The Last Sketch Before Rent

The power went at nine, which Amani took as a sign. Not a good one or a bad one. Just a sign, the way the city always seemed to be saying something if you were tired enough to listen.

She lit the candle stub on the windowsill and opened the sketchbook to the last clean page. Rent was due on Thursday. It was Monday. The landlord, Mzee Juma, had stopped smiling at her in the corridor two weeks ago, which in his language was a long and detailed letter.

On the page, she began a hand. She always began with hands. Faces lied too easily; hands told you what someone had been doing all day.

Monday

The message had come that afternoon, from a café opening in Masaki. They loved her Instagram. Could she paint a mural on their back wall? There was no budget yet, but the launch would be full of influencers. Big exposure, dada. Big.

She had typed three replies and deleted all of them. The first was polite. The second was honest. The third was something her mother would not have liked. In the end she put the phone face down and drew the hand holding a brush, knuckles stained the colour of rust.

Tuesday

At the daladala stop she sketched a conductor counting coins with his thumb, fast as a card dealer. A woman selling vitumbua glanced over her shoulder and laughed. 'That's him,' she said. 'That's exactly how he cheats me.' She asked how much for the drawing. Amani said nothing, embarrassed. The woman pressed two thousand shillings into her hand anyway and took the page.

Two thousand shillings was not rent. But walking home, Amani realised it was the first time in a month someone had paid for something she made without asking first whether she would do it for free.

It was not much money. It was a great deal of meaning.

Wednesday

She wrote back to the café. She did not delete it this time. She said she would be delighted to paint the wall. She attached a price, a timeline and a request for a fifty percent deposit, and she said the design would remain hers to show in her portfolio. Then she turned off her phone and went to sleep before she could regret it.

In the morning there was a reply. Not yes. Not no. 'Let us discuss with the owner.' Which, she was learning, was how the city said: you have surprised us by having a price.

Thursday

Mzee Juma was waiting in the corridor. She had most of the rent: her tailoring job, a logo for a cousin's shop, the vitumbua woman's coins, and a promise for the rest by Saturday. He looked at the money, then at the sketchbook under her arm.

'You still draw,' he said. It was not a question.

'It's my work,' she said, and was surprised to hear how steady her voice was.

He grunted, took the money, and said Saturday. Then, as he turned, almost to himself: 'My daughter draws too. Everyone tells her to stop.'

That night the power stayed on. Amani opened the sketchbook to a fresh page, one she had bought cheap from the stationer by the mosque, and at the top she wrote, in careful capitals, three words she had been carrying around all week. SANAA SI HOBBY. Then she began, as always, with a hand.

This story is a work of fiction. Amani, Mzee Juma and all other characters are invented. Any resemblance to real people is coincidental.