Sankofa(26)

Thomas knows a great many members of what he calls the British left. They are an odd assortment. Duchesses and dustmen rubbing shoulders. We are all equal at the meetings we attend—Thomas Phiri and Sir Henry Norris, shake hands and be friends, no difference between black and white—but step out on the street to hail a cab and you’ll soon know the real story.”



“That’s right. That was Thomas. Untidy and too political for his own good. At least until I arrived. You said Francis wrote about me.”

“Yes.”


“I have met Thomas’s wife. She is a formidable woman. He seemed rather diminished in his newly spick-and-span flat. She is determined that he be called to the bar this year. Blessing has been to Menelik’s flat and is unimpressed. ‘If you want to fight imperialism go back and join the Chimurenga.’

‘We are strategizing,’ Thomas said weakly.

‘Strategize on the boat home.’”



“Interesting. I didn’t know he noticed me enough to make such an observation. I was unimpressed by Thomas’s friends. A bunch of radical posers. Although I didn’t mind Francis. He was kind. Never came round to our flat without a small gift. Milk, apples, and so on.”

“Did Thomas ever get called to the bar?” I asked.

“No. He couldn’t pass the exams. He became a librarian,” she said. “What else from those days?”

“He wrote about Menelik.”

“He was a Caribbean, you know? Calling himself Menelik like some Ethiopian prince. They didn’t take slaves from Ethiopia. Read it.”


“Menelik has gone on a speaking tour of the North of England. His flat is closed and I am left unoccupied. I try my old haunts, the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, but I am thrown into those first days when I was a lonely Londoner. The other African students have scattered to their holiday jobs or the homes of their classmates. I have received no invitations. I do not know how to make myself amenable to the English.

I have begun the book Menelik gave me on African kingdoms. It is arranged in order of the alphabet. I have read through Adal, Aksum, Alodia, Asante, and am now on Bamana. It will be the end of the holidays before I reach Zulu.”



We were silent for a moment, as if a prayer had just been read.

“So that’s where he got the name Bamana from. You’re holding history in your hands,” she said.

“What was he like?”

“I didn’t know him that well. He was Thomas’s friend, not mine. There was something about him that made people want to impress him, something cool and aloof, like he was condescending. But I suppose he was just thinking things through as that book has shown, making note of everything. He was never one for a quick response,” she said. “Does he know about your birth?”

“I don’t think so. He went back to Bamana before my mother discovered she was pregnant.”

“Why do you want to meet him, then? You seem to have done all right for yourself. Are you married? Children?”

“I have one daughter. I’m in the process of getting a divorce.”

“Shame,” she said.

Her pity made me suddenly spiteful. “The diary—it says Thomas had other women.”

She leaned forward.

“You think you can come here and shock me with anything you read in that book?”

“I’m sorry, I spoke out of turn.”

“No, you spoke to wound me because you’re ashamed of this divorce, although I can’t see why. People get divorced all the time. And Thomas was here for five years without me. What do you expect? I’m just glad I didn’t arrive to find a half-caste bastard.”

“I should go,” I said.

“Now I’m the one who has spoken out of turn.”

“No, really. I’ve kept you too long.”

“Your father came here once in a motorcade of three black Benzes. Just after he was elected. His bodyguards stood in the hallway with their guns or whatever was under those big coats and we sat here, three of us in this room.” She pointed at the spaces her husband and my father had occupied.

“He ate. One of his men insisted on tasting the food first, as if my sadza could be poisoned,” she said with a small smile. “For months, the neighbors were talking about the African prince that came to see us. It left Thomas feeling small. My husband wouldn’t have been president if he’d gone back to Zimbabwe, wouldn’t have been a cabinet minister, probably wouldn’t even have been a school principal. But seeing Francis made him feel like we should have gone home. That was the last time we saw him.”

She stood. The interview was at an end.

“Are you sure I can’t offer you a cup of tea?”



I dialed Adrian once I got home.

“Blessing said you were a spy,” I said, bypassing a greeting.

“Did she?”

“I was expecting a more straightforward denial.”

“I wasn’t a spy, but I was invited in by the Home Office once or twice because of my friendship with some members of the black left.”

“And you went?” I asked.

“I was curious. It was all a little James Bond. I didn’t tell them anything of use. I didn’t know anything of use. I certainly didn’t know about Menelik’s guns.”