Nzisa Karanja I find myself shuttled back and forth between two universes. This where the air hangs heavy with the stench of death and cordite. The other an endless abyss; more tenebrous with each deepening inch. In this I am weightless and unfeeling but in the other I am anchored wet and sticky by hip like lead where something struck me deep. I struggle to pick a place I like the most (Something tells me I need to let go of one) but my efforts are interrupted. A steady gurgle. I am back in the universe where my mortality has most rudely been made conscious. The pain that racks my body when I stir to investigate the sound assures me this. From the corner of my eye I can see him; he of my desire for many a long day and night. Memories of when first I saw him flood my mind. Gurgle. Hussein, or Hassan. I am fighting to remember which even if it matters little now. The one who churned an aching in my loins with a mere glance yet never made known he was aware of my existence. He lies here now, on the right of my shoulder in a deluge of his own guts and shit, his face where there is a frothing at the mouth an explosion of crimson. His feeble hand reaches out for me. He knew. I know he knew. He knew I loved him. This is his delayed acknowledgement. I shift some more to feel even for a second the touch I had been denied for so long. The pain again, this time with nary a forgiving bolt. I scream just as Hussein's (or Hassan's) eyes together with his hand fall sending a spray of his blood; still warm to my face. We haven't touched yet and I can't move but his blood, it cradles me like a warm fleece. My scream has drawn some attention. A gleeful laugh whose owner's face now looms above mine. Face like furrowed land ahead of planting, mouth so close I can smell the last khat leaves he chewed. I look away in disgust back at my beloved where his still gaze catches mine. He who bears reeking mouth and gutted face pulls his trigger. I have found the place I like the most. That place of weightlessness, nothingness, blackness. I am tunnelling down into it, slowly losing control but never losing grip of his hand. My Hussein (or Hassan). Now I need to remember which. Maybe when we get to the bottom still hand in hand, I will pull him close and ask him in a soft whisper. *** Scar Tissue The throng of mourners dispersed slowly and silently into the shadows of a dusk which hung ominously above the compound. Darkness soon took its place and still they stood there. Two solitary figures. One across from another; a shallow grave between them. Numbed by grief, they stared into the nothingness of that still, humid night. They could feel each sweep of the eyes from head to toe that they exchanged in that piercing blackness. Around them, a world of regret and a thousand unsaid sorries. Between them, the lifeless body of their nine year old son in a casket whose panels were joined poorly together leaving uneven gaps on all sides. Death has a long history of forcing us to face our shame and this time was no different. Someone from inside lit the bulb which hang from a tall mukima tree. The kind that provided beams for his mother's house by which they stood and raw material for the box which quartered little Njui's corpse. In this light they saw each other's faces. She didn't recognise her husband in the man before her. Something had departed from him the day he left them. He had said he couldn't be around her, couldn't breathe when she was in the room. Not the way things were. All he took with him was a plastic bag with his framed advanced diploma, a pair of shoes and the few shirts they had not hawked at the local market. Looking at him now, Murugi was overcome with shame. She had taken a good man with little ill will in his heart and she had broken him; ripped out from inside her womb a life they had both created and kept this a secret from him until infection attacked her insides and she nearly died. And now this; her middle one had been in her line of vision as she beat her only pair of bed sheets on a rock in the river. He had been there playing with the smooth flat pebbles he tried to make skip on the water, laughing that cackle which brought her warmth on so many cold nights. There had been a scream and a thud and then he was not there anymore.
In the glare from that lone security light, she could not bear the shame anymore and collapsed in a heap by her son's grave. Murugi tore at her hair until there was a steady trickle of blood from her left temple and dug into the mound of earth which just a few hours before took the space where Njui now lay. Her mother in law and the neighbours who had stayed on for the obligatory tea and gossip would speak of those feral cries for months.
'Take me now O God. Carry me into your skies' she whimpered as she started to slip away but a vigorous shaking kept her on the side of consciousness. It was his arms which shook her; wrapped around her over clothes muddied by a slurry of blood, tears and dirt. King'ang'i who had sunk himself inside her with thoughtless abandon and filled her with seed from which their beautiful children came quickly one after another. Who had vanished into places of his mind unmapped and disappeared from her life when he shut the door of their home behind him as if in a trance and never returned. She tilted her neck to search his face for something familiar and he let her. In that moment she felt him who she first knew and married. He was back with silent tears in his eyes and a gentle gaze. It told her she was forgiven for that original deception. It told her she could lean on him. It told her he understood. It said he needed her. King'ang'i could not speak more than to say 'I'm yours.' And just as well because it dawned on them lying there in the light of that single bulb with their dead child beside them, that they were never going to be able to get through this without each other. Someone must have been watching them because just as it had come on, the night bulb went out. _ _ Karanja Nzisa is an only child--slightly adrift--of a single mother. He is learning to love and grow up (in spite of himself) and is dedicated to re-scripting the African narrative while preserving the teachings of those who have gone before him. Karanja does not suffer fools gladly and has little time for bigotry. In 2015, he was shortlisted for and attended the Farafina Trust Creative Writing Workshop in Lagos, Nigeria hosted by award-winning writer and intellectual Chiamanda Ngozi Adichie. Karanja has worked as a speech writer, corportate editor, magazine columnist, blogger and is a food & restaurant reviewer for Kenya's highest-selling daily. You can find him on Facebook and Twitter. << Back to New Writing from Africa |
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