Picture this, it is a Saturday night and a priest on the prowl picks up a hooker and they end up in his house, located in a church compound.
In the morning, he leaves the girl in bed and goes to conduct mass.
No way! You might say.
Well, this is one of the very many risqué scenes in Ciku Kimani-Mwaniki’s book, NaiRobbery Cocktail, released in November last year.
As the title suggests, the book is about to take the reader on a bumpy ride into the inner sanctums of the Nairobi crime world. Bumpy in that the experience might test the limits of your emotions and belief systems.
For example, a teenage girl, fresh from losing her only parent, is left with no option but to surrender her virginity to the highest bidder in a high-end brothel.
Criminal underworld
Who does that? You might ask.
Some of these things, your righteous anger notwithstanding, still happen. It is the reality of the world we are living in.
How about you learn that this girl ends up inheriting the entire business? Does it make it right? Does it make up for the anguish she suffered at the beginning?
Wait, I am running ahead of myself.
Let us start from the beginning and properly introduce Naliaka, for that is the name of the girl. It is majorly through her that we get a glimpse of how the criminal underworld operates.
At some point, and despite the fact that she enjoys favoured status from Queen, the brothel proprietor, Naliaka opts out, so as to explore the world of prostitution on her own.
It is here that she meets Boss, the man who runs a well-oiled criminal network; even senior cops defer to him. They are in his pockets. Now, Boss harbours a dark secret, right from his childhood, and which partly explains why he is incapable of showing any form of remorse.
To run the street, the way he does, one has got to be ruthless and be capable of inflicting unspeakable violence on those who go against his code. There is an exception though, and that exception happens to be Naliaka. To the shock and dismay of Boss’ acolytes, he turns a blind eye on Naliaka’s transgressions, which in other circumstances might cost other offenders a limb or even their life.
Oh, and you might have guessed it, it is Naliaka who goes out on countless sexual escapades with the priest. Does it bother her?
“I am not responsible for his sins,” she explains nonchalantly. “I have enough of my own to worry about.”
And before some people go all sanctimonious with the portrayal of Father Joshua in the book, they would do well to know that there are lots of priests caught up in similar or worse situations.
Bedroom skills
As we speak, the Kenyan TikTok ‘court’ has been ‘prosecuting’ the shocking case of a man of the cloth accused of drugging and sodomising young men. Part of the court’s judgement saw angry youths storm the church operated by the ‘prophet’, in Ruiru, causing considerable damage to the property.
So, compared to the said prophet, our Father Joshua is, erm, rather saintly. Plus, he is a likeable and fun-loving character.
Another notable character is Chizi Samuel, an undercover cop, who operates under the cover of a mad man. Chizi is part of the squad tasked with protecting Boss. Apparently, security chiefs are in awe of the organisational prowess of Boss’ criminal enterprise and the fact that he “brings order to the streets”.
Suffice it to say that security authorities have subcontracted the services of Boss to keep the streets safe.
Chizi Samuel is also a regular beneficiary of Naliaka’s bedroom skills.
Other criminals, who are in competition with Boss, are not happy with his status and would do anything, including colluding with dirty cops, to dislodge him from the privileged spot.
It is these turf wars that culminate into a fearsome firefight that sucks in various “formations from Boss’ men, rogue cops to the undercover cops protecting him.
In this book, Ciku builds on the success of her other book, Cocktail from the Savannah, where she continues to showcase her impressive storytelling skills.
Ciku’s smooth writing is a joy to read and, like in Savannah, she takes time to develop her characters, making them wholesome and relatable.
As a reader, one finds oneself rooting for the characters, empathising with them and praying that they don’t get into trouble. This includes violent robbers like Jonte and Oti.
How else do you explain the reader praying for the success of a carjacking mission, simply because our favourite character, Naliaka is involved in the planning and execution of it.
And the book is not short of plot twists, like the instance where Naliaka, despite being close to Chizi Samuel, arranges for Jonte and Oti to carjack him. One can surmise that the cold and soulless manner she approaches her ‘job’ is the result of how society treated her when she was at her most vulnerable.
Crime balances life
Still, given the readiness of readers (I did) to identify with their favourite characters, who between Naliaka and Chizi Samuel would you wish they ‘succeeded’, in this carjacking drama, seeing as we have a soft spot for both?
Only a persuasive writing can put you in such a sticky situation and successfully get you out of it without casualties.
Ciku knows how to trick the readers into liking her characters, when conventional wisdom dictates that we shouldn’t be cheering criminals like Boss, Jonte and Oti.
Sample this: “… who are we to imagine that we can live in a world without criminals? Crime, terrible as it is, balances life…”
So, of all the characters we came to identify with did, why did the author decide to kill Johte when he had just been promoted within the hierarchy? It can be argued that crime doesn’t pay and in any case, the man who caused his death paid for it with his life.
Then there is Naliaka, the prostitute.
From the beginning, we are bound by collective guilt after we witness the loss of her mother and the subsequent loss of virginity in Queen’s brothel.
How do we assuage this guilt? By turning a blind eye when the author overcompensates her by making her win in every step of the way. Like she gets to have and keep all the desirable men, even when other deserving girls want a piece of the action.
For how long will she keep winning?
You only need to read to the very end to know what surprise the author has in store.
The author left me longing for a sequel.
Ngunjiri is the curator of Maisha Yetu, a digital Arts and Books media platform
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