Uhuru Street Read Free Page B

every morning we woke up to his fist banging on the door. He would make the tea and send us off to school. Then he would clean the dishes, sweep the floors, and do the beds, before going down to help Mother who was already in the store. He would run errands and was learning to cook. Every evening a pile of clothes would be ready, washed, dried, and ironed – pleats done just right, shorts turned up at the legs at just the right length, shirt collars turned up or down, fully or partly, according to the dictates of current fashion in school. The pile rose in a pyramid from a chair, starting with a base of shorts and dresses and ending at the peakwith hankics. Each evening Mother would call out to him as he left, ‘Tomorrow don’t sleep, you hear?’ And he, already outside, would reply, ‘No Mama, I won’t,’ knowing full well what she meant.
    In short, Ali became indispensable. Yet he showed no signs of wanting to move on. No backtalk from him, no laxity in his work. And herein lay the wonder. What kept him with us? Not the pay, certainly; and not the working conditions, for ours was a modest household, with no benefits to speak of. He did not steal: nothing was unduly missing from the flat; our curries prepared by Mother in the morning survived the day with their modest meat portions intact; and he faithfully took our food offerings to the mosque without consuming anything on the way, so we were assured by the chits he brought back with him. He could easily have found a better paying job elsewhere, now that he had mastered the workings of an Indian household. Neighbours were already eyeing him approvingly. But he did not leave. Everyone in our home appreciated this, of course, but it made the situation a little uneasy. There was a feeling of uncertainty about. Mother gave him a raise without his asking for it.
    I was Ali’s special and added responsibility. Often he came to fetch me from school when for some reason my elders failed to accompany me. On our way back, in the hot afternoon when the dirt roads and the whitewashed mud houses reflected sharply the sun’s glare, when he saw me finally stumbling along and lagging behind, he would pick me up and carry me on his shoulders the rest of the way. He came looking for me when I was missed. And I used to plague him for the stories he knew. On our way back from school, or later across the table where I watched him iron clothes, or downstairs in the store when there was nothing special for him to do, I would plead with him: ‘Say a story, Ali!’ If he was in the right mood, his eyes would pick up a gleam, his face a smile. He would begin. He spoke about the cunning rabbit who tricked thehyena; how the zebra exchanged his muddy brown suit for the lion’s striped black-and-white; of wily Abunawas, who outwitted everyone in sight. As he went on his voice gained expression, his eyes caught fire, and I listened spellbound. ‘The rabbit ran, and he ran, he ran and he ran, he raaaa … an, until he got tired. Then he spotted a big leafy tree.’ And Ali, himself getting out of breath, would drop whatever was in his hands and show the full expanse of the tree, its girth and height, and point to its top where the rabbit climbed, while his witless pursuer waited at the foot.
    His favourite stories undoubtedly were about Shane. He had a host of Shane stories, most of which he invented as I now realise. A game he loved to play was to move to one side after knocking on our door. Then, when the door opened, he would step out swiftly with the cry, ‘Shane, look out!’ pretending to draw a revolver and shoot down whoever it was who had answered. Once he did that to Mother – by mistake, I believe – much to his dismay.
    I learnt about Roy Rogers from Ali. On a wall in our stairwell he had drawn with charcoal a full-length sketch of the cowboy in full regalia. It was so well done that no one thought to bring him to task for defacing the wall, and no one ever wrote or painted