Dust (40 page)

“
Karibu, Karibu!
Afande Ali Dida Hada? You’re here? You’re really here?” Aaron’s eyes glow, though his salute is unsteady. He detests locusts. A pre–wet season invasion; the beasts are everywhere.

Ali Dida Hada drawls, “At ease. Status update.”

“As reported. Unchanged, sir. Apart from the locusts.” Aaron’s eyes move to the sack of fruits and the newspapers. He apologizes for the state of his uniform. “Charcoal iron,
eh
!” His finger reaches for the newspapers, eyes clinging to the sack. “Mangoes.” He sighs. “And flowers.” Newspapers! “How is Kenya?” he asks in Kiswahili.

“Depending on the will of God. The will of man has proved faulty.” Ali Dida Hada brushes a pesky insect from his face. A bucking wind
hauls in scents from a faraway lake. Ali Dida Hada exhales. A constriction in his chest dissipates.
I’m happy
.

Plane offloaded, the pilot waves and takes off, fighting for daylight. Watching the small plane circle, Ali Dida Hada says to no one in particular, “We leave for Wuoth Ogik now.”

They turn to him. Aaron’s mouth curves downward. The loss of company shakes him. The rich conversations he holds with himself need an audience. “So soon?”

Ali Dida Hada knows something of Aaron’s dread. Those deep groans within silence. Many-layered thick darknesses, murmurs from one’s soul. Unseen footsteps and other unaccounted-for night sounds. He needs to be kind. “The fruits and newspapers are yours,
ndungu
Aaron. We’ll meet again soon.”

Aaron clears his throat. “At least take some doum nuts with you.” His voice cracks.

Night journeys have their rhythm. On the open, long, winding road, shades and shapes of blurred identities. The sound of the car’s engine intrudes. They watch the moon hurry past dark clouds. They pass a euphorbia bush that emulates the leaning Tower of Pisa.

Isaiah says, “I walked this way.”

Ajany glances at him.

“From Wuoth Ogik. On my way to Nairobi.”

Ali Dida Hada asks, “Where did you go?”

“North Horr.”

Ali Dida Hada whistles. “Didn’t get lost?”

“What do you think?”

“How did you find your way?”

“By walking. And walking.”

Soft laughter.

Swirl of dust.

They disturb sand grouse, which fly away in shadow. In the distance, a man-shaped form shimmers, leading two donkeys, its metal adornments gleaming. The flowers perfume the car. Ali Dida Hada warbles a song. Ajany closes her eyes. It is one of the water songs he had taught Odidi to sing. Enraptured by the almost familiar vastness, Isaiah senses
how outsiders who fall out of life and end up here imagine they are the first to have ever done so.

The sound of an AK-47 going off shatters the night’s peace. Ali Dida Hada stops the car.

“What’s that?” Isaiah asks.

“Gunfire,” says Ajany.

They listen. Then Ali Dida Hada gets out of the car and climbs on top, looking toward the west.

They resume their journey, and speed up in the direction of Wuoth Ogik. As Ali Dida Hada’s car reaches a crossroad, a mad
d’abeela
slides behind a tree. The car passes by him. He jogs southward, even farther away from the scene of a crime.

Cumulous clouds and a trail of dust, and they reach Wuoth Ogik. Most of the house is coral rubble.

Ajany scans the ranch, holding her flowers.

Isaiah says, “The house is dying.”

Ajany stands with one foot atop the other, staring in the direction of the cattle
boma
. To Isaiah, she resembles a thin, stripped-bare tree in an eternal landscape, or a solitary ostrich. He would have spoken but for the wind, so he shuffles to stand close to Ajany.

Galgalu approaches them, a bloody bandage wrapped around his head. He recognizes Ali Dida Hada and deliberately slows down, fingering the amethyst resting in the hollow of his chest. He distracts himself—thinks the thorn fence is thinner than usual, studies his shadow—and bends his head.
Why has that man returned?
There were an excess of curses at Wuoth Ogik. Nothing had gone right ever since Ali Dida Hada had entered into its life.

Galgalu spits sideways, depressed by the evidence of his declining powers of exorcism. He has performed arcane rituals to encourage all concerned gods to get rid of Ali Dida Hada. But here he was again.

The first time Ali Dida Hada came back to Wuoth Ogik, he had told Galgalu, “Call me
bambaloona
.…” Galgalu was convinced that the moment he called Ali Dida Hada “marabou stork,” he would be
murdered for insulting a fool. A calculating glitter had popped into his eyes.
What a silly man
.

“I know a coffee song,” Ali Dida Hada had told Galgalu. “Do you want to hear it? It’s from Eritrea.”

“No, I don’t.”

Ali Dida Hada had sung anyway.

Galgalu would never admit that the voice singing
bunabuna
had transported him into a space of fine fragrance and perfect taste.

Anyway he was under no obligation to like everybody.

Galgalu turns to Ajany.

He had incanted hymns that killed lunacy. She seemed steady, even with her bunch of bright flowers.

Life in flow again.

“Ch’uquliisa!”
He limps over.

Ajany hurries into his arms.
“Gaaaluu.”
She touches his bandaged head. “Who?” Her flowers are crushed between them. He hears the fluttery beat of her heart.

Sweet air. She touches his face, as she did when she was a toddler. Blue flies, a buzzing cloud over him, on him. She blows them away.

Isaiah and Ali Dida Hada watch them.

Ali Dida Hada’s skin gathers on his forehead as he reads the fading signs of hooves and sandals on the ground. Tracking them right, he follows until the footprints turn southwest. Dog waste. Tire-sandal marks. Cow dung, camel prints. He squats to read the ground, studies the churned soil leading out of the homestead. Ali Dida Hada’s body stiffens.

Footprints.

Here is where Kormamaddo the camel took off. Here is where someone with slender feet and a light tread caught and calmed him down. Sideways motion, flowing across the ground. Every creature’s footsteps have a unique rhythm. He knew the melody of these human ones. Ali Dida Hada squats on his haunches. He knows why he is here.

Hadada ibis cross the land in raucous song. Ali Dida Hada sidles up to Galgalu like a hungry apparition. Ali Dida Hada glowers at the second cairn. “Where is she?” he asks.

Galgalu lopes away, Ajany two steps behind him. She, too, notices the cairn. What did she expect? That her father would wait for her to reappear before burying Odidi?

A ghost scorpion scrambles from a long-gone predator. Isaiah’s
eyes follow the creature. Restrained shudder. He has heard about these creatures. How pilots who discovered the hideous hairy things aboard their planes in midair screamed all the way to wherever it was possible to land without shame. A go-away-bird holds session close by. Isaiah’s shoulders sag, and he rubs the new stubble on his face. He can smell water. Can’t reach it. Feeling rising bile, he leans forward, unbuttoning his shirt. Sweat drips from his face, down his back. The whirly-burr of a falling insect.
Ultima Thule
, he remembers. He returns to the car to retrieve Hugh Bolton’s head. He will go into the house and sit among his father’s things. He swipes at flies.

Next to the new cairn, Ajany sees her mistake. The hole her father had been digging when she left is half done. Though Odidi’s coffin is not fully covered, it has been screwed shut, nailed down. She touches it, the idea of him, then she drops to the ground. Wind stirs, flings hair on her face.
One day, I’ll forgive your death
. The earth is warm against her skin. Odidi’s absence is now a deep-frozen clot within her heart.
One day, I’ll forgive your death
. New memories.
And mine
. Soft footsteps going somewhere.
Ajany yuak, yuak, yuak
. Her head swivels.
Brought you flowers, Odi
. Upward glance—she stares into the blue; a pair of bateleur eagles. She hears,
I’ll find you, silly
. A smile inches its way out of the depths of her heart.

Inside the cattle
boma
, Ajany finds and touches a bedraggled being that is the shape and texture of an aged, twisted tree bark. Bloodshot eyes, his bare feet are now cracked. The late orange light shines on his face as he contemplates the empty cattle enclosure. He is dark. At close quarters, he seems wavy, not solid, his cloak of solitude forbidding. Ajany almost drops what she is carrying, and clamps down on her lips to stop from crying out.

“Baba,” she whispers.

Nyipir drops his stick and, with both arms, scrambles up and reaches out. He grabs hold of his daughter. She is alive and at home.
“Ibiro.”
You are here.

She is clinging to her father. How small he has become. The wind throws dust around and covers them both.

Nyipir remembers: “Flowers?”

“Yes,” she says. Then, “I found Odidi.”

Nyipir’s head snaps back.

Ajany unrolls Odidi’s office picture.

“Here.”

Nyipir receives the picture with both hands. He lifts the image to his face and presses it in, inhaling the imagination of his son’s presence for a long, long time.

Later.

Voice hoarse, Nyipir says, “He looks well.”

Ajany watches.

Nyipir says, “He looks well, see?”

“Baba,” Ajany starts, wanting to wail about treachery.

“Yes?” He turns, eyes bright.

Hesitation. She says, “I’m happy you’re here.”

Later.

She tells him a little about T. L. Associates Engineering—that Odidi had left a legacy with his work in water. She tells him that Odidi’s time with the gang came from heroic idealism. He had only been organizing the disenchanted youth to work for a different future for themselves. It is sad, she tells her father, that the stupid state did not have the capacity to grasp Odidi’s vision and had instead destroyed him.

A vaporlike drizzle.

A large drop spatters on Nyipir’s forehead. They both glance skyward. “Rain?” Nyipir whispers. Followed by a broken-up sound.

Ajany listens.

Nyipir says, “Should’ve told him.” His eyes dart from one end of the horizon to another.

“Said something.”

Ajany rubs her nose. She settles on the ground before curling up against her father’s shoulder. “Baba,” she says, “Odidi’s woman … she found me. She’s pregnant. His child. You’ll be a grandfather.”

As if the sun had all of a sudden popped into existence, everything is infused with fresh warmth and Nyipir’s explosive, “A child?”

Ajany begins to smile. “Yes.”

“New life?”

“Yes.”

“This unknown daughter, she has a name?”

“Justina.”

“Who is her father?”

“Didn’t ask.”

“Odidi’s child,
nyara
?”

Ajany nods.

“Perhaps a son?” Nyipir huddles into his stained coat, cool tears at the edges of his eyes. But a laugh begins with a mouth twitch. When it emerges, the sound lights up Nyipir’s face from within.

Later.

Ajany says, “There’s another grave.”

Nyipir replies, “Yes.”

Silence.

Nyipir asks, “What news of Kenya?”

“A president. A prime minister.”

“Two?”

“Yes.”

“Together.” He snorts. “What do they call it?”

“Coalition.”

“Coalison.”

“Mhh.”

“The people?”

“Forgetting.”

Nyipir scratches his chest. “That Isaiah Bolton …”

“Yes?”

“He left Wuoth Ogik.”

“No.”

“He did.”

She says, “He’s here.” Pauses. “We came back together.”

Nyipir leans back before nodding. “Good.” Gripping Odidi’s picture, he wipes it. “Odidi looks well.
Wuod
Oganda! Shall we go to our guests?”

Ajany helps her father up.

They veer toward the edge of the
boma
. There, Nyipir uses his walking stick to point at different parts of the earth. He says, “Akai-ma came home.”

Ajany says nothing.

“At night. Here are her steps.” Nyipir’s voice is forcefully bland.

Ajany notes the livestock trails leading out of Wuoth Ogik as she bites down on her lips, bruising them. She stammers, “The red dance-ox?”

“It followed her,” her father says on a shuddering breath.

Ajany feels hot and then cold. Golden light in the darkening sky. Ajany shivers. The air is thick with the unexpected scent of rain. No one will say anything, lest eavesdropping malicious ghouls destroy the seeds of hope.

“If I had a ram, I would …” Nyipir starts. “Nothing remains.”

Salt in Ajany’s throat.

“Nothing,
nyara
, not even a lamb.”

Ali Dida Hada had stopped mid-approach, a gargling sound escaping him. Pain, both inner and outer, had convulsed his body and paled his lips: bewilderment, dread, too many battles, spiritual exhaustion. There was a time when he would have rejoiced at Nyipir’s vanquishing. Now all he wants to know is the name of the one lying beneath the new cairn. Was this why Nyipir had asked for him? To reveal to him the finale of their dangerous dance?

Nyipir sees Ali Dida Hada and straightens out his stained shirt. He rubs his face, pulls at his nostrils, and clears his throat.

Ali Dida Hada seizes Nyipir’s forearms. “The second grave?”

“Dead bones.”

“A name.”

Nyipir hears the fear in Ali Dida Hada’s trembling voice. The hand on his arm is strong, hot, and pinching. A perverse impulse:
Akai
, he could spit into Ali Dida Hada’s face,
it is Akai Lokorijom
, my
wife
.

“Who are you hoping it is?” he says. Half-lidded eyes.

Ali Dida Hada takes a deep breath. “Please, Nyipir.”

Nyipir asks, “Do you still believe in God, Ali?”

Ali Dida Hada squeezes Nyipir’s arms. He scrunches his face, pressing down grief.

Nyipir’s voice is so soft: “Are you a praying man?”

Ajany’s high cry, a warble, really, stops Nyipir’s mischief. He is truly tired of the maze of riddles. “It’s a man,” he tells Ali Dida Hada. Icy-toned: “Now let me go.”