Abyssinian Chronicles (4 page)

Grandpa was away on a visit. The news he got on his return made him sad: Nakatu had run away and had no intention of returning to her husband’s house. He was fond of Nakatu’s husband, a bond of loyalty linked to the new Raleigh bicycle this son-in-law had given him before wedding his daughter. It was the same bicycle Grandpa rode around on now. The news made Grandpa look away in the trees, as if worried that his son-in-law was going to appear and demand the bicycle back.

Grandpa sent me away, but I doubled back as usual. Nakatu had left her husband after almost ten years of marriage. Grandpa was annoyed by her refusal to go back. As a compromise, he offered to invite the man over in order to hear both sides of the story, but Nakatu replied that even if he were to invite the pope, she would not change her mind. She insisted that her husband’s concubine had tried to kill her. “It began with nightmares. As soon as I closed my eyes, I would dream of lions closing in on me and tearing me apart. I started sleeping with the light on because then the nightmares relented a bit. I consulted a seer, and I was told that it was a concubine who wanted to drive me out of the house. When she realized that I was not leaving, she got someone to try to run me over.”

“There are too many drunks and freaks with cars.”

“I got stomach infections and migraines which disappeared as soon as I left the house and slept elsewhere but returned as soon as I was back. The woman wants me out of the house, and now she can have it.”

“Does she have a child with him?” Grandpa asked.

“Not that I know of, but I guess he would not bring children home with all those illnesses plaguing me.”

This vague answer did not sit too well with Grandpa. In his experience, it was usually concubines with children who mounted campaigns of terror in order to get recognition for their children and equal treatment for themselves. Kawayida’s mother had tried the same tricks. Her plan had been to become the official wife after the death of Serenity’s mother. Grandpa had never had any intention of installing
her as such, but her son was recognized and welcomed into the family. My guess was that, despite having a son with her, Grandpa was ashamed of her two buckteeth.

“Isn’t it strange that a childless woman is driving you out of your house and your marriage?”

“Such behavior is not exclusive to women with children. Maybe she wants to have the children when she enters the house,” Grandma said. Saddled with amenorrhea and barrenness, Grandma’s marriage had been wrecked by a young girl who took over and produced six children with her husband. It was this piece of real-life experience that shut Grandpa up. He grumbled unintelligibly and later said, “All my daughters are marital failures.”

It was another way of saying that Padlock had been right. It was she who had said that Serenity’s family was full of marital failures. Normally, Grandpa would not have cared a hoot about such an observation, but his daughter-in-law was not a woman to be ignored. He had tried to block her entry into his son’s house and failed. Her observation hurt now because she was still his son’s wife and she showed no signs of leaving. Grandpa did not like her much: she was too strong-willed. What he admired about her, on the other hand, was her sense of commitment, a quality he felt Nakatu could do with.

Grandpa’s worries were far from over. Nakatu left only two days after her arrival. She went off to visit her sister, Tiida. I was ecstatic. Grandma and Grandpa were mystified.

A month later, she was back, a brand-new marriage proposal in her bag. She had met and fallen in love with Hajj Ali, a former schoolmate ten years older than she. It was unclear whether she had always had him on her mind or whether he was a new phenomenon, but seeing her glowing face left no doubt that Nakatu wanted to marry this former football player who had transferred his competitive skills to the field of trade. Grandpa had so far sent two letters to Nakatu’s husband without getting any reply. He was worried that there might be a clash between the two men in his house, which would do nothing to enhance his reputation. He wanted to avoid any unfairness. But then why was Nakatu’s husband not coming to state his case? Grandpa did not dwell too much on that. He had a more pressing problem: he felt that he had to quell the fires of the latest Muslim invasion.

“This has gone too far. It has got to stop,” he bellowed. “Look what happened to Tiida’s husband: the ulcers and those filthy things left in his garden! Why do you women never learn? You looked around and thought your sister was getting something special, and so you decided to get a share too?”

“Sir, it was you who began the invasion, if I may use the word. Kawayida’s mother is our mother too, and she is a Muslim. I can assure you that Tiida and her husband are happy. Shared suffering has brought them closer to each other. The madwoman who deposited dog heads in their garden confessed and withdrew claims to their land. Ssali is a better human being now. He is not the arrogant imp he was before.”

“Was that why you decided to try the wonders of Islam by finding a Muslim man for yourself? Think about it: you left your husband allegedly because of the sinister activities of his concubine, and now you are entering a relationship in which four wives are legal. Why are you doing this?”

“Hajj Ali is not going to marry any other wives. I am enough for him.”

“Foolish woman talk. I believe that Ssali won’t marry again because he is highly educated. But what will stop Hajj Ali from doing what he wants? Are you a virgin, or do you still think you are?”

“If he was after virgins, sir, he would not have come knocking on my door. He has had enough of virgins who have to be taught everything. And save your worries for your other children, I know what I am getting into.”

“So it is a question of a Muslim man getting tired of Muslim women and trying Christian stock for a change!”

“Sir, I am in love. I am old enough to know that. I also know that something special is going to happen. I can feel it.”

Something special eventually did happen: she became pregnant after a drought of about eight years. Grandpa sanctioned the marriage, but without the knowledge that Nakatu was going to convert. By the time he got that particular detail, he had given up.

“They are not going to circumcise you, are they?” he asked in an attempt at humor.

“Whoever heard of women getting circumcised?” Nakatu, victorious, asked.

“Right. You can do what you want. If your husband wanted you, he would have been here already.”

That was how Aunt Rose Mary Nakatu became Aunt Hadija Hamza Nakatu. The wedding took place six months after her departure from her husband’s house, but most relatives boycotted it. For the first time in many years, Serenity, who had ignored all the dramas in the family, appeared.

This was vintage Serenity, “Cocoon Serenity,” as Nakatu called him now and then. Withdrawal was his best form of attack, and after all the storms which had preceded his marriage to Sister Peter “Padlock” Nakaza Nakaze Nakazi Nakazo Nakazu, he had decided to lie low. He had visited Tiida once, when the ulcer and dog-head upheavals were about to end. He was a hands-off type of brother-in-law who never intervened in marital dramas except when especially requested by both parties. He was the first person in the family to address his sister Nakatu as “Hadija Hamza.”

Serenity had had his share of a bachelor’s troubles, like getting rid of Kasiko, the woman he had cohabited with at the end of the fifties, fathered a daughter with and then decided to send away in order to marry somebody else. Kasiko, a real peasant girl despite her long limbs and good looks, was the husband-has-said kind of woman, ever waiting for commands and ready-made directives to follow, all out to please and to obey. This, for a man who had spent his life maneuvering and outwitting the treacherous rapids and precarious depths of his father’s female entourage and his army of female relatives, was frightening. He found himself being studied, analyzed, manipulated and negotiated like a river choked with papyrus reeds, or a steep hill with a soft crumbly surface. It made him nervous and angry. He wanted to be the one doing all the negotiating. Worse still, he could not care less for domestic affairs. Those were matters beneath him, but Kasiko wouldn’t learn that. Instead of seeking advice elsewhere, she just kept on dragging him into it, asking whether to buy this or that thing, and cook this or that dish on this or that day. Worst of all, she tried to find out what he thought and what he liked or disliked, things he would rather have kept to himself.

Kasiko was nice, kind, shallow, limited in her ideas—very good
in bed, very good in the kitchen and wonderful in the garden—the type of woman many men would have kept as a second wife or a concubine. But polygamy was not on Serenity’s mind, at least not at the time. He was looking for a total package: a self-motivated, self-contained, self-regulating woman, good in bed, good in the kitchen, good around the house. A woman who would give him time to prepare his lessons and plan for the future without being distracted by things he considered beneath his dignity.

When Serenity finally informed Grandpa that the time had come for him to part company with Kasiko, he got the green light, with the tacit knowledge that Grandpa would help him find a suitable girl. Arranged marriages were slowly dying out but were not ended yet. To Grandpa, this was an opportunity to show paternal concern for his son. It was time to bring him closer to his heart, and give him a few useful tips on how to be a man and a husband. This was the time to fill a hole or two left gaping, because back when he was chief, he did not have much time to talk to Serenity. So, by suggesting that his son marry the daughter of one of his former colleagues, Grandpa was offering Serenity a hand in friendship and male comradeship. The time had come to introduce him to the clan as a potential clan leader, or at least as one of the leaders. Nowadays clans needed educated leaders. Serenity, with his schoolmaster background, stood a good chance against the traders and the like who often headed clans. If the elders and prominent members of the clan liked him, Serenity might gradually assume the administration of clan land; it would give Grandpa great satisfaction if that privilege remained in his family.

“It is a fine idea that you have finally made up your mind to wed officially. It is a sign of maturity and commitment. A former colleague of mine has a very well-bred, educated, attractive, nubile daughter who is very well suited to your temperament. I know that she will cost us heaven and hell in bride-price, but we are in this together, son. I will give whatever is demanded. What do you say?”

“Ah …”

“You see, son, some people put great emphasis on religious denomination, but we are not like that, are we? Not after what has happened in this family. The girl has a Protestant background, but her mother was formerly a Catholic. Maybe she can convert, though
Protestants do not often cross over to Catholicism, but that’s beside the point. One needs to marry from a good house, and she comes from a fantastic family. We can always work out the differences.”

Overcome by his father’s avalanche of saliva and words, Serenity could hardly feel his feet. He seemed to be sinking in mud. His father’s green-roofed brick house seemed to be moving, disintegrating, turning to liquid mud, sweeping forward to swallow them.

Serenity wanted the house to disintegrate; he had never liked it. It had given shelter to too many people he had not liked or understood, people who had neither liked nor understood him. It echoed with the shouts, the sighs, the screams, the whispers of all those women, some with children, some without, who swarmed the compound when favor and money were still plentiful. He had seen them do a lot of peculiar things. He had seen mysterious dusts sprinkled in cooking pans, dry leaves set on live coals and sprinkled with magic incantations; he had also heard plots and counterplots whispered in the dark. The walls of that house crawled with the schemes and counterschemes, the struggles and counterstruggles, between male and female relatives and strangers. Those walls reverberated with the fights, some ugly, some comical, between hangers-on and friends, greedy relatives and competitive in-laws. The green roof was laden with the curses of strangers who never got justice or got it too late because the big county chief had people round his house who, intentionally or unintentionally, stopped some people from gaining audience with him.

At the time of Grandpa’s fall, when the spirit of the fifties was surging to its climax, the place was no better than a temple inhabited by thieves, each trading, each competing, each scheming for this or that gain. At the time of his fall, the place had gone mad, careening out of control and disorienting everyone in it, despite the fact that some people believed they were in charge. At the time of his fall, Grandpa was just like any other lodger, fighting for his sleeping place, antagonizing as few fellow lodgers as possible, working out shaky alliances in the hope that things would improve in the end.

At the time of the fall, Serenity had stopped eating meals there, and by so doing avoided the intrigue, the jealousies, the diaphanous festivity and the brittle joy that hung in the air like the smell of cow dung. All he was searching for at the Fiddler’s house, with its chipped
plates, its mutilated mugs, its naked children, was freedom of spirit. At the Fiddler’s, surrounded by runny-nosed and runny-assed children, he felt at ease, accepted, not looked at as if he had stolen or was about to steal something.

In the beginning, Serenity had missed his mother terribly, believing that she was about to return. After the blessing from that mysterious woman, after that push into serene hemispheres, he stopped thinking about her, and filled the gap with indifference and dreams of education and music. At the onset of adolescence, he had waited for somebody to say something about his mother, or things a mother said to a son at that juncture. When no one said a thing, not even his aunts, who were the traditional sex educators, he put the ghost to rest. He luxuriated in detachment. His parents became mere shadows, ghosts, and he felt them floating away to the dark confines of a sealed abyss. At that time a close friend lost both parents in a spectacular bus accident which left all on board dead or injured, except for the driver, who escaped without a scratch. At that time he felt that his parents had done him a favor by saving him such pain. He was like that driver, surrounded by wreckage and carnage, but unscathed; surrounded by screams and lamentation, yet unaffected.