The Book of Secrets (28 page)

It was noon, on a school holiday, and Aku was sitting as usual on the step outside his father’s shop. Pipa was seated among his wares, around him the gunny sacks and crates, behind him the scale for weighing produce.

“Eh, Aku,” Pipa said to the boy. “Mind the store, will you, I’m going in for a minute to stretch my legs.” A little later he called out from inside: “Aku, don’t leave the store. I’m staying to eat.”

The boy sat confidently in his father’s chair, next to the till, and served the customers who came. Like his father he would extend the long-handled tray to receive the copper and silver coins from the customers, who stood outside, then extend it again with the change and the goods. A few of the customers paused to compliment him, quite a young man now, in his father’s seat, and he felt proud. Between customers he watched the street outside. There was some excitement when a police Land Rover passed, making an announcement through a megaphone.

Suddenly a shadow fell over the street, a cloud had covered the sun. Everything became still for the boy — far away — he could hear a buzzing in his ears and distant, very distant sounds of the street, as if it had receded into a dream. He felt a call, an urge, a pull, from behind — from the storeroom, from Mariamu, his guardian angel. He got up, walked between crates and gunnies, past the doorway on the left that lead to the inner room where his father was, then paused at the threshold to the storeroom. It was a few days after the Diwali festival and his father had had the markings on the floor renewed, with blue, white, red, and yellow patterns in chalk for good luck. On the lintel above was a verse from the Quran. He waited to hear if his father was coming, then with beating heart and trembling hand he slid back the bolt, pushed open the creaking door, and there in front of him was the shrine he’d only glimpsed before through the crack in the door.

He hesitated once more, then walked to it, the chair which was an offering to her, sent to the mosque and bought back, on which now was the sacred book. There was an incense stand on a stool to the right; and some sweets on a stool to the left. The book itself was placed on a white doily of cotton needlework. Yellowish boards, red and black letters on the cover. He opened it gently, and looked through the pages inside, trying to read in a hurry,
looking for the charmed word “Mariamu,” without success. He turned around, then, to see his father approach.

He was beaten — until he ran fearing for his life — for the desecration, for having dared step on the auspicious patterns, for having slid back the bolt, touched the book and soiled it. Shaytaan, he heard, as the blows fell, you devil,
bastard.
He did not return that day, slept the night in the mosque, vowed never to return. He asked the caretaker of the mosque if he needed assistance, whether he could serve him. The next day the caretaker took him home, holding him firmly by the wrist, but grinning. “Many like you have come to me for refuge,” he said. But he scolded the father: “Why breed if you can’t look after them?” Pipa opened his mouth to reply but shut it.

The boy and the father looked at each other. The one searching, the other blank but without anger. Aku was forgiven.

One day he asked his father, “Shall I draw Mariamu for you?”

Pipa, somewhat startled, stared at the boy. “Yes, do,” he said, struggling with a tenderness he did not quite know how to handle. And the son, sitting on the step next to the scales and the gunnies, drew a head, a chest on a piece of paper, and showed it to the father.

“The face should be a little narrower, you’ve made it round, like Remti’s.”

And the boy, with eraser and pencil, altered.

“Add the cheekbones. And the siri on the right side of the nose, not the left. It sparkles.

“Put a border on the pachedi. The shoulder doesn’t droop so.

“The chest.” (He meant the bosom. The boy made it fuller.)

Pipa held it, and stared long at it. “You draw well,” he said.

“Can I have it back?” the boy asked.

“By all means, she is your mother. Every Thursday take a plate of sweets for her to the mosque and pray for her soul.”

“She was a sati, wasn’t she?” the boy said, chattily. Pure and pious.

Yes, she was a sati.

“And sinless, she did no wrong?”

Pipa looked at the boy. Here he himself was on shaky ground.

“Remember what they teach in mosque. Everyone, no matter how pure, commits at least seven sins a day. That is the nature of life. That is why every day in mosque we go to the mukhi and ask for forgiveness.”

The boy took the drawing with him. He showed it to his stepmother and sisters. He kept it near his mat. And he also took to talking to her. She distracted him on Thursday nights, during the performance of his father’s lust upon his stepmother; and other times interceded for him through his adolescence.

Akber Ali — Aku, as he’d been known — grew up into a dashing youth. Throughout childhood he had been considered especially well endowed with good looks: a local phenomenon, with beautiful eyes and fair skin. This glamorous reputation stayed with him in boyhood and beyond. It gave him a sense of specialness, which was reinforced by the less public, unhappy aspect of his upbringing as a stepson, a child of that other, mysterious woman from a war-torn country. And to this specialness he would attribute that certain longing he always carried for something he could not quite describe: a need to rise above others, to escape and move on, and the drive to prove himself, to conquer.

At twenty he was tall and somewhat burly. He preferred white suits, a style associated with an older generation of men, except that he also wore a striking black tie. His black hair was combed back above an ample forehead.

He was working in “town” — the business area — as a salesman for a wholesale firm. For the young Indian men in Dar, the first real job always was a watershed, the end of youth. Marriage
proposals would already be out in all directions, to families ranging from the upscale to the modest, girls from the beautiful and smart to the demure and homely. Before he sank into domestic oblivion, Akber Ali decided he would go to Mombasa to see his mother’s family and perhaps seek better prospects there. At first his father would not have it.

— This is your place, with me, with your mother.

— But my mother wants me to go.

— No, she doesn’t. I have known her longer. She left you in my care.

— But I will return.

Without consent, without blessing, the boy could not go. The stalemate lasted a year. And then: Go, his father said. But your home is here.

In Mombasa, Akber Ali was apprised of some family history. His mother’s grandmother, he learned, had gone as a girl from Jamnagar, India, first to Zanzibar, then had married in the ancient Swahili town of Lamu. It was from Lamu that her son — his greatuncle Jamali — set off in the company of a British explorer and founded the town of Kikono, where Mariamu, his mother, was brought up, later married, and where he was born.

If Ali had had hopes of being reunited with Mariamu, of finally getting to know her in her death, he was quickly disappointed. Here she was the “sati,” the saint, and it was in these terms that she was spoken of. Sometimes, at his grandmother Kulsa’s home, a relation called Rashid would show up, apparently for handouts. With reluctance he was told that Rashid was his grandmother’s estranged husband and Mariamu’s stepfather.

Ali quickly found work — and diversions — in Mombasa, a city with long traditions, and multitudes of tribes, castes, races, which offered greater allure and more freedom than the smaller, repressed Dar. Life’s lessons in the streets of Mombasa were learned
more easily; there were more corners and alleys, and ample curtains to hide behind. A city more experienced, sinful, earthy, was kinder to the yearnings of youth, less prone to condemn. Akber Ali travelled with friends, dressed well, and wherever he went he cut an impressive figure. He contemplated many ventures — apprenticeships in Lamu, Uganda, Nairobi, Mombasa. But two years after, he decided to return home to Dar.

Ali came back from Mombasa a dandy, and quickly found a job at the firm of G. R. Moolji, a successful wholesale distributor of khanga cloth. Soon Ali married one of G. R. Moolji’s daughters. She was called Sherbanoo and was educated up to Standard Eight; she had been a teacher for a while and was on the prestigious Ladies’ Committee, which ran classes in etiquette and “English” cooking (boiled or baked). But she lacked in looks — she was the darkest of the daughters when “beautiful” meant “fair,” and by no means was she slim like the actresses in the films. But she had the name and was a good catch.

From the son of Pipa the shopkeeper to the dandified in-law of the “khanga king”; from salesman to part owner. He could have been exploited and mistreated by his in-laws, but he had a strong presence. His grey eyes were a source of wonder, family pride. He should protect his eyes and skin from the sun, he was advised. No point in acquiring a fair in-law only to have him baked brown afterwards. The family well remembered that their Miss Sherbanoo Moolji had been hard pressed for a suitor. The fact that she failed to conceive after marriage gave him a hold over his in-laws that was irksome to them, though they found consolation in his circular adopted name, Ali Akber Ali, which denounced his humble origins and protected their new mobility (and nobility). He still preferred white suits, but now wore a black astrakhan hat and carried a cane. In all this he had a model: none other than the glamorous Prince Aly Khan.

And so there was born the legend in Dar es Salaam of the
handsome boy who looked like Aly Khan but who had changed his name and denounced his father.

“I told you so,” Pipa said to Mariamu, “when you said to let him go. They put all sorts of ideas into his head. Now he doesn’t know me. They stole him from me.”

I knew it, he muttered to his wife, Remti, and daughters.

“How long could you have held him prisoner?” Mariamu said. The other wife, Remti, concurred, adding, “He’s showing his true colours, it was bound to happen. He’s not yours. Now you know.”

That, of course, was where the knife hurt most.

“Don’t worry,” Mariamu said. “No matter what, a boy always returns to his father; always the son becomes the father.”

“You talk as if you know a lot about such matters, you who bore only one son and couldn’t see him grow up.”

“There’s a lot of wisdom where I am,” she answered.

But inwardly, he groaned. Always he becomes the father — but which father?

One afternoon, a European police inspector, accompanied by three askaris, called at the store. With them was another European, a red-faced stocky man in civilian clothes, who didn’t say much but smoked a pipe and followed the inspector about. They were searching for smuggled items, the inspector told the shopkeeper. “Go ahead, then, look,” said Pipa to the inspector wearily, and the men got to work.

Shopkeepers were used to these whims of the police — if it was not smuggled goods it was stolen property, or expired licences, or scales which had been tampered with. But something in the demeanour of the two Europeans, and that one of them was a civilian, made Pipa wary this time. Something else was afoot, but he could not be sure what. He had only one thing to hide, and it had ruled his life for almost twenty years. When the askaris
reached the storeroom, Pipa would not let them through. “My prayer room,” he told them. “Don’t go in. Don’t step —” he pointed to the chalk markings on the floor, pointed to the Quranic verse on the lintel. They insisted on peeping in. The bolt was shot back, the door pushed open. The two white men stared at the room for a while. It was quite dark and bare except for a shrine in front of them, consisting of a decorated chair with a garland hung on its back. There was the smell of incense. “Let’s go,” they said to the askaris and left.

The two men returned the next day to an even more agitated Pipa, and themselves very much impatient and bad tempered. They headed straight for the storeroom, and they entered, careful to step over the chalked markings. On the seat of the wooden chair, which was directly before them, they saw a book covered by a white doily and picked the book up. It was printed, in Gujarati, published in Bombay. No interest. There was a photograph. “Who is he?” asked one of the Englishmen. “Suleiman Pir,” said the shopkeeper. “Our spiritual leader.” The two men asked for lamps. Candles were brought, and they looked around. Their shadows loomed large against the walls, darkening large portions of the small room. The three men kept bumping against each other. The Englishmen yelled at Pipa to wait outside, but he wouldn’t. In one corner of the room was a pile of newspapers, the floor was wet there. This was the corner opposite the shrine, towards the inside of the house.

Later no one could say exactly how it had happened. A candle fell, turned brighter on the floor, then the fire exploded in their midst, throwing them back and into confusion, and sped towards the walls, which burned in no time. The storeroom was destroyed, as was part of the shop and the kitchen.

It took Pipa some years to win his claim for damages from the colonial government. He moved his shop and residence to the African side of the Mnazi Moja no-man’s-land, called Kariakoo, where land was cheaper. He also had a dark storeroom there,
which acquired legendary status because even then subsequent police raids found nothing incriminating.