The Man Who 'Preyed'

I wrote this story about a year ago - it is loosely based on a true story related to me by a close friend. I am now publishing it  today with her permission.

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The grownups at the table were in deep conversation about things that *Toral didn’t understand. They had been sitting in the garden restaurant for hours and Toral was bored. She watched enviously as the other children chased each other and played in the grass. If only she wasn’t so shy, she would have been having as much fun as they seemed to be.

After what felt like an eternity, Toral’s mother turned to her and said they were leaving. Relieved and eager to get home and finish the Enid Blyton book she had been reading, Toral followed her parents to the car. As they pulled out onto the street, she looked out the window and began to daydream as her parents chatted away.

Toral’s attention snapped back to the conversation in the car as she realized her father had raised his voice and her mother had grown quiet. He was saying to her mother that she wasn’t supportive and that he was just doing what he needed to do for his family. Toral’s heart pounded as she watched the side of her mother’s face from the backseat, praying that she wouldn’t start to cry. Her father so often would speak to her mother so harshly that she would end up in tears, making Toral feel awful for her. She turned to look out of the window as Toral’s father continued to rant. Toral felt a lump in her throat and the tears welled up in her own eyes.

A few minutes later, Toral’s father steered the car into the parking lot of an unfamiliar compound and parked the car in front of an old building. They were evidently not going home just yet. Her mother turned around to look at her and said, ‘Daddy needs to see someone here. Then we’ll go home’. Toral reluctantly got out of the car and followed her parents into the stuffy building. As they walked up two flights of dimly lit stairs, she tugged on her mother’s skirt and asked, ‘Why are we here? I want to go home’. Toral’s mother looked down at her and sighed, but said nothing. Her father led them down a hallway and into a room that looked like a scantily furnished office. The paint on the walls was peeling and the room smelt musty. A greasy haired, dark skinned Indian man sat behind a desk at the far end of the room. He had a round red spot on his forehead. As he stood up to greet Toral’s father, she noticed that he was wearing what looked like an oversized dull brown shirt over a white sarong and sandals on his feet. He spoke rapidly to her father in an Indian dialect that Toral did not understand. He turned to Toral’s mother and said something to her to which she responded by nodding politely, although she did not smile. Then he turned to Toral and smiled, displaying a set of very yellow teeth with dark stains on them. Toral cowered behind her mother. She did not like the way this man looked at her with his dark, beady eyes. Toral’s father put his arm reassuringly around her shoulders and said, ‘He is going to pray for our family.’ Toral didn’t understand why they needed this strange man to pray for them when they were surely capable of praying for themselves, but she did not dare question her father.

The man pulled up two chairs beside his desk for Toral’s parents to sit down, facing each other. She stood beside her mother as the man and her father spoke to each other. She watched as the man walked over to where her father sat, closed his eyes and began to chant in this language that Toral didn’t comprehend. He then placed his hand on her father’s head as he continued to chant, and then on each of her father’s shoulders. The man had his eyes shut the entire time, almost seeming as though he was in a trance. Toral’s father kept his head respectfully lowered as this ritual continued. A few minutes later, the man opened his eyes, turned and walked over to Toral’s mother. Before he began his chanting he looked piercingly at Toral and she immediately moved away from her mother’s chair to the middle of the room. The man proceeded with the same ritual, placing his hand on Toral’s mother’s head and then on each shoulder, all the while chanting with his eyes shut and his head tilted back slightly.

Toral knew she was next and she was dreading it, but she didn’t see that she had any choice. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the man turned around and walked towards her. He stood in front of her, quite a bit taller than her – as most adults were. She could smell the nauseating mixture of betel leaf, tobacco and sweat as he breathed heavily. From the corner of her eye, she could see her mother sitting in front of her, to her left. She couldn’t see her father as the man was obstructing her view, but it felt somewhat comforting that she could see her mother.

The man began to chant. Toral kept her head lowered as the last thing she wanted was for her eyes to meet his again. Before long, she felt his hand on her head. A couple of minutes later, his hand had moved to her right shoulder. ‘Only a few more minutes,’ she said to herself, trying not to cringe as his hand brushed past her hair and settled on her left shoulder. But his hand seemed to be slipping. In complete horror, Toral felt the man’s hand slide down her shoulder, towards the middle of her chest. Before she knew what was happening, he had slipped his hand into the neck of her dress.

Toral’s feet were glued to the ground. She felt paralyzed. She wanted to push the man away, to punch him with her little fists, but she had been raised to respect all adults – especially those whom her parents, especially her scary father, expected her to respect. Gripped with intense panic, she looked at her mother, her eyes imploring for help. She was certain that her mother hadn’t been watching as she would have already jumped to Toral’s rescue. But she was wrong. Toral’s mother’s eyes were already on her - a look that couldn’t be explained. The second Toral’s gaze met hers, her mother hastily looked down at the floor in front of her. 

Complete disbelief. Shock. Helplessness. Fear. Betrayal. All kinds of emotions ran through Toral as this terrible man continued to molest her within a few feet from the two people who brought her into this world, whose job it was to protect her as a child when she was unable to protect herself. The tears streamed down the twelve year old girl’s face as she looked at her mother, silently begging her to look at her again. Toral needed her mother to see that she needed her to help her child. But she just sat there. And did nothing. Nothing.

 

*Name has been changed to protect identity

Mama

I stepped outside and took a long, deep breath as I shut my eyes, feeling the cool breeze against my face. I had just walked out of a business meeting at this beautiful golf and country club located on the outskirts of Nairobi. The grounds were spectacular and the air was crisp and clean. It was too bad that I had to go back to the office before I could wrap up for the day.

As I got into my car and pulled out of the parking spot, I decided that I would come back on a weekend – and perhaps bring my dear mother along for one of our mother-daughter dates. My mother, whilst struggling with her own health problems as she aged, cared for my disabled father and didn’t get out of the house much. Occasionally, when my father would join his fellow senior citizens for a community-organized outing, I could steal my mother away for some quality time together and have a good girly gab. She would definitely love this place, what with its plush gardens and peaceful ambiance.

I made my way through the snail-paced traffic back into the city. The roads were being constructed and the numerous diversions caused major snarl-ups. I turned up the radio, bobbing my head to the rhythm of one of my favourite ‘80s songs. I could see my exit just up ahead to the left which, fortunately, seemed to have flowing traffic. As I belted out the lyrics to the Stevie Wonder song, I realized that the passengers in the stationary bus beside my car were watching me with smirks on their faces. Thankfully, the car in front of me moved forward and I hit the accelerator.

Just as I negotiated the corner onto the clear road, I heard the sound of my cell-phone ringing. I switched gears and looked briefly at the phone. It was my mother. I was not generally in the habit of answering phone calls whilst driving, but I turned the volume of the radio down and hit the speaker button on my phone. “Hello?” There was no answer. The phone display indicated that the call had ended. I hit the call button and turned on the speaker again. I wanted to tell my mother about the golf and country club.

“Mama?” My mother had picked up the call but wasn’t saying anything. “Mama, can you hear me?” Then I heard her quivering voice on the other end say something that I couldn’t make out. My body tensed up as I responded in a firm but steady voice, “Mama! What’s wrong? What happened?” I had grown somewhat accustomed to receiving panicked phone calls from my mother about something or the other happening to my father. I would invariably rush home to them, keeping level-headed and calm so that I’d be able to deal with the situation swiftly. My father had already suffered two strokes and I was always terrified that one day I would receive the dreaded call from my mother to say he had had another…or worse. What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was what I was about to find out.

Her words were punctuated with erratic breaths… “I f-fell… hit m-my head… bleeding s-so m-much… p-please… p-please c-come quickly…”

Some of what transpired between then and the time that I got my mother home after four hours at the A&E is a blur. These are the things I do recall: I remember driving like a maniac, overtaking cars that seemed to move at a sluggish pace. I remember calling two friends to see if they could get to my house before I did. I remember calling my mother back, screaming hysterically on the phone for her to stay with me, sobbing in horror as she sounded like she was fading away. I remember getting home and somehow managing to calmly but swiftly get my mother into the car and speeding off to the A&E. I remember my mother clutching my hand as the doctor sutured the nasty gash on her head. I remember smiling reassuringly at her as she lay on the hospital bed, watching me for signs of panic at the sight of the wound.

That night, after I got my mother all cleaned up, I sat with her until she felt calm enough to fall asleep. I then got her into bed and kissed her forehead, telling her that all would be well. As I settled down under my own warm duvet, all I wanted to do was fall asleep and forget that this day had ever happened. But as I shut my eyes, I started to feel an uneasiness set in and the images began to reel through my mind… the look of terror in my mother’s eyes when she looked up at me as I flew into the house… the sight of blood dripping down the side of her face from underneath the towel that she clutched at the side of her head… her navy-blue dress, soaked in the dark liquid… the splotches of red glistening all over the terrazzo floor… the water that just didn’t seem to run clear from a washcloth that I used to wipe my mother’s face and around the stitched up wound…

As my body began to convulse beyond my control, I knew that these were images that would lay ingrained in my memory forever.