We Are All Birds of Uganda

by Hafsa Zayyan

  ‘No,’ he insists. Hasn’t she been listening? ‘Everything I read in the letters – it’s made me wonder, am I doing the right thing by trying to stay here? I just don’t know if any of this is right – none of this, except you, feels right. I know that this isn’t what we planned, but can we at least talk about maybe going to the UK?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she says, and she cannot keep the emotion out of her voice. ‘You think you’re causing a problem here, so you want to deal with it by running away?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be running away.’

  ‘But what would you do in England, Sameer? Go back to the job you hate? Work for your father? It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I don’t need to have a plan. We would work it out.’

  ‘What would I do? I wouldn’t be able to work there, my qualifications wouldn’t be recognised.’

  ‘Of course they would,’ he says unsurely.

  ‘Look,’ she tries gently, ‘I understand you’re feeling strange. But you haven’t thought through any of this.’

  ‘Do you think I thought through coming here?’ he snaps, and her face recoils with hurt. ‘You know what I meant,’ he adds, but her eyes have filled with tears and her lip is trembling now.

  ‘How did you not realise any of this before you asked to marry me, Sameer?’ she says, and the tears are rolling down her face now – she’s agreed to marry an idiot. He reaches out to touch her arm – he shouldn’t have brought it up like this. She flinches but doesn’t pull away.

  ‘Maryam,’ he says, pulling her elbow towards him gently, coaxing her body to turn to face him, ‘I know I’m sounding confused. I’m sorry. My mind is fucked up right now – I can’t tell you what’s going on inside my head.’ He takes her face in his hands and wipes the tears with his thumbs. ‘But the one thing I’m not confused about is you.’

  She gives him a half-smile and he brushes one thumb over her lip; she catches it in her teeth and sucks it gently, surprising him and arousing him. Then she pulls away and looks out of the window. ‘I can’t leave Kampala, Sameer.’

  He leans back in the seat with frustration. Could he really stay? After everything he has done and seen, is it really right for him to stay? Outside, the sky has turned an angry shade of grey, like nightfall has come early. He opens the car door and wind rushes in, diffusing the heat inside the metal shell.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she says. ‘Let’s go home – we can talk to Taata about this. We’ll work something out.’

  He doesn’t respond and steps out of the car, leaving the door open. A single, fat drop of rain lands almost immediately on his cheek, a strange relief. It’s almost cold. The wind is strong and the rain will be heavy.

  ‘Sameer, what are you doing? It’s about to rain – we should head home.’ She’s come out of the car now, standing in front of him, arms all wrapped around herself as she likes to, and she’s having to shout over the sound of the wind.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ he admits. ‘You don’t understand because you haven’t read the letters –’ and then, in a moment of madness, he reaches into the car, retrieves the bundle from his backpack and hands them to her. ‘You have to read them – all of them.’ But he had not secured the twine properly and as she takes the package, the top two letters are picked up by the wind and carried away into the air. ‘Shit!’ he rushes to take the package back, but it’s still in her hands too and as they attempt to prevent the others from flying away, the whole package falls apart and suddenly there are letters everywhere – some on the ground, some in the air. ‘No, NO!’ Sameer falls to his knees, scrambling around in the red dirt to collect up the letters. Maryam drops automatically to the floor to help, and the rain has started to come now, thick and fast, the heaviest rain he has ever experienced; these are not individual droplets but sheets of rain, slicing through the sky and drenching the two of them.

  ‘We need to go!’ Maryam yells, standing with a bunch of crumpled, sodden paper in her hands.

  ‘No – I need to get all of them!’ He is still on his knees, which are now swimming in puddles of reddy-brown water. He gathers together what he can, but the ink has run and the paper is disintegrating under the weight of the water. The rain is relentless but she doesn’t get back inside the car. When he finally stands, they are both soaked through. The paper in their hands is no longer paper: it is coloured pulp. He is glad for the rain and the cold, masking the tears that are shaking his body. She comes towards him and takes one of his hands, full of paper pulp. ‘Let them go, Sameer,’ she says gently. ‘Let go.’

  He shakes his head, but he drops the pulp to the floor, taking her in his arms and pulling her close, so they become a single figure pounded by the rain. Her whole body is shivering and he squeezes her harder, letting his lips rest on her forehead. ‘I just don’t know how to fix this,’ he whispers, trembling.

  ‘Some things just can’t be fixed, Sameer,’ she says.

  26

  Orange burns the horizon, jagged with the shape of ashy trees. Although it is mild tonight, Sameer shivers as he watches the last vestiges of the day leave the sky. He’s standing on the balcony of his Airbnb for the last time. This one had allowed him to stay longer than he was strictly supposed to – he’d had to pack up the parts of him strewn across the small apartment; it had only ever been intended to be temporary, but as things tend to after a period of time, it had begun to take on his essence. That was it in Kampala: you could get away with bending the rules, no one minded. It wasn’t the same in London.

  He misses her.

  He’d thought a lot about what he could do to try to fix things, but she was right in the end. Perhaps some things were incapable of being fixed. He had thought about setting up a charity to help those struggling, but it wouldn’t really have been feasible to run alongside the juice business. He settled for making a donation to assuage his conscience, followed up with a promise that if he ever made it, he would set up a charity. But it all seemed so half-hearted, as everything did with him. Something bothers him still, and it will take time for him to come to terms with it – time is the only solution to this issue. All he knows for certain is that he will be better than those who stood here before him; he has to be.

  He thinks of Maryam again, of her lips. The softness of them. But it’s not long to wait now.

  The wedding has been organised by Maryam and her aunties. Sameer has no particular interest in the wedding: only the marriage itself. He has insisted (despite Maryam’s protests) on contributing financially; he has no idea what a wedding costs and when he asks her what the total is, it seems cheap enough. It will be a low-key affair, with a small number of guests: the nikkah will take place in the National Mosque, and afterwards the wedding party will go to the same steakhouse that Sameer and Maryam dined in on his first visit to Uganda, for the reception.

  His father had not reacted well to the news that Sameer would not be coming home; but he had sounded resigned more than anything over the phone – this son of his, with his ever-changing mind, the son he raised to indecision, this son without a backbone. What kind of a son was he? But at the same time, with a son like this, there is every chance that he will return to him in the future. He has not given up hope yet.

  A handful of Sameer’s family members are flying to Uganda for the occasion: Yasmeen Foi and Haroon Fua, Samah and John (Samah insists on coming even though she is in the third trimester of her pregnancy), and – Sameer’s heart beats gratefully – Zara. Also on his side, Jeremiah and Angela, Roy and a few of the other boys from his school friendship group, the Shahs and Patrick. When Sameer finally gave the invitation to Mr Shah, only two weeks before the event, Mr Shah had expressed a quiet disappointment at the news that he was getting married (although Sameer had an instinctive feeling that the disappointment would come more from Mrs Shah) and asked casually who the lucky lady was. Sameer could not bring himself to look Mr Shah in the eye when he told him. This was not out of embarrassment
, but out of respect. Nevertheless, the whole family – including Aliyah – said they would attend. And that was really it from Sameer’s side.

  It is decided that, for now, the newly-weds will live in Maryam’s family house after the wedding. Sameer finds it funny that he will not have seen all of the rooms in his father’s old house until he marries one of its inhabitants, but he will be happy to leave the Airbnbs, this nomadic existence, moving on every few weeks to a new place. The wedding day approaches with surprising speed, coinciding neatly (and to Sameer’s amusement) with the end of the notice period he never completed – just over three months from the day he resigned. How much has changed in the space of a notice period.

  Two days before the wedding, Sameer catches a taxi to Entebbe to meet the family arriving from the UK. As he stands waiting in front of the arrivals gate, his stomach begins to knot and the hairs on his arms stand to attention. He looks up: his mother is walking through the gate. She comes to him slowly and hugs him. ‘I’m so happy to see you, Mum,’ he says, and she bursts into tears. Zara, Yasmeen Foi and Haroon Fua, Samah and John – they are all there behind her. But his father is not.

  They get two taxis back to Kampala, splitting into their respective families. Zara takes the passenger seat and Sameer sits in the back with his mother, who holds his hand firmly in her own. ‘He wanted to come,’ his mother lies. ‘But he had unavoidable work business. He sends his love, though. And a gift for Maryam – gold.’

  Later, when they are in the Airbnb, Zara tells him the truth: ‘He’s punishing you. And he’s pissed at both of us for coming. We’re getting the silent treatment.’

  Sameer’s hands ball into fists. Zara can cope with the silent treatment, but he hates that his mother must suffer this. Zara is young, busy at university and has her whole life in front of her. Sameer has a new family, Maryam, and a new life in front of him. His mother’s life has no new beginnings. It has only endings now, and the path to those endings is filled with Sameer’s father. ‘Don’t tell me this,’ he says. ‘It makes me wish you hadn’t come.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Zara responds, avoiding his gaze for a minute, and what has been unspoken between them is no longer necessary to say. ‘And anyway, Mum said you don’t know anything about weddings,’ Zara is grinning now as she puts on a desi accent: ‘We had to come to make sure you didn’t make a fool of yourself and bring shame to the family’s name.’

  True to her word, his mother’s suitcases are packed full of gifts for Maryam and her family – an Asian tradition Sameer had no idea existed. She wants to march over there straight away with the family in tow, but Sameer manages to convince her to wait until he has arranged it with Maryam. He messages Maryam (My mum came … and she came with gifts. When can we come over?) and they arrange for the families to meet for the first time the day before the wedding.

  The meeting is a solemn affair; while his mother is impressed with the house (‘Much nicer than the area and the place we’re staying in, huh?’ she says in the taxi on the way back, but not being able to stop herself from adding, ‘then again, it is of course your father’s old house’), she is reserved almost to the point of coldness with Maryam and her family. Maryam receives four suitcases – two from Sameer’s mother, one from Yasmeen Foi and Haroon Fua, and one from Samah and John – packed to the brim with clothes, handbags, shoes and costume jewellery. Sameer cringes as his mother insists that the cases are opened in front of them and, upon seeing layers and layers of heavy salwar kameez and embroidered saris, Maryam says thank you in a small voice that is almost painful to Sameer’s ears. The other members of Maryam’s family are much more enthusiastic, fawning over the beautiful, intricate details so much so that Sameer wonders if they have gone too far, whether this level of excitement at the gifts is inappropriate. But his mother is wearing a little smile of triumph. He wants to feel proud of her for trying – clearly some effort has gone into choosing the outfits, and each of the accessories match the colours with painstaking detail – but, looking at his mother, he just feels hollow. Samah and John’s suitcase is filled with Western clothing – much more like the kind of thing he thinks Maryam would wear, long skirts and dresses, T-shirts and palazzo pants. Maryam flips through it, quickly closing the case just as Sameer spies a bag under all the clothing labelled Victoria’s Secrets, and she thanks them, even giving Samah a hug. Sameer glances at his mother and sees her eyes harden.

  Maryam’s family insist that they stay for dinner; Sameer’s mother initially protests, but eventually gives in, and although Sameer is desperate for the meeting to conclude as quickly as possible, he is also glad, because dinner at Maryam’s house is always delicious and he wants Zara to experience it. After isha (and this is the first time that Sameer’s mother looks pleased, to pray in congregation), a table and chairs are brought into the drawing room; there is not enough space in the dining room to seat them all, and refusing to separate their guests, Maryam’s family create a buffet on the dining table and ask their guests to eat from their laps. There are a sufficient number of them to fill any potentially awkward silences, but Sameer notices that his mother barely engages with anyone else in the room.

  When the dinner is over, Sameer and Maryam are not allowed a single moment in private before he is bundled away into a taxi by his mother who says that they all need to get an early night because it is a big day tomorrow.

  When Sameer looks back on his wedding day, he will only remember two things: the look on Maryam’s face when the nikkah was complete – exultant; and the contrasting image of the Ugandan wedding party, entirely sober, but wildly dancing in all their traditional clothes, while his mother, Yasmeen Foi and Haroon Fua sat on the sidelines, looking miserable and muttering between themselves. The Shahs had left almost immediately after the dinner; Samah was relaxing with her feet up on another chair, head bobbing to the music, while John rubbed her shoulders; Sameer’s friends from home were dancing with Maryam’s family (Jeremiah having effortlessly mixed with the Ugandans and learned their dance moves); and Zara had made friends with one of Maryam’s cousins and was standing by the edge of the dance floor, chatting. Sameer sat with Maryam and surveyed the scene, exhausted. Her hand rested in his, and every so often he would squeeze it and feel surprised at how small it was, how delicate.

  When the party is over, they are finally allowed to retire to a hotel for one night. Somewhere in the unspeakable back of his mind, that morning when Sameer had pictured the rest of his life fanning out in front of him under the Ugandan sun, he had wondered whether he would end up resenting her for it – after that horrible day when he had lost his grandfather’s letters, there had been several conversations and she had insisted she wouldn’t move. That doggedness, uncompromising – it had angered him and he had admired it in equal measure. He knew it made sense: she being the one with the sick father, the steady job which she loved (and which helped people); but he hated that she couldn’t even begin to consider any compromise (well, you could live there and I here, was a decidedly stupid suggestion). But at the same time, he couldn’t get past the image of the man standing outside his kitchen, the hurt etched in his face. Every time he goes to work, it haunts him. He can still see his grandfather’s slanted writing when he closes his eyes – as he spoke about Abdullah, the betrayal he suffered upon being expelled. If it made so much sense to stay, why did this continue to bother him so much? Would there be a day when he woke up and realised he could not stay any longer?

  But in the corridor outside the door of their honeymoon suite, she has never looked more beautiful: the floor-length, fish-tailed orange gomesi, cinched in at the waist by a golden sash; headscarf adorned with costume jewellery and flowers; she is wearing more make-up than he has ever seen her wear before: false eyelashes, lipstick, black henna in swirling patterns on her hands, back and front. Her beauty commands him, melting away his worry about the future. He takes both her shoulders – again, surprised to feel the smallness of her – and kisses her on the mouth, fully and de
eply.

  She goes straight into the bathroom when they enter the room. Sameer goes onto the balcony, looking out over the city, inhales deeply and closes his eyes. At some point, the sound of Maryam exiting the bathroom makes him turn round. She stands in front of him, smiling shyly, completely naked. Sameer has never even seen her with her scarf off and this is almost too much to process – the smooth curves of her figure, the rise and swell of her breasts, climaxing in black, hard nipples, the shape of her collarbone. Her hair is short, scraped back into a low bun, partly curly, partly relaxed. The protruding, wholesome roundness of her backside, the wide shape of her hips, and on the inside of those hips, that soft V shape. He moves towards her slowly, as if he is in a dream.

  The next week, spent at a beach hotel in Zanzibar, is the happiest of Sameer’s life. They take long strolls along the white shores in the mornings and evenings, spending their days in the bed or outside under the rain shower. For the first time in his life, Sameer understands what it means when people say that sex changes everything. Before, sex was a physical function to satisfy a need – like eating, or sleeping. It felt good and necessary. Now, sex is a way of connecting with Maryam; it is an opening, a way of sharing a part of himself with her, and her with him. There is something almost spiritual about it. It morphs the quality of their relationship; it moulds and binds them to one another. When they are out at dinner and Maryam strokes his thumb with her own, or innocently licks her lips, he flushes at the memory of what they did to each other earlier that day and it gives him a rush of pleasure. They talk endlessly – sometimes interrupting each other, almost tripping over their own tongues in their hurry to get the words out – often digressing down rabbit holes and forgetting what they had initially been talking about and laughing. Being with her – sleeping with her – makes him forget everything else, like a drug. He has a new sense of purpose with her, as if she – and them, together – is ultimately the only thing that really matters. He did not know that it was possible to feel so complete.