Still Sings the Nightbird

Hurting eyes

241 H Hurting eyes abi opened her eyes for the first time the next morning after sleeping all night through. They hurt. She closed them. First she remembered the smoke that had made her weep like a child. Then she remembered the big drops of tears that had rolled down her cheeks as she knelt down by her bed trying to pray, to meditate, to find herself. She did not have the suave way of meditation that Googo had. It was not easy. It would never be easy to find balance in spirit. Kabi’ s strength was still tied up with deprivation. Despair blew around her like a haunting wind. But she grabbed it as a sail for her boat of life. “Hope”, the bird had told her that night on her way home, long ago. She knew she could never expect justice on the loss of Will. There was something that tied her life to Googo’s and the slum people’s fate. Kabi saw victors; where others saw losers. Was there something unheard in the endless song of the night - bird still? For Kabi it was wrong to hide behind one’s own duties, religious ideas; and pain. It was sinful to live as if God were a policeman who could be easily bribed. Or as if God was a shelf filled with answers to social needs. She would stand up for herself. That became the creed of a stronger Kabi. Perhaps it was because of Googo’s words. Old Googo, Kabi realized, had reached that place where the heart and the mind celebrate united in spirit. Who flew her there? The place, when and if reached keeps the person in delight of the experience and never stops searching for completeness in meaning. The place where some marry joy and meaning in their lives whether darkness or light surrounds them? Was it the place too of the greatest resistance or acceptance of injustice? Could the two live together? For Kabi, it is the place where some poets make verses that smash us inside with their marvelous ability to eat pain and turn the ugly into something worth looking at K 242 again and again with love power, sometimes sprouting and sustaining revolutions. It was in that place where no contracts are signed but nobody betrays. The place opened to a few. A place where the bond of human solidarity never breaks, a place. This place where Googo’s heart was at all times. If a whole village discovered this place together, she thought, their part of the world would change forever. There would be no devouring one another in the face of pain, disconnecting on the basis of race, tribe and class but connecting. It was a unique place that no one reached just like that even when they choose the spiritual path. But there is always, there are always people there, even if only a handful. It is a gift of a place. A place most politicians disliked. This special place is reached by some couples together. Will and Kabi were once there. Then the couple is inseparable but not just because of oaths sworn. Their power withstands everything. It is a place reached by some mothers in the love they have for their children. Well, sometimes. A common story was that of a mother who rescues a child from the jaws of a crocodile without any other weapon but love. Nooni’s daughter Rosa, Googo’s great grandchild was seriously ill in Kenyalini Village when the bulldozers struck. Nooni was not at Kenyatta Hospital when Rosa, her daughter, died. She had skipped the visiting hour that evening. Her heart was reached by strong tugs and silent voices that her daughter sent saying farewell to a distant mother in a child’s last instances of life. Nooni felt and heard them but she hoped against hope that the worst had not come. She was a captive of many problems. The tugs: it was Rosa promising her mother that she would fight for justice beyond her death. Her voice did not turn Nooni back from the path of seeking food for the other little children who surrounded her with hunger and tears. The children only wanted to eat and to see their sister Rosa return home. Rosa’s silent calls did not turn Nooni’s feet to her bedside in the big hospital. Perhaps that visit [3.141.100.120] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 01:57 GMT...