By David G Maillu
Published February 6, 2024
Mahmud housed Abdu and their family for about three months during which
he tried to teach Abdul a first aid Kiswahili. By the third month both
Abdul and Halima could see that, in spite of the hospitality with which
Mahmud had received them, they had become a big liability to Mahmud’s
family. Finally, Mahmud knocked up a clever way of riding himself of
that liability. He launched a claim that he was closing his business in
Mombasa and transferring it to Nairobi where there were better
prospects.
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Nobody actually knew what business Mahmud did. Even in Mombasa he had
been a suspect of the authority that he had a hand in drug trafficking
or some dubious illegal activities. He begged Abdu, “Brother, please, by
the end of the week you should have found another accommodation for your
family. The situation threw Abdul and his family into living like
vagabonds. They survived on handouts from sympathizers supplemented by
money from any casual labour he could find, from digging pit latrines to
washing clothes.
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Luck fell into Halima’s hands when she was hired by a wealthy man as a
baby-sitter. At that time the tall and skinny Abdul with undeniable
Somali features worked as a casual labourer for a building constructor.
In Kenya Somalis are nicknamed, Warias. Waria is the sound you
frequently hear in their language. The Waria family could now afford
renting a small slum house. That was seven months after they had
smuggled themselves into Kenya. Abdul had started struggling to get a
forged ID. Unfortunately, that was when Halima developed unbearable
breast pains. Her employer helped her with the medical checking. But
when the results came out with the breast cancer news, he saved his
money by dismissing her saying, “Find money to go for the operation
before the cancer kills you.”
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“Where the hell would I get money for breast cancer operation?” Cried
Abdul who felt absolutely destroyed. He could hardly feed the family
leave alone affording the operation. The yawning death of his wife
paralyzed him. It was a real terror. He couldn’t believe that the most
beautiful woman he had in the world would die. Her desperate face and
eyes cried to him begging, “Abdul, don’t let me die!” There were times
they grabbed each other with embrace and cried tears of desperation over
each other. That was when Abdul realized how valueless he was in the
world. The irony was that they suffered surrounded by rich people. Who
cared whether his wife was dead or alive anyway?