The Soulprint

The Soulprint AHMED ESSA Mafuta the Zulu was no longer fat, as his nickname implied, but he must have been heavy once to be so named. The way he looked now it was difficult to picture him heavy in flesh throbbing as he walked, lifting and setting down his feet heavily like the gait of an elephant. He was wiry now and getting old. The bare growth of hair on his upper lip and chin had increased slightly with its whitening and he kept his hair close-cropped, a natural skull cap almost totally white. The white discs in his ear lobes hung down, the weight having widened the holes so that they no longer closely fitted over the discs. Although his lips retained their bigness, his nose appeared less flat with the leaning of his face. If one could talk his language------no one did in the yard he lived in: as with most Asian Indians in South Africa, they resorted to pidgin Zulu—one would squat on the earth before him and wait and listen. One would have to wait because whenever Mafuta squatted to talk, he would first take out from the pocket of his faded but clean checkered shirt a small balm can, remove the lid with the ornate pattern on it almost completely eroded, take out a pinch of snuff, and inhale it deeply in each nostril. Then he would talk—recite, in fact, the history of the yard, especially the back part, since all that remained there was a mass of bushes wilting in the sun. When Mafuta first came to the yard—he would say—the three sides of the barracks, the dwellings, were the same but here in the back were the stables, whitewashed wooden buildings, with the paint peeling on every board, covered with corrugated iron, with the heavy red of Ahmed Essa teaches at the University of Nevada, Reno Campus. He has published a book of photographs, Images and Eloquence, and is currently planning a novel set in South Africa. 100THE SOULPRINT rust on every curve of the iron. That was when he came here, to work in the stables, take care of the horses, clean the flat-bed cart, grease the wheels with a yellow paste which soon turned black, and sweep out the dung on the floor. With the coming of the lorries, the horses were removed (except Gopal's one horse, but he had his own stable to one side of the yard, behind the taps). Mafuta helped clean out the stables, scrubbing and scrubbing, and then sprinkling sheep dip, the cheapest disinfectant available. He whitewashed the walls all over again after that. Soon, with the dissipation of the stink of the sheep dip, the stench of horse dung returned, faintly, and persisted for as long as the building stood there. The stables were converted to a printing shop, with the press the most difficult to move in, requiring six young Zulus to shift it, and even then, they had to push it into place, huffing and puffing and swelling their muscles. Mafuta moved into the press shop, working now for the printer, cleaning the place every morning, sleeping there too, thus making the place safe at night. It was then that he was designated induna, traditionally a counselor to the old Zulu chiefs but now lessened in usage to mean an overseer. Not that Mafuta had anyone to oversee, although he did keep the children in the yard in line and, as a result, earned the additional gratitude of the parents. For he was, above all, more than a person who worked for certain people. He was a protector of the yard and all its inhabitants. And he was, above everything else, honest, which I cannot say for some of the people in the yard I could name. So that, when the printing press moved, that was some task, since there was no big European company this time to deliver and supervise the unloading of the press. Now, there were the Indian owner, his brother, and seven Africans, their efforts made more difficult by the ink which clung to all parts of the press and made...