LITMIR.BIZ

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off the working area of the garage. The garage reception was the shell of an old Mahindra Kenya Police Jeep.

      It was hard to tell Kinuthia’s age with his thin ropy arms and pulsating blood vessels on his forehead covered with grease. He came up to Juli to report his findings on their Harvester. Solo and Chiri looked on. Kinuthia said something in Kikuyu but Juli refused to acknowledge the language. Kinuthia looked into the blazing sky for a long time as if remembering recent trials in the Rift, tribal evictions and ethnic hostilities. He tried again. ‘I see the sun is out with his familia,’ he said. ‘It is not the rocks that went ndani ya the differential. Ni gear shaft imeoza.’ Rotten gear shaft. Kinuthia chewed at this and spat green in the dust and hefted the large metallic gear innard he had extracted from the Massey Ferguson. To think how a few days ago it held magnificent promise eating up the wheaten gold in the fields to brighten their days with cash.

      ‘Gear shaft,’ Kinuthia said again reverting to Kikuyu as if there are no other words for what he held in his hand. Juli looked long at him and the man seemed apologetic enough.

      It was quiet in the heat of the garage, right smack in the middle of the day. All life – other than the three boys and the thin ancient man – was hidden in the shade.

      ‘You said cheapest parts we can get are in Eastleigh?’

      ‘Kama you are lucky yes.’

      ‘Then, we will try and find our luck there,’ Juli said.

      ‘Mkifika Eastleigh go to Ndungu Motors and tell him I sent you. 5^th Avenue,’ Kinuthia said.

      ‘I’ll see you when we bring back the part,’ Juli said. ‘Don’t sell my Harvester.’

      Kinuthia said nothing, walked over to the insides of the inert police Mahindra that was his reception area. His head soon lolled back, a puppet dead to the world.

      The boys slumped into the Datsun pick-up, and soon they were a small speck cutting through endless sky and scrub valley hurtling towards Nairobi. They passed Narok town without pause, travelling against a light rain and the approaching night that came up suddenly on them. They streaked past Melili, Suswa, Nairage Ya Ngare, Kinungi, Uplands. When a trading centre appeared as another speck on the horizon, they made out figures in the distance, coming out into the road with the old expectation. But they passed without pause, and the figure shrugged and shouted an old language in the wind. These were the string-town people who knew the Datsun 1200 that Juli had met over the seasons, mostly at the tail end of the harvest, a small god with wheat money. Barmaids, no-hopers, transients caught between older traditional times and the economic present, adrift. They retreated to the ancient physicality of the flat land and its dust, its blood and its old ways. They knew the boys in the Datsun 1200 would be back.

      The small Datsun was loud when they reached the City, its cranky muffler throbbed, its large tyres awkward and self-conscious, leaving dust tracks on Uhuru highway tarmac. The boys went wide-eyed at Nairobi, the Mercs and the Beemers in the slow traffic crawl. It had been a while. They’d taken just under two hours to catch the Kangemi jam into Westlands. They headed to Eastleigh. Moving slowly in the traffic they took two hours to cross Westlands, and then Parklands and going through Forest Road finally managed to get to Kariokor, then past Ziwa. In Pangani the streetlights came back on and soon they were in Eastleigh. They drove till Juli nodded, ‘12^th Avenue. Solomon, you know anything about that?’ His brother remained quiet; his face was relaxed, curious – something had changed about him since his return. He seemed more speculative, less petulant, as if he had come upon a new secret knowledge. Now the last few hours seemed to ease away his permanent sneer at the big endless skies of the wheatlands. They found a lodgo and trudged off to bed.

      Three days later everybody on 12th Avenue knew Solo, his restlessness had returned calling to the world. Juli and Chiri had washed themselves clean of all the Rift Valley dust in the arms of two Ethiopian women, unclasping the embraces of rural women from their memories. They felt like Nairobians once more. For a few days they ate, slept, drank and partied to oblivion – wheat, Harvesters and gear shaft forgotten for now.

      They ate most of their meals at Somali Ndogo. All the regulars came to know Solo. When they went there Solo playing the local kept on saying out aloud here tuko in the sitting room of Eastleigh. He was so taken with the place he picked up all he heard and made it his.

      Over the next few days they noticed a light Coastal looking man with a grave face who kept to himself, even if everybody in Somali Ndogo greeted him with heshima. Solo noticed this and asked one of the waiters who the man was and he said: ‘Ahmed Salim’.

      The boys saw this man, Ahmed, each day while looking for the Massey Ferguson Harvester spare parts. Ahmed only came in when the place was emptiest at around 11 a.m. and left at around 3 p.m. These were also their hours. They slept in late, tried to find the gear shaft and then headed out to the bars in the evening. Ahmed always carried a large black diary and he wrote in it all hours as if making the most important appointments on the spot.

      One day the boys went into Somali Ndogo and the only table available was Ahmed’s. Chiri and Juli turned to leave but Solo looked around and gestured at Ahmed asking whether they could sit at his table. He made the slightest of nods and the boys ordered breakfast. The businessmen were making quite a spectacle and the boys watched. Ahmed ignored all this for a while. When he stopped writing in his diary he looked up for a long moment and said something in Arabic that the boys didn’t understand. He then turned to them and said in Kiswahili, ‘Kunguni.’ This word was straight from their school Kiswahili school days and Chiri who had taken Kiswahili in secondary school said: ‘Bedbugs.’

      Solo started on about his time in the UK for Ahmed’s benefit. Chiri and Juli had noticed that he kept on increasing the number of years he’d been there whenever he met someone new. He also reduced the months he’d been back in Kenya. Ahmed said that he had lived in Tottenham and Birmingham but he was originally born in Lamu.

      ‘Have you heard of the Mbarawa?’ he asked. ‘My ancestors are African and Portuguese.’

      Solo was beside himself with Ahmed’s news of also having lived in the UK. Chiri and Juli let him to do the talking for a while, exhaust his Manchester stories. They accepted Ahmed’s invitation to his house when he said he had to leave.

      The boys expected Ahmed to live in an apartment but when they got to the address that he has given them, it was a whole fenced-off plot. They went beyond the large gate and inside the building was split into two wings. Ahmed’s two wives and their children lived on each side. Ahmed occupied the main wing, straight though, opposite the large gate. The rest were all his offices. They were taken to a large open area with a TV and couches. Ahmed joined them and they were served fried coconut and a purple slushy drink the colour of iodine that they could not get enough of.

      ‘Maybe this is some kind of Sangria? Without the pombe,’ Solo said loudly and leaned back on the long sofa. ‘Ah. This is the life. Eastleigh kweli.’

      ‘I am a Forex dealer,’ Ahmed said as they crunched away at the fried coconut. ‘I represent my family’s business interests in Nairobi. We are based in Dubai.’

      ‘We are farmers,’ Juli said. ‘At least I am. These two are kati kati between things.’

      Solo jumped in. ‘Me, I plan to go into business,’ he said, looking at Juli. ‘I studied law. Mr Ahmed, you know Sussex University I am sure?’

      ‘Please call me Ahmed,’ he said. ‘Even if I grew up in Lamu here Eastleigh is now my home. This place is in a bad way. I need partners from outside Eastleigh. We might be from different worlds but all of us are interested in money. Many young people in Eastleigh now … all they want is to get high or drunk,’ Ahmed said. ‘They say they are frustrated – I tell them that should give them all the more reason to work.’

      ‘Tunatafuta gear shaft. Massey Ferguson combine harvester … ’86 model,’ Juli said. ‘Can you help? We were told that we could find it in 5^th Avenue but we found the place closed.’

      Ahmed looked at him. ‘I am sure I can find what you are looking for in twenty-four

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