Kololo Hill Read online

  He watched as others took their turn in front of him. A man in a long white cotton kanzu was led away by one of the security guards, disappearing into a windowless office.

  It was Vijay’s turn.

  The man in the cubicle stared at the navy British passport. Like other Ugandan Asians, he’d been given the option of getting one during Uganda’s move towards independence a few years back, before the ties to Britain were cut. Ba and Papa had taken the opportunity to secure one for him. A passport for a country he’d never set foot in until now. The official took in Vijay’s smiling photo, then looked up at him. Not smiling now.

  ‘How long are you here for?’ said the man.

  ‘Just a few days,’ said Vijay, hoping the nerves didn’t make his voice sound like it had just broken.

  ‘How many days exactly?’

  ‘Five. Five days. Exactly.’ Vijay was about to smile but he thought better of it. Best to be serious.

  ‘On your own?’

  He nodded. Yes, of course on his own. Not like he was hiding a family of ten under his coat, was it?

  ‘What are you doing here, then?’ The official’s eyes narrowed. ‘On your own.’

  Vijay had rehearsed this bit a thousand times, but he still had to say it slowly to make sure the English words came out in the right order. ‘Just some sightseeing, maybe a little shopping.’

  ‘No friends or family to visit?’

  ‘Oh, no. My family and friends are all back in Uganda.’ Pran had told him beforehand: don’t give them any sign that he was going to stick around longer than he was supposed to.

  ‘Unusual to come here by yourself?’ The man was spending a lot of time looking at the passport, despite the lack of any stamps inside it, even running his thumb along the crisp blank paper.

  Vijay slid his finger into his shirt collar and tugged. Had his neck swollen to twice its size? ‘Family business. They couldn’t get away, you see.’

  ‘And how much money have you brought into the country?’

  ‘Enough for a place to stay, and some more for food and drink.’ He shifted his weight to his other foot and instantly regretted it as money rustled inside the coat. ‘Get on the London Underground. That kind of thing.’ The kind of thing that involved giving suspicious people all that money that he’d smuggled into England.

  The official stared at him.

  Now what? Was this the moment the other guards came out and took him away? Everything went quiet. Chest tightening, belly churning. Don’t throw up.

  ‘How much is that exactly?’

  Vijay said the amount, as Pran had advised him to do. A safe number that wouldn’t draw attention.

  Another hard stare. ‘And I don’t need to remind you that we have very strict laws about people staying in this country beyond their welcome. There are clear processes and procedures to follow, do you understand?’

  Vijay nodded. Yes, he knew very well – for people like him, there were endless processes and procedures, no matter what passport you had.

  ‘Please wait here.’ The official stood up and walked over to a colleague who was standing close by. They discussed something and nodded, each man getting a good look at Vijay while he clutched the frame of the cubicle, hoping the panic hadn’t reached his face. A foreign prison, no one to visit him.

  After what felt like hours, the official came back over. Vijay hadn’t thought it was possible for the man to look any grumpier than he had before, but somehow his brows had furrowed so firmly you could crush peanuts between them.

  ‘Five days then.’ A thud and a clink of metal as the man stamped the passport and handed it back.

  Vijay gave a watery smile and walked away as calmly as he could. He gulped in the air, as though he’d held his breath the entire time. ‘Just stay calm and you’ll be fine,’ Pran had said. As if it was nothing.

  He collected his luggage, then stopped for a split second outside the red zone customs channel where the sign demanded, ‘Anything to declare?’ He moved past, joining the sea of fellow travellers in the long, brightly lit tunnel of the green zone. A customs official standing behind a Formica table looked directly at him, his grey eyes staring at Vijay’s left arm. This was it. Out of luck.

  But after a moment, the official’s gaze softened. He looked away and continued to scan the crowds. To the man, Vijay was too meek, too fragile to be a threat.

  His arm was the perfect disguise.

  Out into the Arrivals area. Any minute now, a single hand on his back could still stop him, haul him back when they realized they’d made a mistake. He mustn’t run out of the airport, no matter how much he might want to. Had to act like the people around him. He hurried through the families and the taxi drivers with scribbled cards gathered in the terminal.

  Outside, the air bristled through his coat; despite the extra insulation of the notes, it felt as thin as chiffon now. Only when he was halfway through the car park did he dare to turn around.

  No one followed.

  He’d made it. He’d actually got away with it! He looked around. His connection in London, Haribhai, would be waiting in the car park with his brother-in-law. Little islands of grubby snow lined the kerbside; not the sparkling white he’d seen in films. The grey sludge beneath his feet was more like sticky, slippery mashed mogo – cassava. He wandered around the car park, looking past the Fords, Mercedes and Range Rovers, the ordinary people piling their suitcases into their cars, trying to find the beaten-up black Peugeot.

  Finally, in the corner of the car park, he saw it.

  What now? He stood there, cars swooshing behind him. The Peugeot’s doors opened on both sides and two men got out. The driver, skinny as a reed, and his passenger, stocky with heavy jowls and small eyes, not unlike a hippo.

  ‘Get in, then,’ said the thin man, as though they’d known each other for years. From Popatlal’s description, this must be Haribhai. And Popatlal must have mentioned Vijay’s arm; they’d have seen the coat hanging off his shoulder.

  Once they’d driven away from the airport and onto the motorway, the hippo asked, ‘You got it, neh?’

  Vijay nodded. Of course he had it.

  ‘Take it off, then.’

  Outside, people were bundled up in hats and scarves. Apart from the jacket he’d handed over, he only had a cotton shirt.

  ‘Relax, there’s another coat in the boot,’ Haribhai said, glancing at him in the rear-view mirror.

  They drove to another car park, quieter this time, a couple of cars dotted here and there. How much electricity did it take to illuminate this gloomy concrete block, he thought, looking at the pockets of light across the building.

  They parked in a dark corner, the shadows growing longer across the Peugeot’s bonnet. Vijay looked around. These people thought nothing of smuggling money in and out of the country; it occurred to him suddenly that hanging around in a deserted car park with them wasn’t the best idea. The man who looked like a hippo took the coat from Vijay and grabbed a small kitchen knife from the glove compartment. Fear pricked at his neck until the man cut into the coat, just enough to check the money was there. He showed it to Haribhai and both men nodded. They gave Vijay a flimsy beige trench coat. The Humphrey Bogart look really wasn’t his style, but it was bitter outside.

  ‘What now?’

  The men didn’t answer. Instead, they carried on driving along broad roads, past fishmongers and butchers and bakers, until they stopped, gave him a brown-paper envelope and told him to count the money inside, just like in the crime movies.

  Then they left him at Acton Town underground station. Not quite like in the crime movies.

  He took in the clean lines and red bricks of the station. A train rattled in as he reached the platform. The whole carriage smelt of stale smoke; at his feet, fallen cigarettes lay between the wooden slats of the floor. Hanging down from the ceiling were long, pendulous handles. (Had to admire someone who had the guts to design something so public that looked like a penis.)

  The woman
sitting opposite him wore a tailored jacket and matching skirt. Her grey hair was swept up in a bun, topped with a little navy hat like an upturned dog bowl.

  She stared at him, eyes bright blue. It made Vijay think of Jaya, whose eyes had faded from hazel-brown to grey in old age. They made his Ba look sad, even when she was smiling. What would she think of the things he’d done to get here? What would she have done if he’d been caught?

  The woman on the Tube continued to look. Where to start? There was his arm. Then his hair, which he’d modelled on Marc Bolan but which looked more like a ball of wool that had lost a fight with a kitten.

  The train rolled along the tunnel. Vijay focused on keeping his eyes open until he could get off the Tube, muscles still stiff with tension.

  He came out of Ealing Common station and followed the directions Pran had given him. The bed and breakfast was an old house, sandwiched between others just like it, with sandy-coloured bricks and a red-tiled roof. The landlady let him in and he nodded politely as she spoke, knowing that by the morning he’d have forgotten where things were, what time breakfast was served and the cost of the room. Anything to lie down and get some sleep.

  After he’d washed up at the little basin in the corner of the bedroom, he climbed into the bed, the chill of the white cotton sheets seeping into his body. He curled his legs up, knees almost touching his belly. When Pran had first asked him to go to London, Vijay had thought it an adventure. Yet now, fear seized him. Pran took his cut, safely tucked away in Uganda, while Vijay took all the risks. It wasn’t an easy holiday. And then there was the guilt – lying to everyone, to Ba, to Asha. He looked around the room, the light of the street lamp creeping through a crack in the curtain. The flowery lampshade on the ceiling quivered as someone walked around the attic room above. The last thing he saw before he closed his eyes was a murky yellow patch across the ceiling plaster, like a cloud of piss.

  *

  By the time he ventured out of the bed and breakfast two days later, the snow had melted. He took in Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, Leicester Square, where people fed pigeons and a bag of chips lay strewn on the ground, as though they’d made a suicidal leap out of someone’s hand. Clutching fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, he ranged further; on to Soho, catching glimpses of posters in the windows. Non-stop striptease, silhouettes of buxom women, all in bright colours.

  London was nothing like the news reports back home, those pictures of Brigitte Bardot and Michael Caine waving at fans. England had been around Vijay all his life. In the films at the Century Cinema, where ‘God Save the Queen’ blasted out after each showing; in the stock at the dukan, Lux soap and Heinz baked beans. The British boys at school with their tanned limbs and sun-bleached hair, the children of schoolteachers and civil servants who were sent back ‘home’ to England during school holidays. English words, too, woven into their Swahili, their Gujarati and Hindi; into street signs, onto the paper money, into the newspapers that until a few years ago had told them they were British subjects.

  But that was an England at the edges of his life. Now that he was here, looking around a country so different from the one he’d imagined, the taste of vinegar prickling on his tongue, he felt further away than ever before.

  3

  Asha

  The snow came down over Tower Bridge, sunlight glinting along the arc of the snow globe.

  Asha stood by the kitchen table, watching Jaya as she shook the globe again, delighted by Vijay’s gift.

  ‘It’s just like grated coconut in there,’ said Jaya, the tiny lines gathering in the corners of her eyes in glee. ‘You enjoyed yourself then, beta?’

  ‘Yes, Ba, it was fun.’ He didn’t meet her gaze.

  ‘And you didn’t have any trouble getting through the airport?’ Asha took a shortbread biscuit from the tin. It was covered in a red, white and blue flag with a picture of men dressed in red uniforms with tall fur hats. She passed one to Pran.

  Vijay glanced at his brother. ‘With Immigration? It was fine. They just like to take their time with their questions. But it was fine, all OK, really.’

  ‘Good, beta. And what did you do there?’ Jaya perched on the edge of the chair next to Vijay.

  ‘This and that. I went to Leicester Square, walked around a bit. And Tower Bridge, as you can see,’ said Vijay.

  Jaya tried to ask more questions, about what he’d eaten, what else he’d done, but Vijay’s responses were vague. Perhaps he was tired, thought Asha, perhaps he felt bad about leaving Pran at the dukan after all.

  ‘We should talk later,’ said Pran.

  ‘Yeah, maybe,’ said Vijay, as he walked out of the door.

  *

  Asha stood with Pran outside their neighbours Naseem and Razia Iqbal’s house. The sun had chased the afternoon rains away as quickly as they had started. The earth had turned dark copper, the sunlight catching the tips of the Nandi flame trees. It was good to get out of the house with Pran, these occasions rarer than ever with curfew always looming. He kissed Asha’s shoulder, lips warm against her skin, as the house girl opened the door.

  ‘Pranbhai, Ashaben. Come, come,’ said Naseem, beckoning them into the house. He was a few years older, a few pounds heavier than Pran. He walked in an unhurried manner, the confidence that came with money.

  The Iqbals’ house was far larger than others in the street. It was single-storey like many others, but it was made up of two houses extended into one large complex, with a red roof and vast garden. Asha looked around the sitting room filled with European souvenirs, figurines of cherubs and angels and maidens swathed in white fabric, a landscape painting of the English countryside, chiming gold carriage clocks and a large side cabinet filled with fine china. Razia and Naseem lived in the house with their four children and Naseem’s youngest brother. His parents, who also lived with them, had gone out to visit relatives, taking the grandchildren with them so that the couple could enjoy some time with their friends. Razia came over, frangipani-yellow silk sari swishing as she walked. A streak of blusher on each cheek made her look like a porcelain doll. ‘Kemche? All well?’ she asked, with her usual habit of not meeting Asha’s gaze but instead looking past her with her heavy, kohl-lined eyes. Though they’d spent some time together over the past few months, Asha hadn’t yet worked out whether it was shyness or snootiness.

  ‘You’ll have some food?’ Razia headed towards the table, releasing a cloying rose perfume into the air.

  There were other young couples milling around, laughing and joking. Pran and Asha said hello to a few of them while they waited for Vijay, who was still getting ready.

  ‘Thought you’d sneak in without saying hello?’ Pran’s friend Rakesh came over. He slapped Pran’s back and greeted Asha, hands together in a salaam.

  ‘What can I say? I thought I’d managed to avoid you,’ Pran laughed. Rakesh was Pran’s oldest friend; they’d known each other since they were toddlers. His family owned a large fabric shop on Kampala Road.

  ‘You almost did, we’re off to a family engagement,’ said Rakesh. Asha wondered how much longer they’d be able to go freely to gatherings and celebrations, but she was determined to make the best of it while she could.

  After Rakesh had said his goodbyes, she and Pran went over to the buffet. The table was laden with golden slabs of mogo piled up high, along with kuku paka, chicken pieces peeping out of a pale-yellow coconut sauce; lamb biryani, plump rounds of daar na bhajia; crispy aloo paratha and sliced onion scattered with coriander. She helped herself to a fluffy spoonful of shrikhand, thick, sweetened yoghurt, saffron-hued and pistachio-studded, knowing better than to put any on Pran’s plate; he hated anything with cardamom in it.

  As they sat outside in the shaded part of the garden, the strap of Asha’s dress fell off her shoulder. Pran hooked it with his little finger.

  ‘Are you planning to put that back on or slip it off?’ said Asha. Her eyes settled on his lips.

  ‘I haven’t decided yet,’ he whispered.

 
; Just then, Vijay arrived and people buzzed around him; his jovial warmth always seemed to draw people closer. He piled his plate with food and joined Pran and Asha.

  ‘Training for a marathon?’ said Asha.

  Pran laughed. ‘Not sure he’d be able to run very far after eating all that.’

  ‘I missed this food in England, that’s all,’ said Vijay. ‘Oh, I forgot the chutney.’

  ‘Missed the food? You were only gone a few days!’ said Asha. ‘I’ll get the chutney, don’t want you dropping that huge plate.’

  On her way back, she caught the end of the brothers’ conversation.

  ‘No, I’m going straight to sleep after this.’ A tinge of frustration in Vijay’s voice. ‘You’ll have to wait.’

  Pran was about to say something, but when he saw her he decided against it.

  Naseem came over and joined them. ‘I hope you’ll be going back for more, we need to fatten you up,’ he said, laughing at Vijay’s plate.

  Vijay grinned, unable to say anything as he’d just taken another huge mouthful of rice.

  ‘So, how’s business?’ said Naseem, pressing his glasses back to the bridge of his nose.

  ‘All fine, you know how it is.’ Pran and Vijay exchanged a look that Asha couldn’t read. ‘How about you?’

  Naseem ignored the question. ‘You’re extending the dukan?’

  ‘We’ve finished. The business is keeping us busy. And how are the exports doing?’ Pran took a sip of juice then lowered his voice. ‘Government still giving you trouble?’ Naseem’s family had made a lot of money from their four general stores around Kampala. Things had really stepped up in the past decade after his other brothers opened a sugar plantation near Jinja. The sugar exports changed their fortunes dramatically. But their wealth also brought more scrutiny from those in power.

  ‘It’s fine, we’ll find a way around it,’ said Naseem wearily. ‘They love poking their noses in. They’ve been doing it for a while now.’