MAN ABOUT TOWN
text
JACKSON BIKO
ART
MOVIN WERE
Snake
Game
We don’t talk about
the betrayal with
our lips, because we
do so with our body
language.
Jackson Biko, is a lover of whisky and
people watching. He likes to walk the
shadows of the city at dusk, picking
conversations of a people spurred by the
night and by their drink.
T
he sky is bruised as I get
into Tamambo, Karen. Karen
is as still as a tomb. Nothing
moves. Even though I can
feel a slight breeze on my
face, the leaves are immobile. A few
people sit huddled in the garden. I
wonder how people can sit in that
cold and have white wine, chilled.
I’m there to meet a friend I haven’t
met in ages. It’s not exactly a friendly
meeting, this. Once upon a time we
had done a job together and he had
swindled me a good portion of my
cut, something I found out later. He is
a snake. But even snakes deserve to
be heard. And this is a perfect night
to meet snakes; a nippy, still night, in
the woods of Karen. A night of long
knives, if you are prone to drama.
There is an unspoken rule amongst
men who walk the same paths that
I do and it is that you only get one
chance to throw someone under the
bus. But there is also another rule;
that because we are men sometimes
we have to give people a hearing,
their day in court. Of course we
pick this from the teachings of Vito
Corleone, the Godfather, for those
who sleep with Shades of Grey.
He is seated in the shisha lounge,
his snake eyes light up as I walk in.
He rises to meet me, smoke curling
44.
from his nostrils. We embrace,
like men in dark movies do before
someone is killed. Then I take a
seat with my back facing the wall,
that way he can’t stab it again. He
has ordered a bottle of single-malt,
probably paying for it with the cut he
stole from me. Ice-cubes are hurled
in glasses and the whisky is poured.
Then we raise our glasses and
exchange the first words since that
betrayal: “Cheers!”
Tamambo is a nice cosy place.
Across from the main, the work of
Zia Manji, the photographer who
specialises in water bodies and
monochromes, is on display and
on sale. His work captures the
relationship of water and the other
elements. His pictures are minimalist
but they evoke some sobriety, or is
it sombreness? Whatever it is, they
are the perfect backdrop for this
meeting.
All around the shisha lounge are
Karenites, sucking on their smokes,
laughing out loud while The Snake
tells me about a project he is
working on tha