A Guide to the Birds of East Africa Read online

  Mr Malik asked his taxi driver to wait in the car park. He wasn’t planning to go far – just find a bench, sit down and think. He pushed open the green gate, turned left at the big sequoia and headed towards a grove of lemon-scented gums. And blow me down if he didn’t see, on the path right in front of him, a hoopoe.

  Several years ago my sister gave me a very fine present. It is a centre spread taken from the Boys’ Own Magazine of 1927, on which, arrayed among a fanciful landscape of trees, river, beach and fields, is every bird that can be seen in Britain. The robin, the blackbird, the thrush and the wren are there, as well as less common birds like the water ouzel and Montagu’s harrier. Among the nearly three hundred species represented (it is a very crowded picture) are birds that are not resident in Britain but are occasional visitors – a snowy owl from the Russian tundra, a cattle egret from the Camargue. And there on the ground, jostled between a lapwing and what I’m pretty sure is meant to be a fieldfare, is a hoopoe.

  I have never seen a hoopoe in Britain – they are what are known to ornithologists as ‘infrequent visitors’ – but the first time I saw one in Africa I had much the same feeling as Mr Malik was having now. It was one of happy elation. There is something about the shape of the bird, with its long curved beak and clown’s crest, and the colour of the bird, with its bright russet plumage speckled with bands of black and white – there is even something about the very name of the bird – that just cheers you up. Forget the bluebird of happiness, give me a hoopoe every time. It didn’t seem at all afraid. It cocked its head to one side, looked up at him with bright black eye. Don’t worry, the bird seemed to be saying. Your secret is safe. Don’t worry. Mr Malik reached into his pocket for a pencil, opened the new notebook to the first page and wrote down ‘Hoopoe’.

  Monday at the Asadi Club is usually a quiet night. It is the night when the click of billiard balls is at its most sporadic, when the bar staff have time to polish glasses and catch up on the weekend gossip, when you can drive into a parking space right next to the door. Not so this Monday. It was as well Mr Malik arrived by taxi – had he been driving his own car he would have had to park on the street. The car park was full and the joint was jumping. He paid the taxi driver and made his way to the barroom where he found Mr Patel and Mr Gopez surrounded by an excited crowd of members. Mr Patel was hunched over his lists and standing smiling beside him was Harry Khan.

  ‘Hey, Jack,’ he called out. ‘How did your day go?’

  Mr Malik took the notebook from his pocket and held it up.

  Mr Patel, looking up from his table and waving a greeting to his friend, said, ‘Khan, thirty.’ He stood, and in a louder voice announced, ‘Khan, thirty. In total, one hundred and eight.’

  Mr Malik pushed his way through the roaring crowd. Without a word he handed Mr Patel his new notebook.

  Mr Patel sat down and opened it. He looked silently up at Mr Malik. The crowd became silent. He again got to his feet.

  ‘Malik,’ he said in a soft voice, ‘one.’

  He coughed to clear his throat.

  ‘Malik, one,’ he announced. ‘In total, forty-nine.’

  It was true. The only new bird Mr Malik had seen at the arboretum that day had been that solitary hoopoe.

  He had, though, seen quite a lot besides.

  25

  Khan, one hundred and eight; Malik, forty-nine.

  Now, something may have been niggling one or two of you. I don’t mean the problem with the stolen notebook – I’m sure you spotted long before Mr Malik that if that notebook got into the wrong hands it could mean trouble. I mean that according to the rules of the competition, as drawn up by Tiger Singh and agreed to by all parties, it is behoven to each protagonist not to mention anything of the reasons behind the competition to anyone outside the Asadi Club. What then are we to make of the fact that Harry Khan seems to be doing all his birdspotting with the help of two people who are not members? Has he told them about the competition? If he has, has he broken the rules?

  And what about the fact that while Mr Malik is operating alone and unaided, Harry has had the assistance of a couple of increasingly enthusiastic twitchers? Is this kosher, I hear you ask. Is this halal? Can this really be viewed as strict adherence to the letter and spirit of the competition? To find the answer to these questions (and others) we will return to the club.

  If someone had cut a banana in half (just an ordinary banana, not a big cooking plantain) and held it up in front of Harry Khan’s face, it would only just have covered the grin that now stretched across it. Malik, one? It was high fives and, ‘Drinks on me, boys.’ As the crowd moved towards the bar with Harry Khan in its midst, Mr Malik sat down beside his friends.

  ‘What happened?’ said Patel.

  ‘My very question,’ said Mr Gopez.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Mr Malik. ‘Well, it’s a long story.’

  ‘What time does the club close today, A.B.?’

  ‘Monday? Midnight – as usual.’

  Mr Patel looked at his watch, then back to Mr Malik.

  ‘Four hours then – long enough?’

  Mr Malik smiled. The two half-empty glasses of beer in front of his friends made him realize he was thirsty. He was about to signal for a waiter when Harry Khan burst out of the crowd around the bar carrying a laden tray.

  ‘Here you go guys, something to keep your strength up.’

  Five glasses of Tusker were lifted from tray to table. It was unclear who the fifth glass was for until the familiar form of Tiger Singh also appeared from the crowd.

  A most satisfactory evening, gentlemen,’ he said. He glanced at Mr Malik and reached for a beer. ‘I mean for the club. We don’t usually get this kind of a crowd on a Monday. But before we do anything else, Khan here tells me he has a point he wants a ruling on.’

  The two of them sat down at the table.

  ‘Gentlemen, your health,’ said Harry Khan, raising his glass. ‘Yes, what I want to know about is tomorrow. It’s Tuesday. The bird walk. Is it on or is it off? Can we go or can’t we?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Patel.

  ‘I do,’ said Mr Gopez.

  ‘Hmmm,’ said the Tiger. ‘This could, I fear, be a case of adhuc sub judice lis est. I think that the Committee needs to discuss it. Mr Patel, you have a copy of the rules? Come, gentlemen.’

  The three members of the Special Committee left our two protagonists sitting alone while they retired to a separate table. Mr Gopez put forward the problem as he saw it.

  ‘The first problem is the lady. The agreement clearly states that neither party is to contact the lady at the heart of the matter until that matter has been resolved. If going on a bird walk on which said lady is present is not contact I don’t know what is.’

  ‘I see your point, of course, A.B.,’ said the Tiger, ‘but you will in fact find that the term “contact” is closely defined.’ He turned to the second page of the agreement. ‘Both parties also agree that between now and the moment when the Wager is settled, neither will initiate contact – personal, telephonic or epistolary, nor through any third person nor by any other means – with the aforementioned lady.” It seems to me that as long as they don’t actually talk to her or slip her a billet-doux there’s no reason at all why they shouldn’t go on the beastly bird walk. What do you think, Patel?’

  Patel sat back in his chair.

  ‘Tricky. When is contact contact? A dilemma worthy of a US president, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Come on, Patel,’ said Mr Gopez. ‘We’re the bloody Committee. We’ll just say no and that’s that.’

  ‘We are indeed the Committee, A.B., as I’m sure Tiger would agree. And that as the Committee our job is to discuss points as they arise.’

  ‘But never mind if they do promise not to contact her, what would be the point of them going? If they both go, they’ll both see the same jolly birds and neither of them will be any better off anyway.’

  ‘I think you’re missing something here, A.B.
The point at issue – correct me if I’m wrong here, Tiger – is not whether they should go, but whether the rules say they can go.’

  ‘Can go, should go – don’t be so namby-pamby. Just tell them they can’t go.’

  The Tiger thought it time to interject.

  ‘My suggestion, gentlemen, is this. In such a case, I can see no reason why we shouldn’t consult with the parties. If both agree, fine. If one disagrees, then it’s off. What do you say?’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ said Patel.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Mr Gopez.

  ‘We should do it separately, though,’ said Patel. ‘It’s important that neither should feel pressured.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said the Tiger. ‘We’ll hear their views, then give our decision. Now, who shall we have over first?’

  There are no prizes for guessing Mr Malik’s view on the matter. Just because he had embarked on this bizarre competition and just because he had lost his notebook, did not mean he could forget about his ‘Birds of a Feather’ column, for which his regular briefing from Thomas Nyambe was, as the Tiger might have said, a sine qua non. He was also able to assure the Committee that there was little chance of Rose Mbikwa being there. He remembered that she had said she would be away that week and it was unlikely that she would have changed her mind. He gave the Committee his opinion that either or both parties should be able to go on the bird walk. It was now up to Harry Khan to make his decision.

  Harry had to do some fast figuring, and the way he figured was this. Whether Rose was there or not was immaterial. He was well ahead and had been getting further ahead for each of the last two days. Now, if both he and Malik went on the bird walk tomorrow, then presumably they would both see the same birds and at the end of the day he would still be ahead by the same margin. So at the very least it was a safe option. But if neither of them went on the bird walk and he went somewhere new again with David and George (they had already talked about Lake Magadi as a possibility) he had a good chance of getting even further ahead. On the other hand he had to admit he had been getting a little bit worried about the George and David thing. The rules didn’t say you couldn’t get help to find birds, but they didn’t specifically say it was OK. There was just a possibility that he might be caught out here. But if he and Malik went on the bird walk tomorrow, where everyone was helping everyone else, the problem would be solved. They would both have openly benefited from the help of other people in finding birds and there could be no future objection to any help he might get or had been getting from anyone else. That made a lot of sense – yeah, a lot of sense.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘If it’s OK with Jack it’s OK with me – hey, I remembered the name.’

  The Committee announced its decision, the Tiger went back to the billiard table and Mr Malik sat down with Mr Gopez and Mr Patel in their usual seats.

  ‘By the way, Malik, A.B. and I were wondering,’ said Mr Patel, reaching for his glass. ‘What’s all this “Jack” business?’

  ‘My goodness,’ said Mr Malik, standing up again, ‘is that the time?’

  26

  Though the hoopoe was the only bird that Mr Malik had recorded from his visit to the arboretum, it had not been the only one he had seen. Sparrows fossicked and fought around the rubbish bins. A gang of glossy starlings swaggered across the lawn, on the lookout for worms or other unlucky invertebrates. Red-eyed doves fluttered among the bamboo groves cooing their simple though tedious message, ‘I am – a red-eyed dove. I am – a red-eyed dove.’ But these were just the usual common or garden birds – none that Mr Malik did not already have on his list.

  Was that a regal sunbird flitting among the lemon-scented gum leaves? Mr Malik raised the new binoculars to his eyes. No, not enough red on the chest. It must be a male shining sunbird – he’d seen plenty of those before. But no matter that it wasn’t a new species for his list, it was still a pretty little thing. The tiny bird flew over to a flame tree and, ignoring the young man who was rocking back and forth beneath murmuring prayers to the lower branches, began sipping nectar from one of the bright red flowers with its long beak. Off the path to the left, a young woman was conversing with a jacaranda (the Christians of the arboretum, he had already noticed, were as usual out in force). The path to the right led down to the river. Between them, a third path led to the araucaria grove. There was another seat there, a quieter place where he would be able to sit and think more clearly about the stolen notebook. He took the middle way.

  Many of you will be familiar with the family Araucariaceae, the group of southern hemisphere trees whose members include the monkey puzzle tree of South America Araucaria araucana. The family also boasts several Australian species, and it was towards one of these – Araucaria bidwillii, the bunya bunya of southern Queensland – that Mr Malik now bent his steps.

  What, he mused as he meandered, should he do? He brushed away some spiky leaves from the empty bench beneath the tree. What could he do? The answer seemed clear. Absolutely nothing. And perhaps the hoopoe had been right. Even suppose one of the thieves had read the purloined notebook – and that would have to suppose that any of them could read at all – they would make nothing of its contents. It did not contain his name, nor that of his friend Mr Nyambe. How could they know that the marabou so often referred to was the Minister for Defence? That the vulture was the Minister for Security? And even if, by some remote possibility, they put two and two together, why should they do anything about it? But on the other hand, perhaps the hoopoe had been wrong… It was just as he was about to sit down and try once more to reassure himself that the tree spoke.

  ‘Hi,’ said the bunya bunya. There was no trace of an Australian accent.

  Mr Malik’s first reaction was naturally to ignore it.

  ‘Hi,’ said the tree again. ‘Mr Malik, is that you?’

  It is disconcerting to be spoken to by a tree. It is doubly so when that tree clearly recognizes you but you have absolutely no recollection of ever being introduced to the tree. Mr Malik was beginning to feel on shaky ground here. He rose to his feet and began to walk away.

  ‘Mr Malik, please, I need some help.’

  Now that he was a little distance away the voice seemed to be coming from about halfway up the tree. When he looked up he saw a black face looking down from the high branches, a face that was clearly human, a face that he recognized. He could see only the face, the body being obscured by foliage.

  ‘Benjamin,’ he said with some relief. ‘What on earth are you doing up there?’

  He had often wondered where the boy went on his regular Monday morning off.

  ‘I climbed up here.’

  ‘Are you stuck?’

  ‘Not stuck, Mr Malik, but I need some help. I can’t get down.’

  This didn’t seem to make any sense.

  ‘Why can’t you get down?’

  ‘Because I don’t have any clothes on.’

  Mr Malik was not sure that this made any more sense.

  ‘Why?’ he said.

  ‘I took them off.’

  ‘You took off your clothes, and climbed the tree?’

  ‘No, no, Mr Malik, it was not like that at all,’ said Benjamin. ‘I climbed the tree first, then I took my clothes off.’

  ‘Why?’ he said again.

  ‘He said that I should, the young Christian man. He said that when he wanted to get closer to God he climbed a tall tree.’

  ‘Without any clothes on?’

  ‘He said that if I wanted to get truly close to God I must take off all my clothes, like Adam in the Garden of Eden.’

  ‘Well, put your clothes back on again and come down.’

  ‘I can’t. He said I should cast them away.’

  ‘Well, where are they?’

  ‘He said that he would look after them for me.’

  ‘Well, where is he, this Christian man?’

  ‘I don’t know. He went away, many hours ago. He took my clothes, and my shoes too. He has not come back.’


  On the scale of the bizarre and improbable this all seemed to Mr Malik to rank high, though considerably lower than a talking tree.

  ‘Mr Malik, can you help me?’

  ‘Yes, Benjamin,’ he said. ‘I will help you.’

  It took him twenty minutes to go home in the taxi, another twenty to find the spare key to Benjamin’s room and gather up some clothes. He couldn’t find any shoes so he brought along a pair of his own flip-flops. On arriving back at the tree he found that Benjamin refused to descend to the lower branches.

  ‘Someone might see me, Mr Malik. That is why I have stayed up here.’

  Mr Malik supposed that the boy had a point. Fifty yards away the young woman was still talking to the jacaranda and a flock of primary school children had just swooped on to the lawn and were heading towards them.

  ‘I can appreciate your difficulty, Benjamin,’ he said, ‘but there is no way I can climb this tree and give you your clothes. I’m afraid you will just have to come down.’

  ‘Mr Malik, I was thinking you might have a piece of string.’

  ‘A piece of string?’

  ‘Yes. You could throw it up here, and I could let one end down and you could tie my clothes to it. Then I can get dressed and climb down.’

  Some half an hour later Mr Malik returned from Amin and Sons General Emporium (‘Don’t ask, Godfrey, please don’t ask’) with a ball of sisal string of the required length. It took him several girl-like attempts at throwing the string up to Benjamin, then the end of the string was let down, the clothes were hauled up, and after a few minutes Benjamin descended.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Malik,’ he said.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Mr Malik. ‘Now let’s go home.’

  It was these events which he had been going to tell his friends about at the club that night – until Harry Khan had mentioned the hated nickname. As he hurried out of the club he thought that perhaps it was as well he hadn’t.