NB: This short story is supposed to be in the format of an email from a friend to another.

wZup Pinky

This morning is oddly cold. It is way into frosty July and I have just finished reading my sisters email entitled, Dad Dead. Yes, I have just lost my father. I do not know exactly how I feel about it but at least I know I am feeling cold, and hungry as well. Two gangsters shot him dead last Thursday in Kericho as he was leaving an ATM service machine. Remember that this was going to be his first homecoming after seventeen years of absence, and what is more? He was actually coming home for his long overdue retirement. With three fatal slugs lodged in the left side of his chest, he now lies at the Kericho Funeral Home…a fallen Brigadier who had taught many the fundamentals of arms and war in Mombasa but was unable to protect his heavily decorated chest like the veteran Naval officer he had been for two thirds of his life.

Zak's no more. Chep writes that the gangster took off in his new Peugeot 504 with all his retirement baggage and have up to now not been found by the police. Although I must say that the police spokesman was on the KTN prime news yesterday saying that no stone will be left unturned in the quest of the two killers. A small caption on the fourth page of the Daily Nation carried the fatal incident under the title GANGSTERS GUN DOWN RETIRED SENIOR MILITARY COPS—I never knew many things…many things about him. His retired status for instance came to our family as a newspaper cutting from a distant relative’s house only one month ago. I never knew my father.

I wonder whether he had changed from the way he appeared in the photo he sent two years ago while his ship had been in the Philippines. He had looked fatigued but still immaculately erect in his splendid white fatigues. His pencil-line lipped smile revealed also that the traditional gap on his lower teeth had widened…later I learnt that he had lost a tooth after being mugged in downtown Durban by a group of Indian urchins. He had lived a rough life, my dad had. I remember now more vividly the ancient portrait in our living room opposite the door to the veranda and his severely scarred face wrinkled into an omnipresent and omnipotent stare. I know those green eyes that I have dreaded as long as I can remember, those haunting eyes, that spoke of his place in our lives in spite of their actual absence, were now closed…dead never to stare at me again. With their death, something in me seems to have died as well.

It is threatening to rain outside, and the streets as well as the skies are grey and gloomy. Looking outside, through the window of this forth storey cyber café, I can see the usual crowd of commuters at KENCOM huddling together…for warmth maybe. I am feeling cold. It is as if I am looking through the glass of my mind and seeing the huge family album that lies next to the leather-bound bible at the heart of our living room, and seeing tight crowds of foreign peoples in foreign lands amid whose heads smiles my father’s—crowds can chase away loneliness.

I think…I feel like going to the new crowded joint that has just opened downstairs and mix up my mixed up self with the mingling bodies of young, vibrant teeniz. Let me go and lose myself in that world of not-alone-but-very lonely-ones where feigned voices with foreign accents ooze human emotions as music, and lonely…lusty youthful human bodies gyrate, ululate and forget the cold greyness of Nairobi Friday jioniz in July. Pinky, I yearn for your comforting voice that I grew up with and grew to love as boarding school hosted you and I as desk mates and cube-mates. I yearn for your long-nailed left hand over mine as loudspeakers pumped punk music into our nerves and numbing, frothy drinks made you and I twins in the world of growing up. I miss you now. 

I miss your sexy and sweet-smelling self, for in moment like this, you would lift my spirit full head high and my spirit higher still. We would first forget about Prakash and the others on the chaise longue and in unison woo wonder-struck teeniz (and loonies sometimes) with our closely glued, sexily-cladded, beat-possessed bodies. Then at the small hours of the cold and grey-black city dawn, the DJ would resort to the go-home and rest-now-blues as tired lovers picked up their drunk, drugged, drowsy selves and headed for the rainbow lit, revolving dance-floor then mill around in tightly paired love. At such moments you and I, if dressed in a similar stress, would refuse to dance with or be caressed by the boys and would instead find warmth, understanding and sometimes arousal from cuddling into each others loving arms as we sang along with the crooning voice from the nearest speakers. How we loved this one that, uncannily, is playing in this cyber-café at this very moment!

Oh how I wish it could rain now

Rain down on me…

Oh how wish it could rainnnn…rainnn… RAINNNN!

I do not know what else to say, I know that tears will rain from the blue skies of your wondrous eyes when you read this mail. I know too that the skies seem to be dark and dull in mathe and Amo’s lives just now. I also know that I will be travelling for horror-stricken home tomorrow. My main worry now is that I will surely miss the interview with PriceWaterHouse Coopers again this year…by the way your Mesh was taken in the last one and he now works in Mahe, Seychelles. You two still talking marriage? Or better still, do you still keep it on, going on, via emails and smses? 

(Loud sniff and wet-white-hanky sweeps at her soggy face…Very thin looking Korean with heavy safari bags surfing next to her throws her umpteenth sneaky sideway glance…)

What a mess this death has brought to us all! It is drizzling outside and the wind howls around the lonely-looking, tall Hilton tower, threatening to bring it down like the bomb did last year to the American embassy. Pinky…it is raining in my heart now because I can feel my eyes turning teary. I feel lonely now. I am distressed. Not because of what has happened but more so at the thought of yet another season of missed opportunity. I don’t think I have a superstitious mind, but I am beginning to associate Julys with misfortunes. Remember last July? By the way he has found another new catch. Maybe this time it will last because she is a chootie, an Indian, like him. Yet the July before last was when the Indian embassy thing happened! Simply because my allergy was so persistent due to the cold of the month, the burghers thought that Coimbatore climate would worsen my conditions, and even had the audacity to say that I was better off under my native Kenyan climate that even nowadays Asian tourists travel thousands of kilometres each year to enjoy! Pleasssse! I still ask the questions, “Were they the ones who had won the f****** scholarship? And now that I never got to go, who took up the scholarship in my place anyway? It is not many people who would want to study Aquarian Biotechnology and whats more, Seeta—Prakash’s sister-in-law told me that Coimbatore and Kenya have almost similar climatic conditions, owing to their equatorial locations!

Hey siz! You don’t have to worry so much about me, I am gonna be just fine…promise! Say hi to kina Njeri and Weks—Nafula’s bro who joined UCLA last month—that is if you guys ever get to meet. Gotta run now, I am bila credit now and I hope to hook up with kina Kajuju baadayez @ Carni to give them the same 4.1.1. Eda love, remember Destiny’s Child Survivor? (Biting her lower, trembling lip and staring at the hazy computer’s screen through tear-welled eyes…) I will survive. Peace out.

Always yours

Catty Kate

(The fine-figured, skimpily dressed, save for a warm-looking leather jacket, twenty-threeish looking young woman, signs out of her hotmail account, gets up and heads for the counter. The Chinese-looking tourist hisses at her and points at the red-computer billing-card that she had forgotten. She comes back, picks it up without a word of thanks and joins the crowd of clients at the counter. Outside, the wide windows a powerful flash of lightning leaves the heavens as if God is taking a photo of Nairobi, followed by a thunderous rumbling…KABOOOOOOOM! Then all the rains of the world come down.)

GLOSSARY

Zaks – Sheng’ for father or dad

Sup – American Slang’ for “What’s up?” its used as a funky type of greetings amongst peers.

Teeniz – Sheng’ for “Teens” which is used informally to refer to young people in general but male adolescents in particular.

Mathe – She’ng for the English word “Mother.”

Jioniz – Sheng’ word derived from the Kiswahili one “Jioni” which means evening.

Smses – Plural for the word ‘sms’ which stands for short text messages on the cellphones.

Siz – Sheng’ abbreviation for the word “sister.”

Kina – A Kiswahili word that hereby has been used instead of the English phrase “the likes of.”

Bro – Sheng’ abbreviation for the word “bro.”

Bila – Swahili word for “without.”

Baadayez – Sheng’ word for “later”

Carni – Sheng’ abbreviation for the popular Nairobi nightspot called The Carnivore Restaurant off Lang’ata Road.

411 – Nairobi slang’ for “news.”