Beyond the Scars: A Novel Set Against the Background of the 1998 U.S. Embassy in Nairobi

By David Franklyn

The novel is about the human condition, healing, love, and forgiveness. It is about a woman who has been traumatized by the tragedy of the bombing, her husbands attempt to heal and rescue her, and a young man coming to terms with the death of one of his friends in the same tragedy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Mar 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491887523

David Franklyn

David Franklyn is a Grenadian writer. He lives and works in Kenya and is employed by UN-Habitat as a legal officer. His other novels include Belvedere, Mission Betrayed, Children of the Sea, and A Season of Waiting.

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© 2013 David Franklyn. All rights reserved.

Cover Image by: Adel Franklyn

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/03/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-8751-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-8752-3 (e)

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Contents

Author’s Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Afterword

Author’s Note

The title of this novel is inspired by words written beneath a photo of a survivor carrying scars on the right side of her forehead in the museum on the site of the tragedy in Nairobi: ‘We are living beyond the scars.’

The author was present in Nairobi during the bomb attack and the rescue of survivors and has visited the museum often. The author participated in the planting of trees at the United Nations compound to represent the victims. A poem, ‘Vain Ransom’, written and read by Wole Soyinka at the ceremony also served as inspiration for this novel. Most of all, the author was inspired by the suffering and courage of two of the victims who were trapped beneath the rubble for days: Rose Wanjiku and Samuel Ng’ang’a. Rose died. Samuel was rescued alive.

This novel is dedicated to them and all the other victims, dead and alive, and their families. It is dedicated to the memory of my deceased friend Ngugi Muhindi, with whom the author discussed the plot and who encouraged the process of writing the book. Ngugi encouraged me to finish the book but died before he could read the full text. Since the Westgate Mall attack I’ve renewed my determination to publish it. The book is also dedicated to those of us who are condemned to live with the risk and fear of random terrorist attacks in the world.

I also dedicate this novel to Martha, Denzil, Adel, and Amon and all our family and friends who pray for our protection each hour we spend in Nairobi.

Chapter 1

Beyond the Scars

I walk the geography of transformation. I breathe the dust and aroma of history. Where once cool, crystal waters flowed, the lion roared, the gazelles leapt, the zebra grazed, and the giraffe browsed, where once the acacia and the mugumo flowered and the Masai planted their spears and stood like storks on one leg watching over their cattle, civilization erupted around a railway station and threw up a city called Nairobi. The urban sprawl opened up like a sunflower, and the struggle for independence sprinkled the streets with petals of blood.

I had parked my car on Kenyatta Avenue, the main thoroughfare of the central business district, named after the founding father of the nation. I walked the geography of my despondency, slouching towards the monument where my beloved wife spends her days and nights. It is the place where she lost her mind and must rediscover it, the place where she suffered her wounds and must heal them. I make progress on the crowded sidewalks, pushing my way through a study of humanity. step is a step of love, a memory. My heart cries out to my wife by her name: Poetry.

That’s right. I, too, was confounded when she told me that this was her given name. It was in the month of November, in the morning of our lives. I was a poor boy just turned twenty, and I was walking through Uhuru Park in search of photo opportunities. The train of time has taken us far from this eventful encounter. Looking back, we cannot help imagining that fate brought us together, for better or worse, that blossom-decorated day.

My feet follow the streets of this metropolis out of habit, with little direction from my brain, finding their own way to where she is waiting. My mind occupies a different habitat of time and geography, traverses a different terrain. I am here, where the busy street ends at the Haile Selassie roundabout. This is the place; this is the bomb site. They have turned it into a small public park and charge a modest fee for its maintenance. I never fail to read the plaque at the turnstile entrance: ‘This park was built as a memorial to the innocent people killed in the August 7, 1998 terrorist bombing of the American Embassy that used to stand on this site.’

It reminds me that we live in a world without boundaries. It took a big bang to register this fact in my brain; before then it had only been a notion. Now I know that sovereignty and neutrality are no guarantee of protection from holy and unholy wars.

I would sit with Poetry and her suffering sisters on the green benches under the rectangular bower, its roof covered with flowering vines. We would sit in silence, for silence is her refuge. I would sit facing the fountain, watch the water sprout, and study the rainbow effect created by the reflection of the sun’s rays. Poetry would, wordlessly, slip her hand in mine, and I would squeeze it and whisper an entreaty: ‘Let’s go home, honey!’ She would shake her head with the gentleness of wind waving the new leaves of the young eucalyptus.

At other times I would wander about the park, counting the young couples sitting on the benches, lying or sitting side by side on the grass or courting in the shade of the acacias. Love brings people to this place cratered by hatred and vengeance—people whose lives were touched by the tragedy, tourists, young couples who have discovered in themselves and their partner something worthy of being loved, people who only come to pray or pass the time.

A force packed with the power to destroy and obliterate had brought down the embassy and the Ufundi House Cooperative building that had stood with it as a twin. It had damaged surrounding buildings, sending nails, concrete, glass, and debris flying into the faces of the innocent, desecrating the streets with the blood of an obscene sacrifice.

Sometimes I would stand before the names of the dozens of dead that were emblazoned on the cold, grey slabs, over two hundred from that particular blast. I would read them, one name at a time, trying to imagine a face for each one, a story, for we all have our stories. I imagined the futures which each of them had so unfairly and unjustly been denied. In so doing I reaffirmed their humanity. I, too, had recoiled, in horror and contempt, at the bearded, self-righteous figure who broadcast into a microphone before a camera that only twelve people had been killed. Twelve: the number of American citizens, the real targets. And the rest? The 247 locals? They were collateral, statistics—incidental accidents of war.

I read the dedication: ‘May the innocent victims of this tragic event rest in the knowledge that it has strengthened our resolve to work for a world in which man is able to live alongside his brother in peace.’ Beneath the grassy mounds shaded by acacias in whose shade the young couples sit and where visitors pose for pictures is the rubble of the buildings that were brought down and the human remains too mangled by the blast to have been scraped away or gathered. Deep beneath the rubble, Rose Wanjiku and Samuel Ng’ang’a lay trapped. The pedestrians, police, soldiers, medical personnel, and others frantically digging out the dead and dying with their bare hands fought desperately to reach them in a race against time and death. Two strangers met in incredible circumstances that defied all fictional exaggeration, separated but within hearing distance of each other. They had been buried alive for reasons they could not comprehend. Theirs was a conversation of the damned, talking to stay alive or to reassure themselves that they were alive. They communicated to each other their agonies and anxieties, and Samuel watered with reassuring rains of words the withering seedling of Rose’s hope of rescue. After forty-eight hours of this burial, Samuel Ng’ang’a was rescued, resurrected, given a second chance to live. He was the last person to be dug out alive from the rubble. Rose Wanjiku held out for three days, with time running out on her and the seedling of hope withering. And finally her candle blew out. She was dead when they dug her out.

Every time I climb one of those grassy mounds, I recall this incredible tragedy and imagine what it must have been like to be Samuel Ng’ang’a or Rose Wanjiku, waking up from unconsciousness to find myself trapped under rubble, unsure whether I was dead or alive. I would have wondered how it happened. One moment I’m standing here; the next moment I’m lying in my grave. Is this my grave? Have I died? Has the world ended? I never imagined it would be so instantaneous! Yes, I might have wondered things like that.

I weep inside as I enter the little museum. It is constructed in the circular design of traditional African architecture, the metaphor for unity, love, and harmony within the family, within the clan, within the tribe, within the nation, and within humanity. I walk in a clockwise direction. I study the paintings. One of them depicts a myriad of emergences: the wounded running in panic and shock, a doctor desperately trying to save a victim’s life, a pregnant woman lying wounded and in labour in a hospital ward, a man in a wheelchair gloomily contemplating a future without the ability to walk or stand. He considers an ability that was lost in an instant, a future that had probably been promising.

In an abstract painting, wide-open mouths, showing white teeth, are captured in a perpetual shout. What are they shouting? Possibilities tumble in my mind like laundry in a washing machine. They are probably shouting: No! Perhaps they were speaking to the devils responsible for this dastardly deed or to a world gone mad on account of greed and power and crazy from fear and paranoia. They are probably shouting the question why, but at whom? At the divine power and authority who had sanctioned the deed and from whom they expected their reward in heaven if not here on earth? Perhaps they are shouting: ‘I’m not guilty! I’m innocent!’ Perhaps it is as well that whatever it is those mouths are shouting is left to conjecture and silence. Theirs is a wordless shout to an unidentified audience.

I linger longest at this troubling painting. The mouths seem to be shouting in a sea of blood and flames against the background of the bombed-out buildings and the landmark that remained standing—a high rise with an unusual architectural design. Above the blood and flames is a white dove with a green bough in its beak. A very prominent eye is painted in the far right-hand corner. It seems all-seeing. Is it the eye of God? Whose God? Whose conception, comprehension, and experience of the divine? Is it the eye of Horus? Africa gave the world the symbolism of the all-seeing eye, the sacred eye, the eye of mystery and mysticism, of power and magic, of the occult. In Ancient Egyptian mythology, good triumphed over evil (ma’at, or cosmic order and divine truth, over chaos or falsehood) in the battle between Horus (justice and order incarnate) and Seth (evil incarnate). Horus lost an eye in the battle, leaving him with vision in only one eye. That was eye that sees and oversees everything, the all-seeing eye. Am I reading too much into this symbol? I am troubled by my interpretation and speculations. Is the artist steeped in Kemetic mythology, or I am crediting him with intentions and meanings beyond his abilities and beliefs? I move on.

Grateful survivors have exhibited their photos and handwritten messages. They describe themselves as ‘victors’ and ‘silent survivors’. Why are they silent? Who or what has required that they be silent? What this world requires is noise, protest, a long scream, a shout that would unblock the ears of the deaf and break down barriers, walls to crumble and untouchables to tumble from their pedestals. This world needs the voices of collective conscience raised in unison, not the sound of silence.

One survivor carries her scar on the right side of her forehead. The stitches resemble a black centipede against the background of her brown skin. I read the solemn message and memorize it: ‘We are living beyond the scars.’

I turn the phrase over in my mind, trying to interpret its meaning. It fascinates me. What lies beyond the scars? Is there anything other than pain? The phrase leaps and tumbles in my mind. Is there healing beyond the scars, triumph, or renewed strength?

Ah, but of course! Doesn’t the human spirit triumph all the time? It cannot be blasted into oblivion or turned to cinders and ashes. It is immortal. And yet I’ve witnessed all too often too many broken spirits. I move on.

The artist who had painted the wounded pregnant woman had painted reality. No one was exempt from the infamy. In one photo, eight victims who had given birth following the blast and whom the pregnant woman in the first painting represented stood proudly, triumphantly, and gratefully behind eight children seated in a row of chairs. One of them is a beautiful little girl named Joy Prudence. In another photo the then—minister of health holds baby Joy Prudence in his arms. She was born on the day of the blast to her ‘survivor’ and ‘victor’ mother, Gladys.

I move on like the short hand of my watch, confronted by more photographs. A weeping visitor with her hand against the names of the dead on the grey slabs outside, her face a mask of pain, her eyes a Lake Turkana of tears, mourns her loss. I taste the salt. I read the message below the photo: ‘Never again.’

Ah, how often must this vow be forced out of humanity? It is written on the memorial to the Holocaust. It is written on the memorials to the transatlantic slave trade. It was written into treaties and conventions. It was said of the First World War, and it was said of the Second. It was said of the use of the atomic bomb against Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

If the sky is crying outside, I do not pay it any notice. I am engrossed in the pictures and paintings. I am the short hand moving against the face of this clock. Read them and weep. The captions speak softly, gently, without violence, without rage, and without vengeance.

‘Esther Wairumu, nine, lights a candle at