I was very rude to an old classmate of mine last Friday. It was not really her fault, but such is the human condition that being the bearer of bad tidings is more likely to get you shot than the actual commission of evil.

Now to my story, which is perhaps familiar to all those who will be reading this piece. I was on Yahoo Messenger with a particularly nice girl from back home, one who I have not seen for far too long. She said she had sustained a peculiarly profound crush on me back in primary school, in the old days when I had no idea why boys would like girls at all. As these things go, we are now both in the middle of particularly lengthy bouts of loneliness, and as such the warmth of each other's embrace, even if merely virtual, is truly comforting. In the nature of such couplings, I was looking for a brief sensation of the confirmation of my manhood; she was looking for a life partner.

So it was that she asked if I remembered one Salvador from primary school. ‘He got married last week,' she said with a heavy if subtle hint that she was willing her wedding bells to ring too. I had not forgotten Salvador. It does not sound like the sort of name you would forget, and the man who wielded it was not forgettable either. He is not a man as you would forget. He is a lothario with a lothario's name; I remember him well. He always rode in the back of his family's pick-up, standing up and daring the wind as he hurtled along. He spent a few minutes with the street urchins on his way home from the city on weekends gambling with them and shaming them with his war stories. He would always come out on top in any fights both real and virtual, and famously threatened once to deck our Crafts master.

We could not have been more different then, me and him. I did not even have a Game Boy, the world of books being my refuge from the stark vivid images around me. While I contemplated the world of Tolkien, he drank his father's beer. When he was reported to the school authorities and caned in front of the whole school, he barely flinched. The unsatisfied principal thought something was up, and upon closer inspection pulled a piece of carpet from within Salvador's tight school shorts. Always triumphant, Salvador smiled down at us from the podium.

He was the football captain at our primary school, every bit as able to contend with the sixteen year olds sent to play against us by the poor schools on the other side of the valley. Salvador the man was a real man. If the ordinary human body was 80% water, his was 80% testosterone. He had been circumcised by a river, nothing but his taut butt soaking up the pain of the blade. He grew his first pubic hairs long before the rest of us even learned to expect them in Home Science class. More surprising than that was his eagerness to share his virility with the rest of the world. He declared he was a man and proved it to us at half-time by the woodwork workshop.

While I busied myself teaching from Preparatory Mathematics to girls enamored with the soft curls on the top of my head, he was determined to point out to me that they might like me to touch the protuberances springing from forth their beating chests. He was always my friend, standing up for me in the football field and selecting me to his team long before my talent deserved it. I repaid him in class, especially in the exam room. Notoriously lazy, and a grand prevaricator, I nevertheless had time to teach him and all the boys in my class the minutiae of the city council's Mock Examination for Class 7 and 8. We sat on the stairs by the library at the far end of the school during lunch break and went over the questions again and again. When the poor boys could not make head or tail of what I was trying to explain, I just begged that they remember that the solution to number 30 was choice D.

There were three of us that got 96% that time, Dennis, Yoni and I. At least 10 other boys had more than 80% and the school was top in Mathematics both years. Unruly, and suffering a severely diminished attention span, I was banned from all non-regular mathematics lessons and Mr. Apollo Amollo hated my face. I felt bad about it and was happy to earn him the glory of that trophy those two years. I never found out how they came up with those papers, but it was the sort of thing you expected from people who lived in that part of town. Most of the boys lived in their servants' quarters, and had their own VCRs where they watched shows my mother would not let even my 15 year old brother watch.

At one fifteen we played cricket, because footballs were not allowed near the library. I regularly got my team ducks, but it was fun to get selected first like I was a star player of some sort. Still, I was almost always fielding. They had to go to the wood workshop for remedial lessons at one forty five; fifteen minutes of the glory for them and for me time to study the American Civil War in the library. At four o' clock we went back to the steps. I sat at the top and sermonized to them, notepad in hand, service my earnest endeavor. I was king of the hill in a way I otherwise would never have been at that age.

During Mr. Amollo's continuous assessments and in school exams, I would sign the relevant multiple choice answer to Salvador. A slow wink for A, a tap on my chest and stomach for B, eyes wide open for C and a rub of the belly for D. In three years of cheating we did not get caught once. Only Njeri out of everyone in class had a clue. I get lonely for her sometimes; she is a nuclear medicine expert of some sort now, radiating goodness all around no doubt. Salvador is a soldier in Uncle Sam's Army. That is the reason then why I had to shoot the messenger. It is why I put her on my Yahoo ban list, she did not understand why I did not like that Salvador had made a Faustian pact for money, or for citizenship papers. She thought it was just a job, that I was being ‘judgmental', she even claimed it was compatible with her Christianity.

I had always known that Salvador was a brave boy, and a Christian boy. He had a crucifix on at all times. Dangling from his chest, and declaring his love for the Christ. I was going through my first spell of atheism, the mild one. I did not particularly care about it. Now our Salvador was in the vanguard, proselytizing the Arabs at the end of his muzzle. Maybe he was also involved in torture, maybe his tour of duty included an obligation to spread some democracy around the Middle East, convert them to the dollar and to Western values. I wonder if I should have been teaching them the Bible instead of mathematics, but I was only so young and I was a Kenyan in every way.

We do not think anything of one of their number serving in the American or British military, but would scream terrorist if they heard that a classmate had turned into a David Hicks, manning Taliban water-tanks in downtown Kandahar. Travelling to Pakistan to train in some tribal army earns one the badge of nefarious nihilist, eager only for the seventy virgins. Crusading for Uncle Sam on the other hand is the badge of honour, the stuff that fills the chests of fathers with pride and joy. Shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm into the new day the troops roll.

I missed his wedding. It would have been nice to see them giving him away, to see the devil take his soul. I am one for rubber-necking. Still, it would have been very uncomfortable; I do not know that I would have had anything to say to him, except maybe to say I wish he had not got involved at all. This is not our war; this is not a moral war. I might even have reminded him that not too long ago black people were the subjects at the end of such muzzles as his. Cluster bombs and depleted uranium for the Muslims. Gatlings for the blacks. Blood and gory glory.