Things I Have Withheld
Page 13
At Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, it isn’t clear which line I should join. East Africans who do not require visas are directed to one line; foreigners who require visas are directed to another. I am neither fish nor fowl. I am not from East Africa, but my Jamaican passport means I do not need a visa. I ask the airport staff for help and am told to join the East African line. At the desk, the immigration officer looks at my passport and says, “Karibu”—the Swahili word for welcome, but I think he has said something like “Carib” or “Caribbean” and I stupidly say, “Yes, that’s where I’m from.” He looks at me oddly and shakes his head, but I don’t think much of it at the time.
Outside, the driver who has my name written on a piece of paper says the word again, “Karibu”, and then I see it written on a huge illuminated sign “Karibu Nairobi” and now I feel a little silly, but also a little pleased that this word for “welcome” should also name me and my place in the world.
Dear Binj,
I make a bad—an incredibly foolish decision. It is night and I use Google Maps to tell me the location of the pub where Wanjeri has said I should meet her. Wanjeri expects me to take a cab, but it is three kilometres away and I decide to walk it. I decide to walk it because I think it is a way to know a city, and I think I have gotten so fat over Christmas that I have been trying to walk everywhere. I see now that there’s a way that someone like me, a black Caribbean man, can feel too comfortable in a city like Nairobi. So much reminds me of home.
What Google Maps tells me is this: that from the hotel to the pub is a walk of three kilometres, and that it is mostly flat, and that it should take me 37 minutes. As it often is in cities, I become the blue dot on my phone. I go where it tells me. There are other things that Google Maps does not tell me. It does not tell me that the first two kilometres will be straightforward enough—will be along well-lit streets and parks, but the last kilometre will be along a major highway without streetlights. It does not tell me that the only footpath will be tucked away to the dark side of the road, that I will have to walk under bridges where the forgotten of this city seem to loiter and they will look at me suspiciously. It does not tell me—You are a foreigner! This is a bad decision! This is stupid! Run!
Wanjeri calls to ask where I am and I tell her. The call ends abruptly. Later she will tell me that she panicked but did not want to pass on that panic. And that she imagined my phone lit up in the dark and drawing even more attention to myself, and this was the only way she could think of to keep me safe—to end the call immediately.
I notice the boy who, from behind me, is walking at some speed. When he comes up to me and alongside me, he slows his pace—walking only a half a step in front of me. It doesn’t take him long to turn around and ask me for money. He gesticulates from his hand to his mouth to indicate hunger. I say I don’t have any money, and it helps that this is true. I do not so much see as I feel the presence of the other two boys who have come close behind me. It is almost impressive—the military tactic and precision, the way they have boxed me in. One of the boys behind, clearly to cause me some fear, keeps on saying, “No no. He looks like a good man. We do not need to kill him. We do not need to kill him.” It is a game they have played before, and also it is not a game. The threatening words are meant to cause me panic, to make me become a useless fumbling thing, and they are working though I am trying hard to steel myself against their power. I think the boys are going to grab my bag and I decide that is fine. There is nothing much in it—nothing so irreplaceable. Instead, one reaches towards my back pocket, grabbing for my phone. I do not know why I do it, what instinct I am following, but I punch him in the face. He yells. I yell. We are looking at each other.
The way their eyes dart about me—I think I know what the boys are thinking. They are assessing me. My body. I am taller than they are. I am bigger than they are. I am suddenly grateful for my body and grateful for the weight that piled on over the Christmas. Still, I know that if they look at me for a second longer they will see right through me—they will see that I am soft, a foreigner with no fighting skills. In that split second, I run into the middle of the busy highway and stand between the cars zooming by. I yell some more. The boys are now surprised and seem to be considering not my body, but my mind. He is a crazy tourist. He is not worth it. I stay there in the road, flagging cars. The boys walk away slowly.
I run the last kilometre towards the pub. I stay in the road, on the far side. The drivers probably think me crazy, but I do not care. Along the way I pass at least two other groups of homeless boys—always in threes—and always pointing at me as if wondering if they should cross the road towards me.
The shock of the incident only grows the further I run away from it. Only now do I start to tremble. The trembling fills my body. Shit, I say. Over and over again. Shit. Shit. My body in this city feels profoundly unfamiliar, and noticeable, and vulnerable.
Dear Binj,
How did you become the kind of man that you became, and here? A big black man who began to wear pink tutu skirts just for the fuck of it. And did you not feel overly seen? Did you not feel vulnerable? And why did you return? I said before that I get it, and I think I mostly do, but sometimes I do not. When I talk about a place where our bodies make sense, what I really mean is a place where our bodies are not seen, where they raise no questions, where they are not worth pondering. I do not think I will ever have access to such a body again, not even in Jamaica. I wear the wrong clothes now, I am told, or the wrong jewellery. The sense of another place clings to me. And truth is, I would never want to fit in, not easily, even as I hate standing out. It is what it is.
Dear Binj,
The next evening I go to the launch of Nairobi Noir—a short story anthology—and I cannot help but think wryly that I have some qualification to be here, that I have some familiarity now with the dark underbelly of this city. The launch is held in the ground-floor auditorium of the Alliance Française, a theatre-like space, and it is a packed house—standing room only. It seems everyone who is a part of the Nairobi literary scene is here and so it hits me all over again that you are not. Years ago, I had even written a story for Kingston Noir when that globe-trotting anthology series had dropped anchor in Jamaica, so I have some idea about how the anthologies are organised. I listen to the contributing writers talk about the communities that make up this city—Eastleigh, Kilimani, Pangani, Westlands—and the darknesses that stalk these streets. The moderator, a woman who seems genuinely enthusiastic about the collection, asks the editor, Peter Kimani, about the police who feature in several of the stories and not often in a positive light. Peter smiles his familiar soft and knowing smile. He does not yet know I’m in Nairobi; I’ve come here tonight partly to say hello to him. Peter shrugs, “This is Nairobi. We all know what the police mean.” And then he looks into the large audience for confirmation. “We all know, don’t we? Let’s test this—by show of hands, how many people here actually like the police?” From the packed house, only one hand is raised in the air. I can only see the hand. I do not see the body to which the hand is attached, and yet the hand is so very noticeable in this place. It is noticeable not only because it is raised but also because it is white. Who here actually likes the police? Only one hand. Only a white hand. And everyone laughs knowingly, nervously.
Dear Binj,
I hardly take pictures in Nairobi, largely because it is the law of the city and I don’t want to risk arrest. And because a long time ago I read Sontag and it stayed with me—these ways that the camera can come between ourselves and experiences. I therefore do not take a photo of the man standing in the middle of traffic on Kenyatta Avenue, his dreadlocks piled high on top of his head, but wrapped with a turban. He is wearing a white pufferjacket striped with red, gold and green, and across the back is emblazoned: “JAMAICA”. The taxi driver points this out to me and says “Yes—those Jamaican colours are very popular.” He asks me about Rastafari and the dreadloc
ks hairstyle, which he says is now so very popular with Kenyan youths. And I think what an incredible feat this is that my small island has pulled off, how thoroughly we have taken these things and made them our own, that a Kenyan taxi driver would not associate the colours red, green and gold with his neighbouring country, Ethiopia, and he would not associate dreadlocks with his own people—the Maasai or the Mau Mau.
I never asked you about the short dreadlocks that you occasionally sported—what they meant. I didn’t ask you because it would have been a stupid question—the kind of question that often came to me, and that often annoyed me in those days when I too wore dreadlocks. It is as if our hair has to have some deep meaning or an entire philosophy attached to it. But I think maybe people ask about the meaning of our hair because it is easier to ask that than to ask about the meaning of our entire bodies.
You rocked so many styles, Binj—completely bald, short dreadlocks, a bright red swish that looked suspiciously like a Nike logo, stripes of bright blue, half bright purple and half pink, all these colours not usually imagined on bodies like ours. I loved that about you. I still do.
Dear Binj,
I was told about Rosslyn. I was told it is a whole other world, almost as if you are no longer in Nairobi, but I do not accept this. I think it depends on what you expect of cities, and what should we expect of cities if not contradictions? Still, there is a noticeable shift driving from the city centre to these suburbs. The gates of Rosslyn lead to long driveways and the houses are set so far back that you cannot see them. Out on the street, before I turn into the art gallery I have come to visit, I pass a white woman walking her dog. She raises her hand above her head to acknowledge me and I do the same—but her hand reminds me of the one that was raised the night before. Let’s test this—by show of hands. How many people here actually like the police?
It is in Rosslyn that I first hear the local word for the thing that happened to me two nights before—or that almost happened. I turn into the long driveway; I walk past the house set far back, past a paddock for horses, through a sculpture garden and finally inside the art gallery. I end up talking to two other white women who are gracious and kind and have offered me tea. They raise their eyebrows when I tell them what hotel it is I am staying at, so close to the city centre. “Well,” says one, “you had better brace yourself for what we call a ‘Nairobbery’. It is sure to happen.”
A Nairobbery—so common to the landscape that it has its own name, like an indigenous flower. I imagine the “nairobbery” as a dark hibiscus. I do not admit to the women that I have experienced it already. It was already attempted. It is as if I want to protect the reputation of the nameless boys who almost harmed me. Instead I shift the conversation and ask the women about their accents. One woman looks at me a little surprised. “England,” she says, as if it should have been obvious—and it was. I realise I haven’t been clear. “I’m sorry,” I say, “I meant where in England?” “Oh,” she says, understanding at last. “I’m from Devon. But I’ve been living here for ten years.”
The other woman, the one who owns the gallery, says, “Well, I was actually born here!” And she says it with what seems to be an equal mixture of defensiveness and defeat. This is a fight she has both won and lost already. She has won it because she is still here; she has lost it because she always has to explain. There is, of course, a whole world of things that cannot be said, and certainly not over tea, and not in light of the kindness she has offered me—but an entire history all the same that explains why she could have been born here, and why she lives in a house set so far back from the road, and why she speaks with an accent so untouched by the country she claims, as if her accent, like the house, is set far back from things.
Binj, I think about this neighbourhood—Rosslyn, and another that I had visited some days before—Karen. Not Kilimani, or Kileleshwa, or Kawangware, but Rosslyn and Karen. Neighbourhoods that may as well have been named after the women with whom I am speaking—were in fact named after women like them—where women such as these can walk their dogs and be less afraid of the nairobberies that bloom like hibiscuses against the sidewalks of this city. Or simply less afraid of Nairobi.
And sipping the tea, I think about all these things that cannot be said over tea.
Dear Binj,
I take the Nai Nami tour. The reviews of it are excellent and it isn’t expensive. Nai Nami—my Nairobi. A different kind of tour, done by former street boys. I think about the dangers of this kind of tour—not physical danger, but maybe something spiritual—how we make tourist products out of other people’s poverty. I still go on the tour, but I try to keep this danger in mind.
I arrive at the meeting point a little early but still expect to see a group waiting. I do not. Exactly at the appointed time, a young man with short dreadlocks walks up and scans the faces around. I suspect he is the guide and I suspect he is looking for someone white. I’m suddenly too shy to tell him it’s me—just in case he isn’t actually the guide. He is looking at his phone and so I send a WhatsApp message to the tour group chat they added me to the night before. He looks up then, directly at me and walks over smiling. “I’m sorry, first I thought it was you, then I thought no, he’s Nairobi, and then I wasn’t sure.”
I take a strange comfort in this—that he thought I might actually be from this place. “Is it just me?” I ask.
“Yes . . . sometimes we have as many as eighteen, today it is just you.”
We are joined almost immediately by another guide. I am outnumbered two to one—more guides than tourists, but I think it is better this way. We do not walk as if on a tour, but like friends walking through their own city. They are as interested in the fact that I am from Jamaica, and from Kingston, as I am interested in their Nairobi. We do not go into the pretty buildings, not that there are many of these in the centre of the city. The historical landmarks are only pointed out if we happen to be walking by them anyway. Instead, they show me a police officer discreetly accepting a bribe from a motorist. They pause to shake the hand of a security guard in front of a store and then tell me his story—that he was once a wanted gunman, but he disappeared for several months and everyone thought he was dead but now he’s returned with a new passport and new name—but it’s him and there he is working as a security guard. They show me the corners where they once slept in those days when they were homeless, and where was warm but unsafe because you could not see anything—you could not see what was coming, and where else was cold and uncomfortable but provided a better vantage point from which to see the authorities who occasionally came to “clean the city”.
They ask me about Vybz Kartel and Mavado and the Gully and Gaza war in Jamaica. They have gotten things mixed up though—turned them the wrong way around. They think Kartel represents “Gully” and that Mavado represents “Gaza”. “No no!” I tell them laughing. “It’s the other way!” Later, I understand the mistake. As we walk by an elaborate canal system into which the city drains itself, where all the rubbish of Nairobi sails when it rains, they point out that there was a group of homeless boys who actually lived in these gullies. They were quite a ruthless gang and Vybz Kartel was their hero and so they called themselves the Kartellos. I tell them that in Jamaica the gang of homeless boys who live in the gullies has a slightly different reputation. They lean in to listen but I do not have the heart to explain any further. Masculinity can be such a fragile thing.
Or maybe I am not giving them enough credit. One of them asks me about the tattoos on my arms. I explain that they are barcodes for the books I have written. “You are a writer?” he says.
“Yes,” I answer.
“Like Binyavanga Wainaina?” he says. And it takes me by surprise—your name suddenly in the air.
“Yes,” I say, “like Binyavanga.”
“I read a story about him,” the boy tells me, “but I think he’s dead now. Yes. He has died.”
Dear Binj,
Dear Binj,
It is my last night in Nairobi and I go to a one-woman show. I sit under a tree with a carving of the word “Karibu” swinging from it and think about how this word has bookended my trip. The storytelling show isn’t very good but there is love in the audience. The storyteller has managed to bring out many of her friends who are here to cheer her on. At the beginning she encourages us to laugh as loudly as we feel to laugh, and at the sad points—because there will be sad points, she tells us—we can cry ugly tears if that is what we feel to do. But there is little in the art of her stories, in the telling of them or the structure of them that would provoke much laughter and certainly not enough pathos to provoke tears. Still, at the smallest opportunity the audience laughs as loudly as they can and it feels they are performing as much for her as she is for them. And I love it. I love that she is loved. I love all the love that is in the room.