Watching The Sun Set

Watching the sunset has always been my favorite past time. It reminded me that there was an end to everything. And God knows I needed to be reminded of that all the time. I sat on the hood of my car. Farid, my right hand man, stood next to me. He instinctively knew when I needed silence.

17 years ago I would watch the sunset on the sidewalk, pretending to be blind for change while I breastfed my daughter. 7 years ago, I would watch the sunset as I walked, with my merchandise perched steadily on my head, from the market to my home in the squatter area.

Present day, I was a middle-aged woman who wore mostly expensive suits and got driven around in the latest cars. To a casual onlooker I was an educated, successful woman of sophisticated taste and a lush background. They were mistaken.
I'm a powerful woman with a notorious reputation, a broken moral compass and a scorched conscience. And everything I have does not, and can never replace all that I have lost on my fate-filled journey to material comfort.

The sun slowly gloomed over the ruins of Kumilinda, one of the most dangerous streets in Dar Es Salaam. Farid puffed his cigarette calmly, as we both waited.

Finally a man's hat came in to view. My heart jumped. I recognised the man's walk as Darweshi. He alone seemed to have survived the attack out of the eight men I had sent. Not that I had cared. He had stolen from me once and his life was worth nothing more than what I could possibly gain.

He walked in tired steps, carrying with him a seemingly unconscious girl who barely managed to lean on his shoulder. Could it be her?

"Help him." I commanded Farid.

For the first time in years I felt a range of emotions rise up my chest. Guilt being the most prominent of all. It had always lingered. It had haunted me after every kill, every innocent we abducted, every life I destroyed.

Could this be her? God let it be her.

"Get her in the car." It would be a long drive. "Wait"

I rushed to meet them. She was covered in a bloody hooded coat. I pulled it over to make sure it was her. She moaned as I pushed back her hair extension, revealing a Lupita type complexion with high cheekbones in dulled amateur makeup.

It wasn't her. It wasn't my daughter.
At that moment I realised I would never see her again, Karma was indeed paying me back in the most ironic way possible.

I smiled bitterly. I felt something salty on my inner lips. I was weeping silently.

Epiphany

She looked at him, emotionless. This man was definitely not who she once swooned for.

The Norman she fell for was toned, ambitious and had money to at least take her out once a week. He wasn't a bitter, pudgy insecure man with smelly breath who now stood before her.

He glowered at her nakedness.

"You aint come home in days and this where you been? You don't deserve me, hoe." His American slang, she once thought was cool, annoyed her now.

Nina glanced at her equally sweaty naked partner, Jay, who seemed more annoyed at being interrupted than scared.

"You know your way out, ashy ass nigga." She spit back. She might have been a hoe, but at this point she was a tired one. Tired of his shit.

Norman would have lunged for her there and then but the man who had been eating his fiance's ass a few minutes ago before he busted in showed no intention of leaving first and he was quite too well built to take on. He found his gaze dropping to Jay's crotch. What he saw there made his anger escalate to a fever pitch.

"I loved you, wanted to marry you, and this is what you do behind my back!!?"
Maybe at some point he had. His love had lit her up the first few years but it eventually became suffocating and she was drained.

Nina was bored with routine monthly family dinners, his endless job hunting and living in their washed out apartment with his smug sister and her bastard kids.
His volcanic tantrums and occasional beatings had kept them going throughout their 5 year engagement. She had mistaken all of it for passion.

Her reverie continued as he proceeded with his rant.
"...mum's death"
- "...lost my job"
-"...day I proposed"
-"...really miscarriages, not abortions?"
 -"...never taking you back again"

As she watched him leave, she wondered what time the pizza joint down the street would close up.