Just A Birthday Note

Kwach Abonyo

When my phone rang that morning, I knew it was John on the line, but I couldn't bring myself to answer. I just wasn't in the mood for a chat. I got up and staggered my way through the chaotic room to grasp the reality of that day. From the fourth-floor window of what is still known to me as my ‘pleasure habitat’ the morning sunlight gushed in its sepia, natural hue, and with it came occasional snaps of howling wind – its inclemency seeping through my skin.

I love sunshine but I hate colds, thus to avoid snots running down my nose – which has actually been my case with the colds – I shut the window and let my eyes roam over the outside landscape.

From this relatively high point, the sight below does not seem pretty enough, but one can still draw all sorts of poetic images. About fifty yards from my residence lies a rickety tin-walled neighbourhood barely the size of a football pitch. It is a cluster of shacks dubbed 

 – a ramshackle structure made from rusted, corrugated iron sheets. They stand hither and yon, almost without any clear pattern, that if by chance you stand atop our flats – four floors from my ‘pleasure habitat’ – and give the vista a proper, bird’s-eye view, you would easily mistake the neighbourhood for hulks of abandoned trains lying haphazardly around an old interchange. You would also see Kibarage River slithering through the undulated farmlands of Kangemi down to Parklands, despite its putrid, oily colour from years of pollution.

And if you were to go even higher by taking a flying aerial view, the structures, I presume, would look like a palette of variegated blobs, or a dysgraphic artwork done by a bored school kid.

It is also from that higher altitude that you would be able to see the idiosyncrasy of the Kenyan social stratum: to the West being Kawangware and Kangemi with similar congestions of rickety shacks (and scarce out-thrusts of flats, like my residence); and to the East, along the downhill scale of Kibarage River, being the quiet green pines and fir trees of Lavington and Westlands, from which colourful outlines of McMansion roofs can be seen.

And that is where the figure of speech fails to appease me. To an artist, this physical geography could be captured in countless portraitures to evoke emotions and flaunt artistic virtuosity. A painter, for example, could intertwine emotions by creating the optical impressions of both beauty and pain – as seen from the distinctively neighbouring lifestyles. A poet, on the other hand, could weave vocabularies of metaphors, pun and idioms to conjure imaginations and emotions.

But for me, everything was black and white, paraded in their absolute naturalism. The rickety shacks and barefoot children amid garbage piles illustrated the horrifying reality of life in the slums, seemingly designed by fate to be so. In this life, all we seek appears to be meaningless and futile. What is the true purpose of life if we are all destined to die? What is the point of enduring pain and agony if we know they will inevitably confront us at the moment of death?

It was, to be honest, this nihilistic mindset, and not the beauty of the outside topography, that glued me to the window that morning. I must admit that for the period I had been standing there the final thoughts in my mind were faster materialising. This was neither hopelessness nor the personal conviction of worthlessness. It was something far beyond that; a certain invisible agony of some kind that had reached an unendurable level. I felt like I was trapped in a blazing high-rise roof and the only option left of me was to either jump to the ground or be consumed by the blaze. Either way, I was doomed to die, so I had the option of choosing the slightly less terrible of the two terrors.

The next phone call interrupted my reverie. It was still John. This time, he was at the door, pleading for me to open it. I was not inclined to refuse, as such a dismissive attitude has never been in my nature, particularly regarding a person like John. I felt he had done much for me, and it was time to relieve him of the burden. I believed it was time to end all of this—for both him and myself.

I left the window and walked across the room. The entire space was in disarray, a clear indication of the chaos from the previous night. My knuckles were still sore, and the wound on my left knee was deep. Traces of blood had flowed down to my feet and were now thickening and beginning to dry. Interestingly, the pain seemed more dramatic in appearance than in sensation, as it did not trouble me much. However, there was something inside me that felt far worse, likely the precursor to these physical injuries.

As soon as I opened the door, John stepped in. A cluster of curious neighbors had already gathered by my entrance, speaking in hushed whispers, trying to sneak a peek inside. In that moment, I grasped just how dire my situation must have been last night. The state of my room and my disheveled appearance, combined with the crowd outside, said it all.

“Felix,” John called me, extending his hand for greeting. I proffered my hand with some trepidation. This point one would be cautious of everything and everyone. “I am glad you are awake.”

He spoke English, and so did I whenever we were together. Though twenty years my senior, my friendship with John was a ‘fortuitous discovery’, one that began with, as C.S Lewis puts it, the mutual recognition of ‘What! You too?’. It all started two years ago in some long-to-remember function within the locality when I discovered that he was a fellow teacher – he at a private school in Lavington, and I at a high school. 

Our connection deepened over our shared passion for books. John loved Achebe and Okot and read widely on Pan-Africanism. I, too, admired Achebe, along with Ngugi and Shakespeare, and explored Western Philosophy. Most of our conversations revolved around academics, philosophy, and politics. But over and above that, John, I must state, has, over the years, been something more of a guardian angel. In my terrible perturbations, he has extended his warm and tender hands, and in areas that seem way beyond me with age, he has given his noble counsels.

If, for example, I have to take you back a little; when my present condition began, it was John who first discovered it. In those days I had not realised the graveness of my situation, and somehow, I must admit, there was that attitude of mulish obstinacy that shunned me away from any reasonable advice. But John, decked with ornamental gifts of age and experience, noted some subtleties in my behaviours and sat me down the way a father would do to his son, and said:

“Felix, you are becoming strange. I honestly think something is not right with you. I have watched you of late. You are losing control of your life. You drink too much, and you smoke over a packet a day. I have known you far too long to tell whether you are okay or not. In this case, Felix, you are not.”

As expected, I discounted his observation, thanking him, though, as a gesture of propitiation. Months later, when it was apparent that I was sick and I had to seek help, a pang of guilty conscience hit me so hard upon remembering his words that, instead of running to him, I sought redemption from a friend in Kibra. Sadly, this bore little fruit. I was not ready to accept my state. I was not still ready to admit that I needed help.

Then he was here, again, with me, having stayed with me all night during those blackouts and leaving only at dawn with a promise that he would return upon sunrise to check on me. This, of course, he informed me in our later conversations when he narrated to me the ordeal of the night before.

I locked the door and sat on the floor. John stood wordlessly, pretending to be noticing for the first time the chaotic make-up in my room. When this episode struck me, he must have been called by my next-door neighbour, as it has been before, and he rushed from his residence which is a mile away to come to my rescue. They say that when my derangement manifests I tend to understand no one but him. He was the only person who, so they put it, was in perfect harmony with my ‘demons’.

“How are you feeling now, Felix?” he asked, looking me straight for the first. His expression was calm, almost detached.

“I am fine,” I said with such a palpable lie that I noticed John’s face take a faint mocking smile. He went straight to what he had in mind, telling me that he had called the doctor in Upperhill and he was expecting us in an hour or two, so it was better if we left immediately.

“No, John,” I muttered, my body slouched between my laps. “Have we not tried all these before? I am tired of this illness. I don't think this will be of any help!”

I felt his breath over my head. I raised my face to him, and as a way to clear any naughty line in my previous statement, I added:

“I am sorry, John, but I don’t think this is the kind of sickness a doctor will handle. You told me last time that the first step of healing is ‘acceptance’. I think it would be better if I accept to live with it.”

But I was lying. I was not ready to live with this shaming illness. Not at this point when it had already pushed me to the bourn of spooky thoughts.

As I spoke John looked at me with narrowed eyes, as if a ray was glinting off my face towards his. He sat down beside me, taking a slouchy position like me. He took a deep breath and remained silent for some time; his eyes fixed on an imaginary object on the floor. For the first time, I realised that my friend was tired – not with me in particular or the vicissitudes that surrounded me that day, but with life itself.

You may indeed link John’s listlessness to the yielding effort he put on me that entire night. But for me who knows him well he was just but another victim, like me, fighting his way out of the storms of trials and tribulations. Mercifully he had recently lost his mother, the only remaining parent, and his eldest son, Toby, had abandoned school to join the minacious brotherhood of street dwellers. Now seeing me, his friend, already giving up seemed unbearable to him.

“Felix,” he called after a suitable interval, his words coming out in chunks, “I was here, and I fear to tell you what I saw. Seven episodes, Felix! Seven episodes last night. I counted them. There was little hope you would wake up. We prayed here. I prayed…” His voice trailed off, and changing the subject, he continued, “Give this doctor a chance. He believes everything you are going through can be corrected. He is not like the other one.”

I must confess that those might not have been the exact words that John said, but I am confident they trailed along that particular analogy, with similar accentuation. All the same, they buoyed me up.

The man who would later pick up as my new doctor was called Kirui. It is slightly hard for me to remember my first impression of him. A calm-looking demeanour blended with an ingratiating smile, perhaps. But he was articulate and appealing. He gave me a firm, businesslike handclasp.

“Felix,” the doctor said, pulling back his seat while pointing to us where to sit, “John told me everything. But I feel it was better if I first get your personal narrative.”

I looked the doctor confusedly, like a subnormal child, wondering what to say. What was there to say anyway? I had no clear account of my behaviours during those episodes. It was, perhaps, better for an observer to narrate well such experiences on account of his or her recollection. I gave my two companions a sorry look and receded back to my seat, in silence. John seemed to have read my mind.

“He might not recount the ordeals, doctor,” he said. “But I think I can tell you. Apart from those incidents of ‘collapsing’ and jerking, which I think I had briefed you about, there is something else.” Here I saw John take a break, his posture rather droopy. He shook his head ephemerally and, with a tremulous voice, continued, this time mixing English and Kiswahili: “My friend seems to be indulged in self-harming, doctor. If not punching the walls, he is on his skin, laughing over it as bloods dribble off his body. But of late things are getting worse, so worse. He becomes violent sometimes, and – how can I put it? – behaves like someone disturbed by some apparition.”

“Apparition?” the doctor said and made a funny sound which, I later learnt, was a laugh. “Most of my clients have come with similar cases, some with even worse scenarios to imagine. Unlike you, though, they come with some advance assurance of expecting a kind of exorcism from me.” The doctor laughed again. “Let us put an end to that thinking before we begin.”

Again, I might fail to have captured the exact words in that conversation, considering that the dialogue was a mix-up of Kiswahili and English, but the words ‘exorcism’ and ‘apparition’ did appear in those statements. In any case the doctor proved to be a typical rationalist, one who puts logics and professionalism above everything else. This, however, seemed not to augur well with John. Indeed during my previous ordeals, John had insisted on the alternative to my medical approach, which was, so he called it, ‘divine intervention’. He believed my case was a kind that needed some ‘spiritual cleansing’, pegged on, as I understood it, some anachronistic rituals or voodoo. I rejected this on account of personal faith and principles, and gladly, he capitulated and decided to trail along my choices. Thus getting such assurance from the doctor was already a step for me.

The doctor requested John to leave us. John smiled and gave me an imperceptible nod as he closed the door. The doctor took his time, scanning my face the way a sailor scans the surface of the sea, and, after composing himself, said, “You need an urgent help, Felix, and you need it now. I want you to tell me all about yourself, from birth to this very point. Please take your time.”

Reeling my mind back to history was perhaps the hardest thing to do. In that short mental recollection I found myself solving my problems beforehand. What was it that I ever scaled through smoothly, by the way? For the first time I seemed to be discovering myself: the little boy losing his mother at that age and coming to terms with his self identity; those childhood torture; those struggles in school and college; the sickness and the stigmatisation. My life, I could now see, had been simply fragments of a soul struggling to pick its form.

There is something very therapeutic about being allowed to speak about yourself, by someone who listens. I could clearly tell that my eloquence was slowly freeing me from the thralldom of maladies. With each word out I saw the walls of my confinement falling, and gates and windows opening to gush in new light. And with those slow, thoughtful nods from my doctor, my wish for recovery was justified.

It was last weekend, now nearly four months after that last ordeal, that I happened to be strolling outside my ‘pleasure habitat’ when I met with John. A day or two rarely pass without us checking on each other despite our busy schedule; but this seemed to be a pure coincidence. We laughed and exchanged pleasantries, ambling along the opposite direction which I had previously taken. He had told me some weeks before that his son, Toby, was back. He was thinking of taking him back to school. He was requesting if I could take Toby for coaching in mathematics and other sciences before his return to school, of which I accepted unconditionally. 

He also mentioned something to do with my recent comportment, saying that he was happy with the person I was becoming.

“My aunt is travelling from Kakamega next weekend for a visit,” said John. “If you find time you can come over we spend a moment together. I told her about you.”

“Sunday, perhaps, after the First Mass,” I said. “And Sunday, eh, let me see! Second July, right? That will be my birthday as well.”

“Then it seems we will cut the cake in my house,” John said gayly, and we laughed. “I will call you in the morning to remind you, just so you don’t forget.”

And so today when my phone rang, I knew it was John, and I picked it. I was seriously in the mood of talking. From the fourth-floor window of what is still known to me as my ‘pleasure habitat’ everything outside looked beautiful. The morning sunlight was not in its sepia, natural hue, but rather bleak golden, and they came in streaks – those bleak golden rays – like arcing fingers; and merging with the soundless gust of morning wind, they gave my swarthy skin an emollient touch.

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