Criers

When I sat on that seat, it was not a matter of irregular and unprecedented. It was an urgency, I wanted any seat empty next to a window. I wished I could pay for two and just be alone, I didn’t want to sit with anybody. As quickly as I sat on it I tried to flee, urged the driver to go. Urged the criers to stop.

Men do not cry

Men take everything in a stride

Fifty, Hamsini,: Fifty, Hamisini: Fifty, Hamsini

Two criers were calling out the wares of a hawker. They were bras and panties, polyester from China. My brother once told me that he had met one crier in his Keg joint in Umoja. After he bought him a keg of beer, in his usual social science forensic, the crier told him about his business.

His voice was his asset, he had said, siphoning the keg through a straw and hoping his tale was interesting enough. I live by the benevolence of Sir Jah and his gift to me of a voice. I wake up each morning and go by the riiiiveeerside for a session of the herb. He drags the riverside like Joseph Hill’s reggae classic. And then I walk to Muthurwa. He says looking down at his tattered shoes to make his point. And there traders pay us to shout all day, Fifty for those who have gone to school and Hamsini for the sufferers. People are so anxious in life they forget Sir Jah feeds the birds of the air and the beasts of the land and fish of the see. And then he gesture with his finger for my brothers half-life cigarette. He thinks my brother probably is the professor types, the ones who buy people alcohol to get them tell their stories or a journalist or something.

I smile to myself a part of my misery cried away. My chest heaves and I still feel a puffball in my throat. Hot dry choking puff ball. I wish the driver could make off. Ram his foot onto the foot onto the accelerator and fly home.

Doni Thirty, Doni Thirty, Doni Thirty, Doni Thirty, Doni Thirty, Doni Thirty, Thirty Doni Thirty

Touts join in the cacophony. They hit against the matatu like shadow boxers gesturing three with their middle fourth and little finger, each finger worth ten shillings.

An old minibus that had probably plied more routes than necessary pulled over. Its sides bashed in by constant bashing from criers, cracked and aged.

Doni Mbao, Twenty Doni, Doni Mbao, Twenty Doni, Doni Mbao, Twenty Doni, Doni Mbao,

Everyone on my matatu alighted and boarded the new old matatu and in seconds it was off leaving me alone and my criers with a job rolled back. I cursed them, cursed their criers and angrily looked out. All I wanted was to leave, to go away, to float away like their cry.

A man must not cry

He must bear everything in his heart.

I decided on anger, needed an emotion to kill my self-loathing. I needed to be angry to go and drink some cheap vodka, to swivel the mixture of industrial spirit in water and gulp down into my mouth in one swig. Maybe that way the pain would go away. They say alcohol does not solve problems. But they are some dumb people, alcohol allows you to be honest with yourself, to see things in a different perspective. Of course I needed alcohol. Or maybe I should go to a brothel. Angrily let my spite burn out of my groin. Spit a fiery lava into a random vulva. Maybe I should hit someone or something, start an argument and bash somebody’s face in. punch away into warm black flesh until my knuckles meet dull bone resisting impact.

The bus started off jerking into the long queue of vehicles in traffic. My anger spent me, tired me, my chest was heaving with emotion. I no longer wanted to be part of life. Just to watch it with the amusement afforded by God.

Allllaaaaahu, Akbar, Alaaaaaahu Akbar…

The muezzin was raising his cry to the heavens. Flying with recited melody through speakers hanging out of a tower at the Mosque. Floating like consolation to God above where he chose to listen to the muezzin with the sweetest voice all over the world. I closed my eyes and sucked in the salty taste in my mouth.

I could still see it in her eyes, she could see into me. The immense pain that raked my mind. The confusion as I tried to understand. There was no anger then, just an overwhelming feeling of heartbreak. Wrung heart, taut chest that labored breathing, and the feeling of everything falling apart at my feet. The disappointment.

If that is what love does to you then I do not want to ever feel it. I thought to myself, philosophizing. Marrying a bad woman makes a man a philosopher, Nietzsche. I laughed at the thought. If love means cutting myself down at the sheens, I never want it. But was there an otherwise. Lovelessness. A hollow pit of drudgery and loneliness. A painful black hole that I had lived all my life.

When I was little I cried. But a man is not supposed to cry. I felt compelled to cry because I realized I had lost the recognition of my mother. She was weaning me then from her over protection. I was angry, heightening my perception of sibling rivalry and I wanted my affection. So I thought that if I cried, maybe I would evoke emotions back. But mama told me, Men do not cry. It was then that I realized why men do not cry, because the vilest human emotion so grave that it harangues the very nature of man is pity. So I decided never to be pitiable and never to pity.

She knew, I knew it was over. I did not want it to but I knew that was the only way it would go. Unsaid but it was over. I felt crumpled. Overwhelmed. Even death felt more predictable the uncertainties of living without her was too much to bear. How would I even manage to live? How could I wake up each morning and not think fondly of her and hope that she would call me and I would hear her husky sleepy voice over the phone, her chuckle at the other end of the call. The way her words fell out of her mouth with heavy syllables cropped at the edges. How could I imagine never seeing her?

How was I to handle the thought that she was now with another man. Tickling him and laughing playfully, looking at him naughtily and teasing him. That she was kissing him and telling him she loved him.

I clenched my fist and stared into the night Nairobi air that was rushing in through the half opened window, I closed it and felt a blinding urge to jump out. I stared out at open night clubs and was undecided if I should alight and rush into one. When I reached Eastlands. I rushed out bumping into the tout and hoping he would protest so that I could initiate a scuffle. He did not. I ploughed into the first bar I saw and ordered a drink. I no longer cared if I spent all my money. I drunk and drunk and wrote this story hoping it would cry for me.