No New Land Read Online Free

Angels, he said, danced in the sunbeams that fell on this sacred place.
    When Missionary and Mr. Fletcher placed Haji Lalani’s body carefully in the back seat of the car, they placed his fez cap beside him. It was forgotten in the car, and Mr. Fletcher one day returned it to one of Missionary’s sons in school. Missionary saw his teenagers playing with the fez, each trying it on, and he retrieved it, sending them away with a few slaps. He kept the red fez as a memento of his dead friend.

    It was as if with Haji Lalani a whole era died, a way of life disappeared. Some would say it was the onset of the new era that killed him. Certainly the changes that took place only two years later would have been beyond his wildest dreams.
    A few years before, British Prime Minister Macmillan, speaking in southern Africa, hailed the winds of change then sweeping over Africa; in effect, by this very speech unleashing the winds that would accomplish the changes in British East Africa, beginning with independence. By the time Missionary and Haji Lalani’s two sons buried the old man, the winds of change had turned into a hurricane. It was a sign of the changing times that Haji Lalani was buried at the new cemetery, an inland site chosen by the new, independent government. At the old, venerated cemetery facing the Indian Ocean, the earth had already been turned, spirits and jinns exposed and rendered powerless, the bones of the Asian dead transplanted to the new site. The only redeeming feature of this new spot, it was said, in the wry humour that usually follows a funeral, was the presence close by of the new Drive-in Cinema, to which the unsettled souls could go to watch India’s Rajesh Khanna frolic in the grass with a sari-clad beauty, or America’s Charles Bronson mow down his enemies with a machine gun.
    The idea of empire was relinquished slowly in the Asian communities. Right up until independence, letters would arrive addressed ostensibly to someone in the “British Empire” or “British East Africa.” The Asians had spawned at least two knights of the empire in their slums, they had had Princess Elizabeth in their midst, greeted Princess Margaret with a tumultuous welcome. They spoke proudly of Churchill and Mountbatten, fondly ofVictoria. What schoolboy or girl had not heard over the radio the reassuring chimes of Big Ben before falling asleep, or the terrified voice of Dickens’s Pip, the triumphant voice of Portia, the Queen’s birthday message.
    Independence came suddenly but not cruelly. The police and army stayed on, the governor spoke kind words and stayed on as governor general for a year, “Godspeed” said the colonial secretary, Prince Philip waved goodbye. Above all, in the first few days, the newspaper was reassuring, educating people in their new role as citizens of a new country on the world stage, a member of that brotherhood the United Nations, a nonaligned country. It all was fun and excitement, like growing up, being allowed to go out at night, standing up with the adults.
    But the winds had only now gathered strength; the fury soon began. The governor general duly left after a year and a republic was declared. On the island of Zanzibar, some twenty-five miles from Dar, a coup finally toppled Arab rule in a bloody revenge by the descendants of the slaves. If it could happen in sleepy Zanzibar, it could happen anywhere. As if confirming the worst fears, within a few weeks followed army mutinies in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika, quelled, embarrassingly enough, with the help of British commandos. During the short-lived mutiny in Dar, looking out, frightened, through their windows, Asians witnessed their shops being looted. Zanzibar, in British and American eyes, became the Cuba of Africa. Cubans were, in fact,rumoured to be on the island, as were Russians, East Germans, and Chinese. Africa is ripe for revolution, said Chou En-lai. Now you could see Chinese men on Dar streets and buy Chinese goods, such as