Amriika

W
e come from a small people, though we did not think of ourselves as such.

Aeons ago, or so it seems now, it was circles of time and recurring rebirths that gave meaning to my innocent world; as did an unknowable but ever-present God who could at once take on friendly, familiar shapes — a fish, say, or a tortoise, or a prince out in the jungle in the company of a woman and a band of monkeys — and at other times be an irascible, possessive father. This was a time when invocations worked miracles, angels kept watch over us, and djinns lurked in the grey shadows of the sunset. Everything was for the better, though, and because of our basic goodness it could only improve.

But all this I left behind, having cut loose on a tangent one day and escaped into come-what-may. And here I stand, after so many years; and perceived from this, its westernmost rim, the earth
is
flat. And my destiny ends here — a dive in the sand. There is no going back, of course; just as surely there’s no going on and around to where I began. I’ve arrived here shorn of places and ready-made truths. In this bewildered state in which I now find myself, following the recent event that gained me (if you recall) an instant of notoriety and media spotlight, as I await my beloved without too large a hope and chase shadows of vanished omens for meaning,
I
sometimes indulge in beginnings. I try to imagine some starting
point in the past when that destiny began, that movement to reach out for a larger world. The furthest back I can go is to a medieval time, a tumultuous epoch in which I see a mystic mendicant who left a Persia ravaged by the Mongol Khans and sought refuge in the rich and chaotic soil of Hindustan — the larger India, today’s South Asia — and found the people of my race and whispered to them of better worlds.

I write this account not without encouragement — to imagine beginnings, yes, and more, to sustain them and guide them to my present condition, here in the obscurity of these rented rooms near a beach. Thus, I’ve been told with compassion, will I heal my wounds, and (in admonishment) even save my soul from endless torments. As I write these memoirs, I must admit to this too: the probing attentions of a certain representative of the law. He does not interfere as yet but hovers just beyond the edge of my narrative.

Three kids, college age, are among my visitors here. They come because, so they say, of the funky beach around here; but also, I believe, out of sympathy and concern for someone they call “Uncle” simply because I belong to their parents’ generation. Their burdens are of a different order: they discuss sex and
AIDS
, religion and intermarriage, the hangups of their immigrant parents; and their own impending futures. But I suspect they too are sometimes drawn to beginnings. And do I delude myself into thinking there’s a certain wariness too, and awe, at some challenge from the past I may represent? Their names are Leila, Hanif, and Lata. Whatever their reasons for coming, their age and innocence do take me back to a more historical beginning.

My mind often returns to the same point, if not an actual then a constructed origin: a short stout old woman in a soft long dress,
with greying hair somewhat loose and wavy in front but tied behind in a small bun, who —

Grandma was a singer, and a healer. I don’t know which first. She never sang when she healed but she muttered strange prayers, using mysterious powers she claimed were her birthright. But when she sang, she opened curiosity and old cupboards and strange premonitions and desires, even the desire to get away, leave everything behind.

Translating an old folk hymn is like transporting a village house to a city avenue, it loses vitality, colour, significance — but here goes: one of the verses she used to sing went, “Higher and higher I climb / waiting for my Swamiji — Lord — to arrive …”

I would then imagine Grandma sitting high up on some tree branch, gazing out westwards towards the horizon in anticipation of that Swamiji, that Lord, who would come on a white horse in the company of princes riding elephants and amid the sounds of trumpets and tambourines to take her away to a promised land.

Our ancestors were Hindus who were converted to a sect of Islam, and told by that refugee from the Mongols to await the final avatar of their god Vishnu. In Grandma’s words, the sun would arise that day from the west. How far was this west? Where did it begin?

My people sought it first in Africa, an ocean away, where they settled more than a hundred years ago. But in time this west moved further, and became — America; or, as Grandma said it: Amriika.

When I departed for that Eldorado she came to see me off at the Dar es Salaam airport, taking a ride from the local coal seller who lived across the street. The three of us sitting in the front of the pickup, my vinyl suitcase in the coaldust at the back, collecting
black ugly smudges which eventually faded into a residual grey that I would treasure for years. The weekly flight to London left late at night. The airport was crowded with passengers, relatives, and those who had driven over just to have a look-see at a plane taking off into the dark, with people flying away perhaps never again to be seen. Sona, my classmate who was going with me, was of course there, having arrived before me. And also in that small throng there was Darcy, the awesome intellectual and Grandma’s patient, who had come to know her quite well in the past few years. I remember going through the immigration checkpoint and turning around for one last look at Grandma: standing stiffly among the crowd, feigning sternness for grief, her right arm still raised in the goodbye she’d said minutes before, the hand closing and opening as if mechanically in one endless farewell.

I never saw her again. And Darcy, her friend who had now come to stand beside her? I saw the old magus years later when I’d almost forgotten he existed, and he offered a magic potion, a going home of sorts … but I’m getting ahead of myself, there’s so much in the middle.

It was August 1968; a young man, about the same age as my three young visitors, left home.

I
S
CHRÖDINGER’S
C
AT
(1968–70)

“I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more — the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to perils, to love, to vain effort …”

– 
JOSEPH CONRAD
Youth