frightfully out of place. Adé and I whispered about his plight as we counted our shillings. Was Daniel mentally unstable, or telling the truth?
Later, Daniel told us he wanted to be a writer. He had written a novel and wanted me to read it. There were poems in his pocket, dozens of them. He read a few of them aloud as the safari jeep trucked alongside enormous giraffes, and crouched near lions who looked at us with so little interest I wondered if they even saw us sitting before them. Were lions able to see human beings, or did they have some form of human-blindness?
And then again: the shot. I was standing up in the jeep as we bounced alongside hundreds of flamingoes when I took another bullet, this time to the head. The steel plate that opened the roof of the jeep, the thing that gave it a giant eye, had not been secured properly. We hit a bump and up it flew, a square piece of solidsteel, knocking me to black. I lost some moments and then returned, the strong, sturdy American, insisting I was fine. Daniel was beside himself with worry. There was me, and there was also his lack of insurance and his not wanting to be chief and the potential failure of his attempt to be something other than chief. It was all very complex for him.
For us, it was less so. I was fine, but needed to lie down. We could not afford a room at the fancy lodge in the heart of the Serengeti, but Daniel’s uncle worked there so we drove up, the uncle was located, and he showed us to an empty room used by workers who sometimes stayed at the lodge for months at a time. I slept. When I woke, my jaw hurt. I asked for aspirin, the kind in packets that mix into water and juice like sugar, the only type I could find since I arrived in Kenya. Adé found them for sale at the gift shop. He asked how many I wanted. I said ten, a dozen, two dozen, a lot.
Adé decided that Daniel had “the same kind of trouble as Halima,” which meant he was unstable,
kabisa,
not just lonely. We wondered again if Daniel was ever named chief of anything. Did his father even die? Adé said that sometimes families “threw children with mental problems away.” Maybe Daniel was one of those. I could not be decisive, but Adé was clear. He stroked my arm tenderly as I massaged the side of my face and jawbone. I loved the animals, especially the giraffes, with their graceful but awkward lope, but it was time to move on. We needed to get back to the water, to the sound of the call to prayer. We needed to be in our
kangas
and
kikois,
where things were simple and known. We left for the coast, and another island. Zanzibar.
I called home a week after we arrived on the new but reassuringly familiar island, to hear concern in my father’s voice. Wherehad I been and why hadn’t I called in such a long time? I told him everything and nothing. The passport was in the works, and we had seen lions. The man I was to marry, my fiancé, was eating chapatis and drinking a cup of steaming, clove-rich chai. We had found a house by the ocean to stay in until the passport was ready. The man who owned the house said if Adé helped him paint the exterior, we could live there for free as long as we wanted.
I loved everything about the Zanzibar house—its lack of electricity, and the roar of the ocean just outside our window at night. It was at the end of a long road, and stood alone. Mugo’s glare, the image of his hand palming the succession of twenty-dollar bills, began to fade. The pain in my jaw subsided. I still heard the shot, but more faintly. Adé heard nothing but the sound of moving forward. Rice and
mchicha
sustained us, and so did the sun. It was hot in the day, blinding, then breezy and warm at night. The air was thick. Women wrapped rich blue pieces of indigo around their waists, and the conch shells tumbled from the sea like watermelons: huge, smooth, heavy. I picked them up when I walked along the beach at low tide, and rubbed their smooth hardness against my cheeks. One night, his
Later, Daniel told us he wanted to be a writer. He had written a novel and wanted me to read it. There were poems in his pocket, dozens of them. He read a few of them aloud as the safari jeep trucked alongside enormous giraffes, and crouched near lions who looked at us with so little interest I wondered if they even saw us sitting before them. Were lions able to see human beings, or did they have some form of human-blindness?
And then again: the shot. I was standing up in the jeep as we bounced alongside hundreds of flamingoes when I took another bullet, this time to the head. The steel plate that opened the roof of the jeep, the thing that gave it a giant eye, had not been secured properly. We hit a bump and up it flew, a square piece of solidsteel, knocking me to black. I lost some moments and then returned, the strong, sturdy American, insisting I was fine. Daniel was beside himself with worry. There was me, and there was also his lack of insurance and his not wanting to be chief and the potential failure of his attempt to be something other than chief. It was all very complex for him.
For us, it was less so. I was fine, but needed to lie down. We could not afford a room at the fancy lodge in the heart of the Serengeti, but Daniel’s uncle worked there so we drove up, the uncle was located, and he showed us to an empty room used by workers who sometimes stayed at the lodge for months at a time. I slept. When I woke, my jaw hurt. I asked for aspirin, the kind in packets that mix into water and juice like sugar, the only type I could find since I arrived in Kenya. Adé found them for sale at the gift shop. He asked how many I wanted. I said ten, a dozen, two dozen, a lot.
Adé decided that Daniel had “the same kind of trouble as Halima,” which meant he was unstable,
kabisa,
not just lonely. We wondered again if Daniel was ever named chief of anything. Did his father even die? Adé said that sometimes families “threw children with mental problems away.” Maybe Daniel was one of those. I could not be decisive, but Adé was clear. He stroked my arm tenderly as I massaged the side of my face and jawbone. I loved the animals, especially the giraffes, with their graceful but awkward lope, but it was time to move on. We needed to get back to the water, to the sound of the call to prayer. We needed to be in our
kangas
and
kikois,
where things were simple and known. We left for the coast, and another island. Zanzibar.
I called home a week after we arrived on the new but reassuringly familiar island, to hear concern in my father’s voice. Wherehad I been and why hadn’t I called in such a long time? I told him everything and nothing. The passport was in the works, and we had seen lions. The man I was to marry, my fiancé, was eating chapatis and drinking a cup of steaming, clove-rich chai. We had found a house by the ocean to stay in until the passport was ready. The man who owned the house said if Adé helped him paint the exterior, we could live there for free as long as we wanted.
I loved everything about the Zanzibar house—its lack of electricity, and the roar of the ocean just outside our window at night. It was at the end of a long road, and stood alone. Mugo’s glare, the image of his hand palming the succession of twenty-dollar bills, began to fade. The pain in my jaw subsided. I still heard the shot, but more faintly. Adé heard nothing but the sound of moving forward. Rice and
mchicha
sustained us, and so did the sun. It was hot in the day, blinding, then breezy and warm at night. The air was thick. Women wrapped rich blue pieces of indigo around their waists, and the conch shells tumbled from the sea like watermelons: huge, smooth, heavy. I picked them up when I walked along the beach at low tide, and rubbed their smooth hardness against my cheeks. One night, his
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