The Magic of Saida Read Free Page A

to his right, its ancient ruins a dim blur. On a school trip to the Island once, they had been met by a short, bearded white man, Mr. Archaeologist, who had shown them around the ruins and attempted to narrate the Island’s history to them. Once upon a time there was a great city on the Island, known all over the world, he began, and gave up right there, wistfully watched the oblivious boys racing away screaming in all directions. What did they care about the past.
    Now it was he who had come from abroad to search for a past. Kilwa had called and bid, and now he was here at the “
pays
of my haunting, to feed my obsession.” He had left half a lifetime ago, more; he had made a life elsewhere, planted roots there; and still Kilwa haunted. He had headed out, he said, when there was the world to see; he had seen it. When there were triumphs to achieve, he’d had his modest ones. “I’m a rich man,” he said to me in a tone I could not quite place. He was not boasting; I wished he were, then I could have judged him. I did feel a twinge of envy. It occurred to me that there were many here in this city, in this country, who would have killed to be in his shoes. In Edmonton.
    A haze drifted over the shimmering sea, lending to the far distance a myopic vagueness, an impression that a mere lens would suffice to sharpen the horizon; closer at hand half a dozen small dhows were beached, their sails down, waiting for the tide to rise. A covered cart loaded with salt, perhaps, creaked its way across the wet sand to meet them. The clean, regular beat of a hammer on the woodworkstitching its way to the land. Come evening the dhows would rise and sail, for Zanzibar and Pemba and Mafia. Kamal looked around desperately. This is my place, my little town where I grew up, how can I reclaim it. Where are you, Saida, who called me? I’m here, come find me. And we’ll sit here and watch the sea return, and stroll by the creek, we’ll sit down at the edge of our secret lagoon, hidden by a curtain of fronds … and you will recite?
    When God expelled Adam from Paradise, writes Milton, the angel Michael took him up the tallest hill and showed him the world of his dominion, which included “Mombaz, Melindi and Quiloa.” Paradise lost, paradise regained?
    Literature was Kamal’s favourite subject, and history; how could that not be, growing up in this ancient town, under a poet’s shadow? In high school he had produced plays and written stories. You will be wasted in medicine, said Mr. Fernandes, the English and history teacher. And Kamal had replied with a schoolboy’s passion, “How can you be wasted as a doctor, attending the sick, sir? When we have fewer than fifty doctors for a population of ten million in our country?” Easy, as he was to discover; by going abroad, and attending to the rich.
    He turned around and slowly walked back to the tea shack, where he had left his luggage.
    “This region has a bright future, sir.”
    It took Kamal a moment to realize that this hope, expressed in English, had been articulated outside of his musing. He turned his head towards the genial face at the next table, belonging to a rather large man, who was wearing the traditional white kanzu and kofia.
    “You are here to buy property, sir? Are you on business? I can help you.”
    No, Kamal told him, he was here simply on a visit, and received a doubtful but benign look in return, from someone who knew better. “But I can tell, sir, you have come from abroad.”
    He was originally from Kilwa, Kamal persisted. “My mother was Bi Hamida—perhaps you heard of her?” Why would he, he’s not old enough. No point telling him either that he had lived with his mother just off the street known as the “one behind the Indian shops.”
    “No, I have not heard of her.”
    “You must be a teacher,” Kamal told him politely.
    “A businessman,” the man said, then pointing to his attire, explained, “I have just returned from prayer. But I can be