Who Will Catch Us As We Fall (34 page)

Jai left him mid-sentence, wandering into the crowd, which was as upbeat as last time – a normal gathering of people, enjoying the excuse not to spend the day locked up in the libraries or lecture rooms.

‘I see Steven is lapping up his time in front of the camera.' Anthony was limping toward him.

‘It should be you up there, talking to them.' As Jai spoke, he was jostled and pushed by the students flocking to them. They wore big smiles and greeted Anthony warmly.

‘
Sasa
, bro?'

‘Good to see you. They almost got you in there, didn't they?'

Anthony clapped hands, backs and the shoulders of everyone who came up to greet him; he knew and cared for each one personally and they stayed for long moments at his side, always reluctant to move on. As he engaged them in conversation, Jai turned to see that the cameraman was no longer filming. Instead, he was smoking and talking amongst a group of students while Steven was huddled behind the acacia and conversing with the TV presenter in a rapid manner, constantly stretching his neck out from behind the pale bark to see if anyone had noticed them. He shook the presenter's hand firmly before emerging – hands in his pockets as he ambled toward their group.

On his way, someone handed him the megaphone and he called through it for people to join him. ‘Anthony would like to say a few words.'

As Anthony began reciting his poem, Jai's eyes were drawn back to the tree. He noticed with surprise, and some unease, that the TV presenter was accompanied by a police officer.

Once Anthony had finished, Steven led the crowd down the street, chanting, ‘
Cooom-rade POWER
!'
and Jai found something ridiculous about the mantra that had once seemed so thrilling and romantic to him. They were just words now, powerless and empty, and when he shouted them, his throat went dry.

‘Are you alright?' Anthony came to walk beside him.

‘I thought I saw—'

‘I want you both to walk in the front with me.' Steven inserted himself between the two of them and pushed Anthony out ahead, beyond Jai's reach.

The violence erupted quickly. They hadn't been marching for more than twenty minutes before the first flare shot up into the air, bridging the short distance between the police officers and students, landing less than a meter away from their front line. As the crowd behind them pushed forward eagerly at the provocation, Jai said urgently to Anthony, ‘Stay close to me. I can help you if anything happens.'

They had a clear view of the police, huddled in front of their cars and minivans, and he saw one pull out a tear-gas canister. His eyes and skin stung at the memory but he pushed away his fear.

‘
Cooom-rade POWER! Cooom-rade POWER
!'

How much he wished they would stop repeating that mundane chant; it was beginning to irk him so he was glad when someone close to him took up a line of Anthony's poem instead. ‘We labor together in search for / Knowledge and truth.'

The repetitious chant fed into the crowd so that it found its feet at last, bursting forward. The police officers – in helmets and bulletproof vests – shoved at each other while hanging back. ‘
Enda! Enda! Come on, go
!' They had shields and guns but there was something imposing about the protest, a quiet strength, led not by Steven but by Anthony, limping yet steadfast, with Jai close to him and them shouting together, ‘We labor together in search for / Knowledge and truth.'

Another tear-gas canister swallowed up some students in its breathless, horror-filled panic. It spread quickly into the crowd behind Jai, breaking it off in many small directions and as the students ran, they scooped up rocks from the roadside, throwing them at will so that even the pedestrians passing had to cower behind trees and cars to avoid being hit.

While Steven joined in the violence, Anthony stayed quiet, marching ever forward. He repeated his poem to himself, helping people up off the road after they had been hit by the tear gas, wiping their eyes with the frayed ends of his jacket. If he came upon someone who was ready to launch a stone or pull up a signpost, Anthony would catch his wrist and say, ‘Think first. What is the point? How will they understand what you are trying to say when you are saying it like an animal?'

During the chaos, Jai glimpsed Steven isolated from the group. At a distance, it looked like he was getting into a tussle with a policeman. Their heads were bent close together, Steven's hands on the officer's shoulders, the cop grasping his elbows. But then suddenly and simultaneously, they pulled away from each other and Steven threw himself back into the crowd, his fist raised above his head. Jai could hear him, the fury in his voice, ‘You cannot condemn us unheard!' and the policeman was heading in Jai's direction, but when he searched about him he could not find Anthony.

He shouted out his name but it was lost in the thousands of other voices, and he pushed through the crowd roughly, blinking away the residues of tear gas. ‘Anthony! We have to leave,' he called out, a heavy feeling in his chest – not knowing why they must go, only knowing that they must.

When he finally came to an opening, he spotted a police truck and a familiar limp. He began running, shouting in Swahili, ‘Leave him alone!' When he reached the officers, he tried to pry them away from Anthony, asking, ‘What are you doing?'

One of them kept his tight hold of Anthony, who had gone with them so peacefully that no one had noticed. The officer said to Jai, ‘You must leave this place. It is becoming dangerous.'

‘He's done nothing wrong. Let him go.'

‘Disturbing the peace is something very wrong. He must learn his lesson.'

‘What about everyone else? Aren't you going to arrest me as well?'

‘And have your
mzee
get me fired?' the cop scoffed. ‘
Enda
,
go!' He shook his baton in Jai's face, just beneath his chin. He had leaned in so close, their noses were almost pressed together and Jai recognized him as the policeman talking to Steven earlier. He tried to reach around him in panic, more certain than ever that something was wrong.

‘Anthony!' he shouted but was cut off as the policeman's baton made direct contact with his gut. His breath halted mid-way and his knees hit the tarmac, legs folding beneath him. There followed a heavy kick with an army boot to the same place, right at the navel.

The policeman brought down the baton in a swift swing, right in the center of Jai's shoulder blades so that he collapsed forward. ‘Now you've learned your lesson.'

They had loaded Anthony into the van but before the door slid shut, Jai heard him call out, ‘If you don't mind, perhaps you can come and get me from the station…' before the car sped away and Jai was left coughing up a cloud of spiraling dust.

When he finally regained his breath and sat up, he saw Steven standing not two meters away from him.

‘They took Anthony,' Jai called to him. ‘We have to do something.'

The short man watched the shadow of the van slowly fade and silently turned around to rejoin the group of students. His body blended into theirs, his voice camouflaged within their sounds until Jai could no longer distinguish him and he fell back onto the hot ground, blinded by the sun.

He couldn't be sure how long he staggered the deserted roads in town, the side streets tarred and gleaming in the heat, the midday sun cracking his skin. Nairobi had never seemed more cruel, indifferent to the pounding ache that refused to leave his temples or the sharp stabbing in his side. When he finally found a taxi, Jai's throat was so parched that the words choked him and came out in gasps.

‘Chiromo police station.'

He borrowed the driver's mobile phone to call his father, handing it back with a fifty shilling note.

When Raj arrived at the police station, he found his son in a furious debate with one of the officers sitting at the desk.

‘You can't hold him without cause!' Jai was shouting. ‘I'll pay the bail if it's a matter of money – I'll give you however much you want.'

Raj forced his son to be still. ‘What happened to you?'

‘These guys beat me up.'

The policeman cowered under Raj's stare. ‘Not me,
mzee.
I've been sitting behind this desk all day long.'

‘They have my friend in there. They took him during the protests – only him,' Jai said, clinging to Raj's forearms, reminding him how young his son still was. ‘Something is not right, Dad. I have to get him out.'

‘What's the reason for holding the boy?'

‘Disturbance of peace. He was being violent and it was either shoot or arrest him.'

Jai's protestations were becoming weaker as the throbbing in his head turned to a steady pain. ‘I was there the whole time and he never did anything like that.'

‘I'll pay the bail for him.'

‘Sorry,
mzee,
I can't help you this time. The court date will be set tomorrow and then you can come and fetch him if you wish,
sawa
?'

‘Not
sawa
.' Jai slammed his fist down on the desk and winced.

Raj held his son back. ‘There's nothing we can do for him now. I promise we'll come back first thing tomorrow. We have to get you to a doctor.'

Jai ignored his concerns. ‘I can't just leave him here.'

‘Jai?'

A worried voice from the door and Raj saw a short, light-skinned man moving forward into the station, sweat stains butterflying out from his armpits.

A flash before Raj's eyes – he stumbled back in shock as his son reached out and grabbed the man's collar and said, ‘Hey, you little shit, what are you up to?'

The man held up his hands in surrender. ‘I've come to fetch Anthony. What happened to you?'

‘Don't pretend like you didn't see me lying there when they took Anthony away.' The room was spinning and Jai's anxiety was making it more and more difficult to stand. The floors began to slope and slide, the desk pulled away from him. He leaned against his father's steady weight.

‘You should go home now.' Steven's voice sounded far away – ‘I will get Anthony out – don't trouble yourself, everything will be okay' – before the world split apart beneath his feet.

Jai hid a grimace as Leena accidentally brushed up against him. His stomach was badly injured and even the slightest movement sent a ripple effect of hot pain through his body and set his head and teeth ringing. He lay with his neck tilted upward, catching tiny hiccups of air.

‘I don't understand why you had to play soccer with those
kharias
,' Pooja muttered, eyes glued to the television set glumly. ‘They only know how to be rough – of course they would hurt you.'

‘How many times do I have to tell you not to call them that?' Jai snapped, his pain making him quick to anger.

She shook her head at her husband. ‘They injure him until he cannot even breathe and still he defends them. This is all your doing.'

Raj knew that he should tell her that he had taken their son to MP Shah Hospital earlier that afternoon, that Jai had suffered many bruises and a mild concussion, but he had promised his silence and so instead kept his gaze fixed away from Pooja.

She turned up the volume. ‘Look, it's another strike. What did I tell you about that university?'

But her words turned insubstantial, never reaching Jai. He was so focused on the images flashing on the news, waiting impatiently for the moment when the camera zoomed in on two presenters, smiling inanely, oblivious to his agitation.

‘Sit back, Jai. You need to relax,' Pooja was saying but he waved her words away, keeping upright and clutching his abdomen. A tight, sick feeling built in his chest, an aching sweat in his palms when he saw a picture of Anthony marching in the crowd. His bowels went loose from fear, a low groan as he fell to his knees.

He heard the presenter's girlish, high voice.
It is with deep regret and sadness that we report a student of Nairobi University has died during today's protest which took place on Uhuru Highway.
Jai struggled to string her words together but they were too far away to grasp.
Anthony was a third-year university student and he was arrested today for inciting violence at a protest which many students say was meant to be peaceful.

He heard his name being called. ‘What's the matter with him?' Pooja's concern swallowed by the roar of the TV.

‘Oh!' His sister's astonished voice and Pooja turned back to the news to see a young man talking into the camera and beside him was her son. The man was saying:
We made it clear from the very beginning that we wanted peaceful demonstrations. That we did not want to use any violence but simply speak up, to begin conversations…

Watching it took Jai back to that morning when everything had made sense. When his head didn't hurt and his stomach wasn't in pieces – when he wasn't exhausted by guilt and sorrow.

Pooja was in an uproar. ‘What are you doing on TV? What are you doing over there with those people?'

‘Stop asking me so many questions.' The carpet dug into his skin as he collapsed against the couch, his sister's cool fingers at his neck. Their steadiness anchored him for a little while, the room around him temporarily stilled.

The presenter was now saying:
It has been reported that the young student committed suicide whilst being held at Chiromo police station earlier this afternoon.

This time, a current shot of Steven standing outside the doors of the station, surrounded by a horde of somber-looking students. Ivy was beside him, holding his hand.

Steven was saying, ‘Anthony was arrested once again this afternoon, put in the central police cells and now they are reporting that he has taken his own life by passing an electric wire over his neck. They are saying that he strangled himself.' He looked straight out, at Jai. Gravely, hand to chest, ‘Please know that we will not stop seeking justice for him. We want the police commissioner to order a full inquiry into his death and we won't rest until those responsible are held accountable for their actions.'