by Iman Verjee
‘At least for this one,’ Michael said, tilting his plate and wiping up the remainder of his stew with the ends of his chapati, ‘let’s stick to being spectators.’
They had been hoping for a light rain or even a relieving cover of cloud that Thursday morning, but the sun bore down from the sky, which was as cloudless and blue as ever. The light T-shirt Jai wore already felt heavy and he put a hand over his eyes, squinting.
He had expected it to be more orderly and was slightly disappointed to see that the students were not better organized, or even attentive. They did not seem to share the building excitement that caused his words and muscles to move at an alarming pace. Instead, most of them were spread out across a wide area of the main campus, laughing and conversing amongst themselves, as if it were just an ordinary day. Some were seated at the edges of flower beds, others lounging on the field – though a large circle was slowly being formed around the high steps as one man climbed to the top with a megaphone and threw his fist in the air.
‘Comrade Power!’ he shouted, stretching out the first word, Cooom-rade, and sending out the last with a sharp burst from his mouth.
‘Yes!’ came the reply.
‘Cooom-rade POWER!’ A swell of noise, a host of closed fists rising in unison. Jai joined in but Michael stayed silent. It was one thing to shout it out alone but to do it amongst so many other voices Jai felt the conviction more strongly, rising up in his chest and warming his cheeks.
‘Let’s get closer,’ he urged Michael, pushing his way to the front of the crowd despite his promise to remain an observer. Michael had no choice but to follow until they were standing on the lowest step, facing the young leader.
‘We want peace, we want peace.’ He bobbed his palms up and down, encouraging the crowd to chant along with him. ‘Peace, peace, peace.’ As his voice tapered and the shouting died down, an expectant hush fell over the students. They waited for him to continue.
He addressed them gravely. ‘Let us say – we are not going to interfere with any businesses in the CBD.’
‘Yes!’ the crowd shouted back.
‘Let us say – we are not going to vandalize anybody’s property.’
‘Yes!’
‘Let us say – we are not going to interfere with anybody in the CBD. Everyone in the CBD is safe.’
‘Yes!’
‘But what do we insist upon?’ The man leaned down, repeating it louder. ‘What do we insist on? If the government is not going to succumb to our demands, then no rest! No peace!’
‘No rest! No peace!’
He turned toward the building behind him, came down as far as the last step and the crowd parted for him. He looked up, where several students were leaning out of the windows to watch the commotion. He shouted at them, ‘We’re calling upon all of you now – the cowards up there who have not joined us today – we are doing this for you!’ Back to facing the group, he sprang theatrically from a flower bed to the grass and out onto the paved street, making his way to the main road. ‘It is now, ama now!’ he yelled through the megaphone and the crowd moved with him, like a slow animal rising from sleep – a furious background to his words.
‘Cooom-rade POWER!’
That morning, a slow drove of students made their way down University Avenue, two streets long and close to thirty people wide. Occasionally, someone pulled loose from the crowd to pick up stones or discarded tree branches, fanning flags of green leaves as they marched onward.
Five men led the protests, whistles in their mouths and animal-skin drums held close – one even hoisted a radio on to his shoulders and it played a cheerful song that people danced to and sung merrily as they walked, paralyzing the morning commuters. Some drivers honked and shouted and swore but most sat fearfully in their locked cars, searching for alternative routes.
Some students carried hastily made banners drawn up that morning on the university quad, constructed out of manila paper and Sharpies, shouting out slogans as they marched.
‘Quality and affordable education for all Kenyans!’
‘You cannot condemn a people unheard!’
‘Cooom-rade POWER!’
‘What does that mean?’ Jai asked Michael.
He heard a girl’s voice. ‘It’s the motto of the Students of Nairobi Union. Steven, the one who is leading the protest, came up with it during his first riot as chairman, and now it’s become our anthem.’
Somehow, the girl from the cafeteria had found them, had fallen back in the crowd and placed herself in the center of the two boys. ‘I’m surprised you came.’ She spoke as if to both of them but looked at only one.
‘I’m a student here too,’ Jai reminded her. ‘I don’t want my fees to be raised for no reason other than to feed some already fat bellies.’
‘But don’t mummy and daddy pay for you with the profits from the big family business?’
‘Just because my parents can afford to pay for my education doesn’t mean I don’t value money. I’m tired of you making generalizations about the way I am.’ Gone was the friendly expression and he lifted his fist to shout with the rest of the students, ‘Cooom-rade POWER!’
She was reproached by his tone. ‘It’s just that we don’t get a lot of muhindis interested in joining our protests. I’m Ivy, by the way.’
‘Then perhaps you should be friendlier to us muhindis, Ivy.’
Smiling, she began to weave her way back to the front, finding it easy, because of her tiny size, to push past the thickly packed rioters. She called over her shoulder, ‘Come and find me after this is over and I’ll introduce you to Steven.’
They marched throughout the morning as the sun gradually rose to its peak. By the time they reached the Central Business District, it was noon and most students had pulled off their shirts and wrapped them around their heads, shoulders or waists.
It was here that most of the city’s stores and restaurants were situated and, as the protesters approached, Jai saw most shop owners frantically turn keys in locks and pull down the metal grilles guarding their doors, keeping their noses pressed to the windows and telephones in their laps, just in case things should start to go wrong.
They had been victims of many crimes during riots such as these, petty thieves looking to take advantage of the chaotic nature of the situation, hiding themselves within the massive crowd and sneaking into shops, helping themselves to whatever they wanted.
The smaller kiosks, which did not have such security measures, were more vulnerable and Jai, caught too far back to help, saw a woman scrambling to close the door of her shop. She was dragged out by four or five boys and thrown to the curb, left to watch as they raided her store – milk packets, coke bottles, bubblegum, some even pushing carrots and sukuma wiki into their backpacks – rejoining the group and saying, ‘Asante, Mama, for supporting our cause,’ and then shouting out absurdly, as if what they had done in no way contradicted what they were fighting for, ‘Justice! Justice! Justice!’
Steven Kimani was a small man with light skin and pleasant features. The broadness of his shoulders was exactly matched by the distance kept between his two feet, so that he looked like a tricky boxer readying himself for a fight.
‘New comrades!’ He shook their hands firmly and slowly, taking his time to look them in the eye and speaking as if these were words he had rehearsed and repeated countless times before. ‘I’m proud of you, thank you for coming. Thank you for fighting. I hope you will be coming with us all the way to Jogo House, where we will be presenting a memorandum to the cabinet secretary.’
It was peaceful as yet. The anti-riot police had not arrived and so they were taking a break in the sweltering heat, lolling about on the traffic islands, on café chairs of now abandoned restaurants, or some simply lying down on the deserted main road. Jai watched as a student picked up two chairs and turned around, heading back in the direction of the campus.
‘Many business owners have left the CBD for fear that we are going to be looting,’ Steven was saying. �
��But all we want is a peaceful demonstration, to fight for our right to affordable education because it is what the government promised us. But they are planning on increasing the fees, which as you know are already very expensive.’
‘I saw some students raiding a woman’s kiosk,’ Jai told him. ‘Another one just walked away with outdoor furniture from a coffee shop over there. I think the shop owners have a right to be anxious.’
Steven followed Jai’s finger, two metal chairs tucked beneath the man’s armpits and scraping along the road. ‘There are over two thousand students at this rally and only one of me.’ He turned back to Jai. ‘It is a shame that some people are so weak in the face of temptation but most of us guys know what we are here for and don’t allow ourselves to become distracted.’
It was easy to understand why people would want to follow such a man. He spoke with sturdy fluency and one felt comforted by him, encouraged to be as confident and assured. Steven never allowed his gaze to wander as he spoke, intent on catching every expression, every word, so that one emerged from the conversation feeling special and changed, and with a peculiar feeling that you owed him something back.
‘Well, you are their leader,’ Michael spoke up, refusing to be sucked into the man’s obvious play. ‘You should make sure that others don’t suffer any violations of their rights while you are fighting for yours.’
A twisted smile bordering on a sneer, but Steven’s voice remained courteous. ‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ he said as he shook their hands once more and started to move down the road, shouting into his megaphone, ‘Cooom-rade POWER! Cooom-rade POWER!’
He picked up students as he went, dusting them off and encouraging them to reach for their signs and twigs, to slip rocks into their pockets. Soon, it would be time to face the police.
Jai couldn’t be sure which side initiated it. It was difficult to see through the rising clouds of tear gas, difficult to concentrate with the rotten stench from the heated ground below. The crowd, gripped by a sudden hysteria, had begun to scatter and many students ran in a backward direction, seeking the shelter of trees and buildings, some even crawling under parked cars and setting off alarms.
Steven and Ivy, with a group gathering behind them, charged toward the defense line of anti-riot police. Someone shouted, ‘They want to draw lines like it’s a battlefield? Let’s give them a war.’
This elicited a cheer amid the quick bang! of warning shots fired into the air by the police, the tear-gas canisters launched upward, largely ignored. One landed beside Michael’s foot and he pulled Jai behind the cover of a parked Land Cruiser. Jai pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around his mouth and nose, encouraging Michael to do the same.
‘Let’s go,’ said Jai, overcome with excitement.
‘I thought we decided to stay back this time?’ It wasn’t fear that drove Michael to say this. It was the fact that he didn’t believe in violence, in the sudden escalation of forcefulness on both sides – the potential bloodshed and fighting amongst people who knew nothing except that they were meant to be angry.
He watched from his ducked-down position as three men upended a street sign, struggling to bring it down and use part of it as a weapon.
‘We didn’t come all this way to turn back now,’ his friend insisted and took off into the panicked crowd.
‘Cooom-rade POWER! Cooom-rade POWER!’
It was clear that Steven had been hoping for this exact outcome. His voice carried even without the microphone and his face contracted with determination as he caught retreating students and pulled them forward by their shirt tails or their elbows, encouraging them back – all the while, thrusting his arm repeatedly into the air. ‘No Justice! No peace! You cannot condemn a people unheard.’
When they reached Steven’s side, he nodded at them with approval. ‘Good, you stayed.’
The T-shirts around their faces helped keep the severity of the tear gas at bay, and though it stung the back of Jai’s throat, making him cough uncomfortably into the cotton, he shouted, ‘Cooom-rade POWER!’ and felt the strength of his voice lift even higher.
His gaze was cut through by the silver spiraling of a canister in the air, the high whistle of its trajectory filling his ears and, for a moment, the protest halted as he watched it come directly for Steven’s head. Instinctively, Jai threw an arm around the man’s waist and pulled him down so that the canister narrowly missed his cheek and slammed into Jai’s upper arm. It ricocheted off him and threw itself further back into the crowd.
Jai brought his forehead to his knees, keeping his eyes shut tightly and his breath even tighter, but the canister never exploded.
‘Get up – let me help you.’
As Michael dragged him from the crowd, Jai looked back with sinking horror to see that some students were crowded around the canister.
‘Get away!’ he shouted in Swahili. ‘It’s going to explode.’
He wanted to move toward them but his muscles cramped up, closing inward.
Michael left him there, shoving his way through the crowd and toward the canister. When he reached it, he kicked it in a long arc and it landed on a patch of garden, bursting open in three separate clouds of poison.
‘You said we’d stay out of this one!’ Michael said to his friend as he helped him across the road, away from the crowd. ‘What were you thinking? Look at your arm.’ As he spoke, he searched around for shelter.
‘Over there.’ Jai pointed to a small shop where an Indian man was leaning slightly out of the door.
As they approached, the sound of the riots fading into distant cries, Michael called out, ‘Please, can you help us?’
The man looked prepared to close them out but then he saw Jai cradling his bloodied left arm and he shoved them inside, shutting the door securely behind them.
‘You kids and your fighting,’ he muttered, as the two boys fell to their knees at the entrance, coughing and gasping and dragging the T-shirts from their faces. The smoke had filled their throats and every breath was laborious, producing sticky and thick saliva. Their eyes were temporarily blinded by tears; it was as if they were viewing the shop from underwater – a lost city with grimacing masks – and Michael shut his eyes against it. He fought the clawing panic in his chest, pressing his palms to the ground, grateful for something steady and hard beneath him.
The man returned from the back of the shop with two pans of warm water and instructed the boys to wash their eyes with it, constantly returning to his window. As the stinging subsided and the world became solid once more, the shop owner said, ‘Let me bring my first aid kit – that looks quite deep,’ then, shaking his head, ‘What were you thinking, taking your shirts off? Tomorrow, you’ll see how much your skin will burn.’
Michael leaned his head in exhaustion against a wooden desk and closed his eyes.
‘Are you okay?’
Jai was like an excited boy, still in the grip of his adrenaline. ‘That was amazing!’
Michael didn’t reply because on the contrary, he had felt like he had been amongst a pack of wild animals who had neither direction nor one defined purpose and, unlike Jai, he was certain that there were other, better ways of doing such things.
The man returned to fix Jai’s arm and they stayed in the antique shop well into the evening, after all the students had been chased away and there was nothing but empty streets laden with rocks and the steel tinkles of tear-gas canisters rolling in the wind.
30
Esther had become an annoyance. More than that, she was his personal form of constant punishment. She had been more in love with David than Jeffery had imagined and the shock of his death had loosened something inside of her, leaving her constantly restless and muddled. Jeffery would often awake to noises in the kitchen or living room, the eerie scrape of chair legs as she dragged it to the open window, watching out over the road.
It was not long before this was accompanied by the clinking of a glass bottle as it rolled off the table top, e
mpty. In all those times Jeffery had visited their house, Esther had refused to touch the alcohol her husband had so enjoyed. But now it was possible for her to go through half a bottle of whiskey during the day so that she would come to bed smelling sickly sweet and, on the worst evenings, like vomit.
One night, he heard her incoherent murmurings, louder than usual, and he crept down to see what she was doing, less out of worry than goaded by the desire to shut her up. The house creaked with the swish swish of passing cars, the drumming of the boys upstairs, which, when everything was closed, was like the vibrations of a lullaby. But now, they were hard and clear clashes of sound, filling him with sleepy irritation because she had opened all the windows.
Hidden within the shadows, Jeffery saw Esther stumble with the chair, catching herself at the doorway to the living room. She placed the seat beside the window and, grabbing the frame for support, hoisted herself up and steadied her shaking legs beneath her. Five months ago the slight piece of furniture would have held her weight easily, but now it strained and threatened to break beneath her body, which had ballooned with sorrow.
Her nightgown shifted about her body, revealing smooth, unbroken brown shadows and he noticed how, despite her skin having been forced to stretch over her growing size, it remained as taut and perfect as porcelain.
She placed one foot on the windowsill and edged slightly forward, gasping as the chair tilted beneath her, and brought her leg back down. She swallowed in gusts of cold air and clung to her stomach as the foot went back up, toes inching outward.
He should have let her do it. It had become impossible to forget the thing that he had done while she slept so close to him, seeking shelter in his warmth. Often, he would stare at Esther as she dreamed, her mouth slack and salivating, murmuring David’s name. Why, why, why have you left me here this way? Every why was a fresh accusation, piling upon him like sin after sin until he was unable to breathe under the weight of her grief. He spent less time at home, some days with Marlyn, sometimes with other whores he found in bars, loitering on K-Street or even in the police station, when they came in to report assaults or robberies.