Izda Luhumyo

Privately, I rename your city. I start calling it “the city of restlessness”.

Everywhere I look, I see people who find that they cannot make a home here; people who are always on their way to better elsewheres; people on whom the city hangs like an ill-fitting coat.
Here, people seem to have little use for the present. Instead, everything is held to ransom by the regrets of the past and the possibilities of the future.

Perhaps Nairobi is simply an outline I am colouring in with my own restlessness. We humans have an uncanny way of imposing bits and pieces of ourselves on places. Perhaps this is my mark.

Back home, I’m famous for my itchy feet. I’ve told you about that time my grandmother lowered her voice to a husky whisper and said to my mother: “I wonder what our girl did in her past?”

“Why?” Mother asked.

“Because God played a dirty trick on her,” Grandmother said. “Why take with one hand what you give with the other?”

Mother’s response was swift: “I’ve never known God to make mistakes.”

My name is Santa and this is what it entails: a gap in my front teeth, a laugh that can make walls move, an absent father, a love for lemon pickles, a talent for turning words into swords, and a body with only one leg.

I am finally in Nairobi.

Nairobi: what we mean when we say “Kenya”.

Nairobi: brighter lights, bigger city.

Somewhere in my notebook is a hastily scribbled note: “It is easy to look; it is not easy to see.”

I came all this way because no matter how carefully I looked, I could not see my home town. It was too close; everything was right there in my face.

But Nairobi is new to me. There is enough distance between the city and I; I can begin to see it clearly.

This city is not yet tainted with my memories. There are no places I avoid because of this one thing or the other. It is unmarked territory for me.

I want to learn how Nairobi works. I want to lose myself in this place, to see whether I can begin to build a life here.

To do this, I must find a way to understand its rhythms, and see where I fit in the chaos.

I need a guide. So I do what I’ve been neglecting to do all this while: I call you.

And now we are two.

You are Sofia; I am Santa.

Together we are a nuisance, walking aimlessly around the city, being a pain to those who have actual places to go.

You visit my house in Umoja, and I show you the pride that is my apartment.

You ask: “Why Umoja?”

I tell you that I am fond of Umoja, even though its looks are against it. I like this quarter because it has the suspicion of a charming past about it. It makes me think of an elderly musician who was all the rage in his youth but has now been slowed down by time.

“This place makes me feel like I live in a time, not a place,” I say.

You frown-smile, as if you suddenly stumble upon mirth right there in the midst of your confusion. Then you say: “And what colour shall we paint these walls?”

In my kitchen, I manage to impress you with my recipe of chicken cooked in coconut milk.

Later, we sit on the kitchen floor and you show me your tattoos. You tell me that they signify the three great losses of your life.

“Everyone must have a record of their private aches,” you say. “I get tattoos; you scribble in your notebook. It’s all the same thing.”

“You talk like a poet,” I say.

We go through my wardrobe and weed out all the bright-coloured clothes. You’ve decided that I look nicer in blacks and greys.

I fish out blue hair dye from among my things, and we paint my bathroom blue in the process of dyeing your hair.

As we sit outside in the sun waiting for your hair to dry, you explain my face to me as if it were some kind of theory.

You say: “Your face is interesting to look at. What I mean is: you’re beautiful in an interesting way. The features of your face are individually striking. You have gorgeous eyes, a lush mouth, and nice cheekbones. But it’s all chaos. There’s no harmony; you’ve got too many pretty things on your face and every feature cries to stand out.”

“I’m not sure whether to feel insulted or not,” I say.

You frown. Then you say: “Santa, I have decided that you are a woman on the brink of stunning beauty. And that’s a compliment.”

When darkness falls, we sit on my bed sipping tea and feeling like brand-new people – you with your blue hair and me with my grey and black clothes.

You start telling me about this place on Kimathi Street where they play Bongo music all night and where the light is always right and where if you perch on the long stools with your skirt riding up your thighs and your butt hanging off the stool just right, a man on his way home will ask the bartender to keep the drinks coming for you.

I say: “Sofia, let’s go and try out our new selves on the world.”

We are outside this club on Kimathi Street. And we’ve been standing here for about a half an hour.
We’ve been shifting our weight from crutch to crutch, and our spirits have been falling further with every bewildered look that people give us.

One man raises his voice: “Why don’t they just buy from a local and drink from home?”

Another man shakes his head. “I thought I’d seen all wonders,” he says.

So it happens that as we stand outside the club, waiting to be deemed worthy to get in, we discover that we are a wonder. That our presence here is itself a wonder.

But we don’t feel like wonders. We’re just two women who want cold beers.

We know we should walk away, but that requires more courage than we can muster between us.

So we keep waiting and waiting, avoiding each other’s eyes.

Finally, a man in a suit – the club manager, perhaps – steps outside and whispers something into the ears of the bouncers at the door.

They allow us to enter.

We get stools at a spot where we can watch the Nairobi night. The beers are brought and we drink in silence.

Then unable to bear it any longer, I say to you: “Sofia, these beers are not that cold and the stools are not even that high and come on, this place is not even that good to be charging us 350 for a beer. Can we please go?”

We find that we cannot say a word to each other as we walk to the bus station.

Later, when I get home, you call me. You say: “Soul sister, from now on, let’s just stick to the places where we’re actually wanted okay?”

“Okay,” I say.

Here is the first lesson of the city: don’t go where you’re not wanted.

A few weeks later, I say to you: “Show me the places you like.”

So you take me to bookshops and art galleries and thrift shops and museums. You take me to the oldest buildings in the city and watch me as I graze my hands over the old, mildewed stone.
We get on buses going to places like Londiani and Ndia and Gichugu. We travel just to go and see what’s happening.

There is no method to the places we visit; we are simply two women who take our whims seriously.

We just want to keep moving.

We want our eyes to glaze over new places; we want new material with which to fill our conversations; we want new things to remember.

I tell you about my theory of Nairobi’s restlessness. About this constant movement its people have, as if being propelled forward – always forward – by some kind of force.

“It’s the only way,” you say. “Here, you must keep moving. Otherwise, the sand swallows you whole.”

On the buses, we talk loudly about books and people and places and ideas that only we know of.

You confide your weakness for men from the lakeside; I confirm mine for a man who knows how to roll his tongue around Kiswahili words.

We try not to think about the future, aspiring only as far as the next bus stop, as far as our next outfits, as far as our next meal.

We live out our lives as if we are in an Otis Redding song: full of longing and wistfulness and sappy melancholy.

And later, when the buses deposit us in nondescript towns that only appear on the nine o’clock news for bad things, we walk around and ask for the most outrageous of things, things that could never exist in such places: tattoo parlours, fish pilau, crop tops. We are secretly pleased when we are rewarded with the shaking of heads and confused frowns.

We spend some of our days sitting in small-town cafés, waiting for the next thing.

Somehow we’ve gotten it into our heads that we are the leads in an indie art film and we are roadtripping through lazy and dusty towns, drinking cup after cup of bad coffee, coughing our way through packs and packs of cheap cigarettes, and punctuating our sentences with curses.

When you call home, your mother hears the effect of cigarettes on your voice and only asks that you don’t return home with darkened lips.

One afternoon, you look me in the eye and say: “Hey, soul sister, tell me about him. Even a little.”

I tell you there’s nothing to say.

You say: “Okay, what do you remember most about him?”

“I have no memories of him,” I say. “Thankfully, he left before he could take up space in my life. Mother used to call it a kind of kindness.”

You chuckle. “It can only be called a cruel kindness. Then tell me about your mother’s memories of him.”

“She never said much about him,” I say. “It was too painful for her. They met and then they had me. He left right after I was born.”

“Was it because of you?”

“I think so. You know, I’ve never even met the man. Yet here I am, lugging his name around with me.”

Another afternoon, another café.

You look up from the book you’re reading and say: “Soul sister, where is he now, your father?”

“Here,” I say.

“Is it why you came to Nairobi?”

“No,” I say.

Then later I say softly: “I don’t know, S. Maybe.”

I dress in black, as if I’m on my way to a funeral.

Perhaps I am.

In Westlands, I get lost for about an hour before I find the building.

I choose to heave myself up the stairs so that I can have enough time to change my mind and return to my life.

I am a spectacle: this is the kind of building where concerned people ask to help you.

“May I please help you?” they say.

It gives me enormous pleasure to reject their help.

Sometimes help is just a bother. “Help me with my life instead,” I want to scream at them.

I sit in the reception lounge of a large office and watch people walk past me, their minds taken up by what seem to be important things.

Then about an hour later, I sit across from a man who has poured himself into a crisp, white shirt. I watch shock travel up and down his face as his eyes travel up and down my body.

He looks like he’s making a quick dash into the past to retrieve the connections that will help make him make sense of the reality sitting awkwardly across from him.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time,” I say to him. “I think you’re my father.”

He coughs and then falls quiet.

Finally, he asks: “How is your mother?”

“Dead.”

“Oh my… I didn’t know.”

“Grandmother is dead too, so you can stop sending the money now.”

“The money was for you… um… I’m sorry… God, I don’t know your…”

“Name? Santa.”

“Santa… okay… I see.”

He goes quiet again. Moments pass. And then he says: “She named you after her mother.”

“She also named me after you,” I say. “I think she might have loved you.”

He gets up and opens the windows. He goes to the other side of the room and switches off the light.

Anything but to sit still in this nightmare, it seems.

I search the lines on his face for clues. I’m trying to see if there’s any trace of myself in this man.
He sits down and starts to talk about Mombasa, going on and on about the Mombasa of his younger days.

I get my phone out of my bag and show him a little of Mombasa.

“The Mombasa of the 1990s is long gone,” I tell him. “Places don’t remember people, you know…”

Then I show him pictures of mother’s house, and the flowers she grew outside it.

“It’s a beautiful house,” he says. “And she got to grow her own flowers. She always wanted to do that.”

“She built that house because of your money,” I say.

“Santa… the money was all to provide for you. I am a responsible man.”

My name is unrecognisable in his mouth. I regret handing it to him so easily.

I tell him I have to go.

“I only came to tell you to stop sending the money. It was not even difficult to find you,” I say.

“I was not hiding, Santa.”

“Don’t call me that,” I say through gritted teeth. “You don’t deserve to call me that.”

I get up and amble towards the door.

When a man puts on a white shirt on a Tuesday morning and drives to work, stopping at the usual place to fill up on fuel, he does not expect that the past he deftly left behind him all those years ago will catch up with him. He does not expect to find that some things cannot be placed in boxes and put away. Yet, when the past finally comes to find him in the present, he finds himself wondering why it took so long.

Back home, I find that everything hurts.

I text you: “S, I think I just lost my father.”

You come for me and take me to a tattoo parlour in town and hold my hand as the tattoo guy writes this first loss of my life into my skin.

Later, you hold me as I cry out the pain on my kitchen floor.

I say: “He wasn’t even hiding, Sofia. He wasn’t even hiding.”

Sometimes you have to go on living with the knowledge that someone counts you as a mistake that they have to pay for – for the rest of their lives.

My apartment has started to feel strange. The novelty has worn off, and I spend less and less time in it. I only come to it when the city retreats into night-time. I know what this means. It means it’s time to go.

I’ve been to a couple of places, and I’m on my way to more.

Home can only stop feeling like home if it has felt like home before.

This city cannot home me.

Insomnia comes to me like a messenger. Its message is clear. And in that state of sleeplessness, I pack a few things in my suitcases and leave everything else intact: the bookcase and the cushions and the carpet and the mattress.

You stop coming to my house when you visit one day and see my things packed in suitcases.

Finally, I dare to broach the thick silence that is beginning to wedge itself between us.

I send you a message: “Sofia, I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Flying or bus?” comes the swift response.

“Bus.”

“Which one?”

“Mash. Bus leaves at 9:30 p.m.”

You say you’ve got one more place to show me.

You take me to an ice-cream joint that is covered in yellow and white tiles. You tell me that it has been in place since your parents’ days.

“Sofia, you’ve never told me about your family,” I say.

“You didn’t stay long enough to hear it,” you respond.

We order vanilla ice-cream and listen to the waiter tell us about his home – a village deep in Taita – where it is so cold that they always keeps flasks of hot tea at the ready.

Later, you say: “That explains a lot. I once dated a Taita man, and I swear all we ever did was have sex and drink tea.”

“What happened to him?” I ask.

“Oh, he left,” you say. I’m actually surprised he stayed that long.”

You are there at the bus station when I arrive, minutes before the departure time. The other passengers are already in their seats and the driver has the engine running.

When you see me, you run towards me as fast as a person with one leg can.

We hug. You don’t let go when I start to pull away.

“Sofia, the bus…” I say.

“Soul Sister,” you say. “Your friendship has been a lifeline to me. Please stay. You can build a life here.”

Your words are a rush.

“Sofia…”

“Santa, I’ve never asked anyone to stay in my life…”

“My father… he’s ruined Nairobi for me. I can’t stay… I…”

“He’s an ass! Don’t mind him. Listen to me… you can build a life here… I swear it’s not that bad.”

It’s 9:30 p.m. The driver honks twice. The passengers are now craning their necks, trying to see who’s keeping them waiting.

“Sofia…” I start. I cannot go on.

There is the bus engine running and the driver honking and the passengers waiting and you saying don’t go don’t go don’t go.

And then there’s me, shifting my weight from one crutch to the other, unable to leave and unable to stay.