A Guide to the Birds of East Africa Read online

  Down in Mombasa, in a little tin shed with a padlock on the door, he happened to know that stacked against the wall were several cases of dynamite left over from when the harbour master had conceived a grand plan to extend the harbour wall with coral rock blasted from a nearby hill. Two loud bangs were enough to show the harbour master that the rock was so fragile the shock from blasting reduced it to useless dust, and the dynamite still sat in its Swedish pine boxes in this small tin shed down by the wharf. Mohammed Khan introduced the harbour master to the chief railway engineer and a deal was struck. For his trouble the harbour master thanked Harry Khan’s grandfather with the first thing that came to hand, which happened to be several bolts of bright red Manchester worsted that had been left at his office, in mysterious circumstances, by the owner of a private steam yacht.

  Mohammed Khan gratefully accepted the red cloth from the harbour master and had an inspiration. He cut it up into lengths and on his next Saturday off, took his merchandise up the line to sell at the market behind the station in Nairobi. The first Saturday he sold one square of cloth to a passing Maasai. The second Saturday he sold twenty, the third a hundred. Almost every passing Maasai goat and cattle herder – and many Maasai did pass by the railway station, drawn there by its strange spectacle – decided that he would like a new red cloak. Thus it was that the Maasai, who had until then favoured cloth the colour of the earth they walked, acquired their taste for red cloaks which continues to this day, and thus it was that Mohammed Khan first went into trade.

  By the time old Mohammed was ready to pass on the business to his son it had become one of the largest trading houses in East Africa. Advertisements extolling ‘Khan’s for Kwality’ could be seen from the boat jetty at Mombasa to the railway terminus at Entebbe, from the plains of Serengeti almost to the very peak of Kilimanjaro.

  Harry’s father had gone on to consolidate this small empire of trade, and by the 1960s the family was one of the richest in East Africa. But then things went bad. Independence was coming, business confidence went belly up. Unrest and unruliness spread across Kenya; tribes called for tribalization, nationalists for nationalization. As soon as Harry, the youngest of the children, finished his schooling at Eastlands High, the Khans sold up, packed their bags, and moved to Toronto.

  They did well there and expanded operations into the US. Harry had by now joined the family firm but his part was mainly ‘front of house’. He had no head for figures like his brother Aladin, no eye for a business bargain like his brother Salaman, but he had a gift. He could make people feel good. When a new hotel was being opened, Harry was the one who arranged the party, greeted the guests and made the speeches. When finance was being sought for a new shopping centre, Harry was the one who took the bankers to lunch. When a franchise was being sold, he was the one who entertained the franchisees’ wives (they did like Harry, those franchisees’ wives).

  Meanwhile his elder brothers made the deals and counted the money, of which there was always enough so that they seldom had to question Harry about his credit cards and charge accounts. He began keeping an uptown apartment in Toronto overlooking the St Lawrence and a downtown apartment in Manhattan overlooking the East River. He was now on to his fifth apartment in both cities, each of his previous wives having claimed one, and he was getting bored. And his brothers were getting exasperated; so many wives, no children. Perhaps, they suggested, he needed to get away. It would be hard, but they would manage without him for a few weeks – a few months even. What about a visit to the old country? (Yes, they were pretty sure you could use Amex in Africa.) Maybe Mom would like to go too, eh? And he could scout around. There might be some good business opportunities again in East Africa these days – franchises, perhaps? Harry agreed.

  Exactly how he would spend the three months there he had no idea, but he was sure something would turn up.

  10

  In the forty-four years that had passed since Harry Khan and his mother had last driven along the road that leads from the international airport to the city of Nairobi, much had changed. Harry didn’t recognize it at all. His mother, sitting in the back of the nice new Range Rover in which her nephew Ali had met them, kept shaking her head as she thought she recognized some long-forgotten landmark of yesteryear, now hemmed in with stark concrete office buildings and car and furniture showrooms. ‘Aieiii,’ she would say. On the whole trip into town – past the football stadium, past Uhuru Park, the new parliament building, the old university – that is all she said. Aieiii.

  ‘I don’t remember any of these street names,’ said Harry.

  ‘They changed them all, old boy,’ said his cousin. ‘We’re post-colonial now, don’t you know.’

  Turning right off the Uhuru Road (Queen’s Avenue) he drove them down Kenyatta Parade (Prince’s Street), past a petrol station and left at a small roundabout where half a dozen young boys dressed in rags watched with vacant eyes. The large car bumped along a potholed lane for a couple of hundred metres, then turned into a gateway on which was mounted, in shining gold letters, the words ‘Sea Spray’.

  ‘And I certainly don’t remember this.’

  ‘It’s new. Quieter than the Hilton. I thought it would be better for Auntie.’

  ‘What about the old Livingstone?’

  ‘Ah, you mean The Dawn of Africa. Under new management.’ Ali shook his head. ‘Not what it was.’

  Harry had no need to ask why they were not staying at the Stanley. No Khan had set foot in the Stanley since the day fifty years ago when his father, on the way to the dining room for lunch with an important client, had been mistaken by the manager for a waiter and threatened with the sack if he didn’t chop-chop. But the Sea Spray (only its owners, a Saudi Arabian family who have never set foot in it, know why a hotel approximately two hundred and fifty miles from the nearest ocean is so called) looked like a fine modern hotel. They checked in, Harry’s mother found her room and retired to bed while Harry and Ali retired to the bar.

  It had been arranged that the three of them would stay for just one night in Nairobi before driving on in the morning to Naivasha. Ali still kept the large house on the lake that their grandfather had built there as his country retreat in the thirties, and where the Kenyan and American branches of the family had agreed that it would be good for Harry’s mother to stay during her three months in Kenya. It would be easier to have the relatives visit her rather than travelling around to meet all of them. This proved a wise decision. The sooner they got out of this ruined city, she informed her son and nephew at breakfast the next morning, the happier she would be.

  The house at Naivasha had changed little. Still the long euphorbia hedge lining the road, still the tall iron gates opening on to the long murram drive, still the wide lawns and flamingo-pink stucco of the house itself. Harry’s mother loved it; Harry did not. He was bored. So three days later, after making sure that his mother had settled back into life in Africa and was already so used to having servants again that she was quite back to her bossy old ways, Harry Khan was only too happy to accept the invitation of his cousin’s wife’s sister’s youngest daughter Elvira – the spoilt one, the pretty one, the unmarried-but-engaged one who had been down to visit her auntie – to head back to the city for a few days. Her fiancé, an accountant of good family and serious intent, was unfortunately working in Dubai but she would be delighted to show Harry around the town.

  This time he booked into the Hilton. He hired a red Mercedes. Elvira showed him as much as she could of the city’s charms and more than she should of her own and everywhere took American Express. This wasn’t so bad after all, thought Harry. Then the fiancé arrived back in town.

  And so it was that Harry Khan, bored now in the city and at a loose end, found himself one morning walking over to the museum (of all places) to while away a few hours before his head was clear enough to motor over to a restaurant he had heard about just outside town for a couple of beers and a bit of lunch. And so it was that he met Rose Mbikwa.

  T
his is how Rose fills her week. Monday morning, staff meeting. That is to say her own domestic staff, of whom she employs five – Elizabeth the housekeeper, Reuben the 63-year-old gardener (she refuses to call him ‘shamba boy’) and three askaris, Mokiya, old Mukhisa and young Mukhisa, to guard the house and gate in Serengeti Gardens. She doesn’t really need all these staff. Rose is a competent cook and enthusiastic gardener. Nor does she feel she needs guarding. The high walls, razor-wire fences and elaborate alarm systems favoured by so many of her neighbours would make her feel more threatened than safe (and besides, Rose knows that if they really want to get you, they will). But her house had been built with generous servant accommodation, and it would be wrong not to have it used, just as it would be wrong not to give honest employment when so many people have none. She was one of the lucky ones and, as Joshua used to say, it is good to share your luck around. Since coming to work for Rose all three askaris – young Mukhisa in particular – have become keen birdwatchers and are forever calling her outside to observe, and sometimes identify, an especially lovely or unusual bird.

  Monday afternoon is given over to correspondence. Tuesday morning, bird walk; Tuesday afternoon, working at the museum on the guide training project – ditto all Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday morning Rose usually does a stint as volunteer guide at the museum itself, leaving the afternoon free for the weekly shopping, with Elizabeth to help with the bargaining and Reuben to help with the carrying. That particular Friday morning she was about to lead a party of tourists up the main staircase to the Joy Adamson gallery when she noticed a well-dressed man loitering on the edge of the group. When he caught her eye she smiled.

  ‘Please, you are welcome to join us.’

  Over the next hour and a half Harry Khan learned more about Kenya than he had picked up in all the eighteen years he had lived there, especially about the birds. Imagine, over a thousand different species – more than in the whole of North America. By the time the tour was over he was really beginning to believe that the land of his birth was quite a special place. As he was about to leave there was a crash of thunder and the heavens opened. There was no point in walking back to the hotel and getting soaked, but should he wait till it passed or should he get a taxi? There must be a taxi rank somewhere nearby. At that moment the tall white woman appeared, umbrella in hand.

  ‘Could you tell me where I can find a cab?’ said Harry. And thanks for the talk.’

  ‘You can usually find one just outside the gate. And thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed it.’

  Rose recognized him as the white-haired Indian man who had tagged on to the tour. He was quite good-looking, she had thought, in a flashy kind of way – and was that an American accent? She asked him where he was going, he said the Hilton, she said she could give him a lift. He asked her in for a cup of coffee, she accepted. And she’d really enjoyed herself. It was, she couldn’t help thinking as she found herself spluttering into her cup of coffee after another of Harry’s outrageous stories about an American franchisee’s wife (complete with Midwestern accent), a long time since she had laughed like this. When he had asked her whether she would like to have lunch with him – he’d heard about this restaurant just outside town – she found herself saying yes (well, why not, and anyway if they sat outside there were bound to be a few birds to look at). So she went to lunch with him at Tusks, and as well as hearing more funny stories she was surprised to find that he’d shown a lot of interest in the birds too. The sight of a male paradise flycatcher with glowing chestnut tail perched on a jacaranda just metres from the veranda where they ate their lunch had quite entranced him. So when Harry said let’s do this again – how about dinner tomorrow night at the Hilton? – she’d said yes without even thinking about it.

  And that’s when they’d danced.

  11

  ‘What do men want from women?’ my grandmother asked me one day apropos of nothing at all as we waited to be served at the off-sales counter of the Crown and Anchor, one of the several public houses which were favoured in strict rotation as provendors of the daily bottle of sweet sherry she so enjoyed. Without waiting for an answer she said in a loud voice, ‘Sex.’ Satisfied with the look she had created on my late adolescent features, she continued.

  ‘And what do women want from men?’

  I shook an embarrassed head.

  ‘A good dancer.’

  There is, I have come to realize as I have grown older and fonder of sweet sherry, much in this. I suspect it is a sentiment with which Rose Mbikwa would concur. Rose loves to dance.

  Think back to the spring of 1959. We still have twelve months to go until Mr Chubby Checker introduces the twist to the world. We will have to wait another twenty-four before Ray Barretto’s ‘El Watusi’ starts yet another planet-wide dance craze. From Burbank to the Bronx, from Spain to Scotland, rock and roll is still king of the charts and undisputed ruler of the dance floor, and in the junior common room of Edinburgh Presbyterian Ladies’ College fourteen-year-old Rose Macdonald is rocking and rolling with the best of them – the best of them in this case being her fellow pupils at the exclusive Edinburgh girls’ school still noted for producing the crème de la crème. See them step, see them pass, see them do the sugar push. When Elvis curls that lip from the black and white Decca TV in the corner of the room, see the girls all swoon. Oh yeah, hit that rhythm eight to the bar and make it fast, daddy-o. By the time Rose Macdonald had moved on from school to university the rhythm may have changed to 4/4 and the habit of actually touching your partner as you danced may have been temporarily suspended, but she never forgot the exhilaration of those first dances and she never forgot the steps. At the Nairobi Hilton with Harry Khan that first Saturday evening after they met, she found that Harry hadn’t forgotten them either.

  Later that evening, as she left the hotel to drive home, she said, ‘See you at the bird walk on Tuesday?’

  ‘You know, Mrs Mbikwa,’ said Harry, ‘I think you will.’

  At precisely 8 p.m. on the following Thursday – which is to say two days after the bird walk, two days after Rose baby, and the day after the fart bet – Mr Malik walked into the packed bar of the Asadi Club. In his right hand was a black leather briefcase. Messrs Gopez, Patel and Singh, seated together at a table near the bar, looked up as he came in but said nothing. He sat down in the empty chair beside them, opened the briefcase and took from within it a simple notebook. Without comment, he passed it to the Tiger.

  ‘So, Malik,’ said the Tiger, putting the notebook, unopened, on the table before him. ‘You have completed your task?’

  Mr Malik nodded.

  ‘And the results of your investigation are in this book?’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘Were you able to satisfactorily carry out the procedure, as stipulated in the agreement here drawn up and witnessed last night, in verification of the wager between the two members of the Asadi Club now before us?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Gentlemen.’ As the Tiger rose to his feet a hush fell. ‘Gentlemen, you have heard the words of our noble friend Malik. Before I open this book and declare the winner of the bet, does either of you’ – he turned to face the protagonists – ‘have anything to say regarding the agreement, the procedure, or any matter pertaining thereunto?’

  First Mr Gopez then Mr Patel shook their heads. The Tiger let his eyes traverse the still silent room.

  ‘Does any member of the Asadi Club here present have anything to say vis-à-vis or pertaining to this matter – namely the wager between these two gentlemen, Mr Gopez and Mr Patel?’

  Ignoring a muffled and slightly slurred ‘Yes, get on with it’ from a voice at the back of the room (Sanjay Bashu, no doubt), the Tiger removed a pair of half-spectacles from his shirt pocket and adjusted them on his nose.

  ‘Gentlemen, I have the figure before me. Ad utrumque paratus.’ He opened the book, his eyebrows lifting in a millimetre of apparent surprise. ‘You will recall that if this figure equals or exceeds fifty-one,
the wager will go to Mr Patel. If it equals or is less than fifty, Mr Gopez will win the bet. The figure, gentlemen, is…’

  Once more his eyes swept round the silent barroom.

  ‘… forty-two.’

  There was a moment in which you could have heard a distant flea fart, then a cacophony of groans mingled with an equal number of whoops and cheers. A. B. Gopez stood and reached across the table. Mr Patel, with only the hint of a scowl, shook the proffered hand. Over the hubbub of excited voices the Tiger shouted to the bar.

  ‘Four Tuskers. And four Johnnie Walkers too – large ones.’

  There were calls for a recount – not from Mr Patel, who had already accepted defeat like the true clubman he was, but from one or two younger members. Mr Malik’s book, which had been making the rounds of the bar for inspection, was duly found and returned to the Tiger, whose forensic skill did not take long to spot that ten additional marks had been made with ink of a slightly different colour. He tossed the appeal out of court with stern warnings of the penalties for contempt.