A Guide to the Beasts of East Africa Read online

  ‘Tricky thing, curry,’ said Mr Gopez, ‘especially if you’ve got any wazungu on the guest list. Your average white man, I have observed, can seldom handle the heat.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Mr Malik. ‘I read recently that chicken tikka masala is now the most popular dish in the UK.’

  ‘Yes, but have you ever tried it?’ Mr Patel rolled his eyes. ‘I read a recipe for chicken tikka masala in one of those women’s magazines – ready-roast chicken, curry powder, evaporated milk and tinned tomato soup.’

  ‘That’s not a curry, that’s a criminal offence,’ said Mr Gopez. ‘Anyway, rest assured, my dear Malik, that Ally Dass would not allow a jar labelled “curry powder” within a hundred yards of his kitchen. And no peas in his samosas. I really can’t stand peas in samosas.’ He helped himself to the popcorn. ‘So, make a habit of it, do you, Patel?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Reading women’s magazines.’

  Mr Patel turned towards Mr Malik.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘who do you think I saw in town this morning?’

  ‘Your therapist?’ muttered Mr Gopez. ‘Ah well, best keep trying, I suppose.’

  ‘Ha ha, A.B. No, Malik’s old school chum.’

  Oh no, thought Mr Malik, not …

  ‘Yes, Harry. Harry Khan.’

  While it is true that Mr Malik and Harry Khan had indeed attended Eastlands High School together – they had in fact arrived as boarders on the same day in September of 1955 – it would be stretching the meaning of the word to call them ‘chums’. Then, as now, Mr Malik was of quiet disposition, more eager to turn the pages of a book than turn the dial of a contraband wireless after lights-out, happier sitting on the pavilion steps with pencil in hand and scorebook on his knees than swinging the willow out on the cricket pitch. Harry Khan was of a different stripe. In the classroom and on the sports field it was he who stood out. It was he who knew everybody and was known by everybody, he who led the gang, he who gave clever nicknames to boys and masters alike. Whether flashing his bat at the wicket or flashing his smile on the stage in the end-of-term play, Harry loved showing off – his Punjabi Shylock in the 1959 Eastlands High School Production of The Merchant of Venice had brought the house down, and his score of thirty-four in a single over still stood as a school record. And while Mr Malik – or ‘Jack’ as he had, for reasons which we need not go into here, been nicknamed – was not the only butt of Harry Khan’s jokes both verbal and practical, there is no doubt that he came in for more than his fair share.

  Why? Why does the sun rise in the east? Why does a cat play with a mouse? Harry Khan could no more refrain from teasing Mr Malik than could Brahma not create or Shiva not destroy. Though the events of those distant days have now become more school myth than memory, the story of the python and pyjamas can even today be relied upon to bring a smile to the lips of the most surly fourth former, while the petroleum-jelly sandwich still makes the occasional appearance at Eastlands High more than half a century since its first inspired use by Harry Khan at Mr Malik’s thirteenth birthday bash. When the Khan family left Nairobi for Canada in 1962 taking Harry with them, Mr Malik could not pretend he was sad to see them go.

  ‘Harry Khan, eh?’ said Mr Gopez.

  ‘Yes. He said he’s over here on business. I said he should try and drop by the club.’

  ‘This club?’ said Mr Malik.

  The last time he had seen Harry Khan was four years ago when Harry, visiting Kenya with his ancient mother, actually started making a play for the lovely Rose Mbikwa, who used to lead the Tuesday bird walks and on whom Mr Malik, widowed these several years, had long had a serious crush.

  ‘Yes. He’s still a member, you know – kept up the subs and all that.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Mr Gopez, ‘if he’ll bring that niece of his again. What was her name – Emily, Ermintrude?’

  ‘Elvira,’ said Mr Malik.

  Harry Khan’s niece – or, to be more exact, his cousin’s wife’s sister’s youngest daughter – had made quite an impression on the members of the Asadi Club.

  ‘That’s it. Pretty girl … damned fine –’

  ‘Dancer?’

  ‘Now you come to mention it, Malik old chap, I suppose she was.’

  Few present that night at the Nairobi Hunt Club Ball would forget the sight of Elvira in her short red dress dancing rock and roll with her uncle Harry to the music of Milton Kapriadis and his Safari Swingers. But to the surprise of many it had been Mr Malik with whom Rose Mbikwa had danced that evening, and Harry Khan disappeared back to the US soon afterwards.

  What exactly, Mr Malik now wondered, was Harry Khan doing in Nairobi this time?

  ‘She was a good dancer too,’ said Mr Gopez. ‘They went dancing – at the Claremont Club, you know – the very night she shot him.’

  Mr Patel was spared further discussion of the Erroll case by the reappearance of Tiger Singh, fresh from victory at the billiard table (when the Tiger had last lost a court case or a game of billiards, no one could remember).

  ‘Ah, there you are, Malik – I was hoping to see you. What news on the safari front?’

  On weekends Tiger Singh was known for clothes of a casual cut – yellow shirts and red checked trousers were a particular favourite – and he was seldom seen out on the golf course without his lucky green tam-o’-shanter. This being a Monday he was in more formal attire of dark suit and grey dastar to match.

  ‘Everything arranged. Ally Dass will be going on Thursday with some of his chaps to set up the kitchen, and Mr Hapula – the club gardener – is taking his men to put up the tents. They’ll be going in the minibuses – oh, and my own gardener, Benjamin, has agreed to help too. He’ll be travelling with them. I’ve booked the big coach for Friday morning for the rest of us, so we should all get up there before dark.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said the Tiger. ‘Have you put your name down, Patel?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Patel, ‘though I don’t think I’ll be able to persuade my beloved wife and helpmeet to come this year. “Seen one artiodactyl, seen ’em all,” that’s what she says.’

  ‘What about you, A.B.?’

  ‘Me? I’m the same – never could tell the difference between a Tommy and Grant’s. Still, as Father used to say, they all taste the same in a vindaloo.’

  ‘But are you coming on the safari?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ll be there.’ A. B. Gopez took a thoughtful sip from his glass. ‘Father used to love going on safari – I’m talking about the old days, of course. Very fond of guns was Father. Spent a jolly fortune on fancy rifles, safari jackets, hats, spats, the whole palaver. When I was growing up it seemed to be all he and his pals talked about – potting the big five.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Patel, ‘elephant, rhino, hippo, lion and leopard.’

  ‘Hippo? Who ever heard of anyone shooting a hippo? Buffalo, old chap. No more dangerous beast in the whole of Africa.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s hippos,’ said Mr Patel.

  ‘And I tell you no sportsman worth his sola topi has ever hunted hippos. Sitting ducks. Large ducks, I grant you, but sitting just the same.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Then why,’ said Mr Gopez, smacking his forehead with an exasperated palm, ‘did you say it?’

  ‘I meant, A.B., what I said. While I am happy to stand corrected on the composition of the big five as far as shooting the damned things goes, it remains a fact that more people in Africa are killed by hippos than any other animal, so hippos are the most dangerous animals.’

  Which is, if I may digress, a sentiment with which my friend Kennedy would agree. Late one night he was driving home from Limuru in the rain. It had been bucketing down for the last two months, this being the end of the short rains. Four miles from Nairobi, where the Matunda River is meant to go under the road, the water had been inches deep for days but his Land Rover had made the crossing a hundred times. He changed down into low gear and put his right foot hard down on the accel
erator. Then smartly up again and even harder down on the brake. In a shower of mud and water his vehicle skidded to a stop only inches from a large hippopotamus. I remember him saying that it was not so much its size, nor its presence so near the centre of town, but the insouciance of the beast that particularly impressed him.

  ‘My dear Patel,’ said A. B. Gopez, ‘though I hesitate to differ, when it comes to hippos I beg to do so. Malik, old chap, you know something about birds and beasts. Wouldn’t you agree –?’

  ‘Tiger,’ said Mr Malik. ‘Any chance of a quick game of billiards?’

  3

  The ant is eaten by the aardvark, but still the anthill grows

  ‘Ah, hello, Petula darling – up already?’

  A slim, denim-clad figure stepped on to the veranda. ‘Good morning, Daddy dear.’

  Mr Malik had long had mixed feelings for his daughter Petula – a mixture of wonder, love and admiration. The wonder had come first. He could still remember that moment thirty-three years ago when he first held his baby daughter in his arms, brown and pink and perfect. How wonderful that such a strong little being was his own daughter. How miraculous that his dear wife had produced so lovely a thing.

  Love didn’t come till later. He wasn’t surprised by that. It had been the same when his son Raj had arrived seven years earlier. Nearly a year went by before he realized that he had fallen in love with his first child, a love so strong that it almost hurt. So it was with Petula. And then, as she started walking and talking, came the admiration. How clever a child she was, how special. He loved watching his two children together. Raj had adored his little sister from the moment she was born. Mr Malik would find him sitting by her crib gazing at her with a look of pure devotion while she slept or gurgled or cried. Looking back on it, Raj had always been a very affectionate boy.

  Yes, Petula. So intelligent, so strong. And beautiful, just like her mother. He was lucky to have so lovely a daughter – though, if only … He glanced over to where she sat across the table from him. If only she wouldn’t wear those jeans all the time. But at least she and Salman had finally agreed a date for the wedding. He knew young people did things differently these days but three years was a long engagement by any standard.

  Petula picked up the bunch of bananas on the veranda table.

  ‘Will you be coming into the factory this morning?’

  ‘No, not today, dear – it’s Tuesday.’

  ‘Oh, of course. The bird walk.’

  For the last seven years, ever since his first heart attack and strict instructions from his cardiologist to take things easy, Mr Malik had increasingly left the day-to-day running of the Jolly Man Manufacturing Company to Petula. His father might not have heeded the warning signs but he would not make the same mistake. Besides, Petula was so good at managing and a whizz with all this new technology – kept the firm right up to date with all the latest webs and nets and that kind of thing. Mr Malik, who had never learned to use any machine more complicated than a typewriter or a slide rule, now spent more time at the temple than the business, and was less likely to visit suppliers and customers than visit the patients at the Aga Khan Hospital. Ever since his son Raj had died there, he had gone to the hospital at least twice a week.

  Tuesday, though, was his birdwatching day. As usual, he would drive to the museum where his fellow members of the East African Ornithological Society assembled for their weekly walk. After the venue was decided – it might be the arboretum or the agricultural station or even the patch of waste ground behind the army barracks – Mr Malik could be counted on to offer a lift in his old green Mercedes to whoever might need one. A regular passenger was his friend Thomas Nyambe. A government driver in Kenya does not earn enough money to afford a car of his own. The two friends were usually to be seen together on the bird walk talking about the things they saw, Mr Malik making notes in the exercise book he always carried with him. Not all the notes were strictly about birds, though. Many of them were pure gossip – government gossip. And later that day Mr Malik would sit down at his typewriter and write the latest instalment of the newspaper column he sent off anonymously each Tuesday afternoon to the editor of the Evening News.

  At first glance ‘Birds of a Feather’ appeared to be a column about the furred and feathered inhabitants of Kenya. Those who read more deeply knew that it was in fact a satirical exposé of Kenyan politics. For lion, read President; for hippopotamus, read Minister of Agriculture and Tourism; for marabou read Minister of Defence; for python, read Secretary of State for External Affairs. The herds of gazelle and zebra and wildebeest that formed a backdrop to the goings-on were the tribal groups of Kenya. The popularity of the column caused a regular spike in sales of the Evening News every Wednesday, and much anguish to the ruling elite of the nation. Over the several years it had been going, more than one minister had been forced to resign – only last month the Minister for the Interior. But while Mr Malik always wrote the column, using the pen-name of Dadukwa – the black eagle who, seeing all but never seen, spreads the news among the other animals – it was Thomas Nyambe who provided the information on which it was based, as well as the traditional, if sometimes cryptic, proverb that Mr Malik liked to put at the head of each column.

  Like taxi drivers, government drivers often get the feeling that they are invisible. Their passengers talk to each other or on their mobile phones as if there was no one else in the car. So the drivers pick up all the government gossip which, during periods of waiting around at the depot or outside whatever building their passenger has directed them to, they naturally share with other government drivers. Anything Thomas Nyambe overheard he later passed on to Mr Malik on their Tuesday bird walks, where it would duly appear in the next ‘Birds of a Feather’ column. If only some government ministers realized that their drivers were neither deaf, mute nor stupid, they would have been saved many a sleepless night.

  Petula pulled a small banana from the bunch.

  ‘What about after the bird walk – will you be coming to the factory then?’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to make it in at all today, dear. The chap’s coming round about the marquee at three, and after that I’d better drop into the club and see about the catering. I still have quite a few details to clear up with Ally Dass. What about you? Are you going in?’

  ‘Yes. Still haven’t finished the weekly statements. I’ll be there all day. Oh, and I’ll be home late – CI meeting.’

  Petula had recently joined the anti-corruption organization Clarity International. How like her to try to change the world.

  ‘Righty-ho, I won’t wait up then. Anything special tonight?’

  ‘A visit from the new Communications Director – from Switzerland, apparently.’

  She sat down beside him.

  ‘How did it go at the club last night? Have you found out yet how many people have signed up for the safari?’

  ‘About twenty so far,’ said Mr Malik. ‘Still room for a few more. I’ll give them another day or two.’

  ‘Oh Daddy, all this work and worry. Why not let someone younger do it for a change?’

  Someone younger? Hadn’t his new doctor told him only last Friday that sixty-six was no age at all? Even as he was listening to his doctor’s words, though, Mr Malik couldn’t help remembering the age at which his own father had died.

  Mr Malik had been away studying in England when news came of his father’s first heart attack. He hurried home, and home he stayed. If he had any regrets about not finishing his degree he did not show them. Instead of his studies at the London School of Economics, he now had the family firm. Instead of the pubs of Clerkenwell and Fleet Street, he now had the Asadi Club. His father had been Secretary of the club for nearly forty years. ‘Look after the club – and look after your mother too,’ was the last thing he had said to his son before he died of that second heart attack, swiftly following the first.

  Mr Malik glanced over to where his daughter now sat beside him, nibbling at the small banan
a, and smiled. It had been four years ago when she had met Salman at the Hunt Club Ball, the very one where he had danced that dance with Rose Mbikwa, and at last she was getting married. Yes, the garden should do nicely for their reception.

  ‘Oh, arranging the safari’s no trouble. I’ve done it so often now. You’ll still be able to come, won’t you? And Salman?’

  Petula paused and looked out into the garden.

  ‘He phoned last night. He can’t get away till Friday now.’ Petula’s fiancé Salman worked in Dubai for an international firm of accountants. ‘Looks like we’ll have to drive up on Saturday morning.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame – but you’ll still have a couple of days.’

  ‘Yes. Anyway … bye, Daddy.’

  ‘Goodbye, dear.’

  Mr Malik watched his daughter pick up her keys and heard her climb into her little Suzuki and drive away. That pause. Was it his imagination, or was something wrong?

  He took another sip of Nescafé and looked out across the garden. The grass was its greenest, the frangipani and bougainvillea were in multicoloured bloom, and in the flower beds at the end of the garden the canna lilies were just about to flower. With a little judicious pruning now the roses should be at their best for the wedding. Lately, Mr Malik had become very fond of roses. Such a shame, though, about the mango trees.

  It was under a mango tree on the coast down at Malindi that, more than forty years ago, Mr Malik had proposed to his wife. Ever since her death he had been trying to get one to grow in his garden at home. Everyone said that Nairobi, though close to the equator, is too high for mangoes, but Mr Malik was at heart an optimist. He was sure there must be one variety of the many hundreds that are grown around the world that would flourish there. Over the last dozen years Mr Malik had collected seeds from any variety he could find that might have a chance. He would clean each seed and score the tough seedcase with an old chisel, then put it in a jam jar half full of water. As soon as the seed sprouted he would plant it in the special mango bed behind the kitchen. Some had survived and grown into fair-sized trees – but though one or two had flowered, not one had ever produced a fruit.