What You Are

by M G Vassanji

  “Like me.”

  At a table nearby, a religious argument had spun out of control. “By my mother, I will kill you!” went up an angry, somewhat startling cry. The two men, both in suit and tie, were half out of their chairs, glaring at each other like fighting bulls. The manager glided over to the table, spoke to them quietly and familiarly in Gujarati, and ushered them outside. From the door he brought back two other men, a short, dark Asian, and a lean African—a real one, not a Brownie. They walked to our table. Greetings were exchanged, the two men sat down, the waiter was called.

  * * *

  —

  The African was called Martin Kigoma and he was from Tanzania; and so, originally, was his friend, Osman, who had already met Mulla previously and explained to him Martin’s business. The latter took a kabab to his mouth without ceremony, took a bite from it, then—as we watched—dipped the lopped-off remainder into the coconut chutney and ate it with relish. Following which he wiped his hands and mouth with a napkin, put a hand into his black valise and pulled out two large photographs.

  “Here is our man,” he said. “Look at the pictures and tell me he isn’t someone you know.”

  His manner was brisk and bullying, though friendly. He had a strong, glassy glare, and the occasional flitting glance at a passing tray betrayed a craving for a beer which he had declined out of respect for Mulla.

  “Eh,” exclaimed Martin over his reading glasses and passed the photos over to Mulla. “Go ahead, Sheikh, examine them.”

  Mulla fumbled in his pocket for his glasses but Martin pushed his own across the table. Mulla put them on and adjusted them on his nose.

  The first photo was posed and showed a lean African in white bush shirt and dark trousers, standing by the driver’s side of a safari vehicle looking straight at the camera; his fists were balled. The other picture had caught the same man unawares, marching in the company of a group of swaggering roughs who appeared to be singing; a few of them wore cutaway shirts to reveal their jacked-up muscles. All carried clubs or machetes.

  Martin and Osman’s proposition was that the man was a certain Jean-Pierre Makoya, responsible for one or more Hutu massacres in Rwanda and now posing as a Muslim called Abdul Rasheed who prayed at the Salam-e-deen mosque of Rosecliffe Park.

  “It is hard to tell from a photo,” Mulla murmured, looking up, passing the glasses back.

  “Try, Mulla-ji,” Osman pleaded.

  “Try how?” Mulla asked, his voice now dry, and his face drained of the cheery brightness of a few minutes before. “Should I go and ask the poor fellow if he has committed mass murder? On what grounds?”

  “Use your…wits, man,” Martin said, sounding exasperated. “Find some way. You are known for that here, you were a detective, Osman tells me—”

  Mulla laughed softly. “I’m nothing of the sort. But I do know you need proof before you can accuse a man of such a crime.”

  The two men sat back disappointed. Martin looked at Osman and shrugged, as if to say, What did you expect? To recompense them, Mulla ordered them beer. The bottles arrived, trailed by all the curious eyes in the long room. First a man wearing a Muslim cap, then a black man, and to top all that, two beers at our table. The look of pleasure on Martin’s face told Mulla that at least for the moment he had redeemed himself. Technically he had just sinned by procuring alcohol for someone. But this Sufi was hardly ever concerned by such technical matters. It was for the conundrums he posed that he had acquired his reputation.

  Now he was faced with his own puzzle.

  Even if the similarity were superficially there between the man in the two photos and Abdul Rasheed, could this devotee who had become a feature of Friday afternoon mosque with his grey gallabiyah and white cap, who bowed down humbly before Allah and greeted all he met without pretension; whose wife in long dresses and hijab was equally without pretension; and who had two lovely children, could that man conceivably be Jean-Pierre, a Rwandan mass murderer? Not everything conceivable was truly possible. But then, as Mulla related in our taxi back, as a child he would hear about neighbours turning against neighbours during India’s Partition. Our taxi driver, from Lahore himself, turned his head to affirm, You bet. Sometimes, as a youth, Mulla continued, after acknowledging the driver’s contribution, when he saw the men of his village sitting outside the chai shop chatting, or standing outside the mosque after Friday prayer and bantering, or even when he looked at his father over a family meal, he would wonder: How did you behave in those dark days? Did you save any Hindus? Or did you help to push them out? There were empty Hindu houses and even an old temple in the village. The taxi driver turned his head to butt in, They didn’t save Muslims either, on the other side. Mulla demurred, saying there were people on either side who had saved their neighbours. In his own family, however, he knew that some distant relations of his had perished in India during the Partition.

  The following Friday, Mulla and I went for our weekly tea and bhajias at Maqbool’s Halal. As usual I met him outside the mosque, but with him as he emerged from the gate this time was the tall figure of Abdul Rasheed. The three of us made our way to the tea shop, exchanging our first experiences of Canada. Abdul Rasheed had come via Paris four years before and worked as a teller at the Royal Bank in Flemingdon Park Mall, before being promoted to client advisor. Mulla was vague about why he had stayed on, but spoke of riots against minority sects back home. I had come as a child with my refugee parents from Uganda, and attended university in Alberta and dental school in Toronto.

  Behind us a group of hotheads were dissembling loudly, apparently having just accused a man at the mosque shoe-stand of being a police spy. Their accused—or victim—was Liaqat Ali, an idiosyncratic local fellow who was well known for chatting up anyone he met, but who put them off with his excessive warmth and his British accent. People tended to veer away from his path. What made matters worse for him was that he had not quite caught on to the gestures of the Muslim prayer.

  Mulla muttered, “And it was such zealots I thought I had left behind.”

  Our African companion smiled. He couldn’t have understood Mulla, who had spoken in Urdu, but he somehow caught the gist—“Young blood. Hard to control, Mulla.”

  Mulla nodded. We reached Maqbool’s and sought out one of the cubicles set off by blue curtains, which Mulla always preferred.

  “Mr. Jamaluddin,” said Abdul Rasheed, forgetting the title for a moment, and when he had caught Mulla’s eye, continued, “Monsieur, I would like you to teach my children Arabic.”

  “Abdul Rasheed,” Mulla replied quietly, a bit taken aback. “I am not an expert in Arabic.”

  “But you are a teacher—and you know al-Quran…and some Arabic, of course?”

  “Yes, but…I know a teacher who is good in Arabic and Quran, a young man. Much better. Do you want to talk to him?”

  “I want a teacher in language and religion, yes, but also in wisdom and morality—is that right?”

  Mulla nodded but did not commit himself. He had thought to get to know Abdul Rasheed and learn more about him, but the man had turned the tables on him and was requesting a favour. Mulla’s look wavered to the gap between the two halves of our curtain, catching the eye of one of the hotheads, who had also arrived at Maqbool’s and was going on as before.

  The youth, unable to contain himself, came over, and pushing through the curtain stood towering over us at our table. He wore a black vest over his white gown, and a white skullcap, and had a rich black beard.

  “Mulla-ji, we should do something about that spy. He has no right—”

  “To do what, Hanif?” Mulla asked in a sharp tone he rarely used.

  The boy flushed and turned to depart, but Mulla continued, “And do you think the security service is so stupid as to hire a man like him?”

  The boy turned and opened his mouth to speak but Mulla silenced him with the wave of a hand.


  “They are more likely to hire someone who looks just like you. Keep your head on your shoulders.”

  The fellow strode back sheepishly to his table, which fell silent, before antagonistic mutters arose against all heretics.

  “Let me think about this, Abdul Rasheed,” Mulla said.

  * * *

  —

  The following day, Saturday, I was present in his class when Mulla told the children a story about a man of God called Sadruddin, who as penance for his sin of pride would hang himself by his feet over a well and ask forgiveness. The very picture of a naked mystic hanging upside down brought uncontrollable laughter into the room, as if the boys and girls had been shown a hilarious cartoon. Mulla could not help laughing too. “God forgave him,” he said. “God is the Merciful.” He went on to tell the kids how as a young boy, when Sadruddin was bowed in prayer, his mother would put a sweet behind him, telling him later that it was a gift from God.

  As he reached the part when, one day, the mother forgot to place the sweet in its place as usual, there was a knock on the open classroom door. Khatija, Abdul Rasheed’s wife, stood there with their two children. Mulla told the kids where to sit and asked them their names. Maryam and Yunus. Like the other boys, this being the beginning of the weekend, Yunus wore a white cotton gallabiyah and skullcap. Maryam, like her mother, wore an ankle-length dress and a white headscarf. They had both brought notebooks and ballpoints.

  Mulla looked up at the class, nonplussed.

  “The sweet! The sweet!” came the cry. “His mother forgot to put the sweet!”

  “Ah, yes,” said the Mulla, eyes sparkling. “His mother forgot, but God did not forget. He put two sweets behind the boy’s back! Remember the first line of the Quran?”

  “In the name of Allah, the kind and merciful,” came the chorus, in Arabic followed by English.

  “Excellent,” said Mulla. “He gives. And he forgives.” A thoughtful look had come over his face as he said this, and he dismissed his class.

  Over the loud chatter and shouting and scraping of chairs on the floor, Mulla called Maryam and Yunus over. Did they enjoy the class? Yes, they did, and they also liked going to school. They both enjoyed playing soccer and baseball. They watched soccer on TV with their father sometimes. They preferred the French teams. Yes, yes, they knew about Zinedine Zidane.

  Did they recall Rwanda? No, they were born in Paris. Did they have other names? Maryam, the younger of the two, shook her head vigorously; Yunus said his mother sometimes called him Jean. That’s another way of saying Yunus, Mulla told the boy to his great delight.

  We walked out of the building, the two kids on either side of Mulla, holding his hands. At the sidewalk, he released them and they ran off happily.

  “I see you’ve been talking to him,” Martin Kigoma said, striding over from behind to join us. Mulla did not reply but smiled.

  “He’s my man, I am positive.”

  “You have proof now, Mr. Kigoma?”

  “Circumstantial at present—but it’s coming. New facts are emerging and witnesses will talk. I have videotaped our man and will show it around when I get back.”

  He was doing well, he said in reply to Mulla’s query, he was returning to Tanzania in a few days.

  “We should meet before you go,” Mulla suggested. “Come home for tea…but no beer.”

  * * *

  —

  Khatija had brought the tea and cookies for us and retired.

  We had stood loitering outside Abdul Rasheed’s building at a little past five, and when the man returned from work and inevitably, out of politeness, invited us up for tea, Mulla accepted with a haste that was embarrassing.

  “So you are teaching my Maryam and Yunus,” Abdul Rasheed said. “Thank you, Mulla.”

  “Yes. I had no choice,” Mulla said with a chortle. “But they are wonderful kids.”

  Abdul Rasheed nodded.

  Mulla said, “I teach the Quran, but I don’t need Arabic to do so. For Arabic, I suggest a young man called Akhtar. Then the children need not confuse the tedium of learning a foreign language with the spiritual message of Islam.”

  Abdul Rasheed looked surprised, but said, “You are wise, Mulla. Perhaps it’s only the spirit of the faith that they need.”

  Mulla waved away the compliment. “I teach what I learned from my own teacher, a great Sufi in Lahore. His name was Noor. I have no other employment, as you no doubt know. I find great satisfaction in teaching the young.”

  “And the not-so-young?”

  “A few of them, who are inclined spiritually. We meet for meditation and chanting.”

  “Perhaps I can join you.”

  Mulla said nothing and there fell a moment of uncomfortable silence. Finally Mulla leaned forward and said, “Forgive me for asking, Abdul Rasheed. Were you yourself born of Muslim parents?”

  Abdul Rasheed’s face turned a deep hue, before he recovered enough to answer slowly, “No—but there was Islam among my relations…”

  “You accepted Islam…”

  “During…after…the troubles in my country. Why do you ask, Mulla?”

  The voice dry, without substance or pitch, as if he were hanging on to something, some redeeming notion perhaps, whatever he could call up, by the merest thread.

  “And your name before…Jean-Pierre…?”

  The man’s face crumpled before our eyes, a flood of tears slowly washed down his cheeks, releasing his pent-up guilt, I imagined, and easing the terrible tension of trying to live up to his new name. Mulla let the man weep in silence for some moments. Finally Abdul Rasheed sat up straight, took out a large white handkerchief from a pocket and wiped his face.

  “Did you participate in any of the killings at the time, my brother?”

  “Mulla…if you knew…if you could comprehend the hysteria and confusion. To be told if you did not do something, you were murdering your own people…they would get to you first…and your children…you were a traitor.”

  “They? The Tutsi?”

  Abdul Rasheed nodded. “The officials, the radio. All the neighbours.”

  “Did you…yourself…?”

  The man broke down again. It was answer enough.

  “They are on to you, Abdul Rasheed.”

  “I know.”

  * * *

  —

  We met Martin and Osman again at that den of intoxication and nostalgia, the New Safari Grill. This time Martin did not observe any niceties out of respect for the man of God: he drank liberally.

  “We in Africa are determined to bring our criminals to justice this time, Sheikh.”

  A tall order but a good cause, Mulla observed. The continent had suffered much recently…it needed hope and honest leadership. He could say the same thing about the country he came from, high up on the world corruption index. And here he was himself, pleading the cause of a confessed murderer.

  “The Africans of South Africa have taught the world a lesson in nobility and forgiveness—”

  “Have they, my friend? Have they truly forgiven? That’s what the world would like to believe, the world that enslaved us for so long and is fearful of our vengeance.”

  “There are other criminals on your continent—everywhere—who do not have to pick up a weapon—”

  “We have to start somewhere, Sheikh. Are you suggesting that laws, the justice system, can be made flexible—left to the whims of individuals? Where is deterrence, where is justice? Crime and punishment, Sheikh.”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Kigoma. I simply wonder if repentance in this case is not enough. The man still has to face his God daily. And there are the lives of the two children. Should they pay a price?”

  “Countless children in Africa pay a price every moment, Sheikh.”

  * * *

  —

  A few weeks later, Abdul Ras
heed took a flight for Arusha, Tanzania, to be questioned by the prosecutors of the Rwanda tribunal. His family saw him off at the airport. As did Mulla Jamaluddin and I.

  TOVA IN TEL AVIV

  [YOU WOULD LOOK AWAY]

  My Friend.

  It’s drug mischief that’s brought you up in the mind…so painful. Or I would not trouble you. Again. It was so long ago. I betrayed you then…you couldn’t have forgotten that. I see a boy walking diffidently up the curving hill of United Nations Road, Dar es Salaam, eyes fixed on the ground in front of him. The stupefying African heat, the brilliant daylight. What do you see? Where might you be now?

  You would look away into the sun’s glare, determined to avoid me, your face scrunched up, and when you could bear it no longer you’d turn your head back, just in time to miss me passing in that glorious blue Citroën ID like a princess in a chariot. But one day our eyes met. I had you. Do you want a lift? I said. How did I sound then? Wonderfully sweet, I bet. And the shy dark boy dripping sweat allowed himself just one step closer, to sink his eyes in mine, and spoke in a dry voice—No thank you—and walked on. Your heart went thump, thump, thump, I could feel it. And mine? It had stopped. I could not believe it. Just a lift? Just a lift. The next day you were not there, and the whole week following, my driver Abdu sneaking sly looks at me in the mirror as I scanned the sidewalk. I, who was the insulted party. You were teasing me? No. Shy, you said, only shy—I was so embarrassed. That was when you did finally appear and accept the lift. Almost tripped in the process, I stifled a laugh. Where shall the driver drop you? Just there, opposite the mosque is fine. You live here, near the mosque? No—yes, just close by. You didn’t want me to see your home, did you? And me, naive European girl, couldn’t understand why. How nervous you looked, each time we let you out, and without even a look behind, you ran for your life!