Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Art of Being Nairobian

2020; Indiana University Press; Issue: 130 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2979/transition.130.1.15

0041-1191

Cheruto,

Urban and Rural Development Challenges

The Art of Being Nairobian Noel Cheruto (bio) "Do not look misery in the eye!" Misery is a boy, face shaped like a mango, cupped in dirty hands, pressed against the car window. Father, fingers drumming impatiently on the driving wheel, looked sharply at us through the rear-view mirror. "Ignore him! Look ahead!" he commanded, hooting pointlessly into the Saturday afternoon traffic. "A hungry man with no hope of satiety? Do not engage him at any cost. He will stick a knife through your gut for a morsel." We turned back to our phones, using their blank screens as mirrors with which to steal glances at the boy. He had slight ridges down the length of his scalp, from a careless shave. White pimples the size of pencil dots were centered on his broad nose and faded evenly through the rest of his face. He wound his way carefully through hawkers draped in colorful wares: cones of peanuts in flat basins balanced on heads, plastic toys braided into sisal rope and hung around necks, faux-silk scarves swaying in the wind from elbows. He was a lonely little shadow that crept over and under, stopping by each car. He got lucky once; a driver in a pearl Toyota, three cars behind, poured silver coins into his hands. When he crossed the street, we turned our attention back to our phones. That was how we caught it. We might have missed it altogether. This Saturday, like all others, was spent driving around Nairobi with Father. His white shirt was folded up to the elbow, one hand on the wheel, the other resting out the open window. Traffic eased, and we drove on, silently texting each other. Did you see it? His name—our name—trending on Twitter? Do you think we should ask? None of us dared to. We drove past two roundabouts and turned left into Upperhill. He parked outside an office complex that was eighteen floors tall. The windows, stained a deep blue, captured the afternoon light and laid it [End Page 146] Click for larger view View full resolution Ian Mwesiga, Man Standing by the Pool (2020). Oil on Canvas, 150 × 130 cm. Courtesy of Mariane Ibrahim. gently onto the parking lot. Cars parked in yellow squares drawn neatly on the paved lot turned dreamy—blue cars looked purple, white silver, black deep blue. At the entrance, behind a wide security screening area, were his names, wrought in iron and painted gold. "Look at them," he said, waving a large hand toward the building. The veins on the back of his hands bulged out the way they did when he was hot. When we were younger, we spent hours trying to [End Page 147] 'iron' his hand using our fingers, but the veins popped right back up each time. Two more ran along his forehead, meeting exactly where his bushy eyebrows started. His eyes were small, slanted up and apart, as though his temples were pulling them away. We stood against the car, listening to the wind howl as it ran up against the glass walls, and watched hordes filing in and out of the building. One couple walked out, holding hands. They were similar in the unexpected way two people in love can be: lips curved up the same way, eye wrinkles folded in imitation, hand and leg movements alike. A little girl in a pink tutu, hair piled atop the crown of her head in a bun, ran happy circles around them. She stopped to pluck a red hibiscus from a flowerbed that lined the pavement. Her tutu fought against the wind and lost, sweeping up toward her head. Her parents turned to face each other holding their hands between them, necks slightly bent in laughter. When she resumed her circular trot, they started to walk again. "Look at the whole lot of them, feigning sanity. Even their children think that life owes them a living." Father shook his head sadly, his starched collar digging deep into the layers of fat that were his neck. Three men dressed in dark suits clustered around a parking meter, lost in conversation, waving cellphones in the air...