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Dhanji Govindji on the threshold, looking out, Ji Bai inside on a stool some feet behind him, head appropriately covered, listening respectfully, venturing a word here and there. He received several letters, asking him to go and check out some half-caste sighted, and he would go. Sometimes he simply took it upon himself to go and search some city, investigate some new route that had opened up. Every time he returned, he would talk to Ji Bai.
    “Bai,” he would say, “when I came, Dar es Salaam was not fit even to spit on … grass growing in the streets, a few Arab and Banya shops, but mostly empty, crumbling houses with snakes and scorpions, bats and chameleons for tenants … and every now and then junglees would raid the town. Seyyid Bargash who followed Seyyid Majid, Bai, simply left it to ruin. Now what wonders these Germans have achieved. As you approach it from the sea, as you enter the harbour, you see to the right all those beautiful, white buildings of the Europeans … there is already a church there—a big, tall building with a spire, to which the Germans go on Sunday—and there is the Governor’s house, an alishaan building fit for a king truly … the government buildings … the dainty houses with red roofs, all laid out cleanly with gardens, and servants looking out. Behind this beautiful, white European face of the town is our modest Indian district, every community in its own separate area, and behind that the African quarter going right into the forest. Sheth Karmali Samji’s shop, if you remember, is on Ring Strasse near Bagamoyo Strasse—strasse is ‘road,’ by the way—this Bagamoyo Road goes right into the jungle and if you take the road north from Matamu, past Guu Refu’s farm, you will hit this same Bagamoyo Strasse. It goes up to Bagamoyo village, and from there you can go all the way up to Tabora and further. On this road the slaves and ivory used to come, andthe great traders of old used to travel, with hundreds of porters in file. Because of this road the likes of Jairam Shivji and Amarsi Makan made their crores. Now, of course, there is the railway train. I took this train all the way to Kilosa. And everywhere it stopped you had these hustlers coming to sell you eggs, chicken, carvings, and to anyone who seemed to have a little sense in his head, I would ask: ‘Have you seen my son?’ I asked conductors, askaris, akidas, and jumbes, thieves and prostitutes … Don’t think I haven’t been fooled; I have been taken to see men who were only caricatures of my son, I have been presented with shogas of all colours, and I have been taken into alleys and robbed. The District Officer at Kilosa took me to the prison and showed me a lame man. ‘But my son had two legs,’ I protested. ‘Maybe he lost one,’ the swine answered. I have been alone with women, beautiful, alluring, Arab and half-caste, I have been lonely and disheartened, but I have never wavered. Tell that to the mother of my children.
    “Now Mombasa, Bai, there is a place to tempt a man, to draw young men to it like flies to a sweet shop. When I walked ashore in that Bombay of Africa, saw the multitude of people from all the corners of the world, I thought here, surely, must I find him. It is an old city, Bai. Here the Portuguese and Arabs have had their raj, now the British have theirs. And in what style they move. Every saheb has his own trolley, like his own rail gadi, and it moves on two metal rails just like one, only it is being pushed by two barefoot Africans in kofias and short trousers. It has a roof and awnings and screeches along at full speed on four heavy, iron wheels … inside sits a stiff memsaheb fanning herself or a moustachioed saheb nervously looking up and down the street, smacking himself with his stick. Now hear this. From every house in the beautiful European quarter, a pair of rails leads like two iron threads from the front door to the street! The houses are called ‘villas’ there.