One night in Africa, in a bar, I met a woman, not an unusual event I suppose, but she was not just any woman, and of them there were many, cheerful, smiling, charming, that made it a pleasure to go to the market, to a café, to a club, to walk past the jacaranda trees in full violet blossom, and smell their perfume as they passed, laughing in excited conversation, even the sad ones, for life was short and most were young. No, she was more than that.  Much more; she was a shape-shifter. 

That’s right, that what she said. I laughed, of course, and she laughed with me so I passed it off as just a joke, as an attempt to put one over on the mzungu, the white guy. But in Arusha things are never quite what they seem, In fact, nothing in east Africa is as it first appears, nor in the world entire. 

Arusha is a large town in northern Tanzania that began as a German fort when that glorious nation of culture, trying to compete with the British in greed and destruction, troubled the country over a century ago and then lost it to the British, a change viewed with indifference by the peoples of the land who suffered equally under both.

The old fort buildings are still there-but turned over to a small park and café, quiet, peaceful, with peacocks walking about in loud splendour, a beautiful refuge from the dust of the town. 

Now Arusha is a jump off point for tourists wanting to see the sweeping plains of the Serengeti, where the moon lights the path of the leopard, the lion, the Masai, to see Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Manyara, Tarangire and its palm trees and elephants, the volcano of Mt Meru, dominating the town, Mt. Kilimanjaro, visible in the distance, its glaciers ever shrinking with the rising heat, the famous snows soon to disappear and the legends with it It’s also famous as the place where Hemingway wrote The Green Hills of Africa and, yes, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and where the Hollywood film, Hatari was made. I once slept in the same room Ava Gardner did. I have never gotten over it. 

Why I was there is another story, which has to do with politics, its twin, war, and a Rwandan general I was counsel to at the war crimes tribunal, which had been created by those who created and moulded the war, like putty in their hands, to cover their crimes by blaming others. It’s a long story, for another time, and I only tell you this much to explain my being there.

But about the woman; she said her name was Mariam, and, being polite, I didn’t question it. She was pleasant company and I was alone. 

I was sitting at the bar, nursing a scotch, a Johnny Walker Black, if you have to know, talking with the barman, Joseph, a distinguished man with a pencil thin moustache, and a touch of grey in his short dark hair, and, like all barmen, wise to what was going on, to people.  He was slowly polishing a glass in front of me as I sipped on my drink, but then he stopped to lean forward and tell me “the girl at the end of the bar is making eyes. Be careful.”

I looked over of course, and there she was, a stunning beauty. She had dark brown eyes that looked right through me and lit me up from inside, with a smile to keep it charged, and well, warning or not, like I said, you get lonely in strange places, strange to me that is, and any company even bad company is better than none. So I gave her a nod. She smiled again, then picked up her glass and very slowly, very sensually, in a gold-green tightfitting dress, sparkling with the sequins scattered over it like tiny stars, came over and sat next to me. 

“Jambo rafiki,” She leaned into me, bathing me in her scent, like vanilla mixed with a rose.

“Mimi ni nzuri, na wewe?’ I’m fine, and you?”

She laughed, flashing her teeth in that smile again, her dark hair pulled back in a tight bun, like I saw once Kim Novak do in that film, what was it, ah, Vertigo, Hitchcock’s film, in fact she had a strong resemblance to Kim Novak, except the her skin was an exquisite dark caramel, in contrast to my northern pallidity, and as she sat down asked if would buy her a drink.

Joseph looked at me with quizzical eyes, but on my slight nod of the head politely handed her the bottle of Kilimanjaro beer she preferred, a beer popular there then and now, set it down with a glass, and then stepped back to take care of another couple of men who had arrived, one local the other seemed Italian from his accent, but they don’t figure in the story so I won’t bother you with them further, nor the other people in the bar and the restaurant it was in, nor the fact the Impala Hotel had three restaurants, all very good and popular so the place was hopping as they say.  But back to our place at the bar.

“What’s your name’, she asked, adding, Ninaitwa Mariam”

‘John,’ I replied, as she sat down on the bar stool next to me, her dress pulling up a little as she did, exposing thighs that could not be ignored. She noticed and laughed again,

“You like me, Johnny no? Well, every man likes me. I am very beautiful don’t you think?’ It’s ok if I call you Johnny? 

“If you want and yes, goes with the whisky and you are beautiful, no doubt about it.”

“But, I can be more beautiful, I can be many things. You are lucky to meet me.’

“Then I am happy to have such luck, but it seems things tend to unfold as they must. So maybe our meeting was inevitable. But, what do you mean you can be many things?”

“Oh, You think we were destined to meet? You believe in kismet?” She laughed again, but in the delightful way she had, then edged closer towards me, touching my right wrist with her warm hand.

“Maybe that it s true. But what were you destined to meet since I can change into any thing, any form I wish, I can be a leopard, or a rock, a cloud or a bird, anything I will, I am shape-shifter.”

She watched my reaction, my arched eyebrows, my slight moving away from her in doubt and disbelief, and laughed again and she had cause, since she both puzzled and intrigued me.  She was ascribing to herself her own cause, control over her own state of being, that she could not only will what she wants and want what she wills, but will what physical form she can take. But like I said, sometimes locals like pulling the leg of wazungus and I assumed that’s what she was doing. 

“Ok, you surprise me, if that’s what you are trying to do. I admit, it’s fascinating idea.  But I have trouble believing you are.  I mean how does that work? Why you? How do you do it? How can your friends be with you not knowing what you are going to be from one moment to the next? Sure, I’ve heard of shape-shifting stories. I just didn’t expect to find one here in this bar.”

“I know nothing of stories. I only know what I can do. But look, I found you, and you found me, so we combined out existence into one, don’t you think, so we have already changed, have we not, we are not the same as before we met?” She touched my arm again and moved even closer, I could feel her breath on my eyes,

“Perhaps I will show you one day, one night, maybe if you buy me dinner, maybe things can happen.” 

Then she pretended to pout and said, in her purring way and accentuating her accent, which seemed to me to be more of the coast, of Zanzibar or Dar Es Salaam than, the interior, the uplands, of Arusha,

 “I’m lonely, I don’t want to be alone.”

Her reverse take on Garbo made me smile but she had me there. I didn’t want to be alone either, for everyone is the other, and no one is himself, or herself, whatever the case may be, a phrase I never understood until I met her and, as she said, my existence merged with hers.

So I asked her, and looking her over, asked, “Is this your original form then, or am I with one of your transformations?”

“This is myself, what you see, what I am. But sometimes I change, if the mood comes to me. Then I just wish it.”

“Magic”

“No, not magic. It is just something I can do. But don’t worry.  I only use it when I get too angry, too emotional, too alive to live as this.

“Can you choose the form you take’

“It always is what is needed in the situation. If I am a leopard I want to rake you with my claws, if I am a stone I want to be untouchable, if I am a bird, I want to sing and fly away. But, I am hungry, and you promised me dinner.”

With that I indicated to Joseph that he could send my tab to the table and, putting my arm out which she took, escorted her to a table overlooking the garden and fountains where she ordered the most expensive plate on the menu and I followed suit and, ignoring the critical looks from some of the other bargirls hanging around, friends of her it seemed, or more, rivals. 

We settled into a conversation about other things, each of us trying to find out about the other.  It was about halfway through dinner, when we were discussing what truth was, brought on by her assertion that it was impossible to know what was true or false, proved by my disbelief of her claims to powers of self-transformation, that Father Mike came into the place, walked past the table, stopped in surprise, saw her, then me, smiled, and turned back to ask if he could join us. 

It was clear from the exchanged glances that they knew each other, and their quick engagement in chatter about others they new, and local gossip, that they new each other very well. But then Father Mike got around. Id met him some months before, in Stiggy’s Café, the best one in Arusha then, run by an Australian named Stiggy, who’d left Australia in the 70’s and after world travels ended up in Tanzania’s version of Rick’s Café, a place where everyone met, all the UN types, the locals, the politicians, the police, the lawyers.  The Rolling Stones played there once. Just walked in after a safari one night, had dinner, downed some drinks, then picked up the guitars on the small stage local bands used, and did a set that tore apart the fabric of the our minds.  But I find myself digressing, there is so much to tell, anyway let me get back to Marian and Father Mike.

Father Mike was Irish, from the Republic, I think Dublin was his home, a handsome man in his forties, with a soft brogue and a peaceful way with him. He had been transferred to Tanzania some years before by the Church and did his good works among the people of the surrounding villages who could not come to the main church of the parish, or who were lost under the influence of the legions of fake holy rollers wearing Rolex watches who demanded the poor pay them to support their version of a church, and, if they complained of their poverty, blamed then for being poor. You only knew he was a priest from his collar; otherwise he looked like he could be one of the tourists or working at the local UN headquarters, with the CIA.

The local gossip dispensed with, Mike finally acknowledged me and said, 

“I apologise John, but I was surprised to see Mariam here, I heard she was in Dar, and she’s hard to ignore. She got me to read the Koran and to listen to the call of muezzin in the night Anyway, my friend, how are you?”

“Fine, fine, Father. I’m fine. But after meeting Mariam, I’m not so sure,” at which Mariam laughed, and replied, 

“Honey, you are fine, better than fine. Don’t worry. I am really harmless.” 

And she laughed again while picking up her glass of wine to sip, while raising her eyebrows at me, a silent means of communication, which becomes very useful once you get the hang of it. 

Father Mike also laughed and said, “So, she has told you she is a shape-shifter?”

“So everyone knows.  And all this time I thought it was our little secret.”

“Ah, no, she tells everyone that. Never seen her do it. Don’t know of anyone that has, but there are stories, and not just the ones she tells.”

“So, you believer her?”

“It doesn’t matter to me or not. Mariam is special. Right darlin’?”

“Yes, Father Mike, I am something special. That’s why you help me when I need it, Nakupenda pia, I love you too,” and she blew him a kiss.”

I had to break it up.

“Ok, Father, so what are you saying? That the universe is not governed by natural laws, that miracles can happen?

“Ah, Johnny, you set me up with that one. I don’t believe in miracles.  I’m not even sure there’s a God. I have my doubts, frankly we all do, we just don’t’ say it publicly. But I didn’t join the Church for all that mysticism. For me, where I was, coming from a family of six kids and no money, being a doctor or a lawyer, or what have you, was not possible, it was the only way I could see of helping people and I felt the need to help people. Freud would have something to say about it.  Anyway that’s how I try to live and love. Do no harm, and help others when I can.”

“Fair enough but how can it be? Marian how can I believe you, and then believe anything?’

“Allah is Great and can do anything, and I am his instrument.”

Insha’Allah, Mariam” replied Mike. 

Then to me, 

“Look at it this way, the Church tells people that Jesus died and came back from the dead. We tell them he was a man but also a God and the son of a God, a Spirit incarnate, but being human at the same time, he was made a human sacrifice to God, a barbaric concept only exceeded by the practice of feeding worshippers the Eucharist and the wine, which become his flesh and his blood, performing two miracles at once, first, transforming inanimate things into life, and then, telling people to commit cannibalism by eating them. Hundreds of millions believe these transformations to be matters of fact.  So why should you not believe Mariam?”

“I’m a card carrying atheist so I don’t have to believe any of it.”

“No, but who is the arbiter of what is true or false? You?”

“Well, no, but….”

“You see the complexities, we’re into metaphysics and I haven’t had dinner yet.”

And so the evening drifted into night, the dishes came and went, the wine and whisky flowed, the conversation meandered into deep valleys and up steep mountains until we were sated with everything and I had to decide to get back to the house I rented in Sakina, a district of the town a couple of kilometres down the road, or stay up all night. But I had a trial to attend and had to be fresh. 

Mike, always courteous, stood up and said his good byes first, winked at me, winked at her, then walked out past hands extending to greet him, leaving me with Mariam who seemed to be intent on keeping me company, and being weak of the flesh, as the Bible says, or just being myself as Nietzsche would say, invited her back my place, called my driver to pick us up, and ten minutes after his “Ndiyo, mzee, I’ll be right there”, we were dancing to some music in the living room of my house, the lights down low, the feelings up high. 

I don’t remember much of that night. No, I am not being evasive. It was too much to keep in my mind. She was wonderful. The whole thing was wonderful. I remember feeling like I was hallucinating with the love, the music, and the caresses; how her waist chain of glistened gold in the fragments of light.  But the next morning she was gone before I woke up, leaving behind a note, saying we’d meet later that day, signed with a kiss of her lips. I assumed we would. But we never did. 

She never came back, not to me. I had failed to get her mobile number and Father Mike, when I met him the next day, just shrugged, and said, “That’s Mariam. She’ll show up again. In the meantime forget her and move on to less exotic possibilities.”

Some weeks went by before I heard of her, from one of her rivals, Rose, another bar girl at the Impala who joined me for a drink and in the conversation mentioned seeing me with Mariam. I nodded, and she continued,

“You know she is in the prison right now.”

“Prison?”

Yes, they say she stabbed a man in the Queen’s Pub a couple of weeks ago who tried to be too friendly. That is what the police say. But everyone knows they lie. Many people saw her shout at the man she was dancing with to keep his hands to himself, then she suddenly vanished and on the dance floor, a leopard appeared that leaped on the man with great forced, ripped his throat open, then sprang off into the darkness. The man died of course.”

A few months later I had dinner, in the garden of the Arusha Hotel, with a local police captain about an issue about my own security, during which he began telling me about some the cases he was working on. Mariam’s name came up.  I told him what I’d heard.

He didn’t look surprised.

 “Ndiyo, we finally caught up with her in Zanzibar, brought her back here for trial. She was facing several years.. A terrible thing she did, but claims it wasn’t her. Witnesses talk of a leopard, but friends with tall tales won’t go far in court.  It is clear what must have happened. She was in the prison here. You could have visited her.”

“Was? Could have?”

“Yes, somehow she escaped. It is not known how. We think she must have seduced one of the guards and he helped her. But, you know, despite what I said about tall tales, the night she disappeared from her cell, a guard making the rounds of the walls, checking the cell windows and the perimeter, said he saw on her window, what looked like a bird, suddenly leap into the air and dart off into the void.”

He observed my reaction to this with slight smile, amused. 

“Do you think…?”

“Sometimes, my friend, it pays not to think.  All I can tell you Johnny, is that this world is never quite what we think it is and if you ever think you are on the edge of finding out what it is, that’s when the ground shakes, buildings come tumbling down, rains pour, oceans rise, volcanoes erupt, fires rage, storms howl and you find you have fallen into madness. Would you like another whisky?’

“Sure, Captain, asante sana. I need one.” 

And, as he signalled the waiter to bring the bottle, I sat back and gazed out over the garden, the garden lights, the people dining, talking, the waiters and waitresses moving back and forth, the stars in the sky dancing to unheard music and thought deep thoughts about existence and what it all meant, but that waist chain kept stirring my mind, how she moved, what she said, how we were that night, man and woman, and, how, whether leopard or bird, or whatever she was, she had transformed me.