We came to a small wooden house where a tall, handsome woman was sweeping the yard. Behind her, a young shirtless man sat on the porch. The woman shaded her eyes with her forearm and began to wave, and the young man slowly turned our way. Roy went up to shake hands with the woman, whose name was Salina, and the young man stood up to greet us.
“Eh, you people finally came for me,” Abo said, hugging each of us in turn. He reached for his shirt. “I had heard you were coming with Barry so long ago!”
“Yah, you know how it is,” Roy said. “It took us a while to get organized.”
“I’m just glad you came. I’m telling you, I need to get back to Nairobi.”
“You don’t like it here, eh?”
“It’s so boring, man, you would not believe it. No TV. No clubs. These people in the country, I think they are slow. If
Billy hadn’t shown up, I would have gone crazy for sure..."
Abo waved his hand vaguely, then turned to me and smiled. “So, Barry. What have you brought me from America?”
I reached into my bag and pulled out one of the portable cassette players that I had bought for him and Bernard. He turned it over in his hands with a thinly disguised look of disappointment.
“This brand is not a Sony, is it?” he said. Then, looking up, he quickly recovered himself and slapped me on the back.
“That’s okay, Barry. Thank you! Thank you.”
I nodded at him, trying not to get angry. He was standing beside Bernard and their resemblance was striking: the same height, the same slender frame, the same smooth, even features. Just shave off Abo’s mustache, I thought to myself, and they could almost Pass as twins. Except for…what? The look in Abo’s eyes. That was it. Not just the telltale redness of some sort of high but something deeper, something that reminded me of young men back in Chicago. An element of guardedness, perhaps, and calculation. The look of someone who realizes early in life that he has been wronged.
See how that works? Abo's an ungrateful half-brother (and O is cheap), but he's been "wronged." Abo can assault a 13-year-old girl in Britain, but he can attend the US inauguration because he's been "wronged." By whom has he been wronged? Why the racist, colonialist white man, of course.
“By whom has he been wronged? Why the racist, colonialist white man, of course”
Yeah, while the little bigot racist craves his “Sony” crap.
The whole thing is back to front.