Paradise Read online

  But then the evil came upon him, and it came with such force that he abandoned mother and land in search of the weed, and now he roamed the world taking kicks and eating earth. Nowhere in his wanderings had he eaten food which had the perfection of his mother’s cooking, until perhaps now, this piece of cassava. He told Yusuf stories of his travels while they sat against the side wall of the house, his high-pitched voice animated and his wizened young face cracking into smiles and broken-toothed grins. ‘Learn from my terrible example, my little friend. Shun the weed, I beg you!’ His visits never lasted long, but Yusuf was always glad to see him and hear about his latest adventures. He loved best to hear descriptions of Mohammed’s watered land south of Witu and the life he led during those years of happiness. Next best he loved to hear the story of the first time Mohammed was taken to the house of the mad in Mombasa. ‘Wallahi, I tell you no lies, young one. They took me for mad! Can you believe that?’ There they had filled his mouth with salt and slapped him in the face if he tried to spit it out. They had only given him peace if he sat quietly while the rocks of salt melted in his mouth and corroded his guts. Mohammed talked of the torture with a shudder but also with amusement. He had other stories which Yusuf did not like, about a blind dog he had seen stoned to death and about children abandoned to cruelty. He mentioned a young woman he had once known in Witu. His mother had wanted him to marry, he said, and then he smiled stupidly.

  Yusuf tried to hide him at first, afraid that his mother would chase him away, but Mohammed cringed and whined with such gratitude whenever she appeared that he became one of her favourite mendicants. ‘Honour your mother, I beg you!’ he would whimper in her hearing. ‘Learn from my terrible example.’ It was not unheard of, his mother told Yusuf later, for wise people or prophets or sultans to disguise themselves as mendicants and mix with the ordinary and the unfortunate. It is always best to treat them with respect. Whenever Yusuf’s father appeared, Mohammed rose and left, making cringing noises of deference.

  Once Yusuf stole a coin from the pocket of his father’s jacket. He did not know why he did it. While his father was having a wash after returning from work, Yusuf had plunged a hand into the smelly jacket which was hanging on a nail in his parents’ room and taken a coin. It was not something he planned. When he looked at the coin later it turned out to be a silver rupee and he was frightened to spend it. He was surprised not to be discovered and was tempted to put it back. Several times he thought of giving it to Mohammed but was afraid of what the mendicant would say or accuse him of. A silver rupee was the most money Yusuf had ever held in his hand. So he hid it in a crevice at the base of a wall, and sometimes teased a corner of it out with a stick.

  3

  Uncle Aziz spent the afternoon in the guest room, having a siesta. To Yusuf it seemed an aggravating delay. His father too had retreated into his room, as he did every day after his meal. Yusuf could not understand why people wanted to sleep in the afternoon, as if it was a law they had to obey. They called it resting, and sometimes even his mother did it, disappearing into their room and drawing the curtain. When he tried it once or twice, he became so bored that he feared he would never be able to get up again. On the second occasion he thought this was what death would be like, lying awake in bed but unable to move, like punishment.

  While Uncle Aziz slept, Yusuf was required to clear up in the kitchen and yard. This was unavoidable if he was to have any say in the disposal of the leftovers. Surprisingly, his mother left him on his own while she went to speak with his father. Usually she supervised strictly, separating real leftovers from what would serve another meal. He inflicted as much damage as he could on the food, cleared and saved what was possible, scrubbed and washed the pots, swept the yard, then went to sit on guard in the shade by the back door, sighing about the burdens he had to carry.

  When his mother asked him what he was doing, he replied that he was resting. He tried not to say it pompously, but it came out like that, making his mother smile. She reached suddenly for him, hugging him and lifting him up while he kicked furiously to be released. He hated to be treated like a baby, she knew that. His feet sought the dignity of the bare earth yard as he wriggled with restrained fury. It was because he was small for his age that she was always doing it – picking him up, pinching his cheeks, giving him hugs and slobbery kisses – and then laughing at him as if he was a child. He was already twelve. To his amazement she did not let him go this time. Usually she released him as soon as his struggles became furious, smacking his fleeing bottom as he ran. Now she held him, squeezing him to her steeping softness, saying nothing and not laughing. The back of her bodice was still wet with sweat, and her body reeked of smoke and exhaustion. He stopped struggling after a moment and let his mother hold him to her.

  That was his first foreboding. When he saw the tears in his mother’s eyes his heart leapt with terror. He had never seen his mother do that before. He had seen her wailing at a neighbour’s bereavement as if everything was spinning out of control, and had heard her imploring the mercy of the Almighty on the living, her face sodden with entreaty, but he had never seen these silent tears. He thought something had happened with his father, that he had spoken harshly to her. Perhaps the food was not good enough for Uncle Aziz.

  ‘Ma,’ he said pleadingly, but she hushed him.

  Perhaps his father had said how fine his other family had been. Yusuf had heard him say that when he was angry. Once he heard him say to her that she was the daughter of a hill tribesman from the back of Taita who lived in a smoky hut and wore stinking goatskin, and thought five goats and two sacks of beans a good price for any woman. ‘If anything happens to you, they’ll sell me another one like you from their pens,’ he said. She was not to give herself airs just because she had grown up on the coast among civilized people. Yusuf was terrified when they argued, feeling their sharp words cut into him and remembering stories from other boys of violence and abandonment.

  It was his mother who had told him of the first wife, recounting the story with smiles and the voice she kept for fables. She had been an Arab woman from an old Kilwa family, not quite a princess but of honourable descent. Yusuf’s father had married her against the wishes of her proud parents, who had not thought him grand enough for them. For although he carried a good name, anyone with eyes could see that his mother must have been a savage and that he himself was not blessed with prosperity. And although a name could not be dishonoured by the blood of a mother, the world they lived in imposed some practical necessities. They had greater aspirations for their daughter than to let her become the mother of poor children with savage faces. They told him: ‘We thank God, sir, for your kind attentions, but our daughter is too young now to think of marriage. The town abounds in daughters more worthy than ours.’

  But Yusuf’s father had caught sight of the young woman, and he could not forget her. He had fallen in love with her! Affection made him reckless and foolhardy, and he sought ways to reach her. He was a stranger in Kilwa, only there as an agent to deliver a consignment of clay water-jars for his employer, but he had made a good friend who was a boat-master of a dhow, a nahodha. The nahodha gleefully sustained him in his passion for the young woman and helped him in his stratagems to win her. Apart from anything else it would cause some grief to her self-besotted family, the nahodha said. Yusuf’s father made secret assignations with the young woman and eventually stole her away. The nahodha, who knew all the landfalls on the coast from Faza in the far north to Mtwara in the south, spirited them away to Bagamoyo on the mainland. Yusuf’s father found work in an ivory warehouse belonging to an Indian merchant, first as a watchman, then as a clerk and a jobbing trader. After eight years the woman he had married made plans to return to Kilwa, having had a letter written to her parents first, begging their forgiveness. Her two young sons were to accompany her to sweep away any vestiges of parental reproach. The dhow they travelled in was called Jicho, the Eye. It was never seen again after it left Bagamoyo. Yusuf had heard his fathe
r too talk about this family, often when he was angry about something or after a disappointment. He knew that the memories caused his father pain and stirred him into great rages.

  During one of their terrible arguments, when they seemed to forget about him sitting outside the open door as they clawed at each other, he heard his father groan, ‘My love for her was not blessed. You know the pain of that.’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ his mother asked. ‘Who doesn’t know the pain of that? Or do you think I don’t know the pain of love that goes wrong? Do you think I feel nothing?’

  ‘No, no, don’t accuse me, not you. You’re the light on my face,’ he shouted, his voice rising and breaking. ‘Don’t accuse me. Don’t start on all that again.’

  ‘I won’t,’ she said to him, dropping her voice to a hissing whisper.

  He wondered if they had been arguing again. He waited for her to speak, wanting to be told what the matter was, irritated by his powerlessness to force the issue and make her tell him what made her cry.

  ‘Your father will tell you,’ she said in the end. She let him go and went back inside the house. In a twinkling, the gloom of the hallway had swallowed her.

  4

  His father came out to look for him. He had only just woken from his siesta and his eyes were still red with sleep. His left cheek was inflamed, perhaps where he had lain on it. He lifted a corner of his undershirt and scratched his belly, while his other hand stroked the shadowy stubble on his chin. His beard grew quickly and he usually shaved every afternoon after his sleep. He smiled at Yusuf and his smile grew to a broad grin. Yusuf was still sitting by the back door where his mother had left him. Now his father came to squat down beside him. Yusuf guessed that his father was trying to look unconcerned, and he was made nervous.

  ‘Would you like to go on a little trip, little octopus?’ his father asked him, pulling him nearer his masculine sweat. Yusuf felt the weight of the arm on his shoulder, and resisted the pressure to bury his face in his father’s torso. He was too old for that kind of thing. His eyes darted to his father’s face, to read the meaning of what he was saying. His father chuckled, crushing him against his body for a moment. ‘Don’t look so happy about it,’ he said.

  ‘When?’ Yusuf asked, gently wriggling himself free.

  ‘Today,’ his father said, raising his voice cheerfully and then grinning through a small yawn, trying to look untroubled ‘Right now.’

  Yusuf stood up on tiptoe and flexed his knees. He felt a momentary urge to go to the toilet, and stared anxiously at his father, waiting for the rest of it. ‘Where am I going? What about Uncle Aziz?’ Yusuf asked. The sudden damp fear he had felt was quelled by the thought of the ten anna. He couldn’t go anywhere until he had collected his ten anna piece.

  ‘You’ll be going with Uncle Aziz,’ his father said, and then gave him a small, bitter smile. He did that when Yusuf said something foolish to him. Yusuf waited, but his father said no more. After a moment his father laughed and made a lunge for him. Yusuf rushed out of the way and laughed too. ‘You’ll go on the train,’ his father said. ‘All the way to the coast. You love trains, don’t you? You’ll enjoy yourself all the way to the sea.’ Yusuf waited for his father to say more, and could not think why he did not like the prospect of this journey. In the end, his father slapped him on the thigh and told him to go and see his mother about packing a few things.

  When the time came to leave it hardly seemed real. He said goodbye to his mother at the front door of the house and followed his father and Uncle Aziz to the station. His mother did not hug and kiss him, or shed tears over him. He had been afraid she would. Later, Yusuf could not remember what his mother did or said, but he remembered that she looked ill or dazed, leaning exhaustedly against the doorpost. When he thought of the moment of his departure, the picture that came to mind was the shimmering road on which they walked and the men ahead of him. In front of all of them staggered the porter carrying Uncle Aziz’s luggage on his shoulders. Yusuf was allowed to carry his own little bundle: two pairs of shorts, a kanzu which was still new from last Idd, a shirt, a copy of the Koran, and his mother’s old rosary. She had wrapped all but the rosary in an old shawl, then pulled the ends into a thick knot. Smilingly, she had pushed a cane through the knot so that Yusuf could carry his bundle over his shoulder, the way the porters did. The brownstone rosary she had pressed on him last, secretively.

  It never occurred to him, not even for one brief moment, that he might be gone from his parents for a long time, or that he might never see them again. It never occurred to him to ask when he would be returning. He never thought to ask why he was accompanying Uncle Aziz on his journey, or why the business had to be arranged so suddenly. At the station Yusuf saw that in addition to the yellow flag with the angry black bird, there was another flag with a silver-edged black cross on it. They flew that one when the chief German officers were travelling on the train. His father bent down to him and shook his hand. He spoke to him at some length, his eyes watering in the end. Afterwards Yusuf could not remember what was said to him, but God came into it.

  The train had been moving for a while before the novelty of it began to wear off for Yusuf, and then the thought that he had left home became irresistible. He thought of his mother’s easy laughter, and began to cry. Uncle Aziz was on the bench beside him, and Yusuf looked guiltily at him, but he had dozed off, wedging himself between the bench and the luggage. After a few moments, Yusuf knew that the tears were no longer coming, but he was reluctant to lose the feeling of sadness. He wiped his tears away and began to study his uncle. He was to have many opportunities for doing so, but this was the first time since he had known his uncle that he could look him full in the face. Uncle Aziz had taken his cap off once they boarded the train, and Yusuf was surprised by how harsh he looked. Without the cap, his face looked more squat and out of proportion. As he lay back dozing silently, the gracious manners which caught the eye were absent. He still smelt very fine. Yusuf had always liked that about him. That and his thin, flowing kanzus and silk-embroidered caps. When he entered a room, his presence wafted in like something separate from the person, announcing excess and prosperity and daring. Now as he leaned back against the luggage, a small rounded pot-belly protruded under his chest. Yusuf had not noticed that before. As he watched he saw the belly rise and fall with his breathing, and once he saw a ripple of movement across it.

  His leather money pouches were belted round his groin as usual, looping over his hip-bones and meeting in a thonged buckle over the join of his thighs like a kind of armour. Yusuf had never seen the money belt unattached to him, even while he slept in the afternoon. He remembered the silver rupee he had hidden in the crevice at the base of a wall, and trembled at the thought that it would be discovered and his guilt would be proclaimed.

  The train was noisy. Dust and smoke blew in through the open windows, and with them came the smell of fire and charred meat. On their right, the land they travelled across was flat plain with long shadows in the gathering dusk. Scattered farms and homesteads hugged the surface, clinging to the hurtling earth. On the other side were lumpy silhouettes of mountains whose crowns flared with haloes as they caught the setting sun. The train made no haste, lurching and grumbling as it struggled to the coast. At times it slowed nearly to a halt, moving almost imperceptibly and then suddenly lurching forward with high-pitched protests coming from the wheels. Yusuf did not remember the train stopping at any stations on the way, but he knew later it must have done. He shared the food which his mother had prepared for Uncle Aziz: maandazi, boiled meat and beans. His uncle unwrapped the food with practised care, muttering bismillah and smiling slightly, then with his palm half open in a gesture of welcome he invited Yusuf to the food. His uncle looked kindly on him as he ate, and smiled at him to see his long looks.

  He could not sleep. The ribs of the bench dug deep into his body and kept him awake. At best he dozed, or lay half awake, nagged by the need to relieve himself. When he opened his eyes i
n the middle of the night, the sight of the half-full, dimmed carriage made him want to cry out. The darkness outside was a measureless void, and he feared that the train was too deep in it to be able to return safely. He tried to concentrate on the noise of the wheels, but their rhythm was eccentric and only served to distract him and keep him awake. He dreamt that his mother was a one-eyed dog he had once seen crushed under the wheels of a train. Later he dreamt that he saw his cowardice glimmering in moonlight, covered in the slime of its afterbirth. He knew it was his cowardice because someone standing in the shadows told him so, and he himself saw it breathing.

  They arrived at their destination the following morning, and Uncle Aziz shepherded Yusuf calmly and firmly through the shouting crowds of traders inside and outside the station. He did not speak to Yusuf as they walked through the streets, which were littered with the remains of recent celebrations. There were palm-fronds still tied to doorposts and shaped into arches. Crushed garlands of marigolds and jasmine lay broken on the paths, and darkening fruit-peelings littered the road. A porter was carrying their luggage ahead of them, sweating and grunting in the mid-morning heat. Yusuf had been forced to give up his little bundle. ‘Let the porter carry it,’ Uncle Aziz had said, pointing to the grinning man who was standing lopsidedly over the rest of the luggage. The porter hopped and jumped as he walked, taking the weight off a bad hip. The surface of the road was very hot, and Yusuf, whose feet were unprotected, wished that he too could hop, but he knew without being told that Uncle Aziz would not wish this. From the way he was greeted in the streets, Yusuf understood that his uncle was an eminent man. The porter shouted for people to make way – ‘Let the seyyid pass, waungwana’ – and even though he was such a ragged and ill-looking man, no one contested with him. Now and then he glanced round with his lopsided grin, and Yusuf began to think that the porter knew something dangerous which he had no idea of.