For Abdu it was the most exhausting, humiliating and challenging waiting. That was expressed by his visible restlessness. If he had been a smoker he would have smoked a whole packet of cigarettes for the one and a half hours of waiting for the final results of Halima’s medical report. Halima was his young wife in her twenty five years. He was six years older than Halima. What worried him most was his sixth sense predicting that the report will be terrible.
Finally Halima erupted out of the door with the horror of the results written on her face boldly. She had breast cancer, the last thing they would want to hear on earth. The two broke into tears even before they left the hall, leaving people puzzled. They walked hand-in-hand as is to say, “We shall die together.”
They were five years married and they had a gorgeous son today aged three and a half years. They had been thinking of going for their second child when Halima’s pains gave them the alarm. Today they were church-mouse poor, not to mention the threat to their marriage if Abdul was drafted by the terrorist gang in the name Alshabaab fighting to take over the control of Somalia and turn it into a sole Islamic state. He had gone underground to avoid the drafting and when he realized it was just a matter of time before the terrorist militia caught up with him, perhaps after torturing his wife with a gang rape, he stole a neighbor’s camel with which he exiled himself and his family to Kenya. The journey by night most of the time was treacherous. After twenty three days, by Allah’s grace, he crossed the Somalia border through one panya-route and broke into the Republic of Kenya territory. He had had made some important contact to one Mahmud, a distant relative living in Kenya.
“Halima, we’ve made it! I can’t believe it!” Abdul cried tears of joy and his wife joined him for the chorus. The son didn’t cry because he didn’t know what the crying was all about if it wasn’t an amusement. An agent of Mahmud received the family in a hired four-wheel drive car and transported it to Mombasa through Malindi, a journey that took four days. That was after Abdul had sold the stolen camel for a throwaway price. The money from the camel was the only money he had in the whole world. He had left Somalia without a cent.
Mahmud housed Abdu and family for about three months during which he tried to teach Abdul a first aid Kiswahili. By the third month both Abdul and Halima could see that, in spite of the hospitality with which Mahmud had received them, they had become a big liability to Mahmud’s family. Finally Mahmud knocked up a clever way of riding himself of that liability. He launched a claim that he was closing his business in Mombasa and transferring it to Nairobi where there were better prospects.
Nobody actually knew what business Mahmud did. Even in Mombasa he had been a suspect of the authority that he had a hand in drug trafficking or some dubious illegal activities. He begged Abdu, “Brother, please, by the end of the week you should have found another accommodation for your family. The situation threw Abdul and his family into living like vagabonds. They survived on handouts from sympathizers supplemented by money from any casual labour he could find, from digging pit latrines to washing clothes.
Luck fell into Halima’s hands when she was hired by a wealth man as a baby-sitter. At that time the tall and skinny Abdul with undeniable Somali features worked as a casual labourer for a building constructor.
In Kenya Somalis are nicknamed, Warias. Waria is the sound you frequently hear in their language. The Waria family could now afford renting a small slum house. That was seven months after they had smuggled themselves into Kenya. Abdul had started struggling to get a forged ID. Unfortunately, that was when Halima developed unbearable breast pains. Her employer helped her with the medical checking. But when the results came out with the breast cancer news, he saved his money by dismissing her saying, “Find money to go for the operation before the cancer kills you.”
“Where the hell would I get money for breast cancer operation?”cried Abdul who felt absolutely destroyed. He could hardly feed the family leave alone affording the operation. The yawning death of his wife paralyzed him. It was a real terror. He couldn’t believe that the most beautiful woman he had in the world would die. Her desperate face and eyes cried to him begging, “Abdul, don’t let me die!” There were times they grabbed each other with embrace and cried tears of desperation over each other. That was when Abdul realized how valueless he was in the world. The irony was that they suffered surrounded by rich people. Who cared whether his wife was dead or alive any way?
Halima was an exceptionally beautiful medium size woman with a brand of skin features that argued she was a mixture of black and Arabic blood. She had long wavy black hair. Her beauty was most registered in her eyes, in the shape of her face and nose. She was precisely proportional in body/
Every time Halima’s eyes looked at Abdul they appeared to ask, “Abdul, are you going to watch me die from breast cancer?” Perhaps Abdul should be consoled by the thought that Halima’s death would be survived by Saudi, their son. The money amount of how much the operation would cost had actually sounded the death toll of Halima’s life. Abdul was destroyed by realization that soon Halima, his angel, would be no more. Her body would become dust and part of the earth. He hated himself and his fate, counting himself another wretched creature of the world. He thought life was a cheat. It had always cheated him that he was somebody… If God could not save Halima for him, why should that God exist? He lost appetite; became sleepless and started walking talking to himself unconsciously like somnambulist. In the night when he happened to fall into his mean asleep he was plagued by nightmares. He would wake up from the nightmare crying, “No, Halima can’t die.”
He feared overexposing himself for the authority to discover that he was a foreigner then pounce on him for deportation. His Kiswahili language was very poor. In order to fake a citizen he had to speak Kiswahili fluently. He had learnt English up to primary school level. If they caught him speaking only English, which he spoke grammatically incorrect and with heavy Somali accent nonetheless, they would spot him. So, he camouflaged by adopting loneliness, speaking as little as possible.
Was it his request to be born a Somali and live forever in Somali? He realized how free wildlife was. Kenyan wild animals were not aware that they belonged to Kenya. So were the birds, butterflies, domestic flies, squirrels and the rest. They were not captives of locations. As a human being, why should he feel a foreigner in any country? What did it matter in the world to be born a Somali, Russian, Indian, Zulu, Mongolian or American if one was not accepted as a citizen of the human race wherever one chose to live? What a terrible man-made social restriction denying you to be a member of the world.
Whatever Halima said, behind those words Abdul only heard, “Abdul, soon I’ll be no more because I’m going to die.” On several occasion he had tried to pray but the prayers had been aborted by a voice from within wondering, “What’s the prayer for when Halima is going to die?”
One day Saudi asked, “Mummy, why is Daddy crying?” For the answer she cried and Saudi cried joined in the crying; maybe because he thought it was good thing to cry.
That night Abdul hardly slept for thoughts and worries. His restless mind flew from one place to another in search for answers. Even if Halima lost both breasts he would live happily with her forever. The pain killers didn’t help Halima much. She had developed an inflammable temperament, often thrown into bouts of terrible depressions. She had adopted a behavior of seclusion in which she didn’t want to see and talk to anybody.
There is a saying that you run fastest when you know there is a monster chasing you from behind. That is applicable to a tormented mind. The mind flies fastest, sometimes going astray and hitting against objects dangerously. That night Abdul’s mind flew from one action to another; from stealing to even selling the son secretly to raise money for the operation.
Perhaps, one day Abdul would live to remember that the answer to one’s salvation is preceded by crisis. The death lurking in the shadows about to grab Halima had thrown him into a real mental battle. It was the challenge for him to swim or sink. What was obvious was that he was going to sink. On the other hand he believed that the answer to Halima’s survival must be lying somewhere. But where? He believed that the money should be somewhere. But where? How can Halima die just like that? Why Halima? Surely, Halima shouldn’t die. Halima must live for him. Halima was too beautiful to die. The total composition of his life revolved on living with Halima, walking together with Halima, making love with Halima, getting children with Halima and both bringing up those children. That was all. The rest were nothing else but details. He could live full life without those details …
That night his tormented mind squeezed a crazy idea out of the meanness of life. Perhaps later that idea would prove that what you call riches or poverty, after all, is a condition of the mind.
By five o’clock they were awake although neither had uttered a word to the other. They simply felt each other through the union of their bodies. It was one of the few nights when Halima’s pains had taken a break. Pregnant with the crazy idea, Abdul broke the dawn by clearing his voice and saying, “Halima, there’s something we could do to save your life.”
“What thing?” her intuition sensed something positive. Her voice got energized and she cried, “We?” her impatience demanded. “You and who else?You and me?”
“Yes, you and me,” he said in a dreamy voice.
“How? What thing?”
Perhaps in order to articulate the potency of his dream he brought his trunk up and he sat beside her. He wore only his pants. There were many times they had slept stark naked but not since Halima had developed the breast cancer pains. With is hand resting over the suffering breast as if conducting a prayer to heal her, he sketched his dream. He wanted her to go to ask a favour from her former employer who owned a plain plot nearby. “Explain to him that I want to build a temporary miniature hut structure which I would use to raise money for the operation.” When she wanted to know how he would go about using the structure to raise the fund, he denied her the disclosure.
In a way, Halima downplayed her husband’s dream. She thought Abdul had taken a new step of bluffing her in order to by her some little comfort. Nevertheless, when he insisted on the idea she accepted to take the message to the man. However, instead of approaching the man, she explained the weird request to the wife with whom she was closer. “Please convey that to your husband,” begged Halima. The wife faithfully delivered the request to her husband and that evening the employer sent a messenger to Abdul saying, “Tell him to come and explain to me exactly what he wants.”
Abdul explained the weird idea that bordered on madness. But for the sake of sympathizing with the Waria’s wife, the former employer said, “Go ahead and use the plot to build the structure.” He took Abdul to the half-acre plot and chose a particular location asking, “What about that spot?” To which Abdul cried,
“Perfect!”
It took Abdul one full week for Abdul to erect a stick-and-mud miniature hut which was grass-thatched. The ridiculous hut had neither window nor door. It was so small that it could accommodate two persons squeezed into the room. During the construction Abdul attracted many curious people. Eventually the attraction created a mob of observers. Children particularly were thrilled by the construction. They overcrowded the construction and some of them even offered to give him helping hands.
All kinds of voices were heard talking about the matter. The most hitting statement was, “This Waria must be a mad man. He should be taken for mind checking.”
By the time he finished the hut the news had spread far and invited eyes of administration. It looked like nothing had ever happened in that part of the world that had raised so much curiosity. The plot owner watched the work with amazement. As a whole, it was fun to watch craziness in display.
When the structure was complete Abdul embarked on beautifying the compound around it with pavement and decorative stones. People agreed that, whatever it was, indeed it looked beautiful. The fact that the hut, which he built mostly in the night, had neither window nor door created an insatiable curiosity among people.
By then the plot owner had already disclosed that Abdul wanted to use the structure for raising money for the operation on his wife. That disclosure touched people with sympathy. He accepted the fun of being the guest of honour in the opening of the project.
The opening attracted not only a big crowd of the residents, but the media houses arrived to cover the unique event. Local chiefs, religious leaders and business people attended the opening.
“Mr Abdul approached me with the crazy idea,” explained the guest of honour at the opening, “and I gave him the room to carry out his project if, at all, it would help him raise enough money for the operation on his wife. So, here we are today, this is it and welcome! It was only this morning that Abdul disclosed to me that the structure holds something inside. He didn’t tell me what that thing is. Instead, he invites everybody to take a gamble in buying a fifty shilling ticket filled with his name. While buying the ticket he must make a guess and write on the receipt what, in his minds, he thinks is in the hut. The ruffle will run for two months after which the draw will take place by demolishing the hut in the eyes of the public to see the winner. The winner will get a return air ticket to fly to Nairobi. In order to increase the chances of winning, you can buy as many tickets as possible, putting as many guesses as you wish. People with a generous heart can buy each ticket at whatever personal amount he wishes above the fifty shillings.”
The project kicked off with more than two hundred people buying the ticket on the opening day. It acquired high colours when two media houses published the crazy project, which brought a flood of curious people and gamblers on the compound t. There were many generous persons who, each, bought hundreds of tickets merely as a matter of contribution. Responding to the media publication one private hospital which was highly moved sent a special message to Abdul that it would undertake the complete operation and treatment on Halima free of charge.
Even when it was a month to go before the draw, Abdul was shocked by the amount of money that poured into the private account. Many rich people took it as a fun and lavished the account by buying as many receipts as they could. One of them dropped in and said, “Give me all the receipt books in your hand; count the receipts and tell me how much money I must pay.” He hired boys to fill into the receipts with whatever they imagined could be hidden in that hut. One of the hired boys who didn’t want to think hard chose to fill the space by writing “nothing” for the mysterious thing in the hut.
Abdul and Halima couldn’t believe it when the crazy idea collected over three million shillings. One of the donors went overboard by promising to educate their son up to secondary school and a private shipping company promised Abdul a permanent job. Unimaginable fortunes had poured into their hands from every direction.
On the material day of the draw, the compound was packed by people as if there was a political rally, all hung up by the suspense of the mysterious item to be revealed in the hut. The crowd waited with anxiety as the demolishers of the hut began the unfolding by undoing the roof. When the roof was removed and eyes sought for the answer, what did they find?
NOTHING!
The rich man who had bought many receipts and got a lazy boy to write the answer, NOTHING won the air ticket which, in any case, he could afford.
“NOTHING!” the crowd screamed out with laughter.
It was Waria Abdul who had the genius of exploiting the secrets and dynamics of human mind. Out of his observation, for years he had been mesmerized by the power of curiosity in people. Curiosity was biggest natural force and mother of invention behind people’s endeavors.
Nine months after Halima’s breast cancer operation and successful chemotherapy treatment, Abdul went into full-swing fishing business having bought a big fishing boat. Fishing had always been a profession at the bottom of his heart. In spite of his little formal education and lack of good knowledge and experience in fishing, the misfortune of the breast cancer and the consequences had taught him one great lesson. That lesson was: when you lack something, live assured that behind the lack there is something else good waiting for you. He lacked good formal education and a solid profession. But what he lacked other people had it indirectly for him. He exploited people’s education and professionalism by employing and paying them handsomely. They did for him everything every thing he had ever wanted to do. As if his gods had sacrificed him to success, the business picked up speedily and expanded. He was struck by series of successes.
Seven years in the business Abdul had everything it took to become a fishing magnate with a fleet of fishing boats and everything necessary for the profession. He established a fish processing plant for the export market. A year after his business had taken off he had travelled to Somalia to see the man whose camel Abdul had stolen. Abdul confessed the theft and repaid it with enough money for the owner to buy three camels. While Abdul was giving him the money he said, “Please, accept it all; your camel saved my life and that of my family.”
Up to that stage, so many times Abdul and Halima had wondered aloud, “Where would we be today if the breast cancer didn’t strike?” By then they had become Kenyan citizen.
END…………………………………………………..May 15,2013
