The Cell Phone

The Cell Phone
By Nigel Jack

The first time he saw her, he had visited his barber for a haircut. From the mirror in front of him he could see her without her recognizing she was being watched. He could see her contours and curves clearly like a farmer watching his wheat plantation from a glider. Her features were loud and her smile exuded a lot of confidence. The even pieces of ivory that decorated her full lipped mouth was her other major source of facial beauty besides her cat eyes that blinked slowly and graciously.
His heart screamed like a baby asking for a change of diaper. He could hear it throb like a sub-woofer. The central part of his physical manhood rose in anger. It was that kind of anger which is natural and unstoppable. He was lucky that he was wearing new pair of boxer shots inside, they were still tight and could not allow any misbehavior, otherwise he was going to leave holding low the broadsheet newspaper that he had just bought from the street vendors.
When he got back to his office Samson tried to concentrate on a pile of papers that were on his desk but he failed. His heart was not in the office. The hairdresser had stolen the day. He took out his cell phone and dialed his barber’s number. He could hear the phone ringing but no response. He was cross- it was not easy to connect; almost everybody in the city had a cell phone and airtime was a thousand times more affordable and available than bread.
For a quarter of an hour his phone was giving him automated text messages like, ‘error in connection’, ‘wrong number’ or he could hear a fast computer voice telling him, ‘the number you have dialed is not reachable at the moment, please try again latter.’ When he was almost giving up he got through. But that was not enough; his barber was supposed to answer. Tension grew hairs on his skin and his front teeth sat heavily on his lower lip as he waited impatiently to hear a live voice.
“Hello boss,” Givemore responded. He called all his male clients by that title.
“Ah, Givy,” Samson was not amused, “why do you take time to answer when you know the network is drunk.”
“Sorry boss, the phone was on charge, away from my corner.”
“Ah…” Samson wanted to continue complaining but Givemore injected.
“How can I help you Boss?”
“Okay listen, this is between you and me.”
“What is it boss you know I’m always at your service? I’m your most humble servant indeed. Say a word and it will be done.”
Givemore’s spontaneous responses and willingness to execute a duty he had not yet learnt of, gave Samson little creeps. But his fears were no greater than his passions. Fears could make him freeze for a moment but passions were capable of making him burst forever. He shut his eyes and paused for a moment.
“Givemore,” Samson enunciated.
Givemore had never before heard his name called with such gravity before. It was too solemn for a man of his disposition.
“Yes Boss,” this time his response was not rushed.
“Who is that girl I saw today wearing a yellow top and jeans.”
“Oh, wait Boss; let me move away a bit, just a minute.”
Samson could hear Givemore’s footsteps. He could not wait to hear what he was going to say. His blood was overflowing. There was one thing he was afraid of hearing. He was afraid of hearing that the girl was a wife, a mother or both. He had been in the dating business for long and he had not been lucky. In most of the cases he had been the one to call it quits because of his picky tendencies. He was always looking for the one and to him the one was Miss Right. Most of his dates would fall short on one or two qualities and he would not take that. He was looking for beauties, the outward and inward, he wanted both and there were no exceptions. And now at 27 the search was tense.
“Yes Boss, sorry the bird was just close to me that’s why I had to move away. I’m outside the shop at the moment. We can talk.”
“Tell me, what’s her name?”
“Diana, don’t tell me you don’t know Diana, she has been working with us here at She and He for almost three months now.”
“Then she blossomed rapidly in the three months, is she married?”
“No, ah no Boss, she is very much single. She has one or two male friends but they are not her boyfriends. I talk to her at times; I think she is not bad. Besides, she has the goods- I think you can see that she is loaded, a fertile potato farm ha.”
“No I’m not looking at that, do you have her number.”
“She has two; I’ll page them to you.”
“Great, please try and do it in the next five minutes,” Samson was happy with the information he had just gathered, “told you this is between you and me ha?”
“It’s between you and me Boss.”
That afternoon Samson commenced his betrothing on the phone. It was not that much of a hustle as he had anticipated nor was it a walk in the park, but somewhere in the range of careful talking. He enjoyed every minute that he was on the phone with her; to him it was pure entertainment. It was intriguing talking to someone for the first time on love, neither theorizing nor abbreviating it, but confessing a desire to practice it. What was difficult was trying to capture the passion in words and on the phone where responses could be very liberal.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
This was not an easy question for Samson. Saying he had never been in love would mean there was something wrong with him and he was not lovable. If he would say he had a girlfriend, then he was automatically confessing infidelity. And if he was to tell of a break-up, then the reasons were supposed to be provided.
“We broke up,” Samson said knowing what was to be the follow-up question.
“Why?”
“I discovered she had been cheating on me so I decided to part with her. I’m afraid of the virus; I think you understand that nowadays you need one partner.”
“Did you use to have sex with her?”
“No,” it sounded foolish but there was no much of an option.
“Why?” she was inquisitive.
“Why, why what?” Samson had never heard such a question from a girl before, “I’m not immoral, I’m not the kind of person who sleeps around.”
“Have you ever had sex before?”
Samson felt like the earth was crushing down on him. He had no immediate answer for this question but it was expected from him so he stammered.
In a space of a week the contents of the humiliating first day cell phone conversation was spiked. Samson was on the driver’s seat, moderating the pace at which the affair was moving. He was beginning to wave off illusions to get the true picture. Diana was no special to any other full bodied girl. Her outward beauty was average only that it was enhanced by artificial attachments. She had a good choice on clothes and her light skin had a way of exaggerating her beauty.
In –fact it was very disappointing fro Samson to discover that Diana was shallow in thought. Apart from clothes and hairdressing she knew virtually little. It appeared she had last read a book at high school and the only writing that she could do was on her cell phone. Samson knew the affair was not going to last but he had to hang in it a bit, at least to hold on to something while searching for something better.
Many times Samson would find himself condescending to her level in order to communicate effectively. Little did he know that an understanding of that nature would bring her closer? One day Diana visited Samson at his office, and she perched herself on the desk. That could have been a problem if Sam was sharing an office with someone. The office was all his. He was a buyer for an uncle’s supermarket in the countryside. The supermarket had credit accounts with three network providers in the country and Samson was responsible for managing them. Thus he automatically got involved in the new street phenomenon called BACOSSI.
BACOSSI (Basic Commodities Supply Side Intervention) had been introduced by the illegitimate and beleaguered government of Zimbabwe as practical propaganda to safeguard its rural support base.
In fact it was reported in one weekly paper that, “Rampant inflation which the Reserve Bank this week said clocked 2,2 million% is set to hasten towards the 100 million% mark by year-end following government's launch of the "BACOSSI to the People" Project. The Reserve Bank has splashed millions of United States dollars in its latest quasi-fiscal undertaking, the National Basic Commodities Supply Enhancement Programme in which rural and urban dwellers will receive groceries at heavily subsidized prices.”
So the story read but no urban dweller received BACOSSI. They were called traitors and deserved to die of hunger. Everything went scarce and supermarkets had nothing to show but empty shelves. One business was thriving and it was selling money. Banks turned into halls of informal deals. People like Sam would receive a bank cheque of say 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars and use it to purchase cell phone recharge cards that they would sell for a total of say 5 billion cash money. The cash money could buy them hundred United States dollars, which was an amount worth 40 trillion or 50 trillion the following day on the street market. When selling the United States dollars they needed electronic money transfers and it was usually done by big companies who were in desperate need of the foreign currency. The circle would go on and on until such an individual would have a substantive amount to buy a car, and some other basic commodities. Formal employees were getting it hard, they would receive their salaries through the bank and in most cases it was less than a billion Zimbabwe dollars. This means they had less than 10 American dollars for salary the whole month. This forced members of the police force to defect to street deals and there was confusion. The value for money was lost. The idea of selling goods at a ridiculously low price in order to get cash to exchange for hard currency was called BACOSSI by the streets. The term also meant getting whatever you need for free. It became synonymous to confusion.
Diana had learnt of all this, and she knew Samson was one of the key-holders of BACOSSI. She wanted him to go further. She wanted them to explore each other. She pulled up her skirts but Samson pretended not to have seen, he continued packing trillions of Zimbabwean dollars that he wanted to use to buy hard currency.
“So, how long are we going to continue like this?” Diana asked with anger written all over her face.
“Like what Baby?” Samson responded, and when he did not get an answer within the time he expected he turned his head to look straight into Diana’s eyes. They were shining with tears. His heart melted. He rose from the chair and held her tight in his arms.
“What is it?” he muttered into her ears.
“You told me that you love me,” she said and started sobbing.
“Yea, yea I did, is anything wrong with that?” he quickly let off the tight hug and held her on the shoulders looking her in the face, “Is there anything wrong with that baby?”
“No.”
“So?”
“Then why are you avoiding me?” she asked with her eyes fixed on his chest rather than his eyes or at least his face.
“Avoiding you, what do you mean?”
“I mean exactly that,” she raises her voice a bit.
“Okay, okay calm down. I am not avoiding you; I’m just doing my job. You know this is not a bed-room, besides I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t? Are you not my boy-friend?”
“Yes I am, but I’m not your husband.”
Her phone started ringing. She took it out and answered. The conversation was precise and it was mainly about time.
“Who was that?” Samson asked nonchalantly.
“It’s one of my clients.”
“You told her five o’clock, will you still be in the salon by that time?”
“Sometimes we stay up to seven or eight depending on the hairstyle. Most of our clients go to work so we don’t have an option?”
“How do you go home around that time, I understand in most places the mini-bus operators would have knocked off.”
“My brother picks me up, most of the times”
“And when he doesn’t?”
“I look for my own means.”
“Okay, you said you stay in Borrowdale- I forgot to ask which part of Borrowdale?”
“The Brooke.”
“Wow in those hills, your brother must be filthy rich.”
As usual Samson called her girlfriend soon after supper. This call would last more than two hours. BACOSSI airtime was as affordable as free. What was difficult was to get connected and once connected the conversation about nothing in particular would last.
In the middle of the conversation Samson remembered he had just bought a new line for his other handset. A cell phone line was very expensive and hard to find, so Samson was much exited about it. He wanted to tell his tell his girlfriend then he decided to send her a text message on her other cell phone using it.
“Hi,” was the message.
“Hi, who is this,” she responded.
Samson found the response very funny so he thought of delaying to tell her who he was and decided page a compliment, “I saw you in your salon today and I liked what I saw on you.”
“So what are you doing right now,” Samson asked on the voice conversation.
“I’m preparing my supper,” she responded.
Samson’s phone indicated a received text message and it was from Diana. It read,
“Ah, who is this, who gave you my number?”
Samson smiled and asked on the voice conversation, “Are you watching Television right now.”
“It was written on your mirror,” he responded on the text conversation.
“Hey, please hold on, I need to check my pot,” she said
“Okay, what is it that you saw on me and liked,” read her text on the other phone.
“Your king size hips, your full boobs, brown thighs, healthy hair and your soft hands,” the reply was inviting, just what a girl needed to loosen up.
“My soft hands, who told you they are soft,” the response came shortly.
Samson was starting to get a mixed feeing of anger and excitement. He was angry to discover her girlfriend could still entertain separate and intimate conversations with some other males out there. He was excited to accidentally find himself in a position where he could learn more about her girlfriend without her getting to realize she was being spied on. He had never been in such a position before and he was learning to contain the mood. The opportunity had an effect too subtle to be defined or described by words. It was like ale- when you start drinking it sweetness is distant but one sip leads you to another until the mind gives up the guard of reasoning.
“I saw them.”
“What is it that you saw that told you they are soft?” she was now hooked.
“Hello, hello,” she was back on the voice conversation.
“Yea, I can hear you,” he answered while busy typing something on the other phone.
“I saw them applying a chemical to a client’s hair, it was painful to watch,” is what he wrote and send.
“What was painful about that?”
“I wished that was me, being given those strokes on my back while leaning back on the hot boobs,” he explained without any misgivings, the platform called for that, besides his heart was starting to run out of moral reservations.
“Hey baby, how much I wish you were here with me,” he said on the voice conversation while waiting for a text message from Diana, “I miss you so much during the nights that at times I feel like coming over there, just to hold you and hear you breathe. Do you feel the same?”
“You’re so funny, do you have a girlfriend?” is what he read from the other phone.
“Of-course I do, you know I love you so much,” her voice was shaking so she didn’t have to say much.
“Not a serious one,” Samson responded to the hot question on the text conversation.
“I’m not surprised, so what do you want from me,” was the response.
“What about you. Do you have a boyfriend?” it was time to fire back
“Not a serious one,” what goes around comes around was the inspiration behind the response.
A lot of sweet nothings were being muttered as the couple kept their fingers busy with typing secret questions and answers. Both their voices had lost natural flairs. But that wasn’t that important to them, the other conversation was.
“Perfect- do you go clubbing?”
“Not that much, my boyfriend doesn’t like it. I only go when he is out of town.”
“Who do you go with?”
“Friends.”
“Can I come pick you up today?”
“Not that fast brother”
“Why not, after-all it’s just clubbing, nothing else. Can I come?”
“Hey Sam,” Diana said on the voice conversation, “I can’t continue talking to you right now. I need to sleep, last night I slept late doing my sister’s hair. I’m sorry darling, I’ll call you tomorrow morning or I’ll come to your office. Goodnight.”
“Its okay baby, dream about me. Goodnight.”
On the other phone the conversation was still on.
“That is if it’s okay for you.”
“What’s your address then?”
“Come to Warren Park One shops and call me when you get there. Our house is adjacent to the shops. What time do you think you can be there?”
“In 30 minutes, I’ll be there.”
“Okay.”
Samson switched off his new phone and slept.

Thinking Aloud
Nigel Jack

We used to play hop-scotch (pada) in our backyard watching the sun steal away where the earth ends. Our noises would sink into the early evening breeze like the lovely voice of cheese in our little mouths. Girls tugged their size one skirts in their innocent under-wears as they hopped with spread legs on the boxes marked on the ground. Their whole front look was almost as plain as ours just that their pretty faces used to keep us on the edge of our juvenile curiosity and the ribbons on their young hair would radiate our semi-ignorant hearts. We were never love-slaves, just passive artists.
Even when mothers and maids announced, time to bath from the window, parting was usually as painful as the pockets of urine stench that the bottoms of our counterparts puffed into silent air. Parting at first call was unheard of. To us parting was meant to come naturally like the movement of stock birds in summer. There was an indulgent perception boldly endorsed on the canvas of our minds that life was the present. Our prospects were limited to the indicators of what was to us given. Our desires never instigated blueprints but regrettable mischief. Some of them were not even regrettable, just forgettable, like being caught learning to mate while standing under the cover of long linen on the wash line.
We were raised by the best. We grew up feeling we were the first; we recognised but never acknowledged the prowess of the rest. It was always like we were hosts and others were guests. Our parents were everything even though they had nothing. The good thing is that we never realised then that they were the small fry. And how could we have realised when all we needed was a morsel of Sadza served with a substantive amount of relish. That would allow us to play hide and seek under moonlight or positively solve primary school arithmetic lying on cold cement floor. Our homework books were inspected before retiring to bed. We used to take sleep for granted so we could dream dreaming and wake up with swollen eyes covered in wax. In the morning our minds were very expeditious, we could dream thinking or think dreaming, the difference was the same.
Here I am today and It is so amazing that it is in this same life that I was once a pint sized being sitting cross-legged on rural red soil watching with profound awe, Gwenyambira’s dreadlocked grey hair shake rhythmically to the sharp sound from his deze while humming deep tunes of remote yesteryears from the aged walls of his smoke smeared throat. His pauses were only a result of an unquenchable craving for bute, the fine powdered tobacco that smelt of the past and uncompromised nativity. He would pull out his gonan’ombe from somewhere in his ragged outfit and deftly tap it against his left palm like it was a salt-shaker. Wearing a dare-devil face, he would close the small mouth of the portable wooden container with a chicken further and return it to its place before dexterously squeezing the powder with the tips of his fingers. The usual next thing was to use a whirlwind from his dusty nostrils to haul the powder down into his lungs. Sneezing was not an option. He would continue to play sitting under the eaves of my grandmother’s round kitchen while leaning on the rough mud poll wall. Sometimes in the evenings while at the stock pen, tying notorious bulls to corner poles, I used to hear his voice racing with the smoke smelling wind. The metallic chipping of his self-made instrument and the sea-deep humming from his raspy voice used to make my mind spread like the sky into thoughts too way out of range. I would lose myself into a plethora of sharp toothed imaginations. Facts turned into opinions and opinions into discoveries. From the supporting poles where I usually found myself clumsily perched, clad in my extremely and imperatively casual outfit- wild thought would catch with me spontaneously like breathing. I wanted to know what life was all about. The routine was too redundant and absurd for me. Surely it couldn’t be all about waking up to a dish of hot porridge hearing cattle mooing, birds chipping, cooing and hooting, watching dew melt away from green blades of healthy grass while appreciating the scent of a youthful morning as her skirts were being gently pulls up by the sun. I supposed it was not only about the senses; there must have been something more to it, something too hidden to be found in a hurry. I wanted to know if I was immune to death. Just the thought of death brought an immediate and imminent sadness that left me tired and hopeless. I did not want to die much as I did not want to think about the possibility of me dying. The funniest thing I did not possess any such suggestive handsome fortunes nor had I any emotional synergies as can be built by titular cleavage like Mr. or Sir, the mistake that I had for a reason was having started living. I was too addicted to life and I could blame it on the parties that were involved in the irreversible event of making me. Now the forgettable event had turned into a complex process that I could lose sleep upon thinking of losing it. What used to baffle me even now is the uncertainty of returning it. I want a voice from the unseen to assure me of the unseen. I am coward for life.
Now I’m a full man and I realised that in life there are some things that the human mind chooses to ignore at least to attain solace even when it is for just but a while. There also things that the mind chooses to keep in oblivion but each time they reoccur, especially death, there rises a corroding anxiety deep within. News of death is a tip of an iceberg; - it causes the mind to once again reflect on a larger picture called life. The pain of such undesirable but inevitable assimilation in the fabric of the grey cells is indescribable and horrific. Perhaps religion regulates the magnitude of the fear.
I’ve heard and read about the Arabic Jihad and wondered how one can be tutored and seasoned in the doctrines of sheer value to believe one could murder oneself and members of other races through suicidal bombing and still instil in oneself hope for an attainment of blissful full life beyond death. It’s unfortunate such ones never get to realise that those who recruit them stay behind to live full lives and die natural deaths. Its shocking how one is made to spend years and years in tertiary education institutions to master the most challenging of disciplines- for example aviation- so that such a one would graduate by stirring a plane into a building. All the distilled litres of knowledge acquired would at once crush and burn together with hundreds of victims.
But this is not a Jihad.
The truth is that I’m peeping outside my window to see how a dying dog speeds. He is the biggest dog in this yard but that doesn’t count anymore. He ran in front of a speeding car and got his front leg broken. Since then he has never found joy, he receives the best of meals but the appetite is gone. Now he stays under the dark shadow of a big Acacia tree from morning to evening, from dusk to dawn patiently awaiting the touch of death. He can hardly move out of this yard, and even in this yard he seldom moves away from that point, he is a pity but I can’t help it.
It’s giving me a lot of strange pains watching his ribs move up and down in motions too frequent for comfort while he groans from a closed mouth, eyes cold with despair. I can see he misses the good old days much as he wishes this cup to pass. And now I regret being a spectator because that makes me involved. I don’t want the dog to die but I think its best that the dog dies. If he dies there will be no unnecessary investing of emotions and there will be no sounds of death. Just the smell of death will linger for an instant. Eagles with white necks are already celebrating in the sky above the dog as if they are vultures, maybe they are just enjoying the liberty that the dog doesn’t have and will never have.
Ah no. Wait a minute. The dog is now looking at me with eyes red with anguish. His piercing pair is virtually starved of shame. He is slowly raising his head and the younger dogs are once again running away. Terror has risen. He could be an ancestor by now or maybe he is a living ancestor, alive but dead. Ancestors don’t have a heart, they are insensitive to mortal matters and so is the old dog. His barking is now deafening but I see no intruder.
Everything here is confusing, a thousand bleak hours for a moment of bliss that tarries. Most times one has to bear the burden of creating just that moment which is just a negligible fraction of happiness for happiness in its full measure is virtually unattainable and the furthest one can go in pursuing it is to feign it. The problem is when feigned happiness is sin. Most times we pretend we don’t mind the dog stays in the yard but we keep indoors and look for something soft to slowly munch on while waiting to hear the airwaves go sane with silence again. All we want is to forget our woes.
A woman can do the magic. One evening I described her using musical instruments as if she was a piece by an orchestra. She smiled with her eyes fixed on the floor like she was a dub-poet trying to remember a lost line. I told her that her hair was a new violin that I played from a heartbeat, that her lips were a flute that drowned me with a fine sound. I told her that her breast was a piano that I could play the whole night without losing my fingers. Her buttocks were drums that I could bit whenever I got bored or tired of other instruments and her middle was a saxophone that has a noble sound but needed to be played with all carefulness and fulfilling passion. I told her she was a delicacy. She was a mature wine that could only be served to the king on special banquets. I told her she was an addictive drug that I could hardly live without. She lifted her head, silenced my mouth with her point finger, held my cheeks on both palms and reached for a deep, full and lengthy kiss that left both of us trembling and weak. Her irises were looking a bit averted like she had slept the whole night on a bowl of highly intoxicating grapes. Her features had instantly blossomed and the guard of reasoning seemed nullified. I had a feeling my chastity was in danger and my principles had been brought to a test but I would be glad to fail. I had not vowed to practise a life of celibacy but I just wasn’t sure of wearing a completely new feeling. I could see she wasn’t sure too, but a look into each other’s eyes send us ripping off each other’s apparels. We found ourselves working by instinct. Sooner than anticipated we were playing deep tunes without having gone through a rehearsal. We wanted to sing more but the tune was too new; so we quickly retreated to the comfort zone- where notes do not injure the throat. We could still sing some other day and perhaps try high codes.
We were not in a hurry. We were happy. As happy as watching a handsome blind man who is singing about love and the beauty of beauty, amazingly painting the mysterious emotion in colourful colours that he has never seen. His eyes of lesser blink wide open to the world and the world can see the hinges of his heart. After the last elastic note that tears through his humble lips, he smiles to the audience already immersed in tears and they wish he could see how much they appreciate him. They ecstatically scream his name that he gasps; he wishes- more than before, he had eyes. He then clutches his trembling mouth with both hands and contributes a loud cry into the noises. The other contestants in the singing competition are crying too- their hearts have been nabbed by the air. If the competition is to be made to continue nobody will pay attention, everyone is fighting tears and hoping to recover a stolen heart. The mind too is paralysed. After the show people are sleep-walking home.
At home, the wounded dog is hurting. He has gathered all the bones to himself and he is playing it hard on others. He can’t stand watching them gnaw at liberty. Now, they have to struggle to put something in their stomachs. Its not that they are afraid to put up a fight but it’s against their nature to fight and old unrepentant dog that is already knocking on hell’s door, it’s cowardly. Whenever an opportunity presents itself they steal away from the yard to scout for food from neighbors or afar off in the woods fraught of many dangers. For a while they feel good far away from the madding dog but safety is not guaranteed. Those that remain behind see no good times. With the passing of every hour they get leaner and leaner while watching the old dog is waxing fat and growing oily furs. It’s unfair.
When the gate is opened, the old dog is standing right in the middle of the drive-way barking at the on-coming car. He is now the stupidest dog in the yard, it could that old age is playing foul on him. Others are down the drive-way watching the proceedings with eyes weak with hunger. They just don’t care what happens.
“What’s up with this dog?” my cousin is worried.
“What about him?” my uncle who is on the driver’s seat responds with a question.
“He is ailing but he can’t stay away from trouble,” the remark is too general.
“He misses good old days I think- it’s a pity he can’t realize how old he is,” he shakes his head and he adds, “Its not his fault dogs don’t think- they do everything by instinct. Instinct tells them yesterday is today and tomorrow.”Slowly the car is driven in avoiding to run over the stupid old rabid dog. His barking is deafening and irritating. But he never used to be like this when he was young. He was adorable and his mouth was void of vain trumpery. Whenever he barked everyone would pay attention and check the yard. He could get along well with other dogs and could share with others. He was selfless and teachable. But now he is bigheaded and very selfish. Everybody hates him.