The Two Krishnas (43 page)

Moi served his benefactor, “the father of independence,” or
Mzee,
as adulating Kenyans called Kenyatta, with extreme loyalty. He faithfully executed the moderate policies of the Kenyatta era, even surviving several attempts on his office by the Kikuyus who refused to see him as anything but an outsider. “The Giraffe” they called him, some affectionately and others only because they thought all he did was ravenously lick everything in sight like a giraffe does acacia trees. And then, when Kenyatta breathed his last, “The Giraffe,” over six feet tall and immaculately suited with the trademark rose in his buttonhole, lifted his
fimbo ya nyayo,
and led his country straight into the pits of hell.

Even in Kenyatta’s time Kenya had never been free from corruption. By declaring KANU as the single effective political party, Kenyatta had already laid the foundation for a dictatorial regime where independent thought was heresy, and where the fate of over twenty million Kenyans lay in the grips of a couple of hundred elitists. But under Moi the beast of KANU grew bigger, receiving fresh and copious amounts of blood to escalate corruption. Unable to grasp the responsibilities vested in them as leaders of a country, its ruling elite morphed into an occupying force, thrusting the country into a kind of siege.

Opponents in thought or action were detained without trial, tortured, even eliminated without judicial process. Grand looting of state coffers became not only acceptable, but those appointed to positions were expected to contribute to the ruling party’s war chest. A brotherhood of sycophants—Asians and Africans alike—became a channel for transferring resources from the poor to the rich, from other regions to that of the president, and finally outside of Kenya, into personal holdings.

That first day of August, a group of Kenya Air Force soldiers, already maltreated by seemingly endless shortages of essentials like food and shelter while the government sank its fangs deeper into the throbbing vein of the nation, decided to overthrow Moi, and rid the nation of its parasites. Kenyans awoke with the radio broadcasting messages by the rebels under Private Hezekiah Ochuka, interspersed with Bob Marley songs. Most of the army was maneuvering in the northern country and absent from Nairobi. The country plunged into anarchy. The fires to burn away all that had ailed beautiful Kenya had been lit.

Old resentments were reignited.

The Asians, as many were known to say, had it a long time coming.

* * *

When Mariam hadn’t returned with fresh
parathas
and fried eggs for Pooja in an instant, Suchitra grew agitated. “Where is that woman? Is she laying the eggs herself? Poor Pooja hasn’t even eaten yet!”

Not in the mood to hear her mother-in-law’s fussing, Pooja rose from her seat. “I’ll go check. Although I really don’t feel very hungry,” she said, touching her head.

Kiran, still working through an omelet, pushed her plate over. “Here, here. Have some of this.”

“Not hungry? I really don’t blame you. Who wouldn’t lose their appetite after waiting for so long!” Suchitra snorted.

Pooja held her hand out and winked at Kiran who giggled. “No, no, you need that now.” Last night Kiran had revealed to Pooja that she was pregnant. She was going to break the good news to her parents later that day, perhaps over picking out kitchenware at Woolworth’s.

“Go, go! Quickly check on that lazy woman before she starves us all! Are you all right?” Suchitra asked, placing her hand over Pooja’s forehead. “There’s no fever.”

Pooja, having no energy to explain, just smiled wearily. Talk of demonic crows and destroyed
mandaps
would only excite Suchitra more. As she walked away, she heard Suchitra call. “And tell her please to bring some hotter chai as well. If it doesn’t require her to go picking leaves for it!”

What most people didn’t realize about Suchitra when it came to the servants was that underneath the armor was a large beating heart that only Ravi had been privy to, many times catching her handing out extra cash or salary advances to their servants. Why, hadn’t she allowed Salim to take off with the car overnight so he could visit with his city relatives? But, the model of race relations between Asians and their African laborers, just as it had been for the British with the rest of the colored people at one time, was to act tough with servants, otherwise she would be perceived as weak and then they would walk all over her, wouldn’t they?

Pooja found the main kitchen in the house empty with no sign of any food being prepared. An elaborate, imported stainless steel gas range sat untouched in its metallic splendor and expensive copper cookware hung around it from a rectangular ceiling rack. She reached up and touched a saucepan, sympathizing with its purposelessness, thinking, she would never let it go to such waste. The kitchen, like so much in the house, was primarily for display.

She wandered outside, hoping to find Mariam in the servant’s quarters. She looked up at the sky, and the sun, as if on cue, broke through the clouds, suffusing everything with a golden glow but doing little to warm anyone. There was not a crow in sight and only the garbled sounds of transistor radio coming from Mariam’s quarters filled the air. The cold flared Pooja’s skin up in goosebumps. From where she stood, she could see that Mariam and the African man she had been flirting with earlier were standing and talking intently in her quarters, the front door ajar and opening into a dark, rather bedraggled room. She grew slightly irritated, thinking Suchitra may be right after all, that servants must be kept under control or they grow quite lackadaisical in their work.

Just then, Mariam and the African sensed Pooja and stopped talking abruptly. Pooja saw that panic was written all over Mariam’s face, which she attributed immediately to her being caught at her neglectfulness. The African man, however, looked stonily at her. Pooja, fighting the urge to flee into the house, stood her ground resolutely, channeling a little of Suchitra.

“Mama, you need something?” Mariam asked, and then, without waiting for a response, turned back to the man and said urgently, “You must go now! Just go, please, Njoroge!” But he hesitated, giving Pooja one last chilling look, and then dashed out of the property and through the open gates like a fugitive on expiring time, the sun pouring on him.

“Chai,” she said. “We need some more chai please!” Her voice carried the palpable timbre of a command.

“Yes, yes, it is ready, Mama. It is too cold for you, Mama. You go in. I’ll bring it in with some eggs,” Mariam said, and reaching somewhere behind her, silenced the radio and lifted out a checkered thermos flask she had already prepared and which she must have been bringing over before she was interrupted by Njoroge. Pooja, suddenly feeling guilty, crossed the gravel yard and went to Mariam’s door so she could take the flask in herself and spare Mariam from encountering Suchitra. But once there, she couldn’t help her eyes from being drawn into the dwelling, indeed as bleak and threadbare as she had imagined it from the outside. In contrast to the Samjis’ home, this outbuilding was in a state of disrepair—rotting wooden doors and window frames, glass panes held together with packing tape.

“Sorry, Mama, I am so sorry, Mama,” Mariam kept apologizing as she handed the flask over to Pooja, who smiled appreciatively and with some guilt. Pooja could see a small unmade bed by the wall and a small window upon it faced the high, gray walls of the compound itself. It seemed that a small dresser upon which was perched a framed black-and-white picture of an African family and a scraggly money plant twisting out of a Gordon’s Gin bottle were the only other personal furnishing. This scarcity broke Pooja’s heart, filling her with resentment for the Samjis and even her own people.

“Your family, Mariam?” she asked, stepping into the room and pointing to the photograph.

Mariam grew excited, and fetched the picture. “Yes, yes, Mama,” she said and began pointing out her husband and grown sons. “Mohammad and Bashir both go to school. They’re good children, Mama. Very good children. One day, Mohammad tells me, he will be rich enough to own the textile mill at Kangemi. Then I will not have to work anymore. But I tell them, how can that be? They are my family too,” she said of the Samjis. “And they need me.”

Pooja, choked up, put her hand on Mariam’s and squeezed it, the picture and warming flask of tea between them.

Then they heard it, what sounded like an approaching mob outside the open gates. The voices of men continued to rise like a mounting wave and it felt like there must be a full blown stampede closing in on them. There was the crashing of glass, then a piercing alarm followed by angry shouts going back and forth. Both Pooja and Mariam’s hearts leapt. Someone cried out, followed by more sounds of breaking and crashing, as if demons had been unleashed. Both women looked out in the direction of the noise but Mariam, being closer to the door, spotted them first. There must have been at least seven of them, armed with
panga
machetes, invading through the open gates. Too late to send her back, Mariam pushed Pooja further into the room. “Mama, you must hide!” she said, throwing the picture to the side, “Toilet! In the toilet! Quickly!”

“But—they—” Pooja said, pointing towards the house.

“Go! Please, Mama, they mustn’t find you!”

The flask escaped Pooja’s hands but instead of crashing, it rolled out the door. Mariam shoved her into the bathroom that was just to the side of the bedroom. She had barely pulled the door behind her when the men charged into her quarters. In spite of being brave, Mariam let out a cry when she saw the possessed faces. Pooja, crouching in the dark over a pit latrine, the stench of urine and unadulterated fear driving her to the point of nausea, could see through the slit around the doorframe. A tall man came forward and seized Mariam by the neck, lifting her up mightily so that her feet almost lifted off the floor.

“You better stay away or we’ll slaughter you, understand?” he bellowed in Swahili.

“Please, don’t—don’t hurt anyone,” she whimpered in his grip, barely able to look into his demonic, bloodshot eyes or breathe against the overpowering smell of
changa’a
on him. “Take it, take what you want. We have nothing against you.”

Another man, a shorter, stockier one came forward and said, “
You
have nothing against us. But then, why would you? You are also one of us. But they, those people—they do! It’s those Asian dogs that we have come for. Come on,
bwana,
tch!
Why waste your time with this old owl? In there, let’s go in there,” he said, eyes growing wild with excitement. “That’s where our business is!”

Some of the other men were already heading for the house. The others agreed with the stocky man vehemently, urging him on. The tall man, acting like the leader of the gang, released Mariam from his grip and she almost fell to the floor, coughing and gasping for air. “If I were you, I wouldn’t come in there,” he said and then they all turned around and left the quarters as quickly as they had appeared.

* * *

While Suchitra launched into her diatribe against Mariam’s continued absence, Kiran, having force-fed herself, stood up from the table and serenely walked away to the living room, where a floor-to-ceiling window overlooked a verdant garden. The sun was bright, a shaft of its golden light pouring into the room and upon her.
What must Prashant be doing right now,
she wondered as her hand circumnavigated her still flat belly. In her mind’s eye, she saw him behind the counter of the jewelry store, grandly displaying ornaments of buttery gold to clients doing their best to suppress their excitement over a piece and hoping to drive the price down.

She still hadn’t told him that she was going to give them the most precious gift of all, holding on to the secret of the life growing within her belly for five weeks now, and only letting her dear Pooja in on it last night as the electricity returned and went away again. Would it be a boy or a girl, she wondered. It really didn’t matter, the child would be coddled all the same by everyone. There were names to pick, birth charts to be divined. Just the thought of the fuss Rajanbhai alone would make over this new arrival as he stuffed samosas into his cavernous mouth made her burst into little giggles all to herself.

By the time they heard the commotion, it was too late to do anything. Suchitra rose from her chair. “See? What did I tell you about this place! God knows what is going on out there. Quickly, let’s get Poo—”

The sound of feet thumping through the house was followed by a jarring scream, and only then did Kiran turn around and realize that it was her father who had cried out. A gang of armed men in the middle of the room pulled him off the chair and threw him to the ground. Kiran shrank back and up against the windowpane, realizing all at once what was happening. Suchitra rushed to her husband’s aid, falling next to him on the ground. The short, stocky man tried to pull her off him, but Suchitra struck out at him, slashing him on the cheek with the thick gold bangles on her wrist.

“You fucking cunt,” the man snarled as he saw the blood on his face and kicked out violently, hurling her to the side where she lay moaning in pain. “We’ve suffered enough at your hands! No more! Shut up!” He kicked her again and again until she lay silently writhing on the floor. As Ravi tried to scramble to his feet, another man came forward and swung the butt of his machete at him, striking him in the head and drawing blood. He slumped to the ground and was silent and completely still.

Kiran, the only one left standing and facing the men, was shaking and sank to the floor, her hand clutching her belly. The tall, muscular leader took the first step towards her, his face breaking into a bloodthirsty grin, and the rest fell into step right behind him, hankering for a share of the prey.