Green City in the Sun

by Wood, Barbara

  Deborah seemed suddenly so small and vulnerable.

  "You must take care," he said urgently. "The world is a far, far bigger place than you can imagine. You know only Kenya, Deborah, and just a small bit of that—" He caught himself. He wanted to say more, to voice this strange, new emotion that had suddenly gripped him. He looked down at her, felt the warm skin beneath his hands, and thought: She is so innocent.

  He was rocked by a feeling of protectiveness, of wanting to gather her to him and shelter her from all the things he himself had discovered out in the world. Kenya was such a small, insulated country. And Deborah was the child of a rural, backward province. What did she know of life?

  "I'll be all right," she said in bewilderment, overcome by the power of his touch, of the passion in his voice. What had happened to him? Where had this intensity come from?

  Deborah reached up and removed the sunglasses. He was gazing down at her with eyes that, generations ago, had measured the progress of lion in tall, tawny grass. She was captured in that look; she felt energy pass from his hands into her arms. Christopher overwhelmed her. She was suddenly breathless.

  "Deborah," he said quietly, holding her, "I won't tell you not to go. I haven't that right. You must go. You must become the best that you can be. But... promise me, Deborah, that—"

  She waited. A warm breeze stirred the overhead branches. Sunlight moved on his handsome face.

  "Promise you what?" she whispered, her heart racing. Say it, Christopher. Please say it.

  But the words wouldn't come to him. It had happened too quickly, the sudden leap from loving Deborah Treverton as a friend to loving her as a woman. In an instant it seemed to Christopher that a terrifying threshold had been crossed—one which he had not seen coming, had not been aware of stepping over. He was unprepared for this sudden rush of desire, this unexpected, outrageous impulse to take her into his arms and kiss her. And more.

  He didn't know how to say it. He thought of California, of the men there whom Deborah was going to meet, men who were like her—white. She would go away from Kenya, Christopher realized in fear, and she would never come back.

  "Deborah," he said at last, "promise me that you will always remember Kenya is your home. Here is where you belong. Here is where your people are. Out there, in the world, you will be a stranger. You will be a curiosity, and you will be misunderstood. The world doesn't know us, Deborah; they don't know our ways, our dreams. In England I was treated as an oddity. I was engulfed by people eager to make my acquaintance, but I made not one friend. They cannot imagine what it is like to be Kenyan, how unique we are. They can hurt you, Deborah. And I don't want you to be hurt."

  She was lost—in his eyes, in his hold. The strange, frightening world he spoke of no longer existed, only this patch of river and herself and Christopher.

  "Promise me," he said in a tight voice, "that you will come back."

  She could hardly speak. "I promise," she whispered. And when his hands left her arms and he turned abruptly away, she felt the sunshine go out of her life.

  57

  S

  ARAH WAS ANGRY.

  After two weeks of searching Kenya for her "look," she had come to the terminus of the road here on the coast, and she was no nearer to the end of her quest than when she had first started.

  As she walked the ancient streets of Malindi, an exotic, decaying town that had once been an Arab slave port, and took in the blinding white walls, the veiled women, the crowded markets and flowering mango trees, feeling as if she were walking through a century far in the past, Sarah's exasperation mounted.

  She had begun her pursuit along Lake Victoria, where she had visited the Luo people. She had studied and sketched them—at work, in the market, over their cook fires—and had found that for the most part the men wore slacks or shorts, and the women wrapped kangas around themselves. She had gone next to the Masai and the Samburu people, and she had found plain red shukas, either knotted over the shoulder or wrapped around under the armpits, on both men and women. Kamba and Taita women also wore kangas, sometimes even over a European dress or blouse and on their heads as scarves. Red seemed to be the dominant color, and that was due to Kenya's ocher soil; brown was also prevalent, particularly among people who still wore loincloths and capes made of soft leather. Here on the coast, with its strong Arab influence, Sarah found Muslim women dressed entirely in black, so completely veiled that only their eyes showed, and Asian women in bright saris imported from India. She had traveled the length and width of Kenya, her sketchpad was full, and the hoped-for inspiration had never come.

  She wished Deborah could have come along with her. They could have made a holiday of it, driving Dr. Mwai's Benzi and visiting the countryside. It would have been a nice sendoff before Deborah went to America, and Deborah would have had advice or would have listened to Sarah's ideas. But there was a going-away party for her at Kilima Simba Safari Lodge in Amboseli, and Deborah had to attend. So she had gone off with Terry Donald, while Sarah had explained her problem to Dr. Mwai, who was sympathetic and had let her borrow his car.

  Now the two weeks were up; the Benzi had to be returned. Sarah had been everywhere and seen everything, and she had nothing to show for it but a hundred uninspired drawings.

  She sat on a bench that overlooked a broad sweep of white sand beach and lime green coral reefs, in the shade of a palm tree, and watched the hesitant progress of a group of Europeans as they explored the perimeter of an ancient, crumbling mosque.

  Tourists, convinced of the stability of Kenyatta's government and reassured that there would be no more revolutions, were starting to pour into Kenya. New hotels were going up in Nairobi and here on the coast; luxurious game lodges were springing up in the bush; Volkswagen minibuses were taking to Kenya's roads, chasing game and stopping at villages for picture taking. They were even coming as far north as Nyeri, on their way to Treetops Hotel; once Sarah had caught some Americans trying to take Mama Wachera's picture outside her hut.

  As Sarah observed the group climbing through the abandoned Muslim graveyard, searching for an entrance into the deserted mosque, she took in their polyester pantsuits, their blue jeans and T-shirts. And she thought: Why should we be the imitators? Why should we want to look like Americans? Why can't they imitate us?

  She pictured again the young women of Nairobi, fresh out of secretarial college, walking smartly down the sidewalks in protective groups, confident, laughing, their hair proudly cornrowed as if to tell the world that they, like their country, were now liberated and independent. But they wore European styles, and poor imitations at that!

  Paris once led the fashion field, Sarah told herself as she got up from the bench and began walking again. Ten years ago it was England. And now it's America. When will it be Africa's turn?

  This was her first visit to the coast, and she felt almost as much a stranger here as tourists must. There was very little about Malindi that resembled the rest of Kenya. It was exceedingly old, having been founded by the Portuguese centuries ago. It had flourished under the rule of the sultan of Zanzibar. Malindi was like something out of the Arabian Nights, Sarah thought, with its old Arab bazaars, domes and minarets, narrow streets and pushcarts. Men sat around in long white robes, smoking bubbly pipes and drinking coffee out of tiny cups. The women were furtive black shapes sharply etched against whitewashed walls. On the beaches, palm trees leaned with the wind, their great green fronds nodding toward the ancient town. Out on the water among the coral reefs, fishermen steered their picturesque dhows, triangular white sails painted upon a deep blue sky.

  Malindi was a beautiful and enchanting town full of mystique, Sarah thought. But it was hardly typical of Kenya.

  As she strolled among hibiscus, frangipani, and bougainvillaea, through the busy charcoal and fish market, by the seedy-luxurious villas of the past rich, her sketchbook in hand, Sarah considered the Turkana people, whom she had observed in the north. With their precious camels, which they used not as beasts o
f burden but only for milking, with their men in their peculiar caps made of clay and ancestors' hair, and with their preoccupation with bodily ornamentation, they had seemed so alien to Sarah that she had thought they, too, were not typically Kenyan.

  When she arrived at Birdland, a large ornithological zoo, she paused to gaze at an Asian family picnicking on the grass among tamarisk and flame trees. The father wore a European shirt and slacks and a turban on his head; the mother and grandmother wore saris of bright turquoise and lemon yellow; the children were in ordinary dresses and shorts. Quite possibly, Sarah knew, these were descendants of the original Asian workers who had been brought out from India to build the railway more than seventy years ago. No doubt these three generations enjoying lunch on the grass had been born and reared in Kenya. And yet, ironically, Sarah, like most Africans and whites, did not consider the Asians Kenyan.

  Frustrated, she continued walking. She headed toward the beach, where afternoon winds were starting to ripple the creamy dunes and cast sunlight speckles on the green water. She felt her irritation verge upon despondence. Was there no one, she wondered, among all the tribes and peoples of this country, who was truly Kenyan? Even her own Kikuyu had abandoned tradition. The men had given up the shuka for trousers, and the women wore kangas.

  Where, then, was Kenya's style?

  She sat down on a low moss-covered wall and watched fishermen in their long white skirts haul in the day's catch. She smelled the salty perfume of the Indian Ocean, listened to the cries of sea gulls, felt the sun on her arms. Kenyan sun, she thought, which shines equally upon us all.

  She opened her sketchpad and went through her drawings: of Masai warriors jumping; of a Kisii soapstone carver; of a Samburu herdsman leaning on his staff. Sarah had sketched the eyes of Muslim women peering shyly over black veils; she had captured a happy Tharaka bride wearing no fewer than two hundred belts of cowry shells; Pokot women danced on a page, breasts bare, loops of earrings standing out from their heads. Sarah had even drawn an African businessman hurrying down a Nairobi street, briefcase in hand. And here was the smiling doorman of the new Hilton Hotel. Finally, she came to the last sketches in her book: the new, young women of Nairobi in their fake American look, which clashed with their proud, intricate African hairstyles.

  Sarah looked up from the sketchpad and wondered where, in all these sketches, was Kenya.

  The warm wind was building up. It fluttered the pages of her pad. A thin veil of sand raced over the dunes. Palm fronds rustled and slapped against one another. Sarah shaded her eyes and squinted out over the green-to-blue water. The hour was growing late. She knew she should be getting back to Nairobi. And yet she couldn't move.

  Sarah was suddenly, inexplicably fixed to the spot.

  It was as if the rising tropical wind held her prisoner, as if the whispering palms were urging her to stay, stay.... She stared at the sky, at the breakers rolling through distant reefs, at the shifting dunes, and suddenly she wanted to draw.

  Turning hastily to a fresh page, Sarah pulled a pencil from her purse and began sketching.

  She was hardly conscious of doing it; the pencil seemed to move on its own. Her hand flew over the paper, depositing lines and curves and shapes. She outlined and shaded. Her eyes went from the pad to the vista, back to the pad, rapidly, while the scene slowly emerged on the sheet.

  And when she was done, barely minutes later, Sarah blinked in amazement.

  She had captured the ancient beach on paper. Not just its likeness, for any camera could do that, but its spirit. There was life in the sweeping lines and arcs; one could almost hear the crash of the waves, the calls of the gulls. The penciled water seemed to undulate. And even though it was only gray lead, there was color in the picture. Sarah could see it; she could feel it. And her heart began to race.

  Turning to another blank page, she changed her position on the low wall and began to draft the pretty little mosque hidden a hundred feet away behind tamarisk trees. When that was done, she sketched the narrow street with its Arab latticework balconies. And when the soul of Malindi was committed to paper, she closed her eyes and pictured the Amboseli plains, where lions roamed and flat-topped thorn trees held up the sky. Her hands flew. Page after page went by. She brought out fresh pencils. The afternoon waned; Africa's winking twilight was nearly upon her. But still she sketched.

  She drew the shoreline of expansive Lake Victoria and the peaks of Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro. Her mind's eye saw round huts and Masai manyattas and Turkana tents, and her hand put them on paper. She drew birds and animals; she breathed life into wildflowers. And then there were clouds, great herds of them, moving around a central, dazzling sun. Finally, sunsets and sunrises went into the sketch-book, and the way the Chania tumbled over its riverbed, and the smoke curling up from her grandmother's cook fire, and the local bus from Karatina taking women back from the market to their various farms.

  When Sarah had filled every page down to the last one and there was no more room, and all her pencils were dull, and she realized in surprise that she now sat in the darkness of night, she felt a strange, almost frightening emotion wash over her.

  In a revelation that was like a blow, she realized she had been looking in the wrong places. Here, in this dime-store sketchpad now clutched between her hands, was Kenya. The East African "style" was not, she knew now, suddenly, excitedly, in the way its people dressed, but in East Africa itself. The Kenyan soul lay not in shukas or kangas but in its sun and grasses and red earth; in the smiles of its children; in the toil of its women; in the soaring of a hawk, the loping of a giraffe, the lanteen sails of dhows at sunset.

  Sarah began to tremble. She sprang up from the wall and ran to Dr. Mwai's car, holding the precious sketchpad to her breast. She didn't see the dark little streets she sped down or the dusky women who peered in curiosity from windows. Sarah saw only vast yellow savannas and herds of elephant, the desolate deserts of the north and marches of camels, the glass and concrete skyscrapers rising up from Nairobi's slums. And she saw it all in the colors and shapes of the new fabric she was going to create.

  Sarah Mathenge was going to give the world a Kenya look at last.

  "SO LET ME tell you what this bloke does," Terry Donald said as he opened his third Tusker beer.

  Deborah wasn't listening. Sitting with Terry in the observation lounge of Kilima Simba Safari Lodge, she was watching a lone bachelor elephant that had come to the watering hole to drink. The lodge was quiet now; all the guests were in their rooms, changing out of swimsuits and into cocktail clothes. At sunset, when a great show of animals appeared at the watering hole, a hundred tourist cameras were going to click.

  "I've told you about Roddy McArthur, haven't I?" Terry said, trying to get her attention. He understood her distraction. She was leaving for America in two weeks. "Anyway," he went on, "what Roddy does when he hasn't any clients to take out hunting is, he goes off alone and bags the largest trophies he can find. He sells them to Swanson, the taxidermist in Nairobi, who processes them and keeps them hidden. Then, when Roddy does have clients, or some other bloke has clients who bag small trophies and are dissatisfied, the heads are switched by Swanson, on the quiet, you understand, and the clients go home happy with the big trophies they later boast they bagged themselves. Mind you, Deborah, I don't get into that. I think hunting should be kept an honest sport." He leaned over and tapped her on the shoulder. "Deborah?"

  She looked at him. "Sorry, Terry. My mind was wandering again."

  "I'll bet you're all packed and ready to go."

  No, she wasn't. In fact, as the day for departure drew nearer, Deborah's reluctance to leave grew stronger.

  It was because of Christopher.

  She could not get out of her mind their reunion down by the river, three weeks ago. She lived it over and over, filling her every waking moment with the memory of seeing him standing there in the sun. Each time she pictured Christopher, she felt the desperate rush of sexual desire that was growing with
in her every day.

  "You know, Deborah," Terry said, "I wish you'd let me take you out just once more before you go away for three years."

  She regarded Terry Donald. He was twenty years old, lean and sunburned, and ruggedly handsome like his father, Geoffrey, and his grandfather, Sir James. And he had a passion for hunting. When he had received his restricted license three years ago, Terry had taken Deborah on her first hunting safari.

  They had gone in Land-Rovers down to the Serengeti in Tanganyika. Because his license was restricted, Terry had not been able to hunt any of the Big Five—elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion, and leopard. But they had come upon an old lion that had had a porcupine quill stuck up its cheek, all the way into its head, and it had made it crazy, attacking innocent villagers. Terry had brought the dangerous beast down with a single, merciful shot and had been allowed, because of the service he had performed, to keep the skin.

  Their second safari had been a year ago, just before Deborah had entered the University of Nairobi for her premed studies. Then she and Terry had gone into Uganda after elephant. After long, hot days of trekking through eight-foot-tall hyperenia grass, carrying heavy rifles, cartridge bags, and water bottles, of following tracks and droppings into dense forest and feeling sharp danger all around, they had found a small bull group with excellent tusks.

  Terry had given Deborah the honor of the first shot; but she had frozen, and so he had killed the best of the herd and had supervised the subsequent hacking away of the tusks. When, in a gesture of extreme generosity, he offered the ivory to Deborah, she had turned away.

  She had not been able since to convince him of her dislike of hunting and her disapproval of its being permitted in Kenya. Nor had Terry been able to make her see his side of it: that hunters performed a valuable service. They culled dangerously large herds, saved crops and villages from marauding rogues, and policed the poachers, who had cruel ways of killing the animals.