The Magic of Saida (25 page)

Of course Kamal was horrified by the grotesque examples of magic he had heard about upon his arrival. And yet—especially as
a doctor—he seemed a little too sanguine about the potion he himself had been—or might have been—administered so that his heart could be peeked into and his nature revealed. I am one of those who get embarrassed about and angry at such beliefs. Surely they keep us back. But Kamal was desperate: if the potion took him closer in his quest, so be it.

Sorcery being the subject of the day, John the barman had informed Kamal why Markham wouldn’t venture out to the beach at night: He could be mistaken for an albino and murdered, his precious body parts used to make potions to give strength to some sorcerer’s client. They laughed. A potion could cost you two thousand dollars American, John added calmly, and Kamal looked at him in surprise. Was the man serious? The thought occurred to him that Markham was red, in any case; his fear, if real, was surely irrational. Where did one find such sorcerers? he asked John. Mostly in the west of the country, the barman said, but if you looked hard enough, you would find one even in these parts. You needed an agent.

Relating this conversation to me much later, during one of our tête-à-têtes in Dar, Kamal said he was surprised at himself, at the calm manner of his discussion with John. “It’s surprising what begins to seem the order of the day, even a joke …”

“And remember,” I told him, “it’s not just albinos these devils kill, as you must know. Trade in body parts goes all the way up to Congo, to give strength to the militia leaders there.”

“Well, something surely gives those monsters the strength to keep feeding on their people,” Kamal replied.

He recalled a time, when he was little, when Mama would not let him out of her sight. There were people about who could take you away and use you for magic.

When he had his serious bout of malaria, Mama sat on the floor beside him, keeping watch, eyes wide with anxiety. Breathing deeply so he could hear the catch in her breath, a short, high-pitched squeal. She gave him fever pills from the Indian medicine shop, but sparingly, and therefore ineffectually. She gave him compresses, and she boiled roots in water and made him drink it; perhaps they were medicine
from a mganga, he’d never know. She brought prayers from Mzee Omari to recite over him and strips of cloth on which he had written formulae to tie to his bedpost. And waited for the miracle. She believed some evil spirit was possessing her son, but she also knew his sickness could be the work of mosquitoes. You could not live on the coast and not get homa from those devils at least once. And so it was spirits or mosquitoes, you took medicines against all. Anything that promised to work, you took.

“But you yourself don’t believe in magic and prayers as medicine, do you, Doctor?” I probed.

“It’s not what I believe to be true that’s important, but what people believe for themselves, isn’t it?” he replied musingly.

“Then if you believe a dawa works, it works, and if you believe the bones and skin of an albino—”

“That’s extreme, and I didn’t quite say that. But you have in mind that dawa, the medicine that Fatuma put into my water, don’t you? It could actually have contained a compound to make you hallucinate and remember. That’s possible.”

“An African truth drug.”

“Yes.”

I thought he slipped out of that snare too easily.

The European town of Dar es Salaam that Mzee Omari had described in his verses was the older, picturesque section that lay by the seashore: the yellow Lutheran church with its square tower, the Roman Catholic cathedral with its silver spire, the broad, low white buildings with arched verandahs and, farther along, the Government House in its large grounds from where the German and British governors once ruled, and now—when Kamal arrived to live with his uncle Jaffu—the residence of the prime minister. A block in from the shore ran the elegant Independence Avenue, lined by acacia trees, its shop windows brazenly displaying items only to be gawked at by the native. Prominent at the centre of a traffic island stood the Askari Monument, memorial to the fallen soldiers of the First World War, which had so awed Omari bin Tamim. At its far end, the avenue abutted the Gymkhana Club and its golf course, in an area of small, shady side streets with beautiful bungalows.

Beyond this European town, once admired as the Berlin of Africa, lay the crowded, bustling Asian town dominated by the Shamsi khano, the prayer house, with its chiming clock tower; here Jaffu Punja had his shop, at the bottom of a two-storey building overlooking the narrow, potholed Jamat Street. The family residence was in one of the flats above. Of a race of seafaring merchants, as Mama had described them, every morning Uncle would sit on his chair close to a table, shirt open, making cryptic phone calls or vacantly staring out, picking his crotch, awaiting his cup of kahawa from the vendor; at lunch hour he would go upstairs to eat, take his nap, then he would return to the shop and await his afternoon kahawa—as place-bound
as anyone could be. His cropped hair was already greying; he was a man of few utterances, which he would emit in the form of throaty commands and concise opinions. In the evening, just after six, as the singing from the Shamsi khano came loud and clear from a loudspeaker, transforming the mood of the neighbourhood from one of commercial bustle into one of a complacent piety, Jaffu Punja had his bath, put on a plain loose shirt over freshly pressed cotton trousers, and strolled over to the prayer house just as other men did. He would return and eat dinner with the family, then, having changed into a pyjama, go back downstairs to sit outside on the cement porch of his shop under a light and play cards and chat with the other shopkeepers.

Asians loved to play cards. In Kilwa too they would sit outside their shops, or on the town square at the seashore, and play. And eat snacks, and drink tea or kahawa. Now Kamal realized that of the Asians who all seemed the same, some were Shamsis, others Ithnasheris, and still others Hindus, which was why there were several prayer houses in the neighbourhood. But in Kilwa there were no Kalasingas, the Sikhs with their turbans and full beards, as there were in Dar. He, Kamal, had to become a Shamsi. A singing Indian. He did not know how.

His aunt, Zera, was a fair-featured, curly-haired and kindly woman considered generally to be a bit daft. She spoke rapidly and earnestly, often repeated herself, and as she spoke, she would stare into your eyes and was likely to make a grab for your hand or arm and start fidgeting with it, until you pulled it away. When Kamal first arrived, she had hugged him to her bosom, then handed him a container of Vim detergent, instructing him, “Wash with this soap, wash with this when you take your bath—it will make you white, you know, white—like me, look!—like a European.” She had meant well, of course, but Kamal’s skin had chafed and flaked, and bled, and Uncle had yelled at Auntie the only way he knew, acerbically, his crackling voice rising only a pitch.

His aunt and uncle had three kids of their own, two girls and a boy, the youngest and the darling of the home. Living in the typical Asian style, repeated flat after flat, from building to building in the neighbourhood, the family shared two bedrooms on the second
floor, one for the kids, the other for the parents. There was a small sitting room, and a dining area next to the entrance, attached to a windowless kitchen. His new home was crowded and noisy, and confusing, because he had to relate to so many of them, including three Asian females. He had never spoken to one before. But the meals were filling and satisfying. Communication was an ordeal, often an occasion for mirth, when he misspoke or misunderstood, or utter bewilderment, when he was caught in a crossfire between several voices babbling loudly in Kihindi all around him. Only Uncle spoke Swahili fluently, the way Kamal did; the others spoke the Indian variety, hearing which sometimes he in his turn couldn’t help but break up into laughter.

At the raucous dining table, sometimes, as he watched the family members in their closeness and comfort and belonging, tears would roll down his cheeks. During one such moment, he asked his uncle, “Where is my father? Is he alive?” There was a sudden silence at the table, and then his aunt fluttered over to comfort him, herself breaking into tears. “Aren’t we your parents? Isn’t he your father?” She pointed to his uncle, who got up from the table without a word.

One day Kamal wrote a letter to Mama and told Uncle he wanted to post it. His uncle said, “If your mama had wanted to keep in touch, wouldn’t she have written herself? And did she remind you to write her a letter? But go and post it, if you want to.”

He did, and the following days after school his uncle quietly handed him the postbox key, so that he would be the one to pick up his mother’s reply in case it had come. His disappointment was bitter; his uncle was right. But Kamal had become the family’s postman now, in charge of their Independence Avenue mailbox, bringing home letters from India, and from Kenya, Uganda, Congo, Madagascar, Zanzibar, other parts of Tanganyika. But not one from Kilwa.

Slowly, slowly he learned to bend his tongue to utter Kihindi. He could never call it by its Indian name, Kutchi; to him it was always Kihindi. The language of
kin ai
, and
thik ai
and
kem chhe
. He spoke it with a certain lilt, a musical accent, and he would tend to put vowels at the end of the words, the Swahili way:
mamedi, booti, foulo
. This manner of speaking, his dark brown skin, and his curly hair set him apart in his new, Indian environment. He was the local chotaro, the half-caste.

Everyone had a nickname in school, and his was Golo. It was friendly; even to this day, Kamal said, some of his friends knew him as Golo. It meant, in its original sense, servant, or slave. In a strange way, he was proud of it. There was nothing to be ashamed of, he was living in Africa, his continent. And later, it was just a moniker.

Later in life, in Edmonton, his wife Shamim would detest it.
How could you allow yourself to be called a
slave.
Where is your pride?
Once she had told off a friend who was in town and had enthusiastically called and asked to speak to Golo.

But that’s what he was in Dar es Salaam: Golo, the African; the chotaro, the half-caste Indian; mouthing Indianisms with increasing fluency, occasionally stumbling.

Mama was the ache Kamal brought with him to Dar. Often he would recall their life together, the way they laughed and quarrelled, her constant struggle for money and the look of worry on her face, her drawing him close … but the image that overcame all, what could suddenly draw up a sob from deep within him, belonged to that morning when she just let him go. That expressionless face. Don’t bring shame upon me. How could I, Mama. Lying in bed at night, as his childhood in Kilwa returned to him, as he pictured the streets, the houses, the shops, the ocean and the beach, he would also think of Saida, his companion and friend. His pupil. A many and a pany; a bad learner she was; he would smile in the dark. But she taught
him
how to read, she showed him the secret of the Arabic script. And like a nightingale having just found its song, suddenly she could recite poetry. You’re a devil, Mama said when she first heard Saida recite. He recalled every significant moment of their time together, their meetings at the square, their walks along the seafront. Their secret place below the German graves, the lagoon. Saida, can I put my head on your lap … And Mzee Omari, who showed him his manuscript pages and asked him to read, shortly before he died. Shikamoo Mzee, I touch your feet. Why, Mzee, why did you have to hang yourself and die?

What would become of Saida? Did she remember him? He was not sure. Lately she had become a mganga of the Book. A girl with responsibility, who earned for her family. Who had no time to play.
People came to see her with problems. She did not need school or English anymore. After he wrote to Mama, he wrote to Saida, a short letter in Arabic script, which would surely delight her, and this letter too he sent care of the Kilwa Post Office, as Uncle advised him to. But at his Dar post office portal, no sign from her either.

And so the years passed.

Here he was now, back in Kilwa, having tea at the crossroads chai shop, taxis and buses waiting for passengers, touts hanging about—strong men with gleaming biceps and predatory stares, evidently among the few who looked like they actually ate well. Did they meet to work out somewhere? Across the street, partly glimpsed behind a pickup, was the German monument. It was at this site that Kamal had come running that morning, in his wild bid to escape from the man Samji who had come to fetch him. It was from here that the bus finally dragged him away to Dar es Salaam. He had looked back just one last time and seen Saida standing in front of the monument. Watching.

He had never stopped to ask himself—until now—if she had ever received his letter, or if Mama had. Perhaps they hadn’t. But as Uncle said, if Mama had wanted to stay in touch, wouldn’t she have done so? And Saida was in the clutches of her family, consulting the Book she didn’t understand and giving advice.

“You are dreaming, sir,” Lateef said cheerfully, walking in from the sun. He ordered a soup, which arrived immediately, a large, meaty bone inside it. Another one of Kilwa’s few hearty eaters.

Lateef had not shown himself the previous day, but now, unasked, obliged an explanation—“I was called away”—that was not one at all. What work does he do? Kamal watched him attack the bone with gusto. Taking a moment to look up, he ordered an extra mandazi. Kamal ordered a chai just to keep him company.

At this moment two women who had long stood uncertainly outside the entrance drifted in and stopped before him as the manager scowled and grumbled about unwanted beggars.

“Daktari …,” the older one said.

“Yes?” He feigned sternness, their plaintive tone provoking his formal response.

“The girl is sick.”

He took the younger woman’s hand, acknowledged fever, then told the two to go to the town hospital. He had discovered that there was a physician in residence, whose name was, curiously, Dr. Engineer. They had spoken on the phone.