In The Beginning

Another Life The morning scratches her claws across the dusty blackboard of the night. The sky is slung low in Africa, if you could stretch your arms just a little further, your fingertips might graze something soft and black and enter into the layer of dreams. Streaky slivers of light open a little wider and turn milky, clouds and colours are revealed. A gentle hibiscus-pink softly grazes the edges of the dawn. Then, slowly, the eyelids of morning open, heavy with sleep and day raises her arms. Reluctantly she wakes from a deep sleep like a child, to the sound of her mother’s voice calling. Another day, time for the fuzzy remnants of our dreams to take flight. The hemlines of night’s gown rise slowly and are folded away. We live in a squat, sprawling house, in Kampala, 17 Acacia Avenue. It nestles in the shade of thorn trees and a vanilla and raspberry ripple swirl of a magnolia tree. Every morning, , the grass is carpeted with waxy, smile-shaped petals and I can hear Alex, the gardener sweep them aside with a broom made of twigs. It scrapes the footpaths which meander between his manicured flowerbeds. That sound, the crackle of dry branches, the swift whisk of his wrist as he flicks, is the sound that percolates through my half-sleeping state. I am four and barefoot by choice. I don’t wear shoes or socks. It takes much wrangling and cajoling by Teresa, my ayah to get me to wear more than the orange, cotton-lawn print dress which reaches above my knees and a straw boater with a trailing, cream ribbon, which my father has brought me back from his travels somewhere west. This is the uniform of my childhood. Ours is a stuttering, cluttering house, filled with noise and newly whitewashed. It’s stuffed with the latest gadgets such as Hoovers and record players. This is the late 60s and my parents lie at the heart of beautiful, bright, brown things who inhabit this play-play paradise. My grandparents made Uganda their home; they had been brought here by

the British in India to supervise the network of railways that was required to connect the far-flung corners of this dark-hearted continent. But Africa never loved us or reached out to take us in; we were unwanted guests who overstayed our welcome, sucking out all that was good and rich and leaving resentment and dry bones in our wake. We claimed it, anyway, we staked out our homesteads with tall fences and razor wire and pretended everything was just fine. “This is now mine,” we asserted. My ancestors glare angrily from fading sepia toned photographs at the mess we have made, they look stern, in their military uniforms with their MBEs shining; they look so British with their stiff, swarthy Asian upper lips. They were more British than the boys from home. The Asians who came from India, are the proud, fairskinned Farsis from Iran with their lilting language and the Hindus and Muslims from Northern India and Pakistan. They had no predilection for going native; that was a mad dogs and Englishmen affliction, only for the white sahibs; those other, affectedly barefoot, Home Counties expats who called Keeh-nyah “home.” My ancestors on my mother’s side were honoured by having streets named after them, across East Africa that were changed after the uprisings and eventually, independence. Alidina Visram Street became Daniel Arap Moi Avenue. Like specks of dirt in the tropical rain, our heritage in that part of the world was washed away swirling, down, down into history’s forgotten sewers. We had no right to belong, that was removed by the swift stroke of an unforgiving pen, the same one that rewrites history over the centuries. What would they say, to that, those khaki-camouflaged proud forbearers of mine? But for now, this is my kingdom, and it stretches as far as I can see. The house is enclosed by a high wire fence, around the perimeter and there’s an askari at the gate. He stands up straight and tall when guests or delivery boys arrive; he is proud he has a purpose and can commit his respect with dignity, in the smallest task. He towers over me like the black knight in a pack of cards but he doesn’t frighten me; Teresa and Askari are my playmates. I call him Askari. Askari is the Swahili word for

guard, I hear my parents address him in this way so I call him by his function. I never knew his name. These are the people that populate my games of pretend, they willingly take on the roles I ascribe them; Teresa will stand still for me as I tie her with lengths of string, which she uses to hang up the laundry. We pretend she has been captured and all the while she only smiles and sweats sweetly, letting off the fragrance of carbolic soap and cocoa butter. While I play under her feet, she shakes out the wet clothes from her straining reed basket and hangs them up to dry so they flutter, making mute, dazzling prayer flags which smack the white, midday sunshine. In my play world Askari is the hunter, he chases lions and tigers through the wilderness of the garden, shouting to me if he catches sight of one, which only he and I can see. Teresa shakes her head, convinced he is wasting time when he should be working. She tells me in vain, that there are no tigers in Africa. The consequences of other people’s actions make my life what it is. That much is clear, life was what they made for me, and mine was stable and predictable. Teresa goes to the market most mornings to buy fresh vegetables for soup at lunchtime. Sometimes, a stream of mbogha mamas forms a shuffling queue, outside the gate to our compound. They wait in a silent, restless queue for her to come out and see what they are selling. They pray that today she doesn’t feel like treading the melting tarmac under the sweltering African sun, which floats amidst Disney-like animated clouds. At this tiny age I understand rank, and Teresa pulls it with the corner of her mouth or the flick of an eye, a cold stare and the vegetable ladies straighten up like a ragamuffin regiment. In this scorching equatorial inequality, I learn about the relationship between the buyer and the seller, she has the power: she chooses for lunch what we will eat and only her choice will decide the vendors will have money. Then they can feed their own, all hungry like baby cuckoos.

The crumpled, dirty bank- notes she takes from her apron pockets, which look dead and dull to me, confirm her place at the top of their supply chain. The skin on Teresa’s balloon face is shiny and almost indigo, like an aubergine. She leans her huge bosom over the basket for shucking peas which she lifts with calibrated precision, then she lowers herself down, flat footed in the same way that small children and yogis do, but her massive behind balances her out so she doesn’t topple over. Carefully, she drapes her starched apron over her knees, and it makes snowy peaks of their mounds, and there she sits over the peas in their pods and she nips their long green talons. She inspects each one. Those that pass muster she gently places into a pan of cold water, next to her swollen and cracked ankles. She arraigns the rejected peas, cursing under hissing breath, as if they are deliberately trying to cheat her, with her flinty eyes shining and her flat nose flaring. They will be dealt with later. After the labour of the morning, the aroma of freshly made bread and steaming soup curls from the kitchen into the garden, and she calls me, “Farah, toto kidogo, come to eat.” I pretend not to hear and she calls again. This is part of our ritual. She waddles, out of the house, carrying the glass bowl of clear vegetable soup, which she holds in a corner of her apron. On the edge of the bowl she has balanced slices of bread. The bread is warm and steam rises from the soup, but Teresa seems to feel no pain. She can walk barefoot like a stoic on the footpath with a basket of vegetables or laundry perched on her head, an exotic jungle cat. I sputter behind her, jumping up and down, if the soles of my feet hit the ground for more than a second, I am like hot oil off a heated frying pan. All the time, she walks serenely, unaffected, as if she is in a

deportment class, but balancing baskets and not books on her head. The skin on her soles and her heels are as cracked and dry as the clay seams in the earth, but I am fascinated with her hands; where they turn pink and fleshy. Her hands tell a life-story; the ridges on the sides of her fingers where dark meets light skin form an almost straight line. It’s the same way in which night falls on the horizon, a parallel line against the fading sun softened landscape. I hold my tiny, brown hands against her arm, broad, hairless and muscular. Her skin is as taut as a drum, she is wrinkle free. I love the contrast, of my light and her darkness, there is something familiar and comforting in her deep, burnished colour, I look uncooked beside her. I love her warm hands, they feel safe. But best of all I love her voice. She tells stories of magical animals and warrior men that talk to them, who fall asleep under open, starry skies, in the dusky shadow of a lion’s mane. Her tales tell of man and beast sharing the earth, living side by side. At night she sings to me, her voice is as soft and sweet, as full as the moonlight’s sanctuary which covers our house under its midnight veil. In Africa I live close to the earth and I feel the nuances of her moods in the shapes of the seasons; the rain falls like clockwork, at noon. It pours down in buckets like a song, freed from the order of any music. Rain unleashes frenzies of colourless chains, which whip the ground the colour of dried blood, into a foamy copper frenzy. Plants and buds grow before my eyes; seasons change in minutes and as fast as the rain comes down the sun scorches all signs of the downpour away. Life has kodachrome intensity; colours breathe alive like fire and jostle for space on this palette of splashy, primary hues. Scents unfurl, laying their trails to tempt honeybees, and butterflies as large as my hands quiver by, they shimmy to a tune I can’t make out. Life teems at three feet high; there is a steady flow of notes and sights in shapes and scents which tell an ongoing story. I remember almost falling, so many times but his pale hands with long taperedfingers would always catch me. I remember grazing my knees, falling out of trees or into bushes and he was always there with a clean handkerchief and a kind smile in his grey eyes. He is my Bapaji, my father’s father, handsome with heavy lidded, almond eyes, which are set deep within his slim, almost gaunt face. He wears his clothes dispassionately; he has a body that lets clothes hang but he is effortlessly stylish. His were the engulfing hugs that comforted me when I couldn’t understand the excitement over the arrival of a new baby brother, who was the apple of everyone’s eyes except his and mine. His were the arms that broke my skating falls as I slided and glided along polished parquet floors that marked out the flattened boundaries of my early years. He is more of a secret ally than a grandparent. His deep voice ripples like a fingertip over velvet squares, it soothes my mind. He is electric and enigmatic; he doesn’t care what anyone thinks. He isn’t like the other grownups that crowd my world. Whilst my father who was the prototype yuppie was busy recreating himself in the shape of his God, my grandfather was a hippy before it was chic. He held a continued interest in all things from the sub-continent, which his peers had disavowed and shunned as soon as they touched the African shores. They shook the dried dust of the Mother country off the soles of their chappals and never looked back. But such pretentious gestures of disavowal weren’t for Kassam, he was a living alchemist; he changed

everyone around him. He was born in Karachi and met Jena, my Maa in Dar-es-Salaam, but he sent my grandma, his new bride, to his family in Karachi, which was still in India, after my dad was born, as the First World War broke out. He was a pacifist but he fought in the war because he wanted to secure a future for his newborn son and his young bride. The war promised the protection of the empire; it was a passport to citizenship in 1939 and my Maa told me terrible tales of their passage to India. All the stories that were told about my grandpa after he died, all the bitterness and the twisting of history into contorted shapes to suit my family’s dysfunction, they carry the clear hallmark of lies. He was the gentlest man, who named me after Farah Diba, the wife of the Shah; he must have seen the star that anticipated the way my life would twist and turn. There’s so much in a name, he told me. My name is a wish. In Arabic it means specifically the joy and happiness, which is elicited by a wedding. Communal joy. Perhaps he thought an inspirational name, for it was the Chardonnay, Bianca, Apple of the times. Maybe he thought it would guarantee success in my life. If I could have chosen my name, I would have chosen the same one. It fits me.