Miriam
‘We are our own predators.’
An emergency at home! My father was in the Intensive Care Unit at Nairobi Hospital. My mother thought it was a heart attack — they were running a bunch of tests. He might have to be flown to the United States or South Africa if he worsened. We the rich don’t die in Kenya, I couldn’t help thinking. Either way, he would love to have his two sons by his side, and she wanted me to catch the first flight out. If he were to die before I got there, my mother would never forgive that I was busy chasing a story, and for The National Inquisitor. And I did want to go home and see him — the cold war with my parents could not continue. And while my future was with The National Inquisitor, I did want to do stories that I cared about, that mattered. An oxymoron to some — that one could write stories that matter for a tabloid, that I would want to become a serious tabloid journalist, but it is my medium; it is what I am good at.
And that is precisely why I could not leave yet — I had a few hours before the last flight. I did not want to think about the worst, the gut-wrenching pain I would feel if he passed away while I was in Addis, and the guilt. But I was where I was supposed to be for my story. And if I was where I was supposed to be, then the choice before me, to leave Addis or stay, had to be false.
In a strange way, it made me my father’s son — his life was a singular pursuit of power and wealth, and mine was writing good stories. I lied to my mother, told her I would be catching the first flight out. She made me promise.
Maaza was downstairs at the hotel lobby waiting for me. Maaza and I, the self-appointed Bonnie and Clyde of Tizita, we said to hell with everything and made the journey to Miriam’s village to talk to her cousin.
***
To visit the village where Miriam once lived was to be disabused of all that you knew about Ethiopia. Even I, who should have known better after visiting Kidane’s rural home, was still shocked by the greenness of the highlands. Bob Geldof, and much later, Bono, had pulled a number on the world; they had redefined the image of a whole continent to one that was always holding a beggar’s bowl — a black hand stretched out for blessings from a white hand — with the help of African leaders for whom suffering immediately translated into dollars and pounds.
Ethiopia had always been great for Kenyan nationalism. Yes, much had changed, and now Ethiopia rivalled Kenya and was even poised to beat it in the much-coveted race towards being the best wards of global capitalism. But national memory still retained the old Ethiopia of starving kids, the country’s soundtrack stuck on the song “We Are the World.” Ours was a national memory fed a steady diet of how much better off we were than our neighbours. Parents even today warn their kids not to waste their food because of the starving kids in Ethiopia. And, of course, during wedding parties, the drunken uncles and aunts reminded us that our Kenya was the land of milk and honey that was being sucked dry by the Ethiopians, Sudanese and Somalis.
So, the Ethiopian highlands and their abundance of deep healthy green, from grass to the coffee plantations, were, in spite of myself, a surprise. A deep, rich green going into the horizon, a Garden of Eden where the foliage is so thick that it seems like all you have to do is drop a seed and it sprouts right up before your eyes. Looking at this greenery, one understands why the Italians failed to conquer and colonise Ethiopia. No people would give this up without a struggle to the death.
Maaza could see my look of embarrassed confusion, but she merely shrugged it off as we drove up to a small wooden gate that opened up to Aamina Hakim’s small compound. I imagined being Miriam and losing my family to famine and wars, to be that alone, and I could see why her cousin, the sole keeper of her memories, was important to her.
Call it a bias of youth, but I had always associated the word ‘cousin’ with someone young, and the first thing I noticed as Aamina welcomed us to her hut and started making tea was how old and frail she was.
Miriam had given me some things to bring to her — clothes, shoes, a solar-powered mobile phone charger and some Kenyan tea and coffee. And, in true Miriam fashion, she had rigged one of the boxes so that a balloon popped out and burst. Instinctively, we fell to the ground, even old Aamina, and it was with much laughter that we dusted ourselves off.
‘Yes, now I know Miriam sent you. She was always playing tricks on us, wrapping little pieces of soap like candy, covering cow pies with grass — oh, how our unsuspecting feet suffered! She was always up to no good. Doesn’t surprise me she works as a bartender,’ she said, laughing.
‘You keep in touch?’ Maaza asked.
‘On and off over the years. I am glad she is finally doing some singing — what a waste of talent. It is never too late; as long as you are breathing, you can turn a life around.’
She talked really fast, like she was running out of time.
‘She was singing as a child?’ I followed up.
‘Her and her sister — what wonderful voices! They knew pain from a young age; that is why when they sang, you could hear tears even in their most joyous songs. Their father, a farmer, was killed in the Ogaden. Her husband lost to the war. And then her sister died from AIDS—’
‘AIDS? She told us she died fighting against the Eritreans?’ I asked.
‘We are a society of secrets — everything under lock and key. She suffered alone because no one spoke about it — shame and secrets. All the tragedies landed on their doorstep to spare the rest of us. And God has given us long lives so that we can live for those who died,’ she said, clearly wanting to believe that was the case. It did not make sense any other way.
‘Children?’ I asked her.
‘No, they had not got into it yet,’ she said, winking at Maaza.
She asked me to help her with a trunk that was underneath her bed. She dug into it and emerged with some cassette tapes and letters and handed them over to me, pointing to a small, soot-darkened, formerly metallic-coloured tape player.
I picked one at random and played it. The first song was a duet — two kids singing “Silent Night,” only they did not know the words but could mimic the lyrics. But some of the cassettes were not of children playing and recording themselves. Some of them were semi-professionally produced, and they were all of Miriam’s sister. Pulling one of the cases open and looking at the credits, I found Miriam credited as one of the backup vocals singers.
On the tapes, I found only one Tizita song by her sister, but her voice was no longer the same; it sounded weak and old — ravaged by AIDS, Aamina explained. And that is where Miriam emerges from the background vocals, her sound so physical and alive that I could hear her helping her sister walk along, and her sister, being older, rejecting the help. And so Miriam walks not quite in the background and not alongside her. I hear her walking one step behind, propping up her stubborn sister every time she falters. Every now and then, they fall to the ground, and Miriam helps her up. And once she is up and walking, she slaps Miriam’s hand away. Her sister, though she sounds frail, when held up by Miriam so that her remaining strength can go into the song, comes alive out of the old cassettes.
It made sense that there was no way of understanding Miriam outside of her sister. That talent — to have lived so close to it and in its shadow, to have recognised it as better than hers, and then for it to be lost, unrealised. To have watched that happen to a person she loved and looked up to, a person who had even helped define her own voice, would have come at a cost. That, compounded by the loss of her entire family, would have made the price exorbitant. It meant that she could not manage the intensity of her own life and the intensity demanded of her by the Tizita. It had to be one or the other, and she had chosen life over her gift.
After making us drink her tea, Aamina wrapped up Miriam’s belongings in a small box and walked us to her doorway. As Maaza and I walked back to her car, she pointed up to a perfect moon, half shadow, half light. I saw it so clearly that I could feel the crunch of my boots on its rough surface.
‘This Miriam of yours — that is some life. I hear that story every day at work, and each time I get angry. War and death — all of her pain has been caused by another human being, someone like her. That is what I can never understand — that we cause each other misery; rape, torture and murder each other. We are own predators,’ she said, as we tried to process Miriam’s story.
***
Maaza drove me to the airport so I could catch my last flight. She was beautiful, intelligent and passionate; she had my kind of sense of humour. If you added her good income, she was my ideal woman on paper, but there was nothing between us. It would have taken too much effort to fan the little sexual tension between us into a full-blown relationship. It felt right that we work and play together and be there for each other in the future. It was as if we both could anticipate crises in our future that would require that we help each other out and were saving our friendship for that. It could be that I had not yet recovered from The Diva’s lesson at her juke joint, or from my rather poor performance at the orgy.
‘Goodbye, my brother,’ Maaza said as we hugged.
‘I hope to see you soon, my sister,’ I said. ‘Thank you,’ I added as we let go.
‘Thank me by sending me the stories worth my effort, okay?’ she said, and gave me her business card. I did the same.
‘This is like we are becoming strangers, working our way backwards,’ she said.
‘My name is…,’ I said, playing along.
‘Good luck with everything,’ she said, and playfully shoved me into the security line.