Authors Note

The stories and characters in this collection are purely fictional. Any resemblance to names, or people in real life, is merely coincidental. The references to presidential and religious figures should be taken in purely fictional context. But the setting, the landscape, the streets, the smells, the Oyster Bay beach area, the residential Asian district of Upanga, and the dwellings by the Upanga Mosque — where some of the characters live in these stories — and the larger part of Dar es Salaam — known to many endearingly as Dar — are real. Of course, much has changed since the mid 1960s and the decade of the 1970s, a time of immense political and social upheaval in the country that marked and defined many people’s lives.

It is during these times of innocence, turmoil and uncertainty that the social ethos of the immigrant Asian community, undeniably part of the historical landscape of Eastern and Southern Africa, is explored. The yearning sentiments of a sense of loss of history slipping away with death of each generation are shared by me; the rest is purely fictional.

Through out these narratives, the fictional narrator’s strong desire of self discovery, a journey to illuminate his past, which ultimately inspires him to write them, is expressed sometimes with cool detachment and scrutiny, sometimes with painful sorrow. The narrator’s view point changes over the course of time: from a young pubescent boy (Mango Tree and Race Drivers) to a growing adult. Not all stories are narrated by the same fictional voice, but the underlying theme of self-discovery pervades throughout them, the desire of self-expression, and the impetus to write. Collectively, they embody a small slice of history, a moment of time in these characters’ lives, albeit fictional yet set in settings once real.

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Copyright

© Jules Damji, 2006