-
23
- LANGAA RPCIG
- Chapter
- Additional Information
155 23 he next morning, Wanja opened her eyes and gathered herself up from a dew covered ground as soon as the first streak of light appeared on the horizon. Already, Nature had withheld its wrath against them that night, for it did not rain. God had Her own way of protecting the innocent. But the blood of the innocent— young and old—continued to baptize the earth everywhere in the nation. Drip by drip, drop by drop, the warm gentle red quenched the earth’s thirst as, one by one, the innocent fell without mercy or just cause. Wanja scanned the station to see if anything had changed, and indeed, it had. There were swirls and eddies of people at the police station. More had arrived in the middle of the night while she slept, even if only for a very brief moment. She could not remember hearing anything, for her body and mind had simply succumbed to fatigue. And her eyes . . . Yes, her eyes simply closed without her consent. Now, as she could see, the station was cluttered with a sea of people. Some were slouched all over the place, their bodies exposed to the elements of the morning—the early morning sun and dew covered fields. Some were still sleeping in the same clothes they had on since their arrival at the station and had no hope of changing them any time soon. Others were huddled in clusters. Those who were awake, had long, sad, tired faces, and spoke to one another in hushed whispers. The policemen and policewomen roamed around, clutching onto their weapons, afraid to be taken unaware. Their presence could hardly be missed. Some mothers, whose heads kept on bobbing—up and down, up and down like geckos—clung to their youngsters. Wanja could see clutter everywhere— hodge-podge of unusual cargo—bundles of clothing wrapped in old kanga, stuffed sisal sacks, woven baskets brim filled with a lot of odds and end, bags of things, uncountable things. That may have appeared to some as useless, but concealed a heaping of lifetime memories of the displaced, priceless T 156 memories. It was precisely at that time when Wanja’s mind took flight to her family, her immediate family. She worried about them. This is not to suggest that she did not think about them earlier, she had; only, there was too much misery around her that she had focused more on her ‘now!’ It was only in her waking that she began to think about her family. She wondered if they had had the presence of mind to keep intact family memories worth remembering and forgetting those worth forgetting. Were they still alive or dead? Were they hurt or unscathed? The only person she did not worry much about was Sam, her husband, who was from Western Province. She knew he was protected by his ethnicity. She was wrong. As she continued to scan the station, she wondered why she had not seen anyone from her Maraba community. ‘Perhaps,’ she thought privately, ‘they are all dead. That couldn’t be, could they? No, they have to be okay! Yes . . . They are okay. They have to be okay and that’s all there is to it,’ she mumbled. Then, her eyes fell upon one familiar face among the crowd . . . A grain of sand among a sea of people. Suddenly, her heart raced with a hidden. ‘They are not okay!’ she muttered to herself, more so than to anyone else. She closed her eyes in a silent prayer, trying to tame the fears within her heart. When she reopened them and looked in the man’s direction, the sun shone brightly into her eyes that she could barely see. She squinted. Yes, the man was still there. He had not moved an inch. His body was as rigid as stone, as though he had been transformed into a pillar of salt. He did not notice her. She rubbed her eyes, removing sleep matter from their corners. The man was sitting on the ground with his knees folded at forty-five degree angle. He was holding his head between the palms of his hands. And his eyes, his eyes were to the ground, but she still noticed his frail looking and wiry frame. His head was small, but she could still see his sunken cheekbones. Even if common sense entreated her to jumpup , dash to the man, she could not; she sat quietly and motionless. That first...