Читать книгу The Cape Cod Bicycle War - Billy Kahora - Страница 11
ОглавлениеTHE RED DOOR
In the old Datsun 1200, Julius Rotiken Sayianka and Eddie Muchiri Kambo roared off the Narok Highway, just before Suswa, building speed to clear a small rise where it had all become patchwork from the ’97 El Niño floods. Juli took the Datsun into free gear heading downhill to the little seasonal Rift Valley Lake, now called Mwisho ya WaKikuyu after the last Maasai-Kikuyu election clashes. When the laga came into view, on the endless Savanna plain, a long boy lay under one of the Zebus. Juli shouted, ‘Fuck!’ from the safety of the cabin and hooted sharply. The boy’s mouth was stuck fast on a wrinkled udder, feeding like a long leech. The conjoined cow-boy sketch, canvassed against wide sky, broke into two, righting the world.
Juli glanced at Chiri, switched off Snoop Dogg on the radio. They passed the boy’s long form, observing he was at the cusp of manhood in his nakedness. Usually Juli would have stopped to find out which clan he belonged to but passing without acknowledgement was the right insult for the boy’s animal act. Before them was Leakey country, the laga once a prehistoric lake on the floor of the Great Rift. Juli saw the long boy in his side mirror recede, noting the long cloth over his mouth.
‘What’s with the facecloth?’ Chiri asked.
Juli peered into the side mirror. ‘Even me nashindwa. Maybe his people think they can keep him from cow tit by tying his mouth. Matiti.’
Chiri, still learning about the ways out here in the wheatlands, saw Juli was serious. A young donkey stepped away from the Datsun’s quiet roar, its jaws a metronome in the wind of the plain. Raising its head, the donkey brayed far into the northeast where the flat ended and the blue hills took over. The Datsun rumbled towards the other edge of the laga, a soccer field away from the long boy. Juli tipped the Datsun into the edge of the water to cool the tyres and let the makeshift blower exhaust slowly calm down.
Out in the open, Juli was tall, square-shouldered, hard and wiry, his head small and proportional, his face dark and firm. Chiri was shorter, lighter and leaned towards roundness in the middle. The long boy had shrugged off his shuka and was wading into the far shore of the laga. ‘Definitely hii ni kichwa mbaya,’ Juli remarked. Badhead. ‘This time of year, August, morans should be in the forest. He looks old enough.’ Juli sat on the water’s edge on the driver’s side of the Datsun, stuck his long thin knees in the air, slipped a Sportsman in his mouth, reached into his jeans and took out a plastic sachet full of stems. ‘Na amebeba,’ he said, squinting against the sun glinting from the laga. ‘Did you see the size of him?’ His mouth was full of miraa.
Chiri squatted to his left, furrowed his palm in the brown water, scooping it into his pits. Worrying the two-day grime he had picked on the road, he looked towards the far shore in response. Through the wet dripping from his face, Chiri saw the long boy had been joined in the water by his animals. Zebu horns and humps stuck out of the laga mirror. The donkey and goat-headed sheep dipped in and out of the water as if controlled by some giant hand in the sky. Chiri spat out the taste of Zebu from the laga water.
They’d been on the road for three days. Up and down the wheatlands, looking at potential farms to lease for the crop. Juli had been doing this for the last three years after school, banished by his father, Petro Sayianka, from Nairobi after his O-levels. Then, the two childhood friends had met again at Juli’s father’s funeral last March. Afterwards they started drinking into their common Buru past and one thing had led to another. Chiri had just walked out of his copywriting job at Ogilvy and Mather when they met at the funeral, and had been in limbo for three months. This was just two years after leaving Nairobi Uni in his second year. Juli told him about it all, this thing out on the road and the wheat farms in the Rift Valley and it started looking as good as any other decision Chiri had to make in the near future. Possibly Daystar Uni, maybe mtumba business. He didn’t quite know. Chiri now looked at the low, intimate sky and lay back, feeling the warm dust through the thin grass on his back. Juli’s voice played in his head and Chiri, his childhood friend who liked to talk up much more than he knew with a penchant for the fantastical. And so he had taken the percentages Juli had rolled on the harvest as added with a pinch of Kensalt. This Juli – who now lived in five-month cycles – in tune with the Narok wheat, which had two crops every year, and who still seemed to need the old illusions of their childhood friendship. Especially with his cold, smoothly shaven and imposing father in the ground. That evening, after the funeral, Chiri had listened to Juli speak with a freedom he had only heard in his friend’s voice when they were much younger. This made Chiri wonder about his own father, whose death had not freed any of his own dreams.
Juli now stood up and went to the Datsun’s back checking all the tractor and combine parts they had bought in Nakuru. He slapped the bags of seed, fertiliser and insecticide, ready for planting season. He came back to the front, opened the bonnet, poured water from the laga into the radiator. He stepped back as water shot up in an arc, fountain-like, and then lessened as the engine cooled. He cleaned off the deposits around the battery terminals, wiped the windscreen. Chiri did not join Juli’s ritual. Since Juli’s father died, Chiri noticed and respected his friend’s sudden silences, tense and abrupt. He wandered off, made sure there was no wildlife around, and peed in the open field. He watched his yellow, alcohol-heavy pee splotch in the dust, stain the earth and disappear. When Chiri saw Juli look over to him, he strolled back to the Datsun and opened the broken glove compartment. The Marie biscuits had gone soft but there was still some of the Chelsea Dry Gin. He handed over the miraa to Juli, the stems now black and curled like a small dead bird’s claws. There was also some choma left – mbuzi ribs crusted with fat, crawling with ants, hours-old tasty. Chiri wished aloud for some ugali.
‘Maasais don’t eat ugali,’ Juli repeated. ‘Spoils meat.’
Chiri skinned the ribs with his teeth watching Juli carefully pore over the miraa, talking all the while. They shared the gin between them and Juli stood up ready to get back on the road. But first he lit up the weed and that they did standing up, got their heads going for Narok, ready for the barmaids, the fights, the ugliness, the ujinga. The plan was to start planting over the next two weeks. Over their heads the July clouds were overcast, the rains would have started further south and west.
Just as they were about to get into the Datsun the long boy whooped and shouted on the other side of the laga; some storks on the lone acacia took off in witness. Juli, newly alert from the weed, the gin and miraa, turned like a dog.
‘Never seen anyone in these parts swimming,’ Juli marvelled, his voice low. Chiri heard the violent thing in Juli’s voice that he remembered from their Buru teenage years.
‘…This bubu here in no man’s land. Uncircumcised.’
‘Maybe he just wants to play,’ Chiri observed. ‘A big kid.’
Juli looked at him with a hard glint in his eye and Chiri looked away. ‘A lot of blood was spilt here. So now that side ni ya Wa-kikuyu and we are on this side,’ Juli said. ‘Here on the border, the old ways are lost. Too many Kikuyus. They marry Maasais and they no longer remember the ways of the Red Door.’
‘The Red Door?’ Chiri asked.
‘And that jitu thing remains here bila any respect.’
‘And us?’
‘Ero,’ he said. ‘We are passing.’
‘And this Red Door?’
Juli smiled. ‘For us it is everything. Kila kitu. You’ll see. Mlango nyekundu and mlango nyeusi – where all Maasais come from.’ Red Door and Black Door. Chiri had also noticed that Juli no longer saw himself as half-Kikuyu from his mother’s side, let alone a hundred per cent Buru Buru raised. He waited to hear more lessons on wheat. Lessons on Maasais. How shitty Nairobi, Buru Buru were.
But in the mirror of the laga, Chiri saw Juli’s face magnify and contort, thinking maybe about the boy, what they had come upon earlier. Maybe even of his father’s death. But most likely of his elder fuck-up of a brother, Solo, who they were meeting in Narok later. Solo, who had just come from the UK after seven years of doing fuck all.
A muster of storks resettled into the small acacia tree. Suddenly a big head emerged right in the middle of the laga. Then it sank into the water. After a few seconds, a few metres from their feet, the dog-like face with newborn-baby eyes split the water, the fish mouth puckering through the handkerchief.
The long boy broke out of the water, hanging out for all the plains to see – tall against the Datsun’s front, seemingly even longer than the car itself. Even when Juli stood up to full height, in his Safari boots, the long boy towered over him, as if in primal challenge. Chiri stepped back, almost bolting. Quickly Juli flicked his Sportsman in the long boy’s face, and then he reached out, tore the cloth from his mouth and slapped him hard with an open hand and raked hard in a downward motion over the long boy’s face. Juli raised his hand again and the baby eyes went wider than a Friesian’s. Without the cloth, the boy’s face was empty and slack and he started gushing at the mouth and eyes. He cowered under Juli, who lowered his hand and let the handkerchief drop. The long boy started bawling, making star jumps into the sky. His penis, like a fifth limb, jerked in all directions and then he bolted, an antelope on the plain. Juli picked up the handkerchief, went round, opened the car door, dipped his head and then came out, his face dark and triumphant. Chiri remembered the childhood Buru Buru fights, the same Juli look, the pointless violence.
‘Ero…’ Juli shouted. He hurled the Marie biscuits at the retreating figure. The packet made a long arc in the sky and then fell in the shallow water close to shore.
‘Now his people will know why their cows have no milk at the end of the day,’ Juli said to Chiri, picking up the white handkerchief and throwing it in the back of the Datsun.
Chiri stood at the edge of the laga and watched the unfortunate figure dip its fish mouth in the mud of the shoreside looking for the biscuits. When Chiri entered the car he did not look at Juli when he said into the windscreen: ‘But yaani out here the price of milk is a beating?’
‘Narok awaits,’ Juli said, now relaxed. ‘Time to plant.’
They chased down the dying sun, drained of energy and speech, sweeping past mostly trucks, the weed wearing off. When a Land Cruiser or Land Rover flew past them swiftly, Juli talked of its relative strengths, weaknesses.
Outside Narok town, they came to the commercial wheat farms, perfect like miniature Lego models, out of place against the acacias, the open grasslands, the National Geographic mud huts, the scrawny Zebus, stray jackal dogs and the omnipresent goats. Inside the endless fence there were rows of bright-red tractors and harvesters, and ploughed land dotted with young green shoots in furrows that went on as far as the eye could see.
Juli switched back to a monotone not unlike the voice-overs of the Western movies of their childhood explaining to Chiri how wheat was even in Bibilia, Old Testament, God’s crop. Wheat grew flat like Maa land – unlike maize, which did not allow herdsmen to survey the most important thing in their lives: the cows. Wheat allowed the herdsman to sense the approach of the charging bull buffalo. Wheat did not hide snakes like cane or sisal.
They drove into Narok, reviving slowly from the endless flatness of their last few days. Narok in the evening was small-town alive to the evening breeze, the promise of mbuzi, beer and sex. Juli did his Narok ritual whenever they were back in town, taking the perimeter, through the slum known as London, then around downtown Narok’s narrow streets that curved into the natural bowl that the town was built in, past the old market, the cattle sale still going on, the Diplomat Hotel where they did not recognise any of the cars outside. They came back full circle and someone shouted Juli’s clan name, Rotiken, and they stopped, waiting. Obergon, a first cousin and prosperous absentee agricultural officer, waddled up, sweating meat, full of afya. His broad face was all smiles till he peered into the cabin and saw Chiri. He spat on the ground and said something in Maasai. Juli grinned.
‘Habari, Kikuyu,’ Obergon now hailed Chiri who ignored him. ‘Habari mudu wa house,’ he repeated sneering at Chiri. All of them laughed now, and Obergon turned to Juli.
‘Lakini, let me ask,’ he said. ‘Tell me, you have finished planting?’ His stomach was still heaving from laughing at Chiri. Juli threw his head towards the back where all the wheat season preparations were stacked. Obergon nodded in disapproval. ‘Your mzee was always done by late July. Ni nini?’ Now he looked at the purchases. ‘Be careful. Do not leave anything in the open. Si you know there are a lot of Kikuyus hapa after the clashes.’
Juli nodded and said something in Maasai. Obergon said, ‘Ai what’s the hurry? Have you talked to Solo?’
‘Kwanini.’
Obergon looked at Juli for a long time and then said, ‘He has been drinking at Agip tangu lunchtime.’
‘Kawaida. We have been driving for three days. Nakuru tafuta-ing supplies.’
‘Listen. The Senyos are there. At Agip. The whole clan. You know what that means. Twende?’
And Obergon jumped into the back with surprising ease for one so heavy, hit the side of the Datsun and they drove off.
The Senyo clan sat in a semi-circle flank in the open-air part of Agip restaurant, like a large lion pride, potent with violence. Chiri whispered to himself the count – twenty-seven clan members. They had taken five tables – two doddering elders, talking with their gums with an ancient air of instruction to several men in their early thirties with hard faces. Some younger man-boys hovered around them. The women sat to the side in supplication, their cheeks ornamented with vertical scars, their litters of shy kids cowed by the men’s harsh voices. Goat bones lay littered around them, spread over tables. Obergon observed that only the peripheral side of the clan, troublemakers and idlers were present. At least none of them would be carrying guns. ‘But Lemeyian Senyo is here,’ Obergon muttered, leading Juli and Chiri clear to the other side of the bar. Solo was nowhere to be seen. They sat on stools and ordered from the barman who was imprisoned behind chicken mesh, haloed in the light of a small lamp spewing kerosene to keep away the flies from the booze. Obergon ordered a glass of milk.
‘See if you can find Solo,’ Juli told Chiri. ‘Avoid those animals.’
‘Scream if necessary,’ Obergon added. ‘Kama mwanamke Mkikuyu.’ Like a Kikuyu woman.
They heard Solo’s laugh, crazy confident, before they saw him. As he came into sight, his face was flushed – he was yet to lose all the paleness he had cultivated in England. Solo ignored Juli, acknowledged Obergon with a manly handshake. Then, showing that he had not lost any of his boxer’s speed, he quickly grabbed Chiri around the neck in a headlock, grinding his knuckles into his scalp. Chiri smelled the three-day booze, realised he had missed Solo. Juli and Obergon relaxed at seeing him, and looking over at the Senyos, signalled Chiri to finish his beer so they could take it elsewhere. But then they decided to have a second beer, Obergon and Juli exchanged a look confirming that Solo seemed in control. Juli and Chiri soon forgot all their concerns and shouted at the barman: ‘Tumefungua mfereji’ – the taps of our throats are open – and that is when Obergon shook his head and left.
Once Juli and Chiri re-started the conversation of their childhood, Solo inevitably wandered off. Then Juli and Chiri heard shouts and when they went to see what was happening, Solo was on the ground. He was bleeding from the mouth, rolling on his back laughing. There was a tall, burly individual pointing at him, shouting in Maasai. ‘Kaa hapo.’ Let me not see you with my eyes again. There was a girl next to him looking down at Solo with a perplexed look, as if she did not know what to do. Two of the Senyos appeared and greeted the man. ‘Soba. Ni nini.’ The tall man looked at Solo who was smiling from where he was on his back. ‘It’s this dog. He can’t stay away from people’s women.’ One of the Senyo men looked at Solo. ‘Kijana, is there a problem?’ He came closer and stood over him. ‘You want me to step on you?’ The barman in the small cage, looking at Juli and Chiri said, ‘I am not selling to you.’
The other Senyo man turned to Juli. ‘Ndio. You are together. You are the ones disturbing women here.’ At this the tall man said, ‘Ero. Let it end there.’ The Senyo men ignored him, looking at Juli, then the tall man grabbed the woman by the arm and they went into the next room.
‘Let me not see you Sayiankas here again,’ one of the Senyo men said, and they left. Chiri remembered all the kids the Sayiankas had beaten up in their childhood – this was a sight they would have paid to see. Solo stood up and they left.
Outside, Juli found a red public phone booth and called Nairobi as the other two waited outside. Chiri heard him say, ndio Mum, all is well – tume plant. Ndio the tractor is now working. And the Harvester is out in Mau Narok. And yes Solomon is here. Yes, he is helping with the work. This was his weekly report to Mrs Sayianka. When Juli finished they took the drinking to Diplomat Hotel where it was more civilised.
At 5 a.m. they left Narok bullet for Nairage Ya Ngare and were home in less than two hours. Grandma Sayianka, their gogo, querulous as ever, opened the door slowly and when she saw them burst into song.
When they woke up the next day in the afternoon Juli discovered that the supplies they had purchased in Nakuru had been stolen from the Datsun.
II
The Sayianka family’s stone house at Nairage Ya Ngare was the first of its kind in the area. The first version, a small wooden bungalow, had been built by Petro Sayianka in the 1980s after he had bought the house in Buru Buru. Over the years as he prospered and his family grew so did the house, if it could be called that. More of a structure, it now sprawled with stone extensions, new wings, nooks and crannies made of mabati. Gogo had lived alone in the Nairage Ya Ngare house for years until Juli had been exiled by his father to the wheatlands.
Inside the house was a maze of corridors, cul de sacs, weirdly placed bathrooms and toilets. Most of the house did not have a ceiling underneath the mabati roof and sound travelled from room to room above the walls. One wing was Gogo’s living quarters, another their father’s former room and sitting room – the rest of the house was completely separate and could only be accessed through the tiny kitchen which also led to the front yard. Chiri and Juli took two rooms in the shaded southern side, Solo slept in their father’s old room.
Outside the house was a small shed and underneath was half an old John Deere tractor. The rest of the shed was littered with metal parts. Juli did not say much over the next few days about what they would do about the stolen supplies and so they slept, played cards, listened to the radio and talked late into the night. On other nights Juli pored over his late father’s papers and books – reading about agriculture, wheat farming. Solo remained unusually quiet and read some of his late father’s western novels and kept to himself. Chiri borrowed some of these and slept longer than he ever had since childhood. On the third morning Solo had regained his bravado at the breakfast table and plotted revenge on the Senyos. Juli remained quiet during these sessions. He had told Chiri that there was nothing to be done about the Senyos in Narok, especially now that the Sayiankas had lost their patriarch. Even Gogo laughed at Solo’s contorted face, his reckless talk.
The next day Juli woke Chiri up at 5 a.m. and they drove to Bomet and bought new supplies, even if they were almost twice the price of what they had bought in Nakuru. When they returned to Gogo’s there was a man standing in the compound. As they got out of the Datsun Juli said: ‘That’s the driver, Moseti Edwin.’
‘Machini is okay?’ Juli asked.
‘Ndio.’
‘Kweli. We don’t need to go to the garage?’
‘Ndio.’
‘Na Harvester.’
‘Also, that is okay.’
Juli beckoned Moseti and they went over to the shed.
‘Naona there are parts missing … I am told that you gave the plough to Kagunya…’
Moseti looked at Juli with feigned shock.
‘Si, he told me that you had talked.’
‘Skiza – go and bring it back today. Leo.’
When Moseti left Juli pored over the old tractor under the shed and said, ‘This used to be a John Deere tractor … this is money. Watu here took advantage of us when Mzee died … even that jamaa who was here. After this harvest I will wake up this old John Deere for my father. I’ve already done the hesabu of how much it will cost. Moseti will go with the Massey Ferguson Harverster to Mau Narok where they are already harvesting and here we will plant with the tractor.’
They started planting the next day. Juli had already leased farms in Suswa, Ngareta and near Narok town. Each of the three farms had a supervisor, two tractor drivers to do the planting and two boys to watch the seed, do menial small tasks. When Juli and Chiri went to the farm near town the owner said because they had been late he had given it out two weeks ago. A few days later they found a farm in remote Melili. They made sure the tractor work started the next day. Juli explained to Chiri the real numbers and how the acreage worked and how many bags he expected to harvest. Now that they were working Chiri saw a new Juli, older and watchful in the fields as the work went on. When he spoke now it was only of the basics, the figures. A good farm produced ten to fifteen bags of wheat grain per acre. Each bag was Kshs 2,000. Leasing one acre was Kshs 7,500-15,000 depending on where it was. Hiring a harvester and a tractor came to Kshs 1000 an hour. A tractor took half a day to spread wheat seed over ten acres. A harvester could take half a day to harvest ten acres depending on the shamba. Bottom line, if all went well you could double your money.
The planting took two full weeks and Juli and Chiri drove to and fro to make sure that none of the seed was stolen or wasted. Solo came out with them on some days and before long he declared that he was going back to the UK; that the dirty wheat life was not for him. On the days he did not come to the farm he went to the Nairage Ya Ngare bars and he came home late and found them spent eating ugali and sukuma greens. ‘Naona you are pushing the week,’ he laughed.
One evening Juli, tired and dirty from another day in the fields, watched him in the tiny kitchen, the light from the small wick dipped in the kerosene tin throwing their shadows all over the wall. ‘I talked to Mathe leo. This joini. There is someone who keeps calling her in Buru from the UK. Asking to talk to you. Ati she has your son.’ For a second Solo’s face went slack and then he regained the knowing smile at the edges of his lips and looked at Juli for a long time and left without a word.
III
The wheat crop was now three weeks old and susceptible to rust, which could destroy the crop in two days. During this period, Juli and Chiri no longer came home at sunset. They stayed out making sure that the insecticide spray had been done properly and, when it rained, re-done. Now all day the rain poured lightly over them and they came straight to bed. Solo retreated from them, harbingers of knowledge of his secret wife and child. When they made it back early Chiri now sought him out, feeling for him with the guilty face he now wore around the house. On some days he convinced Solo to come out with them to the fields.
After a month all the fields Juli had leased had been weeded and it would be another three weeks before they started re-spraying insecticide, this time for weevils. Now, Juli and Chiri took several trips out south, past Narok town, looking for tractor and harvester work which was scarce mid-season unless it was for maize and barley. It was now August and they were mostly on the road. They went from farm to farm, asking randomly around whether anyone needed a plough, a winch, even a tractor carrier for transport.
On the road Juli continued his tutorials, his moods starting to swing with the vagaries of the wheat crop and the weather as the season developed. In their new idleness Chiri understood Juli’s need to talk his farming dream into being, his voice at this stage betraying no fear of failure. In their road conversations Juli had long moved on from childhood to the more recent failures of their teenage years. Now when Juli talked against the pious mothers of the neighbourhood who had laughed when he failed his O-levels his voice was strained. He spoke with bitterness at their presence at his father’s funeral, their looks of pity at his mother and the burden of her crazy sons.
For days Juli went on about the funeral again and again and in his voice Chiri at times heard Juli’s gratitude to him for being there. And he was surprised as it was not like he would have been doing anything with his life that was of real importance. So, in between the planting and the wait for the crop to take hold Chiri played witness to Juli’s plans, his triumphant return to Nairobi and Buru with a new car for Mama Sayianka like in the old days when his father was alive. But by the end of August, six weeks after planting, it was clear that their little Agip misadventure that had delayed the planting would prove costly. Their crop in Suswa and Ngareta, having missed a week’s worth of rain, was fifteen centimetres shorter than the crops in the surrounding fields they drove past. They had planted when the rains were about to end. Then, in remote Melili, they spent more by having to import labour for another round of weeding as the locals were too proud to do such work, which they had not anticipated. In Ngareta, their second farm, which bordered the Mau forest, wheat rust thrived and the crop had to be sprayed over several times. In Suswa, the intermittent rain, driven away by strong winds, left a third of the crop stunted. That week, Juli did not call his mother with the fortnightly progress report. Instead they went drinking in Nairage Ya Ngare.
Their drinking binge moved between Top Life, Mara and Maji Ya Ngombe bars. After the first day they started drinking on credit and the three of them rediscovered a common ground over those blurred hours. Juli and Solo stopped circling each other. Chiri re-discovered a boyhood when he’d looked up to the older Solo who regaled them with tales of Manchester. Maybe they would have stayed indefinitely in between the three bars and the makeshift lodgings they crept to every morning if it was not for the news. A neighbour’s boy found them in Top Life and told them that the Massey Ferguson Harvester had been spotted in the hills of Mau Narok without its driver. The news had been brought by a herdsman who was waiting for them at Gogo’s. Juli beckoned at Chiri and they left Solo with his arm around one of the numerous Kikuyu barmaids. They found the herdsman on the road walking back and they stopped the Datsun.
‘Machini iko Mau Narok. Imekwama kwa mlima. Mko na ndovu ya kutoa.’
You will need an elephant to move it.
‘Uliona driver. Anaitwa Moseti? Mkisii.’
‘Ai. Sitaki shida.’
‘Twende? You show us?’
The man regarded Juli.
‘Ati.’
Then, Juli changed his tone taking out the drink from his voice. The man started walking away.
‘Two thousand shillings,’ Juli said, and grinned.
The man jumped into the back of the Datsun. ‘My name is Atelek.’
They stopped at the Nairage Ya Ngare Trading Centre and Juli borrowed fuel money from Johnny the Kikuyu bar owner at 15 per cent interest. They headed south first and were caught in passing rain heading towards Tanzania. In a few minutes they were in an indeterminate land where the rain fell with such relentlessness, it was as if time had shortened or space shrunk in the grey world. Now, for two full days, they managed no more than a hundred kilometres, stopping in trading centres, stuck beneath small kiosk fronts, abandoned cattle dips and, at times, under trees in open meadows. They did not notice at first when Atelek slipped away, back to the dry north. Without him, they kept at it because there was really only one road and little risk of getting lost if they asked along the way in the small trading centres where the event of a stranded Harvester was news.
One night, feeling as if they’d travelled almost to Tanzania, they managed to find a place to park the Datsun under a small shed in the middle of nowhere. They had started climbing and sensed they were already in Mau Narok. The world was a grey, stormy sea around them. With the incessant drumming of water on the Datsun’s roof, Chiri could no longer remember what the dry world felt like. They had carried a bottle of gin and a few sips woke up the alcohol of the last three days in Nairage Ya Ngare in their blood. Juli’s eyes were glazed: he was drunker than Chiri had ever seen him. And as he came to, Chiri heard the words: ‘Let me tell you about Naimenengiu Forest. Naimenengiu is a magic forest near the Tanzania border at the edge of God’s Narok. Uski Baba did not even wait for my Form 4 results – he sent me there after Highway.’
Chiri had finished school a year earlier than Juli even though he was younger and was already well into varsity when his childhood friend finished at Highway School. It was only later that Chiri heard from someone in Buru that Juli had been sent to shagz, back to the village his father hailed from. This magic Naimengiu Forest, however, did not sound like shagz.
‘Naimenengiu ni the remotest place in Kenya after Turkana. Haiko, even on the map. There I started a shop. Ilikuwa so remote that I did not need to be at the shop all the time. Because everybody knew each other people were so honest that they just took what they wanted and left the money on the counter. One day I left the shop to smoke a cigarette, those days I was on Rooster ile non-filter, not so mbali far from the village. There were these rocks I used to see every day that looked quiet. I went there. I also wanted to read a letter Baba had sent. Just before I reached the rocks, I looked up. Haiya, sitting hapo on top was a lioness.’
Juli went quiet, the sound of the rain against the windscreen and when Chiri turned he saw that his friend’s head had fallen to his chest. But Juli then continued, his eyes now fixed straight ahead. In his eyes Chiri made out something else – old memories and a bit of doubt.
‘There in Naimenengiu I saw things. Have you ever heard the roar of a lion near you? Or seen a snake the size of your leg? Nilikua in that place for two months alafu one day the oldest man in that small village sent for me. When I went to his manyatta and stood outside his voice from inside said: “Now you have become one of us. Do you want one of my daughters? Do you want land?” I did not want to refuse him. When I remained silent, he asked me whether I was wanted by the government. The police. He said he could send me to his brother in Tanzania. To Mlango Nyeusi. The Black Door. I told him I had been banished by Baba. The old man appeared on the doorway shaking his head. He gave me five goats. He told me that I would always belong to the village. He said that Nairobi is not for everyone.’
‘Catholic Parochial. Highway. You are Nairobi tao born and raised, man. You should have told the mzee that,’ Chiri said. ‘Those years for nothing. Pole, but to send you out there … I had a lot of heshima for him, you know that. But what was your father thinking?’
‘My father …’ Juli stopped and looked at him and then turned away: ‘Out there huko we saw a car once in two months when the Canter from Narok brought me supplies for that little shop. We ate nothing but mbuzi. Sukuma wiki once in two months. One day I bit into a tomato and almost came just from the pleasure of it. For the first time I almost returned to Buru.’
‘Yeah. But our paros, you know they are not always right. Half of the things my Mum goes on about… ’ Chiri said. ‘Wah.’
‘Hapana,’ Juli said, and turned to him. ‘Chiri, if you’d listened to her ungekuwa still in campus.’
‘Chief, let me ask you,’ Chiri said, his voice hesitant. ‘I do not know about you but I really tamani some fries.’
They both laughed and the world in front of them clapped in thunder.
‘When Solo and I finished school Baba called us one evening, you know how wazees are, and asked what we wanted from hii life. Solo said he wanted to go to the UK. I don’t think he was even serious. But me I was sent into the wilderness, to that shop. Because ati I was wild.’
‘Everyone kila mtu, all of us were.’ Chiri was still trying to push away the intense darkness with his eyes. ‘That’s why tuko in this party. To grow wheat and party.’
Juli ignored this. ‘Alafu Solo sent a letter to Mum from the UK saying that he wanted to marry this mzungu girl. The one who has now been calling. Huyu Katrina. Then he wrote to Baba separately and said he had a wonderful business idea. You know how much he asked for? Five milli.’
‘Million.’ Chiri realised that he had said this aloud.
‘That he did not want to continue with school. Baba then wrote to him and gave him his blessing. But he said, “Kwanza come back home we discuss.” You could never fool Baba. He did not ask Solo about the mzungu girl.’
‘Solomon, man.’ Chiri laughed shaking his head. ‘Always sly.’
‘We didn’t hear from Solo for one year.’
‘Wah. I take back sly. Crazy, like a fox.’
‘So Baba went all the way to the UK to tafuta him. When Baba came back he said zero. Sufuri. That’s when he sent for me in Namenengiu. Being away from City he said had been good for me … then he said I had his permission to start real life …’
Chiri was trying to remember when exactly Solo had come back.
‘Baba said I could make a life with farming wheat … he gave me the John Deere tractor, and the old Massey Ferguson harvester. Alafu he leased fifty acres for me in Melilli to anza my life.’
‘But just like that Baba left us. One day there was a knock on the door and there he was. Solo. We had not seen him for seven years. You should have seen Mum. But there was no time for questions. We were busy with funeral things. Mazishi. Then we started taking stock, you know how it is – what we had and of course we turned to Solo.’
A white Zebu cow suddenly appeared out of the darkness, its long horns reaching out at them. It peered through the windscreen, chewing slowly, then eased back into nothingness.
‘Seven years. But we found out that he was bila degree. Nothing. Even now we don’t know what conversations he had with Baba in the UK. He came back with only a serious drinking qualification and too much English. For every year Solo was in the UK, we could have bought a Massey Ferguson. I know because Baba used to send me to the bank to buy bank drafts for Solo. Seven Massey Fergusons. Or three John Deere tractors.’
Juli continued. ‘I left Naimenengiu and when I tried to give the shop to the old man he laughed and asked what he was supposed to do with it. Then he said, do not go back. “Usirudi stay here with us.” But then he saw my eyes and he said: “sisi, ni watu wa mlango nyekundu, we are of the Red Door. If you ever need anything, please come back.” I know the people of the Red Door will always be there for me.’
Chiri could no longer hold his bladder; he opened the door quietly and started peeing on the side of the Datsun. Even before he finished, he heard Juli weeping quietly. Chiri let his friend grieve for his father, for his years in the wilderness. But the tears were more than that and Chiri sensed they were also for their lost Buru Buru childhood and all those who had wished failure on Juli – his St George’s teachers, the Buru Buru mothers who feared for their daughters.
Then Juli stopped and said, ‘You know, that old man did not know me from the animals in the magic forest. But he took me in, wanted me to marry into his family, he would have given me land. If anyone wanting to harm me came looking for me, the village would have protected me, say they didn’t know me. That is the way of mlango nyekundu, the Red Door…’
‘It cannot continue. Solo’s behaviour.’ Chiri heard a new hardness in Juli’s voice.
‘Baba would not allow it. Solo. He has let down the clan. He has let down the Sayiankas. He has let down our late father.’ Juli paused, his face thinking through the mist that was coming at them. They had run out of miraa and without the busy chewing movements his face seemed like the Juli of old. ‘…And now Solo has a mzungu wife. And maybe all I really had of any value was that small shop in Naimenengiu.’ Lightning streaked the sky above them.
Juli said, ‘Fuck Buru and Nairobi. I can’t go back there. If anything, I’d go back to Naimenengiu.’
Chiri tried to picture the small shop out there in the middle of nowhere.
‘I need some miraa,’ Juli said, and impossibly the first of daylight now emerged. And then it started pelting with hailstones.
Driving the whole day, they found the Harvester on the side of a hill deep in Mau Narok that evening. Like a strange windmill the machine tilted to the side, a small tower in the middle of all the nothingness. Moseti was nowhere to be found. He had fled after the machine got held in this rocky field in the dark. It was clear that Moseti had taken up an extra job in the night for his own benefit.
Almost half the wheat fields in the area had been destroyed by hailstones. They went to look for help and they found an old man of about seventy several fields down the road sitting at the edge of his farm holding wheat stems and bawling like a baby. Juli stopped the Datsun and they let the old man grieve and then asked him where they could hire a tractor to help pull away the Harvester. He sat up immediately and said he had a tractor.
‘These kalenjins,’ Juli said. ‘He’s liaing here and he can get a loan tomorrow. And get back on his feet.’
They also hired two drivers with the tractor and dislodged the Harvester. They started to tow it back to Nairage Ya Ngare. The rain lightened as they headed back north. At every trading centre, they saw people who seemed chastened by the hailstorm, re-emerging into their lives, walking like they were in a funeral procession. Chiri and the drivers took turns steering the Harvester. Up in the Harvester like a newly crowned king Chiri surveyed all the broken magnificence, steering through trading centres whose wheat crop had been destroyed in the storm. They passed field upon field, flattened, as if by giant hands. The Harvester had two small round mirrors mounted on long metallic rods and Chiri saw how dark he had turned, how lean his face had become and how rough and pitted his forehead had grown.
Theirs was not the only Harvester the storm had rendered idle. They met other blue, green and red iron giants headed north, made redundant by the Hand of God and the prolonged rains. The faces underneath Trading Centre stoops looked up wordlessly and went back to small, meaningless tasks. They finally left this funeral land and arrived in Narok on the end of the fourth day after they had set out. Juli stopped by the police post and paid some cops to track down Moseti.
The next day they visited Kinuthia, a mechanic who told them that the Harvester repairs would cost Ksh 200,000 and the spare parts could only be found in Nakuru. They left the machine with him. Before they set out to look for the money Chiri and Juli slept for two days from exhaustion. When they woke up, Gogo told them she did not know where Solo had gone. It was late September and they had ten weeks before the first harvest in mid-December. They needed to fix the Harvester quickly.
Juli went to Obergon to ask for a loan but it turned out that he was planning to get married and had no liquid cash. Juli who was only learning of these plans discovered from Gogo that his father had given Obergon half the bride price months ago. Since Petro Sayianka had died Juli had slowly found out the absurd amounts of money that his father had handed over to their innumerable relatives.
However, Obergon had a suggestion. Narok businessman Nkaiseri Ntimama was known to give loans. Obergon went to see Nkaiseri and came back with a report. The conditions for any kind of loan were vicious. The money Juli needed would be lent at 30 per cent interest and, in case of default, Nkaiseri would auction the Harvester and they would only be left with the tractor. After handing over the logbook, Juli and Chiri received a cheque for Ksh 1 million, paid Kinuthia for long overdue repairs, and then half the wages for the Suswa and Ngareta farms. When they went to Melilli, however, the foreman and the drivers and their boys demanded all their money to stop them burning the wheat. When they went to see Kinuthia to get a list of the parts they needed he suggested that they could get the parts even cheaper in Eastleigh. Kinuthia also now told them that he could not fix the harvester in Narok because the garage was too small. He told them he had a place in Kutus sixty kilometres away and they got the machine towed there. It was near the end of October. Before the trip Juli and Chiri headed to Narok and partied like it was already Christmas. When they went back to Gogo’s they found Solo had returned.
IV
They sat in the cabin of the Datsun 1200 parked in Kinuthia’s small town open-air garage in Kutus. They sipped warm Cokes laced with cheap gin, squirming and groaning in the oven-like cabin waiting for Kinuthia to diagnose all that the Harvester needed. The sun reflected off the metallic innards of the other ailing Massey Ferguson harvesters, John Deere tractors, circular gears with teeth and crank-shafts lying scattered in the yard. The bodies of old Canters, mini-bus matatus fenced off the working area of the garage. The garage reception was the shell of an old Mahindra Kenya Police Jeep.
It was hard to tell Kinuthia’s age with his thin ropy arms and pulsating blood vessels on his forehead covered with grease. He came up to Juli to report his findings on their Harvester. Solo and Chiri looked on. Kinuthia said something in Kikuyu but Juli refused to acknowledge the language. Kinuthia looked into the blazing sky for a long time as if remembering recent trials in the Rift, tribal evictions and ethnic hostilities. He tried again. ‘I see the sun is out with his familia,’ he said. ‘It is not the rocks that went ndani ya the differential. Ni gear shaft imeoza.’ Rotten gear shaft. Kinuthia chewed at this and spat green in the dust and hefted the large metallic gear innard he had extracted from the Massey Ferguson. To think how a few days ago it held magnificent promise eating up the wheaten gold in the fields to brighten their days with cash.
‘Gear shaft,’ Kinuthia said again reverting to Kikuyu as if there are no other words for what he held in his hand. Juli looked long at him and the man seemed apologetic enough.
It was quiet in the heat of the garage, right smack in the middle of the day. All life – other than the three boys and the thin ancient man – was hidden in the shade.
‘You said cheapest parts we can get are in Eastleigh?’
‘Kama you are lucky yes.’
‘Then, we will try and find our luck there,’ Juli said.
‘Mkifika Eastleigh go to Ndungu Motors and tell him I sent you. 5th Avenue,’ Kinuthia said.
‘I’ll see you when we bring back the part,’ Juli said. ‘Don’t sell my Harvester.’
Kinuthia said nothing, walked over to the insides of the inert police Mahindra that was his reception area. His head soon lolled back, a puppet dead to the world.
The boys slumped into the Datsun pick-up, and soon they were a small speck cutting through endless sky and scrub valley hurtling towards Nairobi. They passed Narok town without pause, travelling against a light rain and the approaching night that came up suddenly on them. They streaked past Melili, Suswa, Nairage Ya Ngare, Kinungi, Uplands. When a trading centre appeared as another speck on the horizon, they made out figures in the distance, coming out into the road with the old expectation. But they passed without pause, and the figure shrugged and shouted an old language in the wind. These were the string-town people who knew the Datsun 1200 that Juli had met over the seasons, mostly at the tail end of the harvest, a small god with wheat money. Barmaids, no-hopers, transients caught between older traditional times and the economic present, adrift. They retreated to the ancient physicality of the flat land and its dust, its blood and its old ways. They knew the boys in the Datsun 1200 would be back.
The small Datsun was loud when they reached the City, its cranky muffler throbbed, its large tyres awkward and self-conscious, leaving dust tracks on Uhuru highway tarmac. The boys went wide-eyed at Nairobi, the Mercs and the Beemers in the slow traffic crawl. It had been a while. They’d taken just under two hours to catch the Kangemi jam into Westlands. They headed to Eastleigh. Moving slowly in the traffic they took two hours to cross Westlands, and then Parklands and going through Forest Road finally managed to get to Kariokor, then past Ziwa. In Pangani the streetlights came back on and soon they were in Eastleigh. They drove till Juli nodded, ‘12th Avenue. Solomon, you know anything about that?’ His brother remained quiet; his face was relaxed, curious – something had changed about him since his return. He seemed more speculative, less petulant, as if he had come upon a new secret knowledge. Now the last few hours seemed to ease away his permanent sneer at the big endless skies of the wheatlands. They found a lodgo and trudged off to bed.
Three days later everybody on 12th Avenue knew Solo, his restlessness had returned calling to the world. Juli and Chiri had washed themselves clean of all the Rift Valley dust in the arms of two Ethiopian women, unclasping the embraces of rural women from their memories. They felt like Nairobians once more. For a few days they ate, slept, drank and partied to oblivion – wheat, Harvesters and gear shaft forgotten for now.
They ate most of their meals at Somali Ndogo. All the regulars came to know Solo. When they went there Solo playing the local kept on saying out aloud here tuko in the sitting room of Eastleigh. He was so taken with the place he picked up all he heard and made it his.
Over the next few days they noticed a light Coastal looking man with a grave face who kept to himself, even if everybody in Somali Ndogo greeted him with heshima. Solo noticed this and asked one of the waiters who the man was and he said: ‘Ahmed Salim’.
The boys saw this man, Ahmed, each day while looking for the Massey Ferguson Harvester spare parts. Ahmed only came in when the place was emptiest at around 11 a.m. and left at around 3 p.m. These were also their hours. They slept in late, tried to find the gear shaft and then headed out to the bars in the evening. Ahmed always carried a large black diary and he wrote in it all hours as if making the most important appointments on the spot.
One day the boys went into Somali Ndogo and the only table available was Ahmed’s. Chiri and Juli turned to leave but Solo looked around and gestured at Ahmed asking whether they could sit at his table. He made the slightest of nods and the boys ordered breakfast. The businessmen were making quite a spectacle and the boys watched. Ahmed ignored all this for a while. When he stopped writing in his diary he looked up for a long moment and said something in Arabic that the boys didn’t understand. He then turned to them and said in Kiswahili, ‘Kunguni.’ This word was straight from their school Kiswahili school days and Chiri who had taken Kiswahili in secondary school said: ‘Bedbugs.’
Solo started on about his time in the UK for Ahmed’s benefit. Chiri and Juli had noticed that he kept on increasing the number of years he’d been there whenever he met someone new. He also reduced the months he’d been back in Kenya. Ahmed said that he had lived in Tottenham and Birmingham but he was originally born in Lamu.
‘Have you heard of the Mbarawa?’ he asked. ‘My ancestors are African and Portuguese.’
Solo was beside himself with Ahmed’s news of also having lived in the UK. Chiri and Juli let him to do the talking for a while, exhaust his Manchester stories. They accepted Ahmed’s invitation to his house when he said he had to leave.
The boys expected Ahmed to live in an apartment but when they got to the address that he has given them, it was a whole fenced-off plot. They went beyond the large gate and inside the building was split into two wings. Ahmed’s two wives and their children lived on each side. Ahmed occupied the main wing, straight though, opposite the large gate. The rest were all his offices. They were taken to a large open area with a TV and couches. Ahmed joined them and they were served fried coconut and a purple slushy drink the colour of iodine that they could not get enough of.
‘Maybe this is some kind of Sangria? Without the pombe,’ Solo said loudly and leaned back on the long sofa. ‘Ah. This is the life. Eastleigh kweli.’
‘I am a Forex dealer,’ Ahmed said as they crunched away at the fried coconut. ‘I represent my family’s business interests in Nairobi. We are based in Dubai.’
‘We are farmers,’ Juli said. ‘At least I am. These two are kati kati between things.’
Solo jumped in. ‘Me, I plan to go into business,’ he said, looking at Juli. ‘I studied law. Mr Ahmed, you know Sussex University I am sure?’
‘Please call me Ahmed,’ he said. ‘Even if I grew up in Lamu here Eastleigh is now my home. This place is in a bad way. I need partners from outside Eastleigh. We might be from different worlds but all of us are interested in money. Many young people in Eastleigh now … all they want is to get high or drunk,’ Ahmed said. ‘They say they are frustrated – I tell them that should give them all the more reason to work.’
‘Tunatafuta gear shaft. Massey Ferguson combine harvester … ’86 model,’ Juli said. ‘Can you help? We were told that we could find it in 5th Avenue but we found the place closed.’
Ahmed looked at him. ‘I am sure I can find what you are looking for in twenty-four hours. I know someone who works at CMC who supplies Eastleigh on the side. For now my house is your house. I know that your hotel is only good for sleeping – you can spend your other time here. All I ask is that you do not bring alcohol here.’
He stood up. ‘Feel nyumbani. Mtaniambia more about the farming. I now have a meeting with some people from Mogadishu. We talk later.’
They were shown into a room with couches and a large–screen TV. They vegetated for hours. Strange men walked in and out of the compound all day to see Ahmed. Chiri fell asleep. Solo and Juli had nothing to say to each other so they watched another DVD: Pulp Fiction. Solo got up halfway through the movie and went looking for Ahmed. The sun was about to go down.
They chilled till Ahmed joined them for supper. They all ate quietly for a while and then Ahmed turned to Juli.
‘Let me ask. I hear that Maasailand has a lot of business opportunities with leopard skins, ivory, red mercury, and smuggled gold near the Tanzania border. I know a lot of government people doing that business. Solo told me you know Maasailand well.’
‘Kweli, its true about that business. I’ve heard that too,’ Juli said, his voice strained. ‘Have you managed to find the shaft?’ There was an abrupt silence and Solo said: ‘We are all good friends now. I am sure we can do more business than a gear shaft.’ Juli looked at him and remained quiet.
The next day Juli and Chiri spent the morning looking for wholesalers who dealt in cereals who might be interested in their harvest and then headed to Ahmed’s in the afternoon. There were four cars outside and they looked at each other, thinking of heading off to relax elsewhere. But they knocked on the gate and one of Ahmed’s men opened the door and rushed away immediately. There was no one in the small courtyard when they entered. Ahmed’s wives usually sunned themselves in their buibuis during the day but now even the children were not out playing. In the courtyard, Juli and Chiri headed to the open area where the large-screen TV was and Solo emerged from the office at the end of the courtyard. He was out of breath as if he’d been sprinting. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you. Kuja you have to see this.’ Juli ignored him and picked up the remote and flopped on his back. Solo looked at him, grabbed Chiri’s hand and started dragging him towards the office. Juli stood up and they followed Solo.
Inside Ahmed’s office were two women dressed in expensive buibuis and wrapped in a cloud of scent. Three very fat men sat on sofas. Ahmed welcomed the boys like long-lost relatives. Two other men dressed in lab coats stood to Ahmed’s side.
‘These young men are in business and I am trying to help them,’ Ahmed said introducing them. ‘They are large-scale farmers. I hope you don’t mind if they join us.’ The three fat men and two women nodded. They were all Somali. The younger woman smiled at them. The older woman seated in the middle of the group ignored them. Her fingers were covered in gold rings and she had bangles that went all the way up to her elbows.
Ahmed said: ‘I have learned a lot about farming in the Rift Valley from these boys in the last few days. It might be something I want to invest in. So I thought as a matter of trust because we have not known each for a long time I would also ask them to my home. They might also be interested in this venture we are working on.’ He nodded at the boys.
‘We are all here in Nairobi to do business. We all know how tough things can be. When our fathers and families did business a long time ago things were very simple. Because of how things are in Somalia now we are lucky that there are new opportunities.’
His face turned grave. ‘I will ask you for confidentiality in what I tell you. A lot of the money that has always been in the Somali economy is now here in Eastleigh. And this I tell you in the strictest confidence. A big opportunity has come our way from a friend of mine who was in the Somali government. When the war started a lot of money was looted and he was asked to be one of the caretakers of government funds. To transport these large amounts of money a special dye was used so that the money could look like normal black paper. My friend managed to bring some of the money over the border before all the looting started. Now the money is in secret locations in Kampala, Juba and Nairobi.’
Chiri looked to Juli but his face was empty.
Ahmed continued: ‘A lot of the powerful people in Somalia have now disappeared after the War. They went to America, England and changed their names. I now tell you that that money in my friend’s hands will not be claimed for a long time. My friend now needs some of the money to facilitate his own passage to Australia with his family. He came to ask how he can clean the money.’
Juli leaned back, relaxed, watching Solo completely caught in the moment.
‘Cleaning the money is not the problem,’ Ahmed said. ‘Finding the chemicals that governments use is not even the problem. Money to buy these chemicals is the problem. I see all of us as partners. But before we enter any further discussions I want to show you all something.’
The two men in the lab coats headed off to one of the doors in the spacious office and opened it. They all streamed into a long room, a chemical lab with no windows. There was a long table on one end and a long series of cupboards on the other end. There were stools along the table. On the long table lay test tubes, beakers, calipers and glass containers that the boys remembered from their O-level chemistry classes. There was also a strange box-like machine on one end of the long table and next to it, a money-counting machine.
The two lab-coated men led everybody to the long stools. They all sat facing Ahmed on one side.
‘I want to show you how this chemical I am talking about works.’ The technicians arranged a flat tray and then put aside two beakers and turned to Ahmed.
‘Excuse me,’ Ahmed said. He went back into the main office and came back with two bottles, a paper bag full of white powder and a small stack of paper bills that was black in colour. Ahmed placed them on the table and nodded at one of the technicians.
The man greeted them in a strange accent. ‘I know you are all wondering where I am from. I come from Liberia. Like Somalia our country went to war and I was lucky to settle in Kenya to do business. I used to be a banker in my other life in Monrovia. I have experience with the government ink that Mr Ahmed told you about.’
‘In my country we call these notes, black money, negative notes. I have been helping peoples with negative notes for a long time. Here,’ and he pointed to the two bottles, ‘we have the original solutions. SSD solution powder it is called. It is made from international mercury. See it. We have it all here – we can use it to solve the problem of negative notes. We will solve all the problems. We will go through the process.’
Everybody was watching carefully. Chiri was distracted by the man’s English and a small laugh threatened to start in his stomach and explode. Juli noticed and frowned at him. Chiri excused himself and headed off to the toilet. He had a good hysterical laugh behind closed doors. When he was sure it was all out he went back to the lab.
As the man from Liberia talked he removed five notes from the small wad and placed them on the trays. Then he put on plastic gloves and slit the packet of white powder with extreme care. He started rubbing the black notes with the white powder very carefully.
