November 17, 2011

• Oyster Bay, a Novel by Jules Damji

  

   

  The good of this collection, its heart, lies in the rich subject matter, and the author’s feel for it; the vanishing world of a long established, determined and enterprising Asian community in Tanzania and other parts of East Africa. 

   

  Those who have ever gazed at films on that exotic place, land of the red-clad Maasai, the roaming elephant, the towering giraffe, may also have wondered at the names of its great cities: Dar Es Salaam, Nairobi, Zanzibar. What was it like to live there in the turbulent era when British rule ended, and the swinging world of The West in the sixties beckoned? What opportunities beckoned, what miseries tormented, what dark secrets were hidden? How did the people live? 

   

  Jules Damji, should well know, for he was a young, perceptive citizen there in those times, sliding now into history, and he has striven to capture them in these nine connected stories of how things were a generation and more ago.  

   

  The openingstories tell of everyday life, as, beneath the shade of a mango tree, a young boy of the Ismaili Muslim community hears the curse of “Mama Khelele,” a spoilt and scolding “Novi Ladi” (new bride) and later the excitement of the world famous East African Safari grips him. But then he looks more deeply into life, learning the hidden story of The Caretaker, of the past forgotten heroisms that gave the elderly jamat bhai his medals, and of how hideous violence erupted in Zanzibar, and presently was past and forgotten, lost in the darkness of Africa’s tropic nights.

   

  Warming to his work, Jules plunges into a fascinating account of scheming opportunists and corrupt officials in post-independence Tanzania. Indeed, this later chapter, which to me screams “true story,” is as unrestrained an account of lurking dishonesty ripening and sexual manipulation as you could wish to find in any steamy tale of lust and scandal. Africa’s dangers and horrors continue in the next story, as a naive youth becomes obsessed with the culture of communism and equality, dismaying his business like sister, and finally causing disaster.  

  The last stories are more philosophic in tone, leaving the physical violence of the world outside the community to probe conflicts within, as an idealistic youth refuses to tread the path set by his worldly father, who desires to fulfill his frustrated dream of life in England through his only son. Here Damji illuminates a conflict that runs in the background throughout the collection, as indeed it ran through the Ismaili community: the sense of a modern, wider world versus pride, tradition and insularity. “My country,” mocked dad, “this is not our country. You really believe in your heart that these karias give a shit about us muhindis” Other winds of change blow as Jules introduces Jamil, who prefers visiting glamorous Oyster Bay to attending a religious festival; triggering his mother’s rage, for Jamil is her last hope of maintaining a scrap of good-standing within the community. Her final, tragic loss ends this bitter-sweet recollection of a vanished East Africa,  a collection well worth the read.

  • 10:53 am
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