by M G Vassanji
“One day a king wanted to test his three sons. He showed them an apple and told them, ‘This is a magic apple. Whoever eats it will succeed me to the throne and live for ever. But I don’t want you to touch it until I tell you to.’ He left the apple on a table. In the morning it was missing. When the king asked the sons about it, they all denied eating it. So what do you think the king did? I’ll tell you. He asked each one of them to drink a glass of ve-ry salty water. The water was so salty it made them vomit. And from the vomit he found out who was guilty.”
“Who?” asked Sona, a legitimate question, but he narrowly missed a slap for his impudence.
Salma was the prime suspect. Salma, who wet her bed sometimes and was the root cause of bedbugs in the home against which Begum valiantly and constantly battled. Bravely Salma went forward and downed a gulp of brine. Her stomach gave a violent spasm, “Aargh,” even Begum looked a little startled, and the contents of her stomach came out in contraction after contraction of yellow, slimy liquid with floating debris of the day’s ingestion, mainly peanuts and peas, but no apple as a stern Begum went to confirm. Salma stood there, her face a horrible grimace, a thin stream of sticky saliva joining her mouth to her fingers in front of her, and she gave a loud howl.
Begum’s eyes fell on me next and there extracted the truth. “It was I,” I sobbed in terror, “I don’t want to drink the—”
“So!” In one lightning move, first a backhand slap on the face then thumb and forefinger closed on an ear in a tight grip that only she could manage, twist, twist, twist, this way and that, and by my now red, swollen ear I was taken down one agonizing flight of stairs then another and another to be presented to Kulsum. She said nothing. All afternoon I sat behind the glass counter, out of sight of customers, crying, “I am sorry, Mummy, I’ll never do it again.” Only Edward, who had seen me dragged down the stairs, would come periodically and ask her, “What is the matter? What did he do? Surely, mama, it cannot be that bad if he is crying.”
That night her hand came down upon me again, as it had on that fateful day when I was instrumental in spilling the milk, and a rain of slippers fell on my buttocks, my thighs, my arms. “You Shaytaan, you Daitya Kalinga, even in death, even in death,” she sobbed, “you’ll steal from him.”
Red chilies were stuffed into my mouth and I was locked in the terror of the dark bathroom, there to suffer with burning eyes and burning mouth, standing howling on its rough, wet and sticky floor, the laundry lying in a large heap in a corner, clothes hanging like ghosts behind the door and cockroaches running around with loud rustlings.
That night it was my turn to sleep with my mother. But in tears I fell asleep in that little hell, and was not claimed, and Sona took my place beside her.
A little before dawn, just after the old Jogo had passed by our building calling the faithful to prayer, I was woken up by Shamim. She released the bolt slowly, turned the light on, and shook me awake. Then she gave me a glass of milk, and without a word took me by the hand to sit at the windowsill where we waited in silence for Kulsa Thauki’s gang to come shuffling by on their way to mosque.
When you steal from the dead, whose death you’re partly responsible for (although not knowingly); when you’ve eaten the forbidden fruit, not one, which could be forgiven as childish temptation, but the whole lot, and you can only blame it on the devil; when the living don’t understand, and God does not reply to your entreaties: you can talk directly to the dead.
There lived in Kariakoo a certain Zanzibari of evil reputation. His name was Kassim Kurji. It was said that Kassim Kurji claimed to be a prophet. He had a coterie of followers, the chief among whom was my vociferous Aunt Fatu. For problems or wishes Kassim Kurji gave you a prayer to recite. It was guaranteed to work, but there was a catch twenty-two. It had to be said the right way at the right time, and it had to be kept secret. Evil befell anyone who divulged his secret. Kassim Kurji in his red fez and white drill suit haunted him in various forms and drove him insane. They said that the great man muttered in his sleep and his bed shook from his power. To some he was the fallen angel Azazil. He controlled numerous djinns. He meditated for hours, sitting rigidly erect, without moving a muscle, without twitching an eyelid. Once Fatu Auntie had suggested that Kulsum visit Kassim Kurji. No, said Kulsum firmly, I have my own tasbihs, thank you. But Shamim, who had stayed a few months with Fatu Auntie, knew more. Kassim Kurji could call back the dead.
Try telling that to your mother. The dead, she will say, go directly to God, unless they have done evil. In that case their souls flit about restlessly like mosquitoes, looking for mischief such as trying to communicate with the living. Did we think Daddy was a bad person? No. Then why should he be sent back? We would all meet him when we also went to God. Sona and I were given a prayer each to recite before going to bed. “It will make him happy.”
We preferred Daddy a little evil so he could come back. On a Sunday morning the Famous Five at last found an adventure worthy of their name: Five Call on the Dead. We went trooping towards the Kariakoo post office, ostensibly to check the post. Upstairs we had not passed muster yet and Begum, listening to her favourite hits and chasing after cockroaches, had been given the slip. On the way we stopped at Uncle Hassan’s New Medical Store, where he prescribed pills and mixtures for his African customers, to pick up the postbox key. Aunt Zera was there and as usual could not resist her philanthropic drive, and gave us a fifty-cent coin each, thus bringing good luck on the enterprise from the start. We walked past the market to the post office, checked our box, found it empty, and carried on towards the destined store. Anyone who saw us walking noisily past the post office could not have told that we were on our way to talk to the dead. But if he had some instrument that detected beats, he would have heard five hearts thumping loudly. It was a corner grocery store serving an African clientele at which we stopped. I would have preferred Shamim to do the talking. Failing that, her brother Shiraz. But it was my father we had come for, it was my responsibility. My brother and my cousins gave me the signal and I moved a little forward. There was a big, middle-aged woman sitting at the till. “What do you want?” she yelled sourly as we stood below on the street. She had a large white bosom and her hair was tied in a bun.
“We want to talk to Uncle,” I began.
“Henh?” again the yell. “Which uncle?”
“Kassim Kurji Uncle!”
The die was cast. The woman was nonplussed. The old man himself came out. It was as we had pictured him. Red fez, white drill suit. He was short and thin with a dark brown face, the skin old yet unwrinkled: like dry leather.
“The children came to see you,” said the woman, adjusting a strap of her bodice. She was now standing up, tall, taller than her husband, and imposing, hands on hips.
“What do you want?” said Kassim Kurji in a soft voice.
“Bapa,” I addressed the old man, “can you bring my father back?”
He looked at the woman. She gave him a reference, which was completely lost on us, ending with a nod towards me: “This boy’s mother was given in marriage in Nairobi and his father is dead.”
“Come inside,” said Kassim Kurji and turned to go back in. We hesitated and looked at each other in fear. “Go, now,” said the woman, and I took the first step. A long corridor led inside, it was dark and felt cool and damp and had rooms to either side. What does the house of Satan look like? What lies in the shadows that lurk there, who lives in the rooms? We passed three such rooms, doorways leading to dark, sparsely furnished interiors. Djinns, they say, live simply. This was Kassim Kurji who commanded djinns, whose bed trembled with his terrible powers. In front of us he looked straight ahead, gliding smoothly in small, easy steps. Behind us escape was already blocked by the broad figure of the woman. Sona gave a sob and clung to me by my forefinger, I stopped to wait for him and Shiraz was forced to pass me, for which he never forgave me. Finally Kassim Kurji turned into a room, Shiraz almost fell in after him as he missed a step, and Shamim gave a yelp
and Salma whimpered.
We all went in. The room was empty, save for an African-style bed strung with fibre, on which were a blanket and a shawl, and beside it on the side of the door was a prayer mat. Kassim Kurji went and sat on the mat on his haunches. The woman brought a glowing coal brazier and sprinkled some incense on it. The room began to fill with thick, sweet fumes through which we watched the red coals and the glowing face of the man near them. He bent down and kissed the mat three times, then he sat erect, eyes lightly closed, hands in front of him loose and relaxed. He started muttering in Arabic something incomprehensible and guttural, his voice stiff but musical, so that it seemed that if the djinns could be evoked, it must surely be through this mysterious tongue. We watched and listened, unconscious of everything else but this small man in white drill and red cap who sat before us on the mat, from whose mouth which opened into a small black hole hard syllables of mysterious and wonderful words escaped. He stopped abruptly and took some long, easy breaths with his eyes closed. Then he kissed the ground three times as before. He opened his eyes and after a short while said, “The djinns say that the man was a big soul. He cannot be called. He is with God.” The brazier was now quiescent and the fumes had dispersed. There was a stillness in the room. “Go now,” said the man, still on the floor. The woman was not in sight. Shiraz gave me a nudge and we slowly filed out through the corridor and into the bright sunshine of Kariakoo.
A little way from Kassim Kurji’s shop on the way to the post office was “the store with two lions.” It sold fishermen’s nets and the name board over the doorway showed a lion trapped inside a red net. On one of the walls was a metal poster showing a lion trying unsuccessfully to catch up with a rider on a Raleigh bicycle. Then came another poster showing Stanley Matthews dribbling a football. After Stanley Matthews was a mattress shop, and it was here that we saw the woman from Kassim Kurji’s shop, standing with an old woman, watching us trot by on our way past the post office and Hassan Uncle’s New Medical Store all the way to Kichwele.
I never saw Kassim Kurji again, and when he died a few years later his reputation had gone down somewhat. But there was something about that mattress shop. On our trip to the post office we would sometimes walk past it to take a look: at the old woman sitting at the sewing machine by the doorway, the young man at the till inside, the African sitting outside on the sidewalk working on a mattress with needle and thread.
One day as I hurried by, alone, the old woman called out: “Ay, boy. Come here.” She was standing inside, holding a brass measuring rod. I went in and she put the rod down on the counter and came back to face me. She was short and thin, in a long grey frock of the soft material that old women favour. Reddish-grey henna-dyed hair on her almost tiny head was tied at the back in a bun the size of a golf ball. The face was wrinkled, the eyes shone brightly.
“What’s your name?”
“Salim Juma.”
“Juma … Juma … so you went looking for your father—”
I said nothing, what can you say to a strange old woman who’s cornered you? I looked around me discomfortedly, as if for a chance to escape, or for help. I looked at the young man watching me from behind the counter, then at the African who looked up from a mattress, and felt reassured—
“Well, listen, son of Juma, you listen to me and I shall give you your father Juma and his father Huseni and his father …”
Sweet knowledge. Ji Bai spoke and I listened.
There are those who go to their graves not knowing where they came from … who hurtled into the future even as the present was yet not over … for whom history was a contemptible record of a shameful past. In short, those who closed their ears when the old men and women spoke. But the future will demand a reckoning. We will not forgive those who forgot, the new generation of the Sabrinas and the Fairuzes and the Farahs will say.
Ji Bai opened a small window into that dark past for me. She took me past the overgrowth into the other jungle. And a whole world flew in, a world of my great-grandfather who left India and my great-grandmother who was African, the world of Matamu where India and Africa met and the mixture exploded in the person of my half-caste grandfather Huseni who disappeared into the forest one day and never returned, the world of a changing Africa where Europe and Africa also met and the result was even more explosive, not only in the lives of men but also in the life of the continent.
I remember my first view of Shehrbanoo … a dumpy gunny sack enclosing a broken world, the debris of lives lived … slumped in the inner room beside Ji Bai’s bed, her mouth closed with a sisal twine. Ji Bai untied the loose knot, instantly a smile appeared on the gunny where there was a grimace before, and that laughing mouth was never shut again. Eh, Shehru, but for me in my grey shorts and flip-flop chappals where would you be now?
The first things Ji Bai brought out from that bottomless depth were the three books.
There were, of course, Ji Bai, Gulam, and Ma the squint-eyed mother whose authority was on the decline. And there were Ji Bai’s four remaining children, little Mongi having died at Rukanga, and Gulam’s brother Nasser who never left them. Abdulla, the other brother and friend of Germany, never left Rukanga, he married there and he died there. He had one son, Kaiser, named after the deposed Great One, and several grandsons, of whom Aziz became Ji Bai’s travelling companion …
After school, between two and four when all senses were dulled by the heat, I would steal away with the postbox key, my ready excuse, to the mattress shop. Just to see the happiness on her face as I came in was worth the trip. Seated on the bench, frosty Coke bottle in hand, I would let myself be pampered and loved and told stories to, while the African sewing the mattress would look up with satisfaction, and her grandson Shamshu at the till would interrupt her with suggestions. “Tell him about the march to Rukanga, Ma.” “… and the roars of the lions, Ma!” “Tell him about Bibi Wasi—what did she look like?” (Ji Bai: “Oh, she was prim and pretty, with an umbrella and white frock and her face would be all red …”) And once in a while the trip to the inside of the house, to sit on her old bed, and see what Shehru came up with …
Kulsum had never mentioned this side of our history, what point was there in letting her into the secret? But of course, she found out. For Shamshu was the favourite customer of Hemani the secondhand bookdealer; he had acquired from Hemani a roomful of books, walls lined with Famous Five and Secret Seven, Perry Mason and Hercule Poirot, stacks of Kit Carson and Kansas Kid and Buck Jones and Davy Crockett. And Shamshu, who himself did not read his books but would look upon them with the care and tenderness others reserve for their pet children or their pregnant wives, showed a greatness of heart in lending me select titles from his precious shelves.
A Famous Five or Secret Seven book without the rubber stamp of the library on every alternate page, ex libris Shamshudin Gulam Dhanji Hasham, or words to that effect!
“Unless you have stolen it …” said Kulsum, “tell me how you got it.”
They opened a stall on Bagamoyo Road far away from the town, deep inside the African district, selling pili-pili-bizari: chili and turmeric, a clove of garlic here and there, sugar by the packet, flour and grain by the kibaba-cup, kerosene by the jigger. And they were known in town, even though the family name had been changed to Hasham, there were people who could point their finger at them and say, “There walks the house of Dhanji Govindji, who stole from God,” and cross the street and walk on the other side.
During the hartal of 1923, the strike called by Indian shopkeepers to protest against the Government’s requirement that accounts be kept in English, they had to close the stall even when they could ill afford to, they didn’t have a shilling in the house. They had to sell through the back door, the compound, where the mamas knocked and pleaded for groceries and brought vitumbua and barazi for them.
Through the 20s and into the 30s, the years of boom, when the big mosque with the clock tower went up, all in stone, with huge wooden doors and iron gates, when the Indian popul
ation swelled and Dar grew and grew, they carried the shame, afraid to look people in the eye, to get into an argument, for fear of a taunt.
There was one incident Ji Bai never forgot. Her son Kassim, ten years old, was playing in the street with other boys. She sat minding the store, looking out over the groceries, it was a dull humid afternoon right after a brief rainfall, the ground was wet on the surface although the sand underneath was dry … A sudden commotion woke her up from her reverie: Kassim was racing furiously towards her, bare feet thumping on the ground, kicking up dust, chased with even greater thumps of larger bare feet by a grown woman: Sheru Bai of the Indian shop across the road. Kassim raced inside, panting loudly, and looked at his mother in relief. No sanctuary. Sheru Bai without losing the slightest speed raced right into the store, caught hold of the boy by the hair, shook him a few times and slapped him twice. Then without a word or a look at his mother she stomped off.
A kid’s fight, perhaps. But wasn’t I, the boy’s mother, the proper authority to be told? Kher. Never mind. We survived this and other insults. The people forgot, but it took them twenty, twenty-five years to do so. Sheru Bai and I are friends now. We’ve both seen hardships.
In the 1930s Gulam became a missionary. He joined a group of young men, many of them freshly off the boat from Bombay, who went on car trips to the interior to keep their brethren in line and to teach the faith to the African. In the first purpose they were phenomenally successful: few intermarriages, fewer concubines or multiple wives, mosques and schools going up everywhere. In the second, they proved a miserable failure: instead of promising rewards both here and in the hereafter, instead of providing education (which they couldn’t, themselves having none) or hospitals or shoes and clothes, they spoke of punishment: Every grain of sin the Lord will carefully weigh: bongo ya kichwa itatokea sikioni they translated freely—the brain of the head will pour out from your ears. And no-one was willing to buy that, even as insurance. In 1938, one day on the road from Morogoro to Iringa (later to be known as the Hell Run), their car skidded into a ravine. All the five young missionaries inside died on the spot. And became instant martyrs. At first the bodies were to be brought back to Dar. But that was decided against and they were buried at a roadside grave close to the spot where they were killed, with inscriptions in stone commemorating the event in three languages. Until recently, said Ji Bai, cars and lorries on the highway slowed down in deference to the five martyrs who died there, and those that raced past did so at their own peril.
