HEARTLESS
Tuesday 12:30 am Sirens rang over the city as fire trucks and ambulances converged on an isolated house at the edge of Karura forest. The fire was spreading to the trees, threatening to torch Wangari Maathai’s legacy. Alone and seemingly paralyzed in the would-be parking lot of the house stood an eight-year-old boy, and right beneath his feet lay his four-year-old sister. He stared into the abyss as if waiting for something or someone to reach out, oblivious of the firefighters and the first responders who were by now trying to break into the blazing inferno. His sister grabs his leg as she comes to; he reaches down and lifts her up, never once turning his gaze away from the spreading fire. ‘Are you okay? Let me examine you,’ one responder says, jolting him back to the madness going on around him. He looks straight into her eyes with an empty gaze that mirrors the sense of loss that he has just undergone. His clothes are burnt and shredded, some pieces adhesively glued ...