 Good afternoon, everybody. It's my pleasure to read to you from the prologue of dust. He leaps over two fire-painted blossoms resting on the stark-cracked city pavement. Roused, these unfurl into late Christmas season, orange and black butterflies that flutter into the violet shade of a small encrusted roadside Jacaranda tree. A thromb becomes a hum, becomes thumping footsteps. And soon he is entangled in a thicket of jeers and tossed gray, black, and brown stones as he flees toward a still-distant night. It is said that in combat, some soldiers shoot over their enemies' heads in order to avoid killing them. Some don't even fire at all. Moses, a bevestite, or diddy, or gander's fingers tremble on the trigger of an old, shiny AK-47. He hurls the gun away with an, ugh, the weapon spills across the road, a low-pitched, guttural noise. From behind, a diddy, a whale, a diddy man, cover. Other cords of voices echo, how there they are. Wawe killed them. Where's he, thieves? A diddy runs. Three weeks ago, the rifle was in the hands of a minor Somali warlord turned, easily-based vendor of off-season Turkish designer women's wear. The ex-warlord had given a diddy the weapon as compensation for Camel water songs, which a diddy had sung inside the trader's shop while he was picking up lazy feminine things for Justina, his girl. But it is music caused, wistful, chirping sounds to come out of the refugee, lamentations for lost, happy pastoral yesterdays. The taciturn man had approached a diddy. You sing as if you know water, he had said. I do, a diddy answered. These were our old songs. How did they find you? A visiting man, he has a name. A diddy paused. That name came with a torrent of buried history, a curt reply, Ali dirahada. The Godia concluded the warlord naming a clan. No, no, a diddy frowned at yellow, pink, black, and red panties and brassiers, his mind struggling. Then he said, no, a stranger of too many lands and faces. The trader leaned forward. You know the song of Komamado, the sky, Camel? A diddy had winked before whistling an overture. The man had pounced on nostalgia's lyrics and belted them out. They had then ventured into and mangled other water songs. An hour later, as a diddy was paying half price for Justina's free priperies, the ox warlord had muttered, wait. He leaned down, hefted up a canvas, and newspaper wrapped hard four-part object and closed a diddy's hand over it. From my heart, open it alone. God shield your songs and your wife. He dabbed tears off his face, partly of relief because he had also offloaded a problem. Now, while we're the pursuing Nairobi mob house, a diddy runs, not feeling the ground, soaring, swish, zip, pop, rattle, bullets, grunt, thud, a man falls, ratatata, screams, a diddy runs, tears flood, terror, rage, love, fuse, the fallen ones are his men. Guilt, fury, sorrow. Ah, the sound a captain makes when he falters and loses the team. Still, a diddy does not go for the pistol strapped to his chest, a diddy runs. Strength in his arms, his legs pestons, his sprints downhill, Salasi Avenue, jumps over prone, carring citizens, pities them. The bullets aimed at him, raining down upon them. He runs through the stench of decay, the perfume of earth hoping for rain, habits and dreams of Nairobi's people, smoke, rot, trade, worry, residues of laughter and overbrewed ketepa tea, a diddy runs. Incantation, Justina, Justina, shelter of faith, the mob screams, how are Justina, faith into sorrow, into longing? I need to go home. Why where, the answer? Memory's tricks, a diddy saws into the desiccated terrains of Watogik, the home he had abandoned, his people reaching out for him, cowbells, bleeding goats, sheep and far mountains. He sees Komamado, the grand-pief family camel, dashing home from pasture. The sky of home, that endless dome, flood tied in his blood. I want to go home. A diddy lifts his feet higher, trying to fly. A diddy runs. Random humans in this slippery city of ephemeral doings crave his death. Oh, ah! Something flutters and falls within a diddy like a startled, broken songbird. What have I ever done to them? He just wants to go home. Justina, Oasis, who will cross spider web black roads to touch her? O diddy runs. He turns down Jogorod and glances upward. Childhood habit born when Galgalu, the family herdsman, had told him that God was Akuj. Eternity revealed as sky. Up there, now, orange dusk lights battler eagles. Like marrable stalks, they are prophet birds. Water in his eyes. O diddy blinks away Nairobi's late-day drizzle and the earth shivers behind him, a pitiful bellow, a goat protesting the injustice of a butcher's knife. Death stinks of cold emptiness. Our mosh, the last of his men. O diddy gulps down vomit, tastes salt, tears in his mouth, sticky wet of hands as if he had dipped them into blood. Was this the destination of all their wars? Shadow and regret. Stumbling, he must move. But the city, his city has all of a sudden changed its shape and turned against him. Roads slither into hard walls, blocks of shadows curry away to expose his next step to ravenous carnivorous urban trolls. Faster, O diddy runs. A whisper from his remote past like a brush stroke on his bare back. You can't live in the songs of people who don't know your name. O diddy grabs at his throat suffocating in a burst of fire clarity. What have I done? O diddy runs. Glimpse of his fleeting shadow's reflection on darkened glass panes. What had he done? O diddy runs. Louder. You can't live in the songs of people who don't know your name. He understands now that he must protect his family. O diddy runs. He must reach a stranger, stop him from boarding a flight from Heathrow to Nairobi. First, he must find the labyrinth and alleyways, his escape routes. Pounding steps behind him, sundowns cool breeze on his arm and face. A moan within his throat. Let me go home. O diddy runs. Dump fisted hands propel him forward and the city's twilight rain saturates his skin at the same time that he hears a phone melody from within his coat pocket. Caesarea Evora's Un Pencilada. His sister's calling to you. Grimm grin. Only Arabelle Ajaño-Gander would phone at a time like this. If who were to answer, he predicts her first words would be, O diddy, what's wrong? He would have to say nothing. I'm taking care of it. As she expected him to. And he always did. And he was. O diddy runs. Un Pencilada plays. If he could, he would say, hello, silly. After more than 10 years of nothing, today you could tell her, I'm going home. She would laugh and he with her. The music stops. Hello, silly. They were chance offspring of Northern King and drylands growing up. O diddy and Ajaño had been hemmed in by the arid land geographies and essences. Freed from history and the interference of Nairobi's government, they had marveled at Anam-Ka'alokol, the desert lake that swallowed three rivers, the Omo, Tukwil and the Kerrio. They learned the memories of another river, the Awaso Niro, four moody winds, the secret things of parents' fears, throwing shades of pasts, met assorted transient souls and painted their existence on a massive canvas of glowing, rocky, heated earth, upon which anything could and did happen. They mapped their earth with portions of wind, fire, sky, water and nothingness, with light, piecing tales from stones, counting footsteps etched into rocks, peering into crevices to spy on the house of red rain. They lived in the absence of elders afflicted with persistent memories. No one to tell the children how it had been, what it meant, how it must be seen or even what it was. Because of this, they recreated myths of beginnings. The first Uganda was spoken into existence by flame or did you once told Ajaño? She believed him. His sister trusted everything he said, glimmer of a smile. How are, he had forgotten where he was or did he runs? He jumps over mud-stained crumpled election posters entangled in rotting foliage that show the bright face and pure white teeth of one of the presidential candidates. Teeth do not rot in the grave. Where had he read that? To his left, a plastic choked alleyway. He ducks into it, song in his heart, a psalm of glee. This is his territory, Justina. A glance finds her among a seething mass. He knows most of them, gang associates. Justina is draped in her yellow moomoo with its ridiculous giant pink carnations. He adores that dress on her, he adores her. Her eyes are unusually large, luminous and hollow. Her howl fragments his heart. Who has wounded her? Whom must he kill? And then flames flare from his heart's soul and engulf him. And after he screams out, he can no longer see, Justina. Odidi limps. He grips his shattered right shoulder, protrusion of bone, blood trail, trickle from his mouth. It is said that in throes of battle, dying men cry out for their mothers. Akkaima, Odidi groans. She wads off galls and bad night entities, wrestles God, casts ancient devils into hell before their time, and kicks aside sea waves so her son will pass and hinder. Akkaima, throb in the back of Odidi's left leg, searing that eats the base of his spine, damp from his chest. And even though his leg is heavier than a tree trunk, he tries to carry it home. He grapples with a thought that keeps sliding away. He seizes it. Justina, the finish line. He will make it because he's shifter, the winger, rugby finisher, and scorer. His forwards and backs have thrown him the ball. Although they have fallen out of play, they depend on him to end the game. He's the quickest, the trickiest, the best shifter of the winger, dancing through adversaries. Before Jonah Lomu made it right to have large wingers, there was shifter, the Kenyan winger, who carried the game into the face of opponents and who scored try after try after try while crowds chanted, shifter, thump, thump, winger, thump, thump. And later, when he heard the Kenyan national anthem, felt it resound in his spirit, he had wept tears that travel past his lips and reached the earth. Shifter, thump, winger, thump. Odidi hobbles to the center of a pathway. His twisted leg dragging. Warm liquid runs down, stains his trousers, leaving a visible patch, piss, out of his control. Akaima, she fixes everything, retrieves those who belong to her. Dim shadows, like battler eagle, surveying grassy plains, circle in. They herd him into a trap. Assassin Ratata, Odidi's good knees give out, good knees gives out. He crumbles, exhales on a gurgle. It is said that when a person begins to die, all his life races past him in spaceless time and timeless space. And he can feel again, only much faster and with sunlight light, all he has felt before. Thank you.