Read Online Harare North by Brian Chikwava - Free Book Online Page A

don't want no one to start
saying that I only stay inside the house so I can hit they food
while they is doing graft. Me I am principled man.
    Tsitsi come back from the kitchen eating bread and baked beans.
She start to talk about the rat that have been eating food in the
kitchen, how it get she head out of gear, the rat manage to do it
even if she put the food on the highest shelf in the kitchen; the
following day she find it have been nibbled.
    I don't have answers for these questions so I give she them
one-word answers and small grunts and try to sew while she go
yep yep yep yep. She is now sitting in funny cross-legged way on
bed, with she pointy breasts jumping out at me and she have no
idea that this kind of sitting can give people funny ideas. But it
don't do nothing to me because me I am not civilian person but
military person. Tsitsi, she is just rural mother. She is also just one
small child. I don't need to worry about Tsitsi. Me I am not
civilian.
    Chirac is civilian person and have this tree growing out of his
head making him not able to see where he is putting his foot. Fix
him up with this rural thing maybe he can also drop me cigarette
pocket money. It don't matter that he still have not buy the French
passport. But Shingi is scared of Aleck because he is still not good
at defending himself if someone start to accuse him of leading the
child, Tsitsi, astray. Even at school, after Thoko beat him up,
Shingi still don't know how to fight for himself. Even when I'm
trying to teach him every week at school. His stepbrother Chamu,
who is one year ahead of us, also try to teach him how to fight
because Chamu is not always there to protect him, but that never
work. Only one time in his life Shingi have stand up for himself
and that was the last time. That was few years after we leave school
for ever. Shingi have got graft as tea boy at Central African
Pharmaceutical Society (CAPS) and for some funny reason he spill
tea on company's biggest boss and his big visitor; the whole teapot
splash all over the big man's desk and trousers. His visitor's trousers
too. And important papers. Everything get wet and this is big
mess-up and of course if you do big mess-up you get fired. One
week after he have been fired them people at the local beer hall
start throwing that usual mouth about: oh poor Shingi; the winds
that he get from his father now giving him bad luck; yeee he will
never have steady life; yeee maybe he don't get fired because of
tea but because of all that liquid paraffin he thief. People was
saying that because Shingi had also start to sell liquid paraffin that
he bring from CAPS. No one know how he get it, but he get it
and people like to use it on they skin.
    Then when Shingi come to the beer hall after losing graft
someone make big mistake of making fun of him by saying now
that he have no more liquid paraffin, maybe his family going
to start using cooking oil on they skin. Because he don't do
talk, Shingi jump into this style of big quiet vex. Now everyone
start going kak kak kak and Shingi don't know how to deal
with this and soon pull out of his pocket the oldest style in the
book; you know how someone get upset by someone but they
don't know how to deal with it except to play out they is now
possessed by old family spirit. Shingi groan, spit and growl until
them veins in his neck writhe under the skin like fat worms,
and the guy that make fun of Shingi is still laughing because
he think this is big pretence. But before he know it Shingi have
pick up half brick and hit him square on his face.
    Shingi spend six months in prison for that but when he come
out he have change style of talking and now don't say even one
word more than is necessary if he is talking to you; no one want
to throw they mouth around in front of him now because they
know he can waste your face if you hassle him.
    But this is Harare North and people change back into they old
self here.
    I finish sewing my button on and decide to do them