The Gunny Sack by M.G. Vassanji Read Free Book Online

The sahebs visit each other and go to their offices in their trolleys.
    “At night, the streets are dark with strange shapes and shadows, alleys that lead into pitch blackness, the road feeling slimy under the feet, appearing truly fearsome to the stranger. It seems as if behind every shadow lurks a daku, a robber or a ghost, every strange-looking shape you pass could turn and spring behind you with a dagger, every sheikh you see carrying a lantern returns having thrust a child inside a well, behind every giggle is a nest of prostitutes and shogas. The imagination can run wild in such instances, and only with a prayer on your lips could you feel safe. The windows are shut tightly in the houses, and the doors are heavy. And the sahebs also feel afraid at night, for you rarely see them venture out after sunset. One evening a trolley trundled past me at full speed, as if the saheb inside was late for something; but when he saw me from behind the gadi, immediately he called for a stop. ‘Ao,’ he said in Hindustani. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Nowhere in particular, saheb,’ I told him. ‘Oho, badmaash,’ he said. ‘Catch him,’ he told one of the boys, and the saheb and one boy, who was called Shomari, held me while the other went to fetch an askari. ‘What are you?’ he asked. ‘Madrasi, Panjabi, Memon? Speak!’ ‘Shamsi, saheb,’ I said. ‘Oho. Juth bolte ho! Then tell me the name of the mukhi.’ The name of Mukhi Lalji Jetha saved me that night. Some Madrasis and Panjabis from the railway gangs never went home, the mukhi told me, and the police tried to deport them.
    “The railway goes from Mombasa all the way to the lake in the interior, and everywhere the train stops there is an Indian settlement. The line was built by our Indians, every stationmaster is an Indian, and every conductor is also one of us. Our people are doing well under the British, Bai. But in Mombasa I inquired about our Moti, and I learnt from the mukhi that Moti had gone to Kibwezi with her husband Rajan Nanji Kara, and had become a widow, her husband having died of the black fever. This Kibwezi is an old town, much used by travellers in the past. So I had this hunch, Bai, a premonition like I sometimes get, that Huseni had followed his wife to Kibwezi.Early in the morning I set off on this train … there were besides people of every shade in the station, also ostriches and deer, and cubs of lion, leopard, and every animal you could think of save the elephant, in boxes bound for Europe. From Mombasa the train climbs up; first the dense, rich forest of the coast is passed, then comes a poor land with red, dusty soil and hungry-looking plants and grass; it is called Tarn. Many a caravan has perished in this desert, they say. Then comes the forest once more. Kibwezi was reached in the middle of the night. I waited at the station until dawn, when the stationmaster directed me to the shop of the mukhi, Nanji Lalji. From Nanji Lalji I heard the sad news that Moti had married once more. Her children by her two previous marriages she was forced to give away to a relative further inland. Then she herself died of childbirth at the nearby town of Voi. So we have lost my grandson Juma, too … where to find him? In which of the small towns littered along the railway? In Voi station where there is a big dining-room the train stops for some hours, and the Europeans have a long and leisurely meal. On the return journey I went and stood by her grave.”
    Mombasa kept him for four months. Every time the old man returned, disappointed and tired, more of the business was in the hands of Gulam and his two brothers, all in the control of Fatima. Dhanji Govindji ignored her, she despised him. What savings he had not spent in his quest disappeared, and of the earnings in his absence he was not informed. Slowly he became a guest in his own house. He would come to cool his heels, as it were, biding his time, collecting himself, and then, at a letter or a