We get to the field and watch the boys a little. Because we like games, we quickly pick up the rules. We start shouting tips from the side of the field. We have favourites. Scola’s brother, of course, and others. After a few weeks, someone gets tired of us stealing the ball and shouting so much and asks us if we want to play, since we know so much about it. We’re in!
He had moved in before I knew it. I had a small bedsitter. He had problems with his landlord. I liked him well enough. It wasn’t rocket science. Once again, I didn’t think it was a big deal for him to move in. I mean, this was Nairobi, right? I knew my mother wouldn’t approve, so I didn’t tell her, because I am a big girl. I send her money, after all, don’t I? That was enough.
You wanted him. You wanted him right there at the door. “Can I take you out tonight?” you asked instead and he said, “I have just the clothes for the occasion.”
Yet she could not remember her own name. She tried recalling all the female names she knew, certain she would recognise hers once she heard it. Fatuma. Naima. Khadija. Hawa. Malyun. Zainab. Ambiya. Batula. Rukiya. Ifrah. Quresha… None sounded like the name she would know to be hers.
a short story by Judyannet Muchiri.
The faces started to blur after a while. Why remember them? Each one was the…
At dawn, she drags herself from the bed, leaving the sheets ruffled into a heap…
I Other people die and stay dead. Others leave and never come back. But not…
The boat drifted on the endless sea, lugging the twelve remaining passengers. Seven men. Four…
The phone rang. Mama picked. Three minutes after ‘hello’ she was still listening. “Thank you,”…