The Magic of Saida (22 page)

The DC’s hair was a startling mop of fire that drew your eyes away from his face; he was a big man somewhat dishevelled in appearance and known as Bwana Kendrick. Omari liked his respectful manner and noted that his Swahili was spoken in a sharper accent than that of the Germans he had known. Like theirs it was clean—too clean, like a house that is swept every day but not lived in. The European officials learned the language well. The trouble was they learned it too well, diligently noting down rules and expecting them to apply everywhere. But there was the language of the poet and that of the
street and that of polite discourse; there was the language of Kilwa, and of Zanzibar, and of Lamu. The white man’s consonants, too, were hard and angular. Swahili was soft and pliable. That was its beauty, its fun to the poet, its lover.

Omari had hardly composed any poems in recent years. His heart had turned cold to the art: when he wrote, his sentences came out stiff, suitable to speak only to the tone-deaf; it was as though he were laying bricks or arranging sticks in a row. During the last weeks of the war, he had written for the German commissioner of Kilwa one verse on the hardships of war and another on the bravery of soldiers, the second of which he had been asked to recite when a company departed from Kilwa to go and fight the British Army. They were casual verses, nothing he was proud of. In one line he had mentioned the African soldiers on the British side, but Herr Buler, the new German commissioner, had asked him to remove that reference. “Mwalimu,” he had said, “you are German, and they are British, you have to remember that. The old alliances are gone.” And now the Germans were gone.

“Mwalimu,” DC Kendrick now said, “they speak well of you in Mombasa, where I was posted before the war. They say you are a poet of substance. I want you to teach in the government school here in Kilwa—you would bring it honour. You should impart your knowledge and wisdom to the young ones.”

“I will do that if you give me the job, bwana.”

It has been a long time, Omari thought, sitting in the DC’s office at the boma, where he had previously met Captain Schmidt, Bwana von Rode, and Bwana Buler, a long time since my boyish, nonchalant shrug sent a signal to Herr Schmidt, five men were hanged and my life changed. My elders fought to bring back old ways and they were thrashed by the new dispensation. I had to point a finger at my brother and he was hanged. The German was here to stay, and he wore a heavy boot. But he too is gone, his stay now only fragments of stories for memory to prey upon, and now we have the Biritishi. He treads lightly. But beware the mouse who caresses you as he gnaws.

“Do you want me to write a poem to the King?” Omari asked. “But I have forgotten his name, sir.”

Bwana Kendrick threw back his red-mopped head and laughed
heartily. “Only if the poem comes truly from moyoni, from the heart, Mwalimu,” he said, beating his breast stoutly. “The King’s name is King George the Fifth. Meanwhile, I would much appreciate hearing the poem called ‘Buraq.’ ”

“You know it, bwana?”

“My German predecessor, whom I happened to meet in Dar es Salaam recently, told me about it. He felt grieved to have lost his copy during the war. But he failed to tell me that your home was here in Kilwa. I wonder if that was deliberate. To tell you the truth, kwa kweli, I am jealous of the Germans for having known you first.”

Omari Tamim laughed politely, but he felt trapped. The poem was his brother’s, inspired by the blessed journey of the horse Buraq, who carried the Prophet on his journey from Jerusalem to heaven on the holy night of Miraj. Omari had emended it, transcribed it for von Buler in Arabic script. Bwana Buler had then transcribed it into the European script, but the process was not accurate; much was lost, and Omari had not liked the result. Why change the script? How can Arabic accents and elisions be copied? But that is the script of our nation, Bwana Buler told him; it can be adjusted for new sounds.

Bwana Kendrick was looking at him eagerly, and Omari relented. “Yes, I will read the poem to you, bwana.”

When DC Kendrick introduced him at the school assembly at the beginning of his employment, he begged Mwalimu Omari formally to step forward, cast modesty aside, and recite from his repertory. Omari stood up and, as he had promised, read verses from “Buraq.” In his reading he could no longer identify his own emendations to Abdelkarim’s poem. His editing had been informed by his firm belief that Abdelkarim too had been carried by Buraq to heaven that fateful morning. He knew that poem so well, he read it as his. A renewed fear gripped him as Bwana Kendrick stood up and bravoed his recital and all those present followed suit; as elders of the community took the opportunity now to praise also the exemplary fortitude and wisdom he had shown over the years; and as a few others recited their humble verses to praise him. They were all honouring him, and not Abdelkarim, the hero, the genius and patriot, the man of God. He had ingested his brother. No one spoke of Karim Abdelkarim; they knew only Omari bin Tamim, the poet and teacher.

•  •  •

Over the years Omari bin Tamim’s eminence shone like a star over Kilwa, bright and steady, not extravagant. A teacher in the government school and in the madrassa, an august man with experience and apparent influence in the colonial administration, a poet who could be relied on to come up with something appropriately edifying for an occasion—the King’s birthday, the sacrifice of Abraham, the birth of a son—without taxing the mind. His renown among the aficionados of poetry all along the coast, from Lamu in the north to Lindi in the south, was of course due to that one famous poem, “Buraq.” Like an unclaimed child it haunted him, for he could hardly now deny that it was his, and it was partly so, in any case. Letters would come by post congratulating him for his genius, or seeking some explanation, always inquiring about his more recent work. He replied diligently, thanking the writer for the praise, explaining a choice of word or an apparent deviation in meter. No, he would conclude in his replies, I have nothing of substance that is recent, the muse has abandoned me for the time being; but if Allah wills … and so on.

Each letter and reminder a pang of guilty conscience, a prod to the wound, to be borne patiently. Finally these letters of praise and acknowledgement stopped, the past was ready to let him go, and he it.

The Germans were long gone, the gutturals of their language now only distant echoes, riding the waves of a fast-ebbing tide. The terrible wars of the past were forgotten, their heroes consigned to a few paragraphs of the history books. There was stability in this land, now called Tanganyika Territory, one of a triad of East African countries, its symbol the placid and enigmatic giraffe. Life was changing apace; the developments taking place in the country would have been beyond imagination only a few years ago. There were now already those too young to recall days without an automobile or bus on the road, the telephone at the post office from which you could place a call to Dar es Salaam or Arusha, a camera to capture events and people on a piece of paper to show around and keep as a memento; when English was not spoken. Once in a while you might see an airplane,
constructed of iron and bigger than any bird, flying in the sky, carrying people inside its belly. Watching one drone overhead against the glare, he was led to wonder, Truly, could this overwhelming force of destiny, could this storm of progress and change have been stopped? Surely it was God’s will, even the pain and humiliation? It was Allah, after all, who had sent the flood upon the earth when He thought it appropriate, and all sorts of plagues. Wasn’t his gentle brother, Abdelkarim, his most dear companion once and a father to him, in error when he challenged this dispensation? And yet Omari couldn’t forget that hanging, the tall lean body of his brother stretched from a rope, the look of physical pain borne without a sound … when the life left him there was not the slightest twitch from the body, it was as if a saint had died; the caning that preceded … the punishment so drawn out as though the clock had slowed … the skin flaying … Shouldn’t there have been some among the onlookers to register protest at such humiliation?

Omari’s wife Halima had died, having given birth to two sons and two daughters. Together they had buried a boy and a girl while still young. He had seen a lot, like his generation. His second wife, Mwana Juma, was a much younger woman, a somewhat perky daughter of an eminent sheikh from Lindi who also fancied himself a poet, and naturally therefore she could read and write. One day, having peeked into the sanduku of manuscripts which had been used as a table in their home, she asked him as he came in the door from work what these shairi were, who had written them and when. Angrily he shouted at her and beat her. “They were written by a djinn!” he said angrily. “It is not your business to know!”

It was time to shed this last burden of guilt and reproach, this physical reminder of his brother, this temptation to steal a look at the contents of those curling pages of poetry and marvel at their skill and poise. And so one night with determination he took the sanduku of manuscripts, put it upon a donkey, and silently set off. The moon had just sunk into the forest ahead, a dim silver glow emanating from that direction like an inspiration or affirmation; night calls rang out, strange and familiar, disembodied; hyenas emerged from the shadows, then slunk off to root; probably towards the forest a lion or leopard was lurking. Witches came out too at this hour to
plot their nefarious acts, search for herbs or a grave to desecrate for their medicines and powers. He himself was a sinner, a fratricide, his load the sacred, intimate words of his dead brother, whom he had betrayed. What curse might not spring from those pages? All the way to his destination the poet repeated the names of Allah and of His Messenger, and recited the auspicious Sura Yasin of the Quran to ward off the evil spirits.

He arrived at the old mango tree. He stood in silence for some moments and then in a low voice said the Fatiha for his brother’s soul. The ground was hard under the tree, thick roots creeping out from the surface. He found, however, a soft grassy patch nearby, the soil newly damp, and dug a hole there and deposited the sanduku inside. He covered it up to look undisturbed and left. Although Abdelkarim was buried in the graveyard on the other side of the town, Omari had always imagined his spirit haunting this mango tree. Now Abdelkarim was united with his brilliant compositions. The air in this place will be hallowed by his words and phrases, thought Omari, they will float in the air like the smoke of incense and make it sacred. Transported by his sentiments, heavy in the heart—and he thought he was shedding his burden—Omari bin Tamim turned to go, patting the donkey to trot on ahead.

When he arrived home, Mwana Juma was waiting for him. “Where did you go?” she asked suspiciously. “I went out, that’s all,” he replied curtly.

But she glanced at his soiled kanzu and hands and knew that he had taken along a spade. She’s a smart one, he admitted to himself not for the first time as he slowly turned away from her quiet defiance. He already regretted marrying a much younger woman, and daughter of a sheikh.

He had only fooled himself. Gradually and inevitably the doubt crept upon him that he had not freed himself from a burden at all but had actually betrayed his brother’s trust. Hadn’t Abdelkarim of his own accord sent him his manuscripts for safekeeping? Hadn’t he allowed Omari to make copies and add his corrections? Now they were buried somewhere: all those testimonies to the beauties of their mother tongue, all that history told and all those stories of Islam and the Prophet retold with such cleverness and precision, such honesty and piety. When he visited the hanging site again, a week or more had passed; it was daytime and the sun was shining; there were people about. The place had changed, as though someone had erased a picture and painted a brighter one in its place. A vegetable plot had sprung up, and beside it stood a makeshift hut used by a vendor. He couldn’t tell where exactly he had buried the trunk; and anyway, he realized with despair, the ants and the rain would have got to the papers by now. He imagined them rotting away in their dark prison.

He had acted impulsively. But whom did he have to talk to, take advice from? He had only himself, with his gnawing guilt.

Lines from those buried compositions came back to haunt him; fragments of his brother’s poems that he had copied with devotion on good German or Syrian paper in his best writing and recited to himself with admiration and joy, were resolved to torment him in his nightmares. They came twisted and stretched, hairy snakes and scorpions with big grinning mouths, laughing and taunting, nipping and stinging, always beyond his reach. How he wished to get his hands on them, turn them around, join them, reshape them into
poetry; or to capture them and beat their heads in and throw them away by the roadside like vile, dirty things.

So you thought you would bury us, ha-ha-ha Mwalimu!
jeered the snake.

What is written is never erased, didn’t you know that, Teacher?
retorted the scorpion.

Kilichoandikwa hakifutiki, ha-ha-ha!

What is written has a soul, ha-ha-ha!—it never dies!

Although he taught Swahili and not English or arithmetic or geography, subjects that held more prestige in the territory, Omari had enough of a standing by himself to have been named vice-principal. He was comfortable. But now the nightmares came. They were not frightening but wounding, so that he would wake up full of regret and guilt, and he would cry out. He became depressed, listless; thoughts of suicide came. All this began to show in his demeanour. He looked dishevelled and talked to himself when alone. It was evident to all those close to him that he had become possessed. He was given a leave of absence from school, and Mwana Juma kept him at home as much as was possible. Traditional doctors—the mgangas—came occasionally to exorcise him, using prayers, rituals, and medicines, but the tormenting spirits would not leave him.

One afternoon Bwana Kendrick—who had long since transferred from Kilwa—was travelling in the area. He came by to visit Omari and his wife, wearing the Englishman’s long flappy shorts and white shirt with a hat, followed on the street by a trail of boys. He was given water, which he accepted gratefully. And then the two men were left alone in the house.