The Setting Sun Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Bart Moore-Gilbert
while, dressed in a kaftan and passing as a Pathan in the border region abutting Afghanistan. Had she mixed up the North-West Frontier with Sindh? Once, apparently, Bill and an Indian subordinate chased some malefactors into a ravine. Turning a dog-leg in the chasm, the Indian suddenly barged my father from his saddle, cushioning him in his arms as they fell. Only as he dusted himself downdid Bill notice the wire ahead, stretched taut and sharp as a blade at neck height across the defile.
Another time she talked of riots he’d distinguished himself in handling, as Partition approached. But there were never any specific places, dates, or names to anchor these daredevil tales. Like my mother, Pat had never been to India, which she seemed to conceive in terms of Orientalist romances like Beau Geste or The Four Feathers , so unaccountably popular with moviegoers in the 1930s. She was nine years younger than Bill, still at school when he left for the subcontinent; and when she described his exploits there, it was with the starry-eyed look of someone describing a matinee idol.
‘Do you know he was the youngest-ever winner of the Indian Police Medal?’ she’d enthuse. ‘You should be incredibly proud of him.’
But Bill had been in the subcontinent well before I was born, and if I occasionally wondered about his experiences there, other questions were much more pressing. Why had my father been on that plane in February 1965? Why had he joined the UN-funded mission to the mountainous south-west of what by then had become Tanzania, scouting for suitable areas to settle Tutsis fleeing from the Hutu terror in neighbouring Rwanda – events repeated with such catastrophic results thirty years later? Why were too many passengers aboard? Why had no one factored in the extra distance required for take-off at that altitude? Why had the plane broken in two when, according to witnesses, it barely brushed the tree-tops at the end of the dirt runway? Why had only the front part burst into flames when it hit the ground, so that Bill and the pilot were probably burned alive? Why Bill, why us?
It was no consolation that he’d died trying to help refugees, the line so many people took after his death. As a young adult I returned to Tanzania on several occasions, hoping to settle the ghosts of the past. The new African owners of the houses we’d lived in looked at me kindly but blankly, as if the times I talkedabout were already as remote as the Triassic era. The bitterest disappointment was that Kimwaga had vanished. After Bill’s death, he’d apparently worked briefly for another European family, before joining the Game Department himself. But no one could tell me where he’d been posted, or name the village he originally came from.
In the pub, Anna leans across the table. ‘Maybe this email’s a sign? That you should go yourself. Find out about the Hoors and Sindh and what your father got up to in Satara.’
I shrug.
‘You’ve never been to India, have you?’
I feel a little foolish, as I always do when people ask me that. The subcontinent’s always loomed large in my research. Why haven’t I gone? Partly because for many years I used what time and money I had to head back to Africa. Since then, there’s been the rest of the world to see. In any case, I’d always assumed that the India I’d been most interested in, the India of the Raj, has vanished even more definitively than the Tanganyika of my childhood. The summer, when I have most time to travel, is one long monsoon downpour in western India, making it difficult to get around. By Easter, it’s an oven again, the thermometer at forty degrees or more. Christmas, which everyone agrees is the best period to visit, has been spoken for as long as I can remember. Professor Bhosle’s email hasn’t made me any keener to go. I’m sure I can now find out all there is to know about Bill’s time in India from him.
My confidence is misplaced, however. Following his
Another time she talked of riots he’d distinguished himself in handling, as Partition approached. But there were never any specific places, dates, or names to anchor these daredevil tales. Like my mother, Pat had never been to India, which she seemed to conceive in terms of Orientalist romances like Beau Geste or The Four Feathers , so unaccountably popular with moviegoers in the 1930s. She was nine years younger than Bill, still at school when he left for the subcontinent; and when she described his exploits there, it was with the starry-eyed look of someone describing a matinee idol.
‘Do you know he was the youngest-ever winner of the Indian Police Medal?’ she’d enthuse. ‘You should be incredibly proud of him.’
But Bill had been in the subcontinent well before I was born, and if I occasionally wondered about his experiences there, other questions were much more pressing. Why had my father been on that plane in February 1965? Why had he joined the UN-funded mission to the mountainous south-west of what by then had become Tanzania, scouting for suitable areas to settle Tutsis fleeing from the Hutu terror in neighbouring Rwanda – events repeated with such catastrophic results thirty years later? Why were too many passengers aboard? Why had no one factored in the extra distance required for take-off at that altitude? Why had the plane broken in two when, according to witnesses, it barely brushed the tree-tops at the end of the dirt runway? Why had only the front part burst into flames when it hit the ground, so that Bill and the pilot were probably burned alive? Why Bill, why us?
It was no consolation that he’d died trying to help refugees, the line so many people took after his death. As a young adult I returned to Tanzania on several occasions, hoping to settle the ghosts of the past. The new African owners of the houses we’d lived in looked at me kindly but blankly, as if the times I talkedabout were already as remote as the Triassic era. The bitterest disappointment was that Kimwaga had vanished. After Bill’s death, he’d apparently worked briefly for another European family, before joining the Game Department himself. But no one could tell me where he’d been posted, or name the village he originally came from.
In the pub, Anna leans across the table. ‘Maybe this email’s a sign? That you should go yourself. Find out about the Hoors and Sindh and what your father got up to in Satara.’
I shrug.
‘You’ve never been to India, have you?’
I feel a little foolish, as I always do when people ask me that. The subcontinent’s always loomed large in my research. Why haven’t I gone? Partly because for many years I used what time and money I had to head back to Africa. Since then, there’s been the rest of the world to see. In any case, I’d always assumed that the India I’d been most interested in, the India of the Raj, has vanished even more definitively than the Tanganyika of my childhood. The summer, when I have most time to travel, is one long monsoon downpour in western India, making it difficult to get around. By Easter, it’s an oven again, the thermometer at forty degrees or more. Christmas, which everyone agrees is the best period to visit, has been spoken for as long as I can remember. Professor Bhosle’s email hasn’t made me any keener to go. I’m sure I can now find out all there is to know about Bill’s time in India from him.
My confidence is misplaced, however. Following his