«Blessed be your failure! Blessed be your spill! Blessed be the closing of your eye! Blessed be the thinness of your cheek! Blessed are your withered thighs!»
«Kaddish», Allen Ginsberg.
Layla He arrived at the hospital with a song name and broken bones. A matatu had just run over her and she was crying softly on the stretcher in the Emergency Room while her husband was talking on the phone. X-rays showed numerous old fractures, already cured, so we asked him about them. "I have never broken a bone", assured. It only took a few calls to other hospitals in Nairobi to confirm that Layla had been admitted twice, both with multiple fractures caused by matatus attacks.
That night I went to her room and told her that we knew from her medical history that it was not the first time she had been admitted for something like this.. Layla cried. Layla begged me not to say anything to the police.. Layla told me, I, northern girl, I did not understand. Layla accused me of not being a mother.
Layla arrived at the hospital with a song name and broken bones. A matatu just ran over her and she was crying softly
Layla had allowed herself to be run over for the third time so that the matatu driver on duty had to pay her an illegal "compensation", I thought to pay for college for their children. I had everything perfectly planned, with her husband, who was the one who was coldly in charge of negotiating the price of his wife's damage. After a month admitted, without receiving a single visit from his children (too busy at university) left the hospital with a smile. I gave him a hug, for me, for their children, for all the children of the world, and I told him not to come back.
Two days later, a friend gave birth in the hospital, and I was there watching his baby girl be born. I was thinking about Layla and her love. I was thinking about my mother. I saw my friend with her belly open, bleeding, while listening to her daughter crying and asking me to take a photo and show it to her. I saw that joy and remembered the first births I experienced in Makuyu, so dirty, so fast, so easy, so earth. Births of very young women (some were close to fourteen years old) who gave birth without knowing what they would eat the next day and looked in silence at their babies. How scary, I thought then. how hungry.
He had allowed himself to be run over for the third time in search of "compensation" to pay for his children's university fees.
Yesterday I was about to go to sleep when someone knocked on the door.. Era He will, the Sudanese woman I buy fruits from. came home, He sat on the couch and started crying.. His daughter had had a stroke and lost her vision.. Zai had worked as a prostitute years before and told me that she had lost two sons and knew she would lose her daughter too., as punishment. He told me that his daughter's brain was coming out of her ear and that she was walking around the house opening her eyes with her fingers., separating his eyelids and saying: I don't even see that, mom, I don't even see that.
Zai told me that at night they stayed up late talking, and she described life to her daughter. I talked to him about the color of the clothes of the people he had dealt with., the shapes of the fruit, the dust, the ugliness, injustice. Zai told me that she would be willing to become a prostitute again if it gave her money to restore her daughter's sight..
Zai told me that she would be willing to become a prostitute again if it gave her money to restore her daughter's sight.
My room window faces the hospital. Sometimes, evening, I hear women giving birth. The damage creeps into my dreams and then I wake up. I go back to sleep when I hear their babies cry. If I knew how to pray, then i would, but since I don't know I just say: "May the force be with you".
