Where the Air is Sweet (19 page)

“Did he mention that he’d robbed a bank?”

Mumtaz sits down as Jaafar explains that Eliab and two of his friends stole a parcel of cash from the local Uganda post office six months earlier. “The three men deliver produce in a truck that has a parking spot near Barclays,” Jaafar says. “The men knew of the delivery beforehand. The bank manager suspected them and alerted police.”

“The manager? That
sirdarji
?” Mumtaz recalls the story about a Sikh man, a Punjabi, killed in the Barclays parking lot. “Not Eliab?”

“I don’t know who shot him, one of the three. I doubt Eliab. But he was arrested, charged. Somehow he got out of it. Some of the money was recovered. Not all of it.”

Mumtaz is quiet.

“Eliab is a smart man. Maybe—”

“A man died. A man was killed,” Mumtaz says. “Eliab couldn’t have been involved.”

“I agree. He’s no killer. But a lot of these Africans feel owed. They believe that money falls from the sky and that the Europeans and the Asians have taken enough of it. Now it’s their turn.”

Mumtaz shakes her head. “Not Eliab.”

Sixteen children and their parents are to arrive in two hours for Shama’s birthday party. Mary is giving Shama a bath so Mumtaz can finish preparing the food. She is in the kitchen when Jaafar walks in and starts speaking.

“Yesterday, our president, the fat, much-decorated General Idi Amin called a conference of Asian leaders and for hours harangued them, listing our misdeeds. We have been milking the cow without feeding it. We are bloodsuckers. We live apart from Africans. We look down on Africans.” He shakes his head and walks out. Mumtaz wipes her wet hands on her skirt and walks to the sitting room.

“What is this?” she asks.

“Seven months ago, in June, the government did a head count of Asians. There was no explanation why. And now Idi Amin called this conference of Asian leaders. Sikhs, Hindus, Bohras, Sunnis, everyone attended. It was a good opportunity
to unite as a group and discuss our concerns. We are part of Uganda and he is its leader. But I have just heard from those who attended that all he did was scream and rage. We are guilty of a great number of things, according to our president, even racketeering. We must change our ways or get out.” He smiles.

“What is there to smile about?”

“It must have been quite a performance,” he says. “I wish I’d been there.”

Mumtaz wants to know more. She wants to ask details, what this means, but Shama has run into the room, naked, dripping wet, Mary frantically trying to catch her.

In February, Mumtaz attends the official opening of a company called Industrial Promotion Services Ltd. in Kampala. She has no interest in the company. She doesn’t even know what it is. She has come with Jaafar because the Aga Khan is scheduled to speak. And she has not seen the spiritual leader of Ismailis, of her community, since she was a girl in Nairobi.

Idi Amin stands beaming beside the Aga Khan. The president is effusively praising Ismailis for their positive contribution to Uganda.

“There is no doubt,” Idi Amin says, “that some immigrant communities have made deliberate attempts in certain spheres of economic activity to prevent Ugandans from disturbing their monopoly. I am happy to say that, on the whole, this does not apply to the Ismaili community.”

Though she does not trust this madman, Mumtaz cannot help but relax. At independence, in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, the Aga Khan publicly encouraged Ismailis to become citizens.
He encouraged them to take on African business partners. Idi Amin must recognize this. He is recognizing it. Finally.

After all, after everything, it will be all right.

The Aga Khan turns to Idi Amin and then speaks into the microphone. “We are confident that in due course we shall succeed in being accepted as full and true citizens of Uganda in every sense of the word. That is what we understand integration to mean.”

20

I
T IS SIX MONTHS LATER. MUMTAZ IS IN THE SITTING
room with Raju. They are perched on the edge of the sofa, listening to Radio Uganda. The madman has made his move.

Two days earlier, Idi Amin announced that non-citizen Asians have ninety days to renounce their British nationality and become Ugandan citizens. If they do not, they must depart Uganda, leaving behind their property and accumulated wealth.

“Since these people are not citizens of this country, Uganda has no alternative but to direct that they go to their country of nationality.”

The logic of Idi Amin’s words hits Mumtaz with such force that she feels a sharp pain in her head, behind her left eye.

Raju shakes his head. “What garbage. He says Asians keep money in British banks. This is nonsense. Two or three rich families would be keeping some money abroad, as rich people in all countries do, but the rest of us own a house, a small business, maybe a car or two. We don’t have money to send to Europe. We need our money to eat.”

“They won’t give Ugandan citizenship to Asians in ninety days,” Mumtaz says, her hand on her forehead. “People have been waiting years and they haven’t got their papers. It’s a lie. But he’s pretending to be reasonable.”

“It is not reasonable. Asians pay almost all the taxes in Uganda. We employ hundreds of thousands of Africans. Of all of the stupid ideas this man has had, this might be the stupidest.” Raju waves his hand dismissively. “It’s so stupid, it’s not worth worrying about.” He stands up and heads to the door. It is time for his daily walk.

She does not move. Mumtaz, who was born in Kenya before independence, is a British national. Jaafar, like Raju, is a Ugandan citizen. She turns to look at the newspaper beside her. She has read and reread Idi Amin’s words: “Asians have kept themselves apart as a closed community and have refused to integrate with Ugandan Africans. Their main interest has been to exploit the economy of Ugandan Africans. They have been milking the economy for years and I say to them all, Go!”

When she hears Jaafar walk in the front door, she stops midsentence, at the word
integrate.
But her mind completes the sentence, even after her eyes have left the newspaper, even while she looks at her husband. Jaafar has been in Kampala for the weekend on business. She has not yet talked to him about what has happened.

She waits for him to speak. When he does not, she does. “What should we do? I’m not a citizen.”

Jaafar laughs. He sits down on the sofa beside her and unties his shoes. “Tomorrow, he’ll get over the Asian girl who rejected him and we’ll be his favourites again.”

“In March, he threw out Jews,” Mumtaz says. “And they left. He didn’t change his mind.”

“Mumtaz, how many Jews lived in Uganda? They were expatriates on contract with construction firms and the military. He broke off with Israel and threw out their companies, ripped up the contracts. This is not the same thing. He can’t throw Asians out. We’re Ugandans. We helped build this country. We help to run this country.” He pulls off his shoes and leans back on the sofa. “The man is a fool. Every day he says something crazy.” She opens her mouth to speak, but Jaafar continues. “I’m surprised you are taking it seriously. You’re smarter than this.”

Mumtaz is quiet. She carefully folds the newspaper, again and again, until it becomes a small bulging book on her lap.

“I wish we had tried to obtain my Ugandan citizenship when we were first married,” she says. “Even if we had just tried, no one could have looked down his nose at me and called me a foreigner.”

“It was complicated, Mumtaz. I thought about getting your Ugandan citizenship a few years ago. But then, watching what was happening in Kenya, I decided there was no point. A Ugandan citizenship is important when you run a business. But otherwise, for Asians, it doesn’t guarantee equal rights. In Kenya, Asians who were Kenyan citizens lost their jobs in the civil service. Do you know why? For the simple reason that they are not African. They call the policy of replacing Asians with Africans Kenyanization.”

“Because Asians, even when they are citizens, are not Africans,” Mumtaz says quietly.

“It doesn’t matter how long we have lived here, how much
we have contributed, when this idea of Africa for Africans takes hold, we are outsiders.”

“And now it has taken hold here.”

“You were young when Kenya gained independence,” he says, ignoring her comment. “You probably don’t remember, but at that time, Britain offered a status they called ‘British Protected Person.’“

“I know,” she says. “But they altered it for Asians a few years later when too many Asians were leaving Kenya and settling in Britain.”

“Still, it does offer some protection,” he says.

“But now those of us with that protection are vulnerable.”

“Asians have always been vulnerable here. But our strength is our contribution. We are too important to the economy. Idi Amin is not clever but soon enough he will realize, or be made to realize, that he has gone too far. Mzee Kenyatta has been much smarter. He uses threatening language against Asians; he makes life very difficult for Asians, but he doesn’t do something that will destroy Kenya, which is what throwing out Asians will do to Uganda.”

The pain in Mumtaz’s head becomes sharp. She leans forward and presses her fingers into her temples.

Jaafar rubs her back. “He is attacking us to please Black nationalists. He is always looking for support, for cheering crowds. The British are already saying they won’t accept it. With their immigration quotas, do you think they will ever allow fifty thousand, sixty thousand Asians into their precious country?”

Mumtaz smiles, though the pain has not diminished. Jaafar puts his arm around her shoulders. “He needs the British. And he needs us.”

She turns to look at him. She wants to ask him if he really thinks she’s smart. She wants to hear him say it again. But she knows such a question would be childish. And she is afraid of the answer.

In the following days, Jaafar and Mumtaz listen as the inarticulate president explains that God asked him in a dream to launch an economic war against the Asians, the “exploiters.” That God asked him to seize their properties, their businesses, their homes and then to send the Asians to Britain, to the very people who had used them to build a railway so they could rob Uganda of its natural riches.

“It’s true,” Mumtaz says. “They’ve been exploited. Africans are the poorest, the lowest, in their own country.”

“It’s my country, too,” Jaafar says.

She doesn’t say it isn’t.

“Why not? I’m not black enough?” He is angry.

“We Asians keep to ourselves. We speak our own languages.”

“And we speak the local languages. Everyone keeps to themselves. A Muganda doesn’t marry an Acholi. A Mutoro doesn’t marry a Munyoro. They have lived side by side for centuries and they don’t mix. Look at how hard it was for Obote to build a nation out of their tribes. We’ve been here for a generation or two and we are expected to marry their daughters and hand them the keys to our shops. Why?”

“They have been humiliated,” she says. “They have watched others prosper. Maybe they don’t believe they are good enough. Not as good. As us. As the British. Jaafar, be honest, we believe we are better than them. Don’t we? Have we showed any interest in how they live? Have we showed any interest in learning from them?”

Jaafar is staring at her through squinted eyes, as though he is listening to a lunatic.

“They had no choices,” she says, trying to explain herself.

“Others came to their land and brought their ways.”

“No choices? If Blacks don’t like being poor, don’t like their lives, then why don’t they work? Work hard. Build businesses. Build better lives. Educate themselves. Like we have done. Who is stopping them? Me? My father?” He runs his hand over his face. “He says we milked the cow without feeding it. Then why isn’t the cow dead? Uganda is strong. The economy is strong. Or it was until Idi Amin stole the government and poured millions into his bloody army. Throwing out Asians. What an idea. What the country would lose in tax revenue alone is unthinkable. It can’t happen. It won’t happen.”

“I’m not saying it’s right. None of it is right,” she says. “But they have become servants in their own homes. Why wouldn’t it make them angry? Crazed even?”

Jaafar does not look at her. He is fumbling through his pocket, pulling out a cigarette, looking for his lighter. When he finds it, he grips it tightly and looks at her. “I am not perfect. We are not perfect. But we don’t deserve this.”

“I am not changing my mind that the Asians who are British will have to go to England and he has accepted that. My decision of 90 days still stands.”

It is one week later and Mumtaz is reading the latest words of Idi Amin. He uttered them after meeting with British special envoy Geoffrey Rippon for two hours. They stood together after the meeting and spoke to reporters. It all seems to her for a
moment, real, but the moment passes. Over the previous week, Amin had said some non-citizen Asian professionals, including doctors and lawyers, could stay; but then, almost immediately, he reversed himself and said they could not stay.

Four days later he says Asian Ugandan citizens, too, must go. They are committing “acts of sabotage” he explains in justification. But they will leave after the deadline, in a second phase, after the non-citizens have been cleared out. University student leaders implore him to reconsider throwing out citizens. Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere calls him a racist. Commentary appears stating Uganda has no legal authority to expel citizens. Though it appears he has some grounds to expel aliens, to expel her, Mumtaz thinks. It never occurred to Mumtaz to obtain Ugandan citizenship when she moved from Nairobi to Fort Portal. From one city to another. From one person’s home to another. She didn’t think of nationality. She was a child and her father said nothing. And when she married Jaafar, no one suggested she become a citizen like the rest of the family. She became a wife and then a mother. Nothing else entered her mind. Now she is called a British national of Asian origin living in East Africa, a second-class British citizen, one who cannot assume she has a right to live in Britain; now she is called a privileged alien who is exploiting a country; now she is called a saboteur who is destroying its economy.