Gravel Heart(25)

‘I now want to study literature and I will re-enrol at the college to do that. I will have to re-enrol as a full-time student because otherwise I will not get a visa. I will then find unregistered work and support myself. But I will need to show financial means of looking after myself while studying. Will you agree to provide the guarantee? You will not need to give me any money. The alternative is for me to disappear but I don’t know if I will still be able to study after that. If you are unable to offer the guarantee, the best thing will be for me to go back.’

Uncle Amir looked at me thoughtfully and did not say anything for a long while nor did I attempt to add to what I had already said. Then he nodded and said: ‘You have put your case simply and clearly. I have been wondering what you were going to come up with now that you have made such a mess of this opportunity. You are a stupid, ungrateful boy. It is a side of you I was unaware of before but which I have seen more and more of as you have been living with us. If I had known, I would not have wasted our money and brought you here to live with us. It would have saved us all a lot of stress and we would have been spared the pointless anxiety of trying to get you to study when you had no intention of doing so. In addition to that it appears there is something malicious and rotten in your spirit and that you are itching to cause mischief. Asha told me what you said to her about your mother. Nothing could be further from the truth. I will tell your mother about your ingratitude, both to her and to us. I think she had higher hopes of you.

‘I don’t know why you want to study literature. I don’t know where this idea came from. It’s a pointless subject, of no practical use to anybody. What will you do with it afterwards? It will neither feed you nor teach you any skills nor allow you to make anything of your life, but that’s your business. I tried to help you but all I got back was vileness and ignorance. I have enquired at your college but they tell me they cannot give me any information about what went wrong. This country and its stupid rules! I expect you got mixed up with drug addicts and criminals, this city is full of them. Now you can join them and be a proper cheating unemployed immigrant. I tried to give you something more worthwhile than that. We tried to give you an opportunity and a home, but that was not good enough for you. You preferred to spend your time with those immigrant loafers. You are my sister’s son and I cannot give up my responsibility to you, but I want you out of my sight. In the meantime, I will arrange the financial guarantee, as you ask, but I will not support you. I don’t want you here any more. I would like you to make sure you move out into your own accommodation before we go away on vacation. Then after that you can go to hell. If you require anything else from me, write me a note.’





4

THE OAU HOUSE

I moved to a room in Guinea Lane in Camberwell, in a house I shared with three other men all of whom were African. It was a long way from the embassy house in Holland Park, a long way in luxury but also in many other respects. The traffic roared by in both directions on Camberwell Road, and the ramshackle chaos and littered pavements of Peckham Road were just a few minutes away. I heard about the room from Mood, who knew about it from his cousin who lived in the house. The landlord, Mr Mgeni, lived next door. Camberwell was not a part of London I had been to before, and in my imagination the Borough of Southwark was a landscape of dark houses that were crusted with soot on the outside and smears of dried human fluids on the inside. It must have been something I read but I imagined it as a place of ancient pain. I had not been south of the river that much altogether: a tube ride to Brixton Market with Mood, an afternoon in Greenwich with a group of friends, a museum trip organised by our Liberal Studies teacher at the college. It was not a famous museum and most of the exhibits were textiles from poor and oppressed places in the world, so at least part of the point of the visit was to show us ethnic art, to teach us not to despise the clumsy efforts of backward people. It was in this spirit of adventure that I set off to view the room.

Mr Mgeni was a neat, friendly-looking man in his sixties, with a good-natured smile and a carefully modulated voice and cheering manner. He was skinny and short with a peppery moustache and tight-knit hair. His movements were jaunty and a little overstated as if he was constantly making an effort. He swayed slightly as he walked, hands in the pockets of his short jacket, his whole body in motion as if gently keeping time to a beat only he could hear. I thought he had a teacherly look about him, but I also saw something spiky and world-weary in those alert eyes. I liked him at once and grew to like him a great deal more as I came to know him. He gave me a long look and broke into a huge smile when I greeted him in Kiswahili.

‘Aha, I thought so,’ he said. ‘Jamaa, mswahili mwenzangu. One look at you and I knew. Mswahili huyu. That’s what I said to myself. We’re related.’

I had guessed from his name, then when I saw him I was certain. Mr Mgeni asked me where I came from and explained that he himself was from Malindi in Kenya. He had left so many years ago that he could hardly remember anything about it. No, that was not true, but he could not be sure if anything still looked as he remembered it. Had I ever been to Malindi? It must look very different now, with all these package holidays you see advertised. He could not imagine the Malindi he knew being a package-holiday destination. Had I seen the brochures? Probably all filthy criminal money from somewhere, money laundering whatever that is. The hotels in those brochures are like fantasies. Tourists wouldn’t go there if they couldn’t stay in palaces, of course, as if that was how they lived in their own homes. Did I want to see the room? Please understand these are bachelors’ quarters, rough and ready and cheaply furnished, just right for a jaluta like you. A week in advance and a handshake was enough for him. Of course the room was mine if I wanted it. It was a little small but it was empty, so I could move in straight away if I liked.