Phoren - Shalini Gidoomal

I’m riding on the lioness in the window of my father’s shop on Government Road. She’s a big beast, and hard to mount because my shoulder only comes up to her side. I have to stand on the elephant-foot stool, grab a fistful of short mane and kick my leg over to vault up onto her. Her fur feels scratchy on my inner thigh – not at all soft. I kick at her sides with my heels, urging her to move forward, but she’s stiff and stuffed and can only wobble lightly from side to side. From her back I could lean forward and hook my finger round her bared teeth. They’re smooth then softly ridged, and snarl through the window at passers-by on this main Nairobi thoroughfare.
My father doesn’t mind me sitting on the lioness but his brother, Uncle Ravi, is much more disapproving. He’s just walked into the shop, back from price spying on City Furrier and Devan Singh, who he says are “competition.” I know they are more expensive than our shop and rich mzungus like to buy from them. Uncle Ravi – who likes to remind everybody that he is the oldest - is much smaller than my papa. Both are thinner than my Uncle Noti, who’s a big fatty with a long black beard. Uncle Noti is funny, when he isn’t scary. He giggles a lot and wraps his arm around whichever pretty white lady I am supposed to call Auntie. They can’t really be our aunties; they change so often. All my dad’s other brothers only ever had one auntie.
There are other things in the shop that I love to play with – big drums made from stretched cowskins, which make a throbbing boom when you hit them hard with the wooden knobkerries. There are lots of hats and bags and coats and rugs made out of different animals. There’s even a Tommies gazelle, which makes me sad as they are small and sweet and I don’t think that my papa needs to make them into things for others to buy. Once, at the Animal Orphanage, a baby Tommie had followed me around all day and let me stroke him and feed him grass. The hat on our rack could have been made from his mama.

I’m in the shop instead of school today because I have lice, and mum is afraid they will jump onto other people’s hair. She gives me two shillings to buy something for myself so I run into Ebrahim’s supermarket next door. It’s really modern, with a black and white tiled floor and long white shiny shelves full of new things from all over the world. I rummage through the hair clips and choose a shiny glitter pink one from a box that says ‘Made in China’ on the side. I’m still fiddling with my new clip as I step out of the shop, and bounce right into a group of men walking outside. They’ve got long knotty hair almost down to their bums, and are wearing dirty grey clothes full of dust which rises out of where I bumped them. I jump back quickly and notice the tattered shoes with holes. They’re clutching woven mkeka bundles tight under their arms and they move past, then stop outside our shop, peer into the window and come in.
My dad looks up, quickly finishes what he is doing, orders tea, and disappears into the back room with a torch and the men with their bundles. Mostly I’m not allowed back there, but today he lets me come too. I should get lice more often. Everyone is being so nice! We don’t have electric light so when papa opens the mkeka bundles, he has to use a torch to examine the things the long haired men brought. I peer over to look. There’s a pile of skins – leopard, lion, zebra, impalas. I put my hand up over my nose really politely - they smell horrible. My dad doesn’t seem to notice and inspects them all carefully in the tiny back room of the shop. He shines the torch onto the head and then each paw, making sure that they aren’t squashed. He lays the skin out flat and runs his hand along the coat, tutting sometimes as he strokes the hide. As one man leans forwards over me to talk to papa, I can feel his long dreadlocks snaking onto my shoulder. I wonder if my lice are going to migrate to him. They’d get lost in that forest of hair if they decided to jump off my head. The man nods as he replies to my papa, his hair jigging.
The dreadlock man smiles very widely when my papa gives him lots of lilac hundred shilling notes, tells him to leave the skins, and asks him to come with more. I don’t know why papa is so excited. It’s not like he’s buying the clean, lovely new stuff you can get next door in Ebrahim’s after all.
Uncle Noti comes into the back to check on the things my papa has bought. He’s in a good mood because he has a new auntie, whom he met with a white hunter friend on the terrace of the Norfolk Hotel. I know her too; she’s my friend Loretta’s mum. Actually she already has her own husband, although I heard someone say that he was gay. Enid Blyton said gay meant to be happy like the Famous Five were after solving a mystery. But maybe her husband wasn’t happy enough because it seems Loretta’s mum much prefers to be with Uncle Noti. Last week, she dropped Loretta at our house for us to play and hasn’t picked her up since. She got to stay lots of nights with us. I’m jealous because I like to have sleepovers, but my mamma doesn’t like us staying anywhere other than at my grandparents, Nani and Kaki. They live nearby in Westlands, on Forces Lane, in a little two storey ex-army house with red velvet sofas and a parrot called Kasuku. Their Cook has thick heavy glasses which are cracked on the side and held together with sellotape. We call him Masala Man on account of his always grinding, pounding, and chopping of spices, sitting on a stool in the garden next to the bird table.
I like going to my Nani’s house because she doesn’t mind if we jump on the sofas; and she makes the most delicious puris for breakfast. They are hot, puffy and crispy round the edges. The best is to peel off the top of the puri bubble and eat that bit on its own before dipping the rest into tea. I like to do this slowly, and stay at the breakfast table long after everyone has left.
I especially love the Mahabharata comics that Nani bought to teach us about our religion. “No good only to only know Jesus,” she says about our divinity lessons at school, and in truth, these are much more exciting than bible tales. My favourite story is when the monkey God, Hanuman, flies across the wide sea to Ceylon and breaks into Ravenna’s evil kingdom to rescue Rama’s wife Sita. He brought her back safely and the world was saved. Sometimes I read so long, dipping and eating that my tummy feels like Krishna’s must have done when he stole all the cow’s milk from the village girls by the river, and had to retire up a tree to sleep off his excesses. I had a picture in my room of a blue Krishna playing his flute under a Banyan tree to entice the maidens to him. “It was embroidered by the Chinese,” Nani told me. I thought uncle Noti must be a bit like Krishna, if uglier, because he was good at finding maidens also.
I ask Mama if I can go to Taws and get a new comic, but she says no. She wants to take me home to use paraffin and that metal lice comb on my hair again today. I sneak into the back room to avoid her. As I kneel to get under the rickety table, there’s a sharp bang-bang on the back door and I bash my back on the table leg as I jump. Uncle Noti comes into the dark room. I try to slink further under the table. He strikes a match, lights the candle stub, and unlocks the door. Another batch of men – smaller, sneakier and pale skinned enter, shoving the metal door hard, because it sticks when you try to open it. They are carrying bows and arrows and don’t smile so much.
“Encourage them,” I hear papa say to Uncle Noti in our language as he pokes his head round the door. “We need them now that Tanzania has closed its border – those Tanga traders can’t get skins, let alone tusks, through to Kenya right now.”
After they leave, Uncle Noti blows out the candle, says “crazy Somalis,” and goes back into the main shop. I’m so relieved. My legs feel cramped and my bum is numb from the cold of the stone floor. I prefer paraffin to this. I count to 20 and then peep round the door and slide into the shop as well.
They’re not supposed to hunt, these Somali’s, but they do it anyway for money.
“Everyone wants to sell their skins to our shop,” said papa. I know he pays much more than City Furriers, and he sometimes serves them tea and samosas, so the wild haired men and the crazy Somalis (who are good at hiding their hunting from the wildlife officers) come to our place first and take the leftovers to the other shop afterwards.
I prefer the long haired men. Papa said they are called Mau Mau.
“They’re freedom fighters that got forgotten after Independence,” he explained. They wanted to help run Nairobi - and even Kenya, but got into an argument with the police about cutting their hair and behaving properly. The cops said they couldn’t be in Nairobi because they were too scruffy, so they were given special rifles, as thank-you presents for helping the country get free from the British. They were told to hunt in the bush. They already knew how to do this because they lived in the forest for a long time and forgot how to live in a house. They didn’t get hungry because they could eat the animals they were allowed to shoot, and then papa could buy the skins to make into the stuff we sell to tourists, like the long leopard coat that Uncle Ravi got cross about yesterday when he found out that Uncle Noti gave it to Loretta’s mum as a present.
“You can’t be handing over such expensive items like that to your women, yaar.” Uncle Noti just pretended not to hear.
The Mau Maus start visiting regularly. My favourite comes nearly every week. He’s called General Kamiti and is very famous because he helped Kenya very much in fighting against the Britishers. He told me he killed a leopard once without any weapons – just by wrestling with it until he broke its neck. Most times, he marches into the shop and slaps his pistol down on my papa’s desk as a greeting. He doesn’t really have a license but nobody is going to stop him from hunting, my papa said. One time, when papa was in hospital for a small operation, he came to visit him there with five other Mau Mau men who carried their skins with them and laid them out on the floor of his room at the MP Shah for him to inspect. “He likes me too much,” joked my papa when I asked why they couldn’t have seen Uncle Ravi or Uncle Noti.
Even with the regular visits by the front and back door, Papa still goes chasing other skin-selling men. Often, he’s the one who has to make visits to see Minister Ole Tip Tip about business, although he refuses to go on Monday, because that’s veg day and we go down to Supreme near Tom Mboya street and get takeaway makhni dal as a treat. “Don’t give them sweets,” insists mama, as we set out. “God knows what oils and sugars they put into them, but it rots their teeth up.”
I reckon meat is much worse for teeth. I decide this after I go with papa to Lavington, one Friday after school to see Minister Ole Tip Tip. He has amazing long holes in his ears, like someone cut a whole chunk out of them. He’s sitting on the floor of his house with his legs straight out in front of him so we join him there on the bristly patterned carpet. We drink cokes and tear big chunks of meat off the bone with our teeth. Bits of it get stuck in my teeth and under my fingernails. It’s oily and greasy ; I sneakily try to wipe my fingers on the carpet, but lots of fur sticks to the meat oil on my fingers. Papa eats lots of it, but I fiddle with one piece.
“Have you managed to arrange your premises to your satisfaction now?” asks Mr Ole Tip Tip. It has taken papa ages to get everything right after he had to quickly move stuff out of our smaller shop, Treasure Curios last month. He got a call and was told that they had to give it away. So Uncle Noti, Uncle Ravi and Papa had to quickly hire one of those mkototeni wooden carts and carry off as much stuff as they could before the new owner, Mr Mutua, turned up. Lots of the beaded jewellery that Minister Ole Tip Tip sold to papa got left behind, but they did remove the giraffe skin buckets. And they took my lioness, propped it on the top of the cart and dragged it to Government Road, her new home in a much better window in our bigger shop.
This was just before my 9th birthday. I remember because it was around the same time that Loretta stopped spending the night. Her mama came round late one night when we were asleep and picked her up out of my room to go home. I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed and could only hear the whisperings; papa telling mama that “Jenny had beaten Loretta’s mum over the head with a stiletto at the Sombrero Club; such a big noise; they physically threw him out; she went to hospital for stitches; Noti hiding at LP’s house.” Auntie Jenny was Uncle Noti’s extra-new very busty lady, who brought us Mars Bars from England. She had long front teeth that stuck out when she smiled and she called me darling a lot. I was surprised that she liked the Sombrero – it was a naked lady place. I knew that from the advertisement in the Nation newspaper every day. It said ‘ADULTS ONLY’ over the booby bit of the ladies but you could tell they weren’t wearing tops anyway.
The voices came again; “Uncle Ravi wants Noti to go to India; had enough of this behaviour; people will think we are all junglis; time to settle down; we’ll find him a woman. No more of these mzungu phorenas.”
I missed Loretta, but whenever I asked about where she was, none of the grown ups would tell me anything about her. In fact they were being really secretive about everything. When I was in the shop on the weekend, Papa said I wasn’t allowed to sit on the lioness any more. “Many customers are coming,” he said, and it would be very busy in the shop.
“In fact,” he says, stroking my hair, “you can’t come to the shop this week.” I move my head away from papa’s hand. Imagine! A whole week away! It’s too much, but when I open my mouth, mama won’t let me speak, “Just had to listen to your papa,” she says, and I’m not allowed to say anything! So unfair! I know that if I stamp my foot mama will get cross with me, so I just leave it, and when I get home I scratch my name onto the sisal plant with a compass. As soon as I do it I feel bad, but its there now forever and it serves them right if they don’t like it.
Each day when the school bus passes the shop there are loads of people outside. I want to shout out to them, but I just stare as we bump by. The road outside the shop is stuffed with big cars parked all over the place getting in the way of traffic. The doors to the shop are shut and occasionally I see them swing open a little bit to let one person in at a time, then it closes again. Everyone on the street pushes and shoves to get closer to the front. Once, I saw a hand come round the door and shove a lady back to the pavement when she tried to sneak inside out of turn.
It was a week later that the lioness disappeared from the window. There was a dusty mark where she stood, but I couldn’t see properly because of all the crowds outside the shop. “Please please can we go in,” I begged mama, “I really want to find out what’s happened to her.” Mama said it would have to be brief, and we pushed our way to the front entrance through all the people waiting. It was really squashy, and I wanted to tell everyone to move. They didn’t care that it was our shop and we never had to queue like they did. They only shifted a little so they didn’t lose their place in the line.
Inside was stuffed full. Papa, Uncle Ravi and Uncle Noti were laying skin after skin on the floor and then scooping them up into bundles for people to buy. It was bursting with men and ladies shoving and grabbing things from the shelves. I could hardly move without bumping into one of them. All of them were shouting instructions, and a muted roar of noise filled the shop.
“Wrap this handbag! Do you have any more leopard skin ones?”
I’ll pay cash for the tusks. And that zebra drum. Stop pushing me! Hoi you…are you listening? Book those tusks for me now.”
“Noti, pass me the receipt book. Move that off the floor. Serve that man waiting there; show him the sables.”
“Look darling…what do you think? Perfect for Nina von Strunkel’s cocktails next week?”
Papa turned, irritated, to Uncle Ravi who struggled to fold things properly and told him, “get useful and check for thievery – anyone can put the ivory bracelets in their pockets.” Papa never talked like that to Uncle Noti, who we all knew was brainy and would shout back. I saw someone that looked like Loretta’s mum pick up 4 handbags and put them on one side, her blonde head turning left and right as she elbowed her way through the shop.
They couldn’t have fitted a single extra person into the shop or an extra word into the air without the whole place popping and falling out onto Government Road. No wonder all these people were outside. I tried to push my way to papa, but he turned to mama and ordered; “take her home, this is not the place for children right now.”
We had to leave without finding out anything about the lioness.
I HATE Loretta. She stopped playing dibs with me at school today. She told me her mum thinks Uncle Noti is a hustler, which means he’s not nice, and neither am I, because I’m his relative. She got the other girls to gang up and they chanted “paki paki brownface” at me and refused to sit next to me in class. I felt prickly hot in the back of my head, but I refused to cry, climbing up into the guava tree all break-time instead. I dream about hitting Loretta on the head with a deadly shot from my biggest marble, but I don’t do it. She might nick it, and that would be even worse.
I spend more time going round to Bubli’s house instead. We want to go see Saturday Night Fever, which has just opened at Kenya cinema, but we’re not allowed because it is a grown up movie, which means kissing. Normally, papa sits next to me and puts his hands over my eyes during the naughty bits of other movies like James Bond, but this one has swearing too and he can’t cover eyes and ears, so we don’t go. Instead I mooch about at home. I haven’t been allowed in the shop since I tried to find out about the lioness, and papa comes home late, sleeps, and gets up early to go back there.
“You need more rest, my love” admonishes ma, but papa shrugs and says “deadlines,” before jumping back into the car to go into town.
I’m sure the President has taken the lioness just like he took Treasure Curios to give to his friend.
“Where’s she gone?,” I asked papa, when I saw the space in the window. I felt hot in my face as I asked and could feel my big toe wiggling without my permission in my Clarks.
“To America,” he replied.
“Didn’t the President want her?” I asked.
He didn’t, but the man who bought her promised to look after her, She had company too so she wouldn’t be lonely. Lots of our animal things had been sold to the American man. And English ladies and Italian people. Even Kenyans had come to buy our things, big knobbly ivory rings and bracelets, tusks and buffalo heads for their walls.
And this time we wouldn’t get any more because they’d been chased away by the President’s ban.
How come the President didn’t want us to sell any more animal things? And why didn’t papa tell me that he was really truly going to sell my lioness? I felt cheated by both of them. I would have bagged the lioness for my bedroom. And maybe a zebra hat and some leopard slippers. We could have kept the impala skin Bubli wore in the school play, Snow White, when he played the deer killed by the huntsman to give the wicked queen its heart instead of Snow White’s. What could I take to show off at school now?
I couldn’t tell papa that it would be tough to compete with Loretta, who got tons of pocket money to buy records from Uncle LP’s shop, and who was still being mean to me. She just brought a new Osibisa one last week with flying red and green elephants and lizards on the cover. And she had all the Boney M’s, but she wouldn’t let me borrow them. How would sisal baskets or wooden bracelets compare to that? Her records were phoren. They had to come all the way from England to Kenya.
She even had Space Dust which she brought to school. So I was extra nice and let her have one of my best marbles so she’d give me a taste. It fizzled and crackled on my tongue and tasted horrible. It wasn’t worth the eight-leaf bombie I had traded at all. Loretta said I didn’t like Space Dust because I was a coolie and ate too many chapatti and chillies. She didn’t say coolie like it meant I had been cool and managed to touch the out-of-bounds willow tree on the playing fields, or won a dibs competition though.
When I asked mama about coolies she got mad and ranted; “these two-bit colonialists think their skin colour makes them superior to everyone. Theives! Common mwizis. They can’t even cook food properly. Who do they think built their famous railway if it wasn’t coolies? And who supplied them with goods all the way along the line? And who arranges timber? Who, hah?”
She thumped the chapatti mix with extra vigour, her knuckles leaving pockmark dips in the dough. “We could be living in a palace if they hadn’t made such a mess of India. Instead we have to lose everything fleeing to here, and they still think their white makes them better. Rubbish people.” I knew I shouldn’t tell papa about what Loretta said because he always said the British like he was spitting something horrible out of his mouth. And papa didn’t like Loretta’s mum anyway.
I hope Uncle Noti doesn’t go buy a wife like Auntie Aruna. She came from India too and Uncle Ravi said she was from a high-up family that was very important and prayed a lot. Auntie Aruna prayed a lot too – she wanted to be like Mother Theresa and to help the poor. At the temple she prostrated herself on the ground, knees tucked under her, head resting on the floor mats before sitting up straight, her head covered with a sari, rocking back and forth as she sung. She looked like a weeble – those ones that never fall down no matter how hard you push them. When the temple collected money for schooling for Dr Barnado’s orphans she made everybody give her at least 2000/= so that she could win praise at the temple for getting the most donations.
“Arey Noti, this is less than you spend for one night with those women,” she said. “The hospital bills from Jenny’s adventure cost you more than I am asking for these struggling babies who also need books and all.”
“Hnnh It feels like paying a bribe,” grumbled Uncle Noti, but he always handed over the money.
He doesn’t come to the shop much either these days, and I know why. It’s really boring in there now. All the animal things – my lioness, the furry handbags, the zebra rugs, the big drums, the necklaces, even the elephant tusks have all gone. All that was left in the shop were things like green canvas hats with Kenya printed on the front, painted batiks of Mount Kenya, beaded bits, and some wooden carvings. My papa said I could have a lovely painted bracelet as a present because the lioness was gone but it didn’t feel like it was a fair swap - which I told him.
“In that case, take whatever you like,” he said But when I looked around, there was nothing really that I wanted that was exciting. Lots of shops had wooden stools and bracelets. Ours was special because we had all those other things too. I asked when another lioness was coming to the window. He told me “the President said we would not be able to have any more animals at all.” They were for the game parks only. They were born free and were going to stay free.
We all knew that, as the President was leading the country, we had to obey. He was such an important man that he was known as Mzee. I thought it meant old with grey hair – like the shopkeepers in Highridge called out to the cook to entice him to buy their vegetables, but papa said it was for respect because he was the leader of the nation. Everyone had the same pictures of him. He was upstairs and downstairs in papa’s shop. Mr. Ebrahim’s supermarket next door had one. Our school had one in the Headmasters office – I’d seen it through the windows when Bubli was being tackied for failing French verbs. Even Uncle LP had a picture of the president at his cool record shop Assanands, although he put his low down on the wall so that he could hang guitars higher up. “Not having people touching the guitars unless they really want to buy,” he told me once, giving me some Orbit gum - we weren’t allowed Orbit at home. Along with the new pictures of Mzee we also had to stand up at the movies when they showed the Kenya flag and played the National Anthem -because the President said so. People did it even though he wasn’t there himself to check. “You would get beaten by askaris with big boots,” otherwise, whispered Bubli. Sometimes we would stand up at home in front of the TV when the flag came on even if no one was watching. I figured out the National Anthem on the piano too. It was only five notes round middle C and really easy. I was scared people would find out that I had learnt it while sitting down on a stool instead of standing, so I didn’t tell my mama.
A week later, I was sure there were robbers trying to squeeze through the bars on my window. I lay there even though my heart was thumping and my hands were wet-sweaty, but then got up to find mama, even though I was not supposed to. I sneaked down the stairs towards the sitting room where I could hear her voice. She was talking in the same cross way she did when she caught me eating flowers from the garden. Papa and Uncle Ravi were there whispering in angry quiet voices. Uncle Noti was the loudest, sitting on the edge of the sofa, and waving his drink around. I could see little spits coming from his mouth as he shouted at Uncle Ravi. He was being scary.
“Don’t think you can send me off like some post mail package to find some good cooking woman to bring back here. India is not even home anymore that you think I’ll find this perfect girl over there? If I want my share of shillings from my labour to go to Bacchus Club or Casino on whisky with white women, that’s my affair.”
Unce Ravi interrupted him; “Noti, people are talking about the troubles you are having with your lady friends. Arey! Women beating each other in the street like that! See, we have children now – you must settle too. A good Indian woman can look after you. Aruna also feels the same way.”
“Pah! To be like you! Sitting in the big office doing small money dukawallah nonsense. Your head is so slow that you can’t do more than check for cheating on tea money or buying petrol. And that wife of yours! Always tapping us for cash to make her look better. This pious nonsense of hers with her head on the floor supplicating to the Gods. But if she had to help her own, with no outward praising from the temple women - then she doesn’t care at all.”
“Don’t you talk about my wife like that. She’s bringing up our children right. We have to keep our culture. And what do you do? Throwing money around town like some irresponsible goondah with no schooling. As oldest and head of the family I need to keep respect in this town. You go to India!”
I see mama puts her hands to her lips to make them be quieter. Papa doesn’t say anything. He’s staring at Uncle Noti and then at the portrait of our family that’s on the wall.
“You think your kids would be at nice schools without my input? Who thought of using Mau Mau hunting quotas? Who do you think made us such big ivory traders? Did you suffer in Japan to find good customers? Where’s the big money coming from for the fancy house you want to build in Riverside Drive?” Uncle Noti takes a large swig from his glass.
“Take your ambitions to River Road where they belong;” he banged it down on the table.
“That’s enough, Noti,” says mama. Papa and Uncle Noti are staring at each other. Why doesn’t papa speak?
“So you are going to go with this goatshit on this?” says Uncle Noti to papa. There’s no reply from papa. “It’s best for the family,” says Uncle Ravi. Uncle Noti stands up.
I run back to my room very quickly before he sees me on the stairs. I lie very still in bed, like I do when I want the robbers, who might come through the window, to think I am dead. I hear Uncle Noti’s red Alfa Romeo – the coolest car – revving out of our gate. I hear the clink of mama’s bracelets at my bedroom door. I hold my breath to be deader, but she doesn’t come in.
It’s a few days since I watched the fight and Uncle Noti hasn’t been to the shop or to the house. Normally he likes to come and drink Black Label whisky with papa and talk about grown-up things, while mum fries bhajias. He often takes off his shoes and his toenails are long and horny and really gross.
We’ve got a new batch of wooden giraffes that arrived to replace the real animals we used to have, I was trailing my fingers down the neck of one when the shop door swung open and shut hard. It rattled the white plastic closed sign on the door. It was another group of men, but this time they came direct from the President. They weren’t friendly like General Kamiti and the dreadlocked men who sometimes gave me sweets that mama wouldn’t let me eat. These guys wore suits and didn’t want to go to the back room. They kept their guns on their belts and I heard “phoren accounts,” and “not suitable; illegal; ad haki this is a verrrry serious crime.” I saw my papa smile like Auntie Aruna, with only his lips moving wide across his face. He ka-chinged the big metal till, took something out, and then shook hands with the biggest and fattest of the men who had many marks on his face. They stared at each other and then they left.
Papa locked up the shop quickly, hustling me out the door and into the car to go home. I knew I couldn’t ask him about the suit-men - like I didn’t ask about where Uncle Noti had gone. “Do you think Hanuman could go across the ocean to America to rescue the lioness?,” I said instead to make him smile. He didn’t reply. At home I watched cartoons, then Mambo Leo, which says the Somalis and Ethiopians in the country next door are fighting badly. Mama sent me to bed after that, so she could talk with papa. I hate it when they do that.
Papa didn’t’ go to work today and instead spent lots of time on the phone in his study. I’m not allowed to interrupt so I went outside to the sandpit in the garden because I know I could hear him through the window from there.
“The bloody bastard’s sent a letter to every MP with details of the accounts,” said papa. “Every one. Information on UK, Canada, all all. Even given amounts in each account. We’re finished. I’ve already had some call me for meetings to discuss the letters. Its too much chai to try to find. Trying to get Rupa to help, but its too widespread. Noti’s run to England, took off with Jenny.”
I know this is bad. I sit in the sand, dig, sit, dig again. I know nobody wants to explain. Later that afternoon papa comes to look at the broken seat of the go-cart. I wanted to explain that it wasn’t my fault and was telling him how “Bubli, twisted down the hill….” but I didn’t get to finish what I was saying because there was a long loud honk at the gate and two suit-men drove into the driveway. They shouted horribly at my papa before taking his nice car away, the blue Mercedes with seats that smelt like the best skins used to make handbags at the shop. They tore out his Ganesh hanging from the mirror and threw it out onto the driveway. They were scarier than Uncle Noti in his worst mood, bringing their faces very close to Papa’s. Loretta did that to me once and it was horrible. I moved far back when she did this, but papa kept trying to be nice to them. I hid by the swings so he couldn’t send me back into the house, and had to bite hard on my lip to not cry. I was so happy when they drove off.
I didn’t have to go to school the next day because after the suit-men left, papa said we’re going on a surprise holiday as everyone was a bit tired after the busy time at the shop. It was a really great adventure because we were not going to Mombasa, but on a big plane to England! Not a supersonic pointy nose new Concord like the one that had just flown at record speed from London to New York, but still, a big jumbo from the new Kenya Airways. We were flying to a phoren land where I could buy my own Mars Bars and all the latest records – even the ones that never came to Assanands. And I knew from school that we would arrive just before the queen would start her jubilating celebration of reigning for 25 years, I even knew she was here at Treetops when she found out about becoming queen.
“Can we go visit Buckingham Palace?” I ask mama. She’s not listening, and is focused on throwing some of my things into a suitcase. “I want to take that pink bikini,” I say, but she snaps back that I won’t need it and then softens. “Just let me finish this beta. No you can’t take that toy, its too big. We must hurry to catch the plane.”
We collect Bubli, Uncle Ravi, Auntie Aruna and squish their big suitcases in mama’s green 504. We drive past the shop on the way to the airport. There is a big CLOSED sign on the door since it is the first time we had ever all gone on holiday together. Normally, Papa, Uncle Ravi or Uncle Noti has to stay to mind the shop. Somebody has put wooden boards in the window where my lioness used to stand roaring at everybody with me on her back. Mama’s mouth goes all fluttery and she looks like she is going to cry, but Papa fixes her with a stern look. Auntie Aruna keeps pressing and twisting her hands together and all the wrinkles on her forehead are showing.
On the way to the airport, some elephants wandered across the road in front of our car and we had to wait for them all to cross. Bubli counted 30 but I’m sure it was 31. The grown-ups got very impatient like mama did earlier when I said I wanted to call Loretta to gloat about going away. “No,” said mama, “this is a secret surprise. We’re not telling any friends about leaving. Now jump in the car quickly.” So I didn’t say goodbye to anybody.
But I console myself that they can drool over my phoren things when I come back.