“The children know you are expected.”
“But no one is answering their phones.”
Gunilla explains that people in Nairobi do not answer their phones if they do not know the identity of their caller, too many wrong numbers. “Have you sent text messages?” she asks.
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Bella says.
Gunilla says, “I’ll call them.”
Then Bella says, “Speaking of Kampala, Gunilla…”
Assuming that Gunilla is in the know about Valerie and Padmini’s situation, Bella fills her in on what has transpired with Helene. Gunilla then says, “Will you please allow me to act on your instructions and settle the attorney’s fees and all other expenses, and you and I will go over it when we meet in a couple of days?”
The phone line carries Bella’s hesitation all the way from Nairobi to Kampala — and Gunilla can sense it. Bella, in turn, can feel it, even though the two women have never met. But Bella says, “You’ve been of immense help.”
Then Gunilla says, “Tell you what. I’ll call on Valerie and her partner in the police holding cell in person and see if there is anything else we can do for them, including lending them money or taking them a change of clothes.”
“I wouldn’t ask that of you.”
They ring off, agreeing to speak again.
—
When Gunilla rings back in a couple of hours, neither of them is as emotional as before. She updates Bella on what she has achieved since they last spoke, which is to say a great deaclass="underline" She has settled the attorney’s fee and oiled enough corrupt police palms that Valerie and Padmini are in the process of gaining their freedom.
“What’s their plan?” Bella asks.
“Helene tells me they are Nairobi-bound.”
“Did you tell them I’m here?”
“Of course not.”
Bella asks whether Gunilla has spoken with the principal of the children’s school or his wife, as she has been unable to reach them or the children.
Their phones must be off, Gunilla thinks, or perhaps they are somewhere where there is no mobile coverage.
Bella hesitates before asking the other question that is on her mind, but she reminds herself of what Somalis say, being a hardy people with a great sense of pragmatism: The shoes of a dead person are more useful to the living than the corpse itself. “And can I get access to Aar’s house and car keys?” she asks.
The children have their own keys to the house, and Gunilla tells Bella where a spare set of car keys is located in Aar’s study. She invites Bella to stay at her house when she returns to Nairobi; she has a spare room with its own bath.
Out of politeness, Bella takes her time in answering, as if she were giving the offer serious thought, even though she knows that she won’t accept it. Finally, she says, “I am okay where I am until I meet up with the children. And then, I think, we will go to Aar’s house. But thanks all the same.”
They say their good-byes, agreeing to talk before the end of the day and keep each other abreast of developments.
Bella telephones Mahdi and Fatima. As with Gunilla, Bella loses hold of her emotions as soon as Fatima lets loose with a bellow of grief. At last she hears Mahdi, the epitome of self-restraint, say to his wife, “Come, come!” From this, Bella gathers the strength to shut off the flow of her tears. And then Mahdi is on the line, saying, “Where are you now?”
She names her hotel.
He says, “Can we fetch you home? We would very much like to see you, hug you, hold you, be with you.”
“Too exhausted,” she says.
“Say the word and we’ll fetch you home.”
But she excuses herself and hangs up, more knackered than before.
—
Bella can’t sleep. She changes into a pair of pajamas, draws the curtains, turns out the lights, and gets under the covers. But sleep won’t come.
Her phone rings, but when she answers it, no one is there. When this happens several times, she clicks on the log of recent calls and, finding the number to be local, copies it out on the pad by the landline and then dials the same number. Bizarrely, there is a recording, both in English and Swahili, telling her that this number cannot be reached.
She decides to go out for a walk, convincing herself that the fresh air will do her good and that there is no point in staying cooped up, fretting and moping, in her curtained room in the hotel. She dresses again, this time in stylish jeans, as if intending to set herself apart from the large number of Somali women here who wear body tents. She has heard that lately, following terrorist threats linked to Shabaab, the Kenyan authorities have been harassing anyone who looks Somali, especially in Eastleigh, the district with the heaviest concentration of Somalis. She selects one of her favorite DSLR compact cameras to take along, with the intention of capturing Nairobi by daylight.
Going out of her room, she puts the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. At the reception desk, she purchases Kenyan shillings with euros in case she needs to pay for coffee or something to eat in a café or for a taxi on the way back. As she prepares to step out of the hotel, she hesitates for a moment, uncertain if it is wise to leave her expensive cameras and other equipment in her room. But what the hell! she thinks. Hasn’t she already lost her most precious Aar. Even though the cameras are expensive, they can be replaced. Not so her one and only brother. What a pity she hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell to avenge him, sending every one of his murderers to the lowest place in Gehenna!
Having stayed at this hotel on multiple occasions, Bella is rather familiar with the neighborhood. The city center, she remembers, is at most twenty minutes’ walk, a compact neighborhood not much bigger than the layout imposed on it in the late 1890s when a railway depot was built on Masai-owned land. Photographs from that period show tents pitched and shacks hurriedly erected for the railway workers. And from what she has read, confirmed by what Aar and others who know the city well have told her, Nairobi has never enjoyed much stability; right from the get-go, a concentration of British colonists occupied the best land and the Africans were pushed into the slums to live in shanties knocked together out of sheets of zinc, earning no standing in the colonial scheme as the city became a hub for business and, eventually, international organizations. The instabilities, which are of a piece with an African neocolonial city, have continued till this day, making Nairobi one of the most violent cities in the continent.
There is a greater agility to her stride now as she waves away invitations from a couple of the taxi drivers parked inside the hotel grounds and then walks past the uniformed security to the street. Once outside, she discovers that one half of the street has been totally blocked off to vehicular and human traffic. Presently, she observes that this is because the Israeli embassy sits directly opposite the gate of the hotel, a fact she had not remembered. Keeping to the open half of the street, she takes care to avoid twisting her ankle or falling on account of the many potholes. Eventually, the road widens, and it is lined with red-tiled, timber-framed villas on either side, as she remembers. Then there is an incline that makes her huff and puff, exhausted and out of shape as she is. She half regrets that she didn’t take a taxi, but she soldiers on nonetheless, the camera slung over her shoulder knocking against her ribs as if urging her on and on, the way a jockey spurs his horse.
The road is a lot longer than she remembers, and she hopes she hasn’t made a wrong turn. When it bends to the right, now in a steep incline, she comes upon a mass of unwashed commoners in dirty overalls, men with something scurrilous in their appearance who are gathered in huddles, smoking. They look to her like mechanics on their tea or lunch break, but the low way they speak is worrying. Her heart misses a beat in fright, and she is relieved when the men take no notice of her. Hurrying past without incident, she reminds herself why she is in Nairobi this time and remembers the responsibility awaiting her. When she spots a taxi, she flags it down.