Weep Not Child Read Online Free

things in their store and they generally charged higher prices so that although the Indians were not liked and they abused women, using dirty words they had learnt in Swahili, people found it wiser and more convenient to buy from them. Somepeople said that black people should stick together and take trade only to their black brethren. And one day an old poor woman said, ‘Let Africans stick together and charge very low prices. We are all black. If this be not so, then why grudge a poor woman the chance to buy from someone, be he white or red, who charges less money for his things?’
    In the Indian bazaar, black people mingled with white people and Indians. You did not know what to call the Indian. Was he also a white man? Did he too come from England? Some people who had been to Burma said that Indians were poor in their country and were also ruled by white men. There was a man in India called Gandhi. This man was a strange prophet. He always fought for the Indian freedom. He was a thin man and was always dressed poorly in calico stretched over his bony body. Walking along the shops you could see his photograph in every Indian building. The Indians called him
Babu
and it was said the Babu was actually their god. He had told them not to go to war so that while black people had been conscripted into the army the Indians had utterly refused and had been left alone. It was rumoured that the white men in Kenya did not like them because they had refused to go to war against Hitler. This showed that the Indians were cowards. The Africans were inclined to agree with this idea of Indian cowardice.
    The African shops were built in two rows that faced one another. The air was full of noise and, near the meat shops, there was a strong stench of burning flesh. Some young men spent all their time doing nothing but loitering in the shops. Some could work the whole day for a pound of meat. They were called the lazy boys and people in the village said that such men would later turn to stealing and crime. This thought always made people shudder because murder in cold blood was a foul thing. A man who murdered was for ever a curse in heaven and earth. One could recognise such boys because they were to be seen hanging around tea shops, meat shops, and even in the Indian bazaar, waiting for any errand that mightearn them a day’s meal. At times they called themselves young Hitlers.

    The barber’s shop was a famous place. The barber himself was a short brown man with hair very carefully brushed. He was very funny and he could tell stories that made people laugh. The barber knew everybody and everybody knew him. He was not called by any other name except the barber. If you said that you did not know who the barber was, or where his shop was, people at once knew that you were either a stranger or a fool. A fool, in the town’s vocabulary, meant a man who had a wife who would not let him leave her lap even for a second. How could anyone afford not to call on the barber who knew how to sing and dance and could speak English?
    ‘I learnt it during the big war.’
    ‘And it was all that big?’
    (The barber lets his clippers go flick – lick – lick – lick. Everyone stands expectantly by waiting to hear about the big war. The barber takes his time.)
    ‘My man, you would not ask that if you had been there. What with bombs and machine guns that went boom-crunch! Boom-crunch! Troo! Troo! And grenades and people crying and dying! Aha, I wish you had been there.’
    ‘Maybe it was like the first war?’
    ‘Ha! ha! ha! That was a baby’s war. It was only fought here. Those Africans who went to that one were only porters. But this one…(Turn your head this way. No, this way. Yes, that’s it.) this one, we carried guns and we shot white men.’
    ‘White men?’
    ‘Y-e-e-e-s. They are not the gods we had thought them to be. We even slept with their women.’
    ‘Ha! How are they–?’
    ‘Not different. Not different. I like a good fleshy