a business for tourists, did the applicant have the proper license from such and such bureau at such and such address? If not, it would have to be acquired before the passport application would be considered.
For each question we would have to leave unanswered, I tallied a twenty-dollar bill. By the time the food arrived, the total exceeded seven hundred dollars.
Adé was no stranger to hamburgers and fries, but after weeks of lentils, coconut rice, and cassava, we could barely digest the meat, and fell into our narrow bed back at the hotel as if drugged. Adé fell asleep immediately, but I lay there in the dark, thinking of Mugo, and the long line of bodies we would encounter the next day. I turned on the light and pulled out the papers. I tried to make headway, but there were too many questions I could not answer. When I lay back down, Adé instinctively reached his arm around me and pulled me closer. I wrapped my legs around his, and nuzzled my face in his neck, inhaling deeply. My faith had suffered a blow, but my love for him, my devotion, remained.
Hours later I woke up ravenous and dressed quickly. I craved eggs, the slick white outer oval and pasty yolk inside, the symbol of life hidden inside the protein-rich orb. I wanted these and maybe some juice—mango, papaya, something orange and
tamu,
sweet. Adé, who usually slept so lightly and seemed always ready to spring into the day, was unmoving in the metal bed, his long body wrapped tightly between the thin sheets shielding him from the cold of Nairobi’s altitude.
Downstairs the desk was unmanned, but I didn’t notice theaberration. The streets were deathly still, but even that didn’t register in my First World mind. I blithely walked the recently swept street from the hotel down to a shop I knew, and found it shuttered. I kept walking until I found another, similarly padlocked and impenetrable. Then I came to a corner where I had seen vegetable stands the evening before, but there was no one and nothing in sight, not even a remnant of one of the crudely constructed stalls, or a dirty orange peel left on the ground. As if in a dream, I wondered if I were the only living person left on Earth. Where were the voices and movement of other souls, the music blaring from the
matatus,
the screeching of worn tires on even more worn asphalt?
And then I felt, without hearing, the rumble of trucks, and then all at once they were upon me, real and monstrously loud. Columns and columns of tanks were rolling through the city. They were gigantic and immediately served at least one of their purposes, which was to make me feel small—very, very small, inconsequential. I could be crushed with one turn of the wheel as if my life, our lives, and everyone we brought with us, our mothers and fathers and their mothers and fathers, and all the mothers and fathers before them, were meaningless, not even a full entry in the annals of humankind.
Instead of running, which would have been futile, I stopped moving and became my own pounding heart. Sweat streamed from my armpits like urine. Soldiers were perched on top of the tanks, and hung from the sides like components of the machines themselves. Huge guns were strapped to their bodies, ammunition sashed over their hearts, red berets atop their heads, their dark faces inscrutable but for the flash of excitement in a fewgrinning mouths anticipating the kill. As each tank passed me, I was assessed and dismissed, held in the sightline of a weapon, caught, then released. This happened thirty or thirty-five times.
I held my breath, counting the steps back to Adé, and carefully charting the path in my mind. But then a boy stepped out of the shadows of a dilapidated building across the street with columns left behind by the English. He had on short pants, a ripped T-shirt with a faded Coca-Cola logo, and worn-out tennis shoes—the kind travelers often leave behind or give away before returning home, where new shoes could be bought easily
For each question we would have to leave unanswered, I tallied a twenty-dollar bill. By the time the food arrived, the total exceeded seven hundred dollars.
Adé was no stranger to hamburgers and fries, but after weeks of lentils, coconut rice, and cassava, we could barely digest the meat, and fell into our narrow bed back at the hotel as if drugged. Adé fell asleep immediately, but I lay there in the dark, thinking of Mugo, and the long line of bodies we would encounter the next day. I turned on the light and pulled out the papers. I tried to make headway, but there were too many questions I could not answer. When I lay back down, Adé instinctively reached his arm around me and pulled me closer. I wrapped my legs around his, and nuzzled my face in his neck, inhaling deeply. My faith had suffered a blow, but my love for him, my devotion, remained.
Hours later I woke up ravenous and dressed quickly. I craved eggs, the slick white outer oval and pasty yolk inside, the symbol of life hidden inside the protein-rich orb. I wanted these and maybe some juice—mango, papaya, something orange and
tamu,
sweet. Adé, who usually slept so lightly and seemed always ready to spring into the day, was unmoving in the metal bed, his long body wrapped tightly between the thin sheets shielding him from the cold of Nairobi’s altitude.
Downstairs the desk was unmanned, but I didn’t notice theaberration. The streets were deathly still, but even that didn’t register in my First World mind. I blithely walked the recently swept street from the hotel down to a shop I knew, and found it shuttered. I kept walking until I found another, similarly padlocked and impenetrable. Then I came to a corner where I had seen vegetable stands the evening before, but there was no one and nothing in sight, not even a remnant of one of the crudely constructed stalls, or a dirty orange peel left on the ground. As if in a dream, I wondered if I were the only living person left on Earth. Where were the voices and movement of other souls, the music blaring from the
matatus,
the screeching of worn tires on even more worn asphalt?
And then I felt, without hearing, the rumble of trucks, and then all at once they were upon me, real and monstrously loud. Columns and columns of tanks were rolling through the city. They were gigantic and immediately served at least one of their purposes, which was to make me feel small—very, very small, inconsequential. I could be crushed with one turn of the wheel as if my life, our lives, and everyone we brought with us, our mothers and fathers and their mothers and fathers, and all the mothers and fathers before them, were meaningless, not even a full entry in the annals of humankind.
Instead of running, which would have been futile, I stopped moving and became my own pounding heart. Sweat streamed from my armpits like urine. Soldiers were perched on top of the tanks, and hung from the sides like components of the machines themselves. Huge guns were strapped to their bodies, ammunition sashed over their hearts, red berets atop their heads, their dark faces inscrutable but for the flash of excitement in a fewgrinning mouths anticipating the kill. As each tank passed me, I was assessed and dismissed, held in the sightline of a weapon, caught, then released. This happened thirty or thirty-five times.
I held my breath, counting the steps back to Adé, and carefully charting the path in my mind. But then a boy stepped out of the shadows of a dilapidated building across the street with columns left behind by the English. He had on short pants, a ripped T-shirt with a faded Coca-Cola logo, and worn-out tennis shoes—the kind travelers often leave behind or give away before returning home, where new shoes could be bought easily
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