One afternoon, on my way to the campus - I was majoring in

Host: The sun was lowering over Nairobi, spilling gold light across the streets like molten glass. The air shimmered with dust, the sound of vendors calling, and the slow hum of traffic caught between the old and the new. In the distance, the white walls of Nairobi University gleamed, half hidden behind trees heavy with purple jacaranda blossoms.

Through this living mosaic of movement and color, Jeeny walked with a stack of books pressed to her chest — her steps purposeful, her eyes alive with that kind of dreaming that comes from believing your life will unfold according to reason.

Then, from the crowd, a camera flash cut through the air. It was quick, intrusive — a spark of curiosity from another world.

At a café terrace nearby, Jack sat, watching the scene unfold. A man — foreign, fair-skinned, disheveled in the way of artists — had stopped Jeeny, gesturing toward his camera, his voice lost under the noise of the street. Jeeny’s brow furrowed, her hand tightening around her books.

That was how it began — a moment born of chance, a crossroad between identity and image.

Pinned on the wall above Jack’s table, written in chalk, the quote that had started their debate:

“One afternoon, on my way to the campus — I was majoring in political science at Nairobi University — a photographer by the name of Peter Beard stopped me in the street and asked me if I'd ever been photographed.”
— Iman

Jack: (leaning back, lighting a cigarette) “One afternoon. That’s how entire destinies start — by accident.”

Jeeny: (still flustered, setting her books down) “Accident? No, intrusion. He didn’t ask to understand me — he asked to capture me. There’s a difference.”

Jack: “Capture, understand — both mean attention. Maybe that’s the beginning of meaning.”

Jeeny: “Or the beginning of ownership.”

Jack: (exhaling smoke) “Come on, Jeeny. You’re acting like a photograph is a cage.”

Jeeny: “Sometimes it is. Especially when the lens belongs to someone who sees you as an idea instead of a person.”

Host: The light tilted, softening to amber. A gust of wind lifted the edge of Jeeny’s scarf, carrying the scent of spice and earth and possibility. The city around them was alive — a thousand lives unfolding, each one framed by someone else’s gaze.

Jack watched her closely — not as a photographer, but as a skeptic trying to decode her fury.

Jack: “You know, Iman told that story like it was fate. One random meeting that changed her life forever. You can’t deny the beauty in that.”

Jeeny: “Fate for her, maybe. But how many women were stopped on those same streets and never seen beyond the curve of their face? You see the fairy tale. I see the power dynamic.”

Jack: “So you’re saying opportunity is exploitation?”

Jeeny: “No. I’m saying the world never asks who holds the camera. It only asks whose face is worth framing.”

Host: The sun slipped behind the city skyline, and the first neon signs began to glow. Children laughed in the distance, the sound mingling with the low rhythm of passing buses and motorbikes. The world around them was changing color, much like the conversation — from bright to uncertain.

Jeeny’s voice softened, though the conviction behind it remained.

Jeeny: “Iman was studying political science. She wanted to understand systems — the machinery of power. Then one photograph made her part of another system: beauty, fame, representation. Do you know how ironic that is?”

Jack: “Or poetic. Maybe politics and photography are the same thing — both about perspective, both about who gets to frame reality.”

Jeeny: “But one claims truth, the other sells illusion.”

Jack: “Every truth has to be sold before it’s believed.”

Jeeny: (shaking her head) “You always defend manipulation like it’s art.”

Jack: “And you always call art manipulation when it’s made by someone else.”

Host: A brief silence fell. The streetlights flickered on, spilling yellow halos across the pavement. The photographer, whoever he had been, was long gone — just another ghost in the architecture of memory.

Yet the question he’d left behind hung heavy between them, more real than his presence.

Jeeny: “Tell me, Jack — do you think Peter Beard saw Iman as a mind or a face?”

Jack: “I think he saw light. And she happened to be standing in it.”

Jeeny: “That’s what every artist says when they want to forget their privilege.”

Jack: “Maybe he didn’t forget. Maybe he celebrated it — the collision of difference. That’s what creation is: one world noticing another.”

Jeeny: “Noticing or consuming?”

Jack: “Maybe both. Maybe that’s the cost of crossing paths — we leave a little of ourselves behind in each other’s gaze.”

Host: The noise of the city softened as the night deepened. The cafés filled with the smell of coffee and the echo of small conversations. Jack’s cigarette burned low, its smoke curling like thought.

Jeeny’s eyes, reflecting the streetlight, glowed with both anger and ache — the eternal war between visibility and selfhood.

Jeeny: “You know what’s strange? I used to love photographs. They made moments immortal. But now... I see them as little coffins. Tiny, beautiful deaths.”

Jack: (quietly) “Maybe immortality always costs a little dying.”

Jeeny: “You’d romanticize anything if it meant avoiding responsibility.”

Jack: “And you’d condemn beauty just because it’s temporary.”

Jeeny: “No. I condemn the idea that a woman needs to be seen to exist.”

Jack: “But isn’t that true for everyone? Don’t we all want to be seen?”

Jeeny: “To be seen isn’t the same as being understood.”

Host: The wind rose again, scattering a sheet of old newspapers down the street. Headlines fluttered and folded like broken wings.

From a passing taxi, a radio voice crackled with news of art exhibitions and scandals — fragments of the same endless conversation: who gets remembered, and who gets reduced to an image.

Jeeny’s voice grew softer, but there was steel beneath it.

Jeeny: “Do you know what makes Iman’s story extraordinary? Not that she was discovered. But that she took back the lens. She built her own narrative. Turned a gaze into a legacy.”

Jack: “So she rewrote the story instead of rejecting it.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. That’s what power looks like — not hiding from the frame, but choosing what the frame holds.”

Jack: “So maybe it wasn’t intrusion after all. Maybe it was the start of authorship.”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “Only because she refused to be the subject.”

Host: The night cooled, settling into a quiet rhythm. The city lights glittered like a thousand apertures, each capturing a fraction of truth.

Jack looked down at her — at the fire that lived in her calm, the storm that hid behind her stillness.

Jack: “You know, you sound like her.”

Jeeny: “Like Iman?”

Jack: “No. Like someone who’s been stopped on the street and asked to become something smaller than herself.”

Jeeny: (softly) “And like her, I said no.”

Host: The café grew quieter, the streets thinning as the night pressed on. Somewhere in the dark, a camera shutter clicked — just once — maybe by accident, maybe not.

Jack turned toward the sound, but saw only the shimmer of passing headlights.

Jeeny didn’t flinch.

Host: The world, after all, is made of gazes — who looks, who is looked at, who refuses to be framed.

And as the moon climbed higher, painting the city in silver light, their reflections blurred together on the café window — not subject and observer, not woman and man, not theory and witness — but two human beings caught in the fragile art of being seen without surrendering.

Because sometimes, as Iman had learned on a sunlit street long ago,
a single question — “Have you ever been photographed?” —
isn’t an invitation.
It’s a test.

And the answer, whispered by every soul that refuses to be reduced to light and angles,
is always the same:

“Yes. But never like this.”

The city breathed,
the camera blinked,
and the night held its pose —
alive, uncertain, and unframed.