Читать книгу Dance of the Jakaranda - Peter Kimani - Страница 10

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History has strange ways of announcing itself to the present, whether conceived in comforting darkness or blinding light. It can manifest with the gentleness of a bean cracking out of its pod, making music in its fall. Even when such seed falls into fertile soil, it still wriggles from the tug of the earth, stretching a green hand for uplift. The seed of wonderment that germinated from the flicker of a kiss in that darkened night had, in a few months, grown by leaps and bounds. And so it came to pass that the ancient history that Babu had dodged for two generations suddenly arrived at his doorstep, unfurling with the slow, deliberate motions of a burning rope, embers crawling from knot to knot. What was perplexing was the precision of the revelations: like the biblical plague that reached every household that did not bear a lintel, the dregs from Babu’s past rose to the fore, sliding beneath his locked door to sweep him off his feet.

But that’s rushing the story, burying the inimitable drama that unfurled the night Mariam made her grand return to the Jakaranda and reordered the lives of those who she touched—not just with her already famously flavored tongue, but with words rolled off the selfsame organ. So let’s hold it right there and absorb the moment when, lured by the smell of sweet, spicy perfume, Rajan descended the dais and stretched a hand, like a leaf dying for light after months in darkness. He stretched a hand toward the woman he suspected was the kissing stranger, and on whom he seemed utterly dependent for survival.

The young lass sat unmoved. She obviously did not understand the dance etiquette at the Jakaranda, and Rajan’s slight frame silhouetted against the dancing lights struck a statuesque pose, hair pulled into a ponytail, his lower lip trembling with both anticipation and trepidation, a hand stretched out to receive the reluctant girl. All this was witnessed by the hundreds of pairs of eyes that seemed hypnotized by the act. A hesitant beat broke the enveloping silence as Rajan knelt at Mariam’s feet, words instantly forming on his lips:

Malaika, nakupenda malaika

nami nifanyeje

kijana mwenzio . . .

The crowd roared appreciatively as the band started to play the slow love song they all knew by heart. Mariam flashed a coy smile and rose to her feet. The instantaneous clamor was enough to lift the roof off the Jakaranda, so that even Mariam could no longer resist the serenade. She made a few strides toward Rajan, who led the way toward the stage, doing a little dance because he could hardly contain his elation.

When she hesitated at the staircase leading to the dance floor, Rajan swept her off her feet, rocking her in his arms. She proved heavier than he had anticipated and Rajan staggered, nearly missing a step before regaining his balance. She swooned with pleasure, or perhaps fright, as he took the stairs before depositing her onstage. She steadied herself, her wide, circular silver earrings shining against the oscillating lights. Her mass of thick hair reached her waist. She smiled broadly, revealing twin dimples, straightening a crease on her long skirt as she did so.

If this was the kissing stranger he had encountered in the dark, Rajan thought, she certainly wasn’t afraid of the spotlight.

The love song faded and was replaced by a mugithi tune, bringing onto the stage the stories that Rajan had been told by his grandfather Babu about his experiences building the railway. The dance imitated the movement of the train and Rajan guided Mariam to join the trail of revelers doing their rounds through the dance floor, their feet spread wide apart to imitate the railway, every lap around the premises marking a completed journey.

The next tune was called the dance of the marebe. It involved thunderous drumming followed by the wail of the guitar and the blow of the sax. It was called the dance of the marebe because it told the true story of the Indian trader who encountered a lion in the Tsavo forest as he led his mule to the camp. The mule carried on its back pails of paraffin and when the lion struck, Babu had narrated to Rajan, its claws got stuck in the ropes holding the pails. The mule attempted to flee but was paralyzed by fear and the additional load on its back. The lion could not extricate himself from the hessian ropes. The pails of paraffin clanged together as the mule hee-hawed, trying to shake the beast burdening his back.

The song climaxed with even heavier drumming that represented the clanging pails, an act Chege the drummer delivered with great drama. He would glide from one drum to another, teasing revelers that the skin drums were not taut enough and needed heating. He would make as though to head toward the butchery, but fans would wave him away, hurling coins onto the drum that Chege accepted with comic deference. It someone offered a note, especially if the giver was a woman, he would direct them to deposit it into the waistband of his pants, his bare chest glistening with sweat.

* * *

Rajan was tongue-tied when he was finally alone with Mariam backstage at the end of the concert.

“Sorry for the late introduction,” Mariam said, finally introducing herself properly. When Rajan stated his name, she smiled sweetly. “Who doesn’t know you . . . ?” she breezed.

Rajan simply stared back, dazzled by the beauty that seemed to radiate out of her every pore. Her face glowed at her every turn, and her circular, silvery earrings danced, oscillating in the darkened space. She was in high heels, and Rajan realized to his horror that she was taller than he. She was so beautiful, he couldn’t imagine her doing any of the ordinary things ordinary folks did, like having a bowel movement. He couldn’t imagine such ugliness from her gorgeous form.

“You are suddenly very quiet,” Mariam whispered.

He wanted to shut his eyes and be serenaded by her cooing voice. His mind was racing through the past few months, when the mere thought of Mariam diminished his hunger pangs and set off such an acute desperation that he feared he was losing his mind. He remembered the many sleepless nights he had agonized about her, and now here she was, in a poorly lit space close to their original point of collision, looking even more lovely than he remembered her. The memory of the kiss resurged with such power that Rajan staggered toward Mariam and pulled her toward him.

“Hey, hey, pole pole,” she protested. “Don’t jump on me as though I’m a stolen bicycle.”

Rajan laughed. “You just can’t imagine how long I have waited for this moment . . .”

“I thought we barely met an hour ago,” Mariam replied.

Rajan stopped himself before blurting about their first kiss in the dark and how it had affected him. He needed to kiss the girl again to confirm she was the one.

“I want to go home,” Mariam said.

“You want me to take you home?”

“That’d be nice,” she smiled.

“Where do you live?”

“Where do you live?”

“You mean my home?”

“Where else do you call home?”

“I am home right now!”

“Stop pulling my leg.”

“I wish I could pull your leg!” Rajan smiled even as a knot of panic congealed in his stomach. Home meant the house of his grandparents, Babu and Fatima. This girl wasn’t possibly thinking he’d take her there on their first night out.

Rajan was suddenly awash with shame. At twenty-one, he still had not moved out, and possibly wouldn’t ever leave home because he was a Punjabi boy. He was bound to live with his grandparents his entire life. He envied his bandmates who all had their private spaces outside the family homes. Era had his small dwelling that was detached from his mother’s house. It wasn’t much, just a tin shack—ten by ten feet, meat paper on the walls, a single bed, and an earthen floor. But Era derived great prestige when he told the other band members: “I have to rush home, I got a bird in the cage . . .”

Rajan could never dream of saying such a thing. The backstage operations at the Jakaranda served to minimize such complications.

He had never taken any girl home to his grandparents, but then again, none had ever expressed such a desire. They seemed content to consummate their lusts backstage. But this was no ordinary girl; he had searched for her for nine months and she wanted to be handled pole pole. She was not a stolen bicycle.

* * *

That night, Rajan and Mariam ended up at Era’s tin shack on the fringes of Lake Nakuru near the kei apple trees and fence that separated Indian from African quarters. The white quarters towered above, close to where McDonald had built his house, the layout of the township forming an unstable triangle, each race on a far end of the lake.

It was at that hedge separating the Indian and African quarters that Era had first encountered Rajan fifteen years earlier. Era was nine; Rajan was six—his small head appearing one day just above the hedge that stood between his family’s house and Era’s.

Era’s principle memory of that first encounter was how Rajan resembled the portrait of Jesus that adorned their living room—only the crown of thorns was not standing on Rajan’s head, it hung around his neck where the hedge reached.

“Maze, umeona mpira?” Rajan’s had asked during that first encounter, his tender voice trilling like a flute.

“Eeeeeehhh?” Era shouted.

“Our cricket ball.”

“Where is it?”

“It just rolled under the fence,” the boy with the thorny garland said. “Have you seen it?”

Era pretended to be looking, although the tiny hard ball was under his heel. “Sioni!” he said in a voice that declared the search over.

“Sawa!” the other boy replied with resignation, and walked away.

Era had hoarded eighteen balls by the time his mother discovered them: tennis balls, cricket balls, and footballs. “I’m not rearing a thief in this house!” she said as she administered a beating over the transgression. “Return them where you got them or else . . .”

Era’s mother left her unspecified threat hanging, but he had a pretty good idea of what would follow. He was the oldest and the only male of her four children, and his mother was determined to make him a good example to his younger siblings. Their father was in a colonial detention, where thousands were being held.

“We may be poor, but we are not thieves,” Era’s mother reminded him. He walked heavily to the fence and hurled the balls over, tears rolling down his face.

The noise of the returning balls drew Rajan back to the fence. He got a glimpse of Era as he disappeared into their mud house and noticed that the older boy had no shoes.

Rajan went back inside and picked out a pair of shoes that he had outgrown and returned to the fence. “Maze! Maze! Maaaaaaaaaazeeeeeeeeeee!” His voice floated in the air.

Era stayed away. Rajan returned to the fence several times that day. He wanted to reciprocate the return of the balls that he and his cousins had been searching for for months, so he decided to dispatch his gift that evening.

The shoes landed on the tin roof where Era’s household was waiting to cook a meal on the open fire. Even from a child’s hurl, the shoes arrived with reasonable force, sending coils of soot tumbling off the roof into the cooking pot.

Initially, Era’s mother did not know what to make of the whole episode. She armed herself with a hefty piece of wood and stepped outside, looking for the offending party. The government had announced a state of emergency and had placed the entire colony under virtual curfew. Communities’ social interactions had been reduced to a whimper and cultural life was disrupted as no one was allowed out before sunup or after darkness. The animals in the wilds were freer. One could not move from one part of the country to another without clearance from the local headman, who derived his authority from the white district officer. And every local had to bear the kipande on his neck like a dog, announcing his name and address. The parallels did not end there; as a dog’s collar attests him to be disease-free through a raft of vaccinations, a kipande around a man’s neck was his proof that he had been cleared by the colonial powers and did not pose a threat to his fellow man.

So everybody kept to themselves unless it was absolutely necessary to travel, making the crashing sound on the roof that much more perplexing. Era’s mother stepped out and was confronted by the sight of two tiny black boots, their surfaces scratched to reveal a brown core.

“Maze! Maze! Chukua viatu mimi nampa yeye!” Rajan sang from the fence.

Era’s mother sighed, dropped the piece of wood, and returned inside. “These Indians are full of madharau. If they want to give something, why not do it like a good neighbor? It’s a child who is delivering them . . .”

Era was beside himself with excitement. He had never worn shoes, and the sight of the black boots was overwhelming. But from the look on his mother’s face, he knew he had to employ caution.

“Go!” she urged Era in a savage whisper. “Go pick what has been thrown at you as one hurls stale ugali at a dog. If I see you in those shoes . . .” Once again, she left the threat hanging.

He waited until his mother went to work the following day before trying on the shoes. He dashed outside and got the washbasin—the heavy metal tub feeling light as he carried it, imbued as he was by the joy singing in his heart. He knelt at the water tank and opened the tap, the gentle trickle drumming a soft drone as it filled the basin.

“Don’t dare drain the tank!” Ceeri, Era’s younger sister, shouted.

He turned off the tap and sat on the grass patched unevenly on the red earth and washed his feet, then dried them quickly with a cloth. He was breathless with excitement as he tried on the shoes.

He attempted to squeeze in one foot but it was too wide for the shoe. He hopped into the kitchen and got a spoon, but even that proved futile in forcing the foot in. He used milking jelly to line the back of the shoe and thrust one foot in, then used the same trick on the other foot. But the shoes were so tight he could hardly stand, and he felt like a baby taking its first steps.

Era grudgingly removed the shoes and hid them, hoping to pass them on to a younger sibling when his mother softened. Months later, he couldn’t remember where he’d hidden them, turning Rajan’s generous gift into a terrible waste.

* * *

With Mariam’s return to the Jakaranda, Rajan could have finally and proudly proclaimed: I got a bird in the cage . . . even if the cage was borrowed. But Rajan was still unable to believe his good fortune. He remained hypnotized by her beauty, which shone through the dim light coming from the kerosene tin lamp in Era’s shack—the languid flame throwing shadows from one wall to another. Her eyes had a hint of blue, and they sparkled delightfully when she looked at him.

Upon arrival, Mariam had dumped her two bags on the floor and slumped onto the bed as though she had lived there all her life. Era returned with fresh linen for the bed before excusing himself to join Chege the drummer for the night. The band members were at liberty to arrive at another’s house without warning or explanation. Such was the brotherhood in the band; each understood that these adjustments had to be made to free up room for overnight guests. As the young men liked to say, they were fine even if they slept packed like sardines because sleep resides in the eyes.

Rajan motioned to Mariam to help him make the bed. She held one edge of the sheet and remarked: “I thought I was a guest but I can see I’m the housemaid already!”

Rajan laughed and said nothing.

As Mariam lifted her end of the sheet up, the slight breeze from this movement blew out the lamp’s flame, sending the room into darkness. There was a momentary silence, before they both collapsed onto the bed in a fit of giggles. It was in this state that Rajan received a kiss from Mariam. It bore the unmistakable lavender flavor.

This was followed by the rustle of clothes as Mariam undressed, before snuggling close to kiss Rajan’s neck and face. He undressed reluctantly, waiting for her to prompt him to shake off this or that garment. She was all over him, her warm, wet tongue coursing along his body with the swiftness of a serpent. Rajan remained completely still, paralyzed with fear.

He was trying to reconcile the different visions of Mariam that he had experienced. There was the Mariam lodged in his mind from that first kiss in the dark and the events that followed through the search. Then there was the returned Mariam, easygoing and seemingly at home wherever he took her. And now there was the Mariam in the darkened room, animal naked, her warm breath scorching his skin. When Mariam’s searching tongue reached his navel and coursed farther down, he went limp.

“What’s going on?” she asked calmly.

He said nothing.

“What’s going on, my friend?” she cooed again.

“I don’t know,” Rajan said earnestly.

“Relax, baby . . .” she soothed. “Relaaaax.”

* * *

And relax Rajan did—over the next few days, their naked bodies marked the passage of time. Clandestine meals were sneaked in to the two lovebirds at appropriate intervals from different kitchens. Arrowroots and sweet potatoes from Era’s mother’s kitchen, buttered naan bread and samosas pilfered from Rajan’s grandmother Fatima’s kitchen. Sweetened tea with milk came from both homes. Social mores decreed it was taboo for girls to spend the night at boyfriends’ houses, so it was sacrilegious to spend several nights together.

When Mariam was unable to find the keys to her suitcases, Rajan sneaked home yet again and returned with some of his own jeans and T-shirts. They were a perfect fit.

“Looks like you’ve been keeping my clothes,” Mariam remarked joyfully, slumping back into bed and snuggling closer. It seemed they could live this way for the rest of their lives.

* * *

A day is a long time for anyone whose singular preoccupation is to eat, drink, and sleep. Actually, one should say day and night, for if one spends the day eating and drinking, then he or she is unlikely to be sleeping. Establishments were starting to sprout up in Nakuru, declaring themselves to be day- and nightclubs. One presumed the daytime patrons would be different from the night owls, though that was not necessarily the case—Rajan and Mariam were partying day and night, albeit in the solitude of Era’s house.

By their third straight day together, Rajan trusted Mariam completely. He told her things he had never shared with anyone, not even Era.

There is something curious about humans’ desire to unburden themselves to complete strangers. Perhaps it’s because strangers, like a stream, flow on with their journeys by daybreak, minimizing any prospect for what has been shared being used against them. Or it could be that strangers make no judgment at all. Mariam had proven to be nonjudgmental on that first night when Rajan, overcome with fear, had failed to rise to the occasion. She had simply urged him to relax, and chuckled that she didn’t know anybody who had died from lack of sex, much the same way she had rebuffed Rajan the next morning when he complained she was taking too much sugar in her tea.

“Ever heard of a bee being hospitalized for having too much honey?” she responded.

It was her easygoing nature that encouraged Rajan to share his secrets, despite the fact that she said little about herself and her mysterious locked suitcases. But Rajan felt no qualms about sharing his story. He briefly told her about his search for her, avoiding the embarrassing parts.

“You are a cow, all right,” she swooned. “What you need is a fine milking of the foolishness in you.”

Rajan laughed along with her, and then continued telling her about his life, too fearful that asking questions about hers would drive her away. So he told her about his grandfather Babu and grandmother Fatima, his father Rashid, who had gone to study in England and stayed, his mother Amina eventually joining him.

“He left at the height of the emergency, when I was about ten,” Rajan said of his father. “Now I’m twice as old.”

“Do you miss him?”

Rajan paused and looked at Mariam. “You are the first person to ask me that,” he sighed. “It’s been ten years of solitude. And all Grandpa says when I inquire about my father is: We came in dhows to build the rail, and left in planes.”

“Do you miss him?” Mariam pursued after a brief silence.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged a naked shoulder. “There are times,” he went on after a moment, “that I wonder how my life would have turned out if he had been around.”

Mariam wrapped her arms around him. “You shall be fine,” she assured in a tone that suggested she was speaking to a child. “We shall be fine . . .”

* * *

It was on their fourth day together that Rajan took her back to the Jakaranda and composed a song for her. Just like that, or as locals would say, Hau hau. Later that night, as he sought to refine the lines, infusing words from local languages, Mariam asked where he’d learned Kikuyu, which was spoken widely across Nakuru but seldom used by Indians. So Rajan told her about the journey that he had taken three years earlier, when he’d turned eighteen.

“I thought it was a joke,” Rajan confessed. “My grandfather was making his usual rail jokes, only this time he said he and I would be taking a road trip the following morning. We came in dhows to lay the rail, so let’s hit the road, he told all of us.”

Babu had surveyed the table where the two dozen friends and family members had assembled to celebrate Rajan’s milestone and said: “This country has been generous to us. It’s a decent thing to return the favor.” He then paused and looked in Rajan’s direction. “I’m passing the baton on to this young man. Now that he’s come of age, it’s his turn to go see the world . . .”

That’s where Babu left it and Rajan thought no further about the issue. But the following morning, he was informed that Babu was waiting, ready to embark on a journey to serve his country. Initially, Rajan thought Babu was bluffing—until he got to the driveway where Murage, the family “boy,” as Fatima liked to call him, was revving the engine.

“What’s going on?” Rajan asked. “Where are we going?”

“No need to argue, young man,” Babu replied calmly. “We’ll talk on our way to Ndundori. You are going to become a fine teacher.”

“Where, when, why?” Rajan was frantic as Murage pushed him into the car.

Once inside the vehicle, Babu said calmly: “If American children can travel halfway across the world to serve as volunteers, what’s the excuse for an Indian boy wasting his youth in funny occupations like producing sounds imitating the train?”

“I felt like I was being banished from the land,” Rajan told Mariam that day. “I was angry at my grandfather. Angry that I had to leave all my friends without a proper farewell. Angry that I was being forced into serving my country as a teacher in some far-off location.”

With the emergency laws still in place, the land was desolate and they encountered very few people along the way, most of them security agents—middle-aged men in khaki shorts, their long, ashy legs resembling marabou storks, their homemade guns lethal beaks.

When they reached Ndundori, Babu directed Murage toward a dirt road that led to a modest one-story wooden house ringed by eucalyptus trees. It was eerily silent and Rajan asked, with panic in his voice, if this was the school he’d be teaching at.

Babu smiled and explained, “This is the home of the Karims. They have a small business here. When Indians crave homemade roti or samosa or biryani, this is where they come. So you will be lucky to eat home-cooked meals every day.”

Rajan said nothing, so Babu went on: “I want you to know my friend and his family. You know the story of our dhow being shipwrecked on our way here to build the railroad. Karim was on that dhow. These are good people. We were like family when we were young . . . Yes, I was once young,” Babu chuckled. “And Karim has a granddaughter just about your age. Actually, you two knew each other when you were smaller.”

Rajan shrugged and said nothing. This was too much information. In any case, why should he care about an Indian family in the middle of nowhere? All he needed was to return home and carry on with his life.

No sooner had the engine turned off than a little balding man emerged, with a big smile that Rajan found irritating.

“Karim, my good man,” Babu greeted. They embraced, then paused to examine each other.

“You don’t look a day older than the last time I saw you,” Karim said. “The gods have been kind to you.”

“We are not complaining,” Babu replied. “You are looking hale.” He glanced across the compound; it hadn’t changed much over the past few decades.

“And this must be Mr. Rajan,” Karim enthused. “You know, I first saw you when you were like this.” He bridged his open palms as if rocking a baby in his arms. “Now you are taller than me,” he added, standing beside Rajan to compare heights.

Rajan said nothing.

Two tiny windows creaked open simultaneously, as Karim’s chubby-faced wife Abdia appeared. Upstairs, Leila, their granddaughter, peeked through the lace curtains to spy on the goings-on below. Instantly, Rajan took a dislike to them. He vowed to himself to keep away from these nosy women.

Babu waved at the woman in the duka.

“Abdia, come greet our guests,” Karim called out to his wife. “You too, Leila,” he waved to his granddaughter, whose silhouette was visible through the curtains.

As the two women made their way toward the men, Rajan shuffled uncomfortably. Karim and Babu spoke in Punjabi, which Rajan barely understood. Abdia joined in the conversation. Murage made for the woods to pass water, leaving Rajan and Leila standing awkwardly, eyeing each other suspiciously.

“Get to know each other,” Abdia pressed. “Leila, ask him where he goes to school.”

Leila did as told, but Rajan answered gruffly, “I don’t!”

“You don’t go to school?”

“No!”

Rajan walked a little farther away from their grandparents. Leila got the message and followed him.

“How come?”

“How come what?”

“You don’t go to school?”

“Well . . . I do.”

“Really?”

“I’m joining a new school.”

“Really? You must be excited!”

Rajan sized her up. She was an excitable little girl, he thought. Not more than fifteen years old. “I’m not a student anymore,” he said with a hint of arrogance. “I’m going to be a teacher.”

Leila was wide-eyed. “You mean you’re the guy my grandfather talked about?”

Rajan was about to respond when Babu called them back. “I don’t have the whole day, but you two will have plenty of time to get to know each other.”

Abdia winked at her husband, who cleared his throat and smiled.

“All right, all right. Mr. Rajan, now that you have another home away from home, I’m sure Leila would be happy to show you around . . .”

There wasn’t much to see in the sparsely furnished rooms that Leila rushed through before escorting him to one with a foldable safari bed tucked in a corner.

“This is your room,” Leila said. “Remind me to get you some sheets.”

They heard Babu calling again and Rajan rushed out.

“You need to get your luggage out of the car, young man. What shall I tell your granny when I return?”

Rajan shrugged and said nothing.

“The schoolmaster expects you tomorrow. Get some rest, do some reading, get ready.”

Rajan nodded.

He neither rested nor prepared for school. He just sat, dumbfounded by the turn of events. Had anyone told him he would have encountered half of what he had in the preceding twelve hours, he would have thought it a cruel joke. He cast a look around the room. The Karim household was noisy. Abdia spoke like a sewing machine, Karim smiled day and night. Leila sat cross-legged and giggled at Indian songs blasting from her transistor radio. When Karim and Abdia weren’t looking, Leila rolled her eyes at Rajan.

Dinner was served in this chaos, and it wasn’t long before Rajan excused himself. Leila offered to get his bedsheets, and as he made his way to his room, tired to the bone, she tried to trip him. He pretended not to notice, so when she delivered the sheets, she rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue. Rajan laughed quietly and bid her goodnight.

* * *

The school comprised a block of mud-and-wattle rondavels with grass-thatched roofs. A small party was hosted in Rajan’s honor by a dozen other teachers. The schoolmaster was short and mustachioed, with his hair parted in the middle in a style called a “lorry” because the gulf was wide enough for a truck to drive through.

“We are honored and privileged to have you here,” the schoolmaster said in a quivering voice because he had never been so close to an Indian.

The children stared openly at Rajan. “Haiya, muthungu! Muthungu!” those streaming into classes after break time screamed, alerting their friends to come and see a white man. It appeared that a few hours on the road had turned his brown skin white.

Rajan volunteered to teach history, but the diminutive schoolmaster had other ideas. “Why don’t you teach English? The children think you are a white man!”

* * *

There were about twenty kids in the class, three or four sharing a desk so that each had to give way for the other to write or else they’d elbow each other.

“Good morning, class,” Rajan smiled on that first day.

“Good morning, madam!” the class returned.

Rajan took no offense, correctly guessing that the previous teacher had been a woman. “Boys are males, girls are females,” he started, pointing randomly to different pupils. “Tell us, are you a male or a female?”

Several boys said they were females while a number of girls said they were males, eliciting lots of laughter from their classmates.

In the second week of Rajan’s posting, Leila arrived at the school one afternoon. “My mother said an Indian boy must miss samosa and masala tea, so she made some especially for you,” she gushed.

Rajan nodded his appreciation, silently wondering if the treat couldn’t have been served at home. He invited Leila into the humble staff room and poured the steaming tea into the only cup available. All the other teachers were in class.

“Karibu,” he invited her to partake of the tea.

“You go first,” Leila returned.

“No, you first.”

“I asked first.”

“I am your host.”

“I made the tea!”

“I thought you said your mother did.”

“She and I did.”

“So who did what?”

“She made it. I listened to her. She said a cup of tea is like love: it is sweeter when shared.”

Rajan blushed. What did this child know about love?

“Do you agree with that?”

“What?”

“The idea of love as a cup of tea,” Leila said with a grin.

“I thought your mother was talking about you, not me.”

“But now here we are. With a cup of tea to share.”

“Why?” Rajan responded cautiously.

“Because you have only one cup . . .”

They ended up taking sips from the cup while quietly giggling. Despite his initial misgivings, Rajan realized he enjoyed Leila’s company immensely, and he continued to in the weeks that followed. What Rajan liked the most were their evening walks. Sometimes they played games along the way that occasionally ended up in Rajan’s room. Once, as they wrestled on his bed, Rajan came to the sudden realization that Leila’s childlike frame was developing into womanhood. She had sizable breasts that she hid under large sweaters. She became aware of his discovery when Rajan loosened his grip and gently stroked her face. Just as they were about to kiss, Abdia’s voice filtered into the room: “Leeeeiiiiilllaaaa!”

Leila rushed out of the room without a word, and what followed was a crackle of violent Punjabi inflexions finished off with the whack of a slap.

That night, Rajan remained holed up in his room and skipped dinner, awash with the shame of being caught fooling around with Leila. He also started taking long walks through the village after school just to avoid being confronted by Abdia. At school, he drifted from hour to hour, day to day, still without any clarity as to what could have prompted his grandfather to consign him to the wilderness. The other teachers were all older than he was, and at first, a few invited him to their homes, but Rajan declined all the offers. It was in this period that he started reading the books that Babu had given him: Mahatma Gandhi’s The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Booker T. Washington’s My Larger Education, Jomo Kenyatta’s Facing Mount Kenya, and Kwame Nkrumah’s I Speak of Freedom.

During one of his solitary walks, he met a young boy around five or six years old. The boy spoke nonstop in Kikuyu, while holding a bowl of porridge that he sipped between bouts of mucousy sniffles. The kid’s khaki uniform implied he went to the school Rajan taught at, but Rajan could not tell him apart from the other three hundred pupils. As the boy continued with his Kikuyu monologue, Rajan just nodded and smiled and kept walking along.

One day, the boy followed Rajan to Karim and Abdia’s home, bearing a gift of chapati rolled in a paper torn from his math book. On another day, he brought a liter of milk in a soda bottle; another, an egg cracked open in a minor accident along the way. After a few weeks, Rajan realized he could not only understand the boy perfectly, but could even engage in short conversations. Leila sulked at Rajan’s new subject of affection. Abdia and Karim totally ignored the boy. By the end of the term, Rajan was fluent in Kikuyu.

* * *

“My grandfather wanted me to give something back to society. Instead, I gained something. A language that made me a proper Kenyan,” Rajan told Mariam that night. “He was smiling from ear to ear when he came to fetch me at the end of the term. He did not say what he was happy about, but he seemed proud that I had survived, and as a bonus had acquired a new language. So the trip to Ndundori was a preparation of sorts for what lay ahead . . .”

“How do you mean?”

“If I didn’t speak any local language, I feel like my art wouldn’t be as authentic. I would just be another muhindi.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I am Indian, am I not?”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “My skin color has . . .” He paused. “At least in the past it had political implications. Whites at the top, Indians after them, then Arabs, and finally Africans. That’s political privilege.”

“What’s changed now?”

“We are waiting to see, but with independence, Africans will be at the top.”

“And . . . ?”

“I don’t know. Indians in the middle? Whites at the bottom?”

“What do your friends say?”

“Which friends?”

“Your bandmates.”

“Era, of course, has been my friend since I was five or six years old. We don’t have political conversations. He’s simply my friend.”

“Does he feel the same way?”

“How do you mean?”

“Does he consider you his friend without condition?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then what’s this pressure about speaking local languages?”

“You got me wrong, it’s not about my friends; it’s about myself. I want to be more than just an Indian. I want to be a Kenyan immersed in other cultures.”

“I can’t believe this,” Mariam said softly, shaking her head.

“Why? I’m telling you the truth.”

“I’m not questioning the facts of your story. I just can’t believe you went to my village. I grew up right next to that school!” she exclaimed. “As a matter of fact, my foster family started the school.”

“Really!? Then you must meet my grandfather, he surely knows your family.”

“I said foster family.”

“What’s the difference, it’s still your family!”

“Not quite. That’s why the word foster comes first.”

“Which means?”

“They are a family of sorts.”

“A family of sorts. My goodness, where did you learn to speak like that! Seriously, though, who is your real family?”

“I wish I knew!”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Yes, I am. I don’t know and I don’t care. Well, I do care, but I don’t know.”

“Which makes you . . . ?”

“Mkosa kabila.”

“Be serious.”

“I am. I have no tribe.” After a moment, Mariam added, “I have no family.”