The Two Majini
Jini jini in my clouds
Not a bot but a genie in the servers of my clouds
A rub, maybe two, three wishes for you
That you are not an African jini, but a genie of my genes.
To make us two majini
Some guy bought my art for around 50 USD from my Etsy UK shop — right when my boyfriend was giving me a talk about nudity and how to be a respectable woman in society.
He wouldn’t pay that much. And those that would simply want to mislead me — Kings had adamantly insisted. I should stay home, clean up the house and cook his meals to please his God. And when he left, he hid his stash, and I had to find it in his jacket and coat. He prayed that I would go mad if I touched it.
I was sad the whole day.
This man was misleading me, and he was growing horns about it. He was claiming me for a low price. He had told his friends it was only for a bottle of wine and a taxi. And when I knew he couldn’t pay for my taxi back, I didn’t mind — I had the money. He twisted the story. He didn’t even have to pay my taxi back.
I laid my blanket on the couch to light a little light in my world.
No good men were out there. I had taken it up with the Lord God. Word had it that I had sent a bad boy to a mental institution. He got better, and when he came out, I was waiting in my tiny bedroom. I would never walk his Kingdom again.
I was wounded.
And every time he woke me up the other day, I was the least grateful human being. Yet he had presented me with a foul and filthy man whom I saw nothing but a strange face. A man who disgusted me and was full of blasphemy to my Lord God.
His house was cold and full of clatter. He held onto so much. He only shared his meals because I cleaned his house — so I felt. Skinny invited me for a family dinner and he couldn’t let me go despite struggling with hunger.
I started crying. My pretty face became old.
All I could do was take drugs, feel better — mpenzi — and with every new day, a fight with my Lord God about his people. His men. His image. Our company in his Kingdom. The guardians he put to be in charge of us were abusing us — the godly women he wanted of us.
There was no happiness in it. Just suffering. Suffering with no love to hold onto. No friendship to rely upon. Just a business-like transaction between help and his employer.
The employee was not a very happy woman.
And Mama would not let her back home. She had to wait. She had to find her own house. She had to wait and listen to this King of the world. Full of pride and false honour. Lazy and a complainer.
“There are no good men out there,” the women were right.
He had thrown me into the dungeon with a lion. He was expecting the Lion not to eat me.
Before I could turn into the angry ungodly woman who burns everything to the ground at the cost of her own life — a Dark Knight from Etsy UK called in.
He wanted all the digital prints. A Portrait of a Brown Lady on Fire. The one Ukwazi — the photo mentalist — had shot. The first and only photographer whose psychology is not affected by my nakedness. He was blind to it all. He was like Adam before he uncovered the nakedness of Eve. He was trying to paint something he had seen right between the chaotic qualms between me and Steve.
Steve also wanted to be like him. He had the money, the impression — but lacked the eye. He could not see the Kingdom of God. He knew I had the keys. And when the Lord God tested his love and found him foul, I fought not only him but the world itself.
I walked His Kingdom bearing nothing but doom.
He will have to take me out. But Ukwazi saw something — a brown lady on Fire.
Not only was I going to march on the 3rd day when his sun rises — I was also going to fight in the first house. Tapawa had digital prints of the animal shifter. Aries house, the God of war, the son of Zeus — and I were going to make Aphrodite sad.
I was thinking of how to get away with murder.
People worshipped other gods and got away with it. People stole and got away with it. I could kill Steve, and my worst curse would be to spend my whole life in prison.
Adaptation is my most excellent skill.
But Ukwazi called.
He wanted to take a photo of the brown lady on Fire.
Some guy online bought it.
And the King, having heard of the news, ordained me in beautiful apparel and wished me well — and out the Lion let me go. Eager to let another desperate woman in.
I laughed, called Sharon, and asked her if I could spend the night at hers. She sent me two dollars from her bank savings. Saving for me to catch a taxi.
“There are no good men in this world,” she reminded me.
Our fathers were also not good men, but I doubted my father would be such an animal. I missed him reading the Bible every other Sunday as a study. The Bible was a weird story. It was full of villains and unnatural happenings. It was better than Samurai Jack. But my hero was killed by his own people, and the last book is full of nasty things.
It was a work of faith. I didn’t have faith the next day.
But the dark knight called, and when I got home, I slept.
I was exhausted. I was tired. I wasn’t sure who sent him. But if I could rest one more day, I would have hope for the next day.
So I slept.
The innkeeper scared the hungry dogs away. He was a wounded man — the Lion had left scars on him, and he could not sleep. He kept watch. He hung the portrait of a brown lady on Fire above his big screen, watching his codes, scanning his conduct. And every time he needed help, he asked me what I would want to eat.
I wanted nothing but to sleep, eat and rest.
I added a few pounds. I coloured my hair red. I painted myself in the tribe.
When the sun rose in the new cycle on the third day, I would march in the great army.
“In war, you have to be aggressive,” he insisted.
In war, I would burn everything to the ground.
He held power to many secrets. I had might as mighty as the sun. I would stand the light, and he ruled the dark. He was making himself better, stronger, more powerful.
I was going to give him that power.
I would let him have everything all other men had wanted. Everything all other men had tried to steal. I would make sweet wine of all the bitter fruits the monkeys had called out — and I would let him drink. To his fill. And only good would come of him.
I would submerge myself in the sea in the last three ages of his House rule.
It was a suicide mission.
But my dark knight lurked somewhere. He watched over me as he watched over the portrait of the brown lady on Fire above his many tabs.
He was twenty-one days away in Earth years — but always on time. His timing was the best.
He was the beast in my dreams. The best I liked. The beast that played with me under the table and the one I kissed on the floor. The dark knight, Legion of Doom — a giant panda that took me to sleep.
Good men exist, I started telling myself.
The Lord God tested him against all other men and none pleased my spirit as Samuel did. He had the favour of the Lord God, whose face pleased me.
I was no longer afraid.
He was alone this time. The female redbone was not with him. He sat in the far corner — near the naked women in the restaurant. It was a typical business lunch meeting. He sat, facing the entrance, somewhere Yvi could easily see him, with no cameras or eyes on his computer.
My job was to just eat and talk.
I was doing nothing besides trying to hide my bald hair with a blonde look.
I’m always a blondie. Sometimes in looks and so often in mind too.
I was never going to guess what he was doing over his laptop. He was working very hard, bringing his computer to the table. He did not want to miss out on either — but he made time. It is not easy to get the geeks off their screens.
He was not going to say a word for almost half an hour. Let me eat. Or instead finish his work.
I finished my drink — not that I remember which one — and scooped potatoes out of the bowl. Made a precise cut on the medium rare steak. And just when I started to chew, he began to talk.
I listened to his choice of words. He was keener on how I answered them.
But he never at one point stopped typing.
“I’m a software engineer. I have two kids — a boy and a girl…”
And whatever followed was me paying more attention to the steak on my plate.
I was yet on another date with a family man.
I was tired already. But I remembered that not all children had parents. There could be a mother of her children somewhere — or none at all. I could be just his yet another hoe-mission. Someone to keep him engaged as he worked and cared for his family.
And with all the bitterness in my heart, I liked him.
I could no longer hide that he was there — proof that he was a human being.
But he vanished.
Like irony, I received certain books from a stranger. One that loved to sleep. I could not tell if I was talking to a human being or a bot — the software engineer’s secret personal project — dealing with making or just a constant reminder that I had to reread and reorganise my genesis story of how he came to be and came to go.
You see, last Christmas, he decided he was doing it again.
He was rewarding himself with all the things that pleased him. He was citing people that pleased him. He would get his favourite atmospheric model — the exclusive one. To test the ambience of his new apartment. Another in his many properties and listings.
The one he met on @etsyuk — whose wall art he mounted above his big screen — is now safely stored in one of the many cabinets in his new apartment. It was smaller and warmer. And every time he got bored or had a blackout, he went to the wide wall-to-wall window on the twelfth floor to pretend to stare at the clear view of the setting sun behind the Ngong hills, the thriving suburbs.
He was rewarding himself for his hard work.
And I sat there, basking in the fruits of his Kingdom.
Maybe a rose?
I doubt he likes pens as much as Sandra did.
Sandra had a collection of pens she never used. I couldn’t believe it once she told me she had a golden Versace pen. I had to see and use one to understand why she spent so much on a pen she hardly used. She was seeking inspiration. Or just a collector of nice things.
A white Apple Pencil 2nd generation — to scribble on his many tabs and skip the new keyboard he got last Christmas — might grab his attention.
He checked out his favourite breakfast from CJs first thing in the morning, almost skipped the gym, and when he returned home much earlier, he still looked unsettled. Later on, I watched his muscles relax. His iPhone somewhere on Do-not-disturb, upside down.
He was a calm, handsome young man eager to unwrap what he got himself from the Amazon Shop.
He was delighted.
He was the last member I considered my Family. I needed to bid my goodbyes and was unwilling to give him space over the Christmas Holiday.
I wanted to invade his privacy. Be where he was. Watch what he did. Sleep when he did. I wanted to leave my Family to spend time with him — but he has a family like mine.
If December is all about spending time with Family, I wanted him in mine. So after church, I sneaked to the big city to his new apartment.
I watched TV and watched him scroll across his many tabs. While I was doing something inappropriate in the bedroom while he was working — my phone sank into the sink.
Majini.
And I knew the Lord God was on me.
Or a genie.