My phone beeped as I left the University’s library that windy evening in May. I walked with my hands sheltered in warm gloves and the rest of my body covered in a dark green coat that I had bought in Gikomba market months before. The long, lazy sunsets were a joy, I formed stories in my mind, stories that I would tell my son, I took pictures of people walking around in small vests and shorts at the first hint of sunshine. This particular evening, my mind was on the timeless buildings, the carefully carved gargoyles of lion heads, and dragons on door frames and roof tops. I made up stories of the people who lived there, and the ones who had lived there for hundreds of years before, of the ones who built them, of their secrets, their pains and longings of love. They too must have had their moments, they too must have been separated from their babies and lost their lovers in senseless murders.
The phone vibrated again. There were two messages.
“Black girls, just as Somali men, are guilty, in their own special ways:) When are we taking that honeymoon trip offer, Mrs. Abdul?”
“What? Who?” I shook my head. “Some guts, what makes you think I want to be your wife…” I thought of the few lonely nights during my first week in Copenhagen, when I had allowed for thoughts of meeting him again, loving him, giving myself a chance. I even wondered if he would like my son, Trevor. Abdul never called back but he was in my mind all the time however hard I tried to forget him. I was determined to erase the whole episode of our first meeting off my mind.
A meeting that would turn my life upside down, of all days, fate had it that we met on the 29th of April, it was the day Trevor turned three, and also three years after the death of his father, Kenny. I had woken up at six in the morning, I took white roses I’d bought the day before to his grave at the Lang’ata Cemetery, like the ones he had given me the day he proposed to me, and when he learned that I was carrying his child. He’d said white roses were pure, like his love for me, like our child would be. I took with me a stone painted with Trevor’s handprint and placed it besides the other two handprints from his two previous birthdays. I sat on the dusty ground with my coffee and talked with him, about how big Trevor had grown, he could count to ten, he knew the months of the year, how he called me Angie, and my mother mama. For the next two hours, I cried, laughed and talked all alone. The cemetery was quiet at that time of the day, I remember the first year I had been scared, I saw images of Kenny walking towards me with his skin falling off. I had placed the flowers and the stone with the handprint and ran back home. But now two years later, I was hoping for any sign of him, from the birds and the butterflies flying around. I wanted to believe it was him laughing with me, happy to hear about Trevor. Maybe next year I would carry Trevor with me.
As I walked back to the road, and though I had done all the talking, I felt at peace, his spirit was with me.
On my way home I passed by the baker’s and collected Trevor’s cake. When I got back home at eleven all the guests had arrived and Trevor was busy opening his with his gifts. A happy boy like any three-year-old would be, oblivious of the memory his birthday evoked. Later he shared the car shaped cake with his friends just before they left.
By the time they left, I was exhausted at smiling with friends and relatives, who gravely avoided mentioning Kenny’s death, nodding at the compliments of how big Trevor had become. I promised Kenny’s mother that we would visit her more often.
I lay down with Trevor as he took his afternoon nap and told him of all the things I would bring him from Denmark. I stroked his hair with my fingers, his resemblance with Kenny was alarming. His big brown eyes, his little round nose, the twitch in his eyes when he spoke of football. When he fell asleep I cried for having to leave him behind, I cried that I never fully celebrated his birth, nor truly mourned his father’s death. Kenny had died in my arms, I had covered my pregnant body with his dead weight to hide from the murderer at the Sunday service in Ngara church in Nairobi, on the 29th of April 2012. And when the gunshots had ended, my water broke and Trevor was born right next to his dead father’s warm body. And now, as Trevor lay with me, I wondered how I would explain why he would never know his father, why I could not save him from the terrorist’s gun. It was his death that made me apply for a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Nairobi, and now this three-month trip to Copenhagen to complete my research.
Mother woke me up for dinner, and shortly after we took a taxi to the airport. I kissed Trevor goodbye with tears in my eyes, as he clung to my chest.
I sat fiddling with my telephone, after trying in vain to reach mother. Only three hours since we parted, but I missed Trevor and wanted to hear his voice. I adjusted my fleece jacket and relaxed my shoulders one more time. I wasn’t sure what I hated more; if it was the hard chairs at the JKIA airport, or the waiting and the imminent flying. I tried mother’s phone but there was still no answer.
“Excuse me.” said a male voice, it was from a man who tripped on my bag that lay carelessly on the floor. He had been pacing up and down, murmuring something to himself as mother did with her rosary beads.
I said nothing and continued pressing the keys on my phone, a quick ‘love you’ message would have to do.
“After you.” The voice came again, I looked up, and was surprised at the contradiction of his deep husky voice and his small body. He had a perfect smile, black curly hair soaked in gel, his perfume, an expensive kind. But even in all his perfection, there was something chilling about him, his cold brown eyes looked painfully familiar. And when he looked at me, I worried he had seen through the fear in my heart. He gestured with his hands offering me a space in front of him. I waved back. He walked leisurely with a bounce that he had probably invented in high school but forgot to get rid of it as he grew up, a teenager trapped in thirty year old body screaming for attention. He opened a small bag around his waist and swung a red passport and his IPhone at the boarding counter. The attendant looked at him, at his passport and then looked at him again, “Any hand luggage?” “No madam” he answered back. The attendant gave one last look at his passport. I watched this somehow familiar stranger walk through the scanner, at his face as he frowned at the beep and the red lamp. Later as he put his belt back on, I saw his brown eyes brightened again. I shivered at the thought of his intentions and prayed there was nothing to that beep.
“Enjoy your flight.” The attendant said as she handed me my boarding pass, and I with my shaky hands emptied my handbag for scanning.
I rushed to my seat and located the closest exits, made a last urgent call to my mother and swore my everlasting love for her and my son, and as I turned off my phone I said a small prayer.
“May I?” There he was again. I got up and he squeezed his skinny legs through and sat by the window seat. He looked at me and smiled, after making a silly comment about fate and destiny. I felt a trickle of sweat down my forehead. He turned the other way and started playing games on his phone. The other passengers around had an air of indifference, as if the Garissa massacre a week before never happened.
I fitted my seat belt, and when the flight attendant instructed us to go through the manual for more information on security, I quickly grabbed mine but I knew that no information in it would save me.
“Are you okay? First time travelling?” he asked.
“Stop it, the phone, it’s time for take-off!” I said.
“Don’t worry, it’s on flight mode. Nervous?” he said. “Where are you off to?”
I hesitated before answering him, then decided on Doha, “Qatar, Doha,” I said.
“Is it for work?”
“No… yes.” I said and asked for a drink at the first sight of a flight attendant on the isle.
“You are not sure?” he asked.
“French or Chilean?” the attendant asked.
“I hate French wine.” I said.
“Two Chilean please.” he said to the flight attendant.
I tried to ignore his forced conversations and was relieved when the flight attendant came back with two small bottles; I ordered for one more, hoping these Chilean grapes would help to calm my nerves.
He fiddled with his phone, midst a bit of small talk and like I, drowned himself in wine. And at one point as he put his phone in the pouch, I saw clear plastic boxes in the bag and shiny wires wrapped around each other, and I took the last drop in my glass and prayed.
Only in Kenya this can happen. What is the point of those scanners if they don’t work? But they do, oh yes they did, they detected my artificial hair braids stocked in my bag. I had to convince them it was for personal use. They detected my two kilos of ugali flour, and thought I was smuggling drugs. Kenyans, like me, and they thought maize flour was drugs. But a bomb they couldn’t detect! What’s the point, what is the very point? I thought.
He paused and looked at me. “How do you like Chilean, is it working already?” He said with a grin. And him, a real waste! In another life, I would have thought him handsome, even a perfect father for my son. How I wished the Chilean was working.
I rolled my eyes and hoped he would leave me alone, I looked at the bag well fitted around his waist and every time he fiddled with it I took a large sip of wine. I powdered my face and applied my bright red lipstick and decided that if I had to go, I would go looking pretty.
“Hi miss is everything alright? You’ve been shaking and sweating ever since.” he said.
If only you knew, I thought.
I asked for another refill of the Chilean in an effort to ignore his presence, but he, too, signaled for a refill. I hated his accent, American, or was it Norwegian? It sounded fake, a cheap cover-up for his real identity. After a few Chileans, I gathered the guts to ask why he didn’t have any hand luggage.
“I know what you are up to.” I said to him gesturing at the bag around his waist with my mouth.
“For a wife that’s what. You know you can marry me, and forget about living in Qatar. I like an observant woman. A beautiful and observant woman … better yet, a voluptuous, beautiful and observant woman.” He put his hands on my thighs.
“Take your filthy hands away from me!”
“You know they will mistreat you and take away your passport, you’ll be a slave. I know many black girls who have fallen into that trap. What’s the matter with you ladies?” the more wine he drank, the louder he became.
“Who? What are you talking about? What do you know about African women? At least we are no murderers.” His free piece of advice only managed to make me hate him even more.
“I knew it from the moment I saw you. You are going to work, right?” He winked as he said ‘work’. “Come with me, I will give you money, buy you a good car!” he dragged his vowels when he spoke.
“Where? In heaven you mean?” My voice was getting hazy, and my sight blurry.
“Well suit yourself then, I’m only trying to help.” He took a large gulp of his wine, opened his bag and took out the small plastic boxes. He put the back again and excused himself to go to the toilet.
“No! No! Wait! ” I said as I reached for his shirt.
“It will just be a minute!” He said.
“No, no, then I will come with you, I will marry you!”
I gulped down his remaining wine and ran after him before he opened the toilet door.
“Wait, I will marry you. Let’s be together. Just give me the bag!” I shouted.
The flight attendants stopped me I screamt as I tried to free myself. “It’s him you should stop. Oh God! The bag!” I cried.
He locked the door, and everything played in slow motion for the very last time. The flight attendants held me, I knelt on the isle right in front of the toilet and put my hands over my eyes and prayed. At the back of my eyes I could see the crash, the blaze of fire, and prayed it would be painless. I saw my fiancé’s lifeless body lying in a pool of blood in the church in Ngara. The same man, who had taken away his life now locked himself in the toilet, at 40,000 feet above the ground. My heart stopped when a slight turbulence rocked the plane.
The other passengers stared at me, some screaming, others hugging their children tight. Finally he came out of the toilet, took my hands and lifted me up.
“Yes I’ll marry you.” He kissed my lips.
The screaming changed to cheering and clapping. He looked at my trembled face, hugged me, and led me back to our seats.
“What’s the matter with you woman?” he whispered.
“What have you done? I know you. I’ve seen you before, please stop! These guys are innocent.”
“Do what? What’s with the paranoia?” He said.
Shortly after, the flight attendant announced a congratulations message to a Mr. Abdul and a Ms. Angela and brought us two small bottles of Champagne. She offered a seat at the business class on our trip to Copenhagen. I stared at him embarrassed.
“Nice to meet you, Ms. Angela. So you’re headed to Copenhagen.” He said.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Abdul,” I said.
We toasted to our ignorance and fate.
When we landed in Doha, the attendants passed us a letter of congratulations from the airlines, signed by the pilot herself. Abdul laughed when I told him I was a visiting researcher at the Institute of Psychology at the university in Copenhagen.
“Small world, I live there.”
We held hands in the transit area and talked like we had known each other for a lifetime.
He had just lost his cousin in the recent Garissa attacks, whose burial he had been attending. I told him of the Ngara Church incident, and apologized for my behavior. He looked down and held my hands tight.
We slept through the next six hours flight to Copenhagen. At the airport in Copenhagen we walked together like old friends.
“Maybe you could come and meet my family sometime?”
“I would like that,” I said. “Goodbye Abdul.” I smiled as I entered my taxi. It would be a while before I heard from him again, but I saw him in my dreams every night, and every night he was there with no inhibitions, no reservations, he was all mine. I didn’t have to wonder anymore what falling crazily and deeply in love would feel like. And of all the strangers I would meet during my short stay, Abdul became my most familiar stranger.
The ringing of my phone disrupted my daydreams. I cancelled the call and replied to the message.
“Sorry, I’m busy.”
“No you are not.”
“Ok.” I wrote.
“Non-committal? Why are you shaking your head so?”
I turned behind, and there he was, right behind me with a mix of purple and yellow flowers he had picked on the street. “Are those dandelions? You have no sense of romance,” I smiled as our eyes met. “I will honoured to be your guide.” I said.
He held my cold hands, and walked with me through the streets of Copenhagen. We went to Café G, and as we waited he took my hands and rubbed them against his.
“It’s going to summer now, it will get better, and you will love the Danish beaches,” he said, his eyes looking directly into mine. We sat in a dark corner of the near-empty café, light from the candles illuminating his brown skin. He kissed my hands, examined my unpolished nails and kissed them one by one. I wanted to pull back, I had not been with a man for the last three years, any attempt would have been betrayal to Kenny. And yet, I didn’t oppose it when the man whose eyes I once feared leaned forward to kiss my lips. I felt liberated by my desire for him, and by his playful nature, and he kissed me with abandon from my fingernails, to my neck, to the coffee foam he put on my lips.
“Let’s go home,” I said and he gladly obliged.
“Abdul, one more question before we leave.” I said looking in his eyes.
“Anything, ask me anything” he said.
“Ok, what was in that plastic box, and the wires in the pouch?”
“What pouch?”
“Your bag, that time in the plane?”
“My contact lenses, earphones?”
“Oh, shit, sorry. Can I ask one more thing, I feel like I knew you before, before we met at the airport, do you have a brother?”
“Yes” Abdul paused. He looked at me, then around us, and nodded still holding my hands. “I have a twin.” He added.
My heart skipped, I took my hands off of him and rushed towards the door.
“Wait, I can explain. Please wait.”
He stopped me by the door and held my hands.
“I’m sorry, we have tried, he told no one, and then we heard one day that he’d left for Somalia. Four years ago… He is my brother, he was…,” he said.
“You bastard! I knew it, God No! My Kenny!” I sobbed, there was a sharp pain in my stomach, and when I looked at him, all I saw was the eyes of his brother. I knew I had to walk away from him. Abdul just stood there motionless, and his cold eyes followed me as I disappeared in the lonely multitudes.
