Uncle
VI.
Please don’t go. You’ve not even been here for a year.
Listen, there are no opportunities here.
Amin and Sumeya need you. I need you.
A man ought to do better than this.
But it is better than death. They slaughter our people there. The other day they flew in another body. Another Somali life gone.
Listen, wallahi death is Truth. One will die on the exact hour and at the exact place Allah has preordained.
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.
One night in his third month the men come. Just when business starts to look promising. He awakes to the sound of boots on the metallic door, which, in the still of the night sound like gunshots. He stands, frozen for a moment, not sure where he is. He lights his torch and sees the boy standing too, eyes wide open.
These makwerekwere, they shout. There’s a slur in their speech. They sound drunk. These makwerekwere coming to our country to take our jobs. You think you are so smart, eh? You think you are so special?
Bullets rain. Metal door caves. He slips the stupefied boy in the narrow slit between the wall and sacks of rice. He retrieves the rifle from under the mattress. His hands shake. He drops it twice. He returns fire. As a young boy he used to ward off dogged hyenas from gorging on their goats with a gun. Get a rifle, the other storekeepers had counselled him when he arrived. In South Africa everybody has one. So he bought a mattress and a rifle. He loads a magazine and fires back. He is terrified into numbness. Everything is quiet but everything swirls. He runs out of bullets. His finger still holds down the trigger. His wife and children flash across his mind. What will happen to them? He offers a prayer.
The sun rises and the city stirs to life. The first customer of the day comes. The boy stands next to sacks of sugar and flour that have now turned crimson. Beams of morning light slant in through the bullet holes on the walls.
When the body was brought back home, the men say, He died fighting, like a man.
I have no use for that, the woman says. I need my husband.
(Dedicated to my uncle Yarow who died in SA seeking to make a better life for his family, like many other Somali economic immigrants. May God have mercy on his soul. Ameen.)