A place for today

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A place for today
Fakhta, translated from Dari by Parwana Fayyaz
Spring 2024, Nairobi, Kenya

About noon, we finally make it out of the airport. We enter the territory of Nairobi, my husband and I each lugging a pair of suitcases. We can hardly understand a word being said around us, but we manage to stop a taxi driver and show him the address the tour company has given us.

As we pull out into the road, the driver turns up his music. From speakers embedded behind each front seat, music fills the back of the car. The song has a beautiful rhythm and I enjoy it very much, without understanding the words. I wonder if the song is sung in Swahili; I know enough words in English to know it isn’t in English.

When I look out of the window, the thing that strikes me first is how green Kenya is. My own country is mountainous, and even in Iran I never saw anything like this. I noticed that if there were a few trees or a patch of grass in Iran, people would call it a park and go there with great enthusiasm. I find the greenery of Kenya exciting. We drive around the city, eventually leaving the asphalt for rutted roads towards our destination. Muddy water has collected on the roads but the sky is a bright clear blue.

When the car stops, I know we have arrived. We have already converted some money into Kenyan currency, but can’t figure out which notes to give the driver. Luckily, he is a kind person, and guides us until we get it right.

Inside, we explain that the tour company has rented us a room here for one day and one night. They hand us our key with a smile and show us to our room. Only after a little rest, do we realise how hungry we both are. We get ourselves ready to face the challenge of the supermarket. Once outside, we realise we have come to an area where other people don’t speak much English either. We recognise some ingredients, like beans, rice and macaroni. But for these we would need a stove, a pot and cooking gas, none of which we have. There are some prepared foods like noodles but my husband is Muslim and he isn’t sure if they are halal or not. The safe option seems to be bread and yoghurt.

In Iran, we had heard of another Afghan family who had moved to Kenya before us and we got in touch with them before we flew. This evening we meet up and they take us house-hunting in a different area. I pay close attention to our friend’s words so I will know what to say if we have to carry on searching by ourselves.

By now the sun has set. After two or three hours of house-hunting, we are able to rent a ‘bedsitter’ for a month. I am uneasy about everything. I don’t know how to ask the simplest questions: how to activate water or electricity or internet in our room. But it turns out that the owner is a very kind man. He explains everything to me a few times, in very slow and clear English.

As soon as we sign the lease, our friend returns to his own home. My husband and I go to the closest supermarket and buy ourselves more yoghurt and bread. We walk back to our room, knowing we have a place for tomorrow.

‘A place for today’ © Fakhta 2024; Translation © Parwana Fayyaz 2024

Extract read by Amanda Vilanova

Fakhta

Fakhta is a contributor to My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird (MacLehose Press, 2021), Rising After the Fall (Scholastic, 2023) and My Dear Kabul (Coronet 2024).

Parwana Fayyaz

Parwana Fayyaz is a scholar and teacher of Persian literature at the University of Cambridge.