Fight nights: The new normal in our estates

It usually starts in the silence of nightly activities. When we are engrossed in an addictive series on Netflix, or nursing calming thoughts so we can sleep well. Perhaps we have been laughing at a joke on TV. Or unconsciously clenching our butt cheeks because of the unending thrill in a movie.

Suddenly we hear a scream, vague at first, so we ignore it because our minds might be playing tricks on us. Five minutes later, another scream. This one unmistakable, warning us that it was no error, someone is in trouble.

We pause the TV to make sure it isn’t just our imaginations. For sure, we hear insults hurling back and forth, voices loud and dulcet, soprano and alto, performing like a shoddy symphony.

We rush to the window, pulling back our sheer curtains cautiously to peek frantically at the other apartments. All we see are other nosy neighbours, huddled in twos or threes by their windows, also trying to catch a glimpse of the commotion. A few are gesturing the universal “What is happening?” sign with a palm raised high. We shrug our shoulders in response, “I don’t know.”

We don’t have to wait long because we hear a thump, and a loud wail filled with anger and desperation. The man, we assume, yells with frustration. We can make out the words “nagging” and “b***h” in between the shrieks. This could get bad, so we fish out our phones to chat where our windows wouldn’t be barriers. The estate WhatsApp group.

“Hey, anyone heard those screams?”

“Who has a type C charger anisaidie nayo?”

“I hear them too, sounds like it’s coming from block P4…”

“Muwache lovers wapigane, it’s none of our business.”

“*Forwarded as received. Reasons why coronavirus is a scam.*”

By our windows, we all crane our necks towards block P4 and try to make out which floor it could be. Three of the six floors have no lights on, so we assume it must be the other three.

The woman screams out, “Enda na huyo malaya… Takataka!” The man’s voice is muffled, and suddenly we hear a blunt thump, like a heavy box falling on concrete. We also flinch in unison with the sound.

“Woi! Nisaidieni…!” We, the nosy neighbours, look at each other in confusion. Inside our homes, a bedroom door opens and a sleepy occupant sticks a head out to inquire if we can also hear the commotion or are they dreaming. We go back to the WhatsApp group.

“Aki mtu amsaidie, huyo atapigwa hadi akufe!”

“Can the men go knock at their door, or call security?”

“Haki kama ulianua my uniform ya job from the hanging lines…”

“Security wamesema wamechoka na hizi cases. Kesho ni mwili tunaokota.”

“Where are you going with an airline uniform, jamani! Rudisha tu kwa line, please.”

“They should just separate, kwani ndoa ni lazima?”

WITNESS TO A MURDER?

The woman is now voiceless, either dead, blacked out or resigned to defeat. All we hear is the man ranting how he tries very hard, yet everything he does is wrong. We stand motionless like mannequins and listen to him keenly.

“There’s no peace in this house… I’ve been quarantined all week with you and the kids… Never enough… Going through my phone… Kumbaf!” The monologue lasts 10 minutes, with him declaring they are done.

It is such a powerful speech that some of us are tempted to applaud. By now we have confirmed which apartment it is: the one on the second floor that has the couple with adorable twin girls. Spectators retreat one by one behind their curtains.

In our apartment, we stay by the window a little more, taking in the situation and wondering if it really is over or if there will be a second round. We wonder what happened to the woman. Will we have to be witnesses to a murder when morning comes?

It takes us a while to get back into the groove of Netflix, or back into the softness of sleep. Surely, we wonder, how many times must we do this? But the situation is so normalised that an hour later, we have moved on and the nightly atmosphere is restored.

Some inconsiderate person is back to booming music, as if they are the exclusive owners of speakers in the world. A car drives by, and we can hear the soft rumba after a late night in the office for the occupant. Cats snarl and growl and the wind gently howls. Like nothing happened.

In the late weekend morning, we spot the couple from the previous night at the butchery, making small talk. The woman, obviously bruised behind her face mask chats with the husband. Him, a picture of gentleness, responds to her with such tenderness that one would think he wasn’t the one who had pounded her swollen face.

To make the setting even eerier, their twins are playing with each other as they hold onto their parents’ legs. A perfect family, it seems. But this is normal, this is our new normal. We have witnessed more domestic fights in the last few months than we have in a year.

YOUNG AND RESTLESS

Down by the street in the evening, the young come to hang out by the flowerbeds. They have been cooped up in the house, asleep for most of the day because they operate in the night these days.

Bottles of alcohol, which they used to bother hiding once upon a time, are now openly displayed on the pavement. And later, when the cleaners will be sweeping the estate, they will collect tens of glass bottles of vodka, whiskey and other names they can’t pronounce.

These high school and college kids carry pocket-sized speakers and crank out gengetone and grime. 'Mayengs' are raped in these songs, and love, in the form of being made a baby mama, is promised. They chat of road trips once the lockdown is lifted and how much pipe the guys will be laying.

We watch them from our apartments, or as we stroll back from the shops. Face masks hide our contempt and judgment as we pass them and catch a whiff of weed and tobacco. We know the odour well because we also indulge in them privately.

Threats of arrests are no longer made these days, because these are kids whose parents are rich and will buy the police station. At least according to them. A security guy also walks by and casually tells them to vacate the premises by curfew.

They mock him. They offer him some drinks. They threaten him, “Hutatuambia kitu…” Everybody else goes about their business: motorists parking their cars, househelps unhanging clothes, children running around for the last time before they have to go home…

A while later, we hear it again. At first we think it’s their usual banter, but experience has taught us to at least take a peek because it just might be the beginning of another brawl.

A young chap is holding onto the neck of a teenage girl. Their friends look on like they’re watching paint dry. He drags her a few feet from the flower bed as he scolds her loudly. “Hutanichezea. Leo utaniambia!”

“Aki unaniumiza…”

She stumbles as he drags her, drawing the attention of passers-by. He nearly shoves her in front of a moving car, and she is lucky not be hit because the driver was cautious enough to drive slowly. He doesn’t waver and drags her on, fist clenched tightly over the collar of her jacket as she tries to free herself. A few people feign interest as the couple walks.

“Nini unafanya kijana?”

“Achana na mrembo…”

“Ni business yako? Toka hapa!” he spits at them. The girl whines and complains, and he turns around and punches her right in the mouth. She bleeds, dripping little droplets of blood. She doesn’t scream in pain, she simply holds her scarlet mouth and lets him drag her by the neck.

“Hiyo mdomo yako leo itajua!” he tells her, drunk and stoned. By now, a small crowd has gathered around them as they walk, but nobody does anything physical. They only urge the boy to let her go, before breaking off onto another path to go and gossip about it to others. The two enter their apartment building and the crowd disperses in all directions, leaving her to his fist. We retreat to the WhatsApp group:

“Aki, who saw that young man punching that girl pale kwa flowerbeds?”

“You saw that and didn’t do anything kwani?”

“I just asked a question, stupid!”

“I hope alisaidika. If not and she ends up kwa morgue, we’ll be on the news tomorrow.”

“Ati stupid? Mbwa hii, nkt!”

“Where are their parents?”

“And they were drinking and smoking, too… I’ve been telling you people about our children doing drugs, mkasema tunawaonea.”

MOVING ON SWIFTLY

*300 comments later*

 “Do you know who I am?! Foolish guy, you don’t know who you’re messing with!”

“Kuja unichape, niko hapa nje.”

“Aki woiye, let’s focus. This won’t get us anywhere.”

“We should pray for marriages and relationships.”

“Or do you want my house number, tupatane kwa mlango, senji!”

According to his neighbours, the young chap lives with an older sibling. He has no job and spends the day drinking with friends in the house. We are still wondering what happened to them once they vanished into their apartment.

However, we wonder only for a while, because now there is an online quarrel and our attention span is like that of a child. Soon, most of us move on with our problems. What to eat for supper, how to pay rent since it is end month, a house help who wants to go home, that problem at the office…

Two hours into the curfew and a few of us sneak out to do all sorts of things we could have done during the day. Taking out the trash, visiting a neighbour, delivering sold goods and hanging clothes.

We spot the young couple at the hanging lines, beneath the dim glow of a security light. The guy is leaning on the wall suckling on the butt of what we assume can only be weed. The girl is standing before him, arms crossed in seriousness because she’s lecturing him with her inflamed wounded mouth.

“Shida yako ni unakuwanga na hasira haraka”

*puff*

“Sasa uliskia wapi nikisema…”

*inhale*

“Ona vile umeniumiza, ntaenda home aje?”

A few minutes later, they vanish into the darkness together, like lovers in the bloom of adoration. It doesn’t seem like we will be on the news tomorrow.

We return to our homes for another night of normalcy. Dishes are washed as the 9pm news pumps out more stories of dead spouses and lovers all over the country. A husband was burned to death. A wife was chopped to bits. A couple committed suicide.

We scroll through our phones, desensitised to domestic violence jokes and memes. We laugh and share them. Social media comedians make skits and money out of them: A man goes to shower and leaves his phone on the bed. The woman finds it and contemplates going through it. She reaches out for it. The man catches her. The coffin dancers from Ghana appear.

“Kwame!”

“Yes, Boss.”

“Get the coffin…”

*song plays*

We settle in for the night, watching TV or tucked into our beds. We wait for what we know is coming. Another fight, because night-time is the perfectly designated time for violence.

Sure enough, when we’ve let our guards down and think we might make it through the night, it happens. More roaring voices and this time it is Nigerian.

“These Naijas, surely,” we decry online. We will rush to the window and do this what-is-happening dance again. It is normal. We are used to brutality. And nobody will do anything about it.

Even when we wake up to a dead body in the morning, we will cup our chins and lament on the atrocity, and then comfortably return to the normalcy of domestic violence.

Edited by T Jalio