Red on red
If you look at Nayna's portrait, three things catch your eye before the face: the black leather biker jacket, the crown of red flowers, and the bandana. Of the three, the bandana is the only one with a proper name behind it.
Wanjiku. Nayna's grandmother. She sold chai and mandazi from a tin-and-wood stall next to Syokimau station, on the southern outskirts of Nairobi, every morning from four thirty. The stall smelled of cardamom, boiled milk, and road dust. Nayna went there after school. Wanjiku taught her two things: how to tie a bandana at your neck — "for the dust and so they know you work" — and not to speak if you had nothing to say.
She died on a Tuesday in August, at 74, while preparing the first chai of the day. Heart attack. Nayna arrived twenty minutes later. The first thing she did was close the stall. The second was take the bandana from around her neck. Red with black dots, cotton washed many times, with that feel that clothes have when they've passed through more hands and more dawns than you.
