by Hafsa Zayyan
It seems that somewhere along the path to independence, the Africans behind the boycott gave up on the existing institutions and the protectorate government, and sought to take matters into their own hands. Shahzeb tells us that it is important for us also to involve ourselves in the pre-independence dialogue, that we should be proactive in seeking to secure our rights, but that we should do it by engaging as Ugandans – not as Asians. I shrunk away from this talk as he spoke to us animatedly over dinner. We do not want to cause any trouble, I reminded him. There is nothing wrong with relying on the institutions that already exist to protect our rights. We have been protected in Uganda under British rule, and we will continue to be protected afterwards. Shahzeb shook his head and rolled his eyes, turning his attention to his siblings. I wanted to slap him for such rude behaviour, but I did nothing. He is young and naive; he does not understand yet what there is to fear from change. Since he returned from university, he has been so vocal about politics and what he calls the ‘focus of Asian participation in the African political space’. I have tried to keep him busy in the business, but every spare moment that he has, he seems to be plotting.
The truth, Amira, is that I am scared. I could only admit this to you, but I fear what independence will bring. I fear that our Indian associations and Muslim councils, who have always looked towards the protectorate officials for protection, have chosen unwisely. Perhaps it was always the African elites with whom we should have been engaging. Shahzeb says that we have been wrong to seek independent protection and that we must lose that mentality if we are ever to be truly Ugandan.
As independence approaches, will anyone remember us during this scramble for rights? We are not natives and we are not Europeans. India has disowned us; Nehru calls us ‘guests’ of Africa. We are not guests. We are Africans of Asian origin.
9
It’s quiet in Leicester. Sameer has not noticed this before, only ever coming back for one night over a weekend packed with things to do and people to see, only ever coming back when there was never enough time. But now that he will be home for several weeks and the pace is slower, he notices how quiet it is at night. No blaring sirens, no screaming, no laughter. Just silence. So silent it feels oppressive; the only way he can fall asleep is by listening to music.
He has six weeks off work. Then, a few weeks back in the office to tie up any loose ends. And then: Singapore. In these six weeks, he will tell his family that he is moving. He cannot leave it any longer. At work, they asked him why he needed so much time off. He said: because I haven’t taken any leave in almost a year, because my leave will refresh when I get to Singapore and because there are a number of administrative matters I need to sort out before going to Singapore. He thought: because the partner I work with despises me, because one of my best friends nearly died in a racially motivated attack, because I feel like everything is falling apart, and because if you don’t let me take six weeks, I will leave this office right now and never come back. They let him take six weeks.
Naturally, his family are delighted. He’s told them the time off is accumulated holiday he’s been forced to take; his father thinks it is a sign that he is seriously considering joining the family business. Sameer does not bother trying to dissuade him from such thoughts. ‘We’ll get you involved from Monday,’ his father had said excitedly when he picked him up from the station. ‘We get six whole weeks with you, eh? It’s like a six-week interview for us to impress you enough to make you want to leave London. Wish us luck!’ Sameer is not sure why he did not just tell his father there and then that there was no question of that happening because, actually, he had accepted a role in Singapore for two years and after his six week holiday, he would be leaving the very next month.
Now that he’s back in Leicester, he will finally get to see Rahool conscious. It’ll be the first time that Sameer will visit Rahool without Jeremiah. The idea makes him strangely nervous.
Rahool has been moved out of the intensive care unit and is on a general hospital ward. He’s awake and sitting up in the hospital bed when Sameer arrives. Rahool’s father had warned Sameer that he should not expect very much; that Rahool cannot control movement well, he cannot walk yet, that he has apraxia and finds it difficult to coordinate his mouth to form speech. He didn’t tell Sameer how he should behave, and so he acts normally. Seeing his friend awake and conscious brings such relief that Sameer instinctively gravitates towards the hospital bed to give him a hug. Rahool’s face immediately contorts with terror; an arm lashes out, uncontrolled, and hits Sameer in the chest. Rahool looks imploringly at his father and says: ‘Donuthim, whoz-ee.’
Alarmed, Mr Patel apologises to Sameer, who immediately retreats, heat searing the length of his body to the point that he can feel his underarms dampen. There’s no need to apologise, he tells Rahool’s father, understanding that Rahool does not recognise him. ‘It’s me, Sameer,’ he says gently, not daring to move any closer.
Rahool looks panicked. His face does not register the slightest recognition.
Sameer begins to back out towards the door. ‘I think maybe the best thing would be for me to leave.’
Rahool’s father steps out with him. ‘I had no idea – I’m so sorry,’ he says.
Sameer shakes his head, hoping the sweat on his brow is not visible. ‘I’m sorry I upset him by going in for the hug. I just didn’t imagine that he might not recognise me.’
‘Mmm.’ Rahool’s father glances anxiously towards the door that is closed behind them. ‘They did tell us that there would most likely be memory loss, but they didn’t tell us that he might not remember people …’
‘Did he recognise Jeremiah?’
‘Oh yes, Jeremiah has been very good with him. He’s been a real help. Good kid.’
Sameer swallows: he is small and insignificant.
‘Um, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea for you to go back in today,’ Rahool’s father says delicately, ‘I think Rahool just needs a bit of time, you know?’
Sameer nods vigorously. ‘Yes, completely agree. Of course.’
Rahool’s father exhales. He looks at his watch. ‘I’d quite like to stay and talk to my boy for a bit.’
‘Of course – I’ll ask someone to pick me up.’
Sameer’s hands search for his new phone. He wishes he had brought his sister’s car. He calls his parents: neither of them pick up. He calls Zara: it goes straight to voicemail. Uber? Closest one is ten minutes away. He keys his address into Google Maps: an hour’s walk. This is perfect: he needs to clear his head; he wants the time to think. But part-way home, it starts to rain, lightly at first and then intensely. He doesn’t have an umbrella or even a jacket with him. He thinks about the expensive new phone he has just bought: it’s probably going to get destroyed.
When he finally arrives home, Sameer is soaked through. He stands under the shelter of the front door and rings the bell repeatedly. He needs a house key. His mother opens the door, an apron tied around her waist. ‘Arey, beta, hou thayoo?’ she exclaims. What happened? ‘Why are you so wet?’
Sameer does not respond and walks into the house, kicking off his shoes at the doorway. His socks are wet and he leaves footprints on the floor as he goes into the kitchen, closely followed by his mother, who yanks his ear with a floury hand. ‘Badmaaz, speak to me!’ she says.
‘Ow, Mum,’ he rubs his ear as he retrieves his phone from his pocket; miraculously it is still working. He rips off a sheet of kitchen roll to dry it. ‘I had to walk back – Mr Patel couldn’t drop me off. Tried to call you, no one picked up.’
‘Then you should have got a taxi,’ his mother retorts. ‘You’ll catch a cold like this. We didn’t pick up the phone because we’re entertaining – Mr Shah has come to stay.’
‘Who?’ Sameer stares blankly at his mother.
‘Uff-oh,’ she responds, annoyed that he hasn’t recognised the name. Sameer feels a flicker of irritation: there are a million and one names for all of the extended members of his family,
for aunties and uncles who are not in fact related to him at all and who he’s never met; he can’t be expected to know them all. ‘You know,’ his mother presses, ‘your father’s old family friend from Uganda. The one who went back. Clean up please, and go and greet him.’
Mr Shah is sitting in an armchair in the living room with a cup of tea when Sameer goes in. He sets down the tea and stands up to shake Sameer’s hand: a strong grip, black hairs covering the backs of his hands, gold rings squeezed into the gaps between fat, stubby fingers. A rose-gold Rolex Daytona is wrapped around his wrist – very nice. His jet-black hair, slicked back, is barely receding for a man his age. A large stomach protrudes from his short, stout frame, which is decorated by a garish purple jacket. Clean-shaven and smelling like musk, his eyes grin at Sameer as they shake hands. ‘You must be the lawyer, eh? Good to meet you, beta.’
Later that afternoon, when Mr Shah has retired upstairs and Sameer is standing in the kitchen, munching on a carrot while his mother and Zara prepare dinner, he asks his mother about Mr Shah.
‘He runs sugar factories,’ she says, pushing him out of the way to access the cupboard where the rice is kept.
‘He’s rich,’ Zara supplies flatly, as she chops a cucumber.
‘Obviously,’ Sameer turns to his mother, jumping out of the way to avoid being hit as she slams the cupboard door shut. ‘But how do we know him? And how come he’s so rich?’
‘So many questions, eh?’ his mother opens the kitchen tap over the bowl of rice and begins to wash it. ‘His father knew your dada – they all knew each other back then, it was a very close-knit community.’ She drains the water from the rice and not a single grain escapes into the sink.
‘And the money?’ Sameer ventures, stealing another carrot from the dish in front of Zara, who protests and pretends to threaten him with the chopping knife.
‘They were very successful there,’ his mother shrugs. ‘He went back to Uganda when they invited us back and I guess he made it all over again.’
‘Why is he staying with us then, if he’s so rich?’
Zara laughs at Sameer’s question and responds in a thick Indian accent: ‘Arey, bacha, don’t you know anything about our people? Why spend the money on a hotel when you can stay with your relatives for free?’
‘But he’s not a relative.’
His mother shoves him with her hip. ‘Then go and ask him yourself!’ she exclaims. ‘Or ask your father,’ she adds, suddenly concerned that such a direct manner of questioning might be perceived as rude. ‘Go on,’ another shove. ‘The kitchen is no place for a man!’
Yasmeen Foi and Haroon Fua join them for dinner in the evening. ‘So, law, huh?’ Mr Shah says, looking at Sameer. Mr Shah eats like a true Indian, shovelling rice with his fingers into his mouth. Sameer watches as a small piece of rice flies out of Mr Shah’s mouth and onto Zara’s plate. She does not seem to have noticed. ‘Good foundations, solid start, yes,’ Mr Shah says. ‘But not forever. You’ll never be anybody if you work for somebody. You need to run your own business, be your own boss, eh? We Asians were born to be entrepreneurs, it runs in our blood. You can’t waste your natural gifts, son. You’ve won the great lottery of life, being born one of us,’ and he laughs heartily at this last comment.
Sameer’s father makes approving noises before chiming in: ‘I’ve been telling him this for years, Sohail.’
‘The boy is young, give him time.’
Sameer despises it when he is discussed as if he is not present, as if those discussing him know what’s best for him, as if they are his puppet masters. He reaches for his glass of water so that his hands have something to do.
‘Now, I hear you’ve had some bad news recently, something happened to your friend?’ Mr Shah’s eyes flicker towards Sameer, who doesn’t say anything. ‘Terrible, terrible. This can be such a terrible country. That’s part of the reason I went back, you know? Mind you, we’ve had some tough times of our own in Uganda.’ Mr Shah shakes his head. ‘They don’t like to see us succeed, that’s the problem. Nowhere is really safe for us these days. Not even India. But then that’s no home to any of us, is it?’
After dinner, Mr Shah asks Sameer’s mother if she minds if he has a cigar. ‘Of course not,’ she says, her voice unnaturally high. She opens the window near to where Mr Shah is sitting. Mr Shah retrieves a box of cigars from his briefcase and offers them around to the men. Sameer has never had a cigar before, but he takes one. ‘Now, don’t draw the smoke into your lungs,’ Mr Shah says, reading Sameer’s mind. Zara watches them as they light up. Sameer places the fat stub between his lips, drawing the smoke into his mouth and letting it sit there, gently burning. The taste is not unpleasant. Soon the room is filled with a soft aroma of burning grass that no number of open windows can dispel. Sameer asks Mr Shah about Uganda. What’s it like? ‘Oh, my son, it’s the most beautiful country you will ever see. You know, like you’ve seen in the films? Jungle green. Smells and looks exquisite. Money grows on trees there. So rich, so prosperous. It’s not a place you can forget easily … It’s a paradise, beta. You must understand – it’s our home. That’s why I just knew after we were expelled that one day I would go back.’
Haroon Fua’s eyes gleam as Mr Shah speaks. ‘I often wonder whether we should have done that,’ he says. Haroon Fua’s family were also migrants from Uganda to Leicester, although they hadn’t known Sameer’s family before they came to England.
‘But we are happy here now,’ Sameer’s father interjects. ‘Happy and successful.’
‘Not as successful as me!’ Mr Shah’s laughter booms before he starts to cough. Zara immediately springs to her feet and brings him a glass of water. ‘Thank you, my dear,’ Mr Shah says between splutters. He begins to sip slowly and the coughing subsides. Immediately, he takes another drag of the cigar.
After only a few puffs, Sameer no longer wants to smoke and he smashes the cigar butt onto the small silver plate his mother has brought in (incidentally for placing over chai to keep it hot – not for use as an ashtray).
‘What kind of animals do you see in Uganda, Uncle?’ Zara asks Mr Shah politely.
‘Well, everything you would expect to see in the jungle. Of course there’s nowhere near as many as there used to be back when we first lived there. Do you remember how we used to watch hippos bathing in the Nile, Yasmeen?’ Mr Shah chuckles. ‘Your father doesn’t remember any of this, of course – he was too young when we left. You want to hear stories about old Uganda, ask Mhota Papa while he’s still alive.’
Not likely, Sameer thinks. Mhota Papa can barely hear and rambles the same boring stories they have heard a million times before. He wants to know more about what the country is like now – and how Mr Shah found success after returning there. They talk as the evening draws on, Sameer supplying a steady stream of questions, and one by one, Yasmeen Foi and Haroon Fua leave, Sameer’s family retire to bed, until just Mr Shah and Sameer remain. He hears about the old sugar factories that Mr Shah found in ruins on his return; the money, time and effort spent to rejuvenate them. ‘It wasn’t easy in the beginning, you know. My grandfather and father had built up such a successful enterprise. We came back to Uganda as the next generation – my brothers and sisters, my cousins. We didn’t know how to work together without him and we all wanted different things. We fought bitterly.’ Mr Shah drags deep on his cigar, while he stares into the distance. Then, his eyes snap up and he smiles. ‘My younger brother and I manage the business now,’ he says cheerily. Despite his burning curiosity, Sameer resists the urge to ask what happened to the rest of Mr Shah’s family.
At 2 a.m., Mr Shah rises with tired eyes. He glances at Sameer’s barely smoked cigar and asks him to pass it over. ‘Shouldn’t waste,’ he says, cramming the stick back into the box.
The working week has begun, and Sameer sits with his father in the office, going over the plans for the new restaurant and wedding venue. The family also has a small side business – a petrol station just on the outskirts of Oadb
y, which had been purchased about five years ago in an auction sale. A nice little side earner, Sameer’s father likes to call it. The petrol station is really all about the shop. Given its slightly out-of-town location, there was enough space on the forecourt to build a shop with a small hot-food counter, coffee machine, clothes rack, magazines, general groceries. It runs twenty-four hours a day and has three full-time employees. Sameer has not been to the garage for some time, but his father takes him to check in on it that week. The forecourt somehow seems smaller than he remembers; dingier. Sameer is struck by how unsophisticated everything is: the food counter stocked with food made by one of the community aunties; the awkward rack of clothes, purchased off the back of a van at a significant discount to what they are sold for in the shop.
Sameer looks at the land around the forecourt: there is a lot of empty, unused space. He closes his eyes, imagining a Costa Coffee, a real supermarket.
‘Dad, have you ever thought about putting some well-known names in the forecourt?’ he asks as they drive back that evening. ‘Instead of having the coffee machine, why don’t we have a Costa cafe? Having a real barista would make such a difference – people will pay good money for proper coffee. We could renovate the whole shop, use the forecourt space a bit better?’
‘Mmm. I looked into all that a few years ago when we first bought the place. But it runs all right as it is – it’ll cost a lot to make the kind of changes you’re suggesting. It’s really not our priority right now.’
