The Magic of Saida (15 page)

In the morning, stories went around of the miraculous powers which Akilimali had demonstrated to his petitioners the previous night.

The second night, based on his interviews and investigations, Akilimali summoned a number of people to join him for a truth session under the hangman’s mango tree. When Akilimali summoned, you went. If he didn’t, you kept well out of the way and counted your luck, even as you waited impatiently for the outcome. It was not widely known who among the townsfolk had caught the mganga’s attention, but secrets were about to emerge, chief among them the solution to the mystery of Mzee Omari’s death. From Bi Kulthum, Mama learned that her mother Mwana Juma had been called. It was from Bi Kulthum that Kamal and his mother heard the details about the proceedings.

Akilimali gathered twelve nervous people of the town under the hangman’s tree. Among them was Salemani Mkono, the one-armed. The sorcerer bade all but one of them, Mwana Juma, to sit in a half circle before him on the ground. With him facing the half circle were his three young assistants and the diminutive Mwana Juma, also seated, privileged to witness the truth emerge about her husband’s death. There was a small lamp present, along with the mganga’s paraphernalia. The master and his assistants began by performing a short dance, beating their drums, banging on a tambourine, and singing. Abruptly, using his flywhisk the mganga went around sprinkling liquid from a gourd upon his guests; it tasted like honey water. Outside this gathering all was quiet and deserted. The hospital nearby was covered in pitch darkness. The music and dancing stopped, and Akilimali went around peering at all those assembled. He acknowledged each of them, then he sat down and started to speak. Akilimali’s expression did not waver as he spoke. He maintained a mild and brisk manner and that mysterious smile that seemed to probe their thoughts. His voice was pleasant and high in pitch, and he terminated his sentences with his characteristic raised inflection that Bi Kulthum would later demonstrate with gusto.

“A strange event, an ajabu has occurred in this town, Kilwa Kivinje. A great poet and scholar, Mzee Omari, he was found hanging from this tree—this ancient one, this one which has seen our warriors hang. The police have come and gone. He hanged himself, they say. Then how did he reach the noose, up there? I ask. My powers of seeing have shown me, my hidden eyes have told me—some agency put him there. Each of you has been called here, under this ancient tree, where the old man hung, why? Because you have something to reveal. From what you say, I will conclude. Yes, my friends. Now each of you will drink this uji. You may choose not to drink this porridge. We live in a free country, we are told, a democrasia, they call it. But then I will draw my conclusions. But if you drink it, your spirit will talk. And I will listen. And this mama will listen, whose husband, a great man, was found hanging from a noose.”

It was a long process. In such sessions, the guilty party took the medicine in the belief that refusing to participate gave them away; if the guilty party was a sorcerer or sorceress, they hoped by their
own powers to defy the mganga. In the other of Akilimali’s famous cases, a coven of sorcerers had murdered a young woman by slitting her throat and dividing up her body. All were present and rendered powerless at the truth session that exposed them.

Akilimali’s powers were such that sometimes he had grasped the truth from your mouth before you even uttered it. Bi Kulthum demonstrated this by grabbing at the air before her face.

“Didn’t his boys go nosing around town?” Mama asked. “That would tell him secrets.”

“Yes,” Bi Kulthum agreed, “that would help him.”

“Suppose he made up his own truth,” Mama wondered, “suppose he—”

“Watch what you say, Hamida,” Bi Kulthum interrupted. “That man is powerful.”

That night at the hangman’s tree there was one obvious suspect, Salemani Mkono, who had hated and derided Mzee Omari, had a long history of antipathy towards him. Nothing significant emerged from any of those who drank the uji before him. A woman confessed to adultery; an old man to theft; another man to lewd thoughts about a boy. It was just before dawn when Salemani took the cup.

Yes, he said, he had despised Mzee Omari, whose cronies the Germans sent him to the work camps in the north where he lost one arm; the teacher Omari sat with them sipping tea from their dainty cups and sang their praises, and made himself into a German, when his own brother had hung from this same tree under which they were sitting now, from the same branch where Mzee Omari had finally hung. That was justice. No, he did not touch Mzee Omari! But early in the morning before sunrise, as the azan was given at the mosque, and the Banyanis were getting up to go and sing at their prayer house, he woke up where he was sleeping outside a shop and saw Mzee Omari walking on the long road, his head bowed. And then ahead of the old poet, almost hidden by the darkness, Salemani saw a shadowy figure in bui-bui, covered head to toe. They both were walking slowly, keeping the distance between them. After waiting for some moments, Salemani followed in their direction, until he saw them come to stand under this tree. They seemed to wait. Salemani watched. Then suddenly—he did not know how! he
swore—there had appeared a noose hanging from the tree branch, and a stool under it. Salemani ran away towards the town as fast as he could. He ran until he had no breath left. He almost died.

Akilimali departed Kilwa with fanfare, having first gone all around the town with his flywhisk and rid it of any residual malevolent spirits. He took with him the considerable payments and presents he had received: bundles of cloth, a cage full of chickens, a goat, and an amount of money that could only be guessed at. The pickup had arrived earlier. Before getting on, the mganga and his assistants did a small dance. Then Akilimali got in next to the driver, the assistants climbed in the back to join the chickens and goat, and they drove away.

What truth did Akilimali uncover? He had made his report to the town’s elders and to Mwana Juma, and then the rest of Kilwa heard it. It came out that Mzee Omari had caused his own death, having constantly called up the past with the aid of a djinn. Now the poet had reached the end of his utenzi, he had no further need of his djinn. But you cannot so easily dismiss a djinn. Out of spite, the jilted Idris poisoned the poet’s mind and led him to the mango tree and there caused him to hang himself. And then the djinn went away to seek another home. The past is a dangerous business, warned Akilimali; it is best to keep it buried.

And so Kilwa came to terms with its poet’s death.

Mama acted strangely, suddenly took to advising Kamal about the ways of the world, matters he didn’t wish to care about. Always pretend you don’t really need it when you go to buy something, umesikia Kamalu? Do you hear me? That way you’ll keep the price down. As though he cared. Did he ever go shopping by himself? No. Remember, these Indians can be nice; they have values too. Why would he argue with that? Wasn’t his father one? But his father had gone away, never written a letter to him. And Kamal had never been to an Indian home, never had an Indian friend. So they had values. He noticed too that Mama was avoiding physical closeness with him. Before, she would often draw him into her bosom; now, when he embraced her she would turn stiff. It was hurtful. There was still that sideways glance of before as she sat down with her needle and thread, watching him, but without the caressing smile and the twinkle in her eyes. She spent more time away from home, ostensibly on some errands; she would sit outside on the porch, casually chatting with the barber under the tree, or a neighbour, or a passerby when Kamal sat inside studying.

Saida had stopped coming home altogether, and he didn’t find her at the seashore, or out in the streets vending something, or loitering outside her house. Bi Kulthum did not make vitumbua any longer; his breakfast on a good day was now a slice of bread or a mandazi. Sometimes while playing outside, he couldn’t help glancing down the street in case by some miracle Saida had turned the corner and was on her way, shuffling along as usual.

Once, out walking at the shore, he saw Mama seated on the grass
verge all by herself, looking out to the sea. He went and sat beside her. “What a beautiful world God has made for us,” she said after a while.

Recently, visitors had come to their home, first two Indian men and then one African, and later a woman accompanied by Bi Kulthum. Each time the adults waited for him to depart before conversing. He had assumed that they had come with proposals, which his Mama would reject. Mama fretted because there was no money with which to buy biscuits to serve her guests. “W’allahi, we are that poor,” she muttered in despair.

“Mama, I will open my sanduku,” he offered his savings box, but she refused.

One morning on a Sunday, when he was especially listless, Mama said, “Do you know that Saida solves shida? She is a big girl now, and she’s gifted, they say.”

“Eh—what shida does she solve?” he replied angrily. “She knows nothing! How can she solve shida?”

“We’ll go there and see.”

That afternoon they went to Bi Kulthum’s house, and entered through the backyard. Bi Kulthum was not around. Mwana Juma welcomed them and after the greetings invited them to go inside to see Saida. There were four people waiting for Saida in the corridor outside one of the rooms. A teenage girl sat with her mother on a short bench, and a boy of six sat with his mother on the ground. Mwana Juma brought Mama a stool and she sat down facing the other four visitors.

“Is it the girl—what ails her?” Mama asked the first mother.

“She is pregnant.”

There followed a silence, as Mama turned away, before the woman spoke again, rather peevishly.

“My girl has not known any man. It is a shetani that’s possessed her. The mganga can remove him.”

What did Saida know about removing spirits from people?

The little boy with his mother was suffering from lethargy.

Kamal stood there beside his mother. This long corridor had always been quiet; he had stood here last waiting to see Mzee Omari in his room, to make him an offering of writing paper, pencil, and eraser. He had sat inside with Mzee Omari, read to him and heard
him recite. And now? What had happened to Saida, this girl who not long ago had cried for her grandfather, who had held his hand? Had she become someone else? How did she become a mganga? Had she completely gone from his life?

The last time they were together, and he had patted her shoulder and wiped away the tears from her face, he had felt the first stirrings of something. He didn’t know what it meant, exactly. In school, boys talked about things, and he read comic books about young men and women in love. They were white people, and the English words were sometimes difficult, but he understood enough and he wanted to be in love. The taarabs, in Swahili, too sang about love, as did the Indian and English songs on the radio. You didn’t have to understand the language to know it was love.

Their turn came, and Kamal and Mama entered the room. It was an ordinary bedroom, at the centre of which, on a mat, sat Saida. In front of her was a thick, ancient-looking leather-bound Quran. She wore a new dress and her hair was combed neatly. He and Mama sat before her on the ground and exchanged greetings. Mwana Juma stood at the door.

Mama said, “Tuna shida, eh Saida.” We have troubles.

“Did you bring a gift?” asked Saida shyly.

Mama put a coin before Saida, who said, “Tell me your shida.”

“Tell her your shida, Kamalu,” Mama said.

Kamal looked at his mother. He could not think of a shida; if it was anything, it was to ask Saida why she had disappeared.

Saida said, as shyly as before, “Bi Hamida, I must hear his problem alone. Please.” She sounded very adult.

Surprised, Mama said, “All right,” and got up.

“Na Bibi,” Saida invoked, looking at her grandmother, who took the cue and also left through the door.

“Why haven’t you come, Saida?” Kamal whispered. “Did you fall sick? Eti, what kind of mganga are you?”

“Sijui.” I don’t know. “They told me to sit here.”

“Aren’t you going to come out, Saida? Will you always hide yourself here? Don’t you want to go about?”

At this point Mwana Juma looked in and asked, “Has he described his problem? Give him the response.”

Saida said to Kamal, “Say the Sura Fatiha. Seven times.”

“You gave the same verse to the other two,” said her grandmother. “And the same one to Kamalu. Seven times.”

“Goodbye, Saida,” Kamal said. “And I will say the sura seven times.”

Then Mama went in, and emerged after a few minutes.

“What shida did you have, Mama?” Kamal asked on the way back.

“No need for you to know,” she replied, but with a smile. Then she asked, “What did she give you? Sura Fatiha?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“I don’t know what kind of mganga she is. It is always difficult to know, but there is no harm in trying. What kind of shida do you have?”

“I have no shida. I only asked her why she doesn’t come out.”

They walked home in silence.

There she was, the next afternoon, at that hot, sultry hour, watching the waves in the harbour, waiting for him. Joyfully he hurried towards her.

“So you came.”

“Mm-hm.”

He noticed that she wore a khanga over her shoulders now, to be able to cover her head when required. At first they simply stood there, exchanging news. Then gradually they ambled over to the path by the creek and made their way to their little lagoon and sat down there.

“Saida—eti, how did you become a mganga? A djinn came to you?”

“My grandfather.”

“Mzee Omari himself? He came to you?”

“I dreamt him. Three times.”

“Three times! Your luck. What did he say? Did he recite to you?”

“He told me to help people.”

“Help people?”

That thin childish voice tugged at him, he would never be able to forget it. He sensed a helplessness to her. She was told that the old man had chosen her, and she could help people solve their problems
by telling them what suras from the Quran to recite. She should open Mzee Omari’s old Quran at random, and wherever it opened would be the sura to prescribe. Sometimes she forgot to open the Book, and simply told them to recite Sura Fatiha.