“Won’t you help me get the suitcase into the house, Mike?” Fatma Nunez Mahmoud said, as she started to drag her huge suitcase into the house.
“What happened to gentlemen these days, uh?”
As she made herself at home by going straight to the kitchen to cook dinner, my mind was racing frantically.
How dare this married woman run away from her rich abusive husband, and presume to immediately be my live-in partner?
“Where are your friends, Fatma?”
“You are my only friend, Mike.”
“But what about your siblings?” I asked. “Shouldn’t they be hosting you until you work things out with Mr Mahmoud?”
“No brothers, we are just three girls, na wako Isiolo, Garissa na Wajir, all married.”
Fatma popped up at the doorway, a very sharp kitchen knife in her right hand.
“You want to throw me out, Mike, even as you see how my eyes are sooo black?”
I gulped, looking at that knife, and rapidly shook my head.
“Goood,” Fatma nodded slowly. “Happy we understand one another, Michael.”
Her cooking was actually great, very tasty, spicy pilau, the like I hadn’t eaten for ages in my ‘kibanda takeaway’ existence and I couldn’t help but compliment her.
“Wait until you taste my other food,” Fatma said with unmistakable lewdness.
I quickly went to my bedroom, got the spare duvet and a pillow, and came to the living room couch to sleep there for the night…
“It’s too soon for me,” I said. “Let’s give it a few days?”
“Yes,” Nunez agreed. “I’m on my Ps, anywayz .”
Fatma took my room, and I took the couch, and was awoken at dawn by both the muezzin’s call to prayer, and a prayer delivered straight into my phone.
“Habari yako Bwana Safara? Naskia bibi wangu Fatma yu nyumbani kwako. Let her go . Tell her to come home!! Ama utapatikana Eastleigh na mambo yako itakuwa imeenda mrama, tunaelewana kaka?”
My hands were shaking after I read the text, not to mention my left big toe and swollen foot (was I also getting gout at just 40?) but I did have a hustler’s plan.
After breakfast of scrambled eggs, white bread, hot white coffee – I could get used to it, which was my worry – I appealed to Fatma Nunez Mahmoud’s vanity.
“You’re such a pretty woman,” I said. “Let me treat you to a full salon treatment.”
Eagerly, Fatma accompanied me to the nearby mall where I told salonist Julianna Nywelele (she was actually ‘Nyerere,’ a Tanzanian, but when you work in a salon with such a name …) to lay it on thick.
“Hair, facial, nails, kila kitu for the mrembo ,” I said, before leaving Fatma Mahmoud in the hands of Madam Nywelele, and hurrying back to the apartment.
Once there, I quickly put Fatma’s clothes and other items back in her suitcase – although I had to sit on it to get it to close.
Then I lugged it down the staircase, five floors down, to the very chilled Chebet, the daytime security guard at our block, and told her.
“Kuna mwanamke na hijab atakuja. Don’t let her up. Mwambie nime hama, sawa?”
Chebet didn’t even blink, or change her expression. She just said, Ok.
Next, I fled to an Airbnb in the neighbouring hood and paid 4K for two nights. I didn’t want Mr Mahmoud’s men kidnapping me from my own house.
Then I called my friend Noni Mbuguas in Malindi, and gave her the man’s number.
“Please tell Mr Mahmoud his wife is at Madam Nyerere’s salon at the mall, Nons,” I said to the barely believing Ms Mbuguas. “And that I don’t want any trouble.”
Having played the part of Iscariot delivering Jesus to the Jews, I settled down at the Airbnb to watch a Netflix series, but I could hardly concentrate.
I was now down to Sh55,000, enough for my needs for the month of November.
But the holidays were here, and I hadn’t seen Neo for months. So I called Lora.
She didn’t pick up, but instead sent a rude message. “Do you have 50K for his upkeep in November? If not, keep off. Or like Riggy G, you can go to court. Bye!”
I must have drifted off because when I awoke, it was to the ringing of the phone – and it would not stop ringing, throbbing there on the Airbnb couch like a rattlesnake. And I wouldn’t pick the strange number, as I knew it must be one of Mahmoud’s men. Had Noni not delivered my message? Should I call the police, tell them my life was under threat, and show them the text?
As I picked up my phone to do this, I saw the SMS. “Am a police officer, Mbui Mawangi. please call me agently, mr. Safari.”
My throat went dry, the way the heart just knows when things are about to go south: “Should I know her?”
“Did she sleep at your house last night, Bwana Safara?” this Mbui asked, and I could tell she already had a statement from Chebet.
“She stayed over. O-o-overnight,” I stammered. “Her husband had abused her. She needed somewhere to stay…”
“That’s odd!” Police officer Mbui sounded skeptical. “Because she said you groped her this morning. And when she resisted, you hit her twice, giving her black eyes.”
“She told you that?” I said, incredulous.
“She did,” Mbui said. “In the company of her husband. Come down to the station I take down your statement, Mr Safara. This is a very serious double offense.”
