Fugitives

Jamal Mahjoub

Description

The Kamanga Kings, a Khartoum jazz band of yesteryear, is presented with the opportunity of a lifetime when a surprise letter arrives inviting them to perform in Washington, D.C. The only problem is . . . the band no longer exists. Rushdy, a disaffected secondary school teacher and the son of an original Kamanga King, sets out to revive the band. All too soon an unlikely group are on their way, knowing the eyes of their country are on them. As they move from the familiarity of Khartoum to the chaos of Donald Trump's America, Jamal Mahjoub weaves a gently humorous and ultimately universal tale of music, belonging and love.

Informations

• Publié par: Canongate Books
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838850838
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Jamal Mahjoub is a British-Sudanese writer. Born in London, he was raised in Khartoum where his family remained until 1 990. He has lived in a number of places, including the UK, Denmark, Spain and, currently, the Netherlands. His novels include Travelling with Djinn s and The Drift Latitudes . Under the pseudonym Parker Bilal he is the author of the Inspector Makana crime series and, most recently, the Crane and Drake series. His latest non-fiction book, A Line in the River , was longlisted for the Ondaatje Prize.
jamalmahjoub.com
Also by Jamal Mahjoub
Fiction
Travelling with Djinns
Nuban Indigo
The Drift Latitudes
The Carrier
In the Hour of Signs
Wings of Dust
Navigation of a Rainmaker
Non-fiction
A Line in the River
 
The paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2022 by Canongate Books
First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
canongate.co.uk
This digital edition first published in 2021 by Canongate Books
Copyright Jamal Mahjoub, 2021
The right of Jamal Mahjoub to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 83885 084 5 eISBN 978 1 83885 083 8
Contents
PART I: Raising the Dead
1. Learning to Write
2. The Letter
3. Uncle Maher
4. Forgotten Kings
5. Hisham s Garage
6. Broken Dreams
7. The Golden Bird
8. Hard Truths
9. Auditions
10. The Ministry of Disapproval
11. Moving Shadows
12. Kadugli
13. Finding the Centre
PART II: The Kamanga Kings Fly!
14. Night Flight
15. Talking American
16. Stage Fright
17. Sightseeing
18. Nerves
19. Showtime
20. The Interview
21. Gandoury s Game
22. Decision Time
23. A Change of Plans
PART III: The Fugitives
24. Band on the Run
25. Pearly Gables
26. Old Songs/New Kings
27. Vanessa s Story
28. Over the Hills
29. The Silver Cloud
30. Off the Map
31. At the Mall
32. Ay dame!
33. Doctor John
34. The Girl in the White Dress
35. Celebrities
36. A Submarine on Wheels
37. Life Happens
38. End of the Line
39. The Predicament
40. One Last Time
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
PART I
* * *
Raising the Dead

The clouds are many, and life is short
Al Hussein al-Hassan
(Habibat Oumri)
1
Learning to Write
T his is a story about a band. A band that lived and flourished and then died its own natural death. At that point it should have disappeared from the pages of the history books for ever, and would have done so if an extraordinary miracle had not occurred and brought the Kamanga Kings back to life.
The only religion I have ever had any faith in is music.
I was brought up to respect tradition. I learned to say my prayers. In school we listened to an old teacher muttering on about the life and times of the Prophet. I did my best to picture it, but seventh-century Arabia felt as far away as Mars. In my heart I believed that if there was a heaven then it would be inhabited by saints who answered to the name of John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, to Monk, Louis Armstrong and Nina Simone. Some of our own would be up there too, seated alongside them. Hassan Attiyah and Al Balabil and, of course, our very own Kamanga Kings, the greatest of all.
Great music transcends all barriers. My father used to say that. He used to say a lot of things. He saw himself as something of a philosopher, when he wasn t being a musician. The way he told it, a nation is like a band waiting for a conductor to show up. Without a leader to guide them an orchestra is just a flock of lost sheep lacking direction. He was certainly right about the country. Our entire history was a list of men who claimed a divine right to lead us. Those who objected tended to fall by the wayside. By the time I was old enough to start asking questions of my own, he was already gone. And maybe that s just the way of things. He paid the price of living in an age when music was not simply frowned upon, but actively discouraged. Musicians had to flee for their lives. They were imprisoned and tortured, along with poets and writers, academics, journalists, anyone, in fact, who could voice an opinion. Musicians were objectionable because they could stir your soul and there were a lot of people who were scared of that.
At this point I should probably apologise. The last thing you expected when you picked up this book was a meditation on leadership and national politics. I beg for your patience just a little while longer. I m new to this writing game. It s not easy. Whenever I get stuck, which is often, I ask myself, what makes this book worth writing? The answer I always find myself coming back to is simple: if I don t do it, nobody else will.
Were the Kings truly as great as people said? I don t know. I m not sure how we define greatness. All I know is that when they played, back in their heyday, they did something extraordinary. And that when we reformed the band there were moments when we played, really played, when we stirred something in the fabric of the universe that could not be described or imitated, could not be repeated. It had to be lived in that moment. Because that s all it was, a moment. But that s what we did, and it s what we still do when we go out and play. Together we become something more than the sum of our parts. I don t know about you, but to me that sounds pretty close to a definition of greatness.
Like most little boys, I started out dreaming of becoming a superhero, a man possessed of extraordinary powers, who would devote himself to righting the world s wrongs, to saving people, leaping over tall buildings and flying to the rescue of beautiful women who were in distress. And like most children, I grew up to discover life doesn t exactly work like that. Instead of a superhero I became a teacher. I taught English and history to a bunch of ungrateful boys. I took my work seriously. I tried to instil in them a sense of appreciation and respect for the wonders of the world, and of literature. It was a thankless task. All they saw was a short-sighted man spouting nonsense that they could not put to any useful purpose.
It was a good school, or it had been. It was founded by an Italian priest who had left home a hundred and fifty years ago and risked his life travelling across the desert on a donkey to bring us news of Jesus. That s all ancient history now. He didn t manage to convert us all, but he did build this school. Nowadays it caters to the sons of low-ranking military officers and government officials. The high-ranking ones send their children to more fancy places abroad. My job was to try and teach them about David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities . Dickens was my hero, though there were times when I struggled to explain what the experience of a dead white man in nineteeth-century England had to offer a child growing up in Africa in the early twenty-first century. When I suggested we try to update the curriculum a little, the headmaster screwed up his face, as if I had suddenly started speaking another language.
What are you saying? he asked, when I explained my idea.
Maybe it would help if they could identify with the writers.
Identify? How? He cocked a wary eye at me.
Modern classics, by African writers.
African writers, really? He looked pained.
It was all academic anyway. The very notion of reading was itself alien to most of the boys. To them books were instruments of torture, inflicted upon them by a dying world. They rolled up the pages, scribbled obscene comments in the margins and drew moustaches and outsized genitalia over the illustrations.
Sometimes I felt like the old man who mistook windmills for giants. I was already twenty-six and, like many people my age, I saw no future for myself, nor the country I lived in.
When my father died, he left me two things: a rather battered trumpet and the legend of the Kamanga Kings. For as long as I could remember, the Kings were a part of a lost world, one I had just missed out on. The excitement that came over people when recounting the old stories made you wish you d been born half a century earlier. Like all legends, that of the Kamanga Kings was a blessing and a curse. Their exploits were woven into the fabric of my life. They shaped the landscape and, of course, the soundtrack from which I had sprung. Their music was the only history I had, etched into my skin like the blue tattoo my grandmother wore on her lip.
A hot wind blows through this old house. Through the open doorway I can see it kicking up the dust in the open yard, tugging at the sheets hanging on the line. I found this typewriter at a stall in the market, its keys rusted into place. They stood out like bony fingers beckoning from the surrounding heap of junk, rusty saws, hammers and chisels, boxes of nails bent out of shape, car batteries, brass scales big enough to weigh a horse, bicycle wheels, wooden saddles and goodness knows what else. The old man who sold it to me confided that it had once belonged to a great writer, whose name had conveniently escaped him. I bargained with him half-heartedly. I knew I was going to buy it. We both knew it. We just had to go through the motions.
Allah knows, we have need of good writers in these hard times, he sighed, brushing his fingers fondly over the housing. As a salesman he could have sold sand to the Saudis.
Perhaps, if I had had a little more money, I might have considered getting a laptop, but once I had found it, I became fascinated by that machine. There was something noble about it. With its steel keys and chrome handles, it resembled a bizarre musical instrument. Embossed on the front plate in Arabic: . Olympia. I had no idea what that meant, beyond some vague notion of a mountain where Greek gods and goddesses languished. He p