The Gloaming by Melanie Finn Page B

‘
Safari njema
,’ she says. Travel safely.
    The bus leaves at noon from under a huge fig tree near the market. It rattles as it idles, exhaust fumes stinking. The crowd here is focused, active; there’s incentive to leave Magulu. People shove bags and even children through the windows. Touts sell tickets. The driver sweats as he manoeuvres boxes and sacks into the luggage compartment. Boys sell hard-boiled eggs. Others carry large boards on their shoulders—window height—bearing plastic combs, mirrors, packs of cards, key rings, dolls. They resemble peacocks, moving their displays stiffly up and down the length of the bus.
    A young man in a tie tries to co-opt my seat by the window. I bought my ticket from the bus office—a table under the fig tree manned by the agent, a Rambo-esque vision in a red bandana and mirrored shades. I paid extra for the window seat.
    As the young man won’t move—he has settled in, folding his arms, crossing his legs, determined as a suffragette—I summon the tout. He shouts at the young man and smacks him on the head. When I have reclaimed my seat the tout comes back and stares meaningfully. I pretend I don’t understand that he wants a thank-you tip—which is a mistake, because he places a very fat old woman next to me.
    She glances down curiously at the box on my lap.
    â€˜
Vitabu
,’ I lie. Books. She looks away. And moves so that part of her buttock takes up part of my seat.
    We reach Butiama at dusk.
    Only a decade ago Lake Victoria lapped at the edge of the town. The dusty shacks and crumbling buildings might have then seemed almost picturesque. But the lake level has dropped, and a wide hem of mud and trash now separates the town from the silvery-blue water. The dark mud smells, the day’s sun has heated the garbage rotting within it, and I find myself almost gagging on the thick, fetid air. The woman next to me shrivels her nose, shakes her head.
    Outside, a medieval scrum surrounds the bus, as if people want to lynch the passengers rather than greet them. We can’t disembark because so many beggars, thieves, taxi drivers, touts for other destinations, screaming relatives are blocking the door. I realize my best option is to slip behind the old woman, drafting her bulk like a cyclist.
    I have not thought what to do now, where to go. The ticket touts shout out destinations: Arusha, Mwanza, Dodoma, Kisumu, Mbeya. Pick one, I think. But not Mwanza, where they burn witches, where they kill albinos. In the frenzy, I am separated from the old woman, and I feel as if I have just lost a friend. Almost immediately, the crowd notices my solitude and I am surrounded by shouting faces. I feel hands grabbing at my suitcase, grabbing at the box under my arm. ‘Sistah!’ ‘
Mzungu
!’ ‘Arusha!’ ‘This way! This way!’ ‘Sistah!’
    Frantically I scan the faces for one that might be open, sincere. I see only the same hungry expression of the men in Magulu when they nearly attacked Kessy.
    â€˜This way! This way!’ a boy in a white shirt is saying. ‘This way, this way, this way.’ He takes firm grasp of the handle of my suitcase. I look down at him, his dark, indecipherable eyes. The white shirt is huge, a man’s shirt engulfing him, making him thinner, smaller: vulnerable. So I soften immeasurably toward him, and he senses this in an instant. He pulls me, shoving aside his competitors as if they are not larger and heavier and meaner. He pulls me confidently, a fish on the line. ‘This way! This way!’
    We are free of the crowd, but still he doesn’t let me go. ‘This way.’ We cross a road. A man tries to sell me a bottle of water. The boy shouts at him. We enter a narrow alley, turn into another alley, another, another. I think about the girl Kessy found deep inside a maze. I think about her toes, smashed with a hammer, a kind of meticulous cruelty. Kessy saved her,