And Then Life Happens (16 page)

“I'll still arrive on time even if I wait until after the performances,” I explained. “There's nothing I can do to change the situation anyway, and I wouldn't want to fly home early either.” But with these last words, I almost lost my self-control. The thought of being among my many grieving relatives, as they mourned the death of the man who was truly the last and most generous of all the chosen ones in the extended Obama family, was crushing.

Another voice from the group spoke up. “But you don't have to dance, Auma. Really!”

“You're not doing me any favors by saying that,” I protested. “Now, of all times, I need to.”

I tried to smile. But everyone only stared at me worriedly. They wanted to comfort me, but didn't know how.

“Come on, people—get up! Let's dance.”

I gave Jai a grateful look. She had grasped that what I needed now more than anything else was distraction. She went to the cassette recorder, pressed play, and when the music came on, I stood up with relief. All I wanted to do was dance. Forget everything and dance, dance, as if my life depended on it.

*   *   *

I no longer remember clearly the details of my journey to my father's funeral. I remember only that the tears I had so successfully suppressed after the first shock eventually began to flow and did not stop until I was in Kenya.

Someone—I no longer recall who—must have picked me up from the airport in Nairobi. The next thing I see in my mind's eye is myself getting out of the car in the Upper Hill neighborhood of Nairobi in front of the small row house in which my father had lived in the end and entering a room full of people. The whole house was filled with relatives, but I couldn't really make anyone out through the blur of my tears. From that moment on, there is a gaping hole in my memory, extending to the point when my father was to be buried in Alego next to his father.

There I see myself standing at the coffin, and I remember looking at my father's face through a small glass window at the head of the raised coffin. His skin seemed lifeless, very black, but at the same time it was as if there were a sort of gray film over it. Although I recognized my father's features, I knew that he was no longer lying there. He was already gone and no longer among us. For a long time, I remained at the coffin as if in a dream, until someone gently nudged me aside. Others wanted to say good-bye to him, too.

What would my father, who placed so much value on quality and a good appearance, have said about the fact that he would be buried in such an ugly wooden box? I simply could not grasp why he had to die so young. He had been only forty-three years old. I couldn't get it through my head that a car accident had been enough to end his life, especially as he had barely any external injuries. But I shied away from looking into his death in more detail.

*   *   *

When I realized that I had suffered amnesia in the days before my father's funeral, I told myself that I had clearly not been able to cope emotionally with this sudden loss any more than with thoughts about how he had died. Only many years later did I ask my Aunt Marsat, my father's second-youngest sister, what had happened back then. For I had heard during a casual conversation with family members that there had apparently been unanswered questions about the circumstances that had led to my father's death. Indignantly, I asked my aunt why no one had gotten to the bottom of the matter at the time.

“None of us had the necessary money or connections to make inquiries. All of us felt powerless. That's why we didn't do anything, as much as it pained us,” my Aunt Marsat explained to me.

At her words, I was beset by a horrible sense of powerlessness. But whom could I blame? At the time of his death, I had already been living far from Kenya and the family for over two years, and had for a long time had nothing to do with my father's life and had made no effort to get to know his friends. I wouldn't have known how to use his influential acquaintances to get help clearing up his car accident.

And what would have been the point? My father was dead. Inquiries would not have brought him back to life. Instead, the struggle for the truth about his senseless death only would have caused me more pain, more hardship. But now I wanted to learn every detail, especially about his funeral. Because I had practically no memory of that event, I had Aunt Marsat tell me everything.

*   *   *

Osumba, as we called Aunt Marsat at the time, had lived with my father until his fatal accident. After the divorce from Ruth, he had not married again and lived alone until he asked Aunt Marsat, who is only a year younger than I, to move in with him. Abongo had moved out long ago and was studying in Nairobi.

My father liked being with Osumba. She is a small, gentle person with a kind face, and her calm temperament was well suited to his taciturn, introverted nature. Her presence certainly helped him not to feel so lonely.

“Shortly before your father died, he had flown to Libya as the leading economist with representatives of the government to a delegation meeting of the OAU, the Organization of African Unity. There, he suffered from eye problems, was examined by a doctor, and returned to Nairobi sooner than planned to get further treatment here. Even though he was on sick leave, he went to the ministry every day for a few hours.”

Typical,
I thought, as I listened to my aunt with rapt attention.

“At that time he was assigned to participate in a meeting with the president of the World Bank,” she went on. “This took place in the Norfolk Hotel, here in Nairobi.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked her.

“Because your father told me. He always told me where he was and what he was doing.”

She said that so matter-of-factly that I had to believe her.
Strange,
I thought. I did not remember my father as someone who confided in others about his affairs. Suddenly, I saw my aunt with completely different eyes, and I have to admit that I was a little bit jealous.

“He never returned from that meeting,” my aunt went on with unmistakable anger in her voice. “At the time, he was already with Jael, and little George was not yet a year old.”

Jael had been romantically involved with my father at the time. She moved in with him when Aunt Marsat was living with him. Shortly before he died, Jael bore him a son: George.

I nodded. I wanted her to go on talking about my father.

“As it got later and later and he didn't show up, Jael and I began to worry. We tried to persuade ourselves that he had gone out after the meeting. But the next day he still wasn't there.” My aunt rubbed her eyes, and for a second I thought she was going to start crying.

“We waited all day, but heard nothing from him. The next morning we decided to inquire at his office in the ministry.”

*   *   *

That day, as Aunt Marsat and Jael made fruitless inquiries at my father's office, the transferred corpse of a student who had died in a gas explosion in India arrived in Nairobi. Like my father, the dead woman was a member of the Luo people. After her family had picked her up at the airport and brought her to the city mortuary, they discovered there the body of my father, who was well known among the Luo.

“They did not believe their eyes, and so they inquired at his ministry about him. But just like us, they didn't find him there. So they called Odima. He then got in touch with his friend Okech. Both of them went to your father's house to ask after him.”

Only Jael was in the row house in Upper Hill, for she herself, my aunt went on, had gone to ask her older sister Zeituni for advice. Jael could tell the two visitors only that she had not yet heard from my father. Then Odima and Okech went to my aunt Zeituni.

“I did not believe my ears,” Aunt Marsat continued. “What the two of them told me about your father's body put me in a complete state of shock. Confused, I left the house. The servants obviously noticed how disoriented I was, because they followed me. They stopped the bus for me, and I got on and sat thunderstruck in my seat.”

Only during the bus ride did Aunt Marsat gradually realize what had happened. She headed to my brother's home, and by the time she arrived there, she had pulled herself together enough to speak with Emmy, Abongo's girlfriend at the time. My brother was not at home. Aunt Marsat delivered the news of my father's death to Emmy and sent her to look for Abongo. Then she headed back to Upper Hill, where she found her sisters Zeituni and Nyaoke, the oldest of the family, who had met there in the meantime.

A few hours later Abongo appeared, too, and shortly thereafter my mother and Aunty Jane. More and more people gathered in the house, and the weeping, regarded by the Luo as the highest sign of respect toward the dead, drowned out all other sounds.

*   *   *

“You know, Auma,” my aunt said, “when your father was found at the scene of the accident, he still had his expensive watch, worth several thousand Kenyan shillings, and all his papers on him. He was even wearing his glasses.”

She took a deep breath, as if she wanted to give herself and me time to digest what she had just said.

“The car he was driving was labeled as a ministry car. But someone must have taken him out of the car and brought him to the mortuary without informing the family.” She sighed deeply. “His body lay there for two days before it was identified.”

I swallowed hard. My chest tightened painfully and I could barely hold back my tears. My heart was as heavy as lead, and I felt completely helpless. At that moment I wished that I had been more outgoing a few years earlier and had not avoided associating with the great and powerful in Nairobi. Then I would have known to whom I could turn now to find out what or who was behind my father's death.

“Not until the family of the student from India had raised an alarm was your father's body identified by Odima, Okech, Zeituni, and Nyaoke. Then, on the third day, Abongo went to the mortuary, too.”

“Then what happened?” I asked. I couldn't bear the silence that had followed Aunt Marsat's words.

“When the police later began their purely routine investigations, we found out that a Nissan from Kenya Airways, in which employees are brought home from the airport, had passed the scene of the accident. The accident had happened in Upper Hill, on Elgon Road. The passengers in the vehicle saw your father's car. The driver braked, but didn't stop, because there were already people at the scene of the accident. But one of the passengers notified the police.”

“But they obviously didn't respond immediately,” I remarked bitterly.

My aunt shrugged. “I don't know. I only know that the car wasn't there anymore the next morning.”

The working hours of the Kenya Airways employees indicated that the Nissan had passed the scene of the accident around eleven o'clock at night.

“I can show you the exact spot on Elgon Road, if you want. Besides a small tree, there is nothing there far and wide that could have caused an accident. We were told that your father drove into this small tree and the steering wheel crushed his chest with the impact.”

“But he didn't have any injuries. I saw him at the funeral,” I said despondently.

“Exactly! We said the same thing to ourselves. Apart from a small scratch on his forehead, there was no visible sign. And even more interesting is the fact that the accident happened practically in front of the residence of a minister. The question is what the military guards were doing who normally stand there.”

The sarcasm in the voice of my usually so sweet-tempered aunt could not be missed.

“Something isn't right there, Auma,” she concluded and left it to me to digest those weighty words.

“Why didn't you do anything to find out the truth?” Again I asked this question, this time reproachfully.

“I told you that we all had the feeling that something was amiss. But what could we do? According to the autopsy report, your father died of internal injuries. The case was not investigated further, but was shelved.” In those days, it was difficult to pursue anything. Under Daniel arap Moi, corruption reigned everywhere. It would have been impossible to persuade potential witnesses to testify in court along the lines of our way of thinking. Everyone was too afraid.

Indeed, the political situation in Kenya in those days was anything but pleasant. Moi ruled with an iron fist. He stood at the head of a one-party system, and all important government posts were occupied by people who were loyally devoted to him. Oppositional figures disappeared. Many rumors of torture and even deaths were circulating. And the corruption had reached a scale that far surpassed all that had preceded it.

Shortly before my father's death, Moi had dismissed the then-governor of the Central Bank of Kenya. My aunt now informed me that my father told her that he had been slated to be the successor, because he was the leading economist responsible for the national budget (he had specialized in econometrics, which not many people had mastered at that time). But he died before he could take up the post. Without being able to point a finger at anyone in particular, Aunt Marsat seemed convinced that his death had something to do with that.

“Your father was too well known to be brought silently from the street to the mortuary like an anonymous accident victim—especially since he had his papers on him!”

I was speechless. For a long time, we just sat there without saying a word, each of us preoccupied with her own thoughts.

*   *   *

“Do you know that you actually refused to accept your father's death back then?” Aunt Marsat asked when we resumed the conversation a few days later.

“How so? I had no choice but to accept it. He was dead.”

“Of course, I know. But you withdrew into yourself and blocked out everything going on around you.”

“What do you mean?”

I had actually decided not to discuss my father's death anymore. Our last conversation about him had been very painful, and I didn't want to suffer even more than I was suffering already. But I had opened Pandora's box, and now there was no going back. I could also sense clearly that my aunt wanted to talk about my father. And so she just started speaking.