The Book of Secrets Read online

  A little later that morning, he saw Maynard and Fumfratti come down the hill and head towards the Taveta road, where Fumfratti’s men always prowled around looking for enemy patrols. Shortly afterwards the ADC took off, leaving Kikono with an entourage of askaris and porters, the dog Bwana Tim, and five mules.

  So much for Corbin, Pipa thought. He need not enter our lives again.

  How do the little people fare in a war between big powers? In answer, the Swahili proverb says, “When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”

  To the religious, the wise have always said, “Pray wisely.” Even in the best of times, prayer can be a mistake. In a war, the wrong prayer can be deadly. It is not only the Omniscient who listens — who might tune in only too well this time and grant the petition, so that you have only yourself to blame for the ultimate disaster — there are government agents and spies, too, who listen in. Jamali’s followers in Kikono began simply enough in the first days of the war. “O, Lord,” they beseeched in their best Hindu-Muslim fashion twice a day in their mosque, “O, husband of the earth and master of the fourteen directions, give success to the efforts of our wise and just government.” But was this a wise prayer?

  As if in answer, pamphlets appeared from across the border, sowing seeds of doubt and discord. “O, Muslims!” exhorted in them the Grand Imam of Istanbul. “O, brothers! The government of the Kaiser is our true ally! Pray for his victory and rise against your Ingleez oppressors! And verily, Allah will protect you from the unbelievers …” And though this was the first time the Shamsis of Kikono had heard of the Grand Imam of Istanbul, they wondered if they had not been too hasty. For the flyer to be distributed right under the noses of the British was itself an impressive achievement. The English agent Maynard questioned a dozen people. They all shrugged their shoulders: I found it with the sweepings; so-and-so showed it to me; a young man brought it and asked if I could read it to him; no, I don’t know the young man. The young man could not be found, but he had entered several stores.

  “Those who believe do battle for the cause of Allah; and those who disbelieve do battle for the cause of idols. Fight the minions of the devil,” said a short message in Arabic from the Sufis of Moshi across the border, on little scraps of paper handed from person to person. A Quranic verse, explained the local skeikh, a message from God to the oppressed. Copies were scarce and in demand, were used to make charms. The Englishman Maynard was not around this time to ask questions.

  At the Shamsi Indian mosque they began to wonder, too, what victory their brethren on the other side — Jaffer Bhai, the mukhi of Moshi, and his congregation — were praying for.

  For the pragmatic there were tales of British defeats — surely one should pray for the winning side? Taveta had been taken within days of the outbreak of war, and their own ADC had retreated, unable to defend the town. There were rumours of Mombasa’s imminent fall: Kisii, near Lake Victoria, had been taken. The German man-of-war Königsberg prowled the ocean from Lamu to Kilwa with its fearsome guns, appearing like a spectre in the mist and destroying British warships. The terrible German demoness Bibi Malkia went around with a troop of her own, appearing from behind hills and trees to wreak havoc on British forces, leaving hacked, mangled bodies behind, especially of the white settler troops. To top it all, there came pictures of the shameful British defeat at Tanga …

  Three months after the outbreak of war, in November, a convoy of ships of the British army, called the Indian Expeditionary Force B, arrived full of confidence straight from India. Their objective was to begin the British takeover of the German colony at Tanga. It was early in the morning, and the Germans seemed to be in their beds when the British landed their troops. “Chalo! Maro! Tally-ho!” the British sirdars rallied their Indian men. But when the Punjabis, the Rajputs, and the Madrasis ran forward, bayonets fixed, they were set upon — not by African askaris, but by bees. In panic the Indians retreated; their British officers pushed them back, sometimes at gunpoint. Only after the Tanga killer bees had done their work did the German side, well prepared, start firing. It was a rout.

  A few copies of German newspapers found their way into Kikono — no one any longer cared how — with pictures of captured British officers, masking their faces with their hands; dead Indian soldiers piled on the Tanga beach; and German officers proudly posed with an oversized captured Union Jack.

  Two Indians, it was heard, were hanged in Mombasa for signalling at night to the Königsberg.

  With all this news, and more arriving every day, Jamali, the mukhi of Kikono, very prudently introduced in his mosque a neutral prayer for peace and guidance in the region.

  His people had waited for word to leave — for Mombasa, for Voi. But stories of the near-siege of Mombasa, its evacuations, were discouraging; and Voi was more dangerous because it was the railway that the Germans were after. A German troop could come to your door in the middle of the night demanding shelter and information. And the next day soldiers from the King’s African Rifles would come and beat you up for assisting the enemy. And so it was, right in the middle, between two warring sides, that the Shamsis of Kikono sat trapped and waiting with prayers in their mouths. Soon it became too late even to think of moving, as the area around them became a hunting ground for the marauding patrols of either side; it was only a matter of time before one of them set up camp in their town.

  Jamali’s neutral prayer was a wise one. One day, well into the first year of the war, a large German force raided and dispersed an advance camp of the British motorcycle unit at Mbuyuni, only ten miles away from Kikono, and set up a post there.

  For Jamali and his people there was now no hope of evacuation from the town. They would have to wait out the war.

  13

  Mali kwa mali, mali kwa mali

  nguo kwa mwili, risasi kwa bunduki

  nipe suruali, mustini, khanga, mabuti

  nikupe kisu, bunduki, mshale, na kuki

  risasi kwa bunduki, mifupa kwa Fisi.

  A pedlar in dirty kanzu and a cap that lies aslant, mouth running constantly with talk, brings his donkey-driven cart to a halt in front of the shops of Kikono. Doing his rounds from Voi to Taveta, he brings items ranging from the ordinary but necessary to the unusual and useless which the war is already beginning to disgorge. It is a wonder, they say wherever he goes, that his donkey has not been commandeered yet. The animal looks strong and is understandably dusty — as is its master, a veteran trader in the area. He sits on a tree stump, removes his sand-filled boots and empties them, orders a cup of tea and a pail of water brought from Baruti’s tea shack, and begins to dispense the latest war commentary: “A station master in Ngozi killed … the Somali scouts of Bwana Cole mutinied … one man whipped, mutiny quelled … trouble in Giriyama … a railway line will be laid from Voi to Taveta … workers sign up … a new general arrived … a warning from the government: don’t place food offerings for Bibi Malkia …” And then, suddenly, as if remembering, he begins his call:

  Goods for your goods, goods for your goods clothes for the body, bullets for the gun give me trousers, mess tin, khanga, and boots take away knife, gun, shield, and spear bullets for the gun …

  Only when he reaches the last, discordant phrase bones for the Fisi does Pipa, watching anxiously from his shop, know for certain that the mali — the pedlar — calls for him today, comes from the dreaded Englishman Maynard.

  Pipa Store of Kikono was a small provision store. It was here that the legend of the thrift and cunning of Nurmohamed Pipa first took hold. Sitting at his shopfront all day, patiently wrapping packets, dealing with customers one by one, taking in just a few hellers or paisa at a time. And one couldn’t help noticing that the unfortunate young man seemed finally to have attracted baraka, blessings. Business at his store was brisk.

  But some of the customers were fraudulent, as Pipa could have told them. Some came bearing cigarette tins and bundles tied with string, saying “Bwana Pipa, bones for the Fisi.” Expertly, the burly s
hopkeeper in singlet would extend the long-handled tray to take their offerings and hand out something in return. “Thank you so much,” the customer would say and walk away — the weary householder, the man about town, the idler, the traveller. Some of these messengers Pipa would see in town (but he avoided them); others simply passed through and disappeared, and he never saw them again.

  At night when the town became quiet, with fires burning here and there and people gathered around them to talk in murmurs (Bwana Tim the dog, gone with the ADC, was always missed at this hour), while his wife worked in the kitchen which was a shed in the backyard, Pipa would bring in the day’s takings for the Fisi — the tins, the bundles — and examine them. Much of what he received, he was sure, was rubbish, picked up on the road by those on Maynard’s payroll. But then there were those other items that had the reek of authenticity about them, the look of having travelled far. He could tell even before they were in his hands by the manner and look of the messenger, the manner in which something was handed to him — and such messengers never stayed around. There were the photographs, newspaper cuttings, scraps of paper with writing, maps, sketches, all crumpled, stained, smelly from the numerous hands, the hiding places. And even among these, there were one or two special ones, scraps of paper with a peculiarity all their own: used, written on, encrusted with brown dirt, they had the revolting odour of human shit.

  “Does the Fisi need shit to smell?” he asked of a messenger once, sardonically.

  “Ehe,” affirmed the old man who had brought the goods that time, “they bear the mark of German arses!”

  Encrusted in foul dirt, and hiding the secrets of an enemy army, these bits of information would be sniffed at by Maynard, the Fisi — what an apt name, because the hyena is also an indiscriminate scavenger — who would piece together a truth, a story, the secrets of the enemy.

  There was a strange intimacy about these scraps of paper. What manner of man had used this one he was looking at? A part of this German was being transported in baskets, pockets, and saddlebags, in bundles and kerosene cans, for the perusal of the Englishman.

  He had formed a fair idea of his place in the information chain into which he had been coerced, leading from the German command to Maynard’s eyes (and nose). The messengers who brought him “bones for the Fisi” were under the charge of the albino Fumfratti, and brought them straight from agents in Moshi or Taveta, or simply bought them at the busy Taveta market — or, as he suspected, sometimes picked them off the roads or the nearby rubbish dumps. Pipa collected these scraps and bits and, in a bag or large can, handed them over to the mali-kwa-mali pedlar who came to call. And from the mali-kwa-mali through unknown intermediaries they reached the Englishman.

  Ten rupees a week was Pipa’s token recompense for handling this dirt. At first he had felt burdened by this responsibility, awed to be participating in the waging of a war. But as the war progressed he became cynical about it, and he hoped whoever won would leave him alone. Or that they would knock each other senseless, and finally go away to their own countries, with their streets of glass and perfumed air.

  The naval debacle in Tanga showed the British that the German side was no pushover. Their confidence checked, they bided their time — replacing generals, gathering forces, acting only to counter German forays into their colony and attacks upon its railway.

  Finally, after months of waiting, the British army began to stir, like a lion after a snooze. With its forces amassed from colonies around the world, it began coming down from Voi on its way to Taveta to engage the enemy, and thence to advance south to German East.

  The Taveta road from Voi was upgraded. Army brass from Mombasa and Nairobi appeared in open-roofed motorcars, surveying the desert terrain with binoculars. Lorries brought supplies, men; motorcycles carried messages. Close to the road, work began on constructing the railway that would take the forces west into the German colony. Hundreds of Kamba and Taita men from the area worked alongside sappers from the Indian army, cutting bush, blowing up rock, laying tracks — a few hundred yards every day — until they reached Maktau and faced the German post twelve miles away at Mbuyuni. And one afternoon a wonderful sight in the sky: eyes trailed the droning dot for miles, pointing fingers converged on that speck in the sky, which approached and grew larger, creating a frightening racket, so that it seemed it would crash upon them with the man in it, but the airplane — the flying ship — simply dropped leaflets, turned around, and flew back. If there was anything to doubt the abilities, the akili, the might of the mzungus, this disproved it once and for all. There were of course those who had said this when they saw the first train approaching with steel and fire, or heard the murderous stutter of the machine-gun. The mzungu was truly mighty. But then there were also the old men sitting outside mosques, throwing curses at the object in the sky and at its makers: Eti, if He meant for man to fly, would He not have given him wings? Shetani, these white men — King Solomon’s djinns — very clever, but. The leaflets raining on the earth announced the sinking of the dreaded German warship Königsberg, and contained exhortations for the British side from the Aga Khan and the Sultan of Zanzibar. It was now July 1915.

  Three months earlier, Mariamu had given birth to a boy, and it seemed then that Pipa was being ridiculed again, for the child was fair and had grey eyes. Which didn’t prove anything against his fatherhood, as the mukhi, who was the boy’s great-uncle, said. But would he ever know if it was otherwise? Would he, Pipa, ever be certain? The child was called Akber Ali, Aku for short.

  One evening a company of soldiers arrived in single file in Kikono. Such expeditions of dusty, exhausted, hoarse-voiced askaris were not unusual, but this time there was a difference: the soldiers were from the German side. The townsfolk quietly shut their doors, fastened their windows, silenced their children. If you strained your ears you could hear the clank of steel not far away at the British army work-camps — yet the Germans seemed to move about at will. How could they be losing? There came sounds of the men singing where they had set up camp. Then two shots were fired, followed by shouts — someone caught sneaking off in search of British patrols. In the long unnatural silence that ensued came the faint smell of woodsmoke. But something had to happen, something dangerous was portended for the night. At last it happened. A tremendous explosion, then stillness, then the delayed rattle of utensils, vibrating doors and windows. Finally, distant sporadic gunshots.

  Then silence once more, a silence pervaded by fear. It was two in the morning, and the people of the town tríed to sleep as best as they could.

  At four the mukhi stirred on his mat. He listened for sounds, but none came that concerned him. Not without fear he opened his door, looked out. There was no sign of life: but that could mean anything. “Rakh Molate,” he murmured, Leave it to God. He brought out a lamp, turned the wick up, went out to wake up his congregation. He saw no sign of the night’s visitors.

  At a little past five, as they began to emerge from the mosque, there was already some commotion to greet them — there was news that the supply dump at the railway depot near Maktau had been blown up. An Indian watchman and some soldiers had been killed, and the British were searching for those who had betrayed them to the Germans.

  “Mali kwa mali …”

  One day the pedlar — the mali — Abdalla was his name, arrived in Mbuyuni from Kikono. It was ten in the morning. As soon as he stopped outside the town’s refreshment store, ordering water for his donkey and ginger tea for himself, a German captain and a band of askaris walked up to him, surrounded him, watched him arrogantly. Abdalla looked at them, but he did not lose his humour. He was of that age at which an air of advanced self-respect — like that of a Muslim sheikh — attaches itself to certain men. He was also nervous. He cracked a joke and took a sip of his tea.

  At once the German captain gave Abdalla a slap, sending the old man reeling, the contents of his cup flying out, his finger still wrapped round its handle. He was arrested.

  In Kikono
, Jamali hastened to Pipa’s shop. “Aré, hide anything suspicious — your Abdalla’s been arrested.”

  “Who … by whom?”

  “The Germans in Mbuyuni. You and your secret games —”

  “As if I had a choice. How did you know?”

  “I am the mukhi, I know everything here,” said Jamali. “Let’s worry about you first.”

  Both agreed there was not much to do but keep their eyes and ears open. The new railway line was approaching Mbuyuni fast, bringing a large British force, and the Germans were bound to evacuate. Pray the Germans did not take it into their heads to retreat to Kikono first.

  About two weeks later Jamali came over again to Pipa’s shop.

  “A letter from Moshi … we, too, have ways to send messages in this war,” he said, answering the look on Pipa’s face. “It has something of interest to you, listen.”

  He sat down, unfolded the letter, and read:

  “ ‘God grant Jamali Mukhi … etc., etc.…

  “ ‘Pipa’s mother has left Moshi, with a man who has agreed to take care of her. Look after Pipa, who is a younger brother to us, and tell him not to worry about his mother. The man is good …

  “ ‘But this week we have been truly shocked. Hamisi, a kindly Arab sheikh and a very good friend of our community, was hanged by the Germans for spying for the British side. All went to see the hanging and grieved for him. Who knows what the truth is? Please give this news also to Pipa, who knew Hamisi well. Also congratulations and prayers for the birth of his son and heir. God grant …

  “ ‘As we agreed before, my brother, it is best for people like us to keep a low profile and out of the way …’ ”

  Jamali looked up. “You should be careful. We all should be careful. These are treacherous times. There is no telling who works for whom.” Jamali waited, looked pointedly at the young man, then said, “News of your mother doesn’t surprise you?”