| Author: |
Jane Bryce |
| Dated: |
Sunday, September 14 2003 @ 08:30 PM EDT |
| Viewed: |
1663 times |
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Home was a long way from the Coast. Driving back after the seaside holiday was hot and boring, without the excitement of going away and the sea and all its adventures to look forward to.
It was hard when her back was burnt and peeling so she couldn’t sit still, but she had to try to keep from bumping the seat in front of her. This year, though, there was the rug. Rolled up on the back seat to keep it out of the dust, its faint, musty fragrance held vague promises of things to come.
Her father had been so excited when he saw the notice ‘Carpet Auction’, and her mother explained it was a sale, and the carpets came from Persia and India. They had gone to the place, it was in the old part of the city, with all the carved wooden doors and little windows high up with iron bars. She stayed close to her mother because it wasn’t like anywhere she had been before, she wasn’t sure of the smell or the narrow streets and the people in their long robes. Inside the auction it was ordinary again, Indian merchants like the ones at home showing you the carpets in a big room, then you sat down and they brought you hot sweet tea on a brass tray. The carpets smelt, not bad but different, rich, as if they had come from far away and brought it with them. A man stood up at the front, calling out things and people called back, and her father called too and at the end of it, they left with three rolled up carpets which one of the Indian merchant’s sons carried to the car. Two of the carpets had to go on the roof-rack, they were too big for inside, only the small one shared the back seat with her. It felt like hers. The parents were happy and it made her feel grown-up, being there, hearing them talk about the auction. “That Mori prayer rug’, said the father, ‘a beautiful piece of work. You don’t get a chance like that very often.” “And the colours, that blue and that red”, said the mother. “Like jewels”.
She knew they wouldn’t go straight home to the holiday house on the beach. It was an excuse for celebration, bottles of Tusker beer and a coke for her, spicy samosas which she loved, fresh roasted groundnuts, maybe an ice-cream. But she wanted to see the rug unrolled, to look at the colours, like jewels, to feel its softness. Mori prayer rug. Her mother explained that Moslems prayed on rugs like that, kneeling towards Mecca, their holy place. The other carpets were patterned all over, the same pattern repeating, with a bright border, one red, one blue. A matching pair. But the rug was different, it had the shape of an arch at one end only. If you held it up it could be a doorway. “The gateway to Paradise”, the mother explained. “When you pray, you pass through the gateway.”
The child thought of Ahmed, the garden boy at home. He was a Moslem, and he was from the Coast. On Friday afternoons, he didn’t come to work because he had to go to the mosque in town. She used to watch him leave, in his special clothes like the ones in the old town when they bought the carpets. Once, her mother was driving into town, and they gave him a lift. At the mosque she saw him join a crowd of men taking off their shoes on the steps. Friday afternoon was the only time she ever saw him in shoes. The rest of the time, he was barefoot and wearing tattered khaki shorts which were too big for him. She craned her neck as they drove away, but she didn’t know when he went inside, or what he did there. She knew Allah was inside. More than once, she had stayed in his room while he prayed, but she had never seen him enter Paradise. Perhaps he needed a rug. Ahmed prayed on a mat facing the wall.
The car spun out the miles in a skein of red dust. Sunburn was easier if you propped yourself on your knees and stared out of the back window, watching the circular swirl of dust, like water going down the plughole in the bath at home. If you were lucky, there might be animals, perhaps a giraffe loping away in the distance, or gazelles peeping from the long savannah grass. Even, something dangerous, an elephant, a rhino, but that was rare, and usually only at dusk, not in the early morning. So you counted the wooden light poles, strung together with a dip in the middle and up at both ends, mile after mile of them, till you got to a hundred and got confused, or sleepy. After hours and hours, they would stop for breakfast at the side of the road, with tea in a thermos that didn’t taste like tea, and sandwiches you never felt like eating, because car travel made you sick. Sometimes you were sick, and you’d better make sure you said so in time for the car to stop so you didn’t do it all over the back seat. But very very slowly the sun would start to fall down the other side of the sky, and you sat up again, waiting for the first glimpse of the mountain, the first familiar landmarks at the edge of town, the turning off the main road, the driveway. Then you were home, falling gratefully out of the car, stretching aching legs, in a frenzy of barking and patting and romping and things being taken bit by bit into the house.
And now, the rug was home. She watched it being carried inside by Antony, the houseboy. She followed him, saw where he put it, on the floor of the sitting room, watched as her father unrolled it, shook it out and laid it down in front of the fire place. Antony wouldn’t know about it, he was a Christian and knelt in church just like they did, not on a rug. Mori. Allah. Paradise. Jewels. She couldn’t wait to see Ahmed.
She found Ahmed in the garden, where he always was, squatting by a flower-bed, carefully planting seedlings with a trowel. He said nothing when she joined him, squatting silently beside him and watching as he dribbled water into the holes he’d made. She knew if she waited he would let her help, but she shouldn’t ask. She followed him around for half the morning, carrying the watering can, heavy at first, becoming lighter and lighter as they progressed. When she saw him glance at the sky, she knew it was time to stop, and she had earned the right to follow him to his room and watch him eat.
She was allowed to taste his food too, but today she was too full of her story.
“Ahmed, we went to an auction. It was in Mombasa. We bought carpets, and a Mori prayer rug. How do you pray with it? Do you enter Paradise?” He looked at her, smiling at her excitement. “Mombasa”, he said. “That’s close to where I come from.” He had told her before about his home. It was an island, Pemba, not as big as Zanzibar, but far more beautiful. He had left it when he was very young and grown up in Tanga, on the Coast. Because there were too many children, his father had sent him to live with his uncle upcountry, and his uncle had come to her father to ask him if he needed a garden boy. The child knew Ahmed’s uncle too, he worked at her father’s office, and he always talked to her when she went there to spend an afternoon. Once a year, he and Ahmed went home to Tanga. It was far, she knew how far, and she was sorry that Ahmed only saw his family then. But Ahmed didn’t seem to mind. He said it was the will of Allah. Allah lived at the mosque, but he could hear Ahmed’s prayers even from his room at home.
“Ahmed, when you pray, do you enter Paradise? Where is it?” He was silent, and his face became mysterious, in a way that was familiar to her. He knew wonderful stories, but you couldn’t make him tell them. Sometimes when she asked a question, he would just stay quiet, as if he hadn’t heard. Other times, he would talk and talk, and she didn’t understand half of what he said. He would talk about his family at the Coast, about Pemba and the spirits who lived there, who were very powerful. He knew things no-one else knew, even how to read the funny letters in the Koran. It was a big book like the Bible, but the writing was different, and when he read he started at the end and read backwards. Sometimes he read to her, the sounds falling all around like music.
“Paradise”, he said. “Paradise is a garden. It has rivers, and a fountain, and when you go there, you wear silk clothes and drink out of silver and crystal.” “Where is it, Ahmed?” the child asked carefully. “We cannot find it on earth”, he replied. “But every garden reminds us of it and that we should try to be good, so we can go there one day.” “Does our garden remind you?” she asked him. “Yes, but it is work. Kazi sana. In Paradise, young maidens do the work and the faithful rest.” “Will I go there too?” she asked.
He was silent, then he shook his head. “You are a Christian”, he said. “Christians have their own place.”
For a moment she was stricken, but then she remembered. “Ahmed, can I show you the rug?” she asked. “It’s beautiful, its colours are like jewels.” He laughed. “Ask the memsahib” was all he would say. She knew it was time for him to rest, and she should go, but she lingered, unsatisfied. “Go now”, he said. “I will meet you in Paradise.” She went.
Antony was cleaning inside, and had put the rug out on the verandah. She had waited several days, hoping this would happen. Ahmed had said to ask her mother, but she didn’t like to in case she said no. Her world was full of incomprehensible prohibitions: don’t cut centipedes in half, don’t ride the bicycle outside the garden, don’t disturb the servants when they’re working. Mostly she did she what she wanted when no-one was watching. She and Ahmed were digging a watercourse from the furrow to the flowerbed on the top terrace, because he had said Paradise was a garden full of rivers, and theirs had none. In the rains, the furrows which circled the garden beyond the hedge were full and rushing with water. Now, they were down to a trickle, but a thunderstorm could come any time, and they would be ready. They had dug for days. It had been her idea, but Ahmed had welcomed it. He said it would save on the hose water. She ran towards him, stumbling a little on the terrace, out of breath.
“Ahmed, please come. The rug is on the verandah”, she panted. He looked up from the hard dry earth he was hacking with a panga to loosen it. He glanced towards the house. He knew its rhythm as well as she, knew the parents were both out and they had nothing to fear, but unlike her, he didn’t take risks with prohibitions. He was the garden boy, and the house was not his domain. Today, however, the work they had been doing together had pleased him, and he wanted to please her in return. Together they approached the verandah, stopping just inside the patch of shade cast by the overhanging roof, in the shadow of the house but still outside its confines. They looked at the rug, spread haphazardly on the low concrete balustrade. Eagerly, she looked at his face, but could see nothing against the bright glare of the light behind him. When he spoke, his hushed voice surprised her.
“That’s the mihrab”, he said reverentially, pointing to the rug. “The archway which points the way to Mecca. It’s on the wall of the mosque too, so we know which way to look when we pray. It’s the gateway of the Prophet, who stands in the door of God. When we pray, all together at the same time, we join with Moslems all over the world who are all thinking of Allah. Then we are on the threshold.”
She did not understand his words. Mihrab. Threshold. But he had seen it, that was enough. He had shared it with her. Until he had seen it, it had held its secret away from her, but now she knew he would tell her more. She only had to prompt him. Shyly, she caught his hand and pulled him backwards, knowing Antony would come soon and catch them. He stepped abruptly back into the brightness, his shorts falling below his belly button. Like him, she was in shorts and barefoot. Together, they trudged back up the garden, and squatted on the parched earth under the flame tree. He picked up a fallen seed pod and scratched a line in the dirt.
“Threshold,” he said. “The door is like this line. One step and you’re across it. But to cross, you must know many things, you must be worthy to enter Paradise. If you are not wise enough yourself, you can ask for help. In Pemba, we have a mighty spirit we can call on. He is one of the djinn who helped Solomon build the arches in the temple, like the archway on the prayer rug. When Solomon died, they went all over the earth, and a very powerful one came to Pemba.”
She wanted to ask, what are djinn? But she didn’t dare interrupt the flow of his words, like water. Instead, she stored them in her mind, where she could sip at them slowly. Threshold. Spirit. Djinn. Mihrab. The words accumulated, pregnant with power. Jewels. She heard his voice resume, still in that hushed tone that was barely above a whisper.
“We are taught that man is made of clay, like this earth.” His fingers scraped the dry ground, his fingernails red with dust. “It was Allah who breathed the spirit into Adam, and our djinn is part of the breath of Allah. In Swahili we say, p’epo. It means spirit, breath, Paradise, all three. When we punga p’epo, we call the spirit, and it fills us up inside.” Ahmed laid his hands flat, red with dust, over his belly button. “I have seen it. The women speak with the djinn’s voice. They are able to cross the threshold. The rest of us can only watch.”
The heat, the smell of the earth, the brilliance of the light, the incantantion of words whose meanings eluded her, filled the child with a kind of ecstasy, and her head swam. Ahmed brought his gaze to rest on her flushed face, and smiled. “You must go inside now, small memsahib”, he ordered. “These things are heavy, and they are only for you. Because of the prayer rug. They are our secret. Even in the mosque, we do not speak of them. There are people who believe that djinn are evil, that when they open their mouths towards heaven, their breath stinks so bad the angels can’t bear it, and so they ask Allah to grant the prayer quickly to stop the smell. They say it’s wrong to pray like that, because it molests the angels. But we know that our djinn protects us, and breathes the breath of Allah into us.”
Ahmed rose, and in a reversal of the previous gesture, held out his hand to pull her to her feet. She staggered a little, the blood all in her feet, sun and shadow dancing across her vision. Then she went to the house.
She was in disgrace. What she dreaded most, her father’s anger, had descended on her, and she still smarted from his hand on her bare legs. Locked in her room at one end of the house, she had wept so much her throat was swollen, and her breath came in hiccups that threatened to choke her. She had tried to explain, to no avail. Her words seemed to carry no meaning, no-one wanted to hear. “It was the archway”, she wailed. “You go through it to reach Paradise. You have to pray and the spirit fills you, then you can pass through. He only has a wall, I wanted him to have the archway…”
They had found the prayer rug in Ahmed’s room while he was at the mosque. She had carried it there when she saw him leave, in his kanzu and sandals, and less than an hour later, Antony had come to report to her mother that it was missing. Theft was a serious thing, especially by a member of the household. Her mother had waited for her father to come home, and he had decreed a search of the servants’ quarters. At first, she had stayed quiet, paralysed with fear, as they discussed what to do with Ahmed on his return.
“He’ll have to go. We can’t have him entering the house like that, let alone taking things. And a carpet….” “But if it means something in his religion, can’t we warn him this time? He probably didn’t see it as stealing.” Her father always got impatient with her mother when she made excuses for the servants. “Don’t be silly, they all know what stealing is. You have to make an example when this kind of thing happens. You can’t afford to be soft.” Her mother, who shared the house and the garden with Antony and Ahmed, clung to her own version. “But he’s never done anything like this before, and he’s such a good shamba boy. I don’t know where I’ll find someone who’s so good with plants again.”
It was a while before she realised what it meant. They thought Ahmed had stolen the rug, and they were going to send him away. She knew she had to speak, but it was a while before she could find the words. She waited till her mother was alone, and whispered it in her ear. She and Mummy had secrets from Daddy, and she begged her not tell, but Mummy looked sad and said it was too serious and she had to tell him or Ahmed would suffer. Daddy was very angry. He was cold and hard, and he took her by the wrist and dragged her round the back of the house. She was afraid of him, the way she had to run to keep up with him, the way he looked straight ahead and his mouth was a thin, straight line. It hurt when he hit her, but what hurt more was that he didn’t want to listen. As if she wasn’t there, as if there wasn’t a reason for what she had done. Ahmed needed the rug, it was the archway. Daddy said she nearly got Ahmed the sack, and what on earth possessed her to be in his room? Then he locked her up, and she heard the car leaving and knew her parents had gone to the club. She listened to the silence and felt the heat in the bedroom lie on her skin, making it hard to breathe. She was still locked up when it began to rain.
She had not seen the lightning flash at first, but she heard the thunder through her wails. The first crack split the sky apart, and she screamed in terror. Antony would be in the kitchen, but she was all alone. It had never happened before. When there was a thunderstorm, she would be with her mother, and they would hold each other as they watched the lightning, and she would feel safe. But to be alone, in a locked room, and oh! She screamed again as the thunder boomed and the house shook, and then the rain came. A curtain suddenly fell between her and the garden, so heavy was the rain, beating on the rooftiles, flinging itself at the earth. She shivered and trembled, weeping at its ferocity, but her sobs were drowned in the downpour. It grew dark, but she was too weak to leave the window, immobilised by misery. To comfort herself, she placed her two hands flat on her belly, as she had seen Ahmed do that day in the garden. She breathed the words she had heard him speak — djinn, mihrab, threshold — as if summoning a powerful spirit. Mesmerised by the fall of water, numbed by the sound of its drumming on the ground, she was startled back into terror by a voice speaking very close to her. It seemed to come from inside the room, and she looked around wildly, but saw nothing. It spoke again, barely a murmur, and now she knew it came from the gloom outside.
“Small memsahib, it is me. Ahmed. Don’t be afraid. I heard what happened, and that they locked you up. They will be back soon, but I am here now. Don’t cry any more. I am here.” Ahmed. She strained her eyes and could just make him out, pressed up against the mosquito netting of the window, sheltering as best he could between the wall of rain pouring from the overhanging roof and the rough exterior wall of the house. He must have come back from the mosque and Antony would have told him the story. Did he know she nearly got him the sack? Did he know her father beat her?
“It’s all right, memsahib kidogo. I heard about the rug. It was wrong to take it, but you told the truth and you should not have been punished for it. But don’t worry, Allah knows. He is everywhere and he will protect you. Did you hear the thunder? That was his voice. He has sent a blessing to the garden. The rain will fill the furrow, and water will flow along our channel, and the garden will have a river, just like we said. Tomorrow, when they go to work, we will visit our Paradise.”
Outside, Ahmed shivered, wet to the skin and frozen. Inside, the child clung to the window bars, absorbing his voice. Neither of them knew when the car returned, the crunch of tyres on the gravel obliterated by the rain. But the child heard the bolt shoot back on the outside of the door, and turned, and saw her mother, her tennis dress steaked with rain, drops of water in her hair. She dropped her tennis racquet on the floor, and the child ran into the cool damp softness of her arms.
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Having just enjoyed reading 'The Walking Dream' I thought I would enjoy returning to this story and I did. When is your collection of short stories entitled Chameleon due to be published and by whom? ;-)