Asians in Tanzania: Two Contrasting Fictionalized Portraits
Karim F. Hirji, Professor of Biostatistics
Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. email: kfhirji@aol.com
May 18, 2008
Reviewed Books: (i) Jules S. Damji (2006) Oyster Bay & Other Short Stories, Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA; (ii) Moez G. Vassanji (1992) Uhuru Street, McClelland & Stewart Inc., Toronto, Canada.
All children in my primary school in colonial Tanzania were brown-skinned, with ancestry in India or Pakistan. Instruction in the first three years was in Gujarati. Only at the age of 13, two years after Independence in 1961, did I have an African friend. And that was because, unlike my Asian peers, I chose to study at the Dar es Salaam Technical College. Else, like them, my circle of friends would have remained an exclusively racial and communal one, and I would have been cut-off from genuine contact with 99% of my country folk until reaching the university.
Moez Vassanji’s acclaimed Uhuru Street, published in 1992, and Jules Damji’s recent Oyster Bay & Other Short Stories are both set in that era of my life and in the location I grew up in. Though these collections of short stories are declared to be purely fictional, it is evident that they derive from reality. Many characters either bear strong resemblances to, or are composites of, real persons from those days. And, the tales mostly relate to the Ismailia community in Dar es Salaam, from which both authors originate. These varied stories essentially reflect the angst and aspirations of a racial minority in a nation burdened with the toxic legacy of colonialism. Hitherto, it had led an isolated and relatively privileged existence. Now, with the nation seeking a brighter future for all its citizens, it finds itself in an existential bind.
Each book, no wonder, begins with a tale of transition. A half-caste, enjoined by poverty into an arranged marriage with a suitorless plump woman, puts up with his dreary life of a docile son-in-law of a wealthier family. Facing social ridicule and boredom, he is attracted by a widow, a seller of buns. When there is a chance to elope, his suspicious father-in-law is on guard. Prevented from accessing his savings, and with only a few coins in his pocket, will the man take the plunge? Vassanji deftly leaves us in suspense.
A majestic mango tree, a magnet for children, hawkers, itinerant barbers, and all forms the locus of Damji’s first tale. A hawker, maltreated by a sour spirited newly wed lady from distant lands, casts a spell on her. Haunted thereafter by the spirit of the tree, she has it declared a safety hazard by the city authorities and cut down. An icon of the place, a refuge from the hot sun for generations, is no more. What’s more, the lady also packs her bags and is gone for good soon after.
Vassanji’s half-caste desperately seeking another place to call home symbolizes a community, neither black nor white, rejected by the locals and the colonial masters alike. Sandwiched into an arranged service of the unruly master, it prospers from favored economic opportunities, and rises above the rest. Independence, though, brings discomfort and insecurity. For some, the prospects of venturing on to distant shores emerge. But the possessions may have to remain. To sail towards London, United States, or Canada, or not? That is the logical climax towards which Vassanji’s characters are headed.
The methodic uprooting of the tree evokes the memory of the original inhabitants displaced by colonial authorities to make way for the Ismailia enclave. It as well signifies a nation turned upside down by foreigners for their own interests. When they leave, the black and brown, hitherto socially and economically apart, have to face the consequences. Can they unite to forge a common destiny, or will the rift between them grow? That is an underlying theme Damji explores.
Both books enthrallingly bring a distant era to life. With dark humor, they expose the idiocies and frailties of our existence; with insight, they narrate the intricacies of ordinary life; and with a vivid caste of characters, we see both the resilience and corruption of persons facing daunting odds. Despite their diverse perspectives, they have much in common. Both depict the profound social distance between the races; the grip of the worst facets of Western culture on the colonized mind; and the challenge to common sensibility posed by the demise of the colonial rule.
Vassanji gives us a host of acrid and hilarious depictions of the Asian community in general, and of the Ismailies in particular. Five stories hammer home the depth of racial hostilities: Ali, the perfect yet ambitious house servant; the beggar exacting revenge on cheeky Asian kids; the dark portrait of the caller to prayer; the small act of rebellion by the African driver; and the rape and murder of an Asian woman.
While Vassanji packs 16 tales over a thin volume of 144 pages, Damji unfolds nine of them in 255 pages. He develops characters in greater depth, and places them in the broader social setting. From a thrilling rendition of a safari rally uniting people in varied walks of life, to a beautiful portrait of the life and work of the prayer house caretaker, a lurid tale of friendship ripped apart by material and moral corruption, and ending with the oddities of a family reunion, he is never far from the inner life of the community in which he grew up. Yet, his stories have a distinct flavor deriving from their connections with the happenings in Tanzania and Africa in those times.
Both authors explore the perplexities of inter-racial romance. Vassanji engages us in an evolving affair between a Ghanian professor and an Asian female student, while Damji portrays a ripening bond between an Asian male and an African female student. While the Asian family in the former uniformly demeans the relationship, at least the mother in the latter is liberal enough to countenance it. Vassanji’s frame of reference thereby is that of a realist while Damji expands it towards an uncharted dimension.
Both authors depict rebellious elements from their community; Vassanji attends to the ostracization of an outspoken book store owner and its impact on his family. In particular, the son Ebrahim is radicalized at the university and later joins the civil service. We hear about Shiraz uncle, a socialist accused of corrupting the youth. But both are casts in essentially a negative light, with the former ending up as a corrupt conduit for the very businessmen he had looked down upon, and the latter being deemed a foolish governmental lackey.
While Vassanji touches on this matter tangentially, Damji devotes roughly a third of his pages to it, more fully capturing how nationalistic sentiments and the spirit of the Sixties radicalized a small but influential segment of the Ismailia youth. Again Damji surveys an often ignored terrain, that of some Asian youth empathizing with the plight of the African masses, and one even laying down his life for African liberation.
While Vassanji’s youth dream of going to an American university, Damji envisions
how and why one chose to attend a local university even when he was accepted to study at Oxford. These are the distinctive fundamental threads running through their tales. Vassanji’s tales are rooted in the community whereas Damji searches for meaning in the nation at large; Vassanji probes into the inner follies and foibles of persons but Damji also locates them to events and history. Despite sprinklings to the contrary, the principal framework of the former is socially introverted and conformist, in which emigration emerges as the eventual solution. The latter, on the other hand, exhibits extroverted, nationalistic and morally bold inclinations, entertaining harmony between communities and races, despite its attendant challenges, as a futuristic possibility. Damji,
furthermore, explicitly touches on the facts and impact of economic inequality.
Fiction thrives when imagination has a free reign. Yet, if the work depicts a specific historic era, the writer is ethically obliged to not, by commission or omission, give a fictionalized rendition of history. Vassanji has a case to answer for his lack of due attention to the inner life of a secretive community, and his bland, superficial and misleading portrayal of the broader landscape. While Damji does a much better job there, he takes too many liberties with history, and at times, reveals the lack of adequate research and mastery of facts. And both authors too simplistically depict the radical Ismailia youth as governmental followers–many, in fact, were critical of Nyerere’s policies in that it was socialism in name only, but not so in practice. And while Vassanji’s skill of narration is hard to fault, a better editorial assistance could have enriched parts of Damji’s exposition.
The two books complement one another. As a seasoned author, Vassanji has a large international audience. I would as well recommend Oyster Bay & Other Short Stories to the general reader. Yet, here I have a ma jor gripe with Damji. His book also needs to reach high school students and their teachers in the classroom setting. But the explicit depiction of sexuality in just a couple of pages make it a suspect reading in our conservative circumstances. By not keeping his African audience in mind, and seemingly pandering to a Western one, he has shot himself in the foot. By laying himself open to spurious and diversionary charges of corrupting the morality of the youth, he has in essence reduced their access to the much needed critical spirit that flows through his work. Perhaps an East African edition or a Swahili translation can remedy this.
********
Nearly five decades later, race relations in Tanzania, or East Africa for that matter, seem no better than they were at the time of Independence. Even religious, ethnic and regional schisms continue to corrode the social fabric. Leadership at all levels today is singularly lacking in vision, places its own interests above anything else, and is firmly wedded to Western economic interests. As the recent post-election turmoil in Kenya attests, the state authorities, virtually the whole spectrum of the political and business elite, and community leaders, bereft of any true legitimacy, can and will exploit these differences to their own advantage. Ethnicities and races remain divided while the underlying wounds are not addressed, and the nation cannot unite to tackle the mammoth challenges it faces. In Kenya, as in Tanzania, and elsewhere in Africa, that is the common story. Can we learn from the past? We will need to read about it first.
We badly need writers who inspire the youth with “unreal” dreams, who look into the past as a way for envisioning a bolder future, and whose stories depict hope not simple realism. While the Western world can continue to pour their laurels on Vassanji, for me, Damji is the man of the hour. But he needs to go forward. While I was entertained by his stories and enthralled by his courage to speak plainly, he needs a deeper and more engaged immersion into African realities to deliver us more exciting and far sighted work. His debut shows a keen talent for the task. I await the next product of his pen.
⃝Copyright(c): Karim Hirji, May 2008.
