No New Land Read Online Free Page B

assistant, Charles, to Morogoro, Dodoma, and towns in their vicinity, trunk and back seat crammed with shoe boxes. He rather enjoyed being on the road. Sleeping in the car, or the backyard in a strange bed in the humble home of a Bata agent; eating in a dimly lit restaurant, under a tree, or at atable under the overwhelming generosity of his host and hostess. There would be the occasional breakdown on the road. In the rainy season you could drive into a ditch. Then you waited hours for help to arrive, on the long-deserted road, or spent a nervous night in the jungle, in the thick impenetrable darkness, encased in the car, straining to hear the distant roar or the closer scratch or rustle, keeping eyes well averted from the window lest a glance outside lock into the ferocious eyes of a devil or an animal. It was always good to have someone with you, and in the morning you felt the stronger for the experience.
    With Charles he developed a friendship and came to learn of African ways. Charles, he learned, had about the same education as he had, but was some years younger. Charles too had had a tyrannical father, who was now dead. Most of his life he had spent in a village. He had got the job at Bata through influence, as had Nurdin. Charles had a girlfriend, a university student. In this developing familiarity, Nurdin felt, with some satisfaction, a new experience, a breaking of walls. He let the experience develop its own sure course, take its time. Back home he had two children, a boy and a girl, and a wife who respected him, was affectionate. It was always good to return to them. He looked forward to a permanent return and promotion in Dar, but was hesitant about living under his father’s grim rule. This was his life, his lot.
    But then came the changes in the country: the nationalizations and the Africanizations. Charles was given the coveted promotion and position inDar. Peons, it seemed to Nurdin, rose above him merely because of their black skins. The Europeans had always been masters; their higher positions he had taken as a matter of course. But now in the scramble for promotions he saw himself overlooked, neglected, as a matter of policy, and felt bitter. The quality of shoes had gone down, and customers laughed in his face, showing him the shoddy products of the new government company, holding him to a responsibility his seniors did not respect. Life on the road had lost its charms and he missed Charles. In those tumultuous times it seemed Dar was the place to be. He quit and became a free sales agent in Dar, not waiting for the managership Charles had promised him.
    Then his father died. His wife, Zera, ran the shop and Nurdin was all about town looking for odd commissions, spending a lot of time at the middle-aged men’s haunt, the A-T Shop, whose tea and kebabs were legendary and where the most up-to-date information on any subject was available.
    No one could tell when it happened, but it seemed, suddenly, that a switch had flipped, transforming the mind-set, the worldview: from a position in which Dar was your world, its problems your problems, to one in which leaving became an option, and to many an imperative. There was excitement, restlessness in the air.
Canada
, someone must have whispered the word somewhere. What was Canada – adistant place most did not know where, a pink mass on the map beside the green of Greenland. Suddenly everyone was talking of Canada: visas, medicals, interviews, “landeds.” In Canada they needed plumbers, so those who did not know one end of a spanner from another, schoolteachers, salesmen, bank clerks, all joined plumbing classes and began talking of wrenches and discussing fixtures they had never seen in their lives. Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal. You got the most recent news outside mosques after prayers, when men await their women, and during morning and afternoon teatimes at the A-T and other tea shops: who had left, the price of the dollar, the most recent