It’s Wednesday and that means Samir Dave is right here on Kamal’s Korner with Part 5 of Bleeding Streets!
Welcome and ENJOY and do give your feedback as Sam really appreciates it.
Thanks so much.

– Kamal Kaur
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The camera panned around the alley and the next thing I saw made me jump out of my skin. As the camera centred on the dead gangsters I could no doubt sense the familiarity in their clothes. Beanies and oversized jackets, short man, tall man, big man and then just what I was hoping not to see; raspy. There was a bullet hole instead of the left eye and two more on his left hand, but it was raspy. The news presenter was serious about the images being graphic and horrific. Raspy still had that toothy smile he had flashed at me in the alley earlier that day but he was dead. Raspy and his goons were all dead. I had just interacted with all of them not more than an hour ago but now I was staring at them on the screen, all dead.

 

I dug into my pocket to pull out my phone. I wanted to call someone, anyone. I realised I had not put together the phone from its fall in the alley. I pulled out the front cover, the keypad, the back cover, the body and lastly the battery. I started assembling everything is a semi-panicked state. I quickly turned the phone over and before I had even snapped the back cover in place I powered it up.

 

After the usual flashing images and the music, which seemed to ‘disturb’ the crowd in my living room, the screen lit up. ‘Insert SIM card’ it read.

“Shit!” I cursed and put my hands into my pocket for the SIM. Apart for some loose coins, an old receipt and some cash there was nothing in my pocket. I frantically started expelling the contents from all my pockets. Jeans front, jeans back, jacket outer, jacket inner, jacket top but nothing.

 

For the others in the living room, I probably looked like an ape in a scratching frenzy. To myself I was an ape with his life on the very verge of an irreversible catastrophe. Was that my SIM they had mentioned in the news?

 

How was that even possible with all the garbage that was on the floor?

 

What are the chances that the police force is efficient enough to find a 2cm by 1cm piece of paper and metal on half an acre of the filthiest streets in the world. This was the same police force that could not find a whore in a brothel on any given day.

 

My mind was a whirlwind of thoughts, assumptions and conclusions. None of them looked good from my perspective.

 

I continued staring at the screen with my mouth agape. Cathy, probably the only person in the room with brains, asked “Is everything, okay Sam? You look a bit pale.” I shook myself out of the temporary stupor and looked at her. I knew my mouth was still open but I had no idea what to stay. The image of raspy in the street alive and raspy in the street dead kept flashing in front of me.

 

I realised that Linda, the girl who had taken the joint from me, had her arm outstretched with it in her hand towards me. It took me some time to realise she was returning the joint to me. My heart was already pounding and the drug was not helping. I took the joint and sucked on it like I was trying to pull a golf ball through a hose pipe.

 

“Sam!” Cathy said with a little more urgency and firmness in her voice. There was a policeman giving an interview on the screen, but I could not hear anything save for the blood pounding in my ears. I could feel sweat forming on my brow. By back had not dried from the encounter on the street but now it was drenched. I looked at her and I started blurting random incoherent sentences that even did not make sense to me.

 

Cathy looked at Jemo and flicked her head in the girls directions. I do not know if Jemo understood but he turned up the volume of the television. The girls were too engrossed to notice Cathy come over. She sat on the armrest as Jemo came over too more because of Cathy’s stern beckoning gestures than his own personal will.

 

“What happened Sam?” enquired Cathy, thus time with a much more soothing tone in her voice filled with concern and care. Cathy had large imploring brown eyes that at this moment felt comforting and motherly. I blinked a couple of times and started narrating my ordeal in the alley that was being televised. From the no-show of Kimani’s contact to my importune meeting with raspy and his goons to my strangely lucky exit from the alley, I narrated it all.

 

My words were tripping over each other and I kept going back and forth as I remembered things. It was not a long tale but I was seeking solace and I kept justifying myself. I looked at Cathy and then at Jemo. He started wringing his hands which in retrospect I realized was because Kimani was his distant cousin and thus his contact.

 

Jemo went to the cabinet in the corner we called our bar, poured a stiff whisky and brought it over. I looked at the amber liquid in the cheap crystal imitation glass that we kept for our guests, swirled it around and swallowed it in one big gulp. As the liquid went down my throat I could feel the warmth from the alcohol down my throat and spreading through my stomach. The vapour from the good whisky came back up the throat and tickled my nostrils. Normally I would enjoy a whisky like a first date with a beautiful girl. Right now the best I could offer was to treat it like a cheap harlot.

 

I had never been this disoriented before and I had no idea what to do. I felt a tugging on my glass and realized Jemo was trying to take the glass from me. My eyes had glazed from the situation and the sting from the alcoholic vapours. He walked over to the bar and poured a bigger shot. He brought it to me. I looked up and muttered by gratitude, disrespected the brew master who had spent fifteen years perfecting that whisky, swallowed it all. Again.

 

My head was reeling from the weed and the whisky. I had no connection to the dead gangsters apart from that of a chance meeting in a dark alley. It could happen to anyone, right? Or were we supplier and customer. Yet, I had left behind my SIM card as evidence of my presence. Knowing the Kenyan police if they ever traced that back to me could I feign innocence or would they weave me into the intricate web of investigations, suspects and possible prosecution. I had never been detained in my life before, not even in school. Prison was a thought I could not even conjure in my wildest nightmares. I had heard and read all sorts of horrifying tales and here I was soon to be starring in one story of my own.

 

I opened my eyes and everyone was staring at me including the two girls, Linda and somebody. Cathy had concern etched all over her face. Jemo had the usual nonchalant smirk on his face, but from the creases on his forehead, I could tell he was worried as well.

“Why don’t you rest now, we will figure out something tomorrow” said Cathy.

***** TO BE CONTINUED *****

Part 4 of Bleeding Streets by Samir Dave

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Cathy lived with her mother who did not mind the fact that she spent more time at ours than anywhere else. She was the same age as Jemo, around 29 and was a receptionist at some big manufacturing company in industrial area. She had a petite frame and large inquisitive eyes. She had a good educational background, pretty, well spoken and well a tad bit crazy. My suspicion for her insanity was the fact that she and Jemo had hit it off and were still together for six years to date. What she saw in Jemo even he did not know. The job as a receptionist despite the university degree stemmed from the fact that the economy was on the downturn and any job was as good as gold.

As I was climbing the stairs to my third floor flat, I heard some unusual commotion. Instead of the usual fanfare of radio music, football games on telly, porn at low volumes, loud chattering of inebriated teenagers or the bass laden rumble of gossiping men, there was a unified chatter from most of the flats. There was something that had unified them all. I continued my conquest of the stairs two at a time, fumbled for my keys, opened the door and got in. Jemo, Cathy and two of her friends were sprawled out all over our living room, fixated on the news been aired on the television. I was a little disappointed when everyone’s acknowledgement to my arrival was just a glance in my direction and back to the television.

It made me happy to note that Cathy had upheld my arrangement with her in regards to no one using my favourite chair. It was a well worn sofa I have lugged around since my college days, but my throne nonetheless. I kicked off my shoes, planted myself on the sofa and decided to see what all the seriousness was about.

Apparently in the crackdown following the election violence, police had cornered a gang of some wanted criminals in town. Nothing new as they were probably ratted out by a rival gang or they had not paid the big boys in the police force the regular ‘protection fee’ or the usual reasons that any nation who underpays it’s police force faces.

I pulled out one of the bags of weed that I had just purchased from my jacket and fished around under my throne for a magazine and some rolling papers. As I plucked on the greens and the trichome laden stalks, I also got engrossed in the news like everyone else in the room. This gang had been terrorising residents of the two largest slums in the city. They were systematic and clinical in their killings but always left behind a calling card, a packet of maize flour. The news analysts and investigators had various theories behind their strange calling card. What amazed me is none of them had bothered to find out why they were killing people but were very keen to deduce the reasons about what they were leaving behind.

I licked the gummy end of the rolling paper once the leaves had set in place and twisted the paper into a tight conical roll. I tapped the end to let the leaves settle a bit more, pinched the larger end of the cone and twisted it down. I lit the joint and took a drag. The weed was packed loose so there was a lot of air in it. A lot more that the one I had tried in the alley earlier. I took a few more drags and as the aroma of the smoke permeated the room and its crowd, one of the girls turned and looked at me. I knew that look, it meant ‘I want some of what you are smoking but if you try and pull a line on me, I will slap you six ways to Sunday’. I knew this because I had learned the hard way before when I was younger. When I was foolish.

I took a couple more drags and stretched my arm in the direction of the staring girl. She took it from my hand and nodded in appreciation. We all continued watching the news.

“The police force had sent in many undercover officers to infiltrate this gang but none have returned alive. The gangs’ hideouts and meeting places are closely guarded and the operations of these notorious men has been largely unknown till today” said the buxom news presenter. The only reason I could imagine she was on television was because she either slept (or is sleeping) with the station boss or has some political connection ensuring she keeps this job.
“Our team of reporters on the field seem to have conflicting reports but it seems that the police arrived on the scene and had to shoot back in self defence”

Given the amount of times the police had “arrived on the scene and had to shoot back in self defence” bullets must be extremely cheap or easily available in our poor country. The news presenter continued to illustrate the bravery and quick thinking of the officers and how the investigators were now combing the area in which the shoot out happened. “Among various guns, knives, chains and drugs found in this dark alley behind Keekorok road, the officers have found some mobile phones and a SIM card that will assist in tracking other members and the operations of this gang”

“The images we are about to show you are graphic and violent. We advise viewer discretion” continued the presenter. The screen changed from the cityscape backed newsroom to a city alley. The picture was grainy and almost amateur but I could tell that the cameraman was trying to do his best to get the effect of the massacre through his lens. There were overturned dustbins, strewn garbage and gunshot riddled walls. There were policemen in sanitary gloves and there were reporters running all over the place. It was more like a scene from an open air trade show than a crime scene. A bit counter-productive while searching for clues I thought. There was a policeman with a bandaged arm with what I could only pray was a male nurse attending to him.

Weed or marijuana belongs to the cannabis family and is a psychoactive drug. While many drugs clearly fall into the category of either stimulant, depressant, or hallucinogen, cannabis exhibits a mix of all properties, perhaps leaning the most towards hallucinogenic or psychedelic properties, though with other effects quite pronounced as well. The weed was good and I was feeling all these effects and more at the same time. I continued watching the news with curious abandon but more because I had nothing to do. If I had known what I would see next, I would not have lit the joint in the first place.

<<<   To Be Continued   >>>

The third, much-awaited installment of Bleeding Streets by Samir Dave.
Do send in your comments. They’re all being appreciated by Sam.
Enjoy Part 3!
-Kamal Kaur

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“Tuonane” I said in farewell and started towards my car parked just around the corner from the alley. It was not a flashy car but a goldmine for thugs. The sale from the spares alone they could salvage with a hammer and chisel could keep them high for a week. In the hands of professional chop shop, for a month. A month on these mean streets was damn close to immortality.

 

“You want anything else? Rizla? Women? Guns? Crack? Snow?” raspy enquired as I started walking backwards out of the alley.

“No, thanks I’m good” I said as I tried to make a hasty retreat. I had enough rolling paper at home, I was not looking for a rough neck massage or an infection from raspy’s women and I sure as hell was not looking to shoot someone. Above all else, I wanted as much to do with hardcore drugs as a cat does with a shower.

 

I was too scared to turn my back at them so I inched slowly to my car, one side facing the goons the other towards my car. I stumbled on a bag of garbage lying in the shadows and instinctively shot out my arms to balance myself or brace myself from the impeding fall, whichever came first. I managed not to fall by palming the wall, but dropped my phone in the process. Despite the ambient noise, the plastic hitting the concrete was as loud as the crack of a whip. I could hear one of raspy’s men snigger, I had no idea who. The phone split open and the battery, the cover and all other loose parts came apart. This was not the first time I had dropped my phone and that was exactly the reason I always use a cheap phone that could take a beating.

 

I quickly scooped up the pieces, pocketed them and walked on towards my car. To my surprise raspy and his men had made no move in all this time and were still staring at me. I got to it to my car and got in, after the usual movie-like fumble with the keys, I drove off. By drove off I mean, made Michael Schumacher look like a mkokoteni pusher.

 

I made it to the madhouse I call home in one piece and more importantly alive. Although I finished university about the same time as Rome was being built, I still lived in the same student-infested apartment block. It was more of a small estate with most of the flats occupied by students on their own, with friends, with their lovers or with their pimps. It was safe to say, there was no morality, legality or decency that would go on at Berry Grove Apartments or BGA as we had all come to call it.

 

I shared by flat with one other guy, an IT consultant, James, who kept to himself a lot either working on a computer or on Catherine one of the girls in our block. I did not really need a flat mate but Jemo’s older brother was a very good mate and when his wife kicked him out, I was the temporary shelter. This was six years ago and I was pretty sure Jemo had settled into this flat as much as I had.

 

Jemo was a wiry young man with the prerequisite glasses that all IT whiz kids these days have. He was tall and lean, not muscular but your average joe and I suspected he only owned three pairs of trousers. The faded, tattered jeans he wore whenever he left the house for anything save the church and other such functions, the pyjamas he exclusively wore in the flat and a pair of black slacks he wore to church whenever Catherine, or Cathy as we all called her, decided to drag him along.

 

He was extremely talented with the computer and all things electronic. He had proved this one day four years ago when I was kicking and abusing myself “Why are you punching the sofa?” he had asked staring up from his laptop.

“I forgot to pay the f**king subscription and now they have disconnected me till I go and pay!” I snapped back looking at him incredulously.

“So you can always go and pay them and they will reconnect you again, sio?” he asked extremely politely and patiently. I would have thrown something, anything had there been anything in our sparsely furnished flat

“It’s two in the f**king afternoon, on a Saturday!” I shouted in anger not at him in particular. Just at what seemed like his stupidity at that moment. “There is no way I can venture to Westlands, make the payment and return before the game starts” I explained more calmly but still frustrated.

“How much is the subscription?” he asked with a smile on his face that did not belong. He almost looked like a mad doctor that had invented something sinister and destructive. I told him the amount. “Give me the money and I will get it connected in fifteen minutes” he told me. You have to keep in mind this was the period before the mobile operators had started the cash transfer system so I was a bit sceptical. Jemo was extremely serious, his outstretched hand confirmed this. I fished out my wallet, counted the notes and gave him the cash.

He leaped up with laptop in hand and ran to the decoder turned it over and started fiddling with the connections at the back of it. He pulled out some copper wire and made a crude connection between the two units at one of the inputs that could only be described as electronic rape. He started fiddling on the keyboard and some moments later he was squealing in glee like a school girl being asked out for the first time.

“Turn the TV on” he said. I humoured him and was about to hit him when the screen still displayed the ‘your account has been suspended’ sign. I glanced at him sideways with enough violent intent in my expression as I could.

“Go to the settings and click on reset” he said as he continued his toothy sheepish smile at me. I did as instructed.

The screen prompted for a code. “Hold down 8 continuously” he said as if he had read my mind.

I did that and the next thing that happened was the equivalent of finding kryptonite. My roommate had just hacked into the decoder and afforded me free TV, for life. Although he threatens to reset the TV every now and then because I do not pay him the monthly ‘subscription’, he is yet to follow through on his threat. Letting him live in my flat balances the free TV out as far as I am concerned.

His girlfriend who we all call Cathy despite Jemo calling her Catherine or ‘Oh God, Oh God’ on most nights and weekends was another reason I shared a flat with this weird man. She was a cleanliness freak and a good cook. She personally supervised the bi-weekly cleaning of our flat and was so stringent that we could have our own ISO certification for cleanliness. I was a vegetarian which by default made Jemo one too and Cathy adapted fast. However, her best attribute was that she knew other girls. Lots of other girls. This worked in my favour and in the end we were all happy.

 

<<< To Be Continued…>>>

Part 2 of the compelling read by Samir Dave.
In case you missed the first one, catch up right here:

http://www.kamalkaur.net/?p=1978

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“In that case I want two bags” I said. As stupid mistakes I have made go in my life, I would not say that this is one of the big ones, but it does gain a place in my personal stupidity hall of fame, along with calling my Std 1 teacher a bloody fool (on her face).
Raspy looked at me, nay stared at me for a while, then put his hand in his pocket and after a little digging pulled out a ‘joint’. He put it to his lips and one of his shorter henchman came over to light it. The short goon was almost comical, like an oversized school boy. Light skinned and stocky, but by and large a veteran at surviving the meanest streets of Kenya. He looked at me with a twinkle in his eyes as he held the lighter for his superior.

Then, he went back to his place in the dark, calmly and quietly like mist does in the morning ones the sun comes up.

Raspy took a long drag of the joint, kept it in and let the blue smoke out through his nostrils. He was looking at me all along, he then said “This is the best shashe you will ever get” and stretched his hand offering the joint to me. I wasn’t too sure what he meant; whether the quality was that good or I would never live past that night.

I was squeezing my sphincter muscles with all my strength for fear of releasing my bodily fluids but I still managed to take a few small steps towards him.

After what felt like twenty hours, I was a hands breadth away from raspy. I could smell wood smoke and tyre fumes coupled with traces of tear gas and ‘changaa’ but his clothes were clean, almost freshly laundered.
I could smell the shashe. The acrid sweet smell of some of the best herb East Africa apparently had to offer. Rumour had it that after his death, Bob Marley’s ashes were sprinkled on the hills of Shashemane by his family. Therefore, in essence you were smoking with Bob Marley if you put some shashe to your lips and lit it up.

I raised my hand which had now decided it suffered from Parkinson’s disease. I took the joint from raspy into my shaking appendage and put it to my lips. It was a well rolled joint about the same size as a cigarette. The roach was good and the body was tight. A professional roll or a machine rolled joint.

Any smoker or toker will tell you, never rush the first drag. I was both of those but I was neither calm nor in control of my lungs, hands or body. I took a fast sharp drag. I felt the stabs of the smoke in my throat. I felt it biting in my lungs. I expelled it in a coughing fit. My eyes were tearing at both the pain of the uncontrolled drag and the humiliation.

Raspy was in fits of his own, except his were fits of laughter. I took a deep breath of air and hyperventilated the next few breaths. Experience had been a harsh teacher but I had learned that the fastest way to stop the burn was to just that.

I stared at the joint, blew the ash of its tip and redeemed myself with another long pull. A slow ‘professional’ pull. I could taste the sweetness characteristic of the Ethiopian highlands at the back of my tongue. The slight acidity from the coffee fields that surround the Shashemane highlands. It was indeed good shashe, not the best like raspy had boasted, but nonetheless some of the best I had smoked in a long time.

I kept the smoke in as long as I could, exhaled, took another drag and gave the joint back to raspy. I was visibly calm and as I let the last puff out, I could sense the effects of the marijuana working faster on me. My senses were heightened. I could hear the rhythm from the background music bubbling and backfiring. I could hear the city stirring. I heard the knuckle of stocky or one of his mates crack.

“So you see mister, I give only the best” raspy waved at me with the joint in his hand. “Two bags is two G’s boss”

I was smart enough to have split the cash on my person. Craftily, I had only left 300 shillings in my wallet, which was in my back right pocket. My back left had a thousand bob note and my front pockets had an array of mixed denomination notes. I reached over to my back pocket, slowly, like people do in the movies when they have a gun pointed at them. I felt stupid doing that charade and probably looked even more stupid. I was constantly telling myself better to be over-cautious then to be under – six-foot under.

Taking the thousand from my back pocket, I amassed the mixture from the front pockets to get to the two thousand we had agreed upon. The I reached out to hand over the cash to raspy. He did not take it but his ‘accountant’ came over and took it. The tall guy in this instance looked like Lurch from Adam’s Family. He had a scar right below his chin that gleamed despite the low amount of light. I was extremely confident that the scar was not from a bicycling accident he may have had as a kid. He was at least one and a half heads taller than me and definitely many times more muscular than me.

He took the money from me gently, counted it to confirm the amount, whispered ‘asante’ and walked off, back to his corner, again like the mist. The money gone I was now expecting to be given my stash or my throat slit whichever came first. Raspy put a hand into the deep pockets of his jacket and pullet out a few bags. They were the usual cellophane ‘zip-lock’ bags that most dealers use. He counted out three and threw them in my direction. “Election bonus” he said and smiled as I caught them. A sincere smile or so I, apparently the new authority on human psychology, thought.

“Thanks man” I said and looked down at the bags in my hands. I wanted to sniff the bags to make sure I was not paying for gold just to be supplied lead. Given the hospitality that I had been afforded, that would be plain rude. Or suicidal. There was a thin line between both. A very thin line.

I had never dealt with a gangster in the middle of town in the dark of night so I did not know what the protocol was. So I waited for them to make their move. They just stood there, like the pillars of the ruins of an old city. Like they belonged as part of the existing scenery.

<<<To Be Continued>>