18 OCTOBER 2015
I saw the woman with a full belly and I asked the king, “who’s she? ”
The king, after throwing a glance in her direction answered me with a calculated vehemence, such that his lips twitched melodramatically, “That woman, that’s your future! ”
The land of the dead had such austerity that awakened the hairs on my body, yet at the same time was a labyrinth of complexities. When I arrived, I was told I was dead; the blood on my polyester shirt; sputtered when I landed on that concrete floor,was proof enough. I still could smell it’s freshness like I had just fallen off that seventh floor, yet it’d been three months. Now the king said the woman with a full stomach was my future and my head spun in wonder.
Do the dead have a future?
The great King Ndombi of Bunyala held my hand and led me by a river.It was actually a stream-thinned and choked by reeds. We sat by the bank where I had a fine view of the woman who was my future and the other ghosts who were tilling a farm. The King dipped into his breast pocket and removed a royal flute. He, for a moment, stared at it with a strange glint in his eyes, savored it,consumed in it’s glory, then put it on his lips and blew a melody in it.
It was a fine melody. It had a lulling sensation on me and I swear I saw a Tilapia jump from the river and dance in ecstasy. For a moment I saw me, in my polyester shirt, on top of that balcony. I felt the soreness in my throat. Maybe from the crying, maybe the heights just had that effect on my throat. Maybe.
I had the drill in my mind, I’d been practising it since when I could remember.
“Breath. Just breath. Everything is going to be okay. In a moment. Just let go.A new life awaits. Breath.”
Before I stepped off the railing on the balcony, I saw Ma.She was at home, laying the table for lunch. In that moment, Ma’s face shone with an articulate radiance as if a huge floodlight had been cast on her. She was humming her happy hum, the one she would do when I came first in class, or that day when Pa brought her a fancy dress from Nairobi.
Then the next moment she was on stage, a clown in a pantomime, the audience laughing boisterously at all her movements. I was part of the audience and by God I longed to be on stage with her. I wanted to join in her hum, to feel the peace she felt and drink from the bountifulness of her joy.
I jumped. I was in the air. I was a feather, carried away by the breeze. I was shrinking into oblivion. I hit the concrete floor. Then I died.
When you’re dying, your life doesn’t flash before your eyesight-that’s romanticist bullshit. But there are regrets that haunt you in your final moments . All the people you let down. All the things you could have become if you had one more chance.
I asked the King, ” The woman, my future, why has she a full stomach? ”
“Those are the contents of your life. ”
“You mean like the blessings that are bound in my future? ”
“Blessings?” he retorted, “Who’re we kidding!Those are the bad things that you’ll go through. The blessings are in that small pouch she has in her hand.”
The king plays his flute again. It’s a slow tune I’ve heard before, before I died. It is Ma’s tune. I look at the woman who is my future’s hands, they are empty.
The king sensing my unsettledness, leaned to my ear and whispered , ” Do you know who you are son? ”
I didn’t.
‘You are a ghost, a ghost of Bunyala.”
son of a common man 