Memoirs

Chapter 1

Joram Gabriel.

That was the name he gave to those who insisted on one.

His official ID carried three more names stitched onto the end—long, tribal names louder than the man himself ever cared to be.

Spoken aloud in the right circles, a name could trace a person clean through generations, binding him to soil and blood he barely understood.

Where he came from, a name was not decoration. It was a vice.

The village was carved from red earth and dust. The roads stained your feet that same stubborn rust no matter how hard you scrubbed. The air always carried something—woodsmoke at dusk, the metallic promise of rain, goats murmuring into the morning like old men with secrets.

The people were warm. Disarmingly so. A stranger never remained one for long. Before you could introduce yourself, a broad-smiling woman would press a glass of water into your palm. Another would insist you sit, eat, stay—waving off gratitude as though generosity required no acknowledgment.

And yet.

Beneath that easy kindness, the old traditions stood immovable. Like ancient trees with roots knotted deep beneath the soil.

Lineage mattered.

A man did not enter the world alone; he arrived carrying names, stories, debts. Sometimes pride. Sometimes something heavier. He could be bound to the sins of generations long gone, made a shareholder in a legacy of shame—bearing a weight he never chose and could never repay.

Out here in Nairobi, “Joram Gabriel” was the perfect camouflage.

Short. Tidy. Easily forgotten. A name light enough to slip through cracks, leaving behind the weight of history he had no desire to carry.

Joram Gabriel was not looking for anything at all.

He didn’t want to be special. He wanted a life that ran with mechanical precision. All he asked was to do his job and go home—to be a functional, silent gear in the enormous, indifferent machinery of the city’s civil service.

In the city, that wasn’t hard.

There were scores more like him, unknown faces handling the quiet, repetitive tasks that kept the city running. Paperwork filed. Systems updated. Forms stamped.

If anyone cared to ask, most city residents didn’t know his department even existed—and he preferred it that way.

Did not understand the obsession with being seen—perhaps in another life he might have indulged it himself. Instead, he preferred to blur at the edges, to move through life without anyone lingering on him for too long.

He preferred the edges. The quiet. The back row. A spectator to his own life. He had carved himself a space where nothing touched him too deeply.

His clothes were precise. Shirts pressed. Shoes polished. Every movement deliberate. Even his smile was measured, the kind people barely noticed.

The man existed in the rhythm of routine. Desk. Meal. Bed. Repeat. And he liked it that way.

Remaining unseen felt like the closest thing to safety he could reasonably hope for.

Then the journal arrived—an uninvited guest in his carefully ordered world.

He didn’t know it yet, but the moment he picked it up, his quiet life began its slow, inevitable slide toward an implosion he couldn’t name, let alone stop.

The leather-bound book was heavier than it looked, as if it carried more than paper between its covers.

This tumble into what would soon be an epic upheaval in his life had started a week or two earlier, with a decision that surprised even him.

It was just random Tuesday, but something inside him refused to stay still. He couldn’t have explained it if anyone asked.

It was as if the air itself had shifted, a fault line beneath his world giving way, tilting everything off axis and pulling him along a path he hadn’t noticed, each step at once terrifying and unavoidable.

He walked out of his office without a plan—not for a meeting, not an errand, not even for air, though that’s what he told himself. He simply stood, picked up nothing—not his keys, not his phone not even a destination—and walked out.

His walk through town had been aimless, a drift without direction, until he spotted the Inama Bookshop—less a shop than a pile of books stacked on a street corner, one of those tucked-away Nairobi StreetSide spots that somehow still survived in a city that never slowed down.

An Inama bookshop is a chaotic treasure trove for second hand books, where anything could turn up: a rare first edition, a dusty classic, or a self-published account of an old lady’s twelve cats and their improbable exploits.

Inama bookshop. The name made him smirk faintly—aptly named, tongue firmly in cheek—because to choose a book, you had to bend over - Inama. Stoop, scan, squint at faded spines, pretend you weren’t judging a book by its cover while absolutely judging it by its cover.

He ran his hands over the books, selecting at random. Or not entirely at random. Some caught his eye. Some felt like curiosities. Some felt heavy.

For someone allergic to disruption, it was a strangely reckless act. Small, yes. But small things, he would soon learn, have a talent for tipping entire lives.

The vendor watched him. Big, clouded eyes, teeth caught in a knowing grin.

“Careful, Mzee,” he rasped, voice hoarse from years of shouting over street noise. “Sometimes we pick the book, and sometimes the book has been waiting for us.”

Joram stiffened.

Mzee.

He nodded once and turned back, selecting a book, then another, his movements careful, almost mechanical. The irritation at the name burned sharper than it should have.

He told himself it was about age—he wasn’t that old, after all.

But it wasn’t. It was the ease with which a stranger had named him, had seen him, and slotted him into a place he had never agreed to occupy.

He filled the carton haphazardly, almost defiantly. Books stacked without order.

He had no real intention of reading them, of after all, he just wanted his office shelves to look respectable. Mature.

Like the workspace of a man who possessed knowledge instead of just proximity to it.

The vendor hurriedly scooped the pile of books into the carton with the urgency of a trader trying to close a deal before the buyer regained clarity.

There was a quiet panic to it—as if Joram might suddenly blink and remember who he was.

He needn’t have worried.

Joram, oddly pleased with himself, paid full price without haggling—a cardinal sin in Nairobi, then lugged the carton back toward his office,

In the corner of his office, he abandoned the box.

There was no urgency.

The books were not going anywhere.

And neither was he.

But something had shifted.

Something had moved in the careful architecture of his life.

When he finally looked, he would know: it had found him first.