Her confession.

She had soaked it all in, but by one look on her face I knew that she was keeping something from me. I never tried asking but I looked at her in a manner to suggest that she had better start talking or else I will just have to extract the information from her using my own ‘tennee’ means.

Marlene is her name, my best friend in campus. It was the wee hours of the day when we were having our chit-chat after lectures when she finally confided in me.

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She loved to watch him. She loved to get lost in the very few, but deep, aging lines in his forehead, imagining the struggles he has had in his life, and recognizing how beautifully they had shaped a boy into this man that stood before her. She loved hearing his voice, like a Ethiopian song to an Kenyan audience; they didn’t speak the language, but had hopes for the day when they might understand the meaning of those so elegantly grouped together words, in a tone that confirms its mastery of the language. A tone that humors you as you try to keep up, in a non-degrading way. His lips would quiver in a very secretive manner when he made a joke and none of us could process it fast enough to share the childish giggle with him. Even Marlene herself.

When she got lost in her head, walking through all of the possible encounters with him on the campus corridors she had yet the invitation to enjoy, he would often catch her off guard with a question she had no answer to. She would then just gaze blankly at him. Besides what could she possibly have in her feeble conformed mind that would be of any entertainment to him? He looked sharp and a mastery of all trades in a manner only Marlene could describe even though my vantage point was totally different from hers. That’s what she feared, she knew none of her daydreaming would get her any closer to being able to have a one-on-one conversation with him. She knew that he was far to busy living his life to spare the time to impact hers in a more  direct way. She did not wish to be the lady he came home to, that she imagined would nag him for problems so miniscule. Nor did she want to take him away from his own world. She simply wanted to talk with him, get to know more about him, let him know her.

He was beautifully broken, yet so held together. He was ugly in the most attractive way. That was my friends description. Physically he was not much to look at, his body held his thinning head about six feet and 2 inches off of the ground, in the middle there was a slight belly that suggested he didn’t do much on weekends. His  torso with a simple T-shirt. His face was normal, nothing misproportioned, nothing too stunning, except his eyes. His eyes were the most excruciating mind dazzling subject she had come across. The windows to his mind, and much like his mind, they were confident. They had the effect of a light to a moth, a light that once inside you shines so brightly it’s hard to fathom its presence.

Every word that came so ghost-like out of his mouth was treated like the word of God by her. And that’s precisely what he was to her, a god of sorts, an answer her questioning the importance of knowledge. He was her very own faith, taking shape. And it was the shape of a twenty-three year old man standing at the front of a half-filled classroom pouring his genius into tiny heads like Marlenes’.They looked in a metaphoric way, like rags already soaked in sticky fluid, trying to soak up the rest of a spill. They tried, and tried, week after week, to wring out all of the old knowledge so that they would have room for his much more significant teachings. And that’s where she is left every Tuesday afternoon, talking about the mystery man after lectures.

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I liked to pick on her but this day I couldn’t. It was all in her eyes. She knew I would not judge  or question her faith because I was her friend. Marlene didn’t look up the whole time. But that was normal for her. We were all silent for some time, then we burst out laughing.

She knew my answer…..