Mummy, Mummy!  Look! Whose house that one, the blue one there at the back of Gussie Wong’s house?

That green one?  Oh that used to be Baraka’s house.  When we were small, there was an old Indian man called Baraka.  We used to be scared of him.  I think he lived there.

You mean old Baraka ga, the old Indian man, the mad one?

He’s not mad.  Just different.

But these people say he’s mad.  When he always came here, we chase him because he always ask for everything.  He asked for a cup of tea, the Indian uto, the coconut.  And sometimes we just don’t know what he’s saying.

Well he used to chase us when we were small.  I’m sure he must be the same man.  But the funny thing was he was an old man at that time.  Ooooh there were stories about him that used to make us really frightenend.  The big gang used to yell out to us.  “Ia Baraka, Baraka, qori mai.” And we used to run for our lives.  One day, me and Auntie Aggie and Auntie Sisi went to buy ice blocks from Keeman.  You know at that time, there were only three shops in Lami.  Just Keeman, Johnson, and Yuen Sang.  Oh there was a club.  I think it got burnt.  Well we bought nice milky ice-blocks and we were walking up the road, that time gravel road no tar-seal yet, when Auntie Sisi looked back and saw Baraka coming behind us.  She never wait again.  She just yelled out “ia you two Baraka”, and she and Auntie Aggie full speed up the road.

And you Mummy?

Me, I was full eating my ice-block.  I didn’t hear her properly.  Only Auntie Aggie.  When I look like this and I saw Baraka walking quickly behind me, I screamed and my ice-block fell.  But I didn’t care.  I just full speed after Auntie Aggie and Auntie Sisi.  I think I was crying because I was so frightened.  I didn’t want to look back.  I just kept on running.  Those two reached home first.  When I got home and looked back like this, I saw Baraka walking up eating one ice block.

That sara ga your ice-block eh Mummy?  My son burst out in laughter.

It was not funny at that time.  As I was running up the street, all the stories I used to hear about him crowded my mind.  A knife hidden in his shirt they said…  A big whatsitsname they used to scrub on his roof, they said … He catches little girls, they said and keeps them in his old green house in Nakoba Street and nobody has ever seen those girls again.  I believed the stories, every one of them.  That’s why I ran for my life.  My heart was stuck in my mouth that whole afternoon.  For many days after that, I couldn’t go to the shop.

Later, much later, I heard that Baraka was not his real name.  His real name was Chotka and according to the story I heard, Chotka’s wife had died when she went to have their first baby.  A little later, the baby died too and Chotka used to go out everyday to look for them.  To this day, they say, he still wanders around, searching.

Susan Sela