Oral East Africa>The vinyl thief At the hut of the story

Written by Otiato Guguyu

Musau tried to look harmless under the stare of the Indian boss but felt himself flush with guilt. His collarbone hurt from his troubled dreams and he winced trying to rub it off. He had slept badly the previous night contemplating his rebellion, because this is what this felt like, a mutiny. Last night all he dreamed about was getting caught in a snare and fighting choking straws like a turtle caught in a fishing net. He was not too sure about his dreams, he was ageing.

His boss, Jibran, had those clear glassy eyes that looked like a mirror that could see into the souls of men. He had inherited the eyes from his father, the reflective sparkle inside his eyes especially when he was chewing those strange Indian intoxicants. He would sigh deeply as whatever he chewed ground down his angst and made his temperament agreeable and his mind generous. Musau had never taken any intoxicant; he considered the need for numbing senses in intoxication for weak men. Or irritable ones, like Jibran, such an anxious boy but who found some sort of calm in those Indian Kuber. Unlike his eyes, nothing of his demeanour was inherited from his father, let alone the old man’s talent of reading suspicious men.

Boyz 2 men

Jibran had grown handsome over the years his deep black hair had attained streaks of silver running through his temples like oiled sisal. His skin had freckled evenly as ageing dots highlighted where it folded. Musau had seen Jibran young supple thirty years ago. A bespectacled teenager meekly walking like a saintless ghost among the vinyl records of his father. Then, Jibran barely took interest in the titles of the silk black discs. He had hated the shop like his little prison.

Musau remembers Jibran would only light up at Friday noon when it was time to go to the Muslim prayer. Then it meant that he was free, that he could meet his friends and walk all the way to Jamia Mosque. He would, while his time, eat out and even spend the better part of the afternoon away from the shop. He remembers it so well because it also meant that he was left to the shop by himself.

Jibran’s father trusted Musau with his life. Unlike the other Indian shops who closed their outlets for Friday prayers relieving their African workers for the afternoon, the old man just upped and went to the mosque leaving the African behind the counter. He had reciprocated the trust with his unbridled loyalty, taking charge like the old establishment were his own.

Tamaa ya kuku

His only private sin was to play Tamaa ya Kuku. After the old man left, he would get the record which he had hidden in the wrong sleeve so that no one could find it and buy it. He would wipe it clean and place it on the stereo and watch it whirl.

At first it throttled like a man clearing his throat. Then the guitar strings would jump off the rough grooves of the plastic black disk like a mystery being unraveled from the night of twisted circles. If he closed his eyes he could see Mbaraka Mwinshehe plucking at guitar strings just as the dainty pin was picking it up and converting concentric grooves into angelic music. His voice would sashay like a rug shook at an angle roughly.

Pengine hukutambua kijana, machungu na fitina jiji letu

Ukaona heri unitoroke mimi

Walikudanganya nina sifa mbaya

Wako wapi sasa wamekukimbia

Umebaki walialia ooh

Sasa unajuta eeh eeh eeh

Drowning the Muezzin’s call to midday prayer. The Muezzin could do a rendition for Mwinshehe, especially where he mentions the adage about Indians, Baniani mbaya kiatu chake dawa, Musau thinks.

Baniani mbaya

He had always harboured these twin emotions about his employer and his ilk. His loyalty to Jibran’s father was absolute. The old Indian had been of some sufi sect that his attitude towards men was nothing Musau had ever seen or experienced in his entire life not even from his own family. The man was larger than life, he treated everyone equal, was gentle, wise, extremely religious and was always too willing to listen to his stories. The old man’s eyes saw into and through people.

One day while we were seated chatting, the old man just stood up and walked out. He met a disparate youth at the front of the shop and approached him. ‘Do you want to risk your life for a watch your are not sure is gold?’ he asked the boy who was eyeing a gentleman inside the shop. The gentleman was oblivious of the shadow that had been trailing him waiting for an opportunity to defray the glitter of ostentation from his wrist. The youth had been furtive and did not escape the attention of the old man however. ‘I’ll give you a deal,’ he told the Youth, ‘come here every evening and help me move some goods and I’ll give you a meal each day’. The old man was a saint, it is people like him who keep this city safe. People like him who keep the darkness that threatens to consume this city contained. We imagine it is our taxes and the police we pay who keep order in this city, but no, its men who give alms that keep desperate derelicts from eating our plump flesh. Upon his death we are now seeing an increase of crime, thieves are on the prowl with no Sufi old man to hold the consuming darkness back.

His son on the other hand is what locals say, ash follows a great furnace. His body took on the turgidity denied his nimble father. His thick arms were covered with fur and ran the length of the gold embroidered suit. He loved glitter, a gold chain and a silver necklace. He hated the shop, it probably made him hate his father. Maybe what made him want to be such an opposite of the old religious man.

For 30 years Musau’s days began here cleaning counters dusting the shelves, wiping the records, cataloguing boxes. The days ended in small talk in the evenings doing the accounts shutting the shop. Then the old man died and little Jibran took over and he spent the next thirty years just waiting to retire.

New technology

Maybe he is overthinking it, maybe it is not Jibran who ran the busy shop down. He probably did his best to try and keep the shop running against the technological explosion that had left their business obsolete. The vinyl had been replaced by the tape, the tape by the CD, by the flashdisk, memory stick, now everything's in the cloud. What chance did they have against virtual storage, but some few eccentrics and lost souls. Sometimes you could see his far off look, that determination to keep his father’s memory alive. The way they lived every day after his death like a de ja vu to the minutest detail.

Maybe he should blame the old man, he probably had not discussed the pension bit with Jibran before he died. The old man had said that each month of service he would put away ten shilling for Musau’s retirement. Musau had marked out each calendar month in a small book calculating what he had accumulated, he had not asked for a raise in pension, just went on crossing the last day of each month. Then when he went to see Jibran about his savings, the boy, now grown, said he had no idea about the arrangement.

Alllaaahhu Akbaarrr

The muezzin’s voice rings through green minarets of Nairobi’s Jamia mosque. Jibran grabs his green prayer mat that has a little compass at one side that tells which direction is Mecca. He leaves the shop to Musau and the new boy Otieno. The boy had been the jobless son of Musau’s neighbour. He was almost Musau’s age when he started working for Jibran’s father. But he was not half as loyal. Immediately he learned of Mutu’s grievances about the abrogated pension muttered whenever Jibran went away, he attacked the fissures with criminal intent. Gradually he convinced Musau they could start selling some records off the books. He said he had the clientele, he could set up a dummy social media marketing shop and tag his school buddies from the other side of town. That side of locks growing, nose ring piercing, Jazz loving romantics whose art is for arts sake. Who pass off as vintage esoterics, clinging to the nostalgic childhood memories of instruments of inferior technology. Who would pay top dollar to own fancy antiques that played record music. If they could up the price or even tell the fancy kids to come on Fridays when Jibran was praying. They could make some real money, more than he had ever made on his stupid pension scheme that Jibran had just wished into nonexistence.

He had angry eyes, Musau thought to himself as the new boy rushed over to him excitedly upon Jibran’s exit. He could not bring himself to back out now. And just like Clockwork a customer the boy had claimed he could attract on Friday’s came in. Otieno smiled wryly and nudged him back, approaching the young man still wearing a ticking Seiko ya majira. The boy looked excited to be in the right shop, like he had reached his Mecca, back in the room where his father smiled broadly and his mother twirled to a record player, maybe nostalgia.

Otieno approached him.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Something African, but don’t charge me an arm and a leg, the boy says.

He was holding a Henry Belafonte sleeve, but when he pulled out the record, it was Mbaraka Mwinshehe. The old man gasped.

‘I'll get this one,’ the boy said ecstatically.

Otieno told him if he paid Sh1000 in cash he could have two, just that he had to leave immediately. ‘Choose another one quickly,’ Otieno urged. He signalled Musau to watch the door. Musau was shaken out of the immobilizing sting of losing his favourite record. It was a terrible sign that the crime should coincidentally involve his favourite record. But Fuck this was his pension, he shut his mouth in a tigh lipped clench and walked to the door. He listened out for the closing prayer, a signal Jibran was making his way back, like an anticipation of the voice of Mbaraka Mwinshehe after the record coughs.

Way outside Jamia, Jibran squeezed out his cigarette. He went to prayers or pretended to, to have some time to himself and smoke. He hated that he had to maintain this taboo, going to the smoking zone every Friday. He felt the old Mukamba told his mother everything. But now that he was getting replaced with this Otieno, maybe Jibran needed to establish some sort of hierarchy, smoke right inside the shop. He pictured his father, how the old man would fancy him sitting inside his little castle and lighting up an offensive cigarette. The image was too alluring to be enacted that he did not wait for closing prayers.