The Gunny Sack

by M G Vassanji

  Zanzibar … here Indians had lived and traded for centuries. There had been others before Amarsi Makan … there was Babu Goss the Cutchi pirate, after whom boys had fashioned games and legends and dreams … who plied the seas between Mandavi and Mombasa, the Comoros and Zanzibar. In the open market of Junapur would often be heard the cry, “I am Babu Goss, surrender your ship!” as a gang of urchins bearing twigs and branches followed their leader across a gutter …

  Dhanji Govindji worked as a clerk in Zanzibar at one of the stores of no less a personage than Amarsi Makan. But there was only one Sultan’s customs collector; and the competition to get to the top was cut-throat. There were scores of apprentices like himself, from all the villages in Gujarat, Kathiawad and Cutch it seemed, all lured to the island by dreams of becoming like Amarsi Makan or Jairam Shivji or Ladha Damji—owners of chain stores, underwriters to Arab, Indian and Swahili entrepreneurs, to whom stranded explorers came for credit. The wise and enterprising sought other frontiers; the rest stayed on, enchanted by the island’s perfume and musk and spice … the soft rustling movements behind silky veils, the giggles behind lattice screens … the mysterious look of two eyes through the slit in a veil, chilling you to the heart and then with a movement of the lashes commanding you, “Come,” and you follow the trace of the halud through the teeming streets to wherever it will lead you, ready to lay down your life for its bearer … On a clear morning you could just about see in a distant haze the land mass that was the continent of Africa. In the evenings some saw the fires that slavers made as signals to incoming dhows. Every morning the harbour was abustle, with dhows setting off for the mainland. Traders, hunters, guides, explorers, porters, immigrants and civil servants left every day for that sleeping, beckoning land mass, waved off by well-wishers and onlookers. A year after his arrival at Zanzibar, Dhanji Govindji landed at Bagamoyo. While the Europeans, the hunters and porters, the seasoned Swahili traders, went inwards to seek greater fame or fortune, my forebear joined a small caravan going southwards on the slave route. Thirty-six miles on foot and donkey later, he unloaded his stuff at the village of Matamu. The caravan marched on towards Kilwa, and Dhanji Govindji walked into the nearest store and asked: “Where is the mukhi’s store?”

  Dhanji Govindji. How much lies buried in a name … Dhan, wealth; Govind, the cowherd butter-thief gopi-seducer, dark Krishna. A name as Banya in its aspiration for wealth as Hindu; yet gloriously, unabashedly, Muslim. For the esoteric sect of the Shamsis there was no difference. But Govindji, the elders will now tell you, is not a family name—where is the attak, the last name, that can pin you down to your caste, your village, your trade? Absent, dropped by those to whom neither caste nor ancestral village mattered any longer. Later this irksome Govindji too was dropped by one branch of the family and replaced with Hasham. Whence Hasham, an Arab clan name? Thus the past gets buried, but for my drab, my sagging ugly Shehrbanoo, from which the dust of Kariakoo has not been shaken yet.

  You can place the names of succeeding generations in a column and visualize the crazy dance of history; the logic behind the mad parade of names, from Dhanji and Samji to Aisha and Faruq, with a hundred years jingling between them—each new variation and fashion in name signalling a new era, a new beginning. In astronomical terms it was Samvat 1942 when Dhanji Govindji first set foot in Matamu. 1885 AD. And he asked for the shop of the mukhi.

  There was a mukhi wherever there were a few Shamsis. And the mukhi would put you up; he would introduce you to the others of the community and he would show you the ropes.

  There is still a mukhi wherever there are a few Shamsis. There is a mukhi in London, in Singapore, in Toronto. There is still a mukhi in Matamu, but there is no longer a mukhi in Junapur (history has seen to that). You could land in Singapore and call up the local mukhi. “Mukhi Saheb,” you say, “I am new here and I need a little help.” “Where are you staying?” the mukhi would ask. He doesn’t let you finish. “No no no, that simply won’t do. Aré, listen to me, you come here first, then we’ll see.”

  Which is exactly what young Dhanji Govindji did. Mukhi Ragavji Devraj, formerly of Jamnagar, welcomed him to Matamu. And after a suitable interval a small handwritten sign went up outside an empty store: Dhanji Govindji of Junapur, and Matamu’s only street boasted another Indian dukan. The mukhi found him some broken-down furniture and gave him merchandise on credit to start up with. And for good measure, he threw in a servant at a cheap price: “She knows how to cook, she’ll take care of you.” And with the sly smile of the elderly setting up a youngster, added: “And who knows, it’s warm enough here, but it can get quite cold at night. The ocean, you know.”

  She was called Bibi Taratibu, Gentle One; a slave, discarded to an Indian on the slave route from Kilwa. The slave trade was over, but the keeping of slaves, especially women, still persisted on the coast.

  In Matamu, Dhanji Govindji became an agent to an agent. Tribesmen from the surrounding areas, still carrying bows, arrows and spears, would come into town heaving basketfuls of gum copal to barter for cloth, beads, wire—and the occasional rusty flint-lock Zanzibari gun. Bargaining went on for hours, round after round with several customers at once, sometimes into the following day. In the end a product of Cutch, Hamburg, Philadelphia or Versailles found its way into the hinterland of Africa; which in turn yielded up the sticky translucent substance dug from its earth or tapped from its trees.

  Dhanji Govindji obtained goods from Mukhi Ragavji Devraj, the local agent for the firm of Amarsi Makan. He sold the copal to the mukhi at a commission. From this commission he paid back the mukhi for the goods and for his own groceries, and put aside a little savings kept in his name by the mukhi.

  In time a son was born to him and Bibi Taratibu, whom they named Huseni.

  Tell me, Shehrbanoo, would the world be different if that trend had continued, if there had been more Husenis, and if these chocolate Husenis with curly hair had grown up unhindered, playing barefoot in kanzus and kofias, clutching Arabic readers …

  But no. In Junapur and other towns in Cutch, Kathiawad and Gujarat a cry went up. Our sons are keeping golis, black slaves in Africa. And there are children, half-castes littering the coast from Mozambique to Karachi. Do something! It was claimed that a group of young preachers, called “missionaries,” had set out from Bombay to help keep the community in line. They never made it past the allures of Zanzibar, for no one saw them in the coastal towns.

  When Huseni was five years old, Dhanji Govindji duly received a summons from home. May the Merciful God grant dear son Dhanji abiding contentment and happiness; increase in income and wealth; a long and healthy life; and an evergrowing faith. Amen. This is to write … and so on. He was to go and get married.

  There is a story of how Dhanji got married. He took a dhow to Zanzibar, where he had to wait a week to catch the next one to Porbander. In Zanzibar he stayed with a widow to whom he brought a letter from Ragavji Mukhi. The widow had a daughter. When the week had passed, Dhanji was not on the Porbander boat; he had married. There are those who see the hand of the mukhi behind all this. It is the mukhis’ job, after all, to see the congregations settled; they are still at it, from Dar es Salaam to Manhattan, Singapore to London. But that is not all. How can a young man simply marry a girl from a family he doesn’t know, without a formal proposal and the negotiation of mohor, without his family’s permission? The widow, Ji Bai would swear, had put something in the boy’s food, had cast a spell on the poor innocent. Trapped him like a spider. A widow in Zanzibar! What tricks would she not know? And how did she earn a living … yes, yes, that’s it. But surely, if the mukhi went to her … Why not?

  My scholarly brother, who studies old manuscripts, writes from the University.

  Kala, I am thrilled that you now have possession of the three padlocked books. The script is known. It is a form of Devanagari (of which the Gujarati script is only one example), an old form, with modifications (extra curves, characters turned sideways, Arabic-looking additions, etc)
to confuse outsiders. Isn’t that exciting! Our own script! I’m not asking much (yet). Could you just make a photocopy of the cover inscription and send it to me? If it doesn’t copy well, you could try to copy it by hand. Just that, for God’s sake! Yours, Sona.

  I hate to make a copy of the books, even the cover, to play the tourist to my Shehru; to rob her of her personality, as some tribesman might say. I can’t say no either. I think, as the Masai used to do, I’ll ask for payment. After all, we have to pay rent here, Shehru and I.

  The reply from Sona comes two weeks later:

  Kala, The Jinn Abdul testifies that he who opens the book takes the full weight of the consequences on his own head.

  The same thing in Swahili (that’s what the Arabic script said—they used Arabic in those days.) Jinn Abdul be damned! I say let’s open these books and find out what the old man was up to!

  Sona and Kala: our nicknames. Gold and black. The colours of Africa.

  THE TWO JEWELS.

  While Dhanji Govindji worked as an apprentice in Zanzibar—and even later as the caravan he had joined went its leisurely pace southwards along the coast, making elaborate rest stops on the way, stared at by curious or enterprising villagers, as his donkey plodded on the way to Matamu and the porters sang to keep their minds off the loads on their heads—movements were afoot that would change the face of East Africa for ever after. Later the villagers of Matamu would take credit for having hosted the Herr Doktor Karl Peters as he went about from tribe to tribe making treaties that only he and his interpreter understood. We gave him water, they’d say, he bought some chickens from us; he bought wire and cloth on credit. The truth is that perhaps there were more Germans in the area at the time; and later, when they were many and strong and fierce, when they had come to stay and suspected treachery, some flattery was seen to be in order.

  By the time Dhanji Govindji brought his bride Fatima out of Zanzibar five years later, Matamu and much of the coast were under German rule, bought from the Sultan; the mainland behind it was simply annexed in the name of the Herr Doktor’s treaties. Drab, grass-grown Dar es Salaam, Sultan Seyyid Majid’s aborted dream, his “haven of peace,” became the seat of the German dream in East Africa. This time Dhanji landed in the booming capital, its streets neat and already lined with new whitewashed government buildings, with its sedate European quarter, its bustling Indian bazaar. From Dar es Salaam, Dhanji on foot and Fatima in a hammock carried by two bearers, accompanied by a gang of porters, they came to Matamu.

  The gentle Bibi Taratibu, of course, had to go. She moved to a house at the further end of the village, bordering the forest, where she sold tea and sweets to the transient Mshenzis from the interior. The boy Huseni stayed on. The Zanzibari widow’s daughter, Fatima, was a tall, stately woman, with large and luscious hips, hefty breasts, extremely fair. When she stood on the store threshold, haughtily looking out, arms on her hips, veil covering her head but not that body, not a passing man could resist a glance at her impressive proportions. Except for one flaw, she would have done proud any Zanzibari harem. It was said that with one look, and without looking at anybody, she could unsettle a roomful of people. She was squint-eyed. When she first came to Matamu, protective mothers kept their children well hidden from her, from fear of that malevolent look that could strike from any direction. Fatima bore one daughter who died in her first year. Then was born Gulam. Gulam was a gentle boy, Ji Bai said. Gentle, and as fair as his mother. He became Ji Bai’s husband.

  They called the half-caste Huseni “Simba”: lion. He was the kind of boy who unerringly senses all that is forbidden or feared in the home, and proceeds to do them one by one; whose single-minded purpose in life is a relentless enmity towards his father, whose every move he tries to thwart, every rise in esteem he tries to bring down. Huseni’s friends were not townspeople but the Mshenzis. Even now, a “mshenzi” is a barbarian. In those days, when the coastal folk regarded themselves as the epitome of civilization and urbanity, a Mshenzi was anyone who was not from within walking distance of the coast. Huseni and his Mshenzis spent their time romping around the towns debauching; in the afternoons they would laze under a shade, gambling and drinking. Sometimes in a great flurry of excitement and talking in tell-tale hushed tones, they would bring into town a tusk, undoubtedly picked off a straggling porter from some caravan in the area, which would then be dispatched posthaste and cheaply into some risk-taking Bania hands.

  German justice was harsh, swift and arbitrary. In return, you could leave your store unattended without fear of robbery. Thieves had their hands chopped; insubordination was rewarded with the dreaded khamsa ishrin, twenty-five lashes from a whip of hippo hide dipped in salt, which would never break however much blood it drew. It was said that the streets of Dar es Salaam were clean because even the donkeys feared to litter them—you only had to whisper those words “khamsa ishrin” into a donkey’s ears and it would straightaway race to its stable to empty its bowels.

  Outside Matamu were two German farms, a coconut plantation belonging to Herr Graff and a cotton farm to Herr Weiss. Early every morning these two gentlemen, the Bwanas Guu Refu (Long Leg) and Wasi, would walk into town in their khakis and sun hats, slinging rifles, accompanied by their foremen. Twenty job cards for each farm were dropped with great ceremony outside Mzee Guaro’s house by the respective foremen in the manner of playing a winning hand, and then the party waited with arms folded for the return play. Mzee Guaro was the former jemadari of the village, the Sultan’s representative, now a German agent. A few minutes later, perhaps sensing the expectant air outside, Mzee Guaro would emerge from his rooms and, drawing in his kanzu like a woman does her skirts, patiently pick up the passes from the ground and start distributing them to the first twenty able-bodied men he could find. Work on the German farms was hated, and Mzee Guaro as the harbinger of that fate was hated like the angel of death, Azrail, his other nickname. There were many stories of cruelty in the farms; of beatings and lashings, of a hanging, of insults to age and traditional rank. And one unnecessary death at which shrieks rang out for many nights.

  One day, Guu Refu instructed his young water-carrier Yusufu not to move from a certain spot, whatever. Guu Refu was the more terrible of the two Germans. Everything he ordered was always followed to the letter. So that when a rain of coconuts cut from the trees around him started falling with great thumps as the men atop let them drop, the frightened Yusufu shouted, too late, but did not move from his spot. The battered body, of which all that bystanders saw was a bloodied boy’s kanzu, was brought into town with great ceremony. It was paraded in the lanes, the women wept and ululated and the men threw curses at the Germans.

  Sometimes Guu Refu’s arrival was preceded by news that he was on the lookout for more men for a special project; and as soon as the lanky figure with the sunhat and the rifle was sighted, towering over his askaris, men and boys scurried towards the forest, at which sight the German and his mercenaries stomped after them in their heavy boots, cutting off their paths to safety.

  It was as if a man-eating lion had taken up residence in the area, with every now and then a new victim.

  When the Germans had marched out of the village with their sulking recruits, exhorting them to sing, Huseni and his Mshenzis would appear under their tree.

  One morning, news arrived of trouble in the interior. A mchawi had appeared who had found a medicine to drive away the Germans. All you had to do, it was said, was to go to a meeting and drink the medicine, take an oath and the German would be powerless against you. You could spit on his cat-eyes that shone in the dark, burn his big white house, drive a spear into his white belly, and he could not touch you. As soon as you chanted the words “Maji maji maji maji …” his bullets would turn into water.

  The men of Matamu were not fighters. And though they were familiar with many medicines, this one they had never heard of. Late one afternoon a rumour spread that the mchawi’s followers were in the vicinity to recruit and at nightfall a nervous sile
nce spread over the village like a blanket. Stores closed early, shutters were fastened carefully and lamps burned low. The medicine men were dreaded as much as the Germans. If you refused to take the medicine, it was said, straightaway you would receive a spear in your belly. And if you took the oath and went about chanting “Maji maji maji maji …” and were caught, straightaway you would be strung up from the nearest mango or mbuyu tree. Your farm would be razed, your family sent away. The Germans employed barbarous askaris, the Nubians, who had no qualms opening up the bellies of women with child. The Masai, the rumours said, were already on their way from the north. And a ship full of German soldiers and more guns had docked in Dar es Salaam.

  That night the village did not sleep. And when in the early hours of the morning, just as the brave muezzin began his “Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar …,” a frantic knocking sounded on the courtyard door and a chill went through Dhanji Govindji’s household as it prepared for prayer. On tiptoes Dhanji Govindji went outside to see or hear what was up. “Baba, it’s I,” came the half-caste’s urgent voice, “quickly, let me in, upesi!”