Black Star Nairobi

by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

  “There are no rules,” Muddy said. “We want the motherfuckers who are setting off bombs and killing women in their homes in Nairobi. The only rule is to get them. Just like the only rule in this fucking slum is to get your child into that school with some food in their belly,” she added.

  “This is a long way from Broadway’s—the stakes are higher and unforgiving,” I said, knowing it wouldn’t matter.

  With or without us, Julio would be here, building a school or a clinic while selling drugs and killing people, destroying some homes and lives in order to save others. Jason would always have a job, maintaining some sort of balance between drugs and terrorism. The question was, could we have made it this far without them? The more I thought about it the more I thought, yes—we could have gotten here without them. But it would have taken us much longer to get those passports, to put together the money and find ourselves a coyote for the trip through Mexico. That kind of time we did not have.

  “So, my friends, what do you really want?” Julio asked as he came back and sat down. Muddy and I looked at O.

  “My wife …” he started to say, but he choked up.

  “We also want justice for a young man, killed and left out in the wild, and for the bomb victims,” I added.

  “And the beautiful rose in love with the AK, what does she want?” Julio asked.

  “My ghosts, they leave me alone when I am busy,” Muddy said, puffing at her joint.

  “Look, my friends, we are all grown-ups here—you are here—you can walk away, hop on the next plane back to Kenya. If you want exile, I can get you to Cuba, or you can stay here. You will not do that, because you have work to do—and it is important work for you. So we get it done and call it a day,” Julio said. His phone rang again; he looked at it and excused himself for a second time, in a hurry.

  I asked Muddy if she wanted to go for a walk. I had never thought I would feel safe enough in a slum to take a romantic night walk with the woman I loved. We walked until we came to the cantina. Opposite, a woman had set up a small table from which she was selling all sorts of things, cigarettes and matches, potato chips, pens and beaded chains and rings like the ones I had brought with me from Kenya. We went over to her. I gave her five dollars and pointed at Muddy, and she piled bracelets and necklaces on Muddy’s wrists and around her neck. The woman tried to give me change, but I refused it.

  Right there, I went down on my knees in the wet nasty mud, and in front of this woman and her makeshift shop, and with Muddy asking me if I was okay, I proposed with the ten rings from Hammer … sliding each one of them onto her ten fingers—and she laughing at their flimsiness.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I will marry you. Ishmael, I would marry you ten times over—you didn’t even have to ask.”

  She pulled me up.

  “Of all the places, Ishmael—a fucking slum in Mexico?” she said, more to herself than to me. It just made sense—I didn’t know why, but it did. I marveled at how beautiful she looked—it was as if I was seeing her again after a long time, I told her.

  “With this background, any woman would look beautiful,” she said.

  The trinket seller took both our hands, led us to the cantina, and loudly called for drinks. She was saying something and the schoolteacher translated for us,

  “She is saying—A drink for that woman—she needs to be drunk where she is going.”

  When the waiter came over, the woman pointed at me, indicating that I would pay for the drinks she had just bought Muddy and me. I did, and we made our escape back to Julio’s.

  At about 5:00 a.m. there was urgent knocking on the door. I opened it cautiously. It was one of Julio’s men and, after getting dressed and wondering if anyone ever slept in this slum, we followed him to one of the drug-processing houses. The employees, still naked, were running out. We rushed in to find, amid the still-to-be-processed cocaine, the English teacher, our translator, tied face up on one of the worktables—naked and roughed up. He was shouting something in Spanish but on seeing us, he quieted down, his chest heaving in and out, hand and leg muscles quivering from the adrenaline coursing through him. And then, in a gesture that I thought was cruel, asked the teacher to tell us what was going on.

  “They came for me at the cantina—they say I am an informant and that I told the police that Julio would be picking you up from the airport. They say I am the only one who had the information. They say they have more evidence but they will not show it to me. They say my life depends on my telling them who I really am. If I lie they kill me, if I tell the truth, they let me live,” he explained.

  Julio pulled us aside. “I need to know what he knows, and I need to know who else he has talked to,” he told us.

  “But how do you know it’s him? Shit, torture, fear, duress—you get unreliable information,” I said to Julio, thinking back to Sahara’s logic.

  “I found him like this—my men roughed him up and naturally I do not want to undermine their authority. But know that here in Mexico, everyone talks,” he explained.

  “What are you trying to achieve exactly?” Muddy asked him.

  “Your lives in Mexico and across the border depend on no one knowing who you are—you get that, my friends? This is for your own good, your own safety—my own as well. You can stay here in this room or you can go back to the cantina and hope that we are still driving to the border tomorrow morning,” Julio said, trying to hold in his anger.

  We decided to stay.

  “How long have we worked together?” he asked the teacher.

  “Five years, almost five years,” the teacher answered, translating both question and answer.

  “In those five years, you have come to know me very well?” Julio asked.

  “Yes, and you have really looked out for me,” he answered regretfully.

  “Órale, hermano, I want you to take those five years of knowing me and hold them close to your heart. Answer me one question, do you think you are lying on this table because of mere suspicion?” he asked.

  “No, but I am telling …” the teacher started to say.

  “Listen to me, because it is very important … mostly to you … Also to all of us, but most of all to you. Think about your answer—take your time and think—my brother, your life is in your hands,” Julio advised him.

  I was trying to figure out what Julio was doing to the English teacher. If he had sold out Julio, his gamble would be that Julio didn’t have enough information—therefore needed a confession. So if he kept quiet, Julio couldn’t know for sure. And if he hadn’t sold out Julio, he would have to trust that Julio would believe him, because Julio had nothing on him.

  Julio had raised the stakes, though, with the simple question—How well did he know Julio? How safe was he in either telling the truth or lying? Would Julio come at him with mere suspicion? If the answer was yes, then he could try to bluff his way out of it. If it was no, then he would have to fess up. Julio was starting to look like Sahara to me.

  At last, trying to speak bravely, the teacher said, “I am Detective Roberto Gonzalez. I work with the Mexican anti-terror unit. You are harboring known terrorists, it had to be reported.”

  Julio held his men back.

  “Who did you tell about our friends here?” Julio asked.

  “Only my jefe.”

  “I would forgive anything else. But not from one who has become like a brother to me,” Julio said as he took an army knife from one of his men.

  I could see the teacher’s stomach muscles tense instinctively. I was not going to let this happen.

  “If this is on us, you have to let us handle it,” I said, stepping in so that I was standing between the two of them.

  “No, gringo, this is between me and him … unless you want to start a little trouble,” he said calmly.

  “I am a cop, too, Julio. I’m not going to stand aside and let you kill another cop,” I said, feeling the familiar fear creeping through the small of my back, adrenaline starting to rush in. O casuall
y positioned himself closer to one of the men, while Muddy, who was close to Julio, remained where she was.

  I knew O wanted to get to the U.S. for Sahara and that nothing would stand in his way. But witnessing another cop getting killed in front of us, and because of us, though in the larger scheme of things it was Sahara who was responsible—even O couldn’t justify that. It would cheapen his revenge—and revenge has to be self-righteous, or at least have the pretense of being self-righteous.

  “Let us not do anything stupid. We have time, enough time to kill and to die—so let us talk, my friends. Explain to me why this pendejo should live. Tell me why I should let him live,” Julio said, looking at his men.

  “It’s a question of principle, Julio,” I said.

  “So now you are a man of principle, eh, gringo?” Julio said, twisting “gringo” so that it no longer had a friendly ring to it.

  O walked over to Julio and pulled out two chairs so that both of them could sit down.

  “I have shot men in the back. I have tortured. I have let an innocent man be hacked to death with machetes so that I could bury a dead woman—my wife. I will do a lot worse to destroy the men who killed her. When I am done, they will know what my wife’s name was worth. I am not telling you all these things so that you think I am a tough man, but so that you know how serious I am when I say I will not let you kill that man, because his life is the only thing separating you from me. We have to draw the line here, Julio, and I am asking you to understand that, because I would rather go after the men who killed my wife than die here. But I will die here to keep that line standing …” O said, speaking barely above a whisper.

  I couldn’t have said it any better. All I knew was that if we stood aside and let Julio kill a fellow cop, I would no longer be who I thought I was, or wanted to become, or could become. Letting the man die would be a kind of suicide followed by an afterlife of pure hell in which love and the things I thought I deserved and could earn would have no meaning. I hadn’t understood it until now—that was why O let Jamal walk.

  Julio looked over at Muddy. She shrugged back at him.

  “His wife, she was a schoolteacher, too,” Muddy said. Something about that jolted Julio so that he raised his eyebrows in surprise—as if now he understood.

  Just one of those details that makes people human to us, I thought to myself.

  “Here in Mexico, we respect the dead very much,” Julio said very seriously. “And so that you can honor your wife’s memory I will respect your wish and not kill this man. Our debt to the dead is more important than the principles of our professions.”

  Julio started talking to his men in Spanish. I could see he was explaining what had just transpired because he kept pointing at O, and the teacher seemed more relieved with each word. His men looked skeptical—their rules told them that the teacher had to die, but the more he talked, the more they started to look sympathetically at O, until finally one of them walked over to where O was sitting, shook his hand, and then untied the teacher.

  “How did you know it was him?” Muddy asked Julio. He beckoned to one of his men, who came forward with a laptop. Julio typed in an address and turned the laptop so we could see. There, in full color, was a rookie cop photo of the teacher.

  He turned the laptop around for the teacher, who looked at the photo in pain and confusion. It went against police protocol—that file was supposed to stop existing the moment he went undercover.

  “Do you want to know how much your life was worth?” Julio asked him.

  He opened another file. It contained a photo of one of his men handing a suitcase over to the police chief, and another one of the chief beaming down into the suitcase as he looked at the money.

  “Five thousand U.S. dollars,” Julio said. “That is all it took. Five thousand dollars for your life. Judas sold Jesus to one person, but your jefe has sold you and my guests many times over—because of you.”

  “Shit, even in Kenya the chief wouldn’t sell an undercover cop. Some things are just not done,” O said. I wasn’t too sure about that.

  “Bring the other one in,” Julio instructed his men, just as I was thinking it was over. A vaguely familiar man was brought in, all bloodied up. He was in shock and he kept feeling for something around his neck until one of Julio’s men took a rosary from his own neck and gave it to him.

  “This was the man who introduced me to my hermano,” Julio said, pointing at the teacher. Julio handed the teacher his knife.

  “Mercy, Julio. A gun, I beg,” the teacher pleaded with him.

  “No, my brother, now you have a real choice. Your life for his,” Julio said. The man looked straight into Julio’s eyes, and without hesitation, he took the teacher’s hand, the one holding the knife, held it steady, and lunged into it. The knife sliced into his stomach and he cried out in pain. The teacher removed it and plunged the knife into the man’s heart and he died. No one moved as the dead man slowly slid down to the floor.

  “That is how to die,” Julio said, wiping away tears. His men, too, were silently sobbing. I had heard of fucked-up Mexican machismo—but now I’d just seen it.

  “This brave man—we have to make sure his children and wife lack for nothing,” Julio said as we left to prepare for the border crossing.

  Having spoken out for the teacher, there was nothing we could have done for the second man. It was like the man back in Limuru, the one who was hacked to death as we listened. After letting the teacher go, Julio had to show that he was still ruthless; otherwise his hold on power would slip. He had shown that he could forgive, but it was a forgiveness that showed no mercy.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE BORDER CROSSED US

  Just a few months ago, we had been so sure of the world we lived in. For Jason, and I must admit for myself as well, there was no way a black man was going to be president in our lifetime. We couldn’t have been surer, and now it looked like we were going to be proved wrong.

  For O and his fellow Kenyans, that a civil war would break out was unimaginable. And for O, that Mary would be dead seemed impossible. Just a few months ago, the world, even in its most uncertain times, was still a known quantity—but here we were now, with everything in flux. Here I was, making my way as an illegal immigrant back into a country that in a matter of months might be inaugurating a black man like me.

  The teacher was driving and Julio was sitting next to him; O, Muddy, and I sat in the back. Julio had decided to bring the teacher along—a cop might come in handy, but it was also to try to turn him. The teacher had already been initiated and tied into Julio’s gang when he killed that man—I was sure there was a knife with his fingerprints on it tucked away somewhere—and now he owed his life to Julio and to us. Besides, at the end of it all, Julio had a genuine brotherly bond with the teacher.

  Obama, the soon-to-be president-elect, I hoped, was already commanding such a stage that Bush preferred to stay in the White House and out of sight. The radio was replaying his statement on the Kenya crisis—he was hoping for a transition to democracy. What was the likelihood, I wanted to scream to all of Mexico? What was the likelihood of a black U.S. presidential candidate talking policy about the African country that his father was from?

  “Gringo, let me break it down for you. Everyone is pushing something. The motherfuckers in Iraq, democracy is a drug … forced into their veins. They nod in and out, the oil is piped out—you see what I mean?” Julio was saying.

  “You keep telling yourself that. Democracy, no matter how fucked up, is not a drug. Drugs are you, Julio. Look at your country, thirty thousand dead,” I said defensively.

  “But with your guns. Drugs kill; bombs kill. Boom, you are free but dead! Better be high and alive. No?” Julio responded and laughed the kind of laugh that told me he didn’t believe in what he was saying.

  “You don’t have to deal,” I said to him angrily. The more I missed home, the more I defended it, the more I longed for it.

  I had only seen Tijuana from afar. Drivi
ng out of the slum, we had caught the tail end of the city, vibrant with bold colors. There were buildings from centuries ago standing next to skyscrapers, and it gave the place an odd feeling, as if the past were here in the present.

  People were going about their business and, if it weren’t for them taking cover when a car backfired, one would never have thought that the fear of people like Julio ruled the city. It was hard to reconcile what I was seeing with the terror the city’s inhabitants felt every day, the terror of knowing that being innocent wouldn’t stop a stray bullet from a policeman or a gang from hitting you. Nairobi was also beautiful, Limuru even more so, but that had not stopped the violence.

  The city suddenly opened up to the desert, where in contrast everything around us was the same—sand, desert, the occasional thriving cacti, and long-suffering stunted trees. Peaceful in its constancy—like an ocean, or the plains.

  An hour or so from the border, as if conjured up from the desert nothingness, two clouds of dust suddenly spiraled toward us from both sides. When they got closer, we could make out four desert ATVs roaring away, bouncing from dune to dune—I could see why they were named dune buggies. If this had been a race I would have been admiring the display of skill; they were like surfers out in an ocean, riding wave after wave. Soon, we could make out four heavily armed men in protective gear and desert camouflage.

  “Aren’t we still in our lovely Mexico?” Julio asked the teacher.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then what are these pendejos doing out here? Be ready for anything,” Julio told us.

  “We can’t get arrested,” O said, as he and Muddy checked their AKs and placed more magazines by them. I readied my Glock. The teacher wasn’t armed, and Julio gave him a 9 mm.

  “Who are they? Border patrol?” O asked.

  “Welcome to your new life as an illegal immigrant—the Minutemen, white militia, they protect the borders,” I said.

  “You mean they protect their own?” Julio said sarcastically.

  “If they know who we are, they didn’t cross the border to take prisoners,” I said.