We walked from dinner to a shopping mall, four stories tall and filled with stores and people, so much glass, a movie theater. Tabitha and I pretended to be familiar with a place like this, and tried not to seem overly impressed.
— Oh lord, we're tired, Grace said, forcing an extravagant yawn. Mike laughed and squeezed her hand. He stopped outside a photo-processing shop. A potbellied man stepped out and he and Mike and Grace greeted each other warmly.
— Okay, Mike said to Tabitha and me.-I'm guessing you two would like some time alone, and we're willing to allow this. But first we'll make an arrangement. This is my friend Charles.
The potbellied man nodded to us.
— He'll be working here till ten o'clock. We will allow you two to stay here at the mall together, unchaperoned, so long as at ten o'clock, you meet Charles back here at his shop. He'll close up and take you both home.
It was a very good deal, we thought, and so we accepted immediately. Mike handed me a handful of shillings and winked at me conspiratorially. When I held that money in one hand and Tabitha's hand in the other, I felt sure that I was living the best moment of my life. Tabitha and I had almost two hours alone together, and it did not matter that we needed to stay inside the mall.
— Be back here at ten, Charles said, looking at Tabitha.
— You'll be okay? Mike asked me.
— Yes sir, I said.-You can trust us.
— We do trust you, he said, and then winked at me.
— Now go, you're free! Grace said, and shooed us with the back of her tiny hand.
Mike and Grace left the mall and Charles returned to his film-developing machines. Tabitha and I were alone and the choices were too many. I began to think where might be the most appropriate spot to hold her against me, to hold her face in my hands. Gop had instructed me to hold a woman's face in my hands when I kissed her, and I was determined to do it this way.
I knew nothing about the mall, but I had the presence of mind to know that in such a situation, the man should appear decisive, so I first led Tabitha up two flights of stairs and into the biggest and brightest of the mall's stores. I did not know what was inside. When I finally realized it was a grocery store, it was too late for me to change my mind. I had to feign great pride in my choice.
When I look back on this, it seems very unromantic, but we spent most of our two hours in this grocery store. It was enormous, brighter than day, and filled with as much food as all of Kakuma could eat in a week. It was also something of a variety store and a drug store, too-so many things in one place. There were twelve aisles, some with freezers stuffed with pizzas and popsicles, others stacked with home appliances and cosmetics. Tabitha examined the lipsticks, the hair products, false eyelashes, and women's magazines; she was very much a cosmetics girl even then. At Kakuma Town the stores were wooden shacks stuffed with ancient-seeming products, nothing packaged brightly, nothing so pristine and delectable as the contents of that Nairobi grocery-variety store. We walked up and down each aisle, showing each other one wonder after another: a wall of juices and sodas, a shelf of candy and toys, fans and air conditioners, an area in the back where bicycles were lined up and gleaming. Tabitha let out a little squeal and ran to those made for the smallest riders.
She sat on a tiny tricycle built for a toddler and honked the horn.
— Val, I need to ask you an important question, she said, her eyes alight.
— Yes? I said. I was so worried that she wanted something of me that I was not prepared to give. I had feared for a long time that secretly Tabitha was well-versed in the ways of love, and that the moment we were alone, she would want to move too quickly. That it would be clear I had no experience at all. Seeing her on that tricycle provoked strong and inexplicable feelings in me.
— Let's run, she said.
This wasn't what I had expected.
— What? Run where? I said.
— Run away. Stay here. Leave Kakuma. Let's not go back.
I told Tabitha that she had lost her mind. She said nothing for a minute and I thought she had regained her senses. But she was far from finished.
— Val, can't you see? Mike and Grace expect us to leave tonight, together. That's why they left us alone.
— Mike and Grace don't expect us to leave.
— You heard Grace! She said shoo! We can go off and be like them. Wouldn't you like to live like them? We can, Val, you and me.
I told Tabitha I could not do it. I did not agree that Mike and Grace expected us to leave that night. I believed that they would be greatly troubled by our disappearance, that it would bring them a lot of trouble from police and immigration officials. Our defecting would also, I reminded Tabitha, put an end to all sanctioned refugee excursions from Kakuma. Our trip to Nairobi would be the last any youth from Kakuma would ever make.
— C'mon, Val! We can't think of that, she said.-We have to think of what you and I can do. We have to live, don't we? What right do they have to tell us where we can live? You know that's not living, how they have it at Kakuma. We're not humans there and you know it. We're animals, we're just penned up like cattle. Don't you think you deserve better than that? Don't we? Who are you obeying? The rules of Kenyans who know nothing about us? Everyone will understand, Val. They'll cheer us from Kakuma and you know it. They don't expect us to come back.
— We can't, Tabitha. This isn't the right way.
— You're put on this Earth just once and you're going to just live as these people make you live? You're not a person to them! You're an insect! Take control. She stomped her foot onto mine.
— Who are you, Valentine? Where are you from?
— I'm from Sudan.
— Really? How? What do you remember from that place?
— I'll go back, I said.-I'll always be Sudanese.
— But you're a person first, Val. You're a soul. You know what a soul is? She truly could be condescending, exasperating.
— You're a soul whose human form happened to take that of a boy from Sudan. But you're not tied to that, Val. You're not just a Sudanese boy. You don't have to accept these limitations. You don't have to obey the laws of where someone like you must belong, that because you have Sudanese skin and Sudanese features you have to be just a product of the war, that you're just part of all this shit. They tell you to leave your home and walk to Ethiopia and you do. They tell you to leave Ethiopia, to leave Golkur, and you do. They walk to Kakuma and you just walk with them. You follow every time. And now they tell you that you have to stay in a camp until they allow you to leave. Don't you see? What right do all these people have to draw boundaries around the life you can live? What gives them the right? Because they happened to be born Kenyan and you Sudanese?
— My parents are alive, Tabitha!
— I know that! Don't you think it would be more likely to get to them from Nairobi? You could work and earn money and get to Marial Bai far more easily from here. Think about it.
I can look back and see the wisdom in what she said that night, but at the time, Tabitha was frustrating me greatly, and I had a low opinion of her views and of her. I told her that her rhetoric would not convince me to break laws or to diminish the quality of life for thousands of young people at Kakuma.
— I have no right to make life harder for anyone else, I said.
And that was the end of our talk. I wandered through the store for some time, not sure if I wanted to be with Tabitha then or ever again. She was a different person than I had previously assumed. She seemed selfish to me, irresponsible and short-sighted and immature. I decided I would simply go to Charles's shop at ten o'clock, hoping Tabitha would be there. But I did not want to be the one to prevent her from fleeing if she so chose. I hoped so dearly that she would not run away but I did not want to tell her not to. I did not have that right. I was sure that this night would be the end of our romance. She would see me as timid and overly obedient; this was something I feared from the beginning, that Tabitha favored more dangerous men than me. I was then, like I was on so many days, at war with my law-abiding personality. Over the years, my eagerness to please those in authority got me into far too much trouble.