There was not a shop left open on all of Haile Selassie Avenue. Those that had not been looted and burned-out were shuttered. In the expensive shops, that sold watches and jewellery and other negotiables, the steel security curtains had been smashed in by ram raiders. The front end of a Suzuki 4x4 projected from the front of Sharma and Sons, Discount Jewellers. Traders had set up pitches on the sidewalks: a trestle table spread with CDs and discplayers; a plastic fertilizer sack split and opened on the ground on which bottles of Volvic mineral water were piled in little ziggurats. A man with a rifle at his side sold car batteries from the porch of the Christian Publishing Office. In the back row of seats the children were crying. Mrs Tembo held them in her arms.
‘Hush now, babies,’ she said. ‘Don’t cry, don’t cry.’
Gaby’s identity card and DF108 were inspected at five different checkpoints on the approach to East Africa Military Command. The soldiers turned out all the passengers to take up the seats to make sure they were not carrying explosives before they would open the barrier to the visitors car park. Gaby left Faraway as a deterrent to thieves and marched Tembo, Mrs Tembo, Sarah, Etambele and After-the-Rains into the reception area and demanded to see someone with the authority to issue an exit visa to Sky Net’s most valuable news gatherer and his family. After forty minutes, an adjutant was sufficiently under-busy to come and tell the civilians that they were in the wrong section of East Africa Military Command. This was East Africa Military Strategic Command. They needed East Africa Military Logistics Command, which had taken over the Church Army Training Centre on Jogoo Road.
Landhries Road had been sealed off with a barricade of wrecked cars where a doodlebug had come down on the Country Bus Station. Detour signs hand-painted on the rusted doors directed traffic along Pumwani Road. The slums had grown bigger in four and a half years; down to and over the Nairobi River. Slums never grow any smaller. They are bad when they are lived in, but worse in decay. Many of the shanties had collapsed or slumped into the river, which was a swamp of plastic, scrap metal, wood and dead things.
There was a road block up at the top of Kericho Road. Two Nissan pick-ups with anti-aircraft guns bolted into the truck bodies – picknis, as they were known on the streets – were parked nose to nose, restricting the traffic to a single line past men carrying automatic weapons. Incongruously, they were dressed in red and purple Chaga-combats under football managers’ coats. The cartel banners drooping from the pickni’s whip aerials sported the black-and-white fuller sphere of a football on a green field. Football, buckyball, Gaby thought. She knew them: the Soca Boys, one of the smaller Tactical cartels that had remained fiercely non-aligned while the others forged alliances and brokered power blocs. A show of strength; a message to the Premier Division managers that the Soca Boys could be valuable players to have on-side when the final play-offs came.
The Tacticals waved through a pick-up hidden under a pile of firewood. Gaby fished out a couple of Krugerrands. The Land-cruiser crawled closer. A smoke-belching municipal bus went through the checkpoint. Gaby had not thought they were still running.
‘Hide your guns,’ Gaby hissed. ‘You in the back, look scared.’
‘That is not difficult,’ Mrs Tembo said.
A Soca Boy in a Grampus 11 coat came to the open window.
‘Hello, m’zungu,’ he said. ‘That is a mighty colourful car you are driving. Would you like to put my face on television, news lady?’
The helicopter came in from nowhere across the shanties, hard and fast: a big Hokum gunship with UN painted on the side. At the sight of it, the Soca Boys ran for their vehicles. The helicopter turned in the air. The picknis drove off at speed. The helicopter tried to follow them through the warren of cinder-block project housing. Minutes later, Gaby passed a convoy of UN armoured vehicles coming at speed up Leman Road. In two days they would be gone from this city, but for those two days they still ruled the street and they admitted no challengers.
‘Isn’t that where you led the choir?’ Gaby asked as they passed a big red brick church with a red tin roof.
‘St Stephen’s, yes,’ Tembo said. ‘But no one is singing there any more.’
The United Nations East Africa Military Logistics Command Headquarters, formerly the Church Army training centre, was directly opposite St Stephen’s Church. Once again, identifications and authorizations were inspected, and Gaby marched the family into the reception area and refused to move them until she saw whoever was in charge of exit visas. She only had to wait thirty-five minutes this time for an aide to talk to her, Tembo and Faraway. They waited another thirty-five while the aide referred the application to his superior, and another thirty-five while the superior checked with the people down in reception and decided if he could talk to these civilians. Tembo’s wife and children sat on plastic chairs under the window of the temporary building that was the reception area and ate vending machine sandwiches and chocolate. Faraway looked out the window, drinking coffee. He is one of those men, Gaby thought, who unconsciously relax into postures that look good to women.
The superior said that he could not vet an application for an emergency visa on Gaby’s authority alone. Faraway negotiated in his capacity as Deputy Station Manager. The officer was still not convinced. Faraway called T.P. on his cellphone and gave it to the officer. Gaby looked out of the window at the soldiers sitting by the side of Jogoo Road. She saw a man in Islamic dress come up the road pushing something that looked like a dog kennel on wheels. Gaby remembered this man, this machine. There would be a veiled woman hidden inside, with only her eyes catching the light. Some of the soldiers offered the man money. He refused to accept any of it. Gaby watched him pass up the road. He is part of the Kenya that was, she thought, that I loved but cannot find any more, for it has turned alien and ugly, like a rotting slum, or a woman hidden in a wooden hutch.
Faraway had his PDU on the desk. Hardcopy documents were squeezing forth. The officer took them across the compound, past the chapel to the accommodation block where the work was done. Tembo looked from Faraway to his wife to his children. Some of the military who came and went through the reception area squatted down to talk to Tembo’s beautiful daughters.
The robed man with the wooden hutch on wheels was coming down Jogoo Road again. Gaby watched him pass again the soldiers sunning themselves. They did not offer him any money this time.
The officer was coming back across the compound now. He looked out of breath. His white face was red. He seated himself behind the counter and put two forms in front of Faraway for him to sign.
Gaby saw all the things that happened next as separate, discrete edits of experience.
She saw the beggar man in Arab dress come running up the road as fast he could. He did not have the trolley with him.
She saw the soldiers at the side of the road get to their feet as he ran past.
She saw Faraway turn from the reception desk with his biggest smile and a piece of paper in either hand.
She saw the white light, and the fireball inside the white light.
She heard the explosion. She heard it like it had blown into every cell of her body and shaken its death-noise out of them.
She saw the window of the reception cabin fly inward in a million stinging insects of glass. She saw Tembo throw wife and children down as the glass passed over their heads. She saw Faraway dive for the floor, tuck himself into a ball, arms wrapped over head. She saw the reception staff take cover behind their desks and counter as the glass rained down on them.