Yvonne Owuor - Dust

He shakes his head and leaps up, his hands knocking over the steel-plated salt-and-pepper shaker.

Isaiah dodges cars, keeps his eyes on approaching faces. Arms spread out. His destination: a 1970s-style office block that would slot right into Cold War Eastern Europe. He sucks in air, then enters Vigilance House’s dark, humid interior, glances at the large concrete coat of arms with the legend Utumishi Kwa Wote —Service to All — hovering over his head like the sword of Damocles. He walks into a capsule of tight conversations, explosive, abrupt laughter, busy footsteps, and quick, squint-eyed assessing looks.

The place is packed, murmuring like a town-hall meeting. It takes fifteen minutes for Isaiah to reach an old brown desk behind which lean two men in uniform, their caps on the counter. One of them doodles in a tattered brown occurrence book. A surly “Yes?”

“Good afternoon. If you could help me, please … I’m here to see Mr. Ali Dida Hada.” Wet palms, dry mouth. Clipped tones concealing the routine dread he felt whenever he met bureaucracy.

“ACP Ali Dida Hada,” the doodler corrects; he is sketching faces and geometric patterns, coloring them in.

“Yes.”

“No, his title is Assistant Commissioner of Police Ali Dida Hada. A very important man.”

Isaiah waits.

“You are who?” the scribbler asks. Not once has he looked at Isaiah.

“Isaiah William Bolton … from England.”

“Identification?”

Isaiah pulls out his passport.

The other policeman, who has been staring at him, reaches out and grasps it as if it is a dead rat. It dangles as he turns the pages.

“Bolton. Isaiah. Like the Prophet. What do you want?” he asks. Delicately handing over the document. “Why do you want ACP? He’s a busy man.”

“He knows about my missing father.”

“You filed a missing-persons report?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Uh … two years ago.”

“Reference number?”

Isaiah improvises. “Mr. Ali Dida Hada worked on the case.” Head throbbing, he wipes his hands on his jeans.

“ACP, ACP.” A patient correction. “Who’s your father?”

“Hugh Bolton.”

“Last seen?”

“Don’t know.” He lowers his head.

“Where?”

“Northern Kenya?”

“And Afande Dada?”

“Has been looking for him.”

“So he knows your father?”

And so it continues. Isaiah wonders if he should have called the British High Commission first. An hour and a half later, his mind numb and ringing, he is led to another office, and then two more, until, at last, he is clinging to the back of a chair in a semi-divided, airy, larger rectangular room packed with files, where two men are waiting for him from behind a lopsided circular table.

The older of the pair clears his throat. He is dark, almost dark violet, bespectacled, large-eyed, with a head too big for his tall body, and wrinkle lines on his forehead. He is full-lipped and droll-voiced.

Petrus Keah says, “Sit.”

Isaiah sits; his eyes move from one to the other. The other man is younger, shorter, with light-brown skin, gray-sprinkled short hair, trim sideburns, two scars on one side of his face, and a thin mustache; he moves with spare gestures. His pale-brown eyes study Isaiah.

A sense of guilt seeps into Isaiah as he sweats under the man’s scrutiny.

He escapes by staring at the older man.

“Are you Al Qaeda?” purrs Petrus Keah, adjusting his spectacles.

Isaiah goes mute. Sweat glistens on his forehead. Finally, he snaps, “I’m English.”

“A false premise upon which to claim innocence. There are many English Al Qaeda.”

“I look nothing like them,” Isaiah huffs.

Petrus leans over the table. “Ali, my brother, does this man even look English to you?”

Isaiah glimpses the small up-and-down movement on the bespectacled man’s lips, a glint in his eyes. He is being toyed with. He leans back.

Petrus cackles, “Funny, man.”

Ha-ha . Isaiah scowls.

“What do you want?” Ali Dida Hada’s voice is inflectionless. He had buried his slow panic at this resurrection of his futile forty-year chase. When junior officers had called to tell him that a man named Isaiah Bolton had come to see him, he had ground his teeth and prepared to escape from the office when Petrus Keah burst in, lugging old files and, anticipating his intent, said, “Were you leaving?” The challenge overt.

Ali Dida Hada had sunk into his chair as Petrus settled next to him. They had watched the files on the table while an iciness grew between them as they waited for Isaiah Bolton to walk in.

Isaiah is saying, “My father, Hugh Bolton, vanished perhaps forty years ago. I understand you’ve pursued the matter for a while. He paused. “Just come from Wot Ogyek.” Isaiah frowns. “There’s evidence he was there.”

Ali Dida Hada’s chair creaks.

Isaiah continues, “His books, art, the house itself — his signature. He was there.” Isaiah pulls out the draft house sketches from inside his coat. He unfolds and spreads the paper out on the table. He points: “My father’s work.”

In that second, Ali Dida Hada could have slapped his own face. Patterns and clues scattered in plain sight. So obvious he had missed them. The books! He had touched them. He could have asked a simple question— Akai, how did you come to be in this house? But there were houses like this everywhere. Homes taken from colonial-era owners. After the new owners moved in, old, misunderstood household goods — books, artwork, and cutlery — were left untouched to gather dust or quietly decompose with everything else. Nobody asked why or how. Ali Dida Hada scowls.

Petrus observes Ali Dida Hada’s fingers make erasing movements on the desk.

Ali Dida Hada, aware of Petrus’s stare, says, “Tea?” Ali Dida Hada pushes back from the table.

A gleam in Petrus’s eyes. Enigmas enthrall him.

He beams at Isaiah as Ali Dida Hada closes the door. “Isaiah Bolton, what can we do for you? We know a little bit about this case.”

Isaiah’s hands come together to shield his face. A release of dread knots in his stomach.

Petrus says, “Long time ago, we sent a man to look for your father.”

“Yes?”

“Following a phoned-in request from an interested anonymous person.”

“Yes?”

“We closed the case over two years ago.”

“Why?”

“The party concerned did not renew their interest.” The eight hundred pounds that were keeping the file warm had been cut off.

“Who?” Isaiah wonders. Selene? But wouldn’t she have known where to look at once? Isaiah murmurs, “All these years of searching — nothing?”

Petrus purses his lips. “Little.”

“Reports?”

“Annual updates.”

“Can I see them?”

“Property of state and client.”

Isaiah lowers his head. Who else would have been interested in finding Hugh?

There is a tingle in Petrus’s belly as he watches Isaiah — anticipation. He looks in the direction of Ali Dida Hada’s exit. Turning to Isaiah, he asks, “How can we help you?”

Isaiah leans over. “Someone knows something.”

“Names?”

“Old man Oganda … the daughter, Arabel …” He unfolds the newspaper cutting and points at Odidi’s picture in the obituary pages. “Moses invited me here. He said I’d find what I sought here. We were supposed to meet.”

“Ah!”

“I’ll pay.”

A sniff. “A bribe?”

“No.”

“What, then?” Petrus asks.

“Whatever it takes to dig out the truth.”

“Truth has a price.”

“I know.”

Petrus watches Isaiah. Truth, truth, everyone wants truth. Few want to look at it. He lifts his hand to the back of his neck, propping up his head. “Where’s Ali’s tea?”