Yvonne Owuor - Dust

After Mboya, Kenya’s official languages: English, Kiswahili, and Silence. There was also memory.

Nyipir’s mind had collected phrases shouted out to those who were within hearing range:

Tell my wife .

My brother .

Daughter .

Son .

My friend .

Someone .

Tell my people .

That I am here .

Tell them you saw me .

Because there was silence, he tried to memorize names, never speaking them aloud.

Some he wrote out in a child’s notebook.

In case one day a stranger might ask if so-and-so had existed.

Patrick Celestine Abungu . University professor of history, returned from Russia, bearded and bespectacled. Broad-chested and terrified. He shouted, Tell my wife and children .…

Onesmus Wekesa . Musician, composer of songs with double-meaning lyrics. A song that mocked an oafish, greedy hyena that ate up its own body had brought him to the police cells. He wept when they dragged him away. He clung to everything. He shouted, Tell my brother .…

Cedric Odaga Ochola . Engineer. Former major. Dragged out the door, he had screamed, “How can you do this?” He glimpsed a figure and shouted, Tell my daughter .…

Odd.

No one would emerge to ask after men who had been erased.

It was as if they had never been born.

Kenya’s official languages: English, Kiswahili, and Silence.

But there was also memory.

Nyipir knew.

He saw.

He did not speak.

He hoped it would end soon.

Till one afternoon.

A jeering colleague.

Nyipir was braiding his horse’s tail when the man sneaked up to him, spitting displaced rage: “Nyinyi! Heee! Mambo bado. Mtaona! Mnacheza na Mzee?”

Nyinyi . You the other . Not us.

Two weeks later, three men in camouflage gear, berets, and shoulder lapels watched an Ajua game in progress. In the camp near Kapedo Falls, to the south of Turkana District, the sound of the Suguta River. Clack-clack-clack of seed on wood. Fixed gaze of two squatting men. Two rows of rough, curved hollows on the board where stones collected. A two-hour Ajua game. Slam on board.

Nyipir collected all but four of Corporal Gakui’s seed “cows.” He had gloated, “Mia dhako!” Give me a woman!

The corporal spat, “Kihee!”

Silence that precedes an ambush.

Three jumpy men watched.

Kihee . Uncircumcised.

Nyipir dropped a seed into the grooved slot before turning to the man. He asked, “How does a mutilated penis make a man more of a man? Msenje ,” he said, “I’ve buried your testicles before, I can bury them again.”

It was only when a locust whirred over a pale-brown anthill that Nyipir realized that in in this epoch of silence, he had spoken, and by speaking he had made himself a sacrifice.

He got a confirmation within five days:

Citing Acting Inspector Nyipir Oganda for indiscipline, insubordination, and criminal activity; failing to protect civilians, stealing police equipment and stock, absconding from duty; protracting military conflict … Verdict: dishonorable discharge.

That was 1969, the year Tom Mboya was murdered, and Nyipir lost Kenya. Often, for him, it was still 1969.

Later, despite a decree that had declared that it was not possible, somehow, the Leader of the Nation managed to die. In 1978, a lean cattleman, an inarticulate teacher, took charge, and Kenya changed again. Still, nobody dared talk about 1969 and why Tom Mboya died, not even Nyipir.

Until the day Nyipir washed his son’s naked and unmoving body, and heard how a grieving Kenya, to receive a new year, 2008, had set itself on fire.

Ajany returns from her final pilgrimage to her brother’s death scene. She had waited by the road, staring at the remains of a white flower on the spot. Later, she had gone to seek Justina, to breathe all that was in and of her that was also Odidi’s. She had found herself wandering from door to door, had discovered that not one of the doors was familiar. “Justina?” she had asked passersby.

No .

Not even stout Gloria could remember that Justina had existed.

“But I saw her … you showed me …”

“Are you sure, Mami? Can I fix your hair?”

Out of Ajany, a tiny whimper.

The kiosk man had frowned. “ Ai! Madam, Justina?” Ajany had examined the bland look on the man’s face. A shield. She had turned away, taken steps toward the dusty road. Walked through the late-morning light and paused to pluck out fragments of a lily stuck on a hard black road. Odidi’s flower; she would take it with her to Wuoth Ogik.

In the late day’s sky, morning’s wandering birds fly in array back to mountain nests.

Ajany walks into the guesthouse’s reception area, limbs weighed down. Everything of life is out of focus, and she has lost her feeling for time.

Just then, a taxi driver skids in. Isaiah leaps out. He is returning from the Rift Valley, where he has experienced arcane space, color, and Great Rift Valley silences. He has also seen flamingos on Lake Nakuru.

“Hello,” says Isaiah in resolute cheerfulness.

Ajany, lethargic, offers a nod, avoids his eyes.

He knows. “You’re leaving.”

Another nod.

She drags herself to her room.

Isaiah reaches her door in time to hear the lock turn. He waits outside, then shakes his head and walks toward his room with the caution of one traversing sliding rocks that abut a crag. Flesh and woman; delirious remembrances of intimate shadowed selves. All of a sudden, they had become afraid of each other. They were not lovers who needed words to wound; absence sufficed. Wordless, they had both fled, before dawn, to opposite portions of the land.

In the evening, on impulse, Isaiah orders Thai takeaway for two, avoiding Calisto, who is stalking him. He did not ask for his twice-a-day hot pineapple-vanilla-ice-cream crêpes.

“Arabel?”

Ajany has stuffed some clothes into an open case. She is busy removing Odidi’s office photograph from its frame when she hears Isaiah’s knock. His voice. She hesitates. A clock’s minute hand settles into nine-fifty-two before she turns to unlock the door.

Isaiah lifts the greasy brown paper bags.

“Last Supper?” He lifts a bottle of Australian red wine. “Thai chicken, jasmine rice,” he adds.

Ajany forces a smile.

What endures?

Absence.

They eat.

They start their meal in silence.

Listening to outside sounds; cars, voices, birds, drip-drip of a leaking tap; whispery wind on plants. Tick-tock . A woman and a man suffused by vague, steamed jasmine rice scents chewing on Nairobi-cooked Thai chicken.

Then Isaiah speaks, much too loudly: “I saw flamingos today as pink as Wot Ogyek.”

“Wuoth Ogik,” mutters Ajany.

Isaiah grins as he pours red wine into a coffee mug.

Fruity.

Ajany looks and looks.

The room spins.

The wine is the color of Odidi’s morgue blood.

A crevasse splits open — a summons, a memory.

Appetite dissolved, Ajany falls in.

Exhausted by mysteries, of confusing answers, fuzzy thoughts, bad dreams, drowning in unknown sensations, the accumulation of silences, Ajany rises up like a creature on fire and flies out of the room. She runs past Jos, onto the lawn and through the gate.

Isaiah follows her, the wine bottle in his hand.

He shouts, “Just a minute. Wait!”

He thrusts the half-full bottle at Jos.

Light-streaked darkness.

Ajany runs blind.