 Jafferaly, the youngest of the children, was Rehmatbai's "chaglo".
He was a quiet and happy person. His great interest was Jamati service. He
was not interested in sports, but he enjoyed entertaining and helping people
in need. His life was marked with seva in various institutions in Mwanza and
Daressalaam. He spent his business life between those two cities. Even when
he was in Mwanza, he needed to spend a couple of months each year in Dar-es-salaam
preparing the accounts.
He felt that his partnership with his wife, Nurbanu, was preordained. He had
a dream in which he found himself a wife who happened to be a girl living a
couple of houses away. He confided this to his friend Fatehaly Daya. In due
course, the news reached the girl, Nurbanu Kassamaii Rahim, originally of Zanzibar.
She obviously liked what she saw, because she made sure that when Jafferaly
walked by in front of her house, he could not fail to see her standing at the
window. Move over Romeo and Juliet! This one had a happy ending. They married
in 1945. Both of them loved children. As detailed above, they took care of
Akber's children. However, they wanted their own children. The doctors advised
them it was unlikely that they could have children, so they pressed upon Jafferaly's
brothers to allow them to adopt one of their children. Again, as described
above, Fatehaly and Sakarbai showed great generosity of spirit and allowed
Rashida to be adopted by them. Within two years they had given birth to a boy,
born on the day of Rashida's birthday, and two more daughters followed.
Jafferaly had a great liking for food. When he woke up from
his afternoon nap, he would start with a glass
of sherbet loaded with "malai" (top of the milk). He
could never resist ice creams and chocolates. A highlight
for children in Dar-essalaam
would be to accompany him at night to one of the
ice cream shops.
In 1967, they served as Mukhi of Baytul Khyal and
in 1973 he was appointed President of the Council.
In 1975, after a busy weekend of meetings of
the Council, he was feeling tired and asked a volunteer
to drive him home. He
commented
that some thorny issues had been resolved and that if Allah was to take
him now, he would surely be a "firasta" (angel).
Later that night, he was admitted to hospital.
The doctor had just declared him - to be fit
enough
to go home when he smiled and collapsed on the spot. I am sure that he
had found his true home.
Nurbanu
was in Vancouver at this time helping Rashida through the delivery
of her second child. Nurbanu, Rashida and Zahir went back for the
funeral and Zahir stayed over to wind up the estate, with Janmohamed
Bapa helping out again. Nurbanu then established residence in Vancouver
with her children. She died in 1977 at the age of 53. |
