Yvonne Owuor - Dust

Six months later, a fellow officer delivered a message from Nafisa: a writ for divorce on grounds of violence, desertion, and neglect. Ali Dida Hada sprinted to his hut, threw things together, talking to himself, laced his boots, ready to retrieve his family.

The officer restrained him. Nose to nose, the man commanded him to listen. He said Nafisa was already engaged to a Jaguar-driving trader. She was also pregnant. She had left for England, with the children. He said the dalliance had been going on for a long time.

Ali Dida Hada had crumpled to the earth with his worldly goods.

Stunned, limbs shaking.

Then he had screamed once, limbs shivering.

The officer stood next to him.

They both stared into nothing.

Later.

“Nobody told me.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“What’s to say?”

Silence.

Later.

“Thank you for bringing the message.” Dizziness. He grabbed his head.

The officer told him that if he made an application, headquarters would give him compassionate leave.

Ali Dida Hada waved away the offer. “A man must be ready for anything, eh?” Then he lost his voice.

His full wits returned forty-eight hours later.

The messenger left.

Later.

Ali Dida Hada’s only attempt to kill himself failed. His pistol self-destructed. He was not even scorched. Then he sent a message to Nairobi headquarters: “I’m available for any kind of work.” He intended to be killed in action. That should be meaningful.

Headquarters assigned him reconnaissance duties, intelligence gathering in the much-avoided Northern Frontier District. He wandered — accompanied by an arrogant police camel with a penchant for dates, a bag of tools, herbs, the portable sanctuary of a dead mother’s healing songs, a herding stick, and an AK-47.

“Who are you?”

“Bakir,” he would answer.

“What are you?”

“Duddaani-nyaatte” —a peddler who sometimes carried goods on his back. He said he was a minstrel. He could sing, and he did. A clan elder once threatened to behead him. Ali Dida Hada replied with the first line of a lyrical formula for exorcism, “I’ll uproot the djinns you keep.” The elder took off. Ali Dida Hada also eulogized dead wayfarers in melodies so subtle and honeyed, near the watering hole north of Koroli, that his reputation as an accompanist for the departed preceded his steps.

This enabled him to attach himself to different arid-land clans, work as a camel handler and livestock herder, making contact with government informers, transferring information, building up relationships with people and clans while the wide skies of the northern lands disconnected him from time.

One day, he walked into an apex in the land to meet Zaman Nawfal, the Trader, who was a troublesome but key informant. A mental checklist of the Trader’s known profile: dealer in all contraband, anything from ideas to blood; supplier of women, honey, and camels to the Middle East; government confidante in poaching activities; concealer — for a fee — of discomfiting corpses and the embarrassing bones of dead citizens and elephants; trader in secrets and names; snake charmer who showed up in Nairobi dressed in a white Italian-made suit and white shoes; most likely the hole down which army-issued weaponry, including tanks, vanished. There was still no evidence. People always shifted and looked elsewhere whenever his name came up.

Ali Dida Hada had been suffused with the scent of unearthly coffee.

One set of the Trader’s skeletal fingers played with air, communicating a story, while the other was wrapped around a flowered ceramic mug. After they took a moment to size each other up, and before Ali Dida Hada spoke, the Trader guffawed and said, “Bambaloona!”

Diminutive of baabo alloona .

Marabou stork.

“I know about you.… Ka-ha-wa?”

Ali Dida Hada stretched out his cup.

His mouth was full of a most perfect dark roast: expansive, smooth, subtle, and buttery. It had covered his palate and struck his gullet with a delicate aftertaste. The Trader saw when the flavor became a bittersweet memory that contorted Ali Dida Hada’s face.

“Did you see the comet two nights ago?”

“No. What did it bring?”

“Wind, fire, water, prayers, spirits, and some tales of misfortune,” the Trader said. “More coffee?” Scratching dry skin.

“No,” said Ali Dida Hada. But he thrust his cup back at the Trader. “What misfortune?”

“A man made lonely.”

Silence.

“What drives a person away from home?” the skeletal man asked.

“Work.”

“So that’s what you call it. I’ve a quarter-kilo of beans.”

“Beans?”

“Coffee. A discount for you.”

“Why?”

“You want it.”

“Do I?”

“Don’t you?”

Ali Dida Hada sighed. “I do.”

“I like your songs.”

“You know them?”

“I know your voice.”

“Coffee?”

The Trader said, “Yes. What’re you looking for now?”

“A man.”

“Not your wife?”

Ali Dida Hada’s voice started to shake.

“Name’s Hugh Bolton. Englishman. What do you know?”

“Why now?”

“Someone’s asking.”

“Tried Wuoth Ogik?”

“Not yet.”

“You should.”

“Why?”

“It is there to be looked at.”

“Who lives there?”

“A down-country man. But a house like that — it would know about wazungu .”

“I’ll look.”

“Tell me what you find.”

“Why?”

“Stories are good.”

After Ali Dida Hada left the Trader, he journeyed for days. A desert hyena stalked him. His senses lit up. Acute hearing. He prepared for battle. Odd pleasure. At a dip in the track, as he was thinking about shooting the creature, their eyes met with a frisson that thrilled him. The hyena, weakened by hunger — otherwise it would not have followed a man — fled.

He found Wuoth Ogik’s silhouette at nightfall.

The woman’s back was to him.

Curvy thinness, like a carved Dinka cow’s horns. Calves, ankles, legs — firm, feminine, long. A small waist, wide hips. She was as dark as midnight. His hands tingled, needing to touch what he knew was soft skin. He caught her scent and imagined tasting its source. Her body radiated strength; her movements were a dance. Needing to look at her, he fixated on her outline.

The rush of milk in pails accompanied hand gestures.

Akai Lokorijom milking goats.

Sensing him, she lifted her head and knocked over a calabash. The milk seeped into the ground.

She screamed, “Shit-smeared, diseased earth, greedy and foolish!”

Goats bleated. A dog barked. Her high forehead, long lashes over large, all-seeing, slanted eyes, her small nose, in a face of perfect smooth symmetry, snared Ali Dida Hada. Partially opened, moistened full lips.

He gulped down the desire to shout, “Here you are!”

A furtive hammering, because for a moment he felt the hunger in her eyes had been for him. He had wanted that look for himself more than anything else.

Akai had approached and circled him.

He stood still and thought of the hyena.

“Who are you?” she asked, arms akimbo.

Ali Dida Hada’s gaze locked on Akai. He would have put out a hand to contain her if he knew it would not be cut off. His palms were wet. “I’m Bakir, a herdsman.”

Akai ignored his smile.

“Bakir,” he repeated, wanting to get it right. “I ask for work. I’ve walked a long time.”

Akai rolled her eyes. She did not believe him. She said, “I like your camel.”

“It’s yours,” he answered.

“Why?”

“It’s work I need. And shelter.”

“His name?”