The Magic of Saida (9 page)

“Kulthum died a long time ago.”

His manner clearly indicated that he had better things to do inside.

“She had a daughter, called Saida. Did you know her, Bwana Ali?”

There followed a silence, during which Ali threw a long look at
the young woman, who muttered something about people digging the dirt on other people.

“That Saida,” she then spoke up, “just went away. I didn’t meet her, but that’s what I heard.”

“You don’t know where she went?”

“We don’t know where she went. No news at all.” And then, “Jé, you knew her?”

“Yes, I knew her when we were children.” Kamal turned back to Ali. “Did you know me, Bwana Ali? I was the son of Hamida.”

Only now Ali permitted a wry smile to steal upon his face. The woman was watching. She smiled too.

“I remember you now. Didn’t you go to the Indian school? You are the son of the doctor, aren’t you?”

“Yes. And you are the son of …?”

“My father was Shomari.”

Shomari, hand me the fine paper from Syria
 … Kamal recalled that memorable afternoon when Mzee Omari sat down to begin his magnum opus and commanded his son to fetch his writing paper. That was the time when the djinn Idris had slapped him.

“And Saida?” Kamal pleaded.

“She went away,” said Ali.

“Where did she go?”

“Don’t know.”

“We don’t know,” reiterated the woman, a little too forcefully.

Ahsante, thank you. How could that be? They didn’t know where she went? Saida was Ali’s cousin. Surely news arrived, so-and-so is at such-and-such? They were holding something back, he was certain. Now what?

“Don’t worry, sir,” said Lateef as they walked away. “We will find her.”

“How? Is there someone else who can tell us?”

They went the short distance to the main road, where the taxi touts—muscular young men—bantered with each other, occasionally looking up to call out. Signboards on either side where they arrived exhorted you to buy tomorrow’s bus tickets today, for Lindi and Dar. Here Kamal left Lateef to go for a walk.

•  •  •

He strolled past the boma, turned into the plaza, came to stand at the harbour, as he had done so many times before. This was a scene that brought back not just the near past of his childhood but also the more distant past of Mzee Omari’s history. At night it was the venue of that history’s narration: how easily he could imagine the audience of old men sitting here quietly on the ground as the poet recited. Now the tide was partly in, a boat was heading out to the dhows. He turned around. On the right-hand corner facing the sea had stood the town’s new clock tower. How could a clock tower disappear without a trace? Straight ahead of him had been the little house and consultancy of the district medical officer—his father. When Dr. Amin’s term expired, he departed by himself, and Hamida moved with Kamal to the African quarter four streets away. Not surprising, some might say, why the town square by the harbour had such a magnetic pull on the son.

Crossing the plaza, Kamal continued for a while on the path that ran by the creek—partly a stinking refuse dump now—then he cut back across a field, passing by a school, behind which was the old German cemetery. Exhausted from the heat, he sat down on a grave, wished he had a bottle of water with him. He reflected on the men buried all around him. Did they have descendants in Germany, did anyone remember them at all there, where their mothers had pushed them in prams, where they had gone to school and college and gotten married? And went away to build an empire. Saida once said a Fatiha here, the prayer for the dead. She had learned this from her grandfather, who stopped here every month to visit one particular grave. He stood up, looked around until he found it:
Hier ruhet Carl Schmidt
. 1865,
Waren;
1904,
Kilwa
.

He walked tentatively towards the creek, came upon a dense overgrowth. A path from here had led down to the lagoon, their secret place. It did not seem safe to go farther, and so he returned to the cemetery.

“Do you want to see another cemetery?”

Kamal looked up. The boy who had spoken to him had apparently walked over from one of the houses a few hundred yards away across a clearing, where a street came up from the town centre and terminated. He might have been eleven, was barefoot, and wore a T-shirt and shorts with an elastic waist.

Kamal thought for a moment, then said, “Yes, show me.”

They walked on a winding path farther away from the town, crossing a long, grassy plain, staying fairly close to the creek. Kamal remembered this area, was thrilled to discover it again. The scene was as green and idyllic as it had been and fairly deserted. Saida and he had come running here and played on the grass. The path wound past a salt works before arriving at some bushes, behind which were the graves of the Sharrifs, the holy men no one recalled even in his childhood. The inscriptions on the stones were in Arabic. Here too Saida had recited the Fatiha. One of the smaller graves, she showed him, marked by a stone tile inscribed in Arabic, belonged to Mzee Omari’s brother. What was his name? Karim. He died in 1326, she read the Arabic. 1908.

He had never given it a thought, until much later. Mzee Omari had an older brother. Of what consequence are the dead to a child who’s not known them? He could not find the grave now, where he thought it should have been.

The boy with him was called Fadhili, and on their way back they chatted, sort of. Fadhili was in Standard Four. Did he want to go on to secondary school? No. He would go to madrassa—which was probably what he could afford. Would he like to have a soda? Mm-hm. They stopped at a little store and had their sodas. Then they parted.

The street was an extension of the street of the Indian shops. Arriving there, Kamal took a cross street and found the one on which he had lived with his mother. He choked when he saw the old mango tree, staid, dignified—as he imagined it—the lonely sentry of his nights’ imaginings. It looked strangely forlorn; why wouldn’t it, with its old friend gone. He went and stood under it; almost shyly put a hand on the trunk. Bwana Mwembe, do you remember me? Can you tell me things? The house in which he had lived had been built over. Three women sat at the porch, chatting, and he greeted them. “Jambo Mama, how are you. There was a woman here who was called Hamida, do you remember her?” “No … how many years ago?” “Forty.” They gaped at him. “Do we look like grandmothers, then?” They laughed, and he smiled and walked back to the main road.

It had been a disappointing day, he thought, marked by that perverse silence at the medical store, the deliberate refusal to
say
—anything. His walk through the streets of his childhood had depressed him. How could an established, historic town so completely lose itself, become a nothing place? Still, his walk with young Fadhili, that small communion, had gladdened him; the sight of the old tree had clutched at his heart. The tree could not talk, but it was as if in Bwana Mwembe he had met someone who had known him intimately, who was a witness to his memories. Surely, slowly, he was arriving?

He would not give up. Saida, I will find you.

On the last day of each month, in the afternoon, Mama would stand in a long queue at the post office, Kamal by her side, to withdraw a fixed sum from her account. This money augmented what she received from her tailoring jobs. During month-end or on the eve of a festival there was a pile of clothes to work on from the Asian shops. Kamal would thread her needle and stitch on buttons while she darned the holes and turned in hemlines. It was understood that it was to help the doctor’s half-caste son that his mother received the work. During Ramadan or Christmas or when the crop season had been good, a shopkeeper called her to work on one of his sewing machines. Sometimes Mama had her entrepreneurial brainwaves, as when she rented an old ice cream maker. The venture proved disastrous, because for one thing few people could afford the ice cream; and then the ice, milk, and sugar had to be purchased in advance. If that were not enough, neither she nor Kamal was adept with the leaky gizmo. She gave it back.

The post office money was what his father had left for her, with clear instructions that she faithfully followed. She would withdraw not a penny more nor less, not a day sooner than mwisho mwezi, the end of the month. All her major shopping was done this day, whatever was needed that they could afford. Soap, maize flour, tea, and sugar to last as long as possible. And only once in a rare while, something to wear. The shops were full, the shopkeepers inviting you in with smiles as you passed, Karibu kijana, Karibu shoga! Starehe, would reply Mama, and hesitate outside, before stepping in. You had to be alert for those Asians, smooth as butter and sweet as honey,
even their children, they would not let you leave without a purchase. But there were no returns, of course, the smiles would turn into scowls—honey into salt, as Mama said—were you to dare to bring something back.

After the shopping they visited the market, and then they would treat themselves to a lunch of pilau, which had in it a bony piece of meat for each of them, and a curry of spinach or beans, followed by a dessert of an orange or a mango. Late in the afternoon she would allow him a stick of muhogo—cassava—from a vendor at the seashore.

And when the two Eids came! They were the happiest times of the year, the first one marking the end of the Ramadan fast, the other, Abraham’s sacrifice and the season of haj. In the morning, wearing his bright white kanzu and hand-stitched cap, Kamal would hurry off to the big mosque for the communal prayer where many of the town’s men and boys also came; most would be barefoot like him. After the prayer he would return home, greeting the elders and anyone else he met on the way with cries of “Idi Baraka!” He would kiss Mama’s hand and tell her, “Idi Baraka, Mama. God give you a long life!” And she would reply, “You too, my son,” and he would receive a thumuni, a fifty-cent piece, from her. To be put away with the coins he occasionally received in his sanduku, the savings box, like a stingy shopkeeper. Mama would laugh at this, saying, “Just like his father,” though it was she who encouraged him to save. Then the two of them, Mama in a brilliant khanga with the latest design printed on it, and smelling of Bint el Sudan, would go off to visit the house of Mzee Omari, taking a plate of tambi for them. Upon arriving at the porch where the family would be gathered, first of all Kamal would go and kiss Mzee Omari’s hand, saying, “Idi Baraka, Babu,” and receive a thumuni. Then he would greet the others, Mwana Juma, Bi Kulthum, and Saida, and whoever else was there. Saida, in a new dress, wearing slippers, her hair braided neatly, would receive a thumuni from Mama and do a kind of curtsy Kamal never understood. After a round of kahawa and some sweets, during which the adults would chat, they would depart, his mother and he, and have an Eid lunch, just the two of them. And he would give her the thumuni he had received earlier.

“Why don’t you have brothers and sisters, Mama?” he asked. “Why don’t I have uncles or cousins, why don’t I have brothers or sisters?” And she said, “Just the two of us, we have no one else.” “And if I die, Mama?” She drew a sharp breath. “Thubutu! Don’t you dare.”

One memorable Eid—it was Mzee Omari’s final one—the old man, having called Kamal over, put into his hand not a thumuni with the head of the Queen or King on it but a pale little silver coin. “Take this,” he said with a smile, and he covered Kamal’s hand with his. When he let go, Kamal saw in his hand an Indian anna. He gazed at it with devotion. It had a head he did not recognize, and the writing on it was Indian. “You like it, yes. It’s from your country, after all. From kwenu.”

Startled, Kamal said, tearfully, “Kwangu ni hapo, Mzee Omari.” I am from here.

Mzee Omari looked at him, the grim smile back on his face. “You are from here, but your grandfather was a Mhindi.”

“Did you know him, Mzee?”

“Yes, I did. Punja was a good man. I was a little boy and he gave me sweets to eat in his shop. And one day he gave me this coin.”

“He was a lion!”

“A quiet lion, yes. This coin belonged to him. It was blessed by a saint, there, in India, and brought him good luck.”

“Ahsante, Mzee Omari.” Thank you. “Idi Baraka!”

Mzee Omari said, to Mama, “Your boy will go far, Hamida. You are bringing him up well.”

“That I am,” Mama replied.

“But it’s also the baraka of his ancestors, all their blessings.”

“Both the Indians and the Africans, my father,” she said to him. “And the blessings of the Rabbi, and His Prophet.”

And they all said, “Alhamdu lillahi rabb al-alameen.” Praise is to Allah.