Uhuru Street (13 page)

‘Don’t be silly! Take a hold of yourself. What do you think I am anyway – the secret police?’

‘You must despise us,’ she said more quietly. ‘You are educated,
learned … your government has loaned you to us … You are a great man …’

‘No, I don’t despise you. And don’t call me great for God’s sake.’ She began to laugh, a little hysterically. They both laughed.

‘And you, I respect you.’ He spoke calmly. ‘You are brave. You left that gang of girls that day at the dance and since then you’ve done it again and again. It takes courage, what you’ve done, trying to break away from tribalism – that’s all it is ultimately … Even coming here like this. I realise that and I like you.’

‘Well, I like you too!’ she said, too quickly. There was a silence between them. ‘You know, it’s not going to be easy … with my father dead, this will be the greatest shock to my mother … it will kill her, it will …’

‘Now, now.’ He went up to her, put her wet face on his shirt. ‘We’ll have to do the best we can, won’t we?’

At two o’ clock she sent the servant upstairs to the flat to wake Ramju up. He came down fifteen minutes later, still drowsy from his nap. She turned towards him a look of exasperation which melted ineffectually into one of concerned affection. What would become of him when she left, she wondered, this uncouth, uncultured fish barrel of a man, her brother?

‘I have to go see that bank clerk,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be back in an hour or two.’

She felt a pang of guilt as his eyes sought hers for an instant. There was no choice, she told herself, as she had already done a dozen times before. She had waited too long and perhaps it was already too late. She had to go, as the others had done: her several younger siblings, whom she had helped to bring up, had gone on to study and then had stayed. She had to go and try to remain there. If possible to send for Ramju. But he was a hopeless case. A good businessman here but completely inept and destabilised when confronted with a sentence in English. He could not even get a tourist visa to go abroad. Alone, how would he fare? He was so dependent on her she even had to remind him to shave. A bachelor now in his forties. They had tried so hard to get him a wife. First their mother and father and then she herself – looking around, enquiring, sending proposals. But invariably he picked the smart and pretty ones, who took one look at him and turned up their noses.

She took the car. On the way she wondered how she herself would fare, not many years younger than him and equally unmarriageable. If she wanted to remain abroad she had to get married then, she thought, one way or another. And if she did … what would become of him, this man who had run a duka, a small shop, all his life, who knew nothing else, had no family in the country? Would he die here a lonely old man with his shop?

There was a fair amount of traffic in people and cars outside the bank. She turned into the driveway and parked at a spot outside the main entrance. The building was new, erected a few years after Independence as the headquarters of the national bank after the foreign banks were nationalised. Its modern expansive structure, grey and concrete, rose up a few storeys high to preside over an array of white-washed colonial buildings spread out around it. Applications to buy foreign exchange to send money out of the country were considered here. There was a ruling now that airplane tickets for foreign travel could be bought only with the bank’s permission, which was not easy to obtain.

Clutching her handbag under one arm she took the front steps to the main reception area, a petite figure with dark features and thin long wavy hair, often mistaken, much to her consternation, for an Arab or half-caste. The bank clerk was waiting for her in the hallway.

‘Ah – you’re late!’

‘Yes, I had a little work to do. Do you have the ticket?’ she said, a little breathless.

‘Yes – but there’s a small problem.’ A round fleshy face, a big body, clumsy gait. In a dark grey Kaunda shirt. He did not at all look like a bank officer. ‘I gave it to my brother for safekeeping; we have to go and pick it up from his house. A small drive …’

She was piqued. ‘I’m not your chauffeur to drive you around! Do you want the money or not? You should have asked him to
bring it. Pick it up tonight, then, and bring it to the store first thing in the morning.’

You had to be tough with them, otherwise they would walk all over you. Even the price he’d asked was far too high. But there was no alternative.

‘Look, Mama, I’ve run a lot of risks for you. I risk my job even talking to you like this. The CID know what’s going on. Now, do you want to go? Tomorrow is another day. This ticket is all stamped and waiting, if you want it.’

‘Okay, okay. Where, now?’

‘Take the road to the University. I’ll show you …’

She strode towards the car; he followed. She got in, closed her door and unlocked his from the inside. They drove out past the iron gates.

She drove aggressively, hooting at pedestrians and cyclists impatiently as she deftly dodged potholes and passed other cars. They left the city limits behind them and sped along the coastal road northward. The ocean was to their right and occasionally appeared as a glimmer through clearings in the trees and shrubbery. He sat comfortably beside her, the thought of which irked her. Like a husband, or a boss, arm resting on window, stomach pushing out. Enjoying the cool sea breeze. The sooner this was over with the better, she thought. Another price to pay. Soon however there would be no more prices to pay. Not such prices. Life wasn’t easy where she would soon be but it couldn’t be so bad. There was a price for everything here. And after all that, there was no peace to be had even at night time for fear of robbers. They lived on the edge, not knowing if they would be pushed off the precipice the next day – or if the hand of providence would lift them up and transport them to safety.

‘Soon you’ll be in Canada, Mama. Will you stay there for good or will you be returning to us?’

‘Oh, no – I will leave this land for good only if they take me by
the hands and feet and throw me out,’ she lied, repeating an oft-quoted line. ‘It’s not easy there, you know. What’s wrong with this place anyway?’

‘True, true – you speak the truth Mama! Some people will never be satisfied. But this land gives enough.’

‘Besides, this is my country. I was born here, my father was born here. So was my mother.’

What times they had had here, she thought with bitterness. On this very road they used to go on picnics in open trucks, cauldrons brimming with Sunday’s choicest, singing, playing, laughing at the breeze that would blow their hair and muffle their voices … Food was abundant, fruit almost free, servants plentiful … violence, real violence, unknown … Who had ever seen a gun? …

Gone, wiped clean. A dream had passed. And now even if she were to describe those times to someone who had not been there he wouldn’t believe her. Sometimes she wondered if what her mind remembered could really have happened.

‘Slow down,’ he said, ‘turn right, there at that road.’

The University towers rose up dimly in a haze like a mirage further ahead in front of them. She waited for the traffic to clear, then took the turn quickly and drove some distance along the access road which was a clearing in the bushes partly layered with sand. It led towards the beach, a picnic spot. She could see the roofs of huts in the distance, hidden behind trees, and drove with difficulty over the uneven terrain that was covered with muddy potholes and clumps of grass.

‘
What
does your brother do here?’ she said in exasperation as the car jolted violently several times and they bounced on their seats. ‘Do you know what spare parts cost these days?’ He did not answer. ‘What you can get of them …’ she added grimly, peering ahead.

When they drew closer she saw the huts were burnt down,
gutted with fire, the roofs just a bunch of sticks. There was no one in sight. She turned to look at him and recoiled with horror at the inane smile on his face, the gleam in his large, yellow eyes. The hatred she saw there she had never seen in a pair of human eyes before.

And she thought of all the black men she had presided over almost all her thirty-seven years with scorn. The houseboys, the tailors, the customers, the hawkers, who came with the dawn, subservient, and disappeared into the night. Who no more belonged to her community of men and women than the flies on the walls. She thought of the thief who had threatened her with a knife after she had caught him stealing, who had put the fear of death in her; the choras – boys – she had been taught to look out for in the streets, who would touch you if they could; the one proposal she had ever had in her life, and that from a former chief, which she had spurned in rage, grieving a whole week afterwards at the insult …

Was this revenge, or plain avarice?

They found the body three days later, naked and abused, hanging by the feet from a tree branch. Her head was in the dirt, and her black hair, now caked with dust, spread out from it in a circle.

The house stood on a wide lot in Upanga, well away from the congested developments up the road. It was new and fairly large, divided into four apartments, one for each of the Teja brothers, building contractors. There was an extensive garden in front, with rose and jasmine bushes in the centre, periwinkle scattered at the hedges along the sides, banana and pawpaw trees in a corner, and bougainvillaea at the wire fence in front. Four cars were parked in the gravelled driveway. The curtains were drawn in the front rooms, letting through a faint and enigmatic glow from the light inside. Against the shrilling of insects in the garden came the occasional distant-sounding ejaculation or child’s cry. Parties were often held here but this was the first time Ebrahim Kanji had been invited – not for a social but for a business meeting.

He had parked his small Fiat on the main road under a street lamp. As his feet went crunching along the gravelled path, there was in Ebrahim a feeling of anger and bitterness mixed with curiosity and triumph. So now they need me, he said to himself, these petty bourgeoisie, dukawallahs: because their world threatens to crumble around them. The men he was going to see belonged to his father’s generation, and his anger was directed at them for the way they had treated his father.

Nurali Kanji – Ebrahim’s father – had been an intellectual: idealistic and impractical. In the 1940s he had incurred the wrath of the businessmen of his Indian community, for being one of the
group of young men that had distributed a pamphlet laying down a general charge of mismanagement of community funds, calling for an open accounting system and for the money to be spent on local social projects. Three young men were principally involved; all three were punished and lived thereafter on the fringes of the community. A gang of loyal youth accosted the youngest of the three and threw a bottle of acid at his face, scarring him for life. The other two escaped lightly and were simply beaten up. One afternoon when Nurali Kanji was returning home for lunch, having reached the narrow alley in which he lived, he found four big women veiled in black waiting for him. They were armed with brooms, sticks and rolling pins.

‘Bastard!’ they shrieked. ‘Satan! Where’s the bitch that bore you?’

Nurali Kanji took his punishment in terror and went home weeping. It became a community joke later that one of his assailants was in fact a disguised youth who had been there in case Nurali turned hostile and attacked the women.

Nurali Kanji never found a respectable job after that, could never raise the loan to open his bookstore. He would receive odd accounting or clerical assignments and be asked to draft petitions to the government or to assist with the community newsletter. His son Ebrahim received free education as charity. His wife sold samosas to support the family. Until the last days of his life he showed supreme contempt for the businessmen and harboured a resentment at their growing successes.

Ebrahim now knocked on the door of the Tejas, one of Dar’s leading business families. After being peeped at through the spy hole he was received by their daughter.

‘Why, Ebrahim! Come in. So nice to see you.’

‘I’ve come to see the businessmen.’

‘Big shot, eh?’

Ebrahim remembered the days when he walked barefoot, when
this girl would pass him in derision. Now he had a reputation with the girls for his machismo and his daredevil ways. He was tall and powerfully built. His hair was combed flat in the traditional way, but this act of defiance, together with his moustache and black fiery eyes, only served to enhance his reputation. He was shown into the sitting room.

‘Ah, Minister! Come in, come in, please!’ Jaffer Teja greeted him with typical exaggeration and escorted him in, seating him prominently on a sofa. Teja was a middle-aged man with a pockmarked face and, like many of the businessmen present, wore a Kaunda suit.

‘Our boy Ebrahim,’ he announced exultantly, ‘is with the Vice President’s Office. This is a proud moment for all of us.’ He looked up as if to offer thanks to God.

‘What can I do for you, gentlemen?’ Ebrahim asked, sipping the tea that had been offered him and helping himself to a savoury from the serving table that had been placed in front of him. They are grovelling at my feet, he thought with satisfaction. If only Father had lived to see this day.

‘Ebrahim … Ebrahim …’ Jaffer Teja, who was obviously the spokesman of the group, began, shaking his head. He was sitting in a chair close to Ebrahim and facing him. ‘You know what has befallen us, our people … all their life’s savings … the savings of their fathers …’

What Teja was referring to was the recent take-over of properties that were let out for rent in a socialisation move by the government. Only the houses that were occupied by the owners were exempt from the take-over.

‘You know how they made their money … They came as paupers, sold peanuts, popcorn, seeds … and little by little, through hard work, morning and night, they earned and saved. They did not put their money even in banks! They were too scared to do so. All they dreamed of was a piece of land, to build
something on it, something they could call their own, the prize of their hard labour.