A Bend In The River

The reader gets Salim’s backstory. He is a Muslim of Indian descent whose family settled on the African coast many generations ago. Salim reflects that they were different from the Arab Muslims in their area: “We were both small groups living under a European flag at the edge of the continent” (15). He senses that their status is precarious and uncertain. Salim also believes that his family have no sense of their own history. The only real history he knows about his people and the place he lives comes from books written by Europeans. In Salim’s time the Europeans are gone or leaving, but “[p]eople lived as they had always done; there was no break between past and present” (12). Two slave families live with Salim’s family and he states that while they weren’t proud of their slave status, they were proud of their connection to a family of good reputation.  Salim felt from an early age that his family’s way of life wouldn’t last. He wonders if his feeling of “insecurity” (16) is a weakness of his personality. As political upheaval foments in his country, Salim feels that “the Europeans were better equipped to deal with changes than we were” (17). 

Next, Salim details the background of his friend Indar, with whom he regularly plays squash. Indar comes from a wealthy family also of Indian descent. Indar announces to Salim that he is going to England to study at a well-known university, adding “We’re washed up here” (18). Salim, for his part, “behaved like the others who had infuriated and saddened [him] by refusing to acknowledge that change was coming to [their] part of the world” (19) and he knows Indar is contemptuous of him. 

Salim realizes he has to decide his own future: either to stay with his family and experience the decline, or break off and make a life on his own. “And that is why,” he tells us, “when Nazruddin made his offer, of a shop and business in a far-off country that was still in Africa, I clutched at it” (20). Nazruddin is a successful, older man from Salim’s community who lives in a town in Africa’s interior. He also has a daughter he would like Salim to marry one day. Nazruddin lives large, enjoying the good life of houses, restaurants, and tennis. He also reads palms, telling Salim his palm shows faithfulness. Nazruddin decides to move to Uganda and in transferring his assets, he sells his shop to Salim, telling Salim he will triple his investment. 

Salim hopes he will enjoy the pleasures of Nazruddin’s old life when he moves to the town to take over the shop. Instead, he finds a town almost entirely destroyed and taken over by bush. There is a ruin by the dock gates with an old Latin inscription reading, “Miscerique probat populous et foedera jungi” (26). Salim doesn’t know the meaning of the Latin words; the phrase translates as “He approves of the mingling of the peoples and their bonds of union.” He is told that the words were part of a monument to mark 60 years of steamer service. All the colonial monuments have been destroyed, and all the street names have been replaced with crude new signs: “The wish had only been to get rid of the old, to wipe out the memory of the intruder” (26). Salim is most disturbed by the old European suburb of the town, where houses were raided for fittings and burned down. 

Salim finds there are other expatriates in the town, but feels they are unwelcoming. He does, however, find three “Asian or Indian” (28) houses to visit regularly for lunch. He forms his closest friendship with a couple, Shoba and Mahesh, who also have a shop in the town. Nonetheless, Salim is lonely, particularly in the evenings. Shoba and Mahesh inform Salim that there has been an uprising in the coastal town where his family lives. They have heard the news on the radio. Salim receives letters from various family members, who inform him that their life on the coast is over and they are dispersing. He also learns that one of the family slaves, a young man named Ali, is being sent to live with him. The reader finally learns Salim’s name when the letter states that Ali wants to “stay with Salim” (30). Ali arrives after a harrowing journey and falls into Salim’s arms, crying and screaming about the killings he witnessed in their home town. After a few days, Ali settles into his new environment after being accepted by the local people and given a new name, Metty, from the French word métis, meaning mixed-race. He helps in the shop and Salim appreciates being less lonely at home in the evenings. He observes, however, that Metty is also a wanderer. He stays out late at night and develops a life apart from Salim. Salim’s shop begins to do better trade and business improves. 

In this chapter, the reader meets Ferdinand, Zabeth’s son, who is also a newcomer to the town on the river. He has grown up in his father’s village in the south of the country and has been sent, for unknown reasons, back to his mother. Zabeth sends Ferdinand to the local school, which has been re-opened, to get an education and to prepare him for a better future. Zabeth brings Ferdinand to Salim’s shop to ask him to keep an eye on the boy, as he will be boarding at the school and the town is new to him. Salim reluctantly agrees. Although Ferdinand behaves respectfully toward him, Salim suspects he will be a troublemaker when his mother is not around. Salim finds Ferdinand difficult to talk to; the boy isn’t like any other African Salim knows. Metty, however, forms a close friendship with Ferdinand. The two young men go drinking and looking for women together. 

Salim worries about what Ferdinand could learn from him. He feels he has little to offer, running a shop containing “a sea of junk” (40). He feels similarly ambivalent about his apartment, a studio flat he took over from a Belgian woman artist who left the town. Metty has a bedroom and takes care of the kitchen, which rapidly becomes filthy. Salim has a bedroom at the end of the hall, and he notes it is “a place of special desolation” (41). Salim worries that Ferdinand will think the shop and flat reflect that Salim’s life has little value. He thinks gloomy thoughts about his aspirations: “I began to feel that any life I might have anywhere—however rich and successful and better furnished—would only be a version of the life I lived now” (42). Nevertheless, he shows Ferdinand his possessions, including the magazines he reads “to know about the world” (42). When a conversation about a new invention leads Salim to feel like Ferdinand wants to speak politically, he decides to stop showing Ferdinand things and to stop trying to teach him anything. 

Zabeth comes to take Ferdinand home to her village for the school holidays. When he returns, Salim notices a change in him. Ferdinand appears to have matured and he is more interested in what he might learn from Salim. He asks, “Salim, what do you think of the future of Africa?” (47), and states that he believes Africa is “rising” (48), while the rest of the world declines.  Later, Ferdinand approaches Salim and asks Salim to send him to America. Salim is angry at what he sees as Ferdinand’s attitude of entitlement. Mahesh tells Salim that Ferdinand has told him that Salim is sending Ferdinand abroad to study “business administration” (51). Salim confronts Ferdinand and tells him to stop lying to people in this way. Ferdinand’s behavior begins to change, and he drops his schoolboy behaviors. Salim begins to understand that for Ferdinand, Metty and other young people are less secure in their worldview and have a more complicated future than Salim and his generation. 

Other boys from the school begin visiting Salim in the shop and asking for money. Salim speculates that Ferdinand has told these boys that Salim is a useful resource. One day, a boy comes to the shop with a ledger from an old fundraising effort he has stolen from the school; he hopes to use this to get money out of Salim. Salim sends the boy away, keeps the book, and vows to set Ferdinand straight. Salim becomes enraged listening to Metty and Ferdinand talk excitedly in the local jargon of the region. Salim shows Ferdinand the book and tells him he is headed for trouble. Ferdinand’s casual response shows Salim that he is behaving as though there are no rules or laws that matter: “To talk of trouble was to pretend there were laws and regulations that everyone could acknowledge. Here there was nothing” (58). Salim tells Ferdinand to take the book back to the Head Teacher, Father Huismans, or Salim will get him expelled from school. He sees rage bubbling up in Ferdinand. Salim thinks, “This is the rage that flattened the town” (59). Salim tells Ferdinand that Salim will return the book himself, and watches Ferdinand walk home through the town.

Salim goes to return the book to Father Huismans, the priest who runs the school, and is told by a young teacher that Father Huismans is away, travelling in the bush for a few days. Salim returns the book to the young teacher, who appears irritated both by Father Huismans’ absence and by the knowledge that the young men at the school are stealing. 

A week later, Salim returns to the school and discovers that the young teacher has gone back to Europe, and that Father Huismans has returned. Father Huismans shows Salim a mask and a wood carving he has brought back from one of the river villages. Salim is dismissive of the cultural value of the pieces, but Father Huismans talks of seeing the power and newness in them, and the religious qualities that make them meaningful. “That was strange,” observes Salim, “that a Christian priest should have had such regard for African beliefs, to which on the coast we had paid no attention” (61). He notes Father Huismans’ apparent disregard, however, for “the state of the country” (62). Father Huismans explains the motto on the town’s ruined monument for Salim, sharing the origins of the motto in Ancient Rome. The words make Salim feel part of the flow of history. Huismans also explains that the bend in the river would have been a place for different peoples to meet. Even the destruction of the European section of the town hasn’t dampened his feeling that he is part of something new and important. 

Salim is shocked that these ancient words were used to commemorate 60 years of steamer service in this town: “To carve the words on a monument beside this African river was surely to invite the destruction of the town” (63). Salim sees Father Huismans’ collection of artifacts in the gun room of the school and reflects that the masks represent Zabeth’s village world: “They were masks that had been laid low, in more than one way, and had lost their power” (65). Although the masks look old to Salim, Father Huismans points out that they are quite new, made within Salim’s lifetime. Salim reflects that Father Huismans sees himself as “the last, lucky witness” (65) to both the old and the new Africa. Even the things that are new will change again.

Salim reflects that the river and town are all he knows. Neither he nor the other non-natives travel outside the town, into the bush or villages. People from outlying villages do come into town, and Salim notes that more and more have stayed, camping in the streets of the town instead of returning home. The town becomes crowded, as there are rumors of impending war. Salim has heard stories from Mahesh and Shoba about the atrocities that took place in the uprisings at the time of the country’s independence, but it had seemed to everyone that these difficulties had passed. Now, more unrest is bubbling up, “[l]ike a forest fire that goes underground and burns unseen along the roots of trees it has already destroyed and then erupts in scorched land where it has little to feed on” (67). In the town, they hear of violent ambushes, villages attacked, and officials killed. Mahesh tells Salim, “You do what we all do. You carry on” (68). 

The army comes to the town, made up of soldiers who served under the colonial government. Their policing methods are old-fashioned, but they spend money in the town. The country has a new president who keeps the army regularly paid but “short of equipment” (68), so he can maintain tight control. Salim fears both the army and the local people, stating, “I didn’t want anybody to win; I wanted the old balance to be maintained” (69). 

In the morning, Metty tells Salim a rumor that the army is in retreat. Sensing an imminent uprising, Salim packs his gold, passport, and documents in a crate that he buries at the bottom of the outside stairs. He regrets that Metty knows where the crate is buried, saying, “I’ve put myself in his hands” (70).  Salim and Metty open the shop and notice that after making a few sales, the town square empties and becomes unusually quiet. That afternoon, Ferdinand comes to Salim’s flat The school has closed for the safety of students and staff. Ferdinand talks about wanting to go south, to return to his father’s people. He and Salim both know it’s impossible for Ferdinand to go either there or to his mother’s village. Salim notes that he and Metty are comforted by the act of consoling Ferdinand. They invite him to sleep in Metty’s room. 

The next morning, the market square remains deserted. The town is mainly empty. Salim goes for his weekly lunch at Mahesh and Shoba’s apartment, during which Shoba is tense and unhappy and Mahesh is distracted. Shoba tells Salim how she married Mahesh against her family’s wishes and has not been able to return to see them. Now, her father is sick and Shoba feels she has wasted her life. After lunch, Salim gives Mahesh a ride back into the town center. Mahesh says he is confident the new president will put everything right. He suggests Salim go to the local hotel, the van der Weyden, if he wants reassurance. 

Outside the hotel, across from Mahesh’s shop, they see a crowd of army and civilian vehicles. Salim goes inside and notices that while the lobby looks empty, there are many suitcases on the floor. Some of these new guests are in the patio bar. Salim thinks they look younger and fitter than the usual guests. The hotel staff are energetic and busy. Salim orders coffee and notes that he is served faster than he’s ever been before. Salim returns to his shop: “It was a way of carrying on, and a way of passing the time” (76). Metty comes in at the end of the day and tells Salim that white men have come into the town, and that “[t]he first thing they did at the barracks was to shoot Colonel Yenyi” (76). He also relates that the colonel’s sergeant, Iyanda, has also been shot. Salim remembers Iyanda and reflects that, “The news of his execution would have pleased the local people” (77) because Iyanda and the colonel belonged to “that detested slave-hunting tribe, like the rest of the army” (77). 

Metty seems calmer to Salim than he was earlier. They hear sounds of gunfire, and are relieved that the shots sound far away. There is no electricity as it gets dark. Salim doesn’t know if it’s a typical blackout or if the power station has been taken over by rebels, but they have “faith in the President’s white men” (78). Salim is also reassured by his knowledge that there will be no nighttime uprising in the town if there are no lights. Salim spends the evening reading magazines and listening to Metty and Ferdinand calmly talk about war and the violence they have witnessed. The distant gunfire continues. 

In the morning, a fighter plane flies low over the town and then out over the bush. Shortly afterwards, the missiles the plane drops over the bush explode, sounding like far-off thunder. The plane returns several times during that week, Salim notes, to drop bombs in the bush. Salim states that “the war was over that first day,” adding, “[a]s it turned out, both sides lost” (80). Many soldiers have been killed and the president has reorganized the army to include men from different regions and tribes. The “warrior tribe” (80) of the old army has been left behind in the town, along with starving rebels. Salim observes that life at the van der Weyden continues to expand. The steamer brings supplies for the white men aligned with the president and also brings attractive women from down river. In this new peace, Salim takes note of what has been destroyed: a nightclub that was pillaged by rebels; a United Nations plaque near the dam; lampposts in the old European style. He states, “It was the rage that made an impression—the rage of simple men tearing at metal with their hands” (81). 

Salim hears that Father Huismans has been killed and mutilated during one of his trips into the bush. His death makes Salim ponder the value of Father Huismans’ “idea of civilization” (82). Ferdinand has a strong opinion about Father Huismans, saying of his mask collection, “It is a thing of Europeans, a museum” (83). Salim feels Ferdinand’s nature is changing; he’s becoming more aggressive and abandoning politeness. Nonetheless, Salim receives a “deliberately crude” (83) thank you card from Ferdinand that he finds “funny and moving” (83). More people in the town take Ferdinand’s view of Father Huismans’ collection, saying that it “was an affront to African religion” (84). In the new peace, visitors from other countries visit the town and are sometimes shown Father Huismans’ artifacts. The masks are stolen a few at a time until one day, the bulk of the collection is carried off by an American, “no doubt to be the nucleus of the gallery of primitive art he often spoke of starting” (84).