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Monday
Feb 06th
An empty glass of beer - A short story by Nasibu Mwanukuzi Utskrift E-post
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torsdag 07. mai 2009
An empty glass of beer. A short story by Nasibu Mwanukuzi aka Ras Nas from TanzaniaIt was after he had entered the café, paid for his glass of beer, looked around for an empty table to sit, that I spotted him. He had a glass full of beer in his right hand and a grey glove on the other. He moved briskly across the café, through the drinking, smoking and noisily talking crowd until he reached an empty table.

He pulled out a chair hesitantly, sat down and unzipped his brown coat. I heard him clear his throat. His eyes moved around and finally settled on the glass of beer that he had put on the table. He cleared his throat once again and took a long gulp. He wiped his lips with the back of his left hand.

I could easily estimate that he was above fifty by the grayness of his hair, and the multitude of wrinkles that ran chaotically across his face; like galleys. He did not look like he belonged to where he was sitting. There was an air of turbulent temporality around him. He seemed distant and drowned in a stream of thoughts. A little while later, when I started to think about him, I saw him confirming something that was passing on in his mind. He nodded his head from time to time as well as moved his hands like he was discussing an important issue with someone that only he could see. It could be bills! I thought. An impending divorce or a quarrel with his boss, it could have been anything, but it was quite obvious that something was eating his mind. He was being mercilessly devoured by some sharp invisible teeth of life. Then I caught my own reflection in the mirror that was on the wall in front of where I was sitting. I saw myself sitting there, as I drank herb tea and let my mind wander aimlessly; killing time.

As I watched myself in the mirror, a sudden feeling creeped through me, a sensation, that I too was being watched from my left side. I turned and saw a bearded man looking at me. He was partly hidden. I had seen him before in town but I could not remember where. Our eyes met like clashing searchlights. I wanted to give him a wink but immediately changed the idea. He had been looking at me as I spied on the stranger. The bearded man was drinking coffee and smoking tobacco.

The room was filled with noise and smoke. The stranger was in the middle of all this.

I could see the stranger through the smoke that filled the room. I fixed my eyes at him without him noticing, and after a while I started to see the whole of him lifting up. He was being reincarnated in the misty cloud of cigarette smoke that was wallowing under the neon light. It was a spectacular scene. He was rising together with the chair he was sitting on plus the table as well as the glass of beer; which was by now half empty. He was lifting up in the hazy smoke like a master yogi and I fixed my eyes at him even more.

I looked around the corners of my eyes and saw that even the bearded guy sitting on my left side was now looking at the stranger with a growing intensity. So now we were in fact two people sitting and spying on the stranger from two different angles.

On the stage there were three jazz musicians playing softly. The waitress came now and then to clear the tables of ashtrays and empty glasses of beer. After a while I straightened up to look at the stranger, and he was gone. At the table where he had been sitting, was only empty glass of beer and ashtray. And except for the transparent glass, the space around the table looked exactly like it was before the stranger came.


Nasibu Mwanukuzi aka Ras Nas is a writer, musician and poet from Tanzania



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