‘Hodi! Hujambo, Daktari!’
‘Aha! The police on our trail, Ally!’ Her aunt’s voice held a distinct tone of pleasure. Curiously, Ally assessed the tall, uniformed man climbing the hill towards them, Carole greeting him, ‘Sijambo, inspector! Karibu. Is this your territory too? How is your sister now?’
‘Oh, recovering fast, Dr Seaton, to escape a return to the dreaded hospital! I am grateful for your care of her!’ The man removed his cap and shook Carole’s hand enthusiastically. ‘Yes, my little empire is enlarged! A new police station north in Tundani – just concrete dust and noise now, but rising fast. Protecting tourists’ expensive belongings is Top Priority, my superiors instruct! But I am very happy to see you, Dr Seaton. These are your family?’
‘My niece and nephews from London – Ally,’ Carole introduced her, ‘Ben and Jack,’ indicating them wandering among trees beyond the ruined arch.
The policeman offered Ally his hand. ‘Inspector Rutere. You are in our land for long?’
‘A month,’ Ally said. ‘But there’s almost three days gone and—’
‘Eh-eh, you are counting! You have good impressions? I am glad!’ He swept a hand round to encompass the arch, the dunes beyond. ‘People complain it is not excavated to find what is underneath. Me – I do not like cars and tramping feet that come too. Or pickpockets and gangs – all those who prey on others.’ He gave an elaborate sigh, gazing along the coast where creamy dunes merged into a distant white haze. ‘A special peace here, yes? A man becomes calm standing here. Of course it should not be peaceful if you listen to the spirit of the place! This may have been buried in a tidal wave. Like the terrible tsunamis of now. Maybe the souls of its people sleep beneath us!’
Goose pimples crept over Ally’s skin. Sleep beneath us. She was tempted to lift her feet.
‘Or perhaps,’ the policeman continued, ‘it is another sad victim of greedy explorers, wandering like pirates in their ships. My friend Makena the mad archaeologist from the university should tell you these stories! She sniffs about somewhere.’
He raised his voice. ‘Makena, stop crawling among old stones and come here!’
An answering shout from a nearby dune: a woman appeared, half slid down the sandy slope towards them and came fast up the grassy hill. She arrived, mopping her forehead with one sleeve. Unlike the neat-uniformed policeman, she was dishevelled, jeans stained from kneeling on soil, hair streaked with sand.
‘You find what you hunt for, Makena?’ the policeman interrogated. ‘You storm the world with new discoveries?’
‘Eh, you joke, Rutere, but one day . . .’ Makena shook her head at the policeman and grinned at everyone else. ‘You like our beautiful place?’ She circled the arch, and looked back at them all. ‘A fine arch, yes? But it tells a sad story. The same story is told by the old part of our city of Ulima. Go there and look! Find the marks of cannon-fire. You must! People know the old fort there, built by the invaders. But before those invaders built their fort, they bombarded and destroyed the ancient city of Ulima. Many, many thousands killed! Three times the invaders did this! As punishment. As this city beneath us was also punished. Oh, oh, the men of the ships and the forts were quick to punish!’
Her words struck Ally with a jolt. Those strange moments on Kisiri surfaced in her mind again. Fumo and Zawati came to Kisiri and when it was safe they went into the forests of the land, Leli’d said, and she’d asked, safe from what? Then that weirdness . . .
Were Fumo and Zawati escaping a ‘punishment’?
The archaeologist had moved on, and was gazing down into the copse of trees clothing the hill on the inland side. Ally made her up her mind and pursued her, leaving the policeman and her aunt still talking.
‘Miss Makena, was this Fumo and Zawati’s town? I mean, did they go from here to Kisiri?’
‘Ah-ha! The legend! The great warrior pair! You are interested? I will tell you! Fumo and Zawati’s birth city is perhaps here. Or there. Or there, or there.’ She flapped her hand north, south, west. ‘Even, perhaps, east, over the sea! It is maybe a mixture of here and there, a story woven of many threads. Like all legends!’ She regarded Ally keenly, head on one side. ‘Do you feel their town here? Do you hear it?’
Is she teasing? But Ally listened. Faintly, Ben in the trees, calling Jack. The surf boom beyond the dunes. Haunting cries of sea birds. In the bushes near the arch, rustling and snuffling. Behind that the soft whistle and trill of smaller birds.
‘No-o . . . it doesn’t feel like a place you’d run from,’ she acknowledged. ‘It’s . . . peaceful.’ Not like the forest near Carole’s house – she was tempted to tell Makena, but the woman simply tilted her head at her answer, and moved on again, and the moment was lost.
‘Are you looking for something here, like Inspector Rutere said?’ Ally asked, following her.
‘Always I look! It would be good to investigate this place well. It is special for me. The first very old, old place I saw. I was very young. I did not understand it. But it opened a little door in my soul. Perhaps it will open a door in yours. Perhaps our land will open many doors in your soul!’ Her eyes smiled, again that tilt of the head. ‘When I was a student, much later, that door was pushed wider by a teacher. He told about the birth of these cities, many centuries ago. And their death, when the Portuguese ships came.’
‘Are they the explorers Inspector Rutere talked about? Or are they the invaders? It’s really confusing, I don’t know anything about it,’ Ally admitted.
‘The Portuguese? You do not study their great voyages of discovery in your school? Truly, they were explorers and invaders! It is not said any more that the Europeans discovered Africa! Of course they did not! We were here before! Perhaps we all began here on this great continent! That is something the scientists are saying!’ Makena chuckled. ‘But I must not tease you! I see you are asking to know – I must not be cheeky! So . . .’ She gestured Ally to walk with her. ‘The history of these things is too often written from the viewpoint of the conqueror! But the voyages of these men are nevertheless interesting – truly audacious, dangerous ventures.’
‘Was it like Columbus?’ Ally asked. ‘I had a book about him when I was little.’
Makena’s head on one side again, like a curious bird. ‘You wish to hear? Truly? I will not trap unwilling listeners!’
‘Yes,’ Ally said, surprising herself. I must understand. In case it was all to do with Leli’s words about going to Kisiri to be safe, in case – an echo of the forest trees and the voice stirred . . .
She said, ‘My aunt called it a murky history, and said we should find out more.’
Makena smiled as if Ally’s answer was immensely pleasing, and wandered on, talking, and Ally wandered with her, circling the crown of the hill, weaving between the tumbled stones, and the trees and the great pillars of the arch.
‘Vasco da Gama – you know of him? No? So, the lesson begins! He was the first Portuguese commander to reach this coast. Six years after Columbus first landed on the Americas – so, a little more than five hundred years ago. Everyone in Europe wanted to find the sea route to the rich spice lands of the exotic East! They could make a fortune bringing spices to Europe! So this Portuguese commander – this Vasco da Gama – had four ships, one hundred and sixty men. Daring voyages across vast oceans, blown by the winds, pushed this way and that by treacherous sea currents. Two out of three died. Just fifty-five of those men lived to tell the tale, you know!’
Ally was trying to picture Portugal on a map, the shape of Africa below. How long would that journey take?
Makena seemed to hear her unspoken question. ‘Endless months! No sight of land, no idea what waited ahead. Will I ever see home again? Will I ever set foot on land again? Will I die in this little box floating on an ocean that never ends? Imagine the spirit of adventure, the call of the Unknown that kept those men going! And dreams of riches! Now, think of this, Mis
s Curious – to sail to the bottom of Africa, down the west coast, they must take winds and currents that swept them far, far away from Africa to the south-west. See,’ she picked up a stick and drew Africa small in the centre of a square patch of sandy soil, ‘they must travel right away from Africa, down to the bottom left corner. Over three thousand miles – nearly two months, almost all the way across the Atlantic to South America.’ She traced it on the sand. ‘Then all the way back across the Atlantic, this time trying to sail south-east – towards the bottom right corner. Two more months to reach Africa’s southern regions. Weeks and weeks and weeks later, round the south tip – the Cape of Good Hope. That name, you know, was given by the very first Portuguese expedition to reach it. You can see why reaching there gave them hope – Good Hope – if you contemplate this journey!’
She straightened up. ‘But those first ships failed to go far up Africa’s eastern coast. They sailed back to Portugal – months and months more – very disappointed! Vasco da Gama’s fleet was the first to succeed. He went round the bottom of Africa and sailed all the way up to here, on this coast where we are.’ She stabbed the stick in the sand. ‘He reached here in 1498, over five hundred years ago. And now, Miss Curious, think of this – these explorers expected to find primitive, ignorant people locked away from the world. What astonishment to find instead rich stone cities! With ships that had been trading across the oceans for centuries, and people who looked out on the wide world and were part of it.’
‘Like here,’ Ally said, ‘I mean, this city.’
‘Like here, yes! Now, Miss Curious, face the sea. Close your eyes. You are in your busy town, people, ships, merchants, travellers, markets all around. One day – open your eyes – there, just there, surging in on the waves, are great ships. You have never seen such ships before! Three tall masts. Flags flying. Many sails, many guns, many soldiers.’
Ships that filled people with fear and hatred. Who said that? Carole? Not Carole’s kind of words. The policeman? Ally cast around, and remembered – the old man who’d talked about the Fumo and Zawati legend. Mzee Kitwana.
‘So that’s when the legend comes from?’ she guessed.
‘Certainly the legend of Fumo and Zawati comes from that time, or the years following. Yes, imagine you are the young girl, Zawati. You look at these ships. They come nearer. Now you see a large crucifix painted on each sail – the cross mark of the Christians.’
‘I wouldn’t think that means bad things coming, though, would I? I mean,’ Ally pointed out, ‘I’d be used to lots of ships coming, from all kinds of places.’
‘True, true. You are thinking well, young friend! Your first thought “interesting new people, maybe good new things to buy. What can we sell to them?” But premonitions of disaster would not be far away? The guns, the soldiers . . . a horrible worm wriggles into your head. Not just traders, you think.’ Makena sighed deeply. ‘You are right. They do not come just to trade, but to conquer, with their big, powerful guns.’
She picked her way down the slope to a stone ledge jutting from the hill and sat down. Ally clambered beside her.
‘The story is very sad,’ Makena went on. ‘These ancient Swahili cities – never subjected to foreign rule before! The Portuguese explorers arrive and plant their Portuguese flag wherever they land. Within ten years every city has fallen under their power!’
Again she fixed her eyes on Ally, as if to make sure she was listening. ‘But more – the men of those ships hated the Muslims – and these coast places were all Muslim. In fact the men of the ships hated anyone who was not Christian, so they loathed the “heathen” inland Africans too. But not quite as much as they hated the Muslims. In truth, they proclaimed war with the “infidel” Muslim, and trade with the “heathen” African. And always there was the lure of immense wealth!
‘And think of this: when the ships conquered a town, soldiers and sailors looted everything. Even by the standards of that long ago time, these Portuguese on these ships were very, very violent and cruel. Their own chroniclers wrote of them with great disgust. Complaint after complaint was sent to the King of Portugal! You can read them now, in the museum records, here, and in Portugal. One man’s words are engraved in my mind, so often I have read them to my students! Is this the vision that drove us to leave our homes and see the world? We are a breed of able sailors, undaunted, tough. Great oceans do not temper our courage. Has that vision become remorseless savagery? We hammer all men into our image, and snatch their wealth. We breed terrible revenge in those we conquer: thirty of our people in a southern settlement, even infants, massacred by native assailants. Yet more terrible punishment will be given to them by the next Portuguese vessel to pass. So the wheel of violence turns . . . You see how it was, my young friend? These invaders were here, on this coast, for two hundred years, they left only destruction behind! And a few forts.’
‘So there was a fort here?’
Makena shook her head. ‘Nothing we have found.’
Questions queued up in Ally’s head. ‘You said quick to punish. Punish what?’
‘Resistance.’
‘What, rebellions?’
Makena snorted. ‘Oh, much, much, much less. Refusing to pay a tax, refusing to celebrate the Portuguese king as your ruler. Punish if a town did not give in quickly. Destroy, to make an example to others.’ She patted the stone underneath them. ‘Many of the old cities have never been found – razed to the ground, sometimes just made poor and abandoned, their stones carried away to build other things, over hundreds of years. Sometimes, of course, other people – from other lands – laid them waste, not just these Portuguese! Oh, yes, there were others who came after . . . and some of these came as Muslim “friends” to these cities. When people realized their true purpose, it was too late. But those are other stories, for another time, I think! For now, Miss Curious, we see just a wall here, a tomb there, part of a mosque – near river estuaries, on islands, on beaches like this. Everything else just vanished.’
‘And you will spend a lifetime searching for them, and be very happy,’ the inspector’s voice cut in behind them. With Carole and Jack, he was walking slantways down the hill towards them. ‘This obsession of Makena’s! She drags everyone in! I come to ask policeman’s questions and when I am here, I forget them all!’ He turned to Carole. ‘So – I am the policeman again! Mzee Shaibu instructs me, “talk to the doctor and her young ones at the Old Fisheries House”, but I did not see he means you, Dr Seaton. I did not know you lived so far from Ulima.’
‘Oh, not usually, just for this month. Half a chance, though, I’d stay for ever!’
The policeman laughed. ‘So – open the longed-for health clinic, and stay to work there! You and your colleagues from Ulima hospital, Dr Kuanga and Dr Ahmad – a first-class team! Eh, Makena, we capture these doctors for the people of the north coast?’ He sobered and squared his shoulders. ‘But, the D.O. telephones me early: “something strange is happening in Shanza, go and find out,” he says. So, I ask, you too have seen these unknown men who worry the good Shanza people?’
Carole nodded. ‘And someone nosing about at the Old Fisheries House.’
‘And boats round there and in the creek,’ Jack put in.
‘Indeed,’ the policeman responded, ‘much unusual going up and down. And other troubling signs: the Wild Life Service detects new animal poaching gangs in the north and inland.’
Ben, just then crawling out of the undergrowth speckled with twigs and bark, wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘Killing animals? Lions and elephants and that?’ he protested.
‘A butchered elephant carcass found, yes . . . but a long way inland,’ the policeman answered. ‘Here, we are – how do you say – just poking about! I have a report of your car on this road, Dr Seaton, and so I am investigating, and Makena comes for the ride to search for buried somethings!’ The policeman turned his cap in his hands and, with an air of reluctance, put it on.
‘Makena, we go! The driver patiently waits at the car. He will think we have gone swimming!’
But as he turned away, he paused again. ‘I am as concerned as any person in Shanza to know who is going where and why. And what these new business people building the hotel in Tundani are planning. Where will they plant their flag next? Be alert. This area is peaceful. I would not like you now to meet unpleasant people in our land.’
Ally wandered away from the chatter of her aunt and brothers. She struggled up the far dune ridge till she could feel the onshore breezes and see the sparkled blue of the water on the far side, the receding tide opening an arc of glistening sands thronged with wading birds. Beyond stretched open sea, on and on. If I could see that far, I’d see India, she thought, conversations flitting about her head in an interesting clutter.
Is Makena hunting for something special? What’ll Leli think about everything she said? I’ll get Carole to stop at Shanza on the way back so I can tell him and he can explain about Fumo and Zawati being safe . . .
Those strange moments on Kisiri with Leli rippled across her, like a wind ruffling the surface of water.
Nine
I stand alone, and do not know where, or how I came there.
A passageway looms. A door. My dead father’s chamber, stained by my father’s suffering!
Song Beneath the Tides Page 7
