The Gunny Sack (24 page)

This time Bahdur Uncle did not dither. In two months he had sold his store and arrived in Dar, as penniless as when he left it, and took Shamim, Shiraz, Salma and Yasmin with him. He opened a small pili-pili-bizari store opposite the market.

The scene: the Gymkhana cricket ground on a sunny Sunday afternoon just after tea break, one team battling valiantly and with almost certain futility against the century and a quarter piled against it, jeers pour in plentifully from one jubilant side of the spectator area and tempers are short on the other. Batting are Hindu Sports Club, against the Challengers XI. The bowler is Gumji, short and affectionate for Gulamali Manji, better known for his century against the touring Indian team two years ago, when he would stylishly clip Desai’s bumpers between gully and third man for repeated fours. For that amazing feat, even when Tanganyika lost by an innings against India, Gumji became the
Herald’s
Sportsman of the Year. Gumji became a legend but never scored another century, instead he started to bowl his own fast bumpers.

Gumji rubs the ball against his trousers, gives his famous squint in the sun and comes running against Tapu.

“Come on! Come on, Gumji, come on, Trueman, break his stumps!”

“Aré Trueman your arse, watch the chakas fly.”

“Shut up, cuntface!”

Tapu is a nervous batsman, short, muscular and dark. And he taps the bat nervously, once, twice, as Gumji approaches, and as the ball flies towards him he gives a wild swing.

“How’s that?” the wicket keeper shouts as the ball smacks into his gloves, and the umpire plays deaf.

“Change the umpire!” shouts a segment of the crowd. “Ay, Fernandes, go and eat fish!” The umpire, obviously, is a Goan.

Nervous Tapu is known for his wild swings. Always, he either scores a six or nothing. And recently Tapu has scored many sixes. In fact, six sixes in an over. But this time, as he swings the second time to an angry full-pitch from Gumji, the stumps go flying. As the disappointed batsman reaches the gate, a spectator on the grass croons at him: “Ay, Tapu … maja avi? Ay, was that fun?” The angry Tapu swings his bat at him, and the fight begins.

“Ay, Banya, pick someone your own size!”

“Shamsi, Khamsi, khamosh! Quiet!”

Fist fights and stick fights get under way at several places. Coconut branches are appropriated for the battle, as are mangoes and Coke bottles. Fiery Gumji has reached the spectator area, has climbed on a car rooftop, saying, “Come on,” fists raised, ready to take on the world. Some spectators discreetly walk away, the clubhouse is over-run and the uniformed African barman closes shop and disappears, the European snooker players slip out of the back way and into their cars.

“Dengu! Dal-eaters! Your Gandhi went around in diapers! Your Nehru goes around in pyjamas!”

“Jinnah the bone pie!”

A song gets under way:

“Go back to Pakistan!” “You go to India! Shit eaters!” scream the young men.

News of the ruckus reaches the settlements in Kisutu and Upanga and Kariakoo and Downtown and boxbodies filled with rowdy enthusiasts of the respective communities leave for the Gymkhana Club.

But happily the fight is settled by those who first started it. The two teams, now in their blazers and sweaters, make up and shake hands in the best tradition of cricket. “We are one,” they say, “we Asians must stay together.” Tapu goes to apologize to the Challenger fans and stoically accepts a slap on the face from a screaming middle-aged man and presents the boy whom he had previously hit with the weapon, his own Donald Bradman bat. “We are one,” goes the cry. The match will be replayed, the field empties of the crowd, and the Europeans return to their snooker and beer.

The reason for the animus between communities is the impending election to the Tanganyika Legislative Council, the first election of any consequence in the country. Every man or woman to vote for one European, one Asian, one African, for a multiracial Legco. Not democratic, said TANU: five representatives for 20,000 Europeans, five for 80,000 Asians, and five for 8 million Africans: divide and see for yourselves! But TANU went along.

But where TANU, the Governor, the Africans, in short everyone else, saw “Asian,” the Asians saw Shamsi, Bohra, Ismaili, Hindu, Sikh, Memon, Ithnashri. One seat in each polling district, seven or more competing communities.

The captain of the Hindu Sports Club was P. K. Patel, or PK, a clerk in the East African Railways and Harbours. His
brother RK was a lawyer and leading member of the Asian Association. RK’s wife Radha was the TANU-supported candidate for Dar. Her strongest opponent was Dr. Habib Kara, supported by the UTP (the Governor’s party, some said) and the Shamsi community. RK was educated in Bombay, and Kara in Poona. Both had then gone to England, from where Kara brought home an English wife, and RK brought back Radha. Both had children studying in England.

This was the first election anyone had ever seen where you could send a representative right to the top, to the Governor’s council, to speak for you. This was only the beginning—if they did not know that, they certainly sensed it. The stakes were high. On every pillar and lamppost in Kichwele and Msimbazi, outside every Asian shop, were the signs exhorting “Vote for Kara!” and “Vote for Patel!” and displaying the candidates’ sombre faces and their symbols. Radha Patel’s symbol was the wheel, representing progress. The fact that it resembled Asoka’s wheel on the Indian flag was missed by her enemies. Dr. Kara was represented by the lofty torch, throwing its rays skywards. “It represents knowledge,” he said proudly. But Dr. Kara’s light was more mystical than political. He came to our shop and shook Kulsum’s hand. Of course, we all knew him. The first doctor in the community. A Mombasa boy. Chubby and fair in a light bush shirt. Kulsum had been his patient, briefly, and given him up, as she had a dozen others. He had been treating my grandmother when she died, and although negligence on his part was always claimed by her family, this did not come in the way of how they voted. He came to our shop just to make sure, and went away reassured by Kulsum.

Against the lofty light and the steady wheel ran the fragile rabbit. The rabbit, Edward bin Hadith would tell you, is a cunning animal, as cunning as Abunuwas. In fact Abunuwas looks just like a rabbit. The rabbit outwits the hyena and leaves the lion shaking its head in despair. Watch out for the rabbit. The rabbit was the symbol of Fateh the Coalseller. It
was a mystery why Fateh ran for the election. He had the support of no community or party. When Dr. Kara walked the blocks of Kichwele Street with his lieutenants, all in bush shirts, when Radha Patel alighted from her car in her afternoon sari accompanied by her son or daughter, Fateh would sometimes draw them to a challenge. “What is your platform? Which people will you represent?” Dr. Kara, who wore black-framed spectacles and looked like a studious schoolboy, would smile genially. “Knowledge. Education,” he would say. Mrs. Patel’s line was also straightforward. African country. Races living in harmony (Oh yes, Dr. Kara would echo when he was around, all equal, no differences) we are all Tanganyikans now. Dada Hodari, Fateh called her contemptuously. She has a mpishi at home, and a gardener, and a houseboy, he would tell the Africans, you think she will abandon them? And this Daktari. His children are studying in England. What will he do for you? Fateh threw his challenges in Swahili, he was answered in English. Whatever Swahili Dr. Kara had spoken in Mombasa, now eluded him. Mrs. Patel, it was said, was acquiring the language and could read her speeches in it. But Fateh did not know English. In other words, he was not educated. He had been to school only to take other people’s children there. He was scruffy-looking, often unshaven, and in not the cleanest clothes, as befitted his profession. “Wey, Fateh,” the TANU supporters would tease him, “eti, what will you say to the Governor at a tea party if you are elected? Don’t forget to wash your hands! His Excellency wears the whitest gloves!”

Fateh was supported by kindred spirits. Drifters and dreamers. Idealists. Edward could not help but support the rabbit, whose praises he had sung for so long. It was more of an aesthetic choice. The underdog rabbit against the torch and the wheel; it was irresistible. And Bahdur Uncle, who had known Fateh since childhood, was drawn quite naturally into the excitement and rhetoric of the campaign. He had the bearing and the habits that others, more responsible (Hassan
Uncle for one), disliked: he liked to have fun. He was rather stylish, sometimes in white shorts and shirt, holding a cigarette in the style of Gary Cooper. His wife Dolu was not unlike him. The fact that she sported a beret on some occasions is indication enough. They both loved to see films, and when they enjoyed a film, they saw it again and again—even when they were broke.

Fateh did not have enough money to have flyers printed, and the 500 shillings he had to deposit to register his candidacy he asked to borrow from Bahdur Uncle. Bahdur Uncle of course did not have 500 shillings, and came to Kulsum with some story, taking the money from her emergency fund, money reserved for the Downtown wholesalers. Thus was Fateh the Coalseller’s campaign financed, at least to a good extent, and my mother never forgave her brother. The next time he came to her for emergency funds she refused, as did the rest of the family, and he spent a month in debtors’ prison.

On the day before the election Fateh rented a loudspeaker from Rajan Radio and he and Bahdur Uncle drove the streets of Kariakoo exhorting people to vote for the rabbit.

It brought smiles, his manner, his familiarity, his slogans echoing from the building walls. Children ran after the Chama Chetu, running with the rabbit. Old men in kanzus, who had known him since he was a boy, would look in pleasure as he
passed, as if to say, Our own Fateh! But so what? The rabbit is fast and clever, as Edward would say, but what can he do for you? The rabbit is kind-hearted, he takes children to school free of charge, while Mzee Pipa extorts 15 shillings from poor families who have no choice. But can he talk to the Governor? Or to the reporters who come from England and America? He has style, but it is the style of a Kariakoo loafer. He is not a gentleman.

On election day of course he offered rides to the polling booths to his supporters. A few mamas who had giggled at his carefree manner went. A few old men went. Children ran after him. But most of the people on Kichwele and Viongozi went in TANU cars or on foot or, as did Kulsum, in one of Dr. Kara’s rides.

After the voting Bahdur Uncle went with Fateh as his counting agent. The two, one holding a cigarette in his best Gary Cooper manner, the other carefree in the Raj Kapoor manner, walked among the working teams at Arnautoglu Hall like a pair of foremen, watching them carefully put a cross over a name on a graph paper for every vote counted, seeing their opponents’ tolls rising higher and higher, finally coming to terms with the fact that the steady wheel had snuffed out the lofty light and run over the crafty rabbit.

The election had been multiracial, each race to be represented in the Legco, but the winner was TANU, only TANU was represented. For in the past months Julius Nyerere had gone from village to village asking young men to leave aside loafing and join TANU; he had patiently followed the old men who would take him to the very spots where their tribesmen had been hanged by the Mdachis, and they had asked him, could he really get rid of these people who had defeated the Mdachis, and he had said yes, follow me. And even as our own Queen Begum was confidently telling Kulsum, “Do you think the people who defeated Napoleon, and Hitler, who hanged Kimathi and put Kenyatta away, will just pack their bags and
leave?”—TANU’s strength was growing. And after the election, which TANU won for the Africans, Asian started telling Asian, We must change, we must diversify. The duka is doomed. We must go into industry, into the professions, into farming, we must move into other economic sectors. Wait and see, said others, the British have not left yet.

When Sir Richard Turnbull was announced as the new Governor, we said, Oh
him?
The District Commissioner—the one who was in Moyale in the NFD and in Isiolo, who was in Nairobi during Mau Mau? Oh,
he
knew our daddy! We did not write to him, or to his daughter, reminding them of the fact, but the thought did cross our minds. Reminded of her past glory, of five, six, ten years ago, Kulsum was not willing even to listen to the stories I brought from Ji Bai. Stories from a remote past, from a village on the coast, stories of black ancestry and a murder …

Taratibu, taratibu. Patience, patience. Don’t cry, my beloved, said a Swahili love song to the tune of a Hindi film melody. Song to a black Radha, coming from the blaring loudspeakers of the Kariakoo market, reminding me of my greatgrandfather, the fair Govindji, who got her for cold nights. I would see her in every black woman I laid eyes on, looked up and down upon. The modest but by no means docile Swahili draped in black buibui and exuding the sticky fragrance of halud; the short and fair Chagga, the shy Makonde … I had visions of Sabini our night watchman, bringing his wife to say goodbye … Did she look like her, my great-grandmother Taratibu—a shy Makonde woman with a face marked by stripes and a large black button on her upper lip? Her mouth stayed open, and she had large teeth, and she just said yes or no, looking at the ground in front of her. Sabini left to become a church minister in his home town south … At night I would stay awake thinking of her, of what she had looked like. I would say her name forwards and backwards, backwards and
forwards … Tara-tibu, tibu-tara, tara-tibu, tibu-tara, conjuring that name from the past until I felt hot and tired and Jogo’s father drew nearer … “Man’s mind is fickle … the world is a fair …” in clumsy Swahili to an even clumsier tune.