Grieving ….
Grieving is something immensely personal
By Omar Kureishi
WHAT you gain on the swing, you lose on the roundabout. One of the roundabouts of modern air travel is that it has knocked the romance and mystique out of travel. There are no longer, far away places with strange sounding names. There is no place on this planet that cannot be reached in twentyfour hours. I remember my friend Ernest Steel in St Leonards-on-Sea in Sussex who was fascinated to know that a place called Chittagong actually existed. It sounded too remote, too musical, something out of The Wizard of Oz.
When Chittagong came up in conversation apropos my brother Achoo’s posting there when he worked for Burma Oil, Ernest Steel said that he preferred not to know that a place with a name like that existed. When I assured him that there was such a place, he said he would make it a point to remember it. He was a disciple of Stephen Potter and his Upmanship. “Good name to drop at the local,” he had said. I wonder what he would have made of Zanzibar, the enticing, scented isle, twenty miles off the coast of East Africa and near the Equator, and of the fact that I had played cricket there.
“When the flute is played in Zanzibar, all Africa, east of the lakes, must dance.” So goes an Arab saying. I had been familiar with Zanzibar only through the film Road to Zanzibar, starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and the delectable Dorothy Lamour. We had flown in there from Dar-es-Salam, a ridiculously short hop. It would have seemed more appropriate had we sailed in on a galleon, or even in one of the dhows that one saw lined up in the harbour.
Zanzibar conjured up magical splendour, it spelt secrecy and intrigue and romance and the aromatic scent of cloves, glowing peaceful beaches and swaying palms and the billowing sails of the dhows. Its streets were cobbled and narrow and, in the dark, one imagined Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman emerging from the shadows. The houses were old, if not dilapidated, with massive teakwood doors, intricately carved and studded with large brass knobs. It could have been a film set had it not been real.
It was largely an Arab town, though it had a population of only 45,000 Arabs as against 200,000 Africans, and about 16,000 Asians. But the Arabs were the aristocracy, the Asians controlled the retail trade, and the Africans worked the land.
Nearly 80 per cent of the cloves of the world came from Zanzibar and there were large clove estates — owned mainly by the Arabs. No white settlement was allowed, though it was an ‘independent’ sultanate under the protection of Great Britain. It enjoyed a semi-sovereign status, but, in fact, nothing happened that did not have the approval of the British Resident.
WE had a pleasant meeting with the Sultan as we paid a courtesy call on him. He was splendid in his white robe with red edging, and wore a white and gold embroidered turban. He was a kindly man, soft-spoken and though he seemed not to know what we were doing on his beautiful island, he made us feel welcome. We asked him whether he would be gracing us at the cricket match we would be playing, he gave the impression that he didn’t understand what we were talking about. He had the reputation of a man who liked to drive around the island in his fire-engine red car (his entire fleet of cars were of that colour) with virtually no escort and stop and chat with his subjects.
We stayed in a modern hotel and one did not want to read too much into trivial incidents. One member of our team summoned a waiter by snapping his fingers as we sat in the coffee-shop. The waiter, wearing a long white robe and a red fez, calmly walked up to the players and told him not to summon him in that manner. “I am not a dog,” he said, Perhaps, there was some political life in the people.
It was really far too hot to be playing cricket, and Kardar sensibly decided to stay in the air-conditioned hotel as did Imtiaz Ahmed. This meant that Yusuf Jaffer (Sunny Joe) would keep wicket. But Joe managed to persuade Hanif Mohammad to do so. Kardar arrived at the ground when we were fielding and he went ballistic to see Hanif keeping wicket. “I can’t risk an injury to Hanif,” he said and there and then Hanif took off his pads and gloves, and Yusuf Jaffer was behind the stumps.
I was fielding at first slip and I commiserated with him and he kept complaining about the weather and how his back was troubling him. I told him that he would probably be opening the innings. “They can’t do this to me,” he wailed. “I will go back to London.” The match itself didn’t amount to much, but I do remember an Arab boy who made an attractive fifty and we were pleasantly surprised that Arabs were taking to cricket.
It was peaceful in Zanzibar, and somewhat unreal. One did not sense any restlessness nor any anxiety that this lovely island would be sucked into turmoil that was East Africa. We were not there long enough and the little time we had was spent in playing cricket or wandering about in the bazaars. I thought about buying an ornamental dagger, but what would I do with it?
BUT politics and race and tribes is not what East Africa was entirely about. It was also about animals and birds and forests and flowers. Hibiscus, iris, lilies, African violets, bougainvillea, cassias, shrubs, vines and a bright scarlet cliber called Ashanti blood. Flora in bewildering profusion. It was, as if, Nature had gone on a binge. The colours were wild and dazzling under high, bright skies, with foaming clouds of pink and cream and slate-blue. It was an incredibly beautiful country with incredibly poor native people.
And whether or not you were interested in Big Game, you got to know about it, its technical, ritualistic mythology and the tall stories, the bragging, the bravado, the daring. Not necessarily the unvarnished truth, but interesting enough to listen to the yarns. For instance, elephants are fun to watch, but no ‘white hunter’ will let you go near them. It is a bad sign if an elephant stamps its rear feet, African elephants cannot be domesticated. No one has seen one in a circus. Lions run at 35mph and a large lion can carry away a whole zebra. A National Games Park is a zoo in reverse, the animals are free and the people are caged in Land Rovers and Jeeps.
I learnt all this from one of the most endearing friends we made on the tour. He was Iqbal Mauladad, the younger brother of Bashir, and known to all as Bali. A warm, happy, large-hearted man, we said that his heart was big as Bali himself. An enormous man, with a handle-bar moustache, a face that was never without a smile, an impish smile, we had nicknamed him ‘Tiny’ and he had become a part of the team. With Bali around, there was never a need for a heavy roller. All he had to do was walk up and down the wicket. He travelled with us throughout the tour and many an evening was made memorable by Bali’s tales about animals.
He was a professional ‘white hunter’ and his clients included famous Hollywood names and, in fact, when MGM was making Bhowani Junction in Pakistan, he become their technical adviser. What did he know about films? Nothing at all. But his safari contacts got him the job. He offered to take me on a safari at the end of the tour, and it is one of my regrets that I did not take him up on the offer. I had told him that I did not believe in killing animals, but it would have been fun to be with him.
He had also been a professional racing-car driver. He was himself a wealthy man and didn’t need to do any of these things to keep his large body and soul alive. But he did it for fun, for he loved life with an intensity that went beyond passion. There were no angles to him, he was not a celebrity camp-follower for he was a celebrity in his own right. He was one of a kind and the only time that he was sad was when we were leaving and tears had rolled down his ample cheeks.
IN Kampala, while Wallis Mathias was batting, we received a telegram that his father had passed away. We were undecided to let him know immediately or allow him to carry on batting and then break the news to him gently at the tea-interval. It didn’t matter one way or the other, and he was called back and the news was given to him. He took the news bravely and with dignity and his eyes got moist and we sat quietly in the dressing-room.
Hamid Jalal asked him whether he wanted to stay or go home. “I want to be with my family,” he said. We felt very badly for him. He was one of the quiet members of the team and seemed very much to mind his business, but he was a popular member of the team and we would joke with him and he would laugh. Each one of us wanted to share in his grief. But it is impossible to do that. Grieving is something immensely personal. It is when a person wants to be with one’s own thoughts and does not want the privacy of his thoughts invaded by public sorrow. Wallis flew out to Nairobi and took a flight to Karachi. The tour continued.
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