Where the Air is Sweet (17 page)

Behind them, an African child walks out through the clubhouse door. He is wearing an oversized brown T-shirt and red trousers that are too short and tight for him. The clothes are faded. His feet are bare. He is holding a pailful of white tennis balls. He is a small boy, not much bigger than Karim, who is four and tall for his age. But Mumtaz knows this boy must be older. The threesome walks by Mumtaz. The women don’t notice her standing next to the hedge, next to the
mshamba.
The boy sees her. He does not smile, though she smiles at him. But he keeps looking at her. It is aggressive, challenging, this gaze he holds on her. Mumtaz feels her body stiffen. She is frightened, but she does not know of what she is afraid. Surely not of a child, a poor African child? He smirks. She lowers her eyes. When she looks up, he is still looking at her, his head turned back. He keeps looking at her, until he is forced to walk backwards, until he stumbles and drops the pail, the white balls tumbling onto the grass. He stops and quickly picks them up. The
mshamba
looks at him and shakes his head. The women do not appear to
notice and continue to walk towards the courts. Once the balls are collected, he gives Mumtaz one more long glance. Then he springs up, turns around and runs to catch up to the women.

Mumtaz walks back to her car. She regrets going for the walk. She regrets going to the clubhouse. She does not know what drew her there. She has never liked it. She has never liked walking through its doors and watching Jaafar become awkward. She cringes when she sees him wearing the ridiculous white shorts that make his thin, brown legs look thinner, browner, when she hears him speak English with a forced accent, trying to please, to impress, to belong. Each time Jaafar brings her into the building, with its wooden dance floor, its walls lined with plaques showcasing unpronounceable English names, its bar stocked with bottles of liquor and its shelves holding piles of
Life
magazines, she feels her lungs constrict and her throat dry up, as though if she were forced to remain in this place she would die, like a blood-red ixora in the pale, parched desert.

After
jamat khana
that evening, Baku and Khatoun come for dinner. Once the meal is eaten, Raju, Jaafar and Baku remain at the dining table. Mumtaz brings out cups and saucers and begins placing them on the table. Khatoun is in the kitchen with Rehmat, boiling the tea and preparing sweets.

“I think Idi Amin will be good for us,” Baku says. “Already, he has reduced government shares in nationalized companies. He isn’t a socialist, like Obote or Nyerere. He loves the British. He loves business.”

“Obote only nationalized large foreign-owned businesses. He didn’t bother us,” Jaafar says.

“But who is to say he would have stopped there?” Baku asks. Khatoun enters the dining room and sets the teapot on the table.

“Idi Amin made a lot of promises,” Jaafar says. “Elections, a return to civilian rule. In six months, he has fulfilled none of them.”

“He may yet,” Baku says. Mumtaz looks at Raju, who is quiet. He is watching Khatoun pour tea into his cup. “He brought King Freddie’s body back from England for a state funeral.”

“But he was the one who led the attack on his palace,” Mumtaz says, turning sharply to look at Baku. “And now he is honouring him with a funeral?”

“He was Obote’s general then,” says Baku. “He was following orders.”

“Was he ordered to kill hundreds of innocent Baganda as well?” she asks.

Baku shrugs. “You young people expect too much from
karias.
”

“Idi Amin will do anything for power,” Mumtaz says, ignoring Baku and sitting down beside Jaafar.

“They all will,” Baku says, laughing.

Khatoun clears her throat loudly. Mumtaz looks up at her, standing behind her husband. “Ma and I need your help in the kitchen,” Khatoun says, her voice clipped.

“In one minute, Bhabi,” Mumtaz says, looking at Baku again. “Obote, Nyerere and Kaunda stood together to demand Britain stop selling weapons to South Africa. They demanded Rhodesia become independent. Idi Amin opposes them and sides with the British. He says the British have every right to
sell weapons to racist South Africa. How could he say such a thing? This is not an ordinary power-hungry man. This is a power-hungry man with no beliefs.”

Mumtaz watches Khatoun walk back to the kitchen. She knows her place is with the women, but she cannot bring herself to join them.

“We all know Britain was behind the coup,” Jaafar says. “They didn’t hide their dislike of Obote. And right after the coup they accepted Idi Amin as president. If he spends his time trying to please Britain, things should remain okay. What’s good for Britain is good for us.”

Mumtaz shakes her head. She sees Jaafar watching her. He clears his throat.

“It’s true, he did give the
kabaka
a state funeral,” Jaafar says. “It made the Baganda happy. Like them or not, they are the biggest tribe in Uganda. They need to be happy.”

“One day he is letting his soldiers kill Baganda for sport. Another day he is giving Baganda a grand show to please them,” she says, becoming exasperated, her voice getting higher.

“Mumtaz—” Jaafar says.

“A funeral is easy to plan,” she says, cutting him off. “Will he actually give power back to Buganda and the other kingdoms?”

“He is stupid,” Baku says. “He says anything and everything because he likes to hear himself speak, though he speaks so badly. A big, bumbling
kario.
As long as he leaves us to live our lives, he can bumble.”

“The truth is we don’t know much about him,” Raju says. “We can only wait and see.”

Mumtaz opens her mouth to speak.

“Mumtaz,” Jaafar says sharply. “Help Bhabi.”

She turns to see Khatoun holding a large glass bowl of
gulab jamun
through the small opening in the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. Mumtaz stands up, walks towards her and takes the bowl. She turns to set it on the table. But her hands are sweaty and the bowl slips from her grasp so that it bounces and rolls on its side, the sweet balls and syrup pouring onto the tablecloth, slow, thick, relentless.

Raju opens the front door of his house and steps outside. The day is clear. He begins to walk as he always does, as he has done every day for more than two decades, through Mbarara, its main roads paved now with tarmac, a shining new
jamat khana
greeting him at the end of the street. He walks past Rajabali Auto Repairs. He will stop in on his way back, when the morning
chai
and
nasto
have been delivered by Yozefu. Then he will sit with customers and talk; he will go through receipts and update the books. He walks along the road leading out of the town’s centre, smiling at all who know him, all who expect to see him at the start of their day. As he walks on these roads, these well-trod footpaths, Raju’s thoughts go back to his first days in Mbarara. But he cannot go back completely. For much of his life, for most of his life, Raju has walked on red earth; he has seen all around him green plantains hanging on small trees or tied onto the sides of rusty bicycles; he has stared up at crimson flowers dotting
nandi
flame trees; he has watched cows with horns the colour of sweet tea twisting out of their heads; he has looked down at ebony-skinned children running along the roads, waving, smiling, their clothes ill-fitting, their feet
the strongest, most solid parts of their lithe bodies. He cannot remember what it felt like before, when all this was new, when all this was alien.

He comes to the Rwizi and walks to its bank in what has become a daily ritual. “The river water helps my circulation,” he has decided he will tell anyone who asks, though no one has asked. He crouches down to remove his shoes, preparing to dip his feet in the water, when out of the corner of his eye he sees something in the muddied water. He shakes his head at the filth that has begun to make its way into the river and proceeds to remove his shoes. Once he has done so, his attention is pulled again towards what he initially thought was some old tires. His throat feels thick and his breathing becomes laboured, as though a slab of concrete is pressing down on his chest. He stands, his bare feet sinking into the cool mud, the bottoms of his trousers, not yet rolled, picking up the wet earth. Arms entwined, heads face down and cheek to cheek as though sharing a secret, float two grey, bloated corpses.

“They didn’t find anything.”

Raju stares at Jaafar, trying to make sense of his words, of his sudden appearance on the verandah in the middle of the afternoon. Raju was rolling a cigarette with a machine when Jaafar appeared. Amir brought the new machine from London last year so that Raju could add filters to his cigarettes. “Who? What are you talking about?”

“At the river, where you said to look. The soldiers found nothing. No corpses, nothing. Just some garbage.”

Raju did not expect to hear “nothing.” It was the last thing
he expected to hear. And he did not expect to hear anything from Jaafar.

“The soldiers found a small tarp, Bapa. Maybe that’s what you saw. It was bunched—”

“They—you—think I imagined two human bodies? I’m a foolish old man?”

“No, of course not. Maybe they floated away.”

“Impossible. They were stuck in reeds, almost on the bank. The current isn’t powerful there. I saw them this morning only. They looked in the wrong place.” He stands up, wiping his hands on his trousers to clear off bits of tobacco. “Let’s go. I will show you myself.” He stops moving.

“What is it?”

“Soldiers? Why soldiers?” asks Raju. “I called the police.”

“Major Al-Bashir came to the garage to tell me. The police must have called him.”

“Why would the police call the army if they found nothing?”

“Asad Al-Bashir comes often to chat, even if his car isn’t in for repairs.”

“This doesn’t answer the question of why the police would inform the army of some old man’s silly visions. Why involve another authority for nothing?”

“I don’t find it strange. Al-Bashir must have stopped in at the police station for something and they got to talking. This came up in conversation.”

Raju sits down and fixes his eyes on the back of the house, on the paint he applied himself, when he was younger, when he was not yet old.

“Al-Bashir mentioned it to me because he knows me and he knows you are my father.”

Raju is silent, his eyes fixed on the white of the wall.

“Bapa?”

He looks at his son. Jaafar’s brows are knitted and he is smiling weakly. It is a look of pity.

“Go back to the garage,” says Raju. “I was tired. My mind played tricks. It must have been a tarp.” The lie leaves his mouth quickly. He cannot tolerate the expression on his son’s face.

Jaafar lowers his eyes and leaves. Raju watches him walk to the side of the house. He is moving quickly, purposefully, as young men do. In a moment he disappears around the corner. Raju turns back to the table and picks up a sheaf of cigarette paper. As he pulls the tin of tobacco towards him, he feels something in his stomach, flying, flitting, poking. It is small. It is not powerful. But its edges are sharp.

18

R
AJU IS WATCHING R?HMAT’S HEALTH DETERIORATE.
She is weak. Some mornings she cannot grasp her prayer beads in her hand. Her skin is sallow. She labours to walk. She no longer cooks, though she prepares
chaas
for Raju every day. She spends most of her time resting on an armchair in the sitting room, a shawl wrapped around her. Raju calls Amir, who comes to meet with the doctors at Mbarara Hospital. He tells Raju he will oversee the tests done on his mother. One week later, Amir and Raju meet with her doctor. While Amir sits quietly, the English doctor tells Raju that his wife’s heart is enlarged. “It has been failing for years and now it is compensating by growing in mass. But still it is not able to meet the needs of her body. Eventually, her heart will give out.”

Raju looks at Amir. “She is dying?” he asks in Gujarati.

“Slowly, very slowly,” Amir says. “It will take time, years even, if we take good care of her.” Despite the Gujarati words and the attempt at comfort, Amir appears to Raju as distant as the English doctor. What does he know of her? Of caring for her? He looks at Amir’s face, at the transparent mask of pity,
the weak painting of love. He was easy to love as a child. They all were. And then Amir his child disappeared. Like Bahdur. Like Mumdu. And now he comes when summoned, like a loyal family doctor. It is fitting then that he is the one to tell Raju this news. That he is the one Raju will always think of when he remembers this moment: the precise second that the earth beneath him began to weaken.

A few days later, Raju hears Rehmat laughing in the kitchen with her daughters-in-law.

Later, in their bedroom, he confronts her. “You are so weak that you cannot speak to me. You cannot do things for me as a wife does. But then I hear you laughing and talking with others.”

Rehmat lifts herself from her bed and walks towards him, but he turns away before she reaches him and walks out of their bedroom.

Raju begins steadfastly to ignore his wife, staring absent-mindedly at anything but her, the wall, the radio, the newspaper, a plate in front of him. He will not look at her, though he can hear her voice, low and soft and clear as it always is, as it has always been.

Raju is standing in the doorway to his bedroom. He sees Jaafar sitting by his mother’s bedside, talking to her, holding Shama on his lap. Shama is struggling to break free from her father’s grasp. He begins bouncing his knees and she giggles. “Dadima,” she says, looking at Rehmat, “why don’t you get up?”

For three days, Rehmat has been so weak she cannot leave her bed. She will eat small bites of plain chapati soaked in tea only when Mumtaz pleads with her.

“Dadima is sick,” Jaafar says. “She has to rest so she becomes well again. Why don’t you sing to her?”

Shama shakes her head. “No. I want to go outside.”

“No.” Jaafar’s voice is firm. “Be nice to Dadima.” The child angrily folds her arms. “Please, Shama,” he whispers. “For Daddy?”