Uhuru Street Read Free

cut. A cup of tea duly came my way and Amin was dispatched to buy something. Roshan sat across from me at her dressing table and I realised that I was sitting there like one of her customers.
    ‘You wanted to discuss something?’ I began.
    ‘Yes, I have something to tell you. You must have heard that Zarina is going to live with her brother in Mbinga.’
    ‘No, I haven’t heard. What happened? Can’t she make it here?’
    ‘No, it is difficult. And the boy is giving her a hard time. He needs a father. A man he can fear and respect.’
    ‘Yes, yes. His uncle will be good for him.’ I felt a little uncomfortable. Behind her a faint light poured in through a small window almost blotted with dust. She was slurping tea. ‘She is a good and clever woman,’ I ventured warily. But you, I said in my mind, are the equal of ten ordinary men.
    ‘If you were a bachelor, you would marry her, I know!’ And she laughed merrily, her cup tinkled against the saucer. ‘Why don’t you take her for your second wife?’
    ‘This is no time for joking, Roshan,’ I answered severely. She had me positively flustered.
    ‘I am not joking, brother. You like her and the other day you touched her in your shop. You should marry her! Go with her!’
    I spoke gravely. ‘I don’t need a second wife, Roshan. I have Baby, and I am satisfied.’
    ‘Ho! Who says? Why don’t you have children then, tell me! You like this woman and you touched her. And she is good and fertile, I tell you. Good and fertile! And she works hard, as hard as your Baby. You know what they are saying about you? They say you are henpecked. “Like her son,” they say. “Follows her like a tail, wherever she goes. No stuff! Hides in her armpits!” ’
    When I’ve had enough I’ve had enough. I got up. ‘Who says this?’ I asked. ‘Let them say it to my face. Let them dare to say it to my face! Just once, I tell you! Do you hear me? Tell them to say it to my face!’ I told her what I thought of them, whoever they were, and I left.

    Behind the rooms in the courtyard the servant irons the clothes I’ve decided to take with me. They include the shirts and trousers I brought with me and the wedding suit which was a gift from my guardian, nothing that I received from here. Behind me stashedaway inside a shelf is a wad of money that I’ve surely contributed to earning and which they could easily earn at month’s end. These two things, the clothes and the money, I would like to take with me in a small wooden trunk I bought for this purpose from a hawker. Soon Baby and Kulsum will get up and prepare for the Sunday walk to the seashore. It has to be soon. But German sits there like an old dog who’s smelt something. He sits patiently on the bench, with the knife in one hand and one half of the sliced ball in the other. If I go, it will have to be with the clothes on my body and the few shillings jingling in my pocket.

Ali
    When Ali came to work for us we were in the throes of domestic disruption. His predecessor had failed to show up after borrowing thirty shillings to add to what little remained of his salary at month’s end, and for a few weeks we were at the mercy of a spate of temporaries who could not be relied on for their honesty or their work. My two sisters went to school like martyrs one day – box pleats ending ruinously half way down their pinafores – and suffered the expected barbs from their teachers. ‘We were the town fools today!’ raged Mehroon, as another temporary servant was paid his daily wage and told not to return. Another day my brother Firoz’s shorts returned from the wash minus a shilling. Or so he claimed and was largely believed. Finally I, only in Standard I and therefore excused from the punctiliousness expected of the others, nevertheless came home one afternoon with a note complaining about my attire. It was obvious, we could no longer simply wait in the hope that a suitable and cheap houseboy would happen by and set us in