Yvonne Owuor - Dust

Outside, a small wind and shards of washed-out red light. Outside, a cracked lamp attempts to cast light. Outside, a huge moth with feathered black wings immolates itself on glass-covered lightbulbs. Inside, stillness. Ajany tries to disentangle herself from Isaiah’s hold. He clings. She pulls. He lets go.

She disappears into the bathroom.

There she touches her body.

Life markings.

Blood from a new battle dance. She listens for whisperings, the ones that suddenly promise, You might live .

Water. Warm. Arousing.

When she sniffs under her arms, she smells that Bernardo’s odor is fading. She scrubs away what persists.

Then.

She creates a list in her head as the water runs:

Plasticine dust .

Oil-based clay .

It is for the face.

And to frame neck and shoulder, wire.

Ajany re-emerges, wrapped in a big cream towel.

Steam rushes into the room where Isaiah sits naked on the edge of her bed, head in his hands.

She stutters, “Daylight?”

His head snaps up, eyes bleary. “Yes.”

She drops her towel. “Sleep well, Isaiah.”

“And you, too, sleep well.”

She snuggles into her pillow.

Isaiah watches Ajany close her eyes.

She is asleep.

Deep sleep’s soft breathing.

He rouses himself to switch off lights, intending to return to his room. He lingers, trying to remember what it is like to be able to simply drop into asleep.

He returns to the bed, where he rests his head on the pillow next to hers. A coconut-caramel-flavored scent from her side of the bed wafts toward him — perplexing, soft, and promising. He closes his eyes, inhaling that fragrance. In less than a minute, he is snoring.

ON THE ROOFTOP OF A CITY POLICE STATION IN NAIROBI, THE early morning broods over a city, a nation, that is gluing its cracked shell together again. Ali Dida Hada and Petrus stand as if they are on a cracked stage and are about to dance.

They were in their office that morning when Ali Dida Hada announced to Petrus, “ Afande , a copy of my resignation.”

Petrus looked over his spectacles, and reached for his drooping cigarette.

Leaving? An empty feeling in his belly, as if he were … afraid ?

Petrus asked, “Retirement?”

“Yes, sir.”

Petrus had whistled at Ali Dida Hada. “So soon?”

Until Ali Dida Hada spoke, Petrus had not known what he was going to do.

“It’s time,” Ali Dida Hada answered, gathering papers from the table.

“Then, Ali.” Petrus’s eyes were bright. “Together, brother, we must erase all impediments to your exit.”

Ali Dida Hada glanced at Petrus. A scheming djinn , he thought. Could I shoot him? Claim a gun accident? He tipped back his head, rubbing his eyes. Men like Petrus always had contingency plans.

There is something of the look and shape of a cornered brown cat against a black-stained wall in Ali Dida Hada. Petrus watches the sky-dance of the Nairobi City Council’s self-appointed mascots, the marabou storks. Petrus says, “I’ll miss this city.”

Ali Dida Hada waits.

“What’s your opinion on a local tribunal? Will they call us to testify?”

Ali Dida Hada waits.

Petrus says, “Tomorrow, there’ll be a peace march from Dandora to Kangemi.”

Ali Dida Hada waits.

“Peace and goodwill for the nation.” Petrus purses his lips, the cigarette dangling. “But, as a people, do we even want to live together?”

Ali Dida Hada frowns.

Petrus continues, “You and I, Ali — our terms of references include dying for the nation. Others, our ‘masters’ …” He pauses, shakes his head. “Asked to choose Kenya, fall over exits trying to save their fat buttocks.” Below them, traffic. Fumes float up. Low-voiced: “Now there are those who are waiting for any excuse to light up the nation again.” A snort. “Was wondering the other night … trying to picture one Kenyan who has given our country a dream as big as a national educational airlift. Forty years. Anyone you can think of?”

Ali Dida Hada rubs his forearms.

Petrus changes tacks, looks at Ali Dida Hada. “I met Nyipir Oganda in ’69. After Mboya was murdered.” His voice drifts off.

Ali Dida Hada leans back, uneasy.

Petrus continues. “His fingers?”

Ali Dida Hada recalls Nyipir’s darkened, twisted digits.

“I did it,” Petrus explains.

Ali Dida Hada straightens up.

“To save him. Sixty-nine … Were you here? Couldn’t tell from your file. This chaos …” He waves in the general direction of the city. “We were here before—’69, when Tom Mboya died. Unfinished Kenya business, this.”

Hadada ibis fly in formation above, screeching as they go.

“Bad times.” Petrus’s gaze is distant. “Remember?”

“I’m a simple man,” says Ali Dida Hada, watching Petrus as he would a puff adder.

Petrus chuckles. “ Aiee! This Kenya marwa! Makes me wonder about soooo many things. Small things: For example, a cryptanalyst is sent to northern Kenya, on a policeman’s salary, to find out what has happened to a mzungu . Years later, this simple cryptanalyst, on a policeman’s salary, has thirty-six million three hundred and fifty-two thousand shillings in six bank accounts, a simple car dealership in Eastleigh filled with cars that never get sold, twelve simple butcheries across the country, and three simple lorries that have been hired to transport cattle from the north to the south. All this on a policeman’s simple salary.”

Words dry up in Ali Dida Hada’s mouth.

He cannot move his hands, so that, even if he had the capacity to, he cannot blast Petrus away.

Petrus pulls out a police-issue pistol from an inner pocket of his black coat. He checks the bullets. “I confess I haven’t been as simple or as wise as you, Ali.”

Ali Dida Hada opens and shuts his mouth.

Petrus says, “You do understand what I mean.”

Ali Dida Hada does.

Petrus says, “I’d noticed thoughts of existence that bother us never seemed to touch you. Got curious. Thought we might be hosting a mystic.” A sneer. “But imagine what I found, Ali? And so I ask a question Kenyans don’t ask — how did you come by your wealth? Hard work?”

Ali Dida Hada closes his eyes. Voice neutral, he asks, “What do you want?”

Around Petrus, veiled, venomous presences, potent and explicit swirl. Whispered options. He struggles. He succumbs. Dread of suffering, of becoming nothinged.

No one need know anything.

Petrus drops his head.

Temporary grief — archetypal loss. As in the beginning of existence, when imagination and cowardice begat fig-leafed fear.

Genesis.

Ali Dida Hada remembers that the tingle from Akai’s bite was as tender as a new kiss. Winds had flung white sand and dark pebbles into the air and covered the view of mountains. Even as he left Wuoth Ogik that day, he had known he would return. He had gone to his police base and dispatched a convoluted and undecipherable message back to Nairobi headquarters, buying time for himself. That night, he had driven in a white van all the way to Dukana, left the car at Puckoon Ridge, and ambled into Sibiloi Park. In a dark Somali kikoi , and a camouflage jacket covering a white shirt, concealing a dagger and pistol. He carried an old leather rucksack and an AK-47. He walked forty kilometers before dropping into the shade created by the merging of shadows by a mukhi-mukha-d’ales and Acacia mellifera trees. Chewing on the end of an aromatic twig, he had waited. Sure enough, a day and a half later, after noon, one of Nyipir’s five hired livestock-lorries lumbered past, packed with resigned bovines.