The Outsider(S) (19 page)

“My name is Csilla,” she started in English but with a thick Eastern European accent that I couldn’t quite place. The name came out as “Chilla,” and before I could ask any questions, she proceeded to spell it.

“It means ‘star’ in Hungarian. You can just call me Star!”

I looked around, amused. The woman seemed likable enough and definitely made an effort to make her clients feel at ease. I wondered silently if she had picked up the habit here in Kenya or if they were outgoing back in Hungary.

“Have a seat,” she continued enthusiastically and disappeared to the back. The salon was luxuriously furnished. Everything in it was either reddish-purple or white, and I instantly felt at peace.

“Would you like to drink something?” a petite black woman asked me as soon as she had handed me a copy of
True
Love
magazine. She wore a navy blue frock that looked like some kind of uniform. She was very slender, and I wondered if it was because of not having enough to eat or if she just had model genes.

“Water,” I responded with a smile. After a few minutes, I was alone with the white woman.

“By the way, I own this place. I always make sure that I serve my clients personally.” She stated while picking up a big white towel from a rack. I smiled up at her.

“Don’t worry about the black people here. They only do the basics such as warm the water or clean up the floor. Everything else is done by me. I am very professional so I don’t let them touch my clients. This is a white person’s salon, white person for white people”. She said while searching my face for a reaction.

My instincts screamed
racist
! I considered myself a person who believed in equal rights, but strangely enough, I found comfort in Csilla’s speech. I looked her up and down to try and discern any discomfort but found none. Something about the confident way she said it all showed me that this speech was something she regularly held for her clients. I suspected that none of them had so far complained about it. I wasn’t going to be the first one.

“Do you like it here in Kenya?” I asked in an effort to make conversation. It didn’t make any sense to me that someone would choose to live in a country whose people she clearly detested.

“Like it?” she asked, and I couldn’t tell if it meant that my question was ridiculous or if she was glad that I asked it. “People here are primitive and with absolutely no sense of hygiene!” she said, throwing her hands in the air. I kept quiet.

“So you want it blond?” she asked while examining my hair.

“Yes,” I said and after a few seconds realized that she might dye my hair ash blond like hers.

“But not like your hair,” I stammered and realized too late that it came out all wrong.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I want it blond. Natural blond.”

“Natural blond, huh?” she asked, and I felt myself shrinking in my seat.

Ramona

Germany, 2010,
the brown paper bag

I am at the train station in Stuttgart. I actually love train stations. There is something about them that reminds one that life isn’t static. Everything changes. The trains come and go. So do the people. For some reason my memory goes back to Angelika, my fourth and last driving instructor. “There are two different kinds of people Ramona; passengers and drivers” she had said in her sympathetic voice after I failed my driving test. My eleventh driving test. The thought makes me smile. Time has a way of healing things. I watch Tankie and Lukas seated on the opposite bench. Ever since Magnus left, some kind of stillness has engulfed us. Lukas hardly talks but even Tankie isn’t his usual self. He still climbs onto things but not as often.

A black woman walks up to us. She is dressed in an ill fitting sky blue trouser and a faded old green jacket. She has short kinky hair and she looks tired and timid. She looks around searching for a place to sit. I smile up at her. She smiles back tentatively and sits down next to me. Well, on the farthest corner of the bench.

Tankie crosses over and jumps onto my lap. His eyes are fixed on the woman. I grab him and try to show him the big Western Union poster directly in front of us.

“
Meine
Damen
und
Herren
die
Regionalbahn
von
Mannheim
nach
Donzdorf
über
Stuttgart
ist
leider
verspätet.
Wir
bitten
um
Entschuldigung
!” I hear the announcement and watch as Lukas’ face creases in concentration.

“Mama what did they say?!” he asks worry spreading across his face. I smile at him.

“Our train is late!” Tankie jumps down slowly and before I know it he is standing next to the black woman. And touching her hand.

“Tankie!” I call out. He runs back to me. I smile at the woman, embarrassed. The woman looks up and smiles politely.

“How are you?” I ask in her direction. I pronounce every word slowly. I like talking to foreigners. Then I’m not too self conscious about my English. “gut”
58
she responds in German while fiddling with a brown paper bag that she is holding. She seems surprised that I’m talking to her.

“I’m sorry” I tell her pointing to Tankie. She smiles.

“Macht nichts!”
59
she says and almost sounds apologetic. I watch her from the corner of my eye. There is something so vulnerable about her. For a moment I’m overcome with strong emotions. I think of hugging her and telling that it is OK. Life is OK. But I don’t. What if she thinks that I’m crazy?

“You are nice” I say. She looks up vacantly and then I remember that
schön
in English can mean both nice and beautiful.

“You are beautiful” I tell her but she only smiles wryly.

A green haired Punk comes and sits next to Lukas who looks at me helplessly.

The black woman removes a colorful headscarf and busies herself tying it. First she ties it tightly and then loosely. I look around fascinated by the diversity. I wasn’t aware that there are so many ways of tying a headscarf.

A few moments later, I hear footsteps. A train has arrived and people are alighting and boarding. The black woman looks up at the announcement board and quickly jumps to her feet. She grabs her bag and runs off to the train platform. “Tschüs!”
60
we both say simultaneously.

And then I see the brown paper bag. I quickly grab it and follow her to the platform but as I reach, I see the train pulling out.

A lot of things flash through my mind. The first one is to take the next train and bring her the brown paper bag. But then it occurs to me that I wouldn’t know where to alight at.

I look inside the brown paper bag. It is a bunch of papers or documents that are neatly arranged and a small red purse. On the cover are the names
Maria
Kotoko
. I think of leaving it exactly where she forgot it at but I somehow can’t bring myself to do it. So I do the only other thing that seems logical. I approach the cops walking leisurely around the train station.

“You saw the person who forgot it?” The cop asks in a bored tone.

“It happened very fast!” I say defensively.

“That’s OK Madam. There is a name on it. I’m sure we will find her” he says finally. For a moment I stand there feeling proud of myself. Proud of the fact that I have helped a poor African woman get back her lost documents.

Philister
Taa

Germany, 2010, Coming Home

O
n that cold September evening, I went to Aldi as usual after coming back from work. The place was crowded with people trying to shop as much as possible, as Monday was going to be a holiday. Most of them had shopping carts full of things. I, on the other hand, carried the things I bought just like that. I didn’t need a cart because I passed by Aldi every day anyway. Every single day. I bought bits and pieces. Whenever I realized that I didn’t have salt, I went to Aldi. If I came back and realized that I didn’t have a matchbox, I walked back to Aldi. On a good day, I went to Aldi as often as ten times. It was like a home away from home.

The two men standing in front of the building that housed my apartment didn’t catch my attention at all. Neither did the green police van that had bars of metal just like the ones in prison.

I walked past them all the time thinking of the sauerkraut that I was carrying. I loved sauerkraut. Served with a white sausage and
ugali
, it was the most delicious food I had ever eaten. It was a pity that no one had yet thought of becoming rich and famous using this recipe. Maybe I should apply to take part in the TV show
Das
Perfekte
Dinner
and prepare it, I thought happily. I took the key and attempted to open the door. But it was already open. I made a mental note to let the caretaker know that the door downstairs was broken again. I was quite sure that the Somalis living in the right end corner had something to do with it.

“Philister Taa,” ‘a voice called out. I froze. The last time I heard that name was almost twenty years earlier. I turned around and realized the heavy police presence for the first time. Two of them walked towards me. The younger of the two spoke first. He had blond hair with streaks of white. “
Sind
Sie
Philister
Taa
?” he asked. There was urgency in the way he asked it. As if he couldn’t wait for the answer. I looked him up and down while contemplating what to say. My gaze met his partner’s gaze. We sized each other up. There was something very hardened and threatening about the way he looked at me. It was as if he were daring me to deny it.

“How did you… ?” I asked, shaking. At the beginning I had thought every single day about this day. After a while, I forgot. It was tiring to constantly think of an oncoming disaster.

“Come with us!” he said with finality.

“I need to take a sweater!” I said dryly, attempting to get into the house.

“Come with us right now!” the older cop reiterated. “You have a flight to Kenya in three hours. We can’t waste any time! Besides, you are a criminal. We don’t negotiate with criminals.”

The flight back to Nairobi was one of the most mortifying experiences of my life so far. I was ushered into the airplane by the two uniformed policemen. My hands were chained in some heavy metal. I wanted to protest that I wasn’t a criminal but lacked the energy. The stewardesses who met us at the entrance wore green-and-cream uniforms. I later learned that it was an Ethiopian Airlines flight.

“Good evening, madam,” she started in that polished way only known to airline crews.

Before I could respond, she saw the chains and the cops behind me. I saw her mouth widening in shock or surprise or whatever one one feels when faced with such an incident.

We passed her and walked slowly through the plane. An old man saw the chains on my hands and made the sign of the cross quickly before turning to look out the window. I realized that the rest of the passengers were not any different. As soon as they saw the chains, they looked out the window or pretended to search for something from their hand luggage. A small boy saw the cops and yelled excitedly in German. ‘
Polizei
!’

The younger cop looked at him and grinned. It was a grin loaded with pride. It occurred to me at that point that he enjoyed being a cop. Unlike many people, I included who never got to realize their dreams, he was living his dream.

We sat at the back of the airplane. I was sandwiched between the two cops. I was still holding the sauerkraut from Aldi awkwardly between my chained hands. I wondered what my friend Tamaa Matano would say when she saw me. The thought struck me both with pleasure and dread. I had let her down. I was not rich like I had promised her. I had not built a
gorofa
as I had hoped. I wasn’t only older but much poorer than when I had left. At that point it occurred to me that I had not informed anyone about my trip back to Kenya. It had taken at most two minutes for the cops to haul me into their van and drive me back to the airport. That was definitely not enough time to carry anything let alone to inform anyone. In the twenty years I had lived in Germany, I had never seriously thought of going back to Kenya. The reasons for that were legal as well as financial.

“Where do I go?” I asked abruptly. It was slowly dawning on me that I might not know anyone. What if Tamaa Matano was dead? From what I gathered, the life expectancy in Africa was pretty low. Some claimed that it was a miracle for an African to live up to forty years. I tried to remember Tamaa Matano’s age. She had to be exactly or just about as old as me, which was almost forty.

Both cops turned their heads to face me. It was as if I had asked the most ridiculous question that they had ever heard. Simultaneously, they responded:

“To prison!”

In normal circumstances I would have burst out laughing. Their response was so natural that one would have thought that going to prison was the nicest thing that could befall one.

“Prison?” I repeated the question nervously.

“Of course. You are a criminal and that is where criminals belong,” the younger cop started with a thick Bavarian accent.

“I am not a criminal!” I protested, my voice trembling.

“That is a case for the Kenyan courts. For the meantime, you will stay in prison,” the older cop stated.

“Kenyan prisons, I hear, are very…” the younger cop started before bursting out in laughter. He laughed so hard that his chest began heaving violently. I stared at him sullenly, feeling sorry for myself.

“Anyway, it would have been better for you if you went to a German prison,” he finished before wiping tears from his eyes. Tears of laughter.

The older cop looked at his colleague and then at me. I could see that he was torn between agreeing with his colleague and rebuking him. The rest of the flight was thankfully without any incident.