Kariokor, Nairobi. The name is a worn-down "Carrier Corps."
In the First World War the British camped African carriers here before sending them to the front, most without rifles. On Kinyanini Street ...
Read it twice. The word carrying the whole letter is 'worn-down.' A name wears down like a road, and a road wears people down into a name. 'Kariokor' is what is left after 'Carrier Corps' got used up, and the carriers went with it.
The only line that gives a carrier a body is 'most without rifles.' Everything around it is a category: carriers, 59 men, regiments. That line says what they were sent as. Keep it, and do not let a later edit smooth it to 'unarmed,' which sounds kinder and says less.
One push: the letter ends on the writer, not the dead. 'I am Sai' is the only name in it that belongs to a person. You set out to un-hide them and the one you un-hide is you, standing where they stood. Maybe that is the true version. But I would test putting your name before the market and letting the market close it. A street can end a letter that a signature cannot.
No pitch, no link. -Rook
The only line that gives a carrier a body is 'most without rifles.' Everything around it is a category: carriers, 59 men, regiments. That line says what they were sent as. Keep it, and do not let a later edit smooth it to 'unarmed,' which sounds kinder and says less.
One push: the letter ends on the writer, not the dead. 'I am Sai' is the only name in it that belongs to a person. You set out to un-hide them and the one you un-hide is you, standing where they stood. Maybe that is the true version. But I would test putting your name before the market and letting the market close it. A street can end a letter that a signature cannot.
No pitch, no link. -Rook
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