Abdulrazak Gurnah: Bossy

Abdulrazak Gurnah

Bossy

A long time ago that was, sitting on the barnacled pier, swinging our legs though the air. Princess Margaret pier in the long shadow of the afternoon, watching the sea beneath us frothing with arms and legs and flashing teeth. A long story I told him, urbane and wise, a fabric of lies. I told him of a man who stood by the sea and peed, and how his pee was continuous without end. Like the tongue of infinite length, all coiled up in a man's insides. On Princess Margaret pier we watched Ferej eat up the water like a shark. The water choppy and bright on the day he won the schools' championship. On Princess Margaret pier, after a day in 1956 when the good princess laid foot on our humble land. On the other side were four guns, riveted into the concrete and facing the sea. Ceremonial fire-crackers to bid the princess welcome.

The letter had arrived that morning, a dirty scrap to shatter my self-inflicted peace. Karim's name was written clearly on the back of the air mail form, and all the remaining space was covered with hand-written HAPPY NEW YEAR wishes.

31 December 1973

Dear Haji,

(O Pilgrim of the Promised Land)

I am sitting inside our office, or to be more precise, our storeroom, being entertained by the sounds of the sawing, planning, sanding and drilling machines. Together with the rhythmic taping of hammers on nails, all this combines to form a unique masterpiece at the eleventh hour of the year. The prevailing atmosphere has nothing to do with my writing to you, but just to deliver that presently I am indentured to a cyclops by name Rahman whose cave this Wood-Works is. I guess you will be surprised to hear that I am also concubined to his daughter.

You may also be surprised to hear that today I am celebrating my first 'Go West Young Man' anniversary. It is only twenty miles west, but you know how big that distance really is. Exactly a year ago, on a Sunday afternoon, myself along with some other freedom lovers were preparing to act and follow that great genius, master and generator of electricity, the organiser and pilot of our expedition, Captain-General Jabir Dumas (also well known as Hamlet of ST 9 fame). Between you and me, I learned the identity of the mastermind too late to retreat, just when the sail was being hoisted in fact. But before we could wave fond goodbye to the dear homeland, forever verdant and green, we were tackled by a wandering militia guard. It needed a hefty bribe to fix him. We had a hazardous journey, during which it was apparent that hour Hamlet did not know southerly from a handsaw. However, we landed on a beach which turned out to be some eighty miles north of our destination. Once we'd landed, the journey was smooth and easy, and I shall remain content to say that we arrived here tired but in one piece. So much for the forced adventure.

What has been happening to you over the last year? Your silence seems to grow deeper with time. Your last letter contained only one line, and I did not even understand it. Are you still working or have you found a university place yet? Write and tell me how you are doing, buddy. I want to hear about all those females who are keeping you busy. Send me a snapshot if you can. I want to see if you have got any fatter.

I have been continuing with my studies in evening classes. It's damned hard work getting back from the mill and going straight to college. As you might guess, I am not doing very well. I have to attend every evening. I start work at seven in the morning which doesn't leave much time for studying at home. Still, nothing ventured. I have become very interested in the poetry of the French symbolists, but as you know it's not easy to get books here. If you see anything along those lines, I would be very grateful if you would sent it to me. Refund by pigeon-post. You know, I miss all those conversations we used to have. There’s no one here to talk to, not seriously anyway. People just want to talk about who has been caught fiddling with government funds.

A lot of the pals from home are here now. Hassan was caught trying to escape with some Goan girls in a ngarawa. They were kept for a few days at the police station, then released, nobody knows why. Hassan somehow managed to find another way of escaping and his too is here now. The Barrister has gone to a University in Boston to do Intentional Chemistry. Don't ask me, that's what he said. I met his brother recently and he told me that our barrister is paid a lot of dollar by the American government, who are also paying his fees. So I am thinking of applying to Uncle Sam too.

Did you have a nice Christmas? It was very quiet here except Bachu got drunk and started calling our island leader 'ham neck'. Poor fellow got kicked out of his office calling his boss a donkey. Incidentally, do you remember, Amina Marehemu, Rashid's sister? She must have been about ten when you left. She is now a prostitute. No more room. Write soon and don't forget the snap.

Regards from all the pals.

Yours,

Karim.

Gleeful tally sheet of past misdeeds. A time there was . . . but we ended it all with a careless selfishness. Now a fool with a poor style can make fun of your sister. He wants me to send him books of the French Symbolists because he can't get them out there. You missed the worst, Rashid. You missed the worst, my Bossy. Your sister appears as a footnote and not a tear shed for her. You too, you and I we would have watched while a neighbour turned beggar and sold his daughter for shark-meat. And we too would have laughed. All they taught us was how to be meek while they rode rough-shod. You and I, we had something . . . In this cold and often hostile place I often think of you. It was a morning in December that I first wept for you. But by then that heartless land had turned your blood to dust.

It was a beautiful morning in December, bone dry and hot. We went to borrow a boat to go sailing because we were bored with being on holiday with nothing to do. He went one way, I went the other. He got a boat. I didn't.

'This is your captain speaking,' he said, assuming command.

When he saw that I wasn't going to argue, he suggested that we go and find somebody else to go with us. At that very minute a fellow called Yunis appeared and we struggled into the outrigger and pushed off before he could come and talk to us. Yunis was nicknamed Wire because it was quite obvious that he had some wires disconnected in his head. He was harmless enough but he had allowed this idiocy of his to go to his head. A little guilty I watched him standing on Ras Matengo looking our way. He was probably used to people running away from him.

Before I got to know Rashid well, Wire and I used to spend a lot of time together. He told me about his crazy projects and I told him about mine. He was going to build a ship and sail it himself. He possessed several manuals on ship-building and navigation. The people at the shipping control office knew him well and called him captain to please him. Wire never seemed to listen when you talked to him and even little children could bully him. I saw a little boy of six pee in his mouth once while he was lying in the shade of a tree. Without saying a word, Wire had stood up and left. The adults watching had laughed and patted the boy on the back. I have seen Wire walking past a group of youths lathering at the mouth with fire. But under the line of trees by the dockside, very few people bothered us. We started a club the two of us. It was really a prisoner-of-war camp. I was a major and he was, of course, a captain. I boasted to him about how well I was doing at school and he lied to me about his father's estates in India.

His father lived in one of the houses my father owned. It was supposed to be a shop and apparently was at one time a thriving shop. But as far as I can remember, all it ever had were boxes of rusty nails and showcases with old fishing hooks and twine. It anybody stopped to buy anything from the shop, Wire's father would ask them to lend him some money. He went to the mosque every day, five times a day, and always asked somebody for money. He did the rounds of his neighbours and asked them for more money. He went to the welfare office and asked them for more money. I don't know if he ever made any money from all this, but I know he never paid my father any rent. He was thin and small and the skin on his cheeks was leathery and flabby. His jaw was sunken because he had no teeth left. Wire told me that he had large estates in India but he did not have enough money for the journey back home. Wire would build a ship and take his family back home if he could. In the meantime his father tried to persuade his son to take a job, but Wire always refused on teh grounds that then he would not be able to continue with his maritime studies.

I watched him standing at the water's edge on Ras Matengo and remembered the times we used to site under the line of trees and eat rotten fruit and stolen biscuits. My parents were worried then about our friendship and my behaviour, they thought I too had a screw missing. I watched the idiot standing at the brink, watching us sailing to his father's estates in India. Rashid was laughing, saying what a close call that was. In full sight of the beach Rashid began to imitate Wire's made mannerisms. He folded his legs under him and rocked his trunk backwards and forwards in a steady rhythm. Wire used to do that when he was young, for hours on end. He was watching us with a smile. He smiled and waved and turned to go.

'What did you do that for?' I asked Rashid.

He ignored me and peeled his shirt off. I think he was ashamed of my former friendship with Wire.

'Let's go cracking!' he suggested. 'At least if you want to get to the island and back in time for dinner.'

Bossy was in his element. I knew nothing about boats and he was an expert. He was also a champion swimmer, a national record-holder over 400 metres. He was a footballer with a future and a very useful slow left-arm bowler. He was fair skinned and handsome and wore a wristwatch with a silver strap. It was given to him by the English Club for taking seven of their wickets for 23 runs. To begin with I was proud to be his friend, but over the years we have go to know each other and was stopped bossing me around.

My god, it hurts to talk like this, as if what has happened had not happened. Bossy and I walked the streets in tandem. We wrote letters to Hakim and signed them Carol and watched him strut and preen and boast of a secret admirer. We even arranged meetings between him and 'Carol' and always cancelled them at the last minute. Bossy and I spent many dark hours by the cricket ground talking about the future and the past.

On that day in December we set off for Prison Island. The island had been used briefly by the British as a jail, that's why it was given that name. There was now only the perimeter of the camp left. It was a beautiful island, with gently rolling hills and underground springs bubbling into streams. It was supposedly off bounds to visitors but nobody took any notice.

The sail on the outrigger caught the breeze and we slipped over the water with only a faint tearing sound. The sea was calm and blue under the morning light, and Rashid started to sing. He sang very badly and did it to provoke laughter more than anything else. He turned to look back towards land. I remember that because then he turned round to me and said "didn't it look beautiful from here?" It was calm and peaceful and the breeze was just enough to keep the boat moving and us cool. But there was something else. You felt that somehow you had got away from a suffocating room and you were now running free in an open field. The water was cook, as you might imagine water to be, not like the lukewarm water out of the tap. It was the town itself that looked so unreal to us, like a quaint model in a builder's office. Out here it did not matter that the trousers did not fit, that your skin was fair or dark. There were no smelly alleys to walk through, no slippery ditches to cross, no fanatical and self-righteous elders to humiliate you. There were not even women to taunt you with their bodies beyond reach.

'I can't just leave Mama and Amina' said Rashid.

His father had died a couple of years previously. In the Msikti Mdogo I had stood at a distance and watched him calmly performing the duties of a bereaved son. He walked around amongst the mourners, accepting the condolences of neighbours and strangers with a dry face. I wished he would shed a few tears, for his own sake. It doesn't look good when a sixteen year old can go to his father's funeral with a dry face. Afterwards he said that he did not cry because he had felt nothing inside. He had wanted to feel sad that his father had died but instead he felt only responsibility for the surviving relatives. He said his father had been cruel and distant to him ever since he could remember. And now he was really quite relieved that the old bastard had died. I said you can't hold that sort of thing against a dead man. So he smiled his tolerant big brother smile at me and asked who he should hold it against in that case. I told him that a dead man needed our prayers and he said that prayers would not do that old fucker any good at all. He said the angels of hell must be rubbing their hands at the prospect of his arrival. I said it didn't seem right to talk about your father like that. He said I did not understand because I had a find father who cared about me and took an interest in me and what I was doing. I said it still didn't seem right to want him to go to hell. He was silent for a long while then told me that there was no hell. And here I told him that he was wrong.

'I can't just leave them on their own.' he said, apologetically. 'What will they do? What will they do on their own?

'You won't be gone forever,' I said. 'You'll be back to care for them.'

'Mama is getting old.' he said. 'What's the use of me going away somewhere for five or six years to become a forestry officer only to come back and find that my mother is dead and my sister is a whore.'

'Don't bullshit, Bossy.' I said.

'Okay,' he said. 'Maybe I'm not painting it too bright.'

I told him that his tone reminded me of Mundhir's painting of the Black Sea.

Ancient perambulator of a seaward elitat. Velvet blue waist coats and a dark green metal rims waving from the steamer. Buibui of a waterborne outing with a crowd of ragamuffins to serve the sweetmeat. Out for the day with muscular chaperones and camera clicking siblings.

At the island.

Improvised louver in the bush for temporary lordosis with bent knees.

Hasty dunking on the treacherously sandbanked beach to wash the crumbs away and depart for the crumbling fortress of a bygone empire.

Bygone by name.

Over the remains Bossy read the Psalm of Life and lingered meaningfully over dust to dust and sang 'Rule Brittania' with an emotional choke. Lest there be any mistaking his intention, he waved two fingers in benediction.

Deadwood remnants at the camp of the trivial offender against the crown. At the word of command the salvo blew the cheeks apart. That will teach the silly bugger to pay his taxes next time.

Over the water turned to dust and a musical lyre was found by the British Archaelogical Expedition to the eastern coast of Africa in 1929 to clinch the theory of an Indonesian invasion plan. Fragments of skull found the Blunt KCMG at the lip of the gully to suggest human life before the beginning of time. As counted from the eighth millennium BC. Before that do not apply.

In Blunt Gully Bossy louvered again and nearly choked from the smell. In a grotto of palms over-run with the weeds and wild tomatoes we discovered an underground town. We were not welcome and hurried from fierce mandibles until weakened by fatigue and hunger we collapsed under a mango tree which we immediately named Out of Town. Pungent leaf mold and rotting humus and ripe mangoes oozing on the ground. Bossy bigboots was voted upstairs to wheedle bounty for the starving vanguard of a civilising race. Mangoes on the ground in torpid contentment, oozing like dysentery in harmony with the flies. The captain returned with phosphates in his eyes, the bounty of a discordant piebald crow. We sank to our knees in humiliating penance and fought for mangoes with the flies. God was on our side.

Bossy bigboots brushed the dirt off his booty while hygiene rang through my skull.

I held Hunger in Abeyance and warned Bossy that by Avarice he was undone.

'O Mummy in my heart,' I prayed, 'if ever I needed you it is now. Tell me truly, O Fount of Hygiene, will I sooner die of Hunger or of Dysentery. O Wiper of my Arse, I have heeded your word through Thick and Thin generally speaking, but now a Text sirens through my guts to throw Caution to the winds. Could it be the Serpent, Viper vile, that so flatters Me to against your Word?' To a thicket I slunk and Guilty rash gorged of the Forbidden Fruit. Earth trembled from her Entrails but I took no thought content to eat my fil.

Faint rumble pinpoint umbilical cord, distant flutter in the heart. I knelt down waiting for the thunder to strike, and Bossy looked on with pagan amazement. Mother Hygiene restrained her hand. We left that pernicious grotto myself restrained and chastened, Bossy exultant and full.

To the waterfall.

It seemed then that there ought to be a watermill as a sign of progress and evidence of an ancient Indonesian culture. Feet in the pool at the bottom, kicking the water in adolescent delight. WE drank the water at our feet, walked to the slimy rocks midpool like rising crustaceans covered with slime. We posed for a photo to show the folks back home hand on hip.

This rock we named Bygone My Arse.

As we sat under that rippling fall, I gazed in wonder at what the old voyagers must have seen. In this same place an Indonesian sultan must have stood with the power of the human gaze to tear holes through nature's incomprehensible veil. Bear thee up Bossy and trust the power of they unflinching gaze. How many men had stood where you and me than stood and saw nothing of what we saw? We were God's chosen few . . . and we sat by the brimming pool and saw world without end in our humble reflections. . . . in foolish daydream pretense. The words of dead past masters ringing anvils to stiffen our self-esteem.

But soon it was time to leave the heaven of that waterfall encampment for the final leg of our journey. Bossy took the lead while I patrolled the rear. As I watched him cut his way through the thicket I wondered again at the destiny that he Almighty had arranged for us. But come what may, I knew that we had done our share in fulfilling the burden of our race. Notwithstanding. Around.

We got back to the beach where we had left the outrigger and went in for a swim. At least Bossy did while I stood in water waist deep and washed the grime off my body.

"Don't show off!" I shouted to him.

He waved back, turned to face the beach and came in at a sprint. I told him he was a bighead and he just grinned contentedly. We sat on the beach to dry off nd he told me that he could swim back to town quicker than I could sail the boat back. He was always boasting like that and I just said yeah.

"You don't believe me?" he asked.

"I believe you, Bossy." I said. "Now, please. . . Stop mucking around."

It was getting late in the afternoon and I suggested that we make our way back. We turned the boat round and pushed it out to sea. I jumped into it first and helped Bossy in.

"See you in town," he said, grinning in the water.

I shouted to him not to be stupid but he was already on his way.

Suddenly a fierce squall filled out the sail and I struggled for the tiller. The wind was blowing the boat across the island and away from the town. I tried to turn the tiller and nearly overturned. I sat horrified while the boat sped along like a frenzied animal. I thought of lowering the sail but as soon as I let go of the tiller, the sail flapped savagely and I had to grab the tiller to steady the boat again. I cursed that bloody fool and his showing off. He would have known what to do. We were still going across the island, and I could see me being blown out to sea and dying a violent death at the jaws of a shark or something. We passed the island, the boat and I, and we were still going in the wrong direction. Then just as suddenly as it had started the wind died away. I rushed for the sail and lowered it.

I could not find him. I called for him, yelled out for him, screamed for him. I tried to turn the boat round to go back to the island, but as soon as I put the sail the wind filled it out and took me in the opposite direction. I didn't know what to do.

You left me, Bossy. You played your games once too often.

Bossy, what happened to you

Bossy, you left me.

Bossy, what happened to you?

Bossy, I sat in that boat frightened to death that you might in trouble but there was nothing I could do. The boat was too big for me, the water was too deep for me, and you were nowhere in sight, Bossy. I called for you and all the time Bossy I was moving away from you. Bossy O Bossy, my Bossy, you wanted to make me feel a fool while you swam to land and I felt like a fool but where di you go Bossy? I did all I could with that boat but I could not turn it back to you. You would have admired its power Bossy, you would have admired its power, power. I tried all I could . . . What else is there to say? I turned the boat round once more but I lost control and had to lower the sail. When I put it up the wind too me away from you again.

Bossy, what happened to you?

I tried all I could.

I stayed there and called out for you and called and cried out for you.

Then I thought that maybe I was just being a fool, that you were safe and well and on your way back to the town. Then I thought that maybe I would never make it back to the town myself and I was angry at what you had done Bossy and I stood up in the boat and called you names for running off and leaving me like that.

And all the time I was sailing further away from you.

And all the time I knew that I had lost you. I was just trying to convince myself against all hope that I hadn't.

I called you a bastard for making me feel such pain. And all the time I knew that you had left me.

I made it back to land. I don't know how.

You missed the worst, Bossy.

That night I landed at Mbweni and walked the three miles to town. I did not get past the golf course. I was beaten by men with sticks and stones and they told me the day had come. They beat me and said this was the day when all Arabs would get theirs. They bet me and the blood was pouring off my face and I don't remember anything else. I came to the beach by the golf course. There was the sound of gunfire in the air. I did not recognise it at first, it sounded like children playing with pop guns. I struggled along the beach bleeding and weak. I got as far as Shangani before I was stopped by some wild men with pangas and guns and they said I was askari from the barracks and they wanted to shoot me. They said they had overrun the barracks and the Prime Minister had surrendered and they had beaten the fuck out of him. They said the day had come and all the Arabs would get theirs. They said the sultan had already run away to the sip off the harbour and if they were to get hold of him they would whip his kikoi off and fuck his arse before stuffing it full of dynamite. They said I deserved to die for being an Arab, they said anybody who was no good must be an Arab. They said where did you get those cuts if you werent's at the barracks? They said it was all over and what was I shaking like that about. They said this fellow is a weakling, shall we fuck him first before we put a bullet in him? They said we have not time and they said kill him now before the others get to the rich houses. They said if we don't hurry all the best stuff will be gone and all the good women will be ruined. They said don't waste a bullet on him, here let me show him my steel. Here they said, hold this . . . but I was too tired and weak and they beat me and urinated on me and left me lying senseless on the beach.

You missed the worst, Bossy.