2008, Naalya. There was this guy, Otim. Half Western Ugandan, half Rwandese, which, if you know anything about either side of that equation, meant God had essentially handed this man two full tanks of charisma.
Otim was a hunk. And I say this as a fellow man who does not casually hand out compliments. But facts are facts, and Otim’s face turned heads.
He was good with words. This chap could talk his way through anything. I genuinely believe that if you dropped Otim at the Strait of Hormuz with nothing but his mouth, he would have both sides sharing a cold Nile Special within the hour, without a single bullet fired. He carried happiness around like other people carry body odour.
Of course, he was not exactly a saint. He lied. Here and there. Small lies mostly, the kind young men tell when they want girls to think their fathers own buildings. He lied about family wealth. He lied about age. He lied about things that frankly did not need lying about, but Otim lied anyway, because the truth, to him, was merely a first draft.
And that sweet tongue of his, Lord. It got him into the pants of so many girls around the neighbourhood that the man had a marking in practically every street. That boy was the hoe of Naalya.
Fast forward to 2012. University. I was freelancing for Daily Monitor, contributing feature stories, mostly campus stuff, the kind of writing that felt important at twenty-two and embarrassing at thirty-five. But it paid. It fueled the Vitz. It kept the Kikoni Chicken flowing. Life was functional. I was writing Hyena escapades for Red Pepper, too.
One evening a colleague asked me to cover in for the Saturday print. I showed up at the newsroom around 8 a.m., still carrying the previous night in my eyes, and was handed a story to put together. A jilted lover. A woman stabbed multiple times in the chest. In front of her parents’ gate. A mother of two. I sat there for a moment and did what journalists are trained not to do, which is feel things. Why would someone do that? What kind of darkness gets into a person and turns love into a knife?
With the story patched, a photo or two was required to put the package in and make it whole. My colleague, knowing I had a creative background, laboured to curate some photos to work with. Many of which were blurry, like Arsenal’s hope of a quadruple. Our ‘killer’ was not a common figure, in fact, he is described largely as an introvert by people we interviewed.
There was, however, one photo, just the bust of a man, slightly clearer than the rest. Professional enough to run. I picked it up and held it to my face. The person looked familiar. A little too familiar. I held it closer. My brain, still loading, began cross-referencing. Naalya. 2008. Happiness walking around on two legs. Every street, a marking. It was Otim and our first encounter would be to narrate the story in which he isn’t a charmer but a murderer.