I only wash my teeth once a day. In the morning before I take a shower. I have one eye on the mirror and the other eye looking through the fogged out window. I see a young handsome face aging and the distorted image of racing overland trains. The house is the last on the block before the rail tracks. The tracks are elevated and level with the bathroom window.
Three times during the week and on Sundays, before I brush my teeth, I step out into the cold morning wearing only shorts, a pullover and running shoes. Out the door there are wide open spaces with nothing to obscure the sight of three trains careening past on their tacks. A huge structure of scafolding represents what is to be the new train and tube station entrance. The sky is criss-crossed by passenger planes, streaming the pale sky with their cloudy exhaust fumes.
The chill bites at my niples. At such times I agree with my little sister, who says I must be mad to go running at the crack of dawn for half an hour. But to her, leaving the bed at any time of day seems like madness. Yet before I have even run a second block, I am reassured by the rythym of my heavy breathing and the pounding of my body on its joints. I am proud of my bold step so early in the day.
On my runs, I turn onto the busy road, along the pavement, and follow it under the rail tracks. The bridge rumbles with the weight of speeding trains. The neighbourhood never rests from their thunder. The bridge is wide (for all its tracks) and it is quite dim for light before I get to the other side. When I do, the whole world has changed.
Before the bridge are low rise city council houses with their English flags. A pub and an off license. A bus stop. Three towering apartment blocks (22 stories!) surrounding the houses and other towers further beyond are gorwing to full height in a cocoon of scaffolding and building works. With more concrete than green, with busy access roads and speeding red buses advertising their destinations and the latest block buster movies, it is at least meant for humans.
The other side of the tracks is different. Into the light, with my regulated breathing and energetic trot, I am always taken by the dramatic scene. To my right I run past what seems to be a cement factory, with large revolving churning machines. To my left, across the road, are conveyors belts rising diagonally well above the perimeter fence flanked by cranes with their dangling steel hooks. Men, at this early hour, walk about the dusty yards with yellow crash helmets and bright orange jackets, looking troubled and busy like they lost something.
The pavement is very dusty, and crowded with delivary vans, double trailor 18 wheeler lorries and discarded tires. The traffic on the road is held back by heavy duty vehicles climbing the pavement to negotiate tight turns. I step over cracked pave stones and duck under skew road signs, as my feet take me past dusty garages and motor vehicle corpses.
Some how it reminds me of the light industrial area of Lusaka or the parts of Salt River towards the harbour in Cape Town. The lorries, the light dust, the absence of women and trees, the abundance of machines and men. They all seem like the same back yard of corrugated iron, piles of car parts and large billboards.
Just after the second bridge I turn off the road onto a gravel foot path along a canal. With in seconds, the dinn of lorries and machines is behind me. Instead I hear my shoes crunching the gravel and not much else. The canal forks and I turn towards the park. I pass moored canal barges and canal locks and keys. On to cement pavement and under huge highways. Swans and geese sometimes stand on the grassy banks, eying me obliquely. The do not flinch when I trot past. The smaller ducks and other water birds have the respect, at least, to hop into the water when I am closest.
The canal is a curious portal between suburbs and industrial areas, between run down city outskirts and high value inner city property. The pre-industrial transport system is crisscrossed above by trains, highways and sky-ways. The barge people, with their firewood laden boats and their scruffy mongrels, live in an underworld that networks the city and is beyond the CCTV cameras and has no high street.
The canal comes up, the other-side of the highways, along Victoria Park. The park is a huge stretch of green grass and deciduous trees lining wide avenues. The park is so big I can’t see from one end of it to the other, even on mornings without mist. To my left are the rear sides of old townhouses, with their green little back gardens stretching to the water and cluttered with benches and children’s toys. To my right is the wrought iron fence of the park. The sky above is no longer busy with apartment blocks or conveyor belts but instead with large trees and bedroom windows and balconies, screened by cream curtains and baroque balustrades.
Daddy
I think daddy brought me here.
Though really, he has not told me where to go for years. He has not told me to buy the paper or drop him off at the news paper offices. He has not told me to drive him around Lusaka on his errands in his large Toyota while we feign a father son relationship in the front seats, him talking and joking, me listening and laughing. If I were home, he would tell me to do these things, but I am not. The last time he told me where to go he said “Go to Cape Town. The University is good and South Africa is a second world country”.
Daddy played with me. He bought me toy cars and toy trains. The trains were electric and went round their own little tracks powered by electricity alone. Toy trucks with their own trailers. Toy vans with doors that open and close, as small as they were. He showed me how to draw cars and motorcycles. He explained the physics behind their mechanics. He was animated and enthusiastic and enveloped me with attention and wonder. The toys came from England. Other boys made their own toys from wire or matchboxes or simply wished for them out of old catalog magazines.
Daddy took me to England. We raced up and down escalators, dashed through aiports and train stations. He showed me wonders out the window. The excitement of highways going under bridges and trains going over highways and underground too, seen from both cars and trains. Daddy showed me planes and large airports festooned with larger planes. He showed me flight cockpits and bought me toy planes. Daddy showed me how to draw planes.
Daddy took me to the park. We bought fresh bread and fed the ducks, swans and geese in the pond whole loaves of bread. He would simply watch as I tore and threw chunk after chunk of bread into the water. I was amazed that ducks could like soggy bread so much while I basked in the attention from both the ducks and Dad. He took me to the sand pits, to the monkey bars and the slides. We went to the canal on week ends and watched the barge men open and close locks and keys. We watched barges rise and fall with the draining water.
Daddy held my hand and daddy bought me ice cream.
I phoned him on his birthday. “Hello son” he answered. “This is ya’Father here” he chimed, like it was not I who asked so speak to him when mum answered the phone. At least he did not answer the phone saying “Who are you, I don’t remember having a son…..oh hang on, is that Jumani? Oh yes, I remember him.”
Daddy joked about turning 65 and so officially retiring to receive his pension, even though he had never contributed to one. “That is why I am going to rely on my successful children for my pension” he joked, over doing the theatrics. “You with your sandwich making job in London, can contribute enormously to my well being as I dwindle into old age”. I reminded him that I no longer make sandwiches, but he said it spoilt the joke.
“I am sorry I forgot your birthday” he said, as part of another joke I cannot recall. I was a little startled. I never expect him to remember my birthday at all. For him to feel guilty about missing mine, of a whole two months prior, when I had called to wish for him seemed unusual. He never calls in the first place.
“You are trying to see the world” he commanded. “Before you come back to try the Zambian job market or become a lecturer in South Africa”. I was amused to think of Zambia as having a ‘job market’ but more surprised that Dad was interested in my career prospects, or the lack there of.
As usual, I let him lead the conversation. I only added to his jokes, or made openings to give him full swing.
The phone card had told me I had ‘29 minutes’ at the start. The recording had an over anglicized congenial tone. However, before 10 minutes was up, I was told I had only 30 seconds in a not so congenial tone.
Hastily I tried to conclude the conversation, throwing in hasty farewells and regards but I heard Dad’s voice cut off. I felt shame and indignation. In shock I went to my desk. Early as it was, most staff were not yet in the office. My head hang low and the tears surprised me. They dripped down my nose onto the mucky black keyboard.
Me
On the run back to the house from the park I am confident. The worst of the run is over and I realise I have some energy left to spare. I kick up gravel by the canal and I race trucks and buses past the industrial yards. Under the bridge and back to the open spaces of the council housing grounds.
I must have chosen to live so close to these over sized versions of my childhood toys. I must have chosen the house next to the tracks so I could hear the trains day after day. I know I was drawn to the canal the first time I ran past it over the bridge, longing for memories that have merged with lofty dreams. I came to London running away from someone and looking for him. In the mirror in the morning I search for his face.
I get to the front door, no longer feeling cold but instead heavy nd steady breathing. Behind me, the trains continue to rage and scream. My pullover is damp and wet from the sweat, at the neck and down the middle of my back. I am thrilled at the mornings achievment. ,
