Gravel Heart Read online

  4

  THE OAU HOUSE

  I moved to a room in Guinea Lane in Camberwell, in a house I shared with three other men all of whom were African. It was a long way from the embassy house in Holland Park, a long way in luxury but also in many other respects. The traffic roared by in both directions on Camberwell Road, and the ramshackle chaos and littered pavements of Peckham Road were just a few minutes away. I heard about the room from Mood, who knew about it from his cousin who lived in the house. The landlord, Mr Mgeni, lived next door. Camberwell was not a part of London I had been to before, and in my imagination the Borough of Southwark was a landscape of dark houses that were crusted with soot on the outside and smears of dried human fluids on the inside. It must have been something I read but I imagined it as a place of ancient pain. I had not been south of the river that much altogether: a tube ride to Brixton Market with Mood, an afternoon in Greenwich with a group of friends, a museum trip organised by our Liberal Studies teacher at the college. It was not a famous museum and most of the exhibits were textiles from poor and oppressed places in the world, so at least part of the point of the visit was to show us ethnic art, to teach us not to despise the clumsy efforts of backward people. It was in this spirit of adventure that I set off to view the room.

  Mr Mgeni was a neat, friendly-looking man in his sixties, with a good-natured smile and a carefully modulated voice and cheering manner. He was skinny and short with a peppery moustache and tight-knit hair. His movements were jaunty and a little overstated as if he was constantly making an effort. He swayed slightly as he walked, hands in the pockets of his short jacket, his whole body in motion as if gently keeping time to a beat only he could hear. I thought he had a teacherly look about him, but I also saw something spiky and world-weary in those alert eyes. I liked him at once and grew to like him a great deal more as I came to know him. He gave me a long look and broke into a huge smile when I greeted him in Kiswahili.

  ‘Aha, I thought so,’ he said. ‘Jamaa, mswahili mwenzangu. One look at you and I knew. Mswahili huyu. That’s what I said to myself. We’re related.’

  I had guessed from his name, then when I saw him I was certain. Mr Mgeni asked me where I came from and explained that he himself was from Malindi in Kenya. He had left so many years ago that he could hardly remember anything about it. No, that was not true, but he could not be sure if anything still looked as he remembered it. Had I ever been to Malindi? It must look very different now, with all these package holidays you see advertised. He could not imagine the Malindi he knew being a package-holiday destination. Had I seen the brochures? Probably all filthy criminal money from somewhere, money laundering whatever that is. The hotels in those brochures are like fantasies. Tourists wouldn’t go there if they couldn’t stay in palaces, of course, as if that was how they lived in their own homes. Did I want to see the room? Please understand these are bachelors’ quarters, rough and ready and cheaply furnished, just right for a jaluta like you. A week in advance and a handshake was enough for him. Of course the room was mine if I wanted it. It was a little small but it was empty, so I could move in straight away if I liked.

  When I got back from Camberwell, I told Auntie Asha that I would be leaving the next morning. My announcement probably sounded like insolence and discourtesy but it was meant as a small gesture of independence. My belongings still fitted comfortably into the cheap cardboard suitcase I had brought from home. I woke early, washed and dressed and waited on my bed for the house to wake up. I looked round the room I had lived in for two years and I shivered. It was a sunny Sunday morning and no one was in a hurry, because while I was upstairs pretending to pack last night, they had all stayed up late to watch the musical Aladdin, ignoring me and refusing to make a ceremony out of my disgraced departure. It suddenly seemed sad to be leaving in such a petulant silence. When I could hear that everyone was about, I went downstairs to say goodbye. I kissed Kady on both cheeks and waited while she kissed me back. I shook hands with Eddie, who was ten and did not take kindly to kisses any more. I thanked Auntie Asha and then kissed her hand. She slapped me playfully on the shoulder and said that she wasn’t a grandmother to have her hand kissed by a grown man. Then suddenly she reached out for me and held me for a moment. ‘Look after yourself and don’t lose touch,’ she whispered. I don’t know what that was about.

  Uncle Amir was in his study and I had to go in there to say goodbye. When I made to speak, my uncle raised his hand to silence me. It was a haughty gesture, meant to stop me from wheedling for mercy. His face was grim but no longer had the power to menace and intimidate that it had while I lived with him. We shook hands, and then Uncle Amir transferred a roll of notes from his left hand to his right, which he extended towards me, the money lying in his palm for me to pick up. For a moment I was paralysed by the condescension, then I shook my head and uttered my thanks. ‘Take it, don’t be stupid,’ Uncle Amir said, and thrust the notes into my shirt pocket with his fingers.

  As I walked along the pavement with my suitcase and back-pack, headed for the bus stop, I felt like a character at the end of a novel on his way to adventure and fulfilment. In real life, I was on my way to Guinea Lane, and more likely on the way to heartache and struggle, and as I thought this, I could not prevent my eyes from smarting with regret and self-pity that I should find myself alone where I was, and where I did not want to be.

  *

  Dear Mama,

  Salamu na baada ya salamu. London streets are huge – not all of them but many. They couldn’t always have been like that. They must have had to knock down a lot of buildings to make the roads so wide. Whereas I think of our place as a town built piecemeal, one building at a time, and each house is kept standing by one ingenuity or another, because ruins are a kind of death.

  I have disheartening news to give you. Forgive me. It has been a hard few months and I have made a mess. It is September again and I have now been here for two years. I think of September as a terrible month; it was when I first came here and became a vagrant, when I lost so much. At first I thought my real life would begin after I reached London, that I would do things differently from then on. I thought everything would change for me here in the land of luxury and freedom and opportunity, that nothing could possibly thwart me. I promised myself that. But it turned out to be untrue. It was a lie I was forcing on myself because I had no choice. It seemed I did not have the strength and hardness for it. I have now left Uncle Amir and Auntie Asha’s home. They have asked me to leave, which was also what I wished. I could not be as they wanted me to be. I could not bear them in the end, and they could not bear me. Uncle Amir expelled me with unnecessary hard-heartedness but it did not come as a complete surprise.

  I abandoned that page and started a fresh one.

  Dear Mama,

  Salamu na baada ya salamu. I hope you are well and that Baba is well, and that you have news of him. It is September again, and I have now been here for two years. If we are lucky, September can be the most beautiful month of the year, with everything still green or just beginning to turn gold. The leaves change colour as the cold begins. I knew that from geography classes at school but I did not really understand what it meant before I saw it. You cannot imagine what the trees look like as they turn. The movement of the leaves is rhythmic and slow and it is like listening to music played over a period of days. I am struggling to explain. Then the strong winds come and whip all the leaves off in a few hours.

  I am also writing to send you my new address. As you probably already know, I am no longer living with Uncle Amir and Auntie Asha. I moved to this address a few days ago. I am grateful that they have looked after me so far. I did not do well in my examinations and I have decided not to continue with Business Studies but to change to studying literature. That is what I wanted to do from the beginning but did not say so when I came here. I talked myself out of it because it seemed an indulgence. They provided an opportunity for me to study and I thought I should use it to learn something useful, which wo
uld earn me a lot of money. What is the point of literature? I think that the person who asks that question will not find my answer convincing anyway. I will try again, I don’t know if there is anything else I can say. I will find work and I will continue with my studies as best I can. I will try to write to you more frequently, I promise. Could you please reply to this when you have a moment, so that I know the letter reached you, and that you have this new address?

  With my love,

  Salim

  When my mother replied several weeks later, she told me that Maalim Yahya had come back and taken my father away to Kuala Lumpur. As I read that, I saw again the man in the photograph the headmaster showed me all those years ago, and for the first time I thought of him as my grandfather. And I saw my Baba leaving when for so long he had refused to go.

  My mother wrote: Your Baba will be there with his family now, with his mother and his sisters and their children. They will look after him and make him happy. I am saddened to hear that your studies have not succeeded so far, but you must not think it’s because you are incapable. You are young, and it is not always easy to go so far from your home and succeed at what you try. But you must not give up. I know you will not stop trying, and after you have completed your work, you will return to us. I was also saddened to hear that you have said unkind things about me to your uncle. I don’t know what I have done to you to deserve that. Alhamdulillah, but I have an obligation to care for you whatever you say, and you have an obligation to me. In addition you must always remember to be courteous to everyone, and you most certainly should always remember to be grateful for what your uncle has done and is willing to do for you. You can have no understanding of how much he wanted to be of help to you. I have the highest expectations of you. Call me when you have time. I would like to hear your voice.

  Your mother

  I wrote: Dear Mama, he lied. I did not say anything unkind about you. I asked if that man forced you.

  I left that page in my notebook.

  *

  Mine was the smallest room in the house, big enough for a bed, a narrow hinged shelf under the dormer window and some floor space in between. I could reach everything from my mattress. The wallpaper was clean and the window opened easily so that was something. The room overlooked a small paved yard, which had some pots of struggling plants or maybe weeds, and an abandoned and rusted barbecue. The window of the house opposite squarely faced mine, about a dozen feet away. I would have to get a curtain to add to the venetian blind, if only to keep the early-morning light out. The shower and toilet were downstairs, not gleaming marble but not disgusting either.

  Mr Mgeni called it the OAU house, the Organisation of African Unity, because all the tenants were Africans, Alex from Nigeria, Mannie from Sierra Leone, who was Mood’s cousin, and Peter from South Africa. Mr Mgeni introduced me to them that Sunday morning when I arrived. Peter was the most outrageously disrespectful of them and the most worldly, and it was to him that the others addressed questions. After Mr Mgeni made his joke about the OAU house, Peter said: ‘To me the OAU has the sound of a sleazy loan company, or a money-laundering bank.’

  ‘What is money laundering?’ Mr Mgeni asked.

  ‘Money laundering is making criminal loot legal,’ Peter said, and explained to them about over-invoicing, off-shore bank deposits, over-valuing property deals, the cash economy, and endless variations of those scams. ‘All international criminals, including our OAU heroes, have to know about that kind of stuff, or they have to hire someone who does, or make it part of the deal they cut with the big global companies when they negotiate their kickbacks, otherwise they can only hide their dirty money under the bed because of the risk of criminal charges when they try to spend it outside their own filthy yards.’

  ‘How do you know such things?’ Mr Mgeni asked admiringly.

  In time, I came to understand that all four of us were living lives in some disarray, working long hours, struggling with debt and fantasies of making good. I did not think that when I first met them. They seemed composed and at ease to me, people used to living in the city whereas I still felt like a stranger from a small town, anxious about destinations and directions although I did my best to disguise this.

  Alex worked as a security officer at the National Gallery. He was slim and stylish, and strutted as he walked. Sometimes he mouthed a song or mutely broke into unexpected dance steps in the middle of a conversation. I imagined him doing that in the galleries when there were no visitors around, astonishing the solemn burghers who hung on the walls. Alex had personality in abundance, but I did not think Uncle Amir would approve of his style. He loved to wear jeans and leather jackets and shirts with two different blocks of colour, which made him look like an incompetent conman in a slum market, but he carried off this costume because he made it seem that he was doing it for fun and that he expected you to smile at the audacity of his taste. I knew he would be able to carry off a leopard-skin mantle and a penis sheath if he so wished.

  Mood’s cousin Mannie worked for an office-cleaning firm, and was out until the early hours of the morning vacuuming and polishing London’s towers in the City. He had a thoughtful and silent manner that made him seem serious, someone I felt I could trust, although that may have been because he was Mood’s cousin. It made a difference knowing someone who was related to someone else when so many of us were bumping into each other so casually in the middle of nowhere.

  Peter was the wit of the house, a cynical mocker of what he called bullshit, which was whatever he felt like mocking: newscasters on TV, politicians of all complexions, Muslim fanatics, Afrocentric gurus, the international community – especially the international community, bankers, generals, faith-healers … liars, liars and bullshitters, all of them. He worked as an advertising salesman for the local free newspaper. He rang up businesses and tried to persuade them to advertise, and in the meantime, whenever an opportunity arose, he wrote a little piece for the paper. His latest was: Pensioner Puts Out Fire in Corner Shop. It was all experience for the day apartheid would be over – which will be any day now, my bro, and then he could return to Cape Town to work on a proper newspaper. In unguarded moments his silences were deep and troubled.

  Uncle Amir would have described them as losers and paupers, people without talent, immigrants, none of them going anywhere. For me this was the first time in my life when I could choose how to spend each moment: to study, to sleep, to eat, to sit all day long in front of the TV. The scope for lounging was limited by the need to go to classes and to work but in between I could still believe in that fantasy of choice. In the evenings I worked in the supermarket for a few hours, my legal work, moving stock and mopping floors as usual. I did illegal work in a clothes sweatshop in New Cross and when Mr Mgeni needed help on a job, he asked me along and paid me in cash. I think he understood my situation from the beginning and found me work whenever he could.

  Mr Mgeni was a self-employed builder, who was nearly retired now. He advertised in Peter’s paper and chose what jobs he wanted to take on. When he needed an extra pair of hands, as he put it, he took me with him, to mix the mortar or to carry materials up the stairs or to hold a plank or to sweep up afterwards, or for someone to listen while he talked about his life and his travels. He loved telling stories and I loved listening to them. I had never met anyone with such openness. His wife Marjorie was Jamaican but Mr Mgeni had never been there even though they had been together for seventeen years. Whenever Marjorie felt like going home she went with their daughter, Frederica. Mr Mgeni told me this and many other things as we worked together on his jobs, dwelling on details because I was so attentive. When he got tired of talking he played tapes of Nat ‘King’ Cole on an ancient cassette player crusted with flecks of plaster and tiny lumps of concrete, and sang along with the King. Rambling rose, rambling rose, why I want you, heaven knows.

  ‘Nor have I gone back to Malindi for a long time, for much longer than seventeen years,’ he said. ‘Why not? That’s another story and
perhaps you’ll find out the answer yourself one day. But anyway, it means that Marjorie has not seen my home either. I am tired of travelling and restlessness and now I am quite happy here in Camberwell. For many years I worked as a sailor and travelled the world. I’ve seen the estuary of the Amazon river in South America, or I should say I have been in it because you can’t see it. It’s like being at sea. I’ve watched the sun set on the Sargasso Sea in the Caribbean and seen miles and miles of the seaweed drifting on the water like an island, and I have danced in the surf on the West African coast with the youth and fishermen. Those were wonderful unforgettable experiences, worth the hardship of that work. I’ve even gone as far north as the Baltic ports and back, which I would not recommend to you. Then when I tired of sailing I became a welder, a carpenter, and finally a builder. I was injured on a job … that was how I met Marjorie, who was a nurse at St Thomas’ Hospital. I did not let her get away after that. Her fate was sealed the moment I saw her. What a magnificent hospital St Thomas’ is!’

  Mr Mgeni was prone to sudden changes of direction in his stories and I nodded to see where we were now heading. ‘I haven’t noticed its magnificence before,’ I said. ‘You don’t mean the buildings?’

  ‘I don’t mean magnificent to look at so much as the idea behind it, a place where the sick could be cured. You’d think, isn’t that what hospitals do, cure the sick? Yes, but did you know that it was first opened a thousand years ago? I’m not joking,’ Mr Mgeni said when I laughed at this unexpected switch. ‘What would your grandfather and mine have done when they fell sick a thousand years ago? Laid on their beds and groaned, probably, and called for a sheikh to come and read prayers over them while they waited for Azraeel to come and do his work, God forgive any disrespect. These people were building hospitals for their own sick, although they probably learnt to do that from Muslims in Persia and Egypt.’