The Journey Back

Unexpected Friend

The house was a few minutes walk away. Bamboo fence and gate greeted them and Uncle Macky entered and announced, “Assalaamu ‘alaykum.” Someone answered “Wa ‘alaykum mussalaam” but Uncle Macky walked inside like he had always been there the rest of his life. Then slowly people emerged out the three houses inside the compound. The house near them was the only one built of the common hollow blocks and cement while the other two were made of wood with metal roofs. He noticed also a sort of big grayish concrete cube structure. Upon close look, he observed a faucet sticking on its side and some basins and clay jars around the cube. Weird, but he might ask Uncle Macky what it was.

They were ushered inside the concrete house. Uncle Macky gave a gesture of respect by taking the elderly men’s and women’s right hand and touching his forehead gently with it. Raza, like he, was given yet another set of ‘sniffing’ kisses. After exchanging pleasantries, they were asked to sit down on the sofa in the living room and the table in front of them was immediately filled with a cold pitcher of orange juice, glasses and platters of assorted biscuits. Despite feeling queasy, Raza was both hungry and curious so he took a bite of one that looked like dark pretzel while the people around him talked animatedly and excitedly. Some were sitting down the sofas and others who didn’t find a place to sit just stood there. Raza thought the people in there was much more excited than the last one he visited. They were all smiling faces. He noticed that the house had three bedrooms, it seemed, which stood side by side, the place where the doors should be was only scantly covered with curtains—no bedroom doors. The living room where they sat stretched in front of the bedrooms. There was a television set near the door which was either not working or was turned off. He looked up and observed no ceiling separated the roof from the entire house. A sewing machine and a rickety chair stood in the corner; a cardboard box below it held snipped cloths of varying colors.

A string of introductions got out of Uncle Macky’s lips. He introduced practically everyone. Raza didn’t fight hard to remember. There were so many names—his uncles, aunts, cousins, grandaunts, granduncles, granduncle’s grandchildren and so on, all his relatives. Someday, he would really construct a very large family tree. He only made it a point to remember his grandparents; after all, they were the reason he was there, if he discounted the iPhone. His grandpa was a balding man, with white eyebrows and short white beard. His nose was pointed like Raza’s and his eyes were gray with age. His hands were tanned and callused. His grandma had long dark wavy hair with tinges of white and gray; wrinkles apparent on her face and arms; and her back arched slightly forward. His father once said to him that he had a total of ten siblings. Wow, when Raza only had a younger sister.

Kids ran around the house and Raza bet were given orders to keep quiet and play outside. He couldn’t keep count of them because they kept coming and going and he heard them playing outside, giggling and laughing. Later, he learned they were his little cousins and cousins’ playmates.

When Raza thought that Uncle Macky would be the only one he would be talking to for the entire week, he met Jamil. He lived a few houses away and went there like everyone else because he heard about the guests. Raza assumed he was another distant relative or a family friend. He learned that he could speak English very well. He was shorter than Raza though he was a few inches above five feet with dark crew-cut hair, pointed nose and bright eyes. Raza thought he knew him from somewhere, his face looked vaguely familiar.

“Jamil knows English well because he is one of the top students, if not the top, in class,” Uncle Macky explained. Other people came and went to meet Raza. He shook hands with so many people than he could remember in a day. The platters and glasses filled endlessly to offer to the visitors who wanted to see the new guest in town like a politician had just landed in the vicinity.

Jamil was asked by the family to stay and maybe accompany Raza since they would most likely understand each other. He was four years older than Raza, he was told. Jamil ate dinner with them without anyone asking him to join; but it seemed like an unspoken offer in the thinning gathering. They had dinner in one of the two wooden houses in the compound. Unlike the concrete one, the two houses were the kind that stood above the waters. One house belonged to his grandaunt, the other wooden house had two areas, one was the bedroom and the other was the kitchen-cum-dining area. About eight people sat on two benches on both sides of the dining table which was unsurprisingly wooden covered with flowery tablemat.  A fluorescent lamp hung above them. The kitchen area was unlike he’d ever seen. Woods were stacked beside the place where cooking was done. Dying embers of burnt wood were apparent on the cooking area high above the floor. Pots and pans hung on one side while plates and glasses were placed neatly on an improvised plate stand.