And Home Was Kariakoo Read Online Free Page A

here for their mid-morning snack; nowadays customers from all backgrounds—bureaucrats, business people, housewives, truck drivers, tourists, the unemployed—come to share the small tables. It is a truly egalitarian place. A domineering, short waiter called Abdu in a dirty white apron sees to it, sternly, though not without a sense of humour, that when you finish your snack you vacate your seat promptly for a grateful someone else who’s been waiting in the aisle, eyeing your progress. This is not the place to come to if you mind the small cockroach playing possum in a corner, or the hand that wipes your table with a towel from Abdu’s shoulder also laying down your plate of kababs and chutney. But for the many who return to Dar, arriving late in the night when the overseas flights land, the first stop the next morning is for sure the KT. And they will swear, the tastes have not come down a notch from their perfection.
    Outside on the broken pavement beggars stretch out their hands familiarly—with the taste of chai and kabab lingering in your mouth, you can afford to be generous; next door is a DVD store;across the street two newspaper vendors sit with spreads of about a dozen papers. Behind them is a barbershop decades old, where four young barbers ply their trade, one of them an African. Such is the level of comfort now, between different peoples. Traditionally, Asians had their hair cut by Asian barbers, the nai or the hajaam, who came from the barber caste. When I go inside for a trim, the talk among customers is friendly and boisterous: kids’ schools, football results, recent overseas visits, pilgrimage routes to Syria and Iraq.
    This is quintessential Gaam. Its recent transformation, and there is that, seems drastic and yet is organic to its nature: haphazard, careless.
    Some years ago, in response to a government dictat, the two-storey buildings in Gaam began growing more floors, sprouting into colourful six- to eight-storey structures, dwarfing their neighbours, but without a thought to zoning, safety, history, or aesthetics. The official ambition was to makeover Dar into New York. In the process, Dar’s distinctive Indian and colonial architecture—the grilled wooden balconies, sloping roofs, arched verandas, and carved facades—slowly bites the dust. Every residue of the old Dar awaits helplessly the wrecking crew. But it is not the Asians who are objecting; few would care about architectural niceties. It is actually a few Asian developers in collaboration with corrupt bureaucrats and politicians who are responsible for erasing the former, gentler face of the city. There is some irony in that what property the government once took away in the name of socialism, with much gusto and racist applause, it is now selling back, to be defaced, deformed, or torn down and rebuilt in the name of the free market.
    Gaam in its heyday, for seventy years, was the heart of Dar behind the seashore and the harbour; it reached out to the newsuburb of Upanga and the expatriate strongholds of Oyster Bay and Msasani; it opened to the African areas of Kariakoo and beyond, and the industrial area of Pugu Road. Twice during the year, for three days, the Mnazi Mmoja ground would resound with the festive drumbeats of Eid. But during socialism, and especially after the Uganda war, Gaam had become a gloomy, flyblown place in the sun, bereft of its former joie de vivre. Those who had built it had departed, and business was in the dumps; landmark shops and restaurants had closed and there were food shortages. The streets were potholed and garbage was not picked up. To complete its demise, city planners had turned it into an Indian ghetto by closing off the two key arteries leading in and out of it.
    But now Gaam is back. The new high-rises are attracting people and businesses; there are new hotels, mosques, and temples. And there is not only the KT to go and have your chai at, but also the AT and Qayyum’s and Blue Room, within a block