Nash’s Return – The Incomplete Ritual
“Nashitsevhe lost everything. He got terribly sick. Over the years he has brought many other girls to Kajengo, in a desperate bid to get his life back, his wealth and influence. It was all in vain. Kajengo kept telling him the same thing. He has to find you and bring you back. Do the ritual all over again. He said you are his key.”
Grace, look!” Moesha says urgently, motioning with his eyes. “Across the street.”
I follow his prompt, and I am shocked. There she is again, standing against the fire hydrant and watching the salon like a hawk. I sigh in chagrin, and shoot a real, enraged glance at her across the street. She is undaunted. She stares right back at me. The scorching sun wouldn’t move her, so a dirty look is as futile as drowning a fish.
“You can tell us, Grace,” Moesha begins, popping a pout and rolling those eyes burdened with thick mascara. “Just let the cat out of the bag.”
“Tell you what?”
“If you are now batting for the other team. We won’t judge.”
I click my tongue disdainfully. Moesha has always thought I am gay, because he has never seen me with a man in the three years I have worked with him.
“Moesha, I told you, I have never seen that woman in my life. You are still the only homosexual in the room, thank you very much.”
“Well, then maybe she has a crush on you,” he says, absent-mindedly yanking the client’s hair with the comb. “It’s the fourth day she comes around just to stand there and gawk at you. And each time you accost her she does a Caster Semenya. Talk about a run-away bribe.”
“I know that woman,” the client I am working on suddenly blurts out. I quickly turn the chair around so she would look directly at me. She rolls her eyes at me, and chews the gum worse than a cow masticating curd.
“You do? Who is she?”
“I don’t know her name,” she exclaims, wide-eyed. “She is not my friend or anything.”
Suddenly, her face looks as if she has caught a whiff of something rotten.
“She is one of the ladies who sell cheap weaves and wigs near Capitec Bank downtown,” she continues. “She is from Zimbabwe or something. These ladies claim to sell genuine Brazilian. Feels like steel wool the crap they sell, if you ask me. After just a day of wearing it, it starts looking like a roadkill that has been in the sun too long.”
“And that is why you are sticking with us, isn’t gal?” Moesha says with feigned excitement. “Because you my dear, have got good taste.”
“You know it, gal,” the client says, giving Moesha a High Five, then she looks at me, and sulks. “Zim. You got some friends, Grace.”
“I knew there was something familiar about you, Grace,” says Moesha, his hands on his hips. “You are Grace Mugabe wena, in hiding from Uncle Bob, and that woman is a Zim Secret Agent sent to find you and bring you home.”
“Moesha, please!” I scold him. “Does Zim even have a Secret Service?”
Raptous laughter fills the salon. I cast a glance across the street again. She is gone. Just like that.
“What the hell!” I exclaim. “Where did she go now?”
“Uncle Bob’s spy,” Moesha hisses. “Poof! Now you see her, now you don’t!”
“Gal, stop or I will shove this hot comb down you throat.”
“Grace, if you really want to find your friend, just go by downtown,” the client says. “Botha and Escombe Streets. These ladies are there until late. Unless the cops chase them away. In any case, they have the memories of chickens. The cops chase them away daily and an hour later they are back on the very same spot. Not even an hour. Five minutes.”
I avoid downtown like it is a quarantined sector. It is always packed, any day of the month, and there is always that likelihood of literally stumbling upon someone from a past you wish to forget and leave buried behind you. But this time around, I have no choice. I need to find this woman and squeeze the truth of why she is stalking me out of her.
The hawking business is huge in downtown Witbank, and because most of the hawkers are illegal immigrants in breach of municipal bylaws, they don’t have stalls. They pound the pavement with their wares in their hands for easier retreat and cowering should cops pounce.
Should you not find what you are looking for in the wares he is carrying, his fellow countryman pounding the pavement on the other side of the street will surely have it. If that too fails, then he will ask you to wait a moment, and he will stride a short distance to either a rubbish bin or the storm water drainage. He will fish out a large carrybag with the rest of his stock – merchandise storage vaults that even cops still know nothing about.
I spot her as soon as I turn out of Escombe Street. Dressed in tight jeans and a cream, sleeveless top, her dark skin glistens with sweat under the unforgiving sun. She has a demonstration bust on one hand and a weave on the other, and targets women passing on the sidewalk with a sales pitch that is more of a nag than anything else to some. She doesn’t seem to notice or care that most women opt to walk off the sidewalk and into the road, just to avoid her and the other traders altogether. The traders own almost every pavement and sidewalk in downtown.
“Nayi le wig oyifunayi, sesi,” she recites her pitch in a tell-tale Zim accent, as she blocks the way of one woman. “And ingakufanela kanjani. Only R350, sesi. This is real Brazilian. Elsewhere, you will pay R3500. Only factory prices la kimi mama.”
“No thank you,” says the woman, visibly annoyed, and tries to brush past her. She blocks her way again.
“At least try it on, ke,” she is so persistent she won’t take a NO for an answer.
“Excuse me,” I say, patting her on the shoulder. She turns around, a big smile on her face. Then the smile vanishes, replaced by appalled recognition. She takes a step back, preparing to bolt again.
“I know where to find you now, so running won’t help,” I tell her. “Who are you? What do you want from me? Why are you stalking me?”
She stares at me, now panting as if she has difficulty breathing. She suddenly seem utterly petrified.
“You really don’t remember?” she asks. “Mashonaland West, Zimbabwe, five years ago?”
“Nice try,” I retort. “I have never been to Zimbabwe. Not even Beit Bridge. Now tell me the truth. Who are-“
“Your life is in danger, Grace!” she cuts in, still panting. Now she looks as if she will break down and cry. Her eyes dart around, unsettled, as if she expects someone dangerous to loom out of the pedestrian traffic.
“What?”
“Nashitsevhe is looking for you.”
“Nashi who? What are you talking about …” I cut myself short, a terrifying realisation hitting home like a ton of bricks. “Nash? Why would Nash be looking for me? How do you even know that poor excuse for a human being? Who are you?”
“You really don’t remember me, do you?” she says, with genuine empathy in her voice. “My name is Abina Moyo. Do you remember the ritual at inyanga Kajengo’s homestead at Kariba Sbhilobhilo, in Mashonaland, five years ago? I was one of the maidens who helped during your cleansing.”
“Cleansing?” I ask, bewildered.
“You had to be cleansed, so you would be as pure as a virgin,” she persists, as if she assumed I understood the basics of what she is talking about. “To remove the souls of any man you have ever slept with.”
I suddenly feel dizzy. I feel her grabbing my arm as I tether on my feet. She sits me down on the pavement. I look up at her.
“I was in Zim?” My brain is still battling to process the abrupt influx of information about so many gaping holes in my past.
“You were in the heart of Mashonaland,” she says, rubbing my shoulder gently. She was still gazing around cautiously. “Grace, something went horribly wrong with that ritual. Nashitsevhe lost everything. He got terribly sick. Over the years he has brought many other girls to Kajengo, in a desperate bid to get his life back, his wealth and influence. It was all in vain. Kajengo kept telling him the same thing. He has to find you and bring you back. Do the ritual all over again. He said you are his key.”
“Me?” I ask, confused. “Just wait. How come you are here? Have you been sent to find me?”
She laughs. “No dear. I fled from that place a year ago. Kajengo wanted to make me his 13th wife.”
“That sick old bastard,” I laugh along with her, the light moment easing the tension. “Anita, what exactly did they do to me there?”
She sighs, and gazes afar. “Do you know what is ‘ukuthwala’?”
I feel my heart sink, and heave a deep breath. “That’s when these greedy bastards make blood sacrifices in order to get stinking rich. Is that what happened to me? I was a blood offering?”
“Not exactly,” she says. “Tell me, when was the last time a man asked you out on a date? Any man. Even a lowly, dirty homeless scum.”
I purse my lips, reminiscing. “About five years ago. Anyway, after the Nash incident, I made a decision to stay as far away from men as possible.”
She snorts knowingly. “Grace, you are a beautiful woman. Men would dig you up from under a Muslim frock. But they stay away from you because … you no longer have … that thing. It was taken away from you that night, and transferred to Nashitsevhe.”
“What? Are you saying I am cursed?”
“I am saying you are a hollowed out shell,” she says. “Everything that makes you a woman, not your breasts and vagina, but your core. Your aura. It is gone. Nashitsevhe has your woman’s aura.”
I chuckle in disbelief. “That’s nonsense.”
“Let me put it this way, and maybe you will understand what has happened to you,” she says, warming up to the subject. “Men would do anything for a woman. They would give you the moon if they could. Kajengo takes your core as a woman, and imparts it into the Nashes of this world. The business deals he keeps scoring? It is not because of his brilliance or unmatched business acumen. The powerful men in those boardrooms just can’t help it but dish out all the contracts to him. So year after year, he brings a beautiful woman to Kajengo, so his aura can be replenished.”
“How many women has he brought in the past, before me I mean?”
“I know of five, at least that’s the number of years I had been at Kajengo’s homestead,” she says. “Grace, he started doing this from a very young age. Early 20’s. I have seen many other men here in Witbank and in Jo’burg, who were regulars at Kajengo’s homestead. Each I see them with young beautiful women, my heart breaks, because after the ritual, the ladies are as good as dead. They become empty vessels, living for the sake of being alive. Like you.”
“Can’t this be broken?” I ask, out of pure desperation than anything else. “Surely, there must be muthi that can reverse -“
“You can’t,” she interjects firmly. “No inyanga or sangoma is as powerful as Kajengo. His spells are iron-clad.”
She is silent, pensive. “Except …”
I look at her, curious. “Except what?”
“There is another way,” she says, but seems reluctant to cough it up. “You have to kill him. You have to kill Nashitsevhe.”
Pause. Even traffic seem to be on mute.
“It shouldn’t be too difficult, because he is no longer as powerful and strong,” she says. “I saw him. He is here in Witbank too …”
PUBLISH'D AFRIKA 