Free The Magic of Saida by M. G. Vassanji

dimension hidden from him. He did not know her after all.
    He kicked her in the shins. She went home crying. And Mama punished him by beating him on his calves with a stick. He cried. He cried because he had hurt his only companion besides Mama; he ached because he felt so alien. She was a proper Swahili, an aristocrat, granddaughter of two poets; he a chotara, a mixed-blood, as he was called in school.
    The next week she was back, sent by Bi Kulthum. Kusoma—to learn, she admitted shyly. A many and a pany. The two of them went around in circles laughing, chanting, A many ende a pany, a pany ende a many …
    “Sing!” he would command. “Mm-mm.” No. Her grandmother Mwana Juma had forbidden her to sing. She was not ready. But she wrote for him the Arabic alphabet, told him how to read the letters and the words.
    Mwana Juma was a mysterious one. Small and dark with staring eyes, she did not leave her house often. And she was devout, and did not like Mama, because Mama was modern and assertive, was not in the care of a man and did not drape herself with the black bui-bui—even though she covered her head when appropriate.
    Mama did not send Kamal to the madrassa to learn Arabic and Quran, because his father had wished him to study in the Asian school. English and arithmetic, geography, history of India and England. He had to go far. But now, after he learned the rudiments of Arabic writing from Saida, he went and bought from an Asian store the Juzu, the elementary Arabic reader, with its cardboard cover and thin, flimsy pages, and he read it with Saida. After “a many ende a pany,” they went, “an-fataha-tin, in-kisira-tin, un-zamu-tin …” An
alif
with two strokes above it becomes
an
, and so on.
    A new world—an inkling of another world—was offered him in this strange, sensual script that he could now falteringly read. It was the physical face of the Quran. Laying out these wonderful magical letters, the tall
alif
, the
lam
like a reflected L, the
mim
like a tadpole, and so on, Mzee Omari wrote his poetry; it was these that Gabriel commanded the Prophet to read, in the name of God—
iqra bismirabbi-ka
—thus revealing to him the Book. It was what the other African boys read in the madrassas, sitting on the ground in their kanzus and kofias, chanting. These new wonderful letters, written from right to left, in books that began at the back made him feel a part of a world he had been denied.
    Mama was aware of his new learning, and that sometimes her teacher son became the pupil, but she seemed not to pay any attention.
    Kamalu and Saida grew close; he was kinder to her than before, more caring and tender. If she was not quicker on the uptake, at least she tried harder—or feigned better. Her affection for him was implicit in her mischievous smile and easy amusement, her yielding to his attentions; the way she leaned forward, as he bent over a piece of paper to do a sum or read to her, to flick a stray thread from his shirt or blow a something from his hair with a quick puff from her lips. They were growing older. The poem she had recited, Mwana Kupona’s advice to her daughter, indicated that she might have been made more aware of her role as a young woman.
    Once he composed some lines for her, mimicking Mwana Kupona’s advice, encouraging her to study:
Sikiza sana Saida / a many ende a pany / jifunze kiengereza
 … Listen well, Saida, teach yourself English. And she corrected him, “Not
Saida
, but
Sa-i-da
!” The lines had to scan properly.
    When her lesson with him ended, she returned home, and he set off to play. Sometimes he accompanied her partway, to the monument; a few times they wandered off from there, past the boma to the shore. Once, with the money Mama had given him to buy a packet of sugar, he bought a coconut and they drank the water together. Mama was furious when he returned without the sugar and told her that instead he’d bought Saida a coconut. He went to bed in tears and without