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‘I'm grateful to my old man,' Ali would later say to Esi. ‘Leaving me that group and their skills is worth more than a million dollars in the bank, you know.' He would laugh, touch his heart and continue: ‘Besides, knowing my father, he would have hated the tiresome business of having to put a good story together to explain how he could suddenly have come into such money, since all his life he had
avoided the banks.'

‘Was he into currency deals?' the listener would ask.

‘But what a very rude question. In any case, how do you think people like my father could have managed to keep commerce and other economic activities thriving in this area if they had played in the white man's bank with their money?'

‘But after independence?'

‘What are you talking about? … My father keeps telling everyone openly that he will take his money to the bank the day something changes properly. As far as he is concerned, these independences have proved to be nothing more than a trick! You should see him imitating African leaders when they are with the heads of Western governments or their representatives, as they tremble and grin with great effort to please! And Allah, he can do them all! Francophone, Anglophone, Lusophone, any kind. No, he is convinced that nothing has changed, so he sleeps on his money.' ‘So he is still alive?'

Of course. And still marrying the fourteen-year-old girls.' Ali always pretended great shock at any suggestion that his father might die. He thought any discussion of that subject was in very bad taste, and Musa Musa agreed with him. Indeed the only opinion Musa Musa could possibly have shared with African heads of state is that any discussion of our mortality is treason and punishable, by death of course, if the circumstances are right.

Allah be praised.

Ali's house was a big structure at the entrance to Nima, from New Town. It had been built in the middle of the 1940s by a local man who had made a lot of money in the Second World War. None of the children this man had sent to England to be ‘properly educated' had bothered to come back. So out of sheer frustration he had driven their different mothers out, and for several years had lived alone. Then, once he knew he was about to die, he had put the house up for sale to spite his family. He knew they were just waiting for him to die to begin harassing one another over the property. The only condition to go with the sale was that whoever bought the house should wait for him to be laid in his grave before taking possession. Which is exactly what happened. Ali had then thoroughly renovated it and built a proper wall around it.

Early in his sojourn in the south, Ali had decided that he would always live in the
zongo
of the cities in which he found himself. He had
not tried to analyse that decision into its parts except to say that, ‘for one,
zongo
is the only area in these places where one can be sure of always getting some decent
tuo'.
If the house he had bought was not exactly in Nima, he could at least console himself with the thought that it was near enough. From his favourite corner on the balcony upstairs, he could hear and see that city- within-city buzzing with maximum activity during the day, and winking all over at night — also with maximum activity. Nima never slept.

Ali had first come south with his father when he was about four years old. Musa Musa always stayed in Nima, with different friends and relatives, deciding on which household, according to how he felt on each trip. When he began to take Ali with him on a regular basis, there was a routine he always followed — in Nima as well as in all the other cities and towns on his routes. As soon as he arrived, he would promptly put Ali in a Koranic school. By the time he was eight, Ali could recite more than double the verses normally expected from one his age. This worked out to about ten chapters of the Holy Book. From Bamako down through Ouga and Kumasi, from Abidjan across Sekondi, Accra and Lome, all his teachers proclaimed him an exceptionally bright pupil.

One day, when Ali was nearly nine years old and they were in Bamako, his mother Mma Danjuma did ‘one of her things'. After the whole family had returned from the mosque and her brother and her husband were swearing by Allah that they would surely die any minute from hunger, Mma disappeared into the huge kitchen which she shared with the other tenants' wives. Then she called her two older boys, Danjuma and Ali — but not, as the boys expected, because she had heated the food and she was going to dish it out for them to take to where the men were. Instead, she just pulled a chair out and sat down. Then she gave the boys some francs and told them to go to Monsieur Abdoulayi's and get the family some kola. The boys were very surprised. It was a most unusual command. The one thing they never ever ran out of in their corner of the compound was kola. Indeed, every now and then Mma herself sold kola to the other residents, since her brother always brought her a small sackful whenever he came from the south. Musa Musa meant the kola for her and her husband's use. But it was always a lot. Too much.

‘How many mouths does Musa think we have, eh?' Mma would ask no one in particular. She would then proceed to give several away to her women friends, until one of them, a much more
realistic somebody than Mma could ever be, asked whether Mma didn't think that if she sold some of the nuts, she could find something else, like salt, to buy with the money? That was a hint Mma took.

So to go and buy kola from someone else, especially when Ali and his father had just arrived from the south the night before, sounded very strange indeed. But then, grown-ups are always strange and unpredictable. Both boys said, Oui, Mma,' and left the house.

The boys were right. Mma didn't need the kola. She just wanted them out of the house for a short while. That was why, in her haste, she had named the first commodity that had come into her head.

‘Ah-ah, there are things you don't discuss with young people listening in. Especially if it's about their future. Since they never forget, if they overhear you making decisions about them which later turn out to have been unfortunate, they would never forgive you …'

Mma adjusted her veil and approached the men. To their cries of ‘Where is the food?' and ‘Where is the
tuo?'
she asked them to be patient and wait. She knelt. Another surprise that afternoon. Mma never knelt.

‘It's about Ali.'

‘Uh … huh,' grunted the men.

‘Musa, no one is a better father than you. The boy doesn't miss his mother. Allah be praised.'

‘Ei,' exclaimed both men, ‘what mother are you talking about now? Are you not the boy's mother?'

‘Please forgive my words,' said Mma, nervously. She realised immediately that she had almost gone too far in her attempt to oil them up for what she was about to say. ‘But the boy is growing. Now he knows enough Arabic to improve on his verses himself with the reading of the Holy Book.'

‘Woman, woman, be short,' her husband, Baba Danjuma, cut in. ‘What is it you want to tell your brother?' Baba Danjuma was trying to hide his fury that whatever it was, she had not discussed it with him first.

‘Musa,' said Mma, Ί want you to leave Ali with us properly. No more travelling for him. So we can put him into a French school. Please? These days, that is very important. Koranic schools are all right. But

Musa and Baba Danjuma were already laughing a great deal and calling on Allah to come bless this good woman, their wife and their sister. But that was what they had been discussing all morning!
Strange ... Allah is great. They had thought they would tell her what they had agreed about Ali after she had fed them. Since, may Allah protect us all, if she did not hurry with the food, she might have two corpses to deal with … Ah no, there was no problem. Of course, Ali would go to the French school.

Mma Danjuma was very surprised, and relieved. She had nothing more to say. There was just no need. She rose up.

‘Ah... yah,' she said, ‘I shall bring the food now.' She went back to the kitchen.

A little while later, when she took the steaming bowls in herself, Baba Danjuma thought there was something odd about it.

‘Where are the boys?' he asked.

‘I sent them to Abdoulayi,' she replied. Why explain further?

Oh … oh, both men murmured. They too were quite anxious to eat, they didn't feel like probing. Since they had already done their ablutions, they immediately attacked their food.

As Mma turned to return to the kitchen there was a smile on her face. Ah men, how easy that was! Had they really discussed sending Ali to the French school? Or had they just agreed quickly so that she, a woman, wouldn't have the credit of being the ore to have brought out a good idea? Or was it just because they were anxious to eat? Mma knew she would never know the answer to that one. But what did it matter as long as they did not stand in her way and ruin her plans to get the boy properly educated? They are men. They must have their little self-deceptions.

In time, Ali went to the junior French school, and later, the lycée. Much later he continued to Ghana and went to a teacher training college, where he met Fusena his wife. Later still he gave up teaching and got himself to England, where he acquired both a bachelor's and a master's degree in Sociology and Economics.

When Ali was in an English-speaking environment, people found his language ‘quaint' with its French accent and philosophical turn to everyday phrases. When he was in a Francophone environment, people thought his language enchantingly ‘simple, comme les Anglais!'

       
5

               
Sunset over the Gulf of Guinea is something very special — any evening.

               
‘Sister, the sea has melted,' said the seven-year-old Kweku to his aunt, as he gazed at the ocean under one such glory.

Driving towards the Hotel Twentieth Century, Esi was completely overwhelmed by the vision of so much gold, golden red and red filtering through the branches of the coconut palms. Although she herself had been born not that far from the sea, even she wondered, as she later looked for parking outside the hotel, how people who had such scenes at their backyards felt on a daily basis. Then, ashamed of herself for automatically applying a research approach, she told the sociologist in her to shut up.

The beach was only a couple of kilometres to the right of the hotel, and the fishermen who were busy packing up their boats down there might have been amused if they had heard her thoughts. For at that time, what they were wondering was whether the government would fulfil its promise to help them get motorised boats and better nets, and when the Minister of Power would stop increasing the price of kerosene; and that night out at sea, would it be warm? For definitely, a chillier wind than they were used to was blowing through their lives.

Having located a good place, Esi parked expertly, jumped out of the car, locked it, and strode towards the reception desk of the hotel, her shoes beating out the determination in her mind.

‘Yes, Madam? Good evening, can I help you?' All that from one of the two men manning the place, said very hurriedly, almost as if he was afraid to pause in case Esi interrupted him before he had finished his standard greeting. She did not interrupt him. But once she was sure he had finished his recitation she asked him if a foreign friend who should be in for a conference had arrived.

Oh, yes,' the receptionist cut in, quite affably though. ‘You were here about the same time yesterday to ask for her?'

‘Yes, yes,' Esi agreed, a little surprised that he could recall so instantly and so accurately.

‘Just a minute,' said the man and with that he turned aside, picked up a clipboard that held some sheets and quickly read what was on the sheets. Then he looked up.

‘There are three new arrivals for that workshop. What is the name of your friend?'

‘Wambui Wanjiku,' her voice registering an anticipated disappointment, ‘she is coming from Kenya.' The man looked at his sheet again, although he already knew the name was not on it. Then he looked up. ‘No, she has not arrived yet.'

‘No?'

‘No.'

‘Thanks.'

Esi turned around. She paused for a while and moved a step or two, towards the entrance. But she changed her mind about going back out. It was clear that she was uncertain as to what to do next. She could go and sit down to have a beer. But she knew this was not really done. A woman alone in a hotel lobby drinking
alcohol?
It would definitely be misunderstood. Then she told herself that she was tired of all the continual misunderstandings. She was tired after a long day in the office, she was disappointed that her friend was obviously not going to show up for her workshop, and she was going to have her beer: misunderstanding or not. By this time, she was already sitting by a table.

‘Esi!' a voiced called out above the steady hum of voices. It was deep and feminine.

‘Opokuya!' Esi screamed back, even before looking for the direction from which the voice had come. They were hugging.

They had missed each other, those two friends. They always did even when they were away from one another for only a few days. And this time they had not been in touch for weeks. Besides, until recently they had lived in different parts of the country for several years. But then they were aware that as two women, each of whom had a demanding career, a husband, a child for one and four children for the other, there was a limit to how much time they could spend together. In any case, what was between them was so firm, so deeply rooted, it didn't demand any forced or even conscious tending. Each of them had realised over the years that perhaps they had managed to stay so close because they made so few demands of one another.
Especially in terms of time to idle and gossip. However, whenever it had become necessary to be in daily communication they had done that too, without either of them fussing.