By David G Maillu
Published March 21, 2024
Halima was an exceptionally beautiful medium size woman with a brand of skin features that argued she was a mixture of black and Arabic blood.
She had long wavy black hair. Her beauty was most registered in her
eyes, in the shape of her face and nose. She was precisely proportional
in body.
Every time Halima’s eyes looked at Abdul they appeared to ask, “Abdul,
are you going to watch me die from breast cancer?”
RELATED: Secrets of Crises Part I
Perhaps Abdul should
be consoled by the thought that Halima’s death would be survived by
Saudi, their son. The money amount of how much the operation would cost
had actually sounded the death toll of Halima’s life. Abdul was
destroyed by realization that soon Halima, his angel, would be no more.
Her body would become dust and part of the earth. He hated himself and
his fate, counting himself another wretched creature of the world. He
thought life was a cheat. It had always cheated him that he was
somebody… If God could not save Halima for him, why should that God
exist? He lost appetite; became sleepless and started walking talking to
himself unconsciously like somnambulist. In the night when he happened
to fall into his mean sleep, he was plagued by nightmares. He would wake
up from the nightmare crying, “No, Halima can’t die.”
He feared overexposing himself for the authorities to discover that he
was a foreigner and then pounced on him for deportation. His Kiswahili
language was very poor. To fake a citizen, he had to speak Kiswahili
fluently. He had learned English up to the primary school level. If they
caught him speaking only English, which he spoke grammatically
incorrectly and with a heavy Somali accent nonetheless, they would spot
him. So, he camouflaged by adopting loneliness, speaking as little as
possible.
Was it his request to be born a Somali and live forever in Somali? He
realized how free wildlife was. Kenyan wild animals were not aware that
they belonged to Kenya. So were the birds, butterflies, domestic flies,
squirrels, and the rest. They were not captives of locations. As a human
being, why should he feel like a foreigner in any country? What did it
matter in the world to be born a Somali, Russian, Indian, Zulu,
Mongolian, or American if one was not accepted as a citizen of the human
race wherever one chose to live? What a terrible man-made social
restriction denying you to be a member of the world.
Whatever Halima said, behind those words Abdul only heard, “Abdul, soon
I’ll be no more because I’m going to die.” On several occasions, he had
tried to pray but the prayers had been aborted by a voice from within
wondering, “What’s the prayer for when Halima is going to die?”
One day Saudi asked, “Mummy, why is Daddy crying?” For the answer, she
cried, and Saudi joined in the crying; maybe because he thought it was a
good thing to cry.
RELATED: How Far Can Kenya’s Cultural Development Go Without the Government Support of the Book Industry?
That night Abdul hardly slept because of thoughts and worries. His
restless mind flew from one place to another in search of answers. Even
if Halima lost both breasts he would live happily with her forever. The
painkillers didn’t help Halima much. She had developed an inflammable
temperament, often thrown into bouts of terrible depression. She had
adopted a behavior of seclusion in which she didn’t want to see or talk
to anybody.
There is a saying that you run fastest when you know there is a monster
chasing you from behind. That applies to a tormented mind. The mind
flies fastest, sometimes going astray and hitting against objects
dangerously. That night Abdul’s mind flew from one action to another;
from stealing to even selling the son secretly to raise money for the
operation.
RELATED: Secrets of Crises Part II