The Magic of Saida (38 page)

“Are you going to deny me to name the father of my child?”

“No, Saida,” he whispered.

“Yes, Kamalu, you left me with child, your seed that was my destruction.”

“Saida, tafadhali. Please. This can’t be you, I have never seen you angry like this. You trusted Kamalu. Remember a many and a pany?
And how I would comfort you? How could you know how often I thought of you, even when I … even when I … was with my wife. Do you know how you haunted my life, malaika?”

She asked slyly: “Did you always wear that tawiz?”

When he would recall that scene later he would remember her sitting in profile, wearing a white dress and a colourful khanga around her shoulders; the head bare, her hands clasped at the knees.

“How could I?” he answered. “How could she let me wear it knowing it was from you?”

“No, she couldn’t. No wife would.”

“Well, then. Tell me about when you went to see my uncle at the shop. I never knew that. By God and His Prophet, they didn’t tell me, Saida … And the child?” he asked. “A boy or girl? My firstborn, my African firstborn?”

She had gone to see his uncle one afternoon, he was having his tea, and two of his children were in the shop with him, a boy and a girl. She came, with a baby at her back and he looked at her with contempt, taking her for a beggar.

“Shikamoo, Bwana Jaffu,” she said respectfully, for he was an elder, and he was a wealthy man, and he was an Indian and she didn’t know Indians at all.

“It’s not Friday,” he said, because that day was when the beggars arrived for alms.

She said, “Bwana, I’m looking for Kamalu.”

“Who? Kamalu? How do you know Kamalu? What do you want from him?”

The man’s face had darkened, his voice was bitter-chungu, and she knew then that he knew about her. And his scowl got darker as he observed the child tied behind her, heard it cry, for it did not seem to like his tone.

“I have come from Kilwa,” she said, and heaved a little to comfort the child, and he seemed to understand that the child was Kamalu’s.

The man did not say anything for a moment. He gave a great cough to clear his throat before looking at her.

“Kamalu is in Kampala,” he told her in a softer voice. “He is becoming a doctor, and today he has become engaged to marry a girl. What do you want from him?”

He looked to the boy standing at the doorway leading inside and instructed him to leave. The girl remained, staring intently at Saida.

“What can you give him?” Bwana Jaffu asked her. “Have you come here to drag him down? He is an educated boy and you have barely gone to school. What standard did you study? Three? Five? He is training to be a doctor. He’ll be a big man one day.”

He cleared his throat again, then said flatly, “He is an Indian, and you are an African.”

As she turned to leave, he came to her and said, “Here. This is for the baby.” And strangely, he briefly put his hand on the child’s head.

And so she returned to Kilwa and her mother and her sorcerer husband.

When her husband, Mzee Hamisi, saw her belly growing, he grew suspicious that the baby was not his. Ever since giving herself to Kamalu, she had resisted him. “My spirits inform me, my wife,” he told her, “that this baby is not mine. It is Satan’s.” He prodded her belly, put his head to it and listened, spoke to it. He beat it with a stick. And she cried because it hurt and with every blow she imagined the child crying out inside her. And she screamed, Kamalu come and rescue your child! She ran away to live with her mother, in whose house she had her son. She called him Shabani, because it was the month of Shaban. And then she went to see Bwana Jaffu in Dar es Salaam, was rejected, and returned in terrible fear for the child.

“What happened to the child, Saida? What happened to our son?”

“He died.”

“He died? How did he die? Tell me, Saida.” Tears ran down his face.

“Drink this uji,” she said. “It will give you strength.”

“I don’t want to drink any more of this uji. It is bitter.”

“You will drink it if you want to know more.”

“You are killing me, Saida,” he said and drank some.

Early one morning she awoke with a start. She sensed with her body, she put out her hand beside her on the mat, then turned and looked. Her son Shabani was missing. Her mother was not in her bed, Saida found her in the backyard. “Where’s my child?” she asked. “Your
child was sleeping next to you, and you are asking me?” replied her mother. The child was still crawling, he couldn’t have gone far. But they couldn’t find him anywhere.

“Where’s my child?” Saida wailed. “Who took him away?”

“Your husband’s a sorcerer, what do you think? That he’ll take the insult and let the child grow up?”

“My mother, what are you telling me?” She ran to her husband’s home and saw the old mganga sweeping the porch. He smirked at her, continued with the chore.

“You have lost something,” he remarked.

“What have you done with the child?”

“Go away. I divorce you. Talaka, talaka, talaka!”

As she ran back to her mother, he called, “And tell your mother she’ll get hers.”

“Forget the child,” advised her mother. “You cannot defy a mganga. And he was a child of sin, anyway.”

And Saida knew instantly that her mother had handed over the child to her husband.

The next morning Saida saw her mother take something out from a small bottle and put it in the tea.

“What is that, Mother?” she asked.

“A medicine to make me better. To remove my ailment completely. And it will cure your grief too.”

“Who gave it to you?”

There was a look in her mother’s eyes.

“And I went mad,” Saida said to Kamal.

And Kamal screamed and screamed. “Don’t tell me more, Saida, don’t tell me that!”

Now he knew he was dying. He was outside under the wide-open sky, sitting in the grass; his shirt had been removed. His hands were tied behind his back tightly with a rope, and his feet at the ankles in front of him. He sat by himself, awkwardly, pain shooting through his limbs, not far from three or four people who were behind him, discussing him.

An old croaking voice that sounded familiar was saying, “My heart
says I cannot agree to go through with this, Bwana Ngozi. I prepared him for the rite and brought him here, therefore I have fulfilled my responsibility. But to go further and do away with him—here I balk, bwana.”

“Cast aside your whimsy, Bibi Ramzani,” a man’s voice reprimanded. “The water is spilled, there is no going back! Long ago we made a pact with Mzee Abdalla. When the father of the child returns, he told us, ill omen is sure to follow, unless we take measures. We must spill his blood right here, and cut off his tongue. His parts shall empower us and his penis shall sheath my knife.”

A breeze blew across the clearing. In the distance, a few hundred yards away in front of him, Kamal could see a few pinpricks of light, hovering like fireflies. On his left the stream glistened. An almost full moon in a clear sky gave the night a silvery sheen. He was in his senses and yet lethargic and powerless. His shouts for help produced no sound. Was he inside a dream? He was in a grotesque situation. His captors were discussing cutting him into pieces to use as medicine. And yet he knew he had asked for this. He had been reckless and irresponsible, and gone off on his search without a thought to his safety. He struggled with his hands. The bruises burned.

“Our prisoner is coming to his senses,” spoke a young woman’s voice. Zara.

Why can I hear you, and you not me?

“Give him some more of the uji,” said Bwana Ngozi. “Let his mind abandon him completely.”

“You think he will take it,” croaked Bibi Ramzani. “He’s a stubborn one, a mule.”

I hardly resisted when you gave it to me before, did I, Kamal protested silently.

Was he still hallucinating? Had he been hallucinating? Saida, I saw you. And this is the hell you saw fit to bring me to. But if it’s from you I readily accept it.

A large round sculpted face with greying hair and dull droopy eyes loomed over him, hiding the moon. “Drink,” Bwana Ngozi commanded, and reached out to hold Kamal’s neck with a firm grasp at the back. Kamal drank the uji. This is it, he said to himself as the eclipse before him suddenly cleared. There followed a moment of quiet, or oblivion, broken by Zara’s young voice.

“I say let him be, Bwana Ngozi. I am with Bibi Ramzani there. For truly what good will the poor man’s death do for us? You’ve already taken his child. Now why go after him?”

“It is not for you to advise your elders, young lady. You are here as a novice and await your approval. It seems that you still need time. I say the water was spilled and it is spilled again! We proceed or we perish. Do I have to explain further, Bibi Ramzani?”

“No,” Bibi Ramzani conceded. “I agree. Let us proceed.”

“My elders, I ask your forgiveness for being outspoken,” pleaded Zara. “But let us wait one more day. Tonight is Laylatu Kadir in the month of Ramadan, and all of Allah’s angels and all the spirits will be witnesses to our deed.”

There followed a moment in which nobody spoke and the night made itself felt in all its eternal depth. Kamal awaited his fate. The old man coughed.

“The spirits of our ancestors are more powerful, Zara,” Bwana Ngozi said. “They were here before the advent of Islam. But this night has power, and according to your wish we will be prudent and come back tomorrow night. Take our captive and hide him in the bushes. And when he stirs, pour the uji down his throat.”

He awoke hot and sweating on the grass; someone had cut his ropes and he was in pain. He was sick and he couldn’t move. This much he consciously knew, he had been poisoned with drugs, and unattended he could die. The moon had risen, heightening the tones on the glowing landscape. He lay on his side, resigned to a pounding head, to the mercy of whoever it was who had cut his ropes. He did not know what awaited him. He had walked into an unopened chapter of his life, so intimately connected, so tragic, one he had turned away from. The road not taken … he had returned and taken it. And it had joined his life and demanded consequences from a deed committed long ago in innocent youth. The evil he had discovered, this knowledge was part of him now, these forgotten people were a part of him. Mama would say some witch would take him away if he played in the dark. And Mariamu left holes in the ground to catch children …

A hare had come and stood before him, its jaws moving steadily,
machinelike. Frightened, seeing the devil in him, Bwana Ngozi himself, Kamal groped on the ground beside him, picked up a sharp stone with mud clinging to it and hit the hare with it, and as it fell quivering, he hit it again and again with a furious energy until it was pulp. And he puked. He threw out all the contents of his stomach. Intensely thirsty, he picked up a clump of grass and started chewing it furiously, and he ran in the direction of the glittering stream.

Zara intercepted him.

She handed him his bag, from which he extracted a bottle of water and drank.

“Come,” she said, “your people have come looking for you.”

Dr. Engineer and Lateef hastened to him and escorted him to the waiting car.

Before getting in, Kamal turned to Zara: “You will be all right?”

“You are my witness, my shahidi. You will protect me.”

“She’s as old as my daughter,” he said to Navroz Engineer and passed out.

Later that day Kamal was flown to the hospital in Dar es Salaam.

He had to find out, he had to find out what really happened that night in Minazi Minne, if that horror in the village was real. The memory of it was raw and painful. And vague. Had he seen Saida, or was she conjured up for him with drugs? What was the truth in that experience?

Did I want to go with him to Kilwa?

I said yes, of course.

Our journey was brought forward when Dr. Engineer called to inform Kamal that Ed Markham had died, he had walked into the ocean outside his hotel and drowned himself. He was buried in the local church ground soon after Kamal and I flew in the following morning. There were not more than ten people at the funeral, some of them guests at the hotel. As we sat that night on the patio, assuming some kind of a wake, Kamal recalled how despite his initial hostility he had been gradually drawn to the man, because he could understand his loneliness. He recalled their daily encounters, their conversations late in the night over a drink. Markham had left a will, found on his dresser, leaving the property, which was heavily mortgaged, to Kamal to dispose of as he wished. All of his few papers and photographs were to be burned.

Kilwa with its history and ancient ruins has been on many a travel wish list, but few people make it here, because it happens to be in the wrong direction: south. Zanzibar and Mombasa long superseded it as romantic tourist spots. I was keen to explore it. Kamal was pleased to hear this, it was his town after all. But I had made him my charge, and I was here primarily to keep an eye on him as he came to a conclusion,
some kind of resolution regarding his search. As he put it, he had walked into the past and it had almost devoured him. But in the bustle of modern Dar, away from the quiet mystery and the painful reminders of Kilwa—and no small thanks to me, he admitted—he had managed to recover somewhat. While in Dar he had couriered a letter to his cousin Yasmin, describing Saida’s visit to his uncle as it was revealed to him in his drugged state in that dark hut in Minazi Minne. She had phoned him and confirmed the story with those details she could remember, in particular her father saying, “What can you give him? He is an Indian, and you are an African.”

If this much of what he had heard was true, then must the rest be too? Who was Bibi Ramzani, the old woman whose revolting potion had brought Saida back for him? What to make of that bizarre experience, the evil meeting under the moonlight? What part was real, what part hallucinated? Had he really seen a hare and, in a fit of frenzy, killed it with utmost savagery, with a stone? Kamal said that after his ordeal there were indeed rope marks on him, but there was no blood from hare or rope. And I knew from inquiries made locally that the police had raided Minazi Minne but found no sign of Mzee Ngozi. Nobody had heard of him. Bibi Ramzani had disappeared too.