FICTION
I no longer want to be told that we disrupt the peace We do not interrupt the peace We are hated like war years and are still wondering who we betrayed. We cradle the bones of the dead time, writing songs and singing to no one. About this town where each citizen is a poet. A torment, a self-mutilation, crucified by poetry, by old wisdom, the manners, the traditions, the kindness and the generosity of those who have do little. From a mutilating tenderness, a bruisedness. For hearts we have places where they can be struck out. One day the stairs won't be darkened by the shadow of barons hunting for your backs. There was water before the navy, the pirate. Before the promise of what it hid, and the enemies it might carry. Oh, all those teeth! Those beautiful, sleek devoured of men, fast in the water yet so sweet in the broth. Our killers, our sustenance, and this- this, the eating of and the eating by is an act of love. This is what we know, let us call it an act of love.
—Binti Mombasa, ‘Mombasa Raha, Raha Mombasa’ (From Down River Road, Issue 1 July 2021)
Cooked Meat
She could not remember the exact moment she forgot her name, or what time it was, what she was doing, what she was thinking. But she was sure she was running, or thinking of running. In her head, she had covered a thousand miles, even though she had never known the world beyond Balambala, the small, permanent village two hundred miles northwest of Garissa, Kenya, where she had lived all her sixteen years. She was sure too she was crying, wet-crying—with tears, that is—or dry-crying, without.
The Whip Fetchers
In the duksi, the sand was blackened by the ink that seeped in, the ink with which we wrote on our loox. ‘If you memorize before the ink is dry, you’ll never forget it,’ the ma’alim would say. He spoke with an intimidating and exotic accent. He was rumoured to be from Jigjiga, Ethiopia a town most of us children had not heard of before. His tongue was as sharp as his whip.
Uncle
He has heard of the stories of killings of Somali businessmen in that country. But makes quick preprations and leaves Garissa for South Africa. He sets up a spaza in Port Elizabeth, a shack made of corrugated iron. It’s popular with Somali businessmen who immigrated to seek fortune there. He and the Somali boy he employed as his assistant sleep and pray at the back, behind a tall stack of maize flour. He sends money back to his family monthly and calls them on his cellphone.
For Whom the Light Shines
The mighty Mediterranean sea beckoned for the tired occupants of the small, overflowing boat. Sometimes it was blue and calm. Sometimes it was ruthless and firm. They tried to hold on to the boat with all their remaining strength but it threw them up into the air and they held their breath. The journey was endless. Time seemed to be sucked into its the sea’s suffocating omnipresence, like stardust into a black hole.