One Day I Will Write About This Place

by Binyavanga Wainaina

  Gasoline catches fire. My fist is in his mouth, and his teeth have cut into my knuckle. I pound him and pound him. Now he is crying.

  It is terrible and I don’t know what to do. He bawls, loud and naked. Ndiyaku… ndiyaku… he is pumping his finger up and down like hip-hop or a cocking gun, or some obscure signal to the gangsters of the world that I am marked.

  His friends just stand there, doing nothing.

  Trust is streetwise. He is from Diepkloof, Soweto. Johannesburg is bigger and more violent than Nairobi. He knows I am in trouble. Me, I don’t care. It’s so good to feel alive again.

  …

  Trust grabs hold of me from behind, and he is all apology, his eyes never leaving Tsietsi and his friend, hand pumping downward gently, like hydraulics, “Ah-­sorry maagents, ohh-­magents, he is drunk, ma-­gents, he will sort me out, ma-­gents, sorry ma-­gents. He is just a drunk Kwererekwere, ma-­gents… these foreigners, you know, ma-­gents, they are funny like that, ma-­gents, Chris Hani is dead today, ma-­gents, people are just being crazy,” says Trust.

  Then it lands. Pang.

  A quart bottle of Lion beer shatters on my head. The feeling is beautiful. Tsietsi is strutting forward, his friends holding him back, his thumbs thrusting down like the buttocks of a sixteen-­valve car, his chest thrust forward, as he pushes forward, and is pulled back. I burst out laughing. I can spread this heat all over the world.

  I start to move toward Tsietsi. Tires screech behind me, and Trust bundles me into the car. Ciru is in the car with us. I don’t know how she got here. She is crying. I ignore her.

  I feel wonderful. There are little delicious explosions in my head for days—­small starbursts, spreading out around my skull, like my mother’s kiss. I lie in bed for a full day afterward, my heart beating, ideas and dreams punching, biting, hissing and kissing and rolling in, as shadows move like mud on the white ceiling of my small room.

  Then I fall asleep again, waiting for the next surge.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It is 1995. Mandela is the president. We all danced and cheered for the inauguration. And I am going home. They sent a ticket. My parents. The day after tomorrow, I will be sitting next to my mother. I will wonder why I don’t do this every day. I hope to be in Kenya for nine months. I intend to travel as much as possible and finally to attend my grand­parents’ sixtieth wedding anniversary in Uganda this Christmas. Ciru will fly to Kampala and join us.

  There are so many possibilities that could overturn this journey, yet I cannot leave without being certain that I will get to my destination. If there is a miracle in the idea of life, it is this: that we are able to exist for a time, in defiance of chaos. Later, you often forget how dicey everything was; how the tickets almost didn’t materialize; how long you took, time lost and you were snarled up in your own hair for days; how the event almost got postponed; how a hangover nearly made you miss the flight…

  Phrases swell, becoming bigger than their context, and speak to us as truth. We wield this series of events as our due, the standard for gifts of the future. We live the rest of our lives with the utter knowledge that there is something deliberate that transports everything into place, if we follow the stepping-­stones of certainty.

  For the first time in months, I find I can move with conviction. I pack, scrub, clean, comb, and even get to the aiport on time. I tell myself that the problem with me is simple. I am homesick. I hate my course. My body agrees.

  …

  I take the cheap Transtate bus in the afternoon, to save money for drinking with Trust, who has moved back to Johannesburg, where he works as a management trainee for a major insurance house.

  This is the bus that black laborers take to and from Johannesburg. It is full of miners and businesswomen who buy things in the city to take back home to sell. All sleeping and drinking and quiet. Deep gothic gospel chorals chant on the stereo. And Dobie Gray, and Percy Sledge.

  If you look out of the window into the dry countryside of the rural homelands, you see not crops, not human life; you see discarded plastic, as far as your eye can see, Transkei daisies they are called, like the millions of drifting people who work and consume shiny products. In this bus are men in overalls, with scarred faces, bleary eyes, and lips burned to pink splotches, from liquor. They sit in groups, in every bus rank of every small town we stop in, drinking clear bottles of cheap liquor. At lunchtime they eat sorghum beer, which is thick and nutritious, but leaves you drunk after lunch. Work, and drink, and work, and drink.

  We drive past small rural towns, where girls and young men stand outside shops: a mountain of fried chicken packets pounded into the ground by months of feet; brochures grinning at you with shiny trinkets, from the floor, from a barbed-wire fence; magazine cutouts of clothes and glamour plastered on the walls of people’s rooms. On every surface there are shiny trinkets of gold plastic and blue and pink and bright yellow and green drinks being sipped out of packets that have a young beautiful person leaping in the air in rapture, a straw in her mouth. Yogi Sip!

  Mandela is president. And Brenda Fassie now looks haggard and beaten. False teeth and shame. There are now new black people in suits and ties, on television, on the streets. There are black people with American accents, with white South African accents, soft breasts, six-­pack abs and regular features and good straight teeth, all over the radio, on television, in magazines showing off their new homes in white suburbs, their 2.3 children gleaming with happiness and swimming pool health.

  There are black people talking about the market in serious credible tones. A good chunk of my finance class is in Johannesburg, working for Arthur Andersen. Marketing people are talking about a new thing called branding. Branding is changing South Africa, somebody told me once when we were drinking somewhere. You can no longer just tell people to buy the blue dress. Marketing has decided that to sell a thing you have to take time to create the right thoughts, feelings, perceptions, images, experiences, beliefs, attitudes. So, suddenly there are jobs for people who know all cultures. White people can no longer sell things to black people. It is about money, and money has decided to become like a rainbow. Kwaito—­a South African version of American hip-hop, hard, material, and cynical—is in.

  Brenda appears on television railing one day: drunk, high, and incoherent. “This is not real music,” she says. “Kwaito is not real music.”

  One day, it seems like an age ago, on a campus trip to Durban, we stopped the bus in the middle of the road to piss in the wilderness past Kokstad. The sky was huge; the air was cool and dry and smelled of tarmac fumes and daytime heat. The bus stereo system was on, and we were all drunk and somebody started to sing, and soon all drunk sixty of us were arranged in lines by the side of the road, doing the Bus Stop, laughing and singing, not one note out of place. The sky was huge—­we were only a few miles from the border, and beyond the road were giant white farms—­and we all knew there were guns there and threats, but in this moment we were all one woven mat of bodies singing struggle songs. I found I knew the words, but not the meaning; I knew the intent. Cars honked rudely, and we boarded the bus and sang all the way back to Umtata.

  Mandela is president. We are entering the city limits of Joburg. I am going home. We find, for the first time, nothing at all to like about Brenda Fassie. We don’t want casualties from the past; they remind of us of the essential cruelty of hope.

  What if change comes and we find ourselves unable?

  …

  Trust picks me up at the Rotunda, and we head for Tandoor. It is a sea of thumping, ganga and dub, flying droplets of sweat. We whir and stomp: furry black and peroxide caterpillars spraying sweat all over the room; rasta colored hair shells and beads clicking; the thump of reggae, bass, and very sexy black people: mocha, cappuccino, frappé skins, warm moist air, open-air rooftop, minty Zam-Buk ointment and black sweat, charcoal-­colored gums, and slow, blurry hugs with people you have never met.

  It is 5:00 a.m. We are in a cab across the street from Tandoor
.

  The driver, a Zambian guy, is dressed in a white leather cowboy suit, with tassles and a leather Stetson, and lots of gold jewelry. We haggle and he tells us to get in. We try to get out of the cab, and from across the street we hear guns and screams. A car speeds off—­as the crowds of Saturday-night partygoers scatter behind us. Police alarms start.

  We jump into the cab.

  We do a tour of Hillbrow as he picks up people and drops them off. Trust starts to complain.

  “Ah, bro. No problem, bro. I will drop you. I cannot lie. If you give me time, I will drop you for free. You are my brothers. Where are you from?”

  And we start to chat. He was an accountant in Ndola before the copper prices fell. Do we want to hear some music?

  We say yes. Spools of light whoosh past us. We are singing along.

  “Like a rhinestone cowboy…”

  …

  He picks up two women from a street corner. Both of them are drenched in perfume and powder and cheap wigs.

  He swings his head back to us, grinning wide. “I cannot lie, brothers. Johannesburg, it is a crazy place. Eh?”

  We are in the Zambian man’s apartment, with the two women.

  Three somber Malawian men are unpacking boxes of wooden carvings as brandy gurgles into our glasses. There are mattresses spread on the floor—­there must be fifteen or twenty people staying in this apartment. On the table there is a pile of marketing books, correspondence college manuals. Steaming plates of nsima and stew arrive, from the women in fishnets, Mary and Violet. We all dig our fingers into the common tray and eat. The taxi driver­–cowboy grabs Mary’s buttocks as we eat. She laughs and sits on his lap.

  “We have to take care of each other! Who will take care of my sister?”

  He is addressing us.

  “I must watch out for my sister, and she can cook for me. This country is very dangerous. They are very violent here.”

  “Who?”

  “The blacks.”

  Trust turns to him, eyes flashing, finger raised to protest.

  “Ah. Sorry, brother. Sorry, brother. It is apartheid.”

  He stands and pats Trust on the back, says, “Let’s smoke some ganja.”

  “You Kwererekweres,” says Trust ruefully.

  We go out to the balcony. Yeoville.

  It is a lovely building from the 1930s, shaped like an oval cylinder, with a thin seam running around it on each floor, large oval clear-­eyed windows and oval balconies, clean lines—­but this is still a building from another age, of hooting ice cream vans and round brass doorknobs. Strings of an old clown’s tears run down the peeling walls. The night is dry and cool, and the air hurts the nostrils.

  Evans is his name, he says. His red and black cowboy shirt is un­buttoned and he wears a gold chain. He has hair on his chest, another surprise, and large, very dark lips, charcoal and ashy like a heavy marijuana smoker’s. Even his teeth, which are large and very white, have sooty edges, and there’s a gap between the two front teeth. His smile warms me.

  Seeds inside the joint crackle as we pass it around. Mary and Violet come, with a new guy, young, shiny, and dapper in a black suit and tie. “My young brother,” says Evans. “George. I brought him here from Zambia. He has finished his BCom at Wits, and is now working at First National Bank.” They used to live in Tembisa, but once Evans was beaten up in a shebeen for being a foreigner.

  “They don’t like us,” says George. Evans’s face darkens. “They don’t like us because we remind them that they are still slaves.”

  I shoot a sharp glance at Trust. He missed that—­he is looking intently at the crackling joint, his lower lip thrust forward like a cash register tray. I giggle. George grins back at me and winks, takes his jacket off. He sets up a grill, lights the coal, and brings meat from the kitchen in a bowl.

  Soon, the room is spinning. Faces swell in and out; Evans’s teeth move, as he laughs up and loud. He jabs Violet’s waist—­that’s her name, Violet. She jerks her waist sideways.

  “Ah, mpslp,” she clicks and slurps, and laughs, and that sound makes me so homesick, I hurt. Mum’s kiss sat there, that day, puckered up in one spot, its dainty legs pumping on the spot, as if this was the only way it had to keep itself together. Then it collapsed slowly, stretched, diluted and gentler, tingling for long minutes.

  I am being attacked by sheets of dancing city lights. I close my eyes as panic rises. Saliva slices back, over, then under Evans’s tongue as he talks to Trust; then a hiccup as a burp reaches the back of his throat and he coughs forward suddenly, and breaks into laughter and I turn to look at him. The sky and stars start to wriggle and streak in my mind. A tongue slips past the gap in his mouth; meat falls onto a flame and squeals.

  We are eating. On the balcony, the air is soft and the sky is spinning and I am starving. We all dip into one large tray of nsima, then dip the balls of maize meal into the tomato gravy. I can hear teeth clicking as we strip bones of meat. Am I seeing things? I close my eyes, dizzy. A red, wet moan climbs down from the roof. Then it starts to dribble—­soft wobbly carrots creep through the gaps, swollen turgid potatoes fall and splatter.

  I rush to the toilet and throw up. I miss my room. It’s been so long since I walked into the world without fear. Already I have been out of my room longer than I have been in a year. I am afraid I can’t handle myself. I can’t go and hide in my room now. I stretch my mind to my bedroom at home—­I will be home tomorrow. I will be home tomorrow. I stand on the balcony away from the rest. I look at the sky, and the giant roof of dark offers spongy, confident promises—­it can take any assault and remain unchanged. Screeching giggles and screams circle faster and faster, smaller and smaller, then gurgle into a sinkhole of incoherence as early-­morning traffic rises.

  It is Trust’s hand on my shoulder.

  “Are you feeling better, bro?”

  I nod.

  “Are you also from Zambia?” I ask Mary, one of the fishnet women.

  She shakes her head. “Malawi. He is just a friend. This is my house. He drops me home every day, and takes my daughter to school. I make food for him. He can’t cook, this one.”

  Congo rumba music blares out of a small cassette player on the floor. Her cousin, Violet, dressed in a tight sequined dress and a cheap weave, is dancing, on her own, to the rumba. The lumps under the blankets on the floor don’t move.

  The sun has started to stream in, still soft and gold. People curl out of their mattresses, grunt hello. I count at least twelve people in this apartment. Giant plastic bags are packed as curio traders start to prepare for work in the flea markets of Johannesburg. Two girls, both seven or eight years old, emerge in full school uniforms, navy blue and white pleated skirts, so short, those South African skirts, neat and innocent with matching satchels and smug white South African accents. They stand, hands shyly swinging behind backs, as they greet me, heads bowed respectfully. Evans is scratching the braids of one of them as they look at our disheveled bodies without mirth or surprise. They speak their language and help their mother set the table. Their mother, Violet, is now wrapped in a sarong, hair under a scarf, skin scrubbed to reveal twin burn marks on her cheeks. Skin lighteners. She looks like a mother now. Her night face is gone. I can’t see Mary anywhere.

  A young man comes in, takes off his security guard jacket. He grabs the books from the table and disappears into one of the rooms.

  As they eat Kellogg’s cereal, the girls watch television, giggling. There is an ad with an aerodynamic man dressed in a neon bodysuit. He is running after drinking a healthy power drink. “Your body remembers,” the ad says. “Your body remembers.”

  “No sleep. We must work! A man should not sleep,” roars Evans.

  We are in the taxi again—­and soon outside the gates of a prosperous-­looking, mostly white school. There are a few brown kids around. The boot is full of wooden carvings, and the car groans and sways, as other cars, sleeker trophies of a credit economy, whoosh away. The girls get out, are admoni
shed to behave by their cowboy uncle. They tumble out of the car and walk, now slouching and chatting loudly, their bodies different, English-­speaking bodies. They don’t look back. They merge happily with a group of mostly white, preppy-­looking kids.

  “The de-­kaff generation,” Trust says, sniffing. “They speak with, lak, white, lak, South Efficen accints.” We stop for some Chicken Licken (s’ good s’ nice) on the way back to Trust’s place in Soweto. Evans refuses to charge us any money. “We are brothers,” he says. “We have to help each other!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  My passport has a problem. It has swollen and is now a lumpy accordion—­full of watermarks, corrugated pages, and slurring visa stamps. It spent a full cycle in a washing machine. The man at security looks at it, then at me and my somewhat tattered and grimy bag, and waves me past, his head shaking.

  They say those streams of puff behind planes are made by the same thing that makes steam puff from your mouth on a cold day: when two air masses that are not fully saturated with water vapor mix, the air remains at the same temperature but drinks in all the vapor it can, until it saturates and forms a kind of cloud. I wonder, sometimes, whether the substance we call reality is really an organization as formless as the puffy white lines that planes leave behind as they fly.

  Since I was a child, my mother has performed an act of will on me. I present myself within her reach, annoyed at something, or upset at somebody. The first thing she does is reach forward with both her thumbs on my eyebrows and push the flesh to the side, her voice flattening my frown, then her hands run down both my cheeks, and I am a lumbar guitar; my vertebrae are fret markers.

  I would not have survived my season of falling if Ciru had not always been there, just there, making sure, giving me pocket money, and wisely keeping her distance.

  People pull you out of yourself, and from the day I met Trust Mdia, he has done this. Each time I have come to him, drunker and dirtier, he has taken what he has seen, ignored the beast, and spoken to the friend, so I have found myself being, with him, a considerate, eloquent person, a normal person.