I crave.
I speak to Sohrabji, my lawyer, over the cell and he is relieved to hear from me. How nice to hear your voice, Vic
, you should at least have had lunch with me and my wife before you left town, he says, in his honeyed manner, knowing full well that it would have been impossibly risky. A brilliant lawyer, he has represented politicians and businessmen of all stripes; he came to teach law in Dar es Salaam when I was a student there, though I did not get to know him well. Once he and his wife had invited all the Kenyan students at the university to a garden party in their home. Even then his resemblance to Gandhi was remarkable; it has only increased with age. We talk business and I tell him about my plans to propose a deal to the Anti-Corruption Commission.
It may not be easy, Vikram, he says. There are people who see you as a wedge they can use to topple the government. But I’ll do my best for you, I have my contacts. This very moment I’m going to start the ball rolling in that direction.
With Sohrabji that could mean in a week, or a month, and I can only hope for the best.
Sohrabji, I ask him before hanging up, can you find a safe place for me to stay in Nairobi, meanwhile?
He chuckles. Vic, currently the only place safe enough for you would be in Eastleigh, in Somali Town!
Three young men have surrounded my car as I approach, giving me the tacit understanding that they have stood guard over it for me. Which could well be true. I give them twenty bob each and depart this town that once cradled me and now seems to be crawling with menace.
The road north to Jamieson, where I am headed, is full of rain-filled potholes and slippery with mud, and the drive in the old Fiat is slow torture. Three matatu-taxis filled to capacity, horns blaring music, almost push me off the road into the bushes as they pass me, though to see so many people on the road is also pleasing. Finally at around four o’ clock, after some difficulty I see the turning that I seek and enter a forest road that is barely more than a walking trail. A couple of miles from Jamieson my way is blocked by a large fallen tree, and so I lock up the car and walk to the village. The old dilapidated house behind the defunct railway station still stands, and Mungai and Janice are both alive and look well and are delighted to see me. I have come unannounced. I last saw them years ago here, and once after that Janice had come to Nairobi to meet a visiting nephew from England and I had put her up in a hotel. They are both greyer and shrunken, but knotty and still nimble on their feet. Mungai comes with me to clear the offending tree, which we accomplish with machetes and the help of two boys, and I bring the car into the village.
It is not simply to hide for a few days that I have come but also to collect the little trunk I left here a long time ago when the Old Man died and the New Man took over and I feared for my safety. I ask the couple if they still have it and they say, with much alacrity, Of course we have it, and give meaningful looks at each other. Do you want it now? I’ll take it when I leave, I reply. They must have known that they had in their keeping a very large sum of money. On my previous visit I asked them if they wanted their dwelling rebuilt; the only convenience they had in their home was a stained seat toilet over a pit; everything else had been makeshift and broken, and was much more so now. They had declined, but now they tell me they wouldn’t mind moving to a small town, like Nakuru, closer to conveniences, though they are fearful of the dangers that might lurk there, especially for old people. I tell them it would not be a bad idea to move to Nakuru, better still Nairobi, and live in a well-guarded, secure apartment complex.
For dinner there is only peasant fare, ugali and spinach; there is plenty of tea and, later, a modest round of whisky. I had wondered on the previous occasion where the money for the whisky came from, before concluding that obviously Janice must have some money in the post office, insurance she collected after the death of her husband. The three graves at the back are still well tended, in the full shade of a tree that has matured over the years. If she wants to move from here, then she must not mind abandoning the graves. We sit outside by the fire, making small talk about our childhoods. As I glance up at the night sky I think fleetingly of Seema and that house on the lake in a faroff country…where the seasons progress in order and the world seemed safe. I notice that Janice does not see well at night, in spite of glasses, and Mungai rubs his leg with a rather rough-looking home-prepared ointment. They go to neighbouring Sarotich sometimes when a travelling clinic comes by, I learn.
I wonder to myself if I kept the money here because I wanted to be able to return one day to this simple primitiveness. As we sit watching the glowing embers and inhaling woodsmoke, hearing the bark of a wild dog, the crick-crick of insects, a radio far away crackling out strains of traditional dance music, there are no complicated questions between us. It is the forest, in whose shadow we are, that owns us.
During the next two days I follow Mungai as he goes about his chores. We dam up a branch of the stream to divert it from the back yard. We set an overdue fire to a refuse heap and let it smoulder. We plug leaks in the roof and walls of the house. There is a tea break and a late lunch with homemade beer, following which we lie down for our naps. In the afternoon, when the sun is low behind the trees and the air is cool, we tend to the vegetable plot. It takes effort to recall the world I have left behind. Perhaps it is here, I tell myself, that I should start my life anew, a life as simple and pure as a mountain stream from the green misty Aberdares. An empty, desperate dream, I know, for I am very much tied to my world.
The morning of the third day I make an arduous trip to Sarotich, where there is a post office with a pay phone, from which I call up Sohrabji.
Sohrabji says, Joseph’s release should not be much of a problem, Vic.
Have you seen him?
Yes, and he’s all right. Roughed up a bit, but what do you expect in detention. They like to use the water hose there, and starvation. His activities in Canada are known to the Special Branch, they want to find out what these MuKenya Patriots are up to in foreign parts—
Can you get him out?
Yes, provided he agrees to stay out of the country for a few years; though the price of freedom, Vic, is steep. A lot of cash. Green.
I’ll pay you the dollars, in cash. But is he agreed to the condition not to return? Does he know it’s I who am springing him?
Yes, and no. For the present he knows that it is his mother who is bailing him out, with the help of friends and family. A few nights of detention and interrogation under water torture have convinced him he doesn’t want to return in a hurry. Did you know his girlfriend was killed in riots last year?
No, I did not know that.
A fleeting image comes to mind, the two of us sharing that house by the lake.
In the middle of the night—we have gone to bed after sitting around the fire telling proverbs—Janice lets out a sharp short scream. A heart-stopping terrifying scream in the still night, as if a small animal has been suddenly caught by a cruel predator and is now in the silence that follows being torn to pieces. The next morning, while Mungai and I sit in the backyard having tea with bread, he confides that Janice has been having nightmares for about a year now. Sometimes sitting by herself she will start to cry. It’s when she remembers her family, he says. Your presence and our talking together brought back memories. Once this happened after she picked up a foreign newspaper that chanced to be flying in the wind right here in this place; how the newspaper came here is a wonder. She had a few troubled nights then.
Have her relations with you altered, I ask.
No, he replies, it’s just that her past life continues to haunt her. It will not be easy to leave those graves behind, but what can be done?
We find ourselves staring at the graves. A full-length one and two small ones. They have been covered with small shards of stone, carefully laid; and I notice something very strange: upon the stone blankets of the smaller graves have been placed a few random-looking objects—a couple of carved animals, a plastic ball, a police whistle…
Mungai says, We care for each other very much.
She happens to be passing by, on her way to throw out old water from a can, and she says, mutte
rs, Yes, that we do.
She is a diffident woman, very British, but of a previous generation. She reminds me of some teachers I had who also never went back home to England.
Five days after my arrival, in the morning we drive to Sarotich, where they visit the market and post office, and I take my leave and head back to the bustling sansara of Nairobi with a heavy heart.
Craters cover the wounded lawless roads of Eastleigh, once the main Indian quarter of the city, and cars, buses, trucks, and pushcarts negotiate them painstakingly, riskily, one by one. Multitudes swarm these dusty streets, turned out in jeans and shirts, full-length veils with eye slits, head-and-shoulder scarves, long white kanzus and embroidered kofias. Sidewalk stalls add a dizzy brilliance of colour, selling everything from televisions to perfumes and toiletries, clothes and jewellery, furniture and mattresses; tall wooden frames loiter precariously at the street corners, like jugglers on stilts, tossing up in the air every variety and colour of track shoe; qat and bhang and Kalashnikovs too, says the lore, have sellers at this market clamouring with chatter, car horns, and music. In the quieter sidestreets, hair salons vie with bars and tire shops for space and attention. I remember staying with relatives a long time ago as a child of eight, in one of these houses that’s now a bar and perhaps a brothel, and in later years coming with my father to collect rents for his Asian clients. This is a different country now, an alien planet, and the first language is not Punjabi but Somali. It is here that I have come to hide next.
I park the car inside the wide-open gate of an old apartment complex, in a gravelled greenless yard in which a few kids are at play among a couple of broken-down cars. They watch me with curiosity as I look around for a while, discover the staircase at the side of the leftmost building, and slowly go up. There is a screened partition halfway up at a landing, with a door, which I enter to see yet another door, to my right, opening into an apartment rich with the aroma of fresh garlicky chicken pilau. The landing floor is being scrubbed by a cleaning girl and two large cockroaches lie on their backs. I knock gently on the door and an African woman carrying a child bids me in. Is Ebrahim here? I ask. He’s praying, she says and takes me to an old-style sitting room with gleaming linoleum on the floor, a prominent TV on a table, two armchairs with white knitted lace on the headrests, and a bed. The woman, who is Ebrahim’s wife, turns the TV on for me and leaves the room. A children’s quiz show is on. Soon Ebrahim arrives, a broad, clean-shaven, medium-height Mombasa Arab, with a young bearded cousin in tow. He is friendly in a quiet way and has been expecting me as Victor De Souza. We shake hands, and immediately he invites me to have lunch; in such a household hospitality is not spurned, and bashfully I allow myself two helpings of pilau with kachumbar. The talk at the table is about public safety, the economy, and religion. After the meal, Ebrahim walks me to the apartment he has reserved for my use, a block away, above a shopping centre called the Mogadishu Mall.
