the best schools and was accepted into most of them. My mother settled on Starehe Boys’ Center and School, a school that was started by an Englishman for children who lived in the streets; to cover the operating costs, smart children from wealthy families were also admitted. Kids like Mahad from low-income families but who had very high academic scores were allowed to pay less tuition.
All our relatives, my mother, and our religious leaders kept reminding Mahad,
Whatever happens, don’t give up our culture and the glorious, millennial customs of our ancestors
. Meanwhile the Kenyan educational authorities were “Africanizing” the school curriculum. Mahad’s reading list shifted from English classics, like Dickens and Trollope, to African writers like Chinua Achebe. These authors were obsessed with the awful manner in which British colonialism had disrupted the lives of their ancestors. Ironically, however, Mahad read about Achebe’s tribe and ancient customs in English, the language of the imperialist oppressor whom we were supposed to condemn. Mahad routinely achieved top marks in English. He was drilled to wear a school uniform (with a tie), obey the school prefects, and play cricket and rounders, foreign sports. Everything he did and excelled at earned him a paradox of extreme praise for academic achievement and extreme contempt for betraying his tribal customs and religious dogmas.
At first Mahad was a day student, but because he was always late to school, our mother, together with the headmaster, decided to make him a boarder. Then he began cutting school for days at a time, though my mother thought he was attending. His teachers didn’t notice his absences at first. He had joined some other kids who were playing truant. No word ever reached me of their doing anything particularly bad; I think they spent their days just hanging out, talking about girls and plotting how to get into discos. At home Mahad berated and lectured Haweya and me: we must maintain strict morality, we must remain virgins. When we asked him why he spent time with bad girls, he said, “That’s just how it is. Some girls are bad for us boys to amuse ourselves. Some girls are honorable and they get married.”
Ma wanted three things from Mahad. First, she wanted him to help her discipline Haweya and me. This cooperation was most often expressed in tying us up and beating us. I hated him for the pain he was causing me, but watching him hurt Haweya was unbearable. Haweya was always being punished for going outside the house, staying up late reading novels, and coming home late from school. As she grew older, she also developed an interest in going to discos. Ma induced Mahad to hunt her down and bring her home, where he would call her a whore and tie her down and beat her. I would be punished for neglecting to complete the housework, the cooking, cleaning, tidyingup, washing the clothes, and doing the grocery shopping. I was also punished for annoying Grandmother. I memorized her lines of curses and lamentations and I would stand in front of her, wiggle my bottom, and pretend to be her, repeating her verses. I also hung out with my friends in school, then came home late and lied that I had been in the mosque.
The second thing Ma wanted from Mahad was to stay in school. She told him the worst thing that could happen to
her
was for him to drop out. It would mean she was a complete failure, as a mother and as a woman. Only his destiny was significant—not hers, and certainly not Haweya’s or my own. She tried to indulge Mahad by making him good food, sometimes by bribing him with a bit of money. Unfortunately none of that helped. Mahad skipped class so often that his headmaster called Ma to school and said he had no choice but to expel him.
Ma began spending days and nights searching for Mahad in dark alleys, on the streets. She went knocking on the doors of boys she thought were his friends, asking to search their houses for her son.
All our relatives, my mother, and our religious leaders kept reminding Mahad,
Whatever happens, don’t give up our culture and the glorious, millennial customs of our ancestors
. Meanwhile the Kenyan educational authorities were “Africanizing” the school curriculum. Mahad’s reading list shifted from English classics, like Dickens and Trollope, to African writers like Chinua Achebe. These authors were obsessed with the awful manner in which British colonialism had disrupted the lives of their ancestors. Ironically, however, Mahad read about Achebe’s tribe and ancient customs in English, the language of the imperialist oppressor whom we were supposed to condemn. Mahad routinely achieved top marks in English. He was drilled to wear a school uniform (with a tie), obey the school prefects, and play cricket and rounders, foreign sports. Everything he did and excelled at earned him a paradox of extreme praise for academic achievement and extreme contempt for betraying his tribal customs and religious dogmas.
At first Mahad was a day student, but because he was always late to school, our mother, together with the headmaster, decided to make him a boarder. Then he began cutting school for days at a time, though my mother thought he was attending. His teachers didn’t notice his absences at first. He had joined some other kids who were playing truant. No word ever reached me of their doing anything particularly bad; I think they spent their days just hanging out, talking about girls and plotting how to get into discos. At home Mahad berated and lectured Haweya and me: we must maintain strict morality, we must remain virgins. When we asked him why he spent time with bad girls, he said, “That’s just how it is. Some girls are bad for us boys to amuse ourselves. Some girls are honorable and they get married.”
Ma wanted three things from Mahad. First, she wanted him to help her discipline Haweya and me. This cooperation was most often expressed in tying us up and beating us. I hated him for the pain he was causing me, but watching him hurt Haweya was unbearable. Haweya was always being punished for going outside the house, staying up late reading novels, and coming home late from school. As she grew older, she also developed an interest in going to discos. Ma induced Mahad to hunt her down and bring her home, where he would call her a whore and tie her down and beat her. I would be punished for neglecting to complete the housework, the cooking, cleaning, tidyingup, washing the clothes, and doing the grocery shopping. I was also punished for annoying Grandmother. I memorized her lines of curses and lamentations and I would stand in front of her, wiggle my bottom, and pretend to be her, repeating her verses. I also hung out with my friends in school, then came home late and lied that I had been in the mosque.
The second thing Ma wanted from Mahad was to stay in school. She told him the worst thing that could happen to
her
was for him to drop out. It would mean she was a complete failure, as a mother and as a woman. Only his destiny was significant—not hers, and certainly not Haweya’s or my own. She tried to indulge Mahad by making him good food, sometimes by bribing him with a bit of money. Unfortunately none of that helped. Mahad skipped class so often that his headmaster called Ma to school and said he had no choice but to expel him.
Ma began spending days and nights searching for Mahad in dark alleys, on the streets. She went knocking on the doors of boys she thought were his friends, asking to search their houses for her son.
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