Who Will Catch Us As We Fall (46 page)

Two days since he last saw her, Leena sends him a text message asking him to meet her at Diamond Plaza. And at lunchtime too – their busiest time of day. She has a point to prove and he chuckles at this stubbornness, thinking that it is the part he likes most about her.

The shopping center is within walking distance from his apartment and he sets off, wanting to prolong the moment of contemplative happiness. The mall has been aptly nicknamed ‘Little India' because it is made up of a multitude of small, overstocked and mostly East-Asian shops – tailors and dressmakers, clothing and material retailers and dozens of stores selling Indian knick-knacks. Recently, other stalls have appeared carrying cheaply priced mobile phones, iPods and other counterfeit goods. The scent of resin peppers the air and small copper bells tinkle outside the various temple shops.

Leena is already seated within the galvanized metal shade of the outdoor food court, sipping on a mug of sugar-cane juice. Squeezing the tip of the straw between her teeth, she waves away a host of waiters, pleading in broken Swahili for them to leave her alone.

‘There are a lot of people here today.' He reaches her, shoos away the insistent waiters and their countless, similar menus. The formica tables are full of businessmen sneaking a quick barbequed lunch, loud families on outings and jostling tourists, cameras hung about their necks and shopping bags at their feet.

They hold each other's gaze until she breaks away with a nervous sigh. ‘I wanted to apologize.'

‘That's not why I came.'

‘I know but I was wrong and I see that now.' A deep scarlet rises up her neck, her throat constricting into a twin pair of hard ridges. But when she speaks, she sounds sure. ‘I want to give this a try.'

‘It's not going to be easy,' he warns, distracted by the light layer of green foam that has stuck to her lip from the juice. He rubs his thumb along it, collecting up the moistness of her mouth. For a moment he thinks he has been too bold but then she smiles.

‘I know.'

He hesitates but has to ask. ‘Your mother—'

Her eyes jump open, a translucent ocher in the sunlight. ‘Actually, do you mind if we keep this between us for now?'

‘I told you, I don't want any secrets.' A rush of disappointment shifts him away from her.

‘I just want to enjoy this for a little while without having to explain it to anyone.' Annoyance dashes across her face. ‘Can't you understand that?'

In the distance, he can make out the rolling, high notes of a Hindi love song escaping the open windows of a parked car. The buzz of chatter overwhelms it as a sudden horde of shoppers enter the food court and already Michael feels the prick of their gaze, people struggling to make sense of the two of them sitting across from each other, fingertips grazing. The sneaky looks and loud whispers are a rude distraction upon their private moment and he catches her hand as it moves away. ‘Okay. We'll do it your way.'

He runs his thumb slowly up and down the inside of her palm in deliberate, secret circles. When he eventually pulls away, she feels the absence of him acutely – a throbbing, sweet hum just below her skin.

The country is stirring with the beginnings of trouble, its corners already unraveled, but they don't pay attention to it because they are too busy coming together.

Before meeting Michael, if someone had asked her to describe Nairobi, she would have struggled with the answer. Her replies had always been vague and run through with an air of fiction. Sweeping red-night skies and daylight robberies. Thin-faced street children compelling you to save them; dusty game drives through yellowing, flat savannah. Things that, though sincere, were the least true things about her city.

Back then, she couldn't have told of the huge, open flea markets such as Gikomba, where gumboots were required to move through the muddy terrain and where one had to arrive in the frigid hours of the morning to beat the rush. She wouldn't have been able to describe the unique yet ordinary pockets – the kind one found elsewhere in the world – such as Arboretum Park with its green trails and park benches frequented by joggers and couples looking to steal a romantic moment; the modern, silver-peaked skyline that would not stop growing.

All those intricate details that made Nairobi less of an enigma and more of a capital city in its own right, she knows them now and they give her home town roots and a firmness in her mind so that for the first time, Leena feels as if she belongs to it and it belongs to her.

She tells him this, leaning against a crooked street light and tilting her mouth up to catch the vanilla streams escaping her ice-cream cone. Michael takes it from her and throws it in the dustbin.

The first time his mouth comes down, it's quick – the brush of a question – before leaving. She tries to talk but once again his lips cover hers, firmer this time, a pressing claim, and he takes her by the waist, drawing her impossibly close.

‘I'll buy you another ice cream,' he says afterward.

She steps back, fingers hovering at her startled mouth. ‘Can we go somewhere quieter? We need to talk.'

In the middle of the afternoon, the apartment block and street around it are tranquil. Not a sound except for their footsteps moving upward, fingers linked. She trails behind him, distracted and overcome by a familiar, dizzying breathlessness whenever her thoughts come too close to what happened that day. Once inside, he leads her to the couch where she pulls her legs up into a soft, lumpy corner, hands busy in her lap. Michael places himself a few spaces away and waits.

Head dipped down, her lips move wordlessly. Talking about what happened isn't the problem. It's trying to explain how it has changed her. Every time she begins, she is met by a veiled uncertainty – shadows seeping into the edges of her thoughts and obscuring them.

Jai has already told Michael about what happened but hearing it from her is painful. He feels it – a rallying anger in his gut – compelled forward just in time to catch her as she falls back, head tucked beneath his chin.

‘I wish I had seen his face because right now, he could be anyone.'

It is easier to talk while supported by the steadiness of his body, the assured pitch of his breath calming her. To confess the anxiety that had extended beyond the man who raped her to others who reminded her of him. To admit that every time one of them brushed against her, approached too near, spoke to her, she recalled the violent rush of his fingers, taking away what was rightfully hers, the accusations he spat so readily, as if she carried within her every injustice of the past.

‘For the longest time, I didn't want anyone to look at me, let alone touch me. Until just now, outside that ice-cream parlor.'

He kisses her face – all those hollow, sharply formed crevices – and holds her for a long time after that.

‘It's dirty business, what's happening up at Tana River.' Raj is talking more to the television than he is to his family.

‘Most of our friends have left for the month. We should think of doing the same – perhaps visit your mother in Toronto or go to London. I haven't seen Amandeep in a while.' Pooja is worried, unnerved by how isolated their street has become, as exposed as it is to the main road. One never knew who could be sneaking in to climb over her neighbors' gates, taking advantage of their prolonged absences – the idea causes her to shiver theatrically.

‘We can't just leave.' Raj's eyes never stray from the graphic images on the news.

At dawn that morning, a village in Tana River Delta belonging to the semi-nomadic Orma tribe was attacked by Pokomo farmers armed with spears and AK-47 rifles, reigniting an age-old rivalry between the two groups.

Even though the pictures have been blurred out, Pooja can still make out the horrific damage: burned, grass-thatched huts split open and blackened like rotting teeth. A small boy, shot from behind, lies unmoving in the blood-clumped dirt. He is still wearing his school backpack, ribbed blue socks pulled up to his knees. Pooja looks away, thinking of her own children.

Her anger at her husband burns stronger than ever, fills her ears with a buzzing heat as she listens to the villager being interviewed on KTN.
These politicians are setting us up, taking advantage of the long-standing conflict between our two groups
–
do they think we don't know who is funding and perpetrating this violence? I'm lucky no one saw me
–
I jumped out of my back window and escaped through the swamp.

Pooja says, this time more aggressively, ‘Look at the situation. Why shouldn't we go when everyone else is doing it?'

‘What kind of Kenyans would we be if we just ran away when it was convenient?'

‘You and your morals.' His love for this country is a selfish streak within Raj that Pooja has never been able to reconcile with, such insensibility from an otherwise practical man.

Raj thinks of Pinto, disrespectfully hidden away in his toilet. ‘I'm going to cast my vote at the end of this week.'

Jai speaks up. ‘There has been some upheaval in the Rift Valley area. I might have to go there for a few days.'

Pooja shakes her head emphatically, still perturbed by what she has seen. ‘You're going to stay here with all of us, in case something happens.'

‘It's for work, Ma.' Just like his father, Jai doesn't even look at her.

‘I don't care. Let those
kharias
solve their own problems.'

Today, her words have a poisonous bite. Perhaps it is the knowledge, as Jai watches the nine o'clock news – the murders, the buying of votes, politicians ready to promise anything just as long as it gets them into State House – that certain things are beyond his reach. It is the slow muting of an impossible childhood hope. He might spend his lifetime fighting and never see any progress at all.

He wants to talk to Michael but his friend hasn't spoken to him in a few weeks, no matter how many times Jai calls. He cannot help but feel that it's all his mother's fault. It had started when she had sent Angela from their lives for nothing more than a hunch, a silly worry. She had spent so much time trying to keep everyone in her control, heeding to certain black-and-white rules of behavior that were as outdated as they were outlandish, simply to fit in with the community, that she was blind to the fact that the world was moving forward without her.

‘When are you going to stop calling them
kharias
?' Jai rises. ‘How many times do I have to ask you not to? You don't pay attention to a word anyone says and yet you expect the whole world to listen to you.'

Pooja's face contorts into shameful arcs; windmill eyes and a mouth dropped open into a tiny
o.
‘Show your mother some respect.'

‘Why should I when you have no respect for me?' he challenges, going for the door and finally understanding the cause of his anger. It is the building tension that is stretching this city tight – Jai feels it, ropelike, in his own body – unfurling, ripping, racing headlong toward breaking point.

She has been instructed to stay at home but instead, at ten o'clock that night, Leena is still sitting at Mercury Lounge in a hard, red booth. The dim light falls in thin bars across the faces of her friends, making them appear villainous and not quite real. She eyes the doorless nook leading out into the open-air patio, feels a pull toward its chilly relief but then Michael rests his hand on her thigh – a firm anchor instantly calming her.

‘I think it's so cute that you two are together.'

The cigarette-filled air has dried out her eyes and makes it difficult to see anything properly but Leena detects a finger pointing out of the darkness at the two of them. The voice is high-pitched and has an annoying tendency to elongate every word.

‘Thanks.' As always, Michael is open and generous with his smile but Leena cannot help the frown that pushes her bottom lip upward, creasing her chin.

At the beginning of the evening, the tension at the table had been palpable, though well hidden. The conversation had been stilted and formal, her friends' eyes permanently stuck on their drinks. It had reminded Leena of the first time Michael had played cricket at the compound; the group dynamic had shifted, becoming uncomfortably fluid and difficult to navigate.

But now, two rounds later, released by the alcohol and dark ambience, her friends lean forward eagerly to inspect Michael. They wear silly, scary smiles and are accepting – encouraging even – of their new relationship, and Leena isn't sure which of these two conflicting attitudes makes her feel worse.

‘Good for you,' someone told her when Michael had gone to the bathroom. ‘We're not stuck in our parents' generation any more.'

‘Nairobi is becoming so cosmopolitan, we have no choice but to accept each other's differences if we want to move forward.' The words are directed at Michael. ‘It's a shame we still have all this nonsense about tribalism.' Whiskey tilts and glints orange as a glass is placed to a speaking mouth. ‘Are you worried about the possible aftermath of these elections?'

Leena sits upright, involuntarily gripping Michael's fingers. ‘What do you mean?'

Michael speaks slowly, as relaxed as always, his nail tracing slow lines in her skin. ‘There have been a few instances of tribal-based riots outside of the city recently with people saying that the only way Kibaki will be re-elected is through a rigged election. And if that happens, they are threatening that it will be us Kikuyu who will pay the price.'

‘But it's just talk, right?' She has forgotten about the people sitting around them; it's only his face – calm and seeming to smile even in its stillness – that she sees. ‘You aren't really going to be in any danger if he is re-elected?'

‘Maybe not.'

The whiskey-slurred voice of one of her friends reaches her, slightly muffled. ‘All you Africans are quite well educated now…'