This seven-year-old image refuses to fade

Why do we have the habit of writing obituaries that describe the deaths of our kin as “untimely?” Is there death that is timely? Maybe there is, but only in a murderer’s schedule.

One night seven years ago, 16 October 2008, at around 10pm to be precise, my elder sister, Margaret Nduta, called me. The conversation was short, since we had met earlier that day. The phone call was to brief me about a transport business I had invested in, upcountry, and which she oversaw for me, since I work in Nairobi.

Before I hung up, we agreed to meet early the following day, before she left for a function at her son’s school. Her boy, Dennis, was sitting for his Kenya Certificate of Secondary Examinations the following week, so the school was holding prayers for the candidates.

For some reason, after the conversation, I switched off my phone and went to bed. I woke up hours later to loud knocking, and when I looked at my watch, I saw that it was a few minutes to 6am.

I got out of bed, wondering what business could have brought someone to my house that early. It was a cousin, who lived in the same building. Before I could say anything, she hurriedly told me to call home, and then she left.

Puzzled, I switched on my phone and called Margaret; she is the one I usually called whenever I wanted to know what was going on at home. The call didn’t go through, but I wasn’t alarmed, and assumed that it was the normal network hitches.

I was about to call someone else when my phone rang. It was one of my other sisters. 

“Unazima simu na Maggie aliuliwa usiku?” She asked.

I couldn’t have heard right, so I stood there, rooted on the spot, my mind numb, my phone plastered to my ear.

COULD NOT REGISTER WHAT SHE WAS SAYING

I could hear her talking, but I did not register what she was saying. After she hung up, I put my phone down and walked with wooden legs into the bathroom to take a shower, like I normally did every morning.

I was in shock, though I did not know it at the time. I told myself over and over that there was no way Margaret was dead. If she was, my sister would not have broken such heart-wrenching news in such an insensitive manner.

During those few minutes of that robotic shower, I found a bunch of missed calls from various family members, neighbours and friends. It seemed as if everyone who had my number had been trying to reach me.

Even as I rushed home, I kept telling myself that it wasn’t true. My sister was alive. My first stop was at Githunguri police station, where I had been told my sister’s body had been taken. 

I am an artist, so registering images in an instant and keeping them for future recall comes naturally. The image I saw that day has completely refused to go away. Seven years later. When I close my eyes, it is right there, tormenting me.

At the back of a police vehicle, outside the police station, was my sister. She was in a red skirt, a cream t-shirt peeping out of a brown flowery sweater. A cruel-looking butcher’s knife was buried in her neck. To the hilt.

Only the black rubber handle was visible. A curious crowd was milling around, whispering in horror and elbowing one another to get a better view.

I would later learn that Margaret had been murdered by her estranged husband the previous night, in our home compound, only a few minutes after our phone conversation.

Their marriage had been troubled for some time. They had separated several times before, but they would resolve their differences and reunite. Before her death, Margaret had returned home, where she had been living with her four children for several months.

Her husband had attacked her in front of their young daughter, then in Class Six. She had been doing her homework in the sitting room, and had therefore witnessed the entire incident.

My sister must have been taken by surprise, because she only screamed once.

My elderly mother was among the first people at the scene, and clearly saw him running away into the darkness, after performing the cruel deed. Margaret’s body lay at the doorstep, and inside the room was her shocked daughter.

The incident had scared the small girl stiff.

She was standing beside the table she had been doing her homework on, and was only prompted to move when she saw her wailing grandmother standing outside.

The house had only one exit, so the poor girl had to jump over her mother’s body to get out. Too traumatised by the incident, we had to later take her for counselling, to help her cope with the trauma.

HER DEATH HIT ME HARD

Margaret’s death hit me hard too, and much later, I too sought counselling, though it did not banish this image that haunts me to this day.

For many years, I beat myself up, wondering whether there is something I could have done to prevent my sister’s death.

You see, the day before, she had told me that her husband had threatened to kill her, and that she had reported the threat at Githunguri police station.

I was not alarmed though, convinced that he would not make good his threat, that this was just the rambling of a frustrated man. What if I had reacted differently?

Maybe I would have told her to make sure she got home before nightfall. Or maybe I would have advised her not to open the door for anyone after nightfall. Or maybe…

Now there she was, lying dead with a knife sticking out of her neck.

But there was no time for self-pity. There was my nephew to think about. He was at school, waiting for his mother to go for the prayer day, a mother who would not be coming. It occurred to me at that point that I had become an instant parent of four.

I should not have been surprised, because I work in the media and therefore know how it works, but I was, when I saw reporters from various media houses at the police station.

They were busy interviewing anyone and everyone, asking questions that would evoke emotion, to enable them to capture and file a ‘good’ story.

At that point, I hated their intruding presence, and for the first time in my career, felt what Kenyans in similar situations feel when a bunch of people with microphones and cameras descend on you, when all you want to do is mourn in private.

Somehow, I managed to go to my nephew’s school that day, the aim being to break the news to him before it reached him via other channels. Dennis was not surprised to see me, and assumed that I was there to represent his mother, though he did wonder why she hadn’t come.

My intention had been to break the news to him myself, but I just couldn’t do it, so I requested a couple of close friends to help me say the difficult news.

Surprisingly, he took the news calmly, outwardly at least. He was given permission to return home until after the burial.

That was one long difficult weekend for our family. There was Mashujaa day, and then Kenyatta Day, which fell on a Monday, making it a public holiday. Our hands were tied until Tuesday, the earliest a post-mortem could be done - four days after the death.

POST-MORTEM

As fate would have it, I had to witness the post-mortem. Our family had to have two representatives during the procedure, and the only other person available was one of my brothers, Kimani. It is at this stage that we learned Margaret had been stabbed 11 times. She had been stabbed in the abdomen, chest and neck.

It was such a gruesome, brutal sight, that one of the morgue attendants exclaimed, “Kwani huyu mtu aliuliwa na nani”? (Who did this?) 

His rhetorical answer was answered by a policeman who was present.

“Yule…” the policeman said, pointing at the disfigured body of my sister’s husband, which lay a few feet from my sister’s.

When villagers learnt that he was the one who had done the killing, they had gone looking for him, and when they found him the following morning, they had beaten him to death. Mob justice is swift and merciless.

We buried my sister on a Saturday. No photos were taken. Who would want to flip through a photo album with such painful memories?

The reality of Margaret’s death hit me weeks after her burial. I wanted to live in denial. I was angry, though I wasn’t sure who exactly I was angry at. I also hated it when people consoled me, especially when they tried to justify the incident.

Being told that “God” had a “reason” for allowing my sister’s death did not comfort me in any way. It felt hollow, and I just wished that people would leave me alone.

Margaret was the fifth born in our family of six children, with me being the last born. I will not claim that I was closer to her than my other siblings, but we were close, and her death left a yawning gap in my heart.

After the funeral, I stayed for over a year without going back home and turned to drinking.

The image of my dead sister kept haunting me though, and to try and banish it, I drank even harder. The image stubbornly stayed put. My drinking became so bad, that I started to keep alcohol in the house.

I ensured that I had a crate of beer lying around, and would often drink myself to sleep every day.

Margaret’s absence was too much to bear. I realised then that the absence of one person completely changes the lifestyle and pattern of doing things, within the family, especially since you cannot fill in the gap.

I managed to put a stop to this destructive habit much later, when I met my wife Rita. She played a big role in helping me ditch the bottle, and instead deal with the issues that would surely have driven me to an early grave.

It is seven years now, since my sister’s death. I have since accepted that she is gone, and I have moved on with my life.

I haven’t forgotten though. It still feels like it happened yesterday, however, I feel much lighter, now that I have talked about it.