The Atheist's Messiah: Yanif

by Saul Dobney

  Riaz made a sign in the air with his finger like a lightning strike racing to the ground.

  “Now some days he is good and some days all he can do is lie like a log on the ground to stop the pain. He has seen all the best doctors and specialists in Kenya, chiropractors, physiotherapists, had massages, taken potions, medicines. Everything.” Riaz opened his palms to illustrate the point. “Then I see how Yanif fixed that boy and I think to myself. ‘Maybe Yanif can help my friend?’ ” Riaz took a sip of tea. “So two days ago I told him what you did and he said to me ‘Riaz, if you find someone who can fix my back I will pay you a million shillings.’ I said to him ‘Then I will bring my friend Yanif here to visit.’ ” Riaz gave Yanif a pat on the back. “Yes Yanif?”

  Yanif shrugged and sought counsel from Tremus. Tremus gave a slight nod to his friend and in unspoken words they agreed.

  “Yanif will help,” said Tremus, “Where and when will we meet this man?”

  “We can go now,” Riaz said. “I told him you would come this evening. After you have finished your tea.”

  The car journey was uneventful and after forty or fifty minutes, they turned down a long drive towards a large plantation style house with manicured green lawns and clipped trees surrounded by flowers.

  “How do you know this man?” Tremus asked suspiciously.

  Riaz wiped his hand down his goatee beard. “I used to live here.”

  Tremus laughed out loud. “You. Here. I do not believe you. Why would you be working in the markets if you lived here?”

  “It is true my friend Tremus. It is true. My father and mother came to Kenya from Uganda before I was born with just the clothes they were wearing. Mr Eden gave my father a job as a chauffeur and my mother worked as the cook. I lived behind the house above the garage.”

  “Do they still live here?”

  “No. My father was taken from us when I was sixteen. My mother shortly after and I moved out. But I see Mr Eden from time to time in the city, and sometimes I visit George the gardener.”

  “But why didn’t you stay here? It is so beautiful and clean. Couldn’t you do your father’s job?”

  “Who would want to work as a servant like my parents? As a servant, you are always second class, never equal. But some day I will have a house as beautiful as this and maybe my own servants.”

  They parked at the back of the house by the stables, away from the main entrance. Charles, the butler, met them and ushered them inside through the gardens to a patio by the swimming pool. A man in a vest with wrinkled, white skin and white hair lay on his back on a sunbed reading a book. He raised his head as he heard them approach.

  “Riaz. How are you? How’s business?”

  “Hello Mr Eden sir. Business is up and down, you know how things are. Some weeks are good and some, well not so good. And your back? I heard from George that it has been causing trouble again.”

  Mr Eden sighed. “One of the bad days today, I’m afraid. If I even attempt to lift my legs I get shooting pains all down my side.” He half turned his head to look at Tremus and Yanif from the corner of his eye. “And these people are…?”

  “I have brought my friend Yanif I was speaking about. The man with the magic in his fingers.”

  “Yes of course. Excellent. Excellent. Good to meet you. Really hope you can help, eh.”

  Yanif stood awkwardly, an uncertain shyness in his face.

  “Well. Bit quiet aren’t you? Not what I expected at all. But Riaz said you have ‘magic fingers’, so you could be a bit of a life saver. Did he tell you about it? I slipped on the diving board steps of all the stupid things, and since then haven’t been able to do a thing. Riaz could you help me roll over so your friend can take a look.”

  With Riaz’s help, Mr Eden rolled over onto his front on the lounger, grunting and wincing as he struggled with the pain. “Now you’re sure you know what you’re doing?”

  Yanif mimed a silent question to Tremus to ask what next, but Tremus shrugged his shoulders and waved his hand towards Mr Eden.

  Mr Eden’s skin was white and dotted with brown moles and pinkish spots. Yanif brushed his fingers down the spine, watching to see how the man responded, but Mr Eden just lay stiff like a mannequin on the lounger.

  Yanif breathed a deep breath. He held his hands together and raised his eyes in a silent prayer. He touched Mr Eden's back again. His fingertips meandered across the flesh feeling out each of the vertebra in turn. Around three quarters of the way down, Yanif's fingers circled to a stop. He tapped out the spot, then gave a forceful push at the bone.

  “Aghh.” Mr Eden yelped in pain.

  Riaz and Tremus sprang up out of their seats.

  Yanif put his hand up to signal them to wait. He moved to Mr Eden's feet and taking them by the ankles, he started to sway the legs watching the motion of the pelvis. Then, judging the moment, he twisted the legs in rotation. A sharp cracking sound came from the base of Mr Eden’s back.

  Riaz and Tremus fixed on each other in panic, but Mr Eden didn’t scream or cry out. Instead he let out a light “Aaaahh.”

  Yanif walked around to the head of the recliner and looked Mr Eden in the eyes and smiled.

  “All done?” Mr Eden lifted his head up towards Yanif. “You’re sure?”

  Yanif held out his hand to help Mr Eden up.

  Mr Eden raised himself up slowly, propping on one arm. “You know Riaz, I think it has worked.” He rotated his trunk then swung his legs over the side of the lounger and sat up. “I wasn’t able to sit like this yesterday.” He reached up for the sky hyper-extending his shoulders, then rotated his arms, first left and then right. He stood up, rubbing the spot Yanif had pressed. “Even on the good days I haven’t had this much movement in my back. Very good job. Very good.”

  Yanif bowed.

  “Charles, this young gentlemen has just fixed my back. What’d you say to that then?”

  “That is very good news sir. I’m very glad to hear it.” Charles’s voice was calm and unemotional, but there was a gracious smile towards his employer.

  “This deserves a celebration. What can I get you?”

  Yanif glanced at Tremus unsure of what Mr Eden meant.

  “Drinks.” Mr Eden was insistent. “What’ll you have – a Scotch, Martini? Come inside and choose. Riaz what do you think?”

  “Have you ever tried Martini, Tremus? It’s a drink from Italy, very elegant for a summer's evening, isn’t that so Mr Eden. For sophisticated gentlemen.”

  Mr Eden nodded and Tremus acquiesced with a shrug of his shoulders. “Whatever. I will try anything once. Yanif, you take one too?”

  Yanif shook his head without saying anything.

  “Water would be fine for Yanif,” said Tremus.

  They stepped into the living room. Dark mahogany panels lined the walls decorated with pictures of cricket and spiring cathedrals.

  Mr Eden saw Tremus inspecting two cricket bats hung mounted as trophies above the fireplace and picked up a photograph off a side-table. “Used to be bit of a batter when I was younger. Got a couple of hundreds at the Nairobi Club. Do you follow cricket?”

  “I have never played it,” said Tremus. “Is it like baseball?”

  Mr Eden chuckled and Charles handed Tremus his Martini.

  For around an hour they made small talk, discussing the worsening economy and times when Riaz would help in the gardens.

  As they finished their drinks, Mr Eden stepped out of the living room and returned with an envelope. “For your evening’s work gentlemen. For your evening’s work.” He handed the envelope to Riaz and turned to Yanif. “You know I have some friends who could benefit from your touch. The economy is in a state and there’s trouble coming to Kenya, you might need all the work you can get.”

  As they walked back to the car, Riaz opened the envelope and showed it to Tremus and Yanif. Inside was a bundle of notes.

  “Maybe Mr Eden is right,” said Riaz. “People pay good money to get well Yanif. You should consider it
. I can help you.”

  Yanif shook his head and went to stand by Tremus.

  “Yanif does not want to,” said Tremus reading Yanif’s body language. “He is not a doctor, Riaz. People need proof. And how is he to going to find clients? He is as quiet as a lamb.”

  “Yanif doesn’t have to sell,” responded Riaz. “I can talk to the people, make the contacts. You and Yanif go in, use the magic fingers and it’s all cool. It would be easy.”

  Yanif shook his head and cast his eyes to the floor.

  “But—” started Riaz.

  Tremus’s eyes narrowed. “He said ‘no’, Riaz. No means no, and that is an end to it.”

  18. Golders Green

  “Champions Hall must be around here somewhere,” said Jill scrutinising at a map on her mobile phone. “But where is it?”

  She looked down the road of tall redbrick Edwardian houses with shop-fronts on the ground-floor and at the cars and buses passing under the railway bridge heading towards Golders Green station, but the streets were empty with no passers-by to ask.

  “We should give up,” said Dr Hill. “I'm not wasting another hour traipsing up and down. We must have tried everywhere by now and it'll be finishing soon. I vote we go home. Enough is enough.”

  “It's not exactly well-advertised,” said Jill. “All this way for nothing.”

  They were headed back to the underground station when a slip of colour caught Jill's eye.

  “Hang on, there's a flyer here. Or at least there was.”

  A torn scrap of green A4 paper was stuck over the bus timetable in the bus shelter. Jill bent down to read it, but the writing on the fragment was obscured by graffiti.

  “It's strange. It has that Hands of God logo on it. You know like the letter you were sent,” she said to her husband.

  “There are more bits,” said Dr Hill. “But someone's been ripping them down.”

  Corner triangles framed out an empty space on the bus shelter wall, where the rest of the flyer would have been.

  “Here,” said Dr Hill standing by the road edge. “They missed one.”

  On the traffic-side of a waste bin one flyer was intact. On the bottom of the paper someone had scrawled a small map.

  “Then we might not be too late,” said Jill.

  She pulled her reluctant husband by the hand and they skirted around to Golders Way the lane behind the main high street. It was empty except for skips and bins of cardboard shop-waste lined up behind the padlocked goods entrances and fire exits at the rear of the shops.

  Halfway along, as the lane curved to the left, they discovered stairways leading up to flats and walkways and the first signs of people.

  “Look – guys in green robes,” said Dr Hill. “And a queue of people coming down those stairs.”

  “But if they're coming out I guess that means the meeting has come to an end,” said Jill. “Quick we might be too late.”

  Half jogging, they reached a set of stairs and climbed up to an open walkway. Ahead of them was an open door into a low second storey building built above the back of a shop, and above the door brass letters announcing Champions Hall.

  “Go on then,” said Jill. “Go in.”

  Dr Hill hesitated. “It's finished. Too late to go in.”

  “Don't be such a wet fish,” said Jill. “I'll go.”

  She stepped into a rectangular room that smelt of damp and old sweat with a wooden floor and red-brick walls. Along the side faded photographs of boys in boxing gloves festooned the wall, interspersed with home-made posters with the words: “Be prepared. He is coming”.

  In the room were two men in green robes stacking chairs at the front and a third carrying a ladder to take down the posters.

  Jill pulled her husband into the room and pointed up to a poster. “Look at that,” whispered Jill. “That's you. You're famous here.”

  A poster with Dr Hill's face taken from his university biography page was pinned to the wall headlined, “Even the scientists say He is coming”.

  Dr Hill snorted. “So what else are they saying?” He picked up a leaflet left on the side and started to read.

  One of the robed men shouted, “Hey. Put that back.”

  Dr Hill took a step backwards. “I just wanted some information.”

  “I said put it back. You only get that if you've attended the meeting.”

  “It's OK. I can read it here.”

  Dr Hill returned to the leaflet, unfolding it to see the inner content. But before he could get anywhere, the robed man snatched it out of his hand.

  “Members only, I said.” The man in the robe pressed himself close to Dr Hill.

  Dr Hill shuffled backwards again and bumped into the door frame. He shot a glance at his wife.

  “How do we become members?” Jill asked. She smiled sweetly.

  The man closed on Jill. “You come back next week. Professor Suleiman would be very glad for you to join if you're really interested. But not now. We have to clear the hall.”

  Dr Hill retreated to the walkway with his wife and the robed man slammed the door shut.

  “That didn't go very well,” said Dr Hill. “Why all the mystery?”

  “As you picked up the leaflet I could swear I saw a £5 note drop out from inside,” said Jill.

  Dr Hill blew out a long whistle. “£5. So he's paying people to come and listen. That would explain the crowds.”

  At the bottom of the stairs a man in a long parka coat with a thin face met them. He dug his hand into his pocket and took out a tatty leaflet and pressed it into Jill's hand, scanning the stairway like he was trying to avoid being noticed.

  “Don't trust Suleiman,” he hissed, “he's a fake. Take this. It'll explain. We can help you. He's evil…” He paused and fixed on Dr Hill. “I recognise you. You're the man on the posters—”

  He was interrupted by noise from above. “Oi you. We've told you before to keep away.” Two men in robes were peering over the walkway railings gesticulating at the man in the parka.

  “I can do what I like,” retorted the man. “You lot are cheating people. Suleiman is a liar. We will deal with people like you.”

  The robed men jumped down the stairs two at a time, pulling their hoods over their heads.

  “We've told you before we don't want to see you anywhere near here.”

  The taller robed man prodded the man in the parka in the chest, but the man in the parka stood his ground. “See. I'm not afraid of you.”

  The robed men jeered “You and who's army?” They wrestled the man in the parka to the floor, pinning his arms to his side, then picked him up, kicking and shouting, and threw him into a waste bin among the remnants of cardboard boxes. “Keep away or it will be worse next time.”

  “I think we should go,” said Dr Hill. “I don't fancy the taste of cardboard.”

  As they watched, the man in the parka climbed out of the bin. He took out his mobile phone filming the men in robes and then Dr Hill. “We will get you,” he shouted as Dr Hill hurried away. “I have you on record now. You'll see.”

  19. To America

  Yanif emerged from the baggage claim at JFK Airport and stepped out into the foyer to a hustle of people waving cards. Martha and Lyndsay had arranged the flight – a last farewell to a boy become a man. Eshe had put him on the flight in Nairobi, checking he had his documents and finding someone to help him navigate through the maze of signs and procedures, leaving him with phone numbers and a smattering of dollars in his pocket.

  “Yanif. Yanif,” came a voice from Yanif's left.

  Lyndsay and Martha stood at the far end of the concourse.

  “We’re so glad to see you,” said Lyndsay taking his hand. “You have grown so much. How was your flight? Did you like it on the airplane?”

  Martha took Yanif’s suitcase and bag and heaved them on to a trolley-cart. “You look overwhelmed. Did you get any sleep on the plane?”

  Yanif gazed at the bustle of people criss-crossing the concourse to the vehicles o
utside.

  “Let’s get you to the car,” said Martha. She stopped and squeezed him. “It’s so good to see you.” She gave Yanif a shoulder hug. “We'll show you the sights. Did John or Beth tell you anything about America?”

  Yanif seemed unable to say anything mesmerised by the concrete and all the new cars and the pristine white sneakers.

  “It's all too much for him,” said Martha to Lyndsay. “Let’s let him come round in his own time.”

  As they reached the freeway, Yanif peered out of the car window, lost in the sights of apartment blocks in brown bricks and signs and advertising in garish colours. Great bridges with huge steel spans crossed the rivers with seemingly endless rivets and girders. Gigantic buildings rose up like canyons in the city on his right. Cars everywhere streamed around in a dance played out to a melody of horns and revving engines.

  “Oh look,” said Martha as they rounded Battery Park. “If you look out to the islands, you’ll just see the Statue of Liberty in the distance.”

  They took the Lincoln Tunnel towards New Jersey and headed out of the city. After a while fields, trees and hills flanked the Interstate and they travelled into woods and farmland and past golf courses with manicured greens. It was all so orderly and clean; grand houses standing in their gardens with garages more than treble the size of Tremus’s workshop. The pattern became repetitive and Yanif dosed in the cool air-conditioned seat, resting his head on the leather upholstery.

  He awoke to Lyndsay shaking him. “We’re here sleepyhead,” said Lyndsay.

  A two storey clapboard-covered house painted yellow and white stood raised above a swathe of neatly trimmed grass. In the middle of the lawn was a sign: “Welcome Yanif”.

  Yanif opened the car door and breathed the air.

  “Do you like it?” asked Martha. “Your home for the next couple of weeks.”

  Yanif smiled and hugged Martha and Lyndsay in turn.

  “Oh, you don’t have to be so sweet,” said Martha. She opened the front door and they stepped inside.