Nairuko - PSYCHOPOMP.COM

I walk into Old Town. In a curio shop on the promenade, an old man sells paintings, deras, kikois, and ornaments. Tuk-tuks move swiftly along the cabro paving, passing the teapot sculpture at the round-about. Pushcarts lumber beside the street restaurants and past the old buildings covered by vines. A radio plays “Malaika,” the song rising like a wisp of steam. Shouts of children playing football near the sea reach me. I buy a ticket to Fort Jesus and the seller tells me I am lucky because it is the day of secession.

The Coast Province is seceding from Kenya to form a new country. The fort’s history plaque is being replaced; two men drill the new plaque onto the wall with fervour. They acknowledge me with a nod as I stop to look. Now the plaque traces, with an ancestry tree diagram, the history of the secession movement since the coastal strip was handed over to Kenya from the Sultanate in 1963 until today—the day of freedom.

“Naweza kuelezea historia vizuri,” a tour guide tells me, but I ignore him. I climb up to the crenelation. Pigeons take flight when I reach the top. I watch the water. Fishermen paddle along the creek. Two people swim across, and the English Point Marina gleams in the afternoon light.

My name is Nairuko, and I am about to become a horrible person.

When I say it like that, it makes me doubt if I’ll be able to do what’s required of me. It’s something all laibons must go through, like my Papa did. But he’s not here to witness my initiation. He took his own life when I was eighteen years old, five years ago.

I’m waiting for my friend Rahma; we’re going to attend the secession announcement in Diani. She is a journalist and was involved in drafting the Coast Province’s new constitution. She supports the secession movement. The movement gained momentum when offshore oil and gas reserves were found here ten years ago and most of the revenue kept going to the central government in Nairobi.

A text comes in from Rahma. I’m here.

I walk towards Burhani Gardens, where we’re supposed to meet. The street is lined with posters of the movement’s leader, Faisal Mazrui, an Islamic lawyer. His family have been prominent people here since the days of the Sultan. Faisal’s wife died in a gas explosion when she was in the market. The Kenyan government said it will not recognize the secession and promised war, while also levelling charges of treason against Faisal Mazrui and his new cabinet.

I find Rahma seated, drinking from a bottle of water. She is facing the sky, and her throat bulges with each gulp. Below the bench, the hem of her blue buibui caresses the ground.

She’s the only friend I’ve made since my father died. I feel closer to her than to my elder brother. She’s my neighbour. I met her in my first week here, on the rooftop of our apartment building. That day, as I watched the sunset, I looked to my left and saw her, through hanging clothes fluttering in the evening breeze, smoking a cigarette. She looked like a chimney, and at the same time, unburdened. When she noticed me, she asked, “Do you smoke?” I lied, took a puff, and started coughing. She was older than me, more assured of herself; there was no trace of malice in her voice—even in her laughter afterwards when she realised I’d lied. It was as if, by offering me her cigarette, she was offering me friendship, a place in her life. Since then, we’ve travelled together to Watamu and taken a boat ride through the mangrove forest in Mida Creek. And last November, when we went to her hometown in Lamu for the cultural festival, her parents made us biryani, mahamri, and samosas.

“Rahma!”

Her eyes light up when she sees me, and her dimples show as she smiles. She rises and hugs me.

“Twende?” she asks. I nod and we flag down a tuk-tuk to take us to Likoni ferry.

The ferry we get into is old, rusty, and creaks with each movement forward. I lean on the rails and look out at sea. I notice the city reflected in the water. I imagine that the other city mirrors the one we are in, except that everything happens in the opposite. Cars drive backwards, gravity acts up, and people walk on the sky. In it, time moves backwards too, and I see my father, still alive and carrying me on his shoulders in our garden at home.

He died with so many secrets, and I’m only now finding them out. I’m a laibon, like he was. There are only nine of us from my tribe. After my father died, the council performed a ritual so that my father’s ability could be transferred to my elder brother, but it didn’t go as planned. It landed on me instead.

That day, I was walking to my bedroom, reading slides on Sans Papier protests in France for my Sociology class, when suddenly I found myself in an apartment in Paris with the Eiffel Tower outside the window. It was winter, snow was falling. I thought it was a dream until my Aunt Sianto—she’s a laibon too—found me an hour later. She wrapped a shuka around me and told me my father’s spirit had chosen me.

“I should have known Sironka would choose you,” Aunt Sianto said. “But why burden his beloved daughter?”

I was confused. I didn’t understand what she was saying. “Close your eyes,” she said, and she recited something softly to herself. The next moment, I was at home.

“Auntie, what just happened?” I’d asked her in disbelief. “How did I? How did we—”

“My child, I cannot explain now,” she said. “I promised your father you would finish your education.” And on the day of my graduation from university, Aunt Sianto came chauffeured in a sleek black car. She walked towards me, with all her elegance and mystery, as I took photographs in my gown, and whispered, “You are ready now.”

Ripples caused by our ferry’s arrival make the city in the water wobble, and I lose the vision of my father. We find another tuk-tuk to where they are announcing the secession results. The results mean more to Rahma than they do to me. The council of laibons posted me here to observe how a place disintegrates. It’s the first assignment a new laibon gets, so that they are used to seeing war and suffering. The council has, for years, known when a place will descend into war. “When countries start buying weapons, training soldiers, and politicians throw around ultimatums, that’s how you know,” Aunt Sianto told me.

I don’t know how I will feel when the war does start.

The centre for the announcement is a memorial, built on the site of the former market where the explosion happened. The memorial is made up of one hundred and three white marble statues with wings as if ascending into heaven. It’s breathtaking. I’ve passed here a few times with Rahma when we are going to nightclubs in Diani. The statues are made in the likeness of those who died. I don’t like looking at the statues of children because they remind me of how vulnerable I felt when I was a child and Papa left for work. Beside the statues are inscriptions in Arabic of their names and year of birth in the Hegira. Even though the bodies are not buried here, it has the mournfulness of a graveyard.

Today it’s different, however; everyone is in a celebratory mood. People are wearing the yellow scarves of the secession party over kanzus and buibuis. They’ve come from Lamu, Pate, Malindi, Kilifi, and many like Rahma and I, from Mombasa. We shove past a man blowing a whistle as we struggle to get to the front. When Faisal Mazrui appears, everyone cheers. He is wearing an embroidered kofia; his greying hair pokes through a little, giving him a dignified aura. He is flanked by two men and two women. The results are announced. Ninety-two per cent voted for independence. Faisal starts to speak, his Swahili rich with poetry and wisdom. He says the new country of Nazira will not waste money on a grand independence ceremony. “Kutoka siku ya leo, ni sisi tutakao amua mwelekeo wetu.” At the end of his speech, the Kenyan flag is lowered and replaced by a yellow, blue, and white flag.

Rahma wants to celebrate and so we go to Forty Thieves because we know the DJ. We get in and I immediately take three shots of tequila. Rahma gets a table near a few tourists. When we sit together, she with her shisha and me with my cocktails, we are lightbulbs—men hover around us like moths. They buy us drinks, more shisha, and food. It’s not that we can’t afford it, but it makes us feel good. I am a different person now. I didn’t use to drink or go to nightclubs. Even in university, I was always left studying. I had to be the best student because that is what I felt I owed my father’s memory. Nowadays, I can’t lie, I like enjoying myself.

The DJ plays Afrobeats. He’s an Italian called Giovanni. He’s our friend, and he knows what we like to hear when we come. Rahma and I stand up to dance. The men who bought us drinks stand up with us, but we don’t want any of them. We hold onto each other, our arms locked. I drop my body down low and someone cheers. I let go of Rahma a little and she pirouettes. I slide across the dancefloor towards her. The disco lights explode, and it feels like stars are falling on us. Louder and louder the music plays. I see a boy I might like and give Rahma a signal: a light touch on her shoulder. He approaches me with a smile, his eyes the colour of rain at night. I press my body against him and move my waist. He looks beautiful, but I turn away from him in case the alcohol wears off in the middle of my dancing and I find out he is not.

When Giovanni finishes his set, he hands over to another DJ and walks to our table, where Rahma is now seated. I know that’s my cue. “I’m coming back,” I lie to the boy. Rahma and I like Giovanni. He’s a sixty-year-old man. He tells us stories of Naples and he treats us as if we were his daughters. He’s childless, so perhaps this makes sense.

The three of us walk out and sit on the beach. The sea is dark, nightfall lending it colour. A dhow is moored in the distance. Near the sea, I feel free; my spirit imitates the waves and I forget myself.

“Will you two leave if there is a war?” Rahma asks suddenly. Giovanni and I turn to her in surprise. “Would you leave because you are from somewhere else?”

“I would never leave you, Rahma,” I tell her.

“This is my home,” Giovanni says. “I have lived here for more than twenty-five years.”

Rahma scoops a handful of sand but doesn’t hold it into a fist; the sand falls through her fingers as if in an hourglass. “I hope there won’t be one like they are saying.”

“You know, Rahma, when I was your age, I was a stadium announcer in Stadio San Paolo. Dios, Diego Maradona played for us.” His gestures morph into his words as he relives his past. He has told us this story before, but we still like it. “‘Di-e-go!’ I would shout when he scored.” His arms sweep out. Maybe it’s the alcohol, but his arms seem to touch the sea. “And thousands of people would scream ‘Ma-ra-do-na!’” His gaze fixes on us, and we know what he wants.

“Di-e-go!”

“Ma-ra-do-na!” Rahma and I reply, like the Naples fans of his memory.

“Di-e-go!”

“Ma-ra-do-na!” We fall into laughter and our voices roar, echoing against the water.

I will miss feeling this free.

We sit watching the waves move calmly against the shore. Behind us, the nightclub explodes into cheer. It starts to drizzle, but the sky is clear—no grey or white clouds; but we don’t move. There is no one else around the beach: it’s just us three, the moon, the stars, and the sea.

The mothers in the apartment building are preparing lunch and the delicious smell of chapati and pilau wafts into my room. “Kwaheri.” Rahma’s voice descends the stairs with her footsteps. She always says this to the children running up and down the steps when she’s leaving, although they hardly ever reply.

I look at myself in the mirror. My Afro looks like it belongs in a black and white photograph from the sixties. Papa always told me to look at myself in the mirror when I was not sure of who I was.

“Ru.” He called me Ru. “Ru, look at yourself in the mirror and remember who you are,” he would say. I suppose he thought it was something profound, but he only ended up sounding like Mufasa from The Lion King. I understood what he meant, however. He meant Ru, you’re my daughter, you’re Papa’s little girl.

Today, I’m unsure of myself. It’s my initiation day. This means I’ll be a laibon for the rest of my life. I have to do it whether I like it or not. Honestly, I don’t know what else I would have done either way. I have never really figured out my true passion. I once wanted to be a singer, a jazz musician. But I feel like I was born too late. I know everyone says this, but for me it’s true. I feel nostalgia for times when I did not exist. I should have been a young, marcelled singer in the Jazz Age.

I hear a knock and open the door. It’s my Aunt Sianto. She is Papa’s elder cousin, and she is tall and thin. She has an air of authority about her, and whenever she speaks, her voice always leaves no room for questioning. She runs the export and import company the first laibons to teleport formed a hundred years ago, after almost all the members of our tribe were massacred by the British, and she is chairperson of the council of nine laibons. After my father died, there were eight laibons left. I’ll be the ninth.

I’m a little hungover from the nightclub yesterday, and I hope she doesn’t notice. I brushed my teeth, but I can’t be sure; nothing gets past Aunt Sianto.

“Child,” she calls me, but her voice is dry, without affection. I’ve heard the other laibons say that before my Papa died, he was the only one with laughter and secret stories.

“Auntie!” I hug her and ask if she wants tea.

“We’re late,” she replies. She notices my blue jeans and white T-shirt. “Nairuko, you need to change. Didn’t you get the clothes I sent?”

I did get the clothes, but I found them boring. I reluctantly walk back and put on the ceremony outfit she sent. It’s a navy-blue trouser suit and a crisp shirt sown in shuka patterns. It’s something Aunt Sianto would wear, but not me. I hold my Afro with a band around the middle and it forms an hourglass; this way I look more stylish.

Aunt Sianto and I hold hands. She shows me a photograph of where we are going and asks me to visualize it properly. It’s not like I have never teleported on my own before, but Aunt Sianto doesn’t trust anyone to do the right thing without her guidance. I close my eyes. Every time I teleport, I feel like I’ve died and then come back to life somewhere else. It’s like my cells disintegrate and then rearrange when I emerge where I want to go. The coastal humidity disappears and is replaced by clean, crispy mountain air. We emerge on a hill’s meadow overlooking a dry riverbed. I feel a chilly wind on my face, and I see the snowy peaks of Mt. Kenya in the distance. Below the hill are antelopes and giraffes.

We are in Laikipia. The hill we stand on was where my tribe, the Ilaikipia, made their last stand against the British. We used to be pastoralists before colonisation. The British, while building the Uganda Railway, passed across our lands. They were signing treaties with other tribes to get land for the railway and settlers. Our tribe’s laibons, back then, possessed the ability to foretell the future, and they had foreseen that we could only win if we secured guns. My tribe’s warriors ambushed a caravan and stole their weapons. The fighting which ensued was merciless. The British commanders vowed that none of us would live. They hired our enemy tribes and promised them our wealth. In the five-year resistance, we lost men, women, and children. When some saw that all hope was lost, they went into exile and assimilated into different tribes. We call them the lost descendants because they were never heard of again. The last village to fall was situated here. The laibons had performed one last ritual and begged the spirits for a way out. When the enemy forces came, they led my people to the top of this hill’s cliff and ordered them to jump or be shot. Mothers jumped with their children, and men jumped with their wives. Some opted to be shot. Imagine thousands of lives lost like that! The nine laibons jumped together; instead of falling to their deaths, they emerged in the town at the centre of the railway line, Nairobi.

The meadow transformed after the genocide. Nine geysers appeared, and odourless white fog emerged from them. The fog is the voices of our ancestors. Anyone who comes here feels immense suffering and misery, and a pull to jump off the cliff.

When Aunt Sianto and I make it to the circle of laibons, I feel a great horror engulf my heart. I hear the screams, and my head starts to spin. I stumble and Aunt Sianto places her arm around my waist.

“It’s okay; I know how you feel,” she says.

They bring a chair. One of them swirls a mixture in a calabash. It looks like ochre, but he adds tattoo ink into it. I feel the pull of death as if the voices are eating the essence of my spirit.

“Which design, Nairuko?” a clear voice breaks through the screams of horror.

Through the pain, I fumble through pictures on my phone and show him the tattoo design I want. “This one.” The tattoo is to be drawn on my left wrist. My design is like henna. It’s a floral tendril that leads up from my fingers to the top of my wrist, like Rihanna’s. Rahma’s mother drew it on me first; she is a henna tattoo artist for weddings.

Aunt Sianto purses her lips as if she is asking, “Is that really your choice?”

The tattoo is history traced on the body; it means a laibon has come here, heard the screams of their ancestors, and knows what it means to survive when people you love die. Yet it is also a sign of survivor’s guilt, the guilt laibons must carry all their lives, as if it were a curse. To learn to live with guilt, to numb emotion when worlds are falling apart, is instrumental to our work.

The idea of the tattoo was founded by the first laibons to teleport. They realised they could no longer foretell the future when they emerged at the train station in Nairobi; instead, their ability had been replaced. And they felt immense guilt. Why hadn’t they died? Why had the spirits chosen to give them the power to save only themselves? They had lost children, husbands, and wives, and some fell into deep grief. The leader of the council at the time conducted a ritual of remembrance in which they all tattooed themselves to represent what they had been through, their unique identities, and the history which held them together. One could choose whichever tattoo they liked, and it was used in the diaries and history books they wrote of themselves thereafter. Most laibons chose tattoos of things which held meaning to them: the face of a loved one, beaded cherished ornaments, a staff they used while herding cattle, or the stars, arranged as a downward-facing calabash, as they were on the night our first ancestor descended from them with his cattle.

The tattoo is forming on my left wrist. I watch him through a fuzziness as he applies it with an ancient magical thorn.

“Breathe in Nairuko, allow the sorrow of our ancestors to pass through you,” Aunt Sianto says. I take a deep breath. “Now, breathe out. Release the sorrow.”

I feel the noises of grief from the geysers disappear slowly, and the taste of blood in my mouth reduces.

When the tattoo is finally drawn, Aunt Sianto looks at me, and the other laibons start to chant. They shake their shoulders in rhythm to the chant and move closer to me.

“Nairuko, this will hurt,” she says. I don’t understand what she means.

She takes a knife and slashes across the inside of my wrist, on the space where the tattoo ends. I scream. My blood drips to the ground. The nine geysers erupt, turning the air around us misty.

“This connects you to our ancestors forever. It connects you to our suffering,” Aunt Sianto says. She treats the cut with antiseptic and bandages it. “Stand.”

I feel fearless when I rise. We all go to the cliff where we are supposed to jump. Aunt Sianto says she will go last, after me. The other laibons jump and then teleport, disappearing in mid-air until it’s only Aunt Sianto and me on the cliff. “You shouldn’t drink too much, child,” she says.

My cheeks heat up in embarrassment. Of course, she noticed.

“One more thing. You should be careful with your friend. The one I saw going down the stairs,” she says as she turns to face me, her voice soft and low, with the tone of a worried mother.

“Who? Rahma? What’s wrong with her?”

“It’s not a good idea as a laibon to make close connections in places you’re working.”

“So, I can’t have friends?” I ask Aunt Sianto, surprised at her suggestion.

Aunt Sianto places her palm on my shoulder. “What I mean is, because you’re sworn to secrecy about being a laibon, you’re not able to be your true self with her. Would she still be your friend if she knew who you really are? And what if she—”

“If she what, Auntie?”

“It would be wise if you listened to me,” Aunt Sianto says, then adds that she will send some books to me about laibon history for me to read. “Now, jump!”

When I jump off, I see the white imprint of the moon below thin strips of cloud. Before I hit the ground, I appear in my apartment.

I don’t know how to feel today. I have been indoors for days. When I close my eyes, sometimes, I hear the sorrow I felt at my ancestor’s site.

I’m reading the books about laibon history Aunt Sianto sent, and about our company’s business model for the last one hundred years. They are written in Ilaikipia, and because I don’t speak it a lot, I’m reading the books more slowly than usual. The books say there are three rules to teleportation: a laibon must visualize the place they are going properly, a laibon cannot teleport with another living thing, and a laibon cannot teleport with something heavier than their body weight.

Rahma calls on me after work. I put my books away and turn on the television before opening the door. She comes in and lays on my couch, her legs spread out in weariness.

“I haven’t seen you in days. How are you? Are you still working? What work is it that you do remotely?”

“Do you want a glass of water? Or juice? I have juice.” I’m not prepared to answer her questions, so I walk to the kitchen to get her something to drink.

From the news, the Kenyan government declines to recognize the sovereignty of the coast province and considers the secession a call to war. They give Faisal Mazrui’s government one week to surrender itself to authorities; if not, they will launch an invasion.

“It’s because of the oil and gas,” Rahma says as she drinks. “They don’t care about us.”

“Rahma, tusiongee kuhusu habari za vita, tell me how your day was,” I say.

“Ok. We had a training on—” she pauses when she notices my tattoo. “You got henna? When?”

“No, it’s a tattoo,” I tell her, but I don’t elaborate, because I don’t want to lie to Rahma.

“When? Let me see,” she comes closer to touch my arm. I quickly raise it for her to see from where she is. “What happened to your wrist?” she asks when she sees the bandage.

“I cut myself while cooking.”

“If you cut yourself like that, maybe you should not be cooking at all,” she says, and we both laugh. “Lakini, you’ve been quiet na your moods look low. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” I reply while nodding. It’s hard for me to keep things from Rahma. In the past few months, Rahma has been like my sister. I wish I could tell her who I am and why I am here, but what will she think of me when I say, “I am here to watch your city burn and not help.” Aunt Sianto’s warning rings in my head, and I think to myself that maybe I was foolish to have befriended her in the first place, and that I should have stayed alone throughout my time here.

When Rahma leaves, I go back to my reading. The laibons, on reaching Nairobi in 1905, didn’t have much. To survive, they stole money by teleporting into colonial bank vaults. After some time, they established a small export and import business dealing in rare valuable goods. During the Second World War, they expanded their business internationally, branching out into profiting from conflicts.

I skip through pages and pages of history and stop at the section with my father. The books detail that his first assignments were in the early nineties. He assisted the TPLF in covertly acquiring arms for the overthrow of the Derg. His service was, however, distinguished in the late nineties when he worked in the Congo Desk. Papa directed the sale of diamonds and other valuable minerals like cobalt and coltan from the Eastern region, despite warring rebels and government soldiers. In his final years, he was working with the Syrian Government on acquiring chemical weapons during the Arab Spring. He had been on leave from Aleppo when he died.

There is a section on laibons, marriages, and relationships. It says often we have trouble maintaining relationships because of the guilt acquired while working in war-torn areas and the amount of time we spend at work. For me, I’m not sure if I want to be married. I’ve liked boys before, but I’ve never loved anyone. I’ve never truly felt I could inconvenience myself for a boy.

What about the children? Do they love their children? I wonder, but there are no sections about this.

I would like to believe Papa loved my brother and me. My mother had left him a long time ago for reasons I never fully grasped. Therefore, we lived in Karen, the three of us. Papa was often away in different countries, and whenever he came back, he smelt of fantasy worlds. He would relieve our househelp from her duties. Then he would make us a recent dish he had learnt from the country he was working in and play with us in the garden. I remember his laughter. He didn’t laugh a lot, but when he did, he did so with his head leaned back, and his laughter left rings of warmth hanging in the air. He took me on hiking trips, an activity he and I liked to do. We hiked up Ngong’ hills, Aberdare ranges, and Mt. Kenya. Papa liked silence, and when we were together, although we didn’t speak much, he would ask me about my performance in school, about my brother, who he didn’t get along with very well, and about my sprinting, if my starting off the blocks was getting better. But I loved the silences the hikes gave us because of how comfortable and safe I felt in his presence.

Still, I wonder how I never noticed in my years with him how his silence hid how withdrawn he was, how he was retreating further and further into himself. I know that he loved ruins. I often wandered into his study secretly. There were photographs hung around the walls of places in various states of destruction. Some showed bombed city buildings with bullet holes, some were of cities which had long been abandoned due to a natural calamity, and others were sites of fallen civilizations preserved in a state of ruin. I didn’t understand why my father forbade my brother and me from going into his study, and yet all he had were photographs of ruins and books. I would try on his coat from the dresser and walk around with it to feel his presence enveloping me. Now I realise that perhaps being in his study meant being in his heart—a beating heart, full of life and yet surrounded by ruins.

He is survived by Ru. I close the book when I see my name.

On the day before the Kenyan army invades, I walk to the supermarket to get supplies. Long lines stretch outside; everyone seems to be stocking up for the coming war. The new government said it would not be standing down. It has raised an army to fight. It recruits people in mosques, colleges, and public squares. Nazira bila ukoloni wa Kenya! This phrase is plastered across the city and repeated on the radios. A newspaper in a stall shows a photograph of young people enlisting in the army in droves—Jisajili, the headline reads. On the back page is a story about foreign countries sending planes for the evacuation of their citizens and another about several people from the interior of Kenya moving back to their ancestral homes to escape the incoming conflict. I go to the aisle with rice and then get some meat and spices for Rahma, as she has been busy putting out statements for the party.

Outside, on the balconies of various apartments, the flag of Nazira flutters in the wind. On stalls along the road, people speak with exuberance. Despite their excitement, I see fear in their eyes, hear worry in their voices, and sense that they will be so tired and weary for years and years, even after the war. I don’t know how to explain it, but maybe it’s one of the things I’m here to learn: that death is never far from the thoughts of those faced with imminent war. I realise too that they will fight two wars. The physical one that is coming; and after it, they will fight another war in their memory.

It reminds me of something Aunt Sianto said to me: “Do you know why laibons profit from war? Why we still do so after all these years?” I hadn’t answered her. “It’s not because of revenge, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s because of trauma, passed-down trauma. Our ancestors’ memories live with us, and we are afraid of extermination. The only way to protect the tribe is with money, a lot of it; and now with our gift, laibons are good at working in war zones. In many ways, laibons are still at the war we lost a hundred years ago, and we are standing on the edge of that cliff, powerless, while the rest of the tribe is being slaughtered. Only now, it’s a war within us, with our memory, and we must do what we can to win.” It does make sense. Our tribe, from the surviving nine laibons, now has about one hundred and fifty people. Everyone is a millionaire because of the work we do, even the children, because trusts are set up in their name when they are born. There is a clause in the company’s articles which states that each descendant of the nine laibons gets a share of the company’s profits. Profits, like our ability, are reserved for the survival of our tribe.

My conscience is not as clouded as it was before my initiation. My tribe is right to always look out for itself and only itself. Where was everyone when thousands of my ancestors were killed? Even after independence, the Kenyan leaders did not requisition our land. Instead, the colonizer’s descendants continue to live there and claim it as their own. We only have ourselves, and our ancestors to protect us.

When I go back to the apartment, I find Rahma and our dear friend Giovanni. He has two large suitcases. His shoulders are drooped and instead of looking at Rahma when he speaks to her, he stares at the ground, crestfallen. They are seated on the entrance steps. “I’m leaving,” he says to me. “I’m going to Nairobi. I’ll come back when peace returns. If it doesn’t, I’ll go back to Naples.”

Rahma and I take him to the railway station. We move with him past the security check and into the waiting area. There are so many people around. The intercom sounds: Abiria wa gari ya moshi ya kuelekea Nairobi . . . Giovanni rises.

“I’ll miss you two,” he says through teary eyes. At the turnstile, he turns and smiles at us. “I’ll miss how happy we used to be together. I’ll miss that so much.”

On the way back, Rahma is silent. She shakes her head and then looks at me. “That night on the beach, Giovanni said he would never leave here. Now look,” she says. “Why are you staying, Nairuko? You could leave. You should leave.”

“I love living here, Rahma. I have found a home here, and I would never leave you.” She doesn’t say anything, and I doubt I have convinced her. We complete the journey in silence, and I feel my heart growing heavy with the weight of my lie, as if I am dragging along an iron ball. “Come stay with me tonight. I’ll cook and we’ll spend the night talking.”

At dawn, the invasion begins with airstrikes. It’s a shrill sound, like a frightening scream, followed by the crackling of fighter jets. Rahma leaps from the couch. “It’s happening, they are bombing us! It’s happening!” She goes to the window and opens the curtains. Black fumes and fire rise in the distance. I rush to her and hug her. She cries into my shoulders.

I don’t know what to tell her. I know I am not scared. If an airstrike were to hit our apartment building, I would be safe. But what about her? I am suddenly burdened by deep guilt; it creeps up from my toes into my stomach, and I hold Rahma tighter. Now that the war is here, my embrace of her feels like I’m holding onto something that is withering. Yet when I ask myself if I would ever abandon her, my heart answers that it wouldn’t.

In the afternoon, when the bombs stop dropping, we walk out. The airstrikes were targeted at strategic military points. In the news, they report airport runways and army naval ships along the four coastline towns were destroyed.

As we walk, we notice an apartment building close to ours that was hit. The building has fallen into the road and covered the roadside stalls where Rahma and I sometimes buy vegetables. Men are struggling to get through the rubble. Some people are trapped inside, and their shouts pierce through. We hear sirens and see an ambulance and a fire truck parked along the road with a hose and ladders.

“Tusaidie,” a man pleads with us. Rahma immediately joins them. The lifeless body of a child, a young boy, is pulled from the rubble, and I suddenly freeze. I feel my stomach constrict. How is the world like this? Are these the places I’m supposed to work? Who will I be if I am a laibon for the rest of my life?

A man shouts at me after lifting rocks with a crowbar, “What is wrong with you? Help us!” But I don’t move. I can’t move.

The days fold into each other as the airstrikes continue. Now, however, they give a sixty-second warning. They announce which building will be bombed and we have sixty seconds. Sixty seconds to leave and hide in makeshift bunkers constructed to avoid the airstrikes. Rahma goes out to collect people’s stories to send to news networks around the world, highlighting the atrocities of the invading Kenyan army. The coast has a right to independence in the same way each state has a right to determine its destiny, she writes.

The government here has refused to surrender. The UN Security Council passed a declaration deploying peacekeeping forces at designated safe zones. These are schools and hospitals. We see them in their blue helmets as they drive, patrolling the safe zones. Every day, I see people fleeing to the south, into a new refugee camp in Tanzania. It’s a wondrous sight, a long line of people and cars flowing non-stop, like a river flowing to the ocean.

On the ground, the army invades from two fronts. From the North in Lamu, and from the West in Malindi. They plan to take Mombasa last to end the siege. Rahma’s parents now live under occupation.

It’s raining and the electricity is out. Outside, the football field overlooking my apartment has turned into muddy sand. Rivulets of water cut across it, branching into forks like a river delta. Crows land and peck at surfacing insects. There’s no sound of children playing on the staircase anymore, nor the sound of mothers cooking and playing music. The city has acquired the feeling of a ghost town and the quality of ruins, like the photographs in Papa’s study.

Suddenly, I hear a knock at the door.

I am startled, but when I open it, I see Aunt Sianto.

“How are you?” she asks me when she comes in.

“I don’t know,” I reply. She sits down and looks at me. “There is so much sadness, Auntie. I don’t think I can handle it. And to think I will be working in places like these. Auntie, I can’t. I want to help some people. Yesterday—”

“Help? Help who? Is this about Rahma? I warned you about making close connections. We don’t help people. Did anyone help our tribe all those years ago? Remember how much we’ve suffered.” Aunt Sianto’s face turns into a frown as she speaks, and her voice rises.

“No, it’s not about anyone. My heart feels so heavy, it’s as if I’m—”

“It’s guilt, child. All laibons live with it, you know that. You’ll get used to it.”

“How did Papa die, Auntie?”

“You already know that, my child.”

“No, I mean, why?”

She hesitates and takes a deep breath. “Your assignment is almost over. You will finish when the city has fallen. It is the last step of your initiation.” She moves to the door, opens it slightly and then stops.

“Sironka—your Papa, he was depressed. He lived with it for years.” She turns to me; her face is now tender, and her wrinkles are clear through the light from the door. I realise how much Aunt Sianto hides about herself and her feelings towards people she cares for. “Sometimes, there’s a limit of how much guilt we can take. Your Papa was a good man, and he saw too much suffering and grief he felt responsible for. But we are laibons. He knew that, and maybe his heart couldn’t bear it. He wouldn’t have done what he did unless he felt he didn’t have a choice. You’ll turn out differently. I promise I’ll watch over you more.”

Our internet access is cut off. Rahma and I are walking to a hospital where civilian casualties are. I have decided to help her with her work, even though Aunt Sianto warned me from being close to her. I don’t know what will happen to me if she finds out, if the rest of the council of laibons finds out. But every day I worry about her going out to work as the city is being destroyed. I fear for her life, and I’m going to try and keep her safe.

My top is blotted with sweat; it’s a hot, humid day and we are wearing yellow press vests over our clothes. On my wrist down to my fingers, I have covered my tattoo with a white bandage to forget the history traced on my body. Some part of the tattoo is still showing, but I try not to look at it—not to think about it.

“We have to find a way to tell the world,” Rahma says. She is carrying a notebook and a camera; I, her microphone and headsets. “Thank you for being here. You are part of us, part of me.” I don’t say anything.

We arrive at the hospital and find long queues. A man at the entrance argues with the receptionist. He is holding his daughter. Blood drips from his hand. When I look closer, I realise the blood is his daughter’s. She has a cut on her head.

“I need to see a doctor.”

“Tafadhali, keti chini. Everyone else is waiting.”

“My daughter. Please—” He starts to cry. I’ve never seen a grown man cry before, and I think of my father’s sadness.

An elderly woman rises from her seat. “My insulin,” she complains, holding up her walking stick. The rest of the patients simply look at her. Every time I look at someone, I feel as if I cannot endure their grief, the grief they transmit to me through their eyes.

In the wards, we find patients lying on beds and the floor. We ask some of them if we can take their pictures. There are so many of them with gunshot wounds and shrapnel lodged in their bodies. A doctor pulls out a stethoscope and checks on a patient. Another in a frayed white coat carries a drip to the farthest end of the room. Rahma sits on the ground. She breaks down, crying. “This is so painful. The suffering!”

Suddenly, we hear the airstrike siren.

“It can’t be this hospital. It’s a safe zone. They would never bomb the hospital,” Rahma says. But we see people running past us.

A nurse screams at us, “Run! Run outside!”

“It’s this hospital, Rahma.” I pull her up.

We run. As we run, Rahma is struck by something blunt. I place my arm around her shoulders and assist her to run. But there are too many people.

We run and run but we are not close to the exit.

“I’m scared,” Rahma says. “I’m so scared.”

Our sixty seconds are almost up.

“Rahma, I’m sorry,” I say.

The bomb pierces through the roof of the hospital. I visualize the garden at home where Papa and I played. The air heats up. “Rahma, I’m so sorry.” I reveal myself to her before she is engulfed by flames. I emerge lying on the earth and grass of our garden. My hand is stretched out towards an invisible Rahma and hot tears burn my cheeks.

I feel so empty. So hollow.