I have cousin called Farouk. Not his real name. Farouk is a jailbird. I won’t get into why and how he ended up in the can again because I wrote about it here in one of my earlier post. Farouk turned 30 in Feb. He didn’t blow candles. He didn’t get smashed. Nobody toasted to his good health. He didn’t get laid…I hope not, damn it! He celebrated it as he had celebrated the last three birthdays, in his drab jail clothes, toiling in the laundry section of the slammer by day and sleeping on an ultra thin mattress by night in a dark cell that he called home for the three years (including the time he spent in remand). He celebrated it by dreaming about freedom.
The first year after judge threw the book at him I often found some sort of morbid pleasure in using his incarceration as a prop for humor. When I was out with friends I would make sure I mention I have a cousin in jail and then pleasure in people’s reaction. People look at your different when you mention something like that. They imagine you come from a family of delinquents, a family beset with felony. They wonder if those genes are imbedded deep in you, lying dormant, waiting for the right stimulus to show face. In short, they imagine I’m a thug. People often asked me why he was in jail. And I constantly lied. I had fun with it. When I was in a good mood I said he knifed someone. “Did they die?” they would mumble in horror. “Only a little,” I would say, “Only a little.” When I wasn’t in the mood I would say he jacked a priest. Or held up a small bank in Kilgoris. Or stole a baby. I got a bang from stuff like this. But such mischief grows old fast. Soon it didn’t matter. But what did he really do, I hear you asking? The judge said he facilitated the loss of a truckload of wheelchairs and crutches en-route to Rwanda. I’ve never asked him if he agreed with the judge.
Last week Farouk- together with a few thousand inmates – was released. Presidential pardon. Word got round very quickly and I found myself at the parking lot of Industrial Area Prison with my brother. It was headed to midday. My other cousin, Farouk’s older (and only) brother was also there holding court and looking a bit bewildered. The meeting party only consisted of the three of us. The rest couldn’t make it because it was kind of sudden; Kibaki didn’t send us emails. We chatted as we waited for him to come out. It was a beautiful day; it had rained the previous night so the ground was wet. The air, even the one in the jail compound, smelled of life. And the sun was out in a dress.
Farouk walks out a few minutes before midday. He walks hesitantly, like a man stripped of his dignity. He’s wearing blue bathroom sandals. He has on a cheesy and faded blue shirt with the middle button missing. He’s in oversized beige khaki pants, no belt, so he has one hand inside his pocket to prevent his pants from falling down. With his free hand he clutches, under his arm, a black paper bag. His world’s possession is in that bag. He’s been shaved clean, about a few millimeters from his skull. He hasn’t lost much weight; in fact he hasn’t changed much. He’s limping slightly. He stops and looks around then he spots us walking towards him. He slowly shuffles our way, clutching his little black paper bag, limping slightly, a faint smile playing at the corner of his lips, a smile that looked like an embarrassed smile from far but as he inched closer I realized that it was a smile trying to be brave. It seemed to say, “I told you guys I would be out before dinner.” I wasn’t convinced.
Cold soda
He hugs my brother fast. He hugs my brother the longest. They were closest. My brother visited him more than both of us combined. He knew when he was sick, or when he was down. They talked on phone frequently. He hugs me next. I have never a hugged a fellow man like that; hands all around torso and shit. It felt right. Then he hugs his brother last, a small awkward hug. They aren’t so close. I can’t tell you why, family stuff. Don’t act like you don’t have issues in your family.
My brother pats him on the back and says he looks good. “No you don’t, you look lousy.” I joke. He chuckles and says in his deep baritone voice, “Man, I was the most handsome man in this whole goddamned prison. This place will never be the same again with me gone.” I can’t resist so I remark, “Oh no doubt, I bet your toothless boyfriends you left back there would agree.”
Look, I was only trying to break the ice, I mean really I was only trying to make everybody relax, the air was too expectant. We were all trying to act prim and proper with our stupid velvet gloves and all. Thankfully he found it funny, like really found it hysterical. We all have a laugh and act like it’s just another day and we are all just shooting the breeze. Which is fine. After a few minutes my bro asks him, “What is the one thing you always wanted to eat or drink when you were released, we will get it right now. A cold beer or maybe some chicken? Vodka? Hey even some tail. What?”
He grins shyly, the sun shining off his scalp, he finally says, “A very cold Fanta.”
“Fanta? Really?” my brother echoes what perhaps we all thinking. He nods. We exchange brief glances. There is a Mobil or something up the road. Galitos and what not. My brother says sawa, let’s go, ride with me. He says he wants to walk there. I offer to walk with him. He hands his brother the little polythene bag and they get into their cars. I really wanted to find out what was in that bag; I wanted to know what a man leaves a jail with. Did he have a book in there? Did he have a change of underwear? Or did he carry hope in that bag? Or bitterness. Or angst. What does a man carry out of jail?
We walk out. At the gate he shows some paper to the security guy who glances at it briefly before handing it back without a word. Without a “good luck” or “take care” or “don’t come back.” Nothing. Civility doesn’t live in our jails. He limbs straight out of the gate without as much as a backward glance, holding up his pants so they wouldn’t fall down. Outside I remove my belt and hand it to him because him holding up his pants like that is depressing me. He belts up and we slowly walk up the road, jabbering. Or rather I ask him questions. He answers them nonchalantly, distractedly while looking at passing cars and at buildings. He looks surprised at being free, he seems to be getting his mind around freedom, disorientated by it all.
My cousin is not a bad guy. He’s just a guy who made some bad calls in his life. He grew up in Christian home. A family that stressed about respect and hard work. Not a bad chap, my cousin. He’s no riffraff either if you want to know. He went to school in the UK, came back with a degree in Civil Engineer but he never worked a day in his life because he’s a restless chap, because he’s the kind of guy who is in a goddamn big rush to get ahead of the queue. Because he loves the good life but unlike you and me, he wants it today. He wants it now. He always had a plan; come back home from the UK, get into the oil transportation business, work for three years driving a truck, buy his own, drive it for another two years, buy another one and start managing them from an office with a shingle bearing his name. He was ready to push the boat out. Only it didn’t turn out like that; he came back, started driving a truck, only it wasn’t an oil truck, drove it for a year and then ended up in jail the next year.
Clean slate
And now this is how it ends, with him walking by the roadside from jail in oversized khakis and a borrowed belt. This is how dreams die. But if you are those glass-half-full kind of people you would say this is how it starts.
On a clean slate.
He orders a Fanta. A cold sweaty Fanta orange. He downs it in three gulps then orders another one. This one he sips slowly, thoughtfully even, like he’s trying to isolate the damned ingredients. This one he sips through a straw. We talk and chaff about, watching cars pull up to fuel. He asks about people, who had a kid, who got married, which club is happening now, stuff. He asks about our children. He asks about our women. But he never asks about our jobs. Never. I gather that’s because it will make him feel like a failure, it will make him feel how much he needs to work hard to catch up. He tells us about the politics of money in jail and how money will buy you protection, how money will buy you friends. How money will get you a bed in jail and soap and a good meal. The jail is the only place money can buy you sleep. He tells us about how you got to man up in jail and learn to fight your own battles, sometimes violently. He tells us how the reality of being sodomized comes close if you don’t have the right friends to buy, friends who stop being your friends when your money runs out. He talks about the nights that you feel hopeless and desperate. Nights that death seems like a friend.
He smiles a lot during our meeting. But the smile always refuses to reach his eyes. His eyes harbor something that I can’t put my fingers on, but they aren’t happy eyes. Although he sits there, upright in his seat, he exhibits a certain vulnerability. I could sense the fear in him. The fear and uncertainty of starting over. At some point his brother asks him what he wants to do and he says simply that he wants to go shags where his parents are retired and tell his mom he’s out. Only he says it in Luo. Please don’t bother having a jang translate this for you because it will be lost in translation. He says, “Adwaro dhi dala angis nyar’ Sakwa ni asewuok.” And it touches me, not so much what he says but why he says it.
He never called his mother, mommy or mum or anything like that. He always called her Nyar Sakwa. Sakwa is a place in Nyanza, his mom’s home. So he always called her Nyar Sakwa. Nyar means “daughter of”. Oh sod it; this is not a Luo class!
His mom – my aunt- is dead. Died years before he was sent off to jail. And so for him to refer to her in present tense was, I don’t know, real touching. I’m a sucker, I know.
The girls
He orders fries and chicken. And he cleans it off. I watch him eat; he eats fast, just like he likes to lead his life. He isn’t going into formal employment, that much we are sure of. It’s not for him. He’s not the type to sit around for four weeks waiting for a paycheck. Farouk is not into waiting around and perhaps that’s his Achilles heels. Perhaps what he needs in this new chapter of his life is to learn to wait things out; to take small steps, but even most important to appreciate those steps. Farouk is those chaps you are embarrassed at being broke. Terrified of it. But I will tell you here that he isn’t a gangster, I swear he isn’t. He doesn’t pull guns on people or break into homes. But he loves shady deals. He loves deals that bring in big spoils and the difference between him and us is that he is not averse to risk.
I don’t know if our jails are corrective. I don’t know if they instill a sense of reform or change of attitude. If they do then they failed with my cousin because sitting there listening to him, watching him eat I didn’t feel that he was a different guy, that prison had changed him. I was looking at the hedonistic chap who loved the fast life and who would pursue it with all his wit.
The girls who work at Industrial area offices start showing up for lunch. Girls in high heels and black stockings. Girls in fitting pants and short skirts. Girls in weaves and glowing skins. They pull over in their cars or stride in twos and threes. Laughing and strutting their thing, especially the ones who knew they got an ass.
Farouk stares. Boy, does Farouk stare at their asses! He loses all interest in what we are saying and his eyes follow any hot chick that walks in the shop. Hell, even the not so hot ones. “Things changed while you were gone; they all scrub up good now. All of them.” his brother tells him with a grin. He mumbles something incoherent. I swear I’m not making this up. He practically zones out, he stares at women like, well, a jailbird. But it was a relief for us in a way, that he still found women appealing, that he wasn’t batting (pun) for the other team.