Chapter V (Family)

It is raining in downtown Kampala, the wind tugs at my necktie and the rain drips onto my spectacles. I wait until it is finished playing then I realign the tie. I wipe the water off my glasses then look out and see, huddled under a bus stop across the street, four people.

There is a man with a large belly who is not fat because his height and the size of his head take numbers commensurate with the protrusion of his stomach. Because of this those who see him deem him big, rather than fat. He is looking left and right, up the road into the traffic, planning and plotting, looking for a way to get his family out of the rain.

The woman next to him is slender, and smartly dressed in a yellow business suit. She has glasses too. They are dry.

Her hair is held up in a bun, and her cheekbones are high. She has the kind of face that in its youth inspired words like Hot Babe, but now has a gravity and elegance to it that makes its admirers chose the more respectful word Attractive. I know that her voice will be deep and strong, and carry a flutter of tenderness on the edges, a tenderness which only comes out to fullness when she speaks to her big husband. No one else ever hears it, not even her children, who she loves with a stern love. The hands she uses to shepherd them close to her will spank sharply if they have to, but only to protect, as they stupidly try to protect the children now. They are all sheltered, and further incursions into her skirts will not make the children any more unwet or uncold. But she gathers them around her nevertheless. She is not thinking, she is just letting herself mother.
 

The boy is the younger. Spoilt. Mischievous. Mad at his sister for something, and finding it hard to wait until they get home where their parents will not be standing above them, where they will separate to go to garden, den and kitchen and will not be there to save her from his retribution. They are in school uniform.

The girl catches the rapid flash of her brother’s tongue, a sudden jet of red, and considers telling her father, but then he looks preoccupied, peering up and down the road, and she judges that this will not be a good time. She will wait. She is older, hence wiser, aware that battles are won by the patient, not the impetuous. She knows he has something up his sleeve, that he is burning to lurch out at her. But his hot head will do him in.

It is a happy family. One that works.
        
A blue-black Pajero squeezes out of the traffic and parks right in front of them. I see through the Pajero windows that its box is filling up with the two kids first, then the woman. Then the man’s head appears besides the driver’s in the front seat, and the car drives off.

        
I will take you. I will be with you forever, for all eternity.
Take me, for all eternity.
With this ring I do thee wed.

That was an eternity ago. Now it is a fist flashing before her eyes, and the next thing she knows she is flat on the floor with dizzying question spinning in her head: Which hurts more, the back of her head where she struck the wall, or her jaw, where she was struck? She gulps, trying not to scream. She does not want to worry the kids. Of course they are awake. If the bellowing didn’t wake them, if, as sounds do, it incorporated itself into their dreams and they saw dinosaurs and bears filling the fields of their sleep, the crash of her falling against the wall would surely have roused them. Tomorrow she will say Daddy and I were chasing a rat.

Maybe they are not a happy family. What do I know? I was just a man across the road staring at them through the rain.
       
But I have to know. I have to find out for sure. I will pay them a visit at their home. I am the nomad and I am the witness. I am the no one and nothing, so I am anyone and anything.
       
“Have a seat, young man. Can I get you something to drink?” she asks. Her voice is deep and strong. She speaks her words measuredly, but not slowly.

I ask for tea. Her husband guffaws and says, “Tea at this time? Come on, don’t be shy, Alan. Have a beer!” I have made myself a distant relative named Alan…