Summary

In Part One, Chapter 1, when Khalifa was 26, he started working for “the merchant Amur Biashara” (3). Because Khalifa’s father Qassim “wanted the boy to want more” for his life, he taught Khalifa “to read and write” (5). He started with a tutor “the year the Germans arrived” in town (5).

Khalifa lived in Eastern Africa. The Germans’ arrival incited a litany of wars between the “Arab and Waswahili coastal and caravan traders,” who resisted the German claim over their land (6).

When Khalifa started working for Amur, he had 10 years of experience working with bankers. Meanwhile, the Germans quashed the African rebellions. Their army, the schutztruppe, comprised “of African mercenaries known as askari,” captured and killed al Bushiri in 1889 (9). Meanwhile, the Maji Maji uprising “was about to erupt in the south” (9).

Khalifa wrote letters and paid bribes for Amur. Three years later, Khalifa learned “that his...