by M G Vassanji
Yasmin had her hair set and wore everything new. She carried a sweater and had a BOAC bag slung around her shoulders, very much a picture of the seasoned traveller. We stood in a circle around her, making small talk as we waited for departure time. Other travellers, students, were similarly the centres of family attention, dispersed all over the big room. Hearts were heavy, the families eyed each other over the distances with curiosity, and acquaintances only nodded at each other. There were Europeans going back: with what feelings? They all converged on the bar, it seemed so easy for them. Finally Alnoor set the farewell process in motion.
“So,” he spoke jovially to Yasmin, “think about us now and then. Don’t forget us little people completely. When you return, don’t walk around with your nose up in the air!”
Yasmin laughed. “Do I look like that kind of girl?”
Gentle Yasmin, with the plain but very white face and the very tight ponytail, how much we loved her, who bathed us when we were young, and set the food on the table, and sheltered us from Begum’s wrath. It was only Mehroon, her sister, she fought with …
“She will be a London-returned,” Bahdur Uncle, said, his voice breaking and lower lip trembling. Aunt Dolu was being brave.
“Take care,” said Kulsum, stepping forward, and pressed a folded currency note into Yasmin’s hand.
Then the tears started to roll. First Mehroon, then Begum, then Shamim. Bahdur Uncle wiped his eyes. Kulsum and Aunt Dolu both looked stern, not a tear between them. The rest of us looked appropriately serious and went to shake hands. Yasmin laughed at this formality. Then Alnoor became frantic. “Photos! Photos!” he came forward with his camera. “We’ve not taken photos.” Photographs were then taken. Yasmin with Bahdur Uncle and Dolu Auntie, her official guardians. Yasmin with Mehroon and Begum: the original trio who had worn pinafores and ribbons and frolicked in Nairobi’s City Park, and then taken care of five children in Kichwele. Yasmin with the whole family. Yasmin and Kulsum. More goodbyes and tears, and finally a ruffled Alnoor: “Goodbye, eh,” with a small choke. “All the best”: Amin, shaking hands. Yasmin brought out her ticket and joined the queue towards Customs, the family waved till she disappeared and some more in case she still saw us, until Alnoor said: “Okay. She’s gone. Goodbye, Dar, good morning, London. She’ll be there in the morning.”
RED SKIES AND WESTERN EYES.
In January 1963, the president announced the introduction of a one-party system of government, with special powers. Beware! at once warned the Herald in its editorial: beware of the fate that befell Sylvanus Olympio of Togo! Sylvanus Olympio, once regaled in Dar from Kichwele to Independence Avenue as the nation’s first official visitor, had been assassinated only a few days before. But our Julius stood firm. The translator of Julius Caesar would yet outlive his opponents … and in the following months and years these fled to London from where they dispatched feeble pamphlets to be dropped on Dar from feeble two-seaters, or they cooled their heels in icy Sumbawanga on the border with Zambia until they had learnt their lessons. As Mr. Gregory was heard to remark, the Brutuses to our Julius were not made of the same stuff. Our republic was only one year old.
November 23, 1963. Dates become important: you realize now why they invented the calendar—to turn events into dates, the artefacts, the knickknacks of yesterday that you store away in your gunny somewhere … November 23, 1963—who, having seen it, can forget it? At 2 a.m. the president summoned his ministers to the State House and issued a statement. “He trod faithfully in the footsteps of Lincoln, with him he is now linked in death …” That morning Nuru Poni’s shop did not open, Alu Poni on the way to school told us why. “KENNEDY SHOT DEAD!” Nairobi’s tabloid the Daily Reporter screamed, “Africa loses a champion.” We all loved Kennedy—who didn’t love Kennedy?—we knew the names of his children and we simply adored his lovely wife … There were many photos of Kennedy in Dar, the biggest perhaps in the display window at the USIS library, with the caption, “Ask not what your country can do for you …” and others in many of the dukas with our own president … and a coloured photo, small but prominent, in Nuru Poni’s shop, taken from the cover of Newsweek and framed, because among his many heroes, handsome Kennedy was the pawnbroker’s favourite. So we knew our Kennedy, and the news of his death hit us hard. The following Saturday all government offices, all businesses and industries remained closed in a national day of mourning, a special High Mass was broadcast to the nation, all flags except the Chinese flew at half mast.
(How naive we were … even as nations we looked for heroes … only to learn later that in politics, history, there are no heroes. Were we conned, Shehrbanoo, by the greatest con artists of all, the packagers of Madison Avenue …)
In December of that year, Kenya and Zanzibar became independent. And, as naively, we looked forward to that long-forecast event, a federation—the United States of East Africa—and even betted on which of the three leaders would head it.
In January of the new year a local Sheikh formed the United Democratic Party and called on the president to announce new elections or resign in favour of Chief Abdalla. “Let us remove Cliff and Elvis from our walls and put on them Chief Abdalla instead.” To which a British columnist in the Herald quipped, “Does the pious Sheikh have on his wall a picture of Elvis the Pelvis instead of the Kaaba? What next?” The chief, who had been previously tried for accepting bribery, whose acquittal Alu, Jogo and I had celebrated outside the courthouse (where Jogo had been caught by the Ngurumo’s camera with his hand in a peanut basket), later rejoined the party. The British journalist, who had also a few months before derided a member of Parliament for enquiring about mermaids in the Indian Ocean, and who later called visiting Stokely Carmichael “Stocky Carbuncle,” was sent packing and was last heard of from Australia. The Sheikh became a prominent astrologer, with a column in the Daily Reporter.
At 7 a.m. on January 12 those who were in the habit of listening to Zanzibar Radio in the morning, the patrons of Moonlight Restaurant, for example, and therefore—without choice because the radio blared right through their walls—neighbours like Nuru Poni, heard the announcement: “I am Field Marshal Okello! Wake up, you imperialists, there is no longer an imperialist government on this island. This is now the government of the Freedom Fighters.”
So we woke up to the presence of John Okello and his periodic pronouncements on the radio. Radio Zanzibar of course became popular, everybody wanted to listen to this field marshal. Arab-owned Moonlight Restaurant stayed closed for a week, while blood flowed in Zanzibar in the revenge of those whose ancestors had arrived in chains and filled the coffers of the merchants and the princes with their heartbreaks and sorrows.
I recall a Zanzibar girl … Wait, don’t tell me about her, Shehru—not yet—tell me about the revolution, tell me what she said … “Even before we heard the announcement on the radio we heard the sounds of shots … not that we hadn’t heard them before, there had been several riots … bloody riots before, how could we not have seen this? … but this time we knew it was the real thing, the big one. It wasn’t surprising really, it was in the air, ask anyone, they smelt the revolution twelve hours before it came, those who had been out on walks or drives, or observed strange behaviour in their servants … the servants had been sworn to secrecy, you see. Mother immediately started stuffing jewellery into her bosom and father looked at me and trembled … I did not realize why just then … girls bear a responsibility to their fathers which boys just do not have … but we all know that, don’t we, except not in those terrible terms … There was a big Arab door in the front of our store, father closed this and kept the others open (this was so the looters would not be angered), and we went to the back section of the house. It faced a street that always voted ASP, so we were always safe from the backside. We stayed there for five days … there was a tap, but no bathroom, no toilet. On two of the nights mother and I tiptoed to the front section, and in great hurry cooked rice and eggs and potatoes. The looters came, certainly, seve
ral times. They combed the whole street on the frontside. They broke down the big front door, fired several shots and took everything in the shop. They stopped outside the door to the back section each time, a flimsy door behind which we were hiding and praying, trembling and weeping, father had me and my sisters under the bed … for we had all heard the screaming and crying from the Arab quarters. Why those revolutionaries—or looters, whoever they were—why they did not break open that door, God alone knows … perhaps they thought it was the back entrance to a house on the ASP street, but so what, they could have checked … and why the smell of cooking in the kitchen didn’t rouse their suspicions … We knew that the Government was taken. There was an opening under the roof in one of the walls, from which standing on a chair, you could see outside … we could see people we knew walking to the mosque, both their arms up, their fingers making the ‘V’ signal for victory, to show which side they were on (the winning side, of course), sometimes goaded on by the militia, but we were too frightened to come out then … and Mahmoud saw, on the first day, Jena Bai following her two boys to the mosque, at a trot, and as they neared the gate, a militia man ordered them to stop—Jena Bai, you see, was a poor widow on welfare—Jena Bai stopped but the two boys, sixteen and seventeen, began to run and the man shot them down … The Sultan and his family had escaped, and the Prime Minister was in jail. We huddled in the inside room and waited. From time to time we heard screams in the distance and we knew something horrible was happening. Men and women screaming, our eyes would widen, our hearts would thump, and we simply awaited our fate. Father would get up to look outside from the hole. Mahmoud, usually brave and rowdy, now whimpered beside mother as she sat on a stool. The rest of us sat on beds or the floor. Finally our time came, after five days, at about eight in the morning the door came crashing down and two Africans stood on top of it, guns in their hands, and held their noses in disgust. It was not the food smell that betrayed us. But nothing happened, we were walked to the mosque like the rest … when we entered it the first person we saw was Jena Bai weeping, weeping inconsolably, but we heard no-one else from the community had been killed … only two people, the only two people Jena Bai had in this world. We had been given up for dead.”
A few days later they started arriving by boat, refugees from Zanzibar, with horror stories about the revolution. The idyllic isle of cloves jolted into bloody reality. Thirteen thousand dead, mostly Arabs. They brought nothing with them, these Asian refugees, except what escaped the notice of the soldiers of the revolution, still green behind the ears and unused to searching: the moist interiors of bhajias studded with diamonds, kebabs clutching earrings in their spicy insides, gold bangles sunk in greasy curries. Family heirlooms, lives’ earnings and investments, most of which was plundered, a little crossed the ocean in ignominy. Thus we got little Miss Ahuja with a figure that threatened to break hearts and burst pants, and we got Shirazi, nicknamed Unguja, among the numerous refugees in school. We heard of rape and pillage, the revenge on the Arabs. They fought back, shot themselves or set themselves and their families on fire in their homes. “We had duriani in the morning, biriani for lunch, and Arabiani at night,” the hapless Zanzibari refugees would boast. “Never in any situation rape women whose husbands have been killed or detained,” John Okello had warned his freedom fighters, “no soldier may rape or even touch a virgin girl.” All else was halal meat. But our Unguja had not had any Arabiani yet, that we knew. He drifted in our school from class to class with his compatriots, trying to learn as much as he could while the authorities were deciding what to do with the Unguja refugees. Finally, after a year, they settled down, but not without occasional calls to the headmaster’s office to confirm their status.
The week following the Zanzibar revolution, Dar was rife with rumours: that the army would take over, the British would return, Cubans had been sighted in Zanzibar. A few grocers had quietly delivered gunnies of rice, onions and potatoes to the mosques. Mukhis were in consultation. In Zanzibar it was at the big mosque that the Shamsis had sought refuge during the revolution. Beware! the Herald had warned: now rumblings were heard from all corners of the town. Who would be the Brutus to our Julius? Kambona, some whispered.
On January 19 the field marshal from Zanzibar came to Dar es Salaam in a Government plane and was welcomed at the airport by Kambona.
At six-thirty the next day, Monday morning, Hassan Uncle pounded on our door.
“Aré wake up all of you, are you still sleeping?” he shouted irritably. A little before, the alarm had rung on our made-in-England Classic silver clock as it had reliably done for many years now. Begum, the first to get up, had set a pan of water and tea leaves to boil and entered the toilet. When Hassan Uncle’s fist struck on our door, Sona and I were awake too and brushing our teeth side by side at the washbasin, yellowish black liquid from the coal powder paste dribbling down to our elbows from our mouths. At that moment Begum used the flush. Mehroon, entering the scene, after some hesitation lifted the crossbar from the door and unlocked it. Kulsum walked in from the sitting room, and the door opened to let in the cool fresh air from outside and the irate Hassan Uncle. We surrounded him.
“My bicycle,” he said frantically, pointing to the door, “I’ve left it downstairs. I must hurry.”
“Why, brother, is Zera sick?” asked Kulsum calmly. My mother’s hair was dishevelled, she was barefoot and didn’t have her glasses on and looked rather like a witch.
“Zera?” Hassan Uncle shouted with impatience bordering on customary scorn. “Aré, don’t you know, it has started. Lock the door, don’t let the servant in. Lock the door, you hear, and don’t let the servant in. Don’t … let … anyone … in.”
“What has started?” Kulsum asked, a little stupidly.
“Riots. Like Zanzibar. Do you understand? Like Zanzibar. That’s all I am saying. My bicycle is downstairs, I must run. Lock the door!”
“But wait! Don’t we have to go to the mosque?”
“When the time comes. Meanwhile lock the door and pray. Don’t look out of the windows. Keep the kids away from the windows!”
As soon as the crossbar was put in place behind him, we rushed to the windows. The street below was strangely, ominously quiet. Those portents of life in the city, the green and beige DMT buses, were not hurtling their way on the street this morning. There were no pedestrians and only a few cars and bicycles. The street remained quiet even when the cool of the morning was invaded by the heat, and the streets and buildings acquired a glare when viewed from the windows. At about nine Kakar the lecherous grocer—so called because he made eyes at Begum, Mehroon and Yasmin—casually cycled up towards his store in Mrs. Daya’s building. He put a key to a padlock and hesitated. Then he looked around and behind, removed the key and walked slowly to the street and looked up at the windows. He saw faces peering down at him through window bars. Then Mrs. Daya yelled down at him, “Eh Kakar Bhai! Go home! Haven’t you heard? Hasn’t the news reached your area? It has started!” Kakar did not hesitate. He ran for his bicycle and swiftly pedalled away the way he had come.
Kulsum prayed. She sat on her bed saying tasbih, Begum was slumped on the sofa reading, Mehroon peeped outside between the curtains. Sona and I stood on our knees on the windowsill, our foreheads pressed against the metal bars. It was too quiet outside in the street for Kulsum’s occasional but frantic warnings to sound convincing. From the building across, Mrs. Daya and her daughter peeped between their curtains. Inside, the radio was quiet. It had been quiet all morning. In the street below a few Africans had wandered out from the side streets and occasionally looked up. We looked back fearlessly; we did not know yet what was going on in the minds of our mother and sisters.
Presently an army lorry filled with soldiers came speeding down the road, followed by another. The soldiers raised their guns and the pedestrians who had gathered to see cheered them. Sona and I were yanked down by Mehroon and Begum and we peered between the curtains, now terribly frightened. A Land Rover came s
peeding by. In all minds Hassan Uncle’s ominous words: Like Zanzibar, like Zanzibar, like Zanzibar … what like Zanzibar, for God’s sake? We had heard it, we had read it, even imagined it … it is one thing to enjoy vicarious excitement through the radio, or the articles in the Nairobi tabloids … but Zanzibar repeated here … the horrors knew no bounds. The Tanganyika Rifles, formerly the King’s African Rifles whom we had watched smartly parading on the Queen’s birthday when Sir Edward Twining was Governor, now transformed into a force of terror.
Congo and Zanzibar. Nuns raped. Duriani, biriyani, Arabiani: I chuckled even as I trembled. What to do if they attacked my sister or mother? There is a trick your mind plays on such occasions, a kind, parently trick—she does not picture the word attack when she pictures Kulsum and Begum and Mehroon … or when she pictures attack she does not see your mother and sister and cousin. Arabs had died defending their women. I would do the same. But then, what? Would they have the sense to commit suicide? If only Kulsum had not turned in my father’s pistol. How handy it would have been! But there were Ali Chacha’s Kashmiri daggers, their blades rusting and neglected no doubt, but better than nothing.
… a mob rushing up the stairs, led by Oman the tailor, eyes red with rage, seething with revenge. “Now I will have the shop. The Fancy Store, now all mine!” His head kept getting bigger and bigger as he ascended, bent forward, arms swinging in front of him until at the head of the stairs there was nothing but the head, big, black, puffed up, eyes red and gleaming … it passed through me, this head, and behind it was Edward bin Hadith my friend, standing behind the crowd, apologetic, in his bush shirt and trousers and sandals, his hands down but held together in front of him, as at a prayer. All around me was the sound of the black mob, screaming, yelling, heckling, ascending the stairs in waves, coming at me and going through me … Then they were breaking down the doors, there was the pounding of bodies and rocks on wood, and I stood behind with my father’s pistol in my hand, arm raised and ready to shoot, I watched the doors slowly giving way, the thick wooden crossbar not breaking but the brackets that held it giving way and falling backwards, limply, the stopper coming off with a snap, the rattling doors gradually yielding at the hinges and the locks … the locks gave way first, the doors swung open, partly falling away at the top hinges, and the crowd went pouring in …
