-> G21 FICTION
 BECOME A SPONSOR OF THE WORLD'S MAGAZINE.
WHY should you advertise here? We'll tell you.
VA LOAN INFORMATION and VETERANS' MORTGAGES Music Download Universe & Great Ebay Info KATRINA & THE LOST CITY OF NEW ORLEANS by Rod Amis New Orleans is the Lost City of America. Rod Amis, publisher of G21: The World's Magazine, once believed one of the best bartenders in New Orleans, tells the story like no one else could. A portion of the proceeds of this book will go to the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Fund. The cooks, servers and restaurant workers of New Orleans have provided fabulous times and memories for millions. Now we must remember them in their time of need.
Buy the book or get a downloadable PDF Copy now!
 AFRICA FRESH! New Voices from the First Continent
An anthology of African writing only featured on the Internet until now, this book features the collected works of writers for the G21 AFRICA section of G21.net. The eight writers represented here are from around the continent and present an exciting look at cutting-edge fiction and reporting from the first continent today. Buy the book or get a downloadable PDF copy now! |
To read this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, copy and paste the complete URL ("http://www.g21.net/fict5.html") and enter it in the box after you click through.
LONG KNIVES, DARK ROOM Ten Years of Truthspeak 1996-2006 G21 AFRICA X.N. IRAKI, United States G21 AFRICA MPHUTHUMI NTABENI, South Africa JOIN OUR MAILING LIST. It contains more jokes than not. G21 FICTION JOHN KARANGA KARIUKI, Kenya IRISH EYES MATTIE LENNON Ireland ON FILM BRAD BALFOUR, United States SMOKE & MIRRORS ROD AMIS, G21 World HQ TABLOID HART THOMAS HART, Austin, Tejas THE PREVIOUS EDITION MEET THE G-CREW! These are the people behind this jam-band every week. HOME TABLE OF CONTENTS & BACK ISSUES BECOME A SPONSOR OF THE WORLD'S MAGAZINE.
WHY should you advertise here? We'll tell you. Send Page To a Friend We know you're lazy. Here's a button for a quick translation of this page. Just click on the flag for your country. You're welcome! OR TRY THIS GOOGLE TRANSLATION SERVICE. |
G21 FICTION - A DJINN FOR BROTHER NGUCHU - JOHN KARANGA KARIUKI offers a story of subtle change for our FICTION section.
Ol Kalou, KENYA - Brother Nguchu was at the dining table with his family. After the meal they lingered for a family chat. It was not lost on everybody that Brother Nguchu had hardly touched his food. After dispensing with the usual nagging from Rachael, his wife, Brother Nguchu had the composure to weather the brickbats from his twin daughters Sabina and Sophia. His son, Joel, chose not to say anything today.
John Karanga Kariuki Brother Nguchu's fortunes with his publishing firm were waning as more people opted for video CDs instead of good books and magazines. There was also severe competition from the alternative press on turf where he had enjoyed relative calmness for ten years. The office rent was overdue by two months. His savings were wearing thin. At most the two girls and the boy would see the inside of the elitist Saint Gregory's Academy for another term. That very morning his bank had threatened to sue him over non-payment of credit card debt.
Brother Nguchu felt slightly dizzy and lighten-headed. His heart pounded and, for brief moments, his vision blurred into gray stripes. He was certain that his creditors would pounce on him form all angles once Ezra Traders came for their state-of-the-art printing press. It had been a miscalculation to install the equipment in the first place. Ezra Traders would start a chain reaction for his fall and fall. He toyed with the idea of a full disclosure about his bleak financial standing but realized this would create more problems. He thought, fleetingly, of the ultimate end of this misery: suicide.
"I have heard all of your complaints and I will be able to solve some of them", he said unconvincingly. It was all too familiar. The usual hearty laughter from the twins froze at some point. He was not yet through with his reply. "I am not sure what this means to us, but I have seen the woman I always talk about."
There was total silence.
"So Zainabu is real!" The twins finally shrieked. "Why didn't you invite her for lunch?"
Racheal edged in, her tone implying boredom with the topic. "But who said this is a real woman?"
Brother Nguchu cried out plaintively.
"C'mon dad! Can djinns torment upright religious people?" Joel asked.
"That's what bothers me, son! Why this creature chose me, I don't know!"
A mighty headache throbbed in Brother Nguchu's left half of his head. An urgent and cross expression came to his eyes. He looked vulnerable and anxious. With a rising alarm, Rachael peered into her husband's eyes. Brother Nguchu slumped in his chair, as if resigning to fate. While there had been many renditions of Brother Nguchu's experience with this woman-like creature, Rachael could see that today's declaration carried the ominousness that it could all be true.
Brother Nguchu's mind was back at Oceanic View School in Mombassa. It was his first weekend at the place where he had come for A level studies and some boys had come seeking him, claiming that a visitor had come to see him. Brother Nguchu took this as a prank. He had no friends or relatives at the coast.
At the boys' incessant insistence, he braved for what come may and went out. A lithe, beautiful Swahili girl was waiting for him at the gate! She was of a brown complexion. She had big eyes and that irresistible, mysterious smile which had been haunting him for thirty years.
He had frozen in flight as the girl extended her hand and admonished him for a missing button, just like any big sister. "Do you always dress this way?"
Disregarding the dense myths about the coast, Brother Nguchu talked with the girl. She was Miriam, a daughter of a shipping magnate. He laughed and joked with her, largely so as not to betray his fear to the boys who ha stood nearby to watch the extraordinary spectacle. Miriam left, but not before giving Brother Nguchu a packet of goodies and promising to come back soon.
"You are a good liar! She was not a djinn!" The boys harangued him. "Nobody talks with a djinn and lives to tell the tale."
They tore open the packet of goodies. They promptly did a short job of the biscuits, bananas and cakes. Brother Nguchu became an instant celebrity in the school.
Miriam visited again on the following three weekends. Brother Nguchu went through the same ordeal. Despite his pleas that he did not know his girlfriend, nobody took him seriously. Not even the school authorities. "It's possible that someone could have read your name on the notice board", the headmaster thought aloud. "But in the meantime keep me out of your affair with this woman, young man!"
Thirty years later, even his family would take his story with a large pinch of salt. In the many versions of Miriam's visits, Brother Nguchu often took a lot of liberty with the details. In some cases he painted Miriam as desperate and older than he was. In other accounts he overlooked his own fears and cast himself as the last chivalrous young man who was out to show a whole school the civilized steps in dating a dainty damsel.
However, in all narratives, Miriam's face retained its beautiful, brown complexion. Her eyes remained big and mysterious.
"Take a glass of water, please!" Rachael said, cutting short his reminiscence. He gazed at the people around him vacantly. Several emotions passed through his face. There was pain, helplessness and fear.
Miriam had become so familiar in the twins' imaginations that they had named her Zainabu because of her similarity with a woman called so in the neighbourhood.
While at the Oceanic View School, a white classmate invited Brother Nguchu to his home at Buxton estate, Mombassa. A party was under way to celebrate this chap's father's birthday. In the haze of the festivities, Miriam materialized. She held Brother Nguchu to a waltz, but he extricated himself and ran out. Miriam chased him. The tempo of the celebration slackened for a minute. Then everybody cheered and the hired band resumed its music.
Brother Nguchu took off to the north of Mombassa along Malindi road with Miriam in hot pursuit. With a heavy head and wobbly legs, he saw a turn-off ahead that lead into a wooded area. He took the turn-off. The last thing he remembered seeing were many tombstones with indecipherable epitaphs.
He woke up the following morning in his bed in school! He left the coast the following day. Though his parents found his story plausible in many respects, they did not probe too much for details. They found him a place in school in Thika, central Kenya where he finished his studies.
"Did she smile?" Rachael asked, as an afterthought.
"Yes she did! It was the smile of a devil himself!" Brother Nguchu spat out.
Rachael looked at him intensely. "You are not talking of Miriam fondly today!" She said conversationally.
A knock came at the door; everybody turned to stare at the door.
A second more determined knock came.
The twins embraced each other and began sobbing.
Joel laughed.
"Shut up!" Rachael screamed.
Brother Nguchu cast his face downwards, dejectedly.
Rachael dragged herself across the room. A gut feeling warned her of disaster. She opened the door only to be met by a beautiful Swahili girl with a brown complexion and big eyes. "I presume this is Raphael Nguchu's house!" the girl said.
The twins screamed.
Brother Nguchu saw her once and made a sign of the cross. He set off across the room. Halfway to the door he uttered a half moan and half scream. He collapsed onto the floor and passed out. The family wailed and screamed. They fussed around him. But he would not come back to consciousness.
A thin sliver of saliva drooled from the edge of his mouth. His left hand and leg jutted out lifelessly. His skin was hot and clammy.
A lay preacher, Rosemary, came and entreated everybody to remain silent for prayers. But Laban, a mechanic, thought that a pail of cold water could revive the man. Mildred, a nutritionist, fetched a vial of smelling salts. In the ensuring confusion of first aid, the brown girl slipped away with the envelope containing a copy of the repossession order from Ezra Traders.
Brother Nguchu responded well to treatment for his mild stroke. He appeared even happy to be in hospital. His family sold off his car and household goods and was barely able to survive. Rosemary, the lay preacher, worked miracles by holding off creditors besides offering Rachael spiritual support.
The messenger girl was arrested, following the twins' description, but was released for lack of evidence that she was a djinn. But the police circulated Miriam's portrait, again drawn from the twins' description and Zainabu was nabbed. At the twins' statement that she only resembled the real djinn, Zainabu was released. When he could talk, Brother Nguchu was not of any help.
Meanwhile Rachael decided to bust Mariam's identity once and for all. She started at her husband's rural home. She cross-checked Brother Nguchu's story with his mother. "God bless us all!" Brother Nguchu's mother wailed. She intimated a new name, Josephine.
"You should know that this is the girl my son would have married if you hadn't appeared on the scene! Josephine was always caring and would most likely be at my son's hospital bedside now instead of chasing djinns!" Her mother!=in-law said self-righteously.
Rachael returned to Nairobi heartbroken. She asked questions around and enlisted her friends' help on a 24 hours a day search for Miriam. "She must be a blood and flesh woman!" Rosemary always insisted.
"Perhaps we are dealing with two djins", hazarded the ever thoughtful Winnie. "An earlier one in his school days and the current one that we must find."
Then her close knot of friends would chorus: "We must find this djinn!"
When he came out of hospital, Brother Nguchu rebounded back in what financial experts called a corporate miracle. His firm now specialized in religious publications and posted a profit within six months. He met most of his financial obligations and life came back to normal. Almost.
At the dinner table one afternoon, Brother Nguchu declared he was taking a break. "I am taking a holiday to Mauritius strictly on my doctor's orders."
Rachael looked up, startled. But her composure quickly changed back to amiableness. "Of course you need the sun and the wind to be fully re-invigorated" she said.
The twins made a racket on why they should be taken along. But their mother prevailed on them. "Your father is on the doctor's orders."
On the day of the flight, the family escorted Brother Nguchu to the airport. In the customs bay, Brother Nguchu tapped one foot idly on the ground. Rachaelknew he was excited. She looked around at the sea of faces, alarmed. One woman looked vaguely familiar, but she was swaddled up in a Muslim robe and veil. Her perfume was sharp and subtly musky.
Brother Nguchu? bade his family goodbye and disappeared into the departure lounge.
But Rachaelwas sure that out of all the women milling around, the djinn would board the flight with him. She just felt it.
As she drove the children home, Rachael missed a bend and plunged the car into a maize field. A cop on the beat came to see if all was well. "Do you realize that you have been driving rather too fast?" the policeman asked sourly.
He shone a torch at Rachael's face and smiled. "Mama, hata kama umefukuzwa na bwana usiuwe watoto!"(Woman, even if you have been shown the door by your hubby, please don't kill the children).
But Rachael heard none of it. Her mind was on Rosemary whose perfumes had a sharp and subtly musky scent. She thought she was going nuts as the reconditioned Mitsubishi Pajero hit the rear of a horse transporter. As rescuers pulled her last out of the wreckage, Rachael saw the face of Miriam smiling down at her for a split second. It was as Brother Nguchu and the twins had always described it!
JOHN K. KARIUKI says of himself: "I am a 39 years old science teacher at Nyandarua high school in Ol Kalou, Nyandarua district of central Kenya. I write as a hobby and make frequent contributions to the East African Standard's education magazine which is published every Wednesday under the by line john k. kariuki. I also run a social commentary in The Leader a weekly English language paper owned by Royal Media Services who are proprietors of 9 radios that broadcast in some of Kenya's indigenous languages. This column is called vile naifeel (the way I feel it) and I use the by line Johnny k.
"I ran a humour column in the Home News, a small weekly rural paper based in Nyahururu with a circulation of 1000. I am published with one novel, MYSTERY OF THE RED MOUNTAIN, a secondary readers title that is published by phoenix publishers, Nairobi, 2005 ISBN 9966-47-102-2. In this book I have used the by line john k. kariuki."
© 2006, GENERATOR 21.
E-mail your comments. We always like to hear from you. Send your snide remarks to rod@g21.net.