The Gunny Sack (5 page)

“We’re hiding from the Mdachis,” a voice said. “Don’t call out.”

Here Ji Bai used the wits she had left with the sense of humour she never lost. “Well, I have a need,” she spoke with determination.

“It’s all right, mama,” came the unruffled reply. “We can’t see in the dark.” A man came and took the lamp away, lowered the wick, and left it burning in a corner, and Ji Bai sat on the pit and relieved herself in the darkness.

When a man hides inside a house, the first place to look for him is the lavatory. Dhanji Govindji, presented with the
fait accompli
, hid the three men in his loft inside the store. The next morning Guu Refu’s head was found on a pole on the road leading to his farm. Askaris appeared and began combing the area, but Indian shops were spared. Mzee Guaro came with the message, “The Mdachi commander requests that you check your lavatories at night.” The three men left at dusk, pretending to be three grateful customers, just before Dhanji Govindji closed for the day and went to pray. Ji Bai never knew if the men later hanged for the crime were any of these.

Dhanji Govindji and Sons, said the new sign outside the shop. Business was flourishing. But then, with two Lakshmis resident in his home, what else could he expect? His two eldest sons were in harness, and there seemed no danger of them breaking loose. Moti gave birth to a boy, who was born on a Friday and thus called Juma. Ji Bai’s son was born six months
later and named Husein. With increased wealth and family came respect and influence. His unwitting deed in hiding three men from the Germans was known about and hinted at in respectable and prudent Swahili company, although he wished it were forgotten, lest inquisitive German ears came to know about it and destroy all he had built up. The pinnacle of Dhanji Govindji’s success came when he was made mukhi of Matamu after Ragavji Devraj retired.

It is not good to be too happy, anyone can tell you, just as it is not good to be too beautiful or handsome. Children who laugh too much go to bed crying, and it is always prudent to administer the bitter with the sweet. The jealous, evil eye lurks not very far off.

Ji Bai said that it was exactly during this happy interlude that Fatima’s mother, the Zanzibari widow, showed up to visit her daughter. Mother and daughter held long huddled talks. Mother and husband did not speak. Things were never the same again.

A few weeks after the widow left, Moti, hidden behind a veil, had a long chat with her father-in-law. That night Dhanji Govindji summoned Huseni. “Why were you not at the mosque today?” he asked. “I was visiting,” was the reply. “You have been seeing Bibi Taratibu behind my back, you have been consorting with the Mshenzis again.” There was no answer. “You fool,” said the father in uncontrolled rage, “you are descended from the Solar Race! What do you have to consort with slaves for?”

The sullen Huseni, eyes red, shifted on his feet. He raised his head.

Then he simply spat at his father’s feet and walked out. He never returned, he was never heard from again. There were reports that he had become a bandit, that he had gone to Zanzibar, that he had stowed away on a ship to Bombay. But nothing was confirmed. Every time he welcomed a traveller into his shop, or bid one goodbye, or wrote a letter, Dhanji Govindji would sense a message from the restless Moti. Ask. Please ask.
Enquire about him. Discomfited, sad, remorseful, he would begin: “Ah, yes. I would like to enquire about my son, a big black man with a large, round head, tall like a tower, like Bhima in strength. If you have seen him or hear of someone like him …”

Moti was always a little fickle; but she waited two years for her man. Then she asked for permission to remarry.

Moti and Mongi, the two jewels in the house. One lost its place and fell. It is her turn to cook today and she returns from the market holding Juma by the hand. Baruti the servant walks behind with a basket of produce on his shoulder. The shop of Nanji Kara and Sons comes up and son Rajan in white singlet and red loincloth leans out to spit. Aaaahk!-thuck! She draws her veil shyly and averts her eyes, too late. Eye has met eye, and heart found heart. She walks on with thudding heart and he draws back, but the old woman his mother, sitting on the doorstep, feet planted solidly on the street, making paan in her lap, sees all and remains quiet.

Some days later Nanji Kara and wife and eldest daughter-in-law came with the proposal.

“What widow?” cried Dhanji Govindji in anger. “Henh? What widow, there are no widows here. What, you have already buried him, you have said the rites for him? I don’t remember.”

“But Mukhi,” said the dutiful bahu, and here came the barb, “how long will you keep another’s daughter in your home against her will?”

Mukhi Dhanji Govindji, who had not seen deep enough into Moti’s heart, fell into the trap. “Of course, it is up to her. I will ask her. That is all I can do.”

“That is all we ask for,” said Nanji Kara. “The girl has no parents.” And the troupe stepped out.

Dhanji Govindji quickly went inside to reassure his daughter-in-law. “Moti,” he said. “Moti, no one asks you to go. This is your home. You are my daughter. We will look after you and your son. The matter is closed.” He patted her head.

“Bapa, I would like to accept, with your permission,” she said, still looking down.

“Well, if this is your wish—”

That night he pleaded with her, he begged her not to go. But Moti was adamant.

First Moti had to be declared a widow. A witness was quickly found who claimed to have seen Huseni hanged. Then as mukhi, Dhanji Govindji gave his daughter-in-law in marriage to Rajan Nanji Kara. Rajan and Moti left the next day for Voi in Kenya. “The British have built a railroad,” said the elder Nanji Kara, “and business is booming there.”

“I had two eyes once,” Dhanji Govindji would say wistfully until the day he died. “Now I have only one.”

Tell me, you who would know all … What was she like, this gentle one, this Bibi Taratibu given to my ancestor for comfort on lonely, breezy African nights when mango and coconut trees rustled and crickets chirped and the roaring ocean echoed with reminders of a distant homeland? From what ravaged tribe, gutted village, was she brought to the coast, and did she not also think of her home, her slaughtered father and uncles, her brothers and sisters also taken away …

She demurs, my gunny sack. Slave women, she says, wore a colourful cloth round their bodies, under the shoulders. She must have been dark dark, because she came from the interior. And technically she was not a slave, because the British Government of India had forbidden its subjects to keep slaves. Other than that? Surely there must have been something between this slave woman and her son Huseni, for he kept on seeing her against his father’s wishes, against respectability. Did she know where he went? Did Dhanji Govindji seek her help? No, most likely he had her house watched.

One day she too left Matamu and was never heard from again.

They were the days of magic and spells. Of Bantu medicines, Arab djinns and Indian bhuts … you could find them all on trees, in graveyards, or under one roof running their nocturnal rounds, doing good or evil at their masters’ bidding … It is still a world of magic and spells. Everyone remembers that afternoon, a few years ago, when African Stars played Young Albion at Dar’s Illala Stadium. An old, undernourished white cock left the sidestands at half time and ambled to the edge of the field, waited uncertainly like an old veteran at a road crossing, then began to cross it, to the tumultuous encouraging roars of one side and hopeless finger-wagging pleas by the other. “Jamani …” said the announcer on radio. “Jamani!” screamed the announcer, the pitch in his voice rising to a fever … “kuna ajabu linatokelea hapo!” There’s a wonder at work here. The following day the Albion players anxiously searched
the alleys of Dar for medicine that would reverse the jinx. The verdict? Change the name. Thus was born the Azania Football Club of Dar es Salaam.

And now … even here … this gaping hole in the gunny that has me mesmerized, this brown pouch that holds me spellbound, holed away in a basement listening to endless tales … Ji Bai was not innocent of magic and spells, and I realize that I sit here obedient to her charm, watched over by this watchdog Shehrbanoo of the gaping mouth, who holds many secrets …

Dhanji Govindji was in contact with a number of people, in different towns across the land, who had been asked to help look for his son. A chocolate-coloured young man, Huseni by name; with hair like an Arab’s, not completely kinky, he wrote, and if you look into his eyes you will see that they are not coal black but a shade of brown. He is big, tall and muscular, a bull of a man, strong as Bhima … A network of mukhis was working on his behalf—in Portuguese East Africa, Kilwa, Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar on the coast; in Mpwapwa, Kilosa, Dodoma and Tabora in the interior; in Mombasa up north—and these mukhis kept an eye open for half-castes in their congregations, employed agents to search the brothels where such types reputedly loitered, to enquire in work gangs and prisons and comb the African tenements. Even after Moti had given up and left, Dhanji Govindji had no doubt his son would be found and could be persuaded to come home. To assist him on the home front he enlisted the help of Bwana Khalfaan.

This Bwana Khalfaan had moved into Matamu from the Kilosa area a few years before, during the Maji Maji troubles, and was a mchawi of renown. It was said that he had predicted the arrival of the Europeans, and had talked of an iron boat which would run on land from the coast all the way up to Ujiji, well before the Central Railway Line came into existence. Bwana Khalfaan had a cure for any ailment, and to protect a
village from attack he had the medicine that would make its huts appear as ant hills.

One morning Dhanji Govindji strode into his shop accompanied by the mchawi. Bwana Khalfaan was a short, wiry African of about thirty-five who wore a black, embroidered waistcoat over a white kanzu; evidently a man of substance. With him was a boy, also in a kanzu, bearing a sickly-looking white cock. The first thing the mchawi did was to check if there was an adverse effect at work in the household that kept Huseni away. To this end he proceeded to line up the members of Dhanji Govindji’s household, including the old man himself, the young children and servants. They stood before him like obedient pupils waiting expectantly, not sure what the master’s next move would be, and he eyed them one by one, as if trying to guess which of them was the evil influence, before his own tests revealed the conclusive answer. He picked up the cock and thrust it roughly into the arms of each one of them. This was originally the test for ascertaining if a claimant to the power was genuine; if the cock crowed, not recognizing the power, immediately the pile of kuni on which the impostor stood was put to flame. Bwana Khalfaan’s cock did not see anything unusual in any of the people lined up there, in Dhanji Govindji’s shop. It protested angrily at every pair of nervous hands that tried to smooth its feathers, until it landed in Fatima’s arms: here it came up with only a small squawk. The mchawi picked it up and handed it to the boy, then rubbed his chin, eyeing Dhanji Govindji’s haughty wife. “A wonder, this,” he said. “This woman has the powers, yet she does not have the powers.”

He was answered by an oblique stare and a “Hmph” as she thrust out her chest and stalked away inside.

“Meaning?” asked Dhanji Govindji.

“There’s some power behind her, that is certain.”

“Her mother!”

“We’ll have to proceed slowly. Then we’ll see what we’ll see.” His eyes gleamed with excitement, he began pacing the floor in
short, springy steps, with his hands clasped tightly behind his back. Then he stopped to put a question to Dhanji Govindji. “Now listen. What taste did your son prefer—salt or sugar?”

“Salt.”

“Then bring me some salt.”

Ji Bai went inside and brought a heap of salt on a plate. The mchawi took it from her, turned away and whispered prayers over it, finishing by blowing three circles over it.

“Take it. Every night take a handful and sprinkle it outside. If you need more, call me.”

Someone was to make a pile of sticks outside the town on the road to Guu Refu’s farm, with a rock of salt in the centre, and check every morning that it had not been disturbed. Having given these instructions, Bwana Khalfaan strode out, followed by his acolyte. He looked on the ground as he walked, and people moved out of his way. It was not advisable to cross his path.

Every morning the pile of sticks and branches would be found in disarray, the rock of salt missing, white flour sprinkled on the ground, and Ji Bai would reassemble the pile over a new piece of salt.

Huseni did not come. Early one morning the captain of a dhow delivered with much ceremony a letter for Dhanji Govindji from Zanzibar.

“A man answering your description has been sighted. Come soon before he begins to suspect.”

Dhanji Govindji packed a trunk and set off with the dhow on its return leg. Thus began the first of Ji Bai’s viraha, the long anxious waiting of a woman for her journeyman beloved: every morning she peeps out of the door to see if he’s coming, all day long her eyes fix with hope on a returning traveller, every night she looks out wearily one last time before finally closing the last panel of the door, pulling the stopper shut, fastening the bar, hanging noisy metal objects behind it to keep out intruders in the night.