The next volume I picked up was Lethbridge Banbury’s book on these parts. Now this one was actually worth something. A handsome deep-red volume. On the cover a gold-engraved image of an elephant and a palm tree. Hand-cut leaves. Black-and-white illustrated plates, each one protected by a leaf of tracing paper.
I can quote the first lines by heart, stilclass="underline" Why I went to S is neither here nor there: perhaps I took that step from that insatiable wish to ‘see the world’, which so ardently possesses many Englishmen; or perhaps I was actuated by an ambitious desire of obtaining promotion in a service in which success is popularly supposed to come specially to those who depart from the beaten track in search of it.
A tutor who knew my love of books gave it to me, a visiting fellow from a Scottish university. A first edition, published in 1888. It arrived in the post some months after he completed his research and sailed out. I remember that when he drank he liked to recite a rhyme, one about the last colonial Governor.
Beresford Stuke makes me puke,
But in the Protectorate
they expectorate.
I laughed to humour him. And later again because he would urge me into drinking, behaving as though sobriety on the part of either of us was an insult.
That January evening I watched her, she and her husband. They moved through the party with ease, never alone for more than a few moments. Once I stood on the fringes of a group, beyond the edges of the circle, out of the light but so close I could have reached out and touched her. Her husband was recounting some incident, there was laughter — from everyone, except me. I hadn’t been following his words. Instead I’d been watching her. Watching her as she in turn watched him. Our eyes met once. She smiled and looked away.
I remembered later where I’d seen him before. One lunchtime in the lecture theatre, a meeting convened by the students. To discuss the expulsion of one of their number, as I recall. I had been sent by my dean and took a seat in the back. My presence went unremarked, which suited me. A couple of paragraphs typed up and placed in the Dean’s pigeonhole. Duty done.
In the minutes before the meeting was officially convened I noticed how they gathered around him, the students, breathless and eager. Some way into the meeting the speaker called him to the stage. At first he was reluctant, smiling and waving a piece of paper as if to dismiss the notion out of hand. At the murmured insistence of the room he rose to his feet, suddenly energised, jumped on the stage and delivered a few words. He stood with his elbow on the lectern, leaning forward, gazing directly into the faces of the audience members. The air trembled with the sound of his voice. A flurry of excitement. Clapping, like birds taking off.
What was it he had said to them? It’s gone.
I spent the rest of the morning and the best part of the afternoon searching. My search was, by necessity, both slow and painstaking. When Babagaleh arrived back from the mosque, I asked him.
‘Where are my notebooks?’
In answer he gazed at me, as was his way, his first instinct to conceal all knowledge, all evidence of intellectual process, to turn his expression into a smooth rock face upon which no accusation could gain purchase until he knew exactly where my question was heading. He left the room and returned with a cardboard box marked Milo Milk.
‘Where were they? Why did you move them?’
‘Storeroom, Master.’ He gazed at me, a look of blank innocence.
‘On the desk, please.’ I could no longer afford to become overheated. I knew it. Babagaleh knew it too.
That night I sat up late, going through my notebooks. There was no power; Babagaleh lit a pair of candles, and though it strained my eyes and the fumes from the wax hurt my chest, I continued reading. The notebooks had survived, though the rubber bands that held them together fell to pieces in my hands. A few pages were missing, others latticed by the work of silverfish and termites, the occasional sac of desiccated eggs, filaments and threads of unknown insects. The ink of my fountain pen had faded to a muted grey on the pages. But yes, intact. More or less.
They were not diaries. Just notes I made for my own benefit. A relevant date. Thoughts on an upcoming lecture. The title of a book or paper. Lists of things to be done.
25 November 1968. Two months before the faculty wives’ dinner. In my own hand, the events of that day. Brief minutes of the meeting, his address to the students. No record of his words.
I recalled I had included mention of his address in my report for the Dean.
Julius Kamara. An afternoon as I worked on my lecture notes I spotted him from my window. A distinctive walk: easy strides, one hand in his trouser pocket. I laid down my pen, the better to follow his progress. I watched him cut the corner of the grass, turn right and push with both hands through the double doors into the engineering department.
The next time I saw him I was on my way home. A Thursday, walking through the campus, I saw him ahead of me. For a minute or two I kept pace behind him. A couple of students sitting on the steps of the lecture theatre called out to him and stood up, brushing the seats of their trousers, gathering their books. He paused, waited for them to reach him. I passed by unnoticed.
Just outside the gates of the university, a white Volkswagen Variant was parked up, the engine idling. She was sitting in the driver’s seat, her elbow resting on the ledge of the open window. She wore a sleeveless dress of pale cotton, her hair wrapped in a large orange scarf. From where she sat she might have seen me in the mirrors, but she didn’t. I slowed my pace. I approached the car.
‘Good evening.’
She started, pulled from her thoughts.
‘Hello,’ she replied, applying a sufficiency of good manners, accompanied by the barest of smiles. Something women do when faced with a man they don’t recognise, hoping neither to encourage nor to offend.
‘The faculty wives’ dinner,’ I said. ‘Elias Cole.’
‘Of course,’ and she gave me a faint smile.
‘Julius told me to tell you he’s been delayed, but he’ll be along in a moment.’
‘Thank you.’ And she smiled again, more generously this time.
‘I’m afraid I’ve forgotten …’
‘Oh,’ she said as she caught my meaning and tapped her chest. ‘Saffia.’
I moved away.
‘Thank you,’ she called again after me. I gave a modest wave of acknowledgement.
Minutes later they passed me, Julius at the wheel. The sun was low. I don’t know if they even noticed me. Either way the car drove on without slowing.
I walked down the long road in the growing darkness. The shadows of the trees that lined the way crept steadily outwards, the colours around me dissolved into grey. The white-painted bases of the tree trunks, illuminated by the fading sun, stood out like sentries. I watched the tail lights of the car until they were fireflies in the distance. I stopped and took out my notebook, pressed it against the smooth bark of a tree and wrote down the registration number of the car, while it was still in my head. And another, single word.
Saffia.
Friday. A few days after our encounter on campus I had an appointment in town. Afterwards I cut through one of the side streets to the main road, where I might catch a bus back to the campus. It was a quiet, once affluent residential street. There was a kiosk supplying soft drinks and cigarettes; further up a tailor’s dummy displaying an embroidered gown stood outside a shop. Parked on the street in front, a white Volkswagen Variant.