The Gunny Sack by M.G. Vassanji

appease these three young women, Hassam Pirbhai himself went to Mombasa, offered Juma a job, and brought him home. The marriage followed in due course, for which project Awal was assigned the job of looking for a fair beauty from a humble but respectable home. Mombasa was the natural choice as the home of the humble where, moreover, Juma’s reputation was unknown. The fair beauty was spotted by Awal in a Membeni street, returning from school.
    Running away. Wanderlust. Having come to this theme yet once again, memory plays a trick on me. From her corner Shehru throws a wink at me … and do I imagine that the gaping mouth with its sisal moustache has a silent laugh on its thin old lips …
    The question that comes to mind is: in coming here, have I followed a destiny? Satisfied a wanderlust that runs in the blood? Or do I seek in genes merely an excuse for weakness, an inability to resolve situations? Perhaps it is this weakness that’s in the blood: can you distinguish such weakness from wanderlust? When does a situation become impossible enough to justify escape?
    I too have run away, absconded. And reaching this grim basement, I stopped to examine the collective memory—this spongy, disconnected, often incoherent accretion of stories over generations. Like the karma a soul acquires, over many incarnations, the sins and merits, until in its final stages it lumbers along top-heavy with its accumulations, desperately seeking absolution.
    I, like my forefathers before me, have run away. But what a price they paid. Dhanji Govindji, his self-respect and his sanity. His son, the joys of family life, the security of community life. My father Juma, I don’t know what price he paid for running away—it was Hassam Pirbhai who paid the cash price—but he did pay a price for coming back. He joined his tormentors. And in joining them he lost his compassion for those of whom he was also a part—if only a quarter.
    Perhaps I judge too harshly.

HOW I KILLED MY FATHER.

    When they married, my mother was sixteen and my father a cynical, rough man of thirty who had seen quite a bit of the world and was now a salesman at the firm of Hassam Pirbhai in Nairobi. Kulsum had studied up to Standard Six in Gujarati, and always stood second in class, but her father had seen no use in education for his girls and did not let her finish school. But for one more year, she could have been a graduate, become a teacher … married well. She did not resent the marriage but the way in which she was given away. My father had been in and out of school and had learnt English on the streets and later at work. After the wedding at the Membeni mosque, they spent the night in a room at the home of an acquaintance of Hassam Pirbhai. The next morning, weeping, Kulsum said goodbye to her family and friends, and with her husband took the train for Nairobi. When she stopped crying, they hadreached Voi. She looked up at her husband, seeking comfort, but the irate Juma who had spent the day watching the scenery turned around from the window and sarcastically said, “Bas? Is that all you’re going to cry? We’re not even halfway there.”
    There was a pitch-black, palpable darkness outside, the air was humid, and in the stillness—perhaps caused by the sudden cessation of the din of the iron wheels on the rails, the steam puffing and compartments rattling—the shouts of people in the distance sounded strangely hollow. They were alone, together, the two of them, and they looked at each other across the compartment in the dim light that had already attracted clinging insects. They reached some resolution, for she got up and set out the dinner her mother had packed for the journey, and he rang the bell and ordered tea. Sometime later the train let off a belch of steam, gave a lurch, and proceeded warily into the darkness. The way ahead was uphill, and there were elephants and giraffes about.
    “They said, ‘We have quarter-and-lac-shilling bungalas in