“New European!” Mrs F hissed. Her tone suggested that the new European must have smuggled himself past passport control to be here without her knowledge.
I looked across the park. In between the city and the water, people milled in groups, all drawn from their homes by the undiscriminating mercy of the retreating sun. The Africans and Shirazis were in their robes, the Arabs in theirs, the Indian groups in their particular garbs, every sub-group of every group, distinct, brushing close yet remaining separate. I could map and name the borders between them: memory of the sixty-four massacre; trading rivals for a thousand years; feelings of social superiority; religious enmity; taint of former slavery; suspicion of informing to the authorities; suspicion of plotting rebellion. And there at the very far edge, motionless and quite alone, was Mrs F’s new European, a man of about thirty dressed in shorts and sandals. He was standing with his back to the sea, staring up at the wall of the fort, which was a bit like going to the cinema and facing the projector.
“Volunteer?” suggested my mother, hoping for contradiction.
“Expert!” Mrs F obliged. “Look, there’s his car.” We knew all about the statuses of our Europeans.
“Maybe he’s American.” My mother was cheerful at the idea that his inexplicable presence might be explained in this way.
“Don’t be foolish, Isabella. Americans stopped coming twenty years ago. They don’t come to socialist countries. What do you think, Marcella? You’re an expert on European men. Is he French?”
I looked. His shorts were baggy and creased and the sleeves of his long-sleeved shirt were unevenly rolled. Hair fell over his face. “Not French. Not smart enough. Not Danish—not fair enough. Not German. Not Italian.”
“Russian?”
“Too alone.”
“What then? Don’t keep us in suspense.”
“Maybe English.”
“English? Are they back?” Mummy asked.
“We’ll see,” said Mrs E She set off again and, as we drew closer, we went quiet with concentration, just three innocent Asian women walking.
He stood at the bottom of the wall, looking up, as if the fort’s stonework held crucial information for him. Since we first saw him, he had not once turned towards us, but just as we passed he stepped back into our path and, still without looking, asked, “Is this part of the Sultan’s palace, this wall?”
The question could only be for us, yet it seemed impossible that it should be. People in Zanzibar did not start conversations this way. They did not demand information. They did not begin to talk before testing the water with greetings. They did not address total strangers, or speak with their backs to you. The degree of delicacy and tentativeness we brought to our social encounters was that of people tip-toeing among light-sleeping lions. And solitary men absolutely did not address unaccompanied women of different race in Jamituri Gardens. The object of our attention had come to life against all natural laws, and we were shocked. Mrs F was lost for words. It was wonderful. We shambled to a halt in disarray.
After a moment, he turned towards us and pointed up at the wall, repeating more loudly, “Sultan’s Palace?” Then taking in our blankness, mumbled, “Oh, sorry, you don’t speak English.”
“Of course we speak English!” But once she had asserted this, Mrs F’s mouth opened and closed several times without any further words emerging. I think she wanted to give him a lecture on Goans being Europeans but then saw the difficulty of her position.
I said, “No, this is the fort. The Sultan’s palace is down there. Or maybe you want the old palace, The House of Wonders.”
“Oh...” He pushed metal-framed glasses back up his nose and wiped away some sweat. “Thank you.” Now he was staring at me as he had at the wall, as if I was the new location of the secret code. “I’m sorry. You speak very good English.”
“So do you,” I replied enthusiastically, and watched a gratifying blush spread upwards from his neck. “The Sultan left ages ago,” I added for the sake of it.
“I know. I know. Nineteen sixty-four. Chased away by the Okello rebellion that put Karume in power. The end of the Omani Arab dynasty. Five thousand Arabs massacred. At least. Led to the union of Zanzibar with Tanganyika to form Tanzania.”
I watched a renewed stupefaction overtake Mrs F, as if our new acquaintance had just gratuitously offered her a technical description of his wedding night. We did not talk of these things. Not in public, not anywhere. I had never before seen her so completely routed. She staggered slightly with dizziness. “We must go,” she muttered in a low voice to us, not him, and abruptly set off.
“These dents,” he said to me, his attention turning back to the wall, “were they made by British cannonballs during the eighteen ninety bombardment?”
Mrs F had gone a few steps, then discovered that neither myself nor my mother had fallen into formation.
“Are you English?” my mother asked suddenly and brighty, though it was obvious that he was.
“Oh ... yes.”
“I don’t know about the cannonballs,” I offered.
“I’m Isabella D’Souza,” announced Mummy, as if she’d just discovered it.
“Oh, I see. Geoffrey Sutton.” He wiped his hand on his shorts, then didn’t offer it.
“I’m Marcella. And that,” I added as we moved away to join the glowering Mrs F, “is my aunt, Mrs Fernandez.”
I LIKE MY STUDENTS. THEY ARE TOUCHING, SOMEHOW, these untidy young people set in the neatness of their college landscape. They seem to have no idea of grace or beauty. How can it be that these privileged children of such a big, rich and confident nation are so fragile and lost? Moore, it turns out, particularly specialises in the troublesome children of the wealthy, who for their own reasons do not wish to be like their parents.
The college has hired me to teach Multi-cultural Studies, but no one has told me what this is. I asked the dean, Dean Goodrich, and he offered with obvious
