Gravel Heart(32)

My anguish needed cooperation to sustain its intensity and since Frederica was not willing to provide it, it dissipated and leaked away, but I knew it was something real, something truthful, not something imagined or misconstrued, genuine like the pain I felt when loneliness and homesickness overcame me. Homesickness sounds like a silly adolescent condition to be in, but there were times when it consumed me and paralysed me with sorrow and then I locked myself in my room and wept for hours. That too must sound ridiculous but it was real and unarguable. My misery was so deep it was tragic, but that could not be helped either and after a time I had to open my door and get back out. I was having to learn so much so quickly, and I was so busy with so much work, that I did not have a proper sense of what I knew any more.

The work at college was reassuring, but I suspected my grades were inflated to encourage me. Most of us were students who had failed before and were trying again, which was not to say that some were not able and clever, but perhaps our teachers feared we were short on confidence. When I felt doubt or was wearied of the task I had been set, I reminded myself of what it would make possible for me. I would be a student in a university and participate in the life of the mind, among people who valued that pursuit above everything.

That year in the OAU house raced past for me. I had worked hard, learnt to be independent, studied materials I enjoyed, and fallen in unrequited love.

Dear Mama,

You banished me to this place in the name of love. You said you wanted the best for me but really you let him take me away so you could live your life in peace. Sometimes I panic when I think I will never see you again and that this is what you want, but then the panic passes and I return to my labours because there is nothing else I can do. Sometimes I hear your voice in the dark. I know it’s you, your voice slightly hoarse as if you’ve just woken up from a nap, but I know it’s you.

*

The tenants changed during my second year at the OAU house. Alex returned to Nigeria to marry and the man who replaced him was another Nigerian. His name was Amos, a quarrelsome battler who by sheer force of ill will imposed himself on the house and poisoned its atmosphere, changing its routine to suit himself. He brooded silently when Peter and I laughed or looked as if we were enjoying ourselves and then burst out at us with mocking sarcasm and jeers. He was a short, round man of impressive energy, and he looked strong enough to overcome any of us. It was as if he loved to speak only in dispute and disagreement, as if he needed to do that for his own well-being. Amos even cowed Mr Mgeni, who gave up coming round unless he knew that Amos was out. The television blasted the news as soon as Amos came in, the fridge was taken over by his various packages and pots. He disapproved of music and demanded its silencing, and he was revolted by alcohol, screwing up his face if anyone opened a can of beer in his vicinity. He was a diligent church-goer and had a phobia about Muslims. Whenever something about Islam came up on the news and I happened to be there, he turned to me as if I were the only Muslim in London and in some way responsible for what he disliked.

‘Muslims are fanatics, imperialists, racists,’ he said, eyes bulging with rage. ‘They came to Africa and destroyed our culture. They made us subservient to them and stole our knowledge and inventions and made us into slaves.’

I was not sure why I deserved Amos’s outrage any more than Mannie, who was a Muslim too and whose father was a devout imam, or Mr Mgeni, or several million other Africans who could also have shared the blame. Peter, though, refused to be cowed, and the two of them spent several evenings arguing and shouting at each other as if they would come to blows.

‘What inventions did they come and steal from you? What inventions are you talking about?’ Peter said. ‘The only thing Africans ever invented was the assegai, and we did that. What were you lot doing up there all the time? Selling each other for trinkets.’

‘You South Africans have no sense of history,’ Amos sneered. ‘The white man ate your brains generations ago.’

‘You are right, we are full of bullshit,’ Peter said. ‘But at least we know it instead of inventing a history that did not exist.’

‘You are just a self-hating kaffir, my friend,’ Amos said.

‘Who’s your friend? I don’t make friends with bigots.’

Amos took off his belt and waved the buckle threateningly in front of him, but he kept his distance and Peter ignored him. I found Amos’s bluster and noise so disagreeable that often they drove me away to my room, which perhaps was just as well for my studies.

I had not been to see Uncle Amir and Auntie Asha since I left the house in Holland Park, nor had I sent them the Guinea Lane address. I forwarded my financial guarantee renewal papers to the embassy. At first it was because I could not face seeing them after my expulsion, and could not rid myself of the memory of the hard words my uncle had to say to me in farewell. But as time passed, my reasons for staying away multiplied: I was ashamed of my failure, I was angry with them for bringing me here, I despised their self-importance, I did not owe them a thing. So I was surprised when around Christmas of that year, I received a letter on embassy paper from Rome. They must have got my address from my mother.

Uncle Amir’s name was on the letter-head as His Excellency the Ambassador, so he had become a big man at last as he had promised to do many years ago. The letter was hand-written by Uncle Amir, and it wished me well in my studies or whatever I was doing, and advised me of his current address. Rome! I wished I could go to Rome. I wished I could go anywhere, I wished I could liberate myself from the drudgery of my life in London. If I had been obedient to my uncle and aunt I would have been spending the Christmas vacation in Rome this year. I sent my uncle a postcard of London Bridge, congratulated him on his appointment and asked him to convey my best wishes to Auntie Asha and the children. What else could I do?