Brian Oduti

Her smile revealed two missing lower front teeth. Like a sunny sky turned cloudy and a voice that carried concern, she said, ‘I heard about the mob attack against Somalis.’ She spoke with a slight accent. He took off his white tagiya and wiped the beads of sweat on his forehead with the palm of his hand. And then he rolled up the left side of his trousers past his knee to look at the damage.

‘I saw the pictures in the newspaper,’ Achol said, handing him a copy of the New Vision. He took it but felt like hurling it into the back seat.                 

 ‘On TV they say the death toll is rising by the minute.’ Her gaze quickly swept over him, his short black curly hair, his beard that had not been shaven for perhaps a month, the quiet brown eyes and the finely chiselled features, like a beautiful brown mask that hugged his graceful youth.

‘There were two blasts. One at an Ethiopian restaurant and the other was at Kyadondo Rugby Club. It’s so unfortunate. Why would anyone be so brutal to fellow human beings?’ Achol asked. ‘How long have you lived in Uganda?’

‘Five years.’
‘I was born here,’’ Achol said.  ‘I have never been to my home country.’

He looked at her not understanding.

‘Oh, my country is South Sudan. They also won’t stop fighting.’
‘Where do you live?’’
‘Kisenyi.’
‘Okay.’

Khalid felt like he had finally met someone who understood what it was like to come from a country at war. His family had made the decision to leave Somalia when their home, a three-bedroomed house on Makka al-Mukarama road, in the Darul Salaam neighbourhood, was bombed. Before that they had lived in fear and anticipation of that moment. His father was a senior police officer and it was a relief when his official car, a dark blue police Land Rover pulled up in front of their home just before 7 p.m. every day. However, on some nights his mother paced around the house waiting for her husband to get home. Because of the insecurity Baba had even stopped coming to Khalid’s football games at Al- Noor School. The family had all together stopped going to Gezirah beach on Saturdays. Weeks before the bombing Baba had said, ‘We can’t go to the beach anymore, it is unsafe these days.’ His mother even dragged Khalid off the street one day outside their home when soldiers followed him as he rode his bicycle.

That day, Khalid woke up to the deafening bang. When they managed to leave the house, half of it was in ruins and his brother was missing. Neighbours arrived with torches shining their lights through the heaps of rubble. During the search his brother’s arm was spotted sticking through the rubble of their house’s remains. His hysterical mother pounded Baba’s chest screaming, ‘Why didn’t you do something? Next they will shoot you!’ His ever-calm father just stood there with tears in his eyes.

Now his mother liked to say ‘We carried nothing’ when they moved to Uganda. ‘Be grateful for life my dear. Your brother died.’

As they drove out of the city Achol told Khalid about herself. All she knew about her country was what she saw on TV. The malnourished refugees flowing into Uganda every day. She had become a generous donor to the Southern Sudanese refugee camps, guilty because she knew her father’s wealth was blood money which he had carried out of the country when it fell apart.

Now she turned into a dirt feeder road and drove a short distance before slowing to climb a hump.

‘Is this where your home is?           
‘Somewhere near yes though I wouldn’t call it home.’

 Khalid remembered the day he picked his Ugandan national ID from the office of National Identification and Registration Authority. He had been so happy. He had read his application number FR212309X to the issuing officer, signed the form walking out a new person, a Ugandan. He thought he would finally belong to a peaceful country. He even secretly hoped that he would play for the national football team Uganda Cranes one day. Now that was all gone.

Night fell quickly on Kisenyi. Smoke billowed in the sky. Police officers and sniffer dogs patrolled the neighbourhood, police cars were everywhere and after every few hundred metres there was a barricade. Somali men were marched into the darkness, handcuffed to each other followed by the police.

When they arrived in Uganda Khalid had been grateful even to live in a slum because it was peaceful. It was better than living in a place where there was always the fear that bombs would drop on them. But now the same bombs had followed him here. The cramped room he lived in was no longer worth it. Khalid felt his breast pocket. His fingers caressed the ID at first, then tightened the pressure around it. Now it felt just like a piece of plastic.

‘Stop,’ Khalid said to Achol. She braked and parked outside a shop with mud walls within a poorly lit neighbourhood. A soundtrack blared from the hut with the Luganda translation of a Latino soap.

Khalid then looked ahead where he saw more police. Then, he saw Sema. He was pinned against a wall speaking to a police officer. Khalid’s eyes locked with his friend’s through the window of the Achol’s Volkswagen Golf.

‘Don’t step out,’ Achol said.

The car engine began humming again.

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