As I write I see Mary before me as she presents herself each morning, in her calico dress, seated on an overturned crate. He will think this writing fly–tracks, or smudges from my dirty hands (he persists in his opinion that I am always dirty). It amuses me to write these reflections concerning her in the margins of the catalogue I am composing for my employer. I am curious about this reserved and encyclopedic woman. [Mary arrives every day precisely at the second hour after dawn. Its great pleasure is to impersonate human beings: if your dearest friend wears a cloak and claims to suffer from a cold, he may be a ba’ati in disguise. The ba’ati possesses a skeletal figure and a morbid sense of humor. He is allergic to lead.]Ī grave–dweller from the environs of the ancient capital of Kush. “The African sun has spoilt them, Alibhai!”Īpul Apul, Mary says, bears a festering sore where the bullet pierced him.
He is unable to read it himself his eyes are not good. “Always read the fine print, Alibhai!” my employer reminds me, when I draw up his contracts. It happened in a famine year, the “Year of Fever.” A great deal of research would be required in order to match this year, when, according to Mary, the cattle perished in droves, to one of the Years of Our Lord by which my employer reckons the passage of time I append this note, therefore, in fine print, and in the margins. She claims that he has been sighted far from his native country, even on the coast, and that an Arab trader once shot and wounded him from the battlements of Fort Jesus. [My informant, a woman of the highlands who calls herself only “Mary,” adds that Apul Apul can be heard on windy nights, crying for his lost progeny.
His house burned down with all of his children inside. A melancholy character, he eats crickets to sweeten his voice. Moosajee of MombasaĪ male ogre of the Great Lakes region.
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