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On the flight over, the plane is packed with Asians who consider themselves unbelievably lucky to have got the right to enter their own country under the quota system. They know they must be grateful for these small mercies. They look relieved and anxious at the same time, hopeful and hopeless. Life for Asians in East Africa has become perilous; my fellow passengers, a canny lot, have fled before they were pushed. Some, travelling for the first time on an aeroplane, have dressed as if they are going to a formal sundowner for topiwallahs, their teasing word to describe colonial masters who always wore stiff hats. The migrants have left behind their houses, farms, factories, shops, cars, insurance policies, gods, shrines, graves, precious sites of worship; by comparison my pitiful hoard of records, books and photos seems a negligible loss. As they swarmed to the airport, their jewellery was snatched from them at roadblocks manned by thieving soldiers with opaque eyes. This was happening long before Idi Amin’s expulsion order legitimized such crimes.