A Conversation From the Third Floor

This is a story of a woman visiting her husband in prison for the last time before he is transferred. She has to shout at him from the out side of the building to the third story cell he's being held in. Basically he asks general questions about if she's taking care of the household and how his kids are doing.

A Handful of Dates

In this, a man, or boy, recalls a story from his past. The majority of it deals with him, his grandfather and a man named Masood. The grandfather calls Masood an indolent man because Masoood had inherited a grove of date palms. Each time Masood would marry, he would sell a little more of his palms to the grandfather. The grandfather saw this eventually leading to Masood selling all of them to him. When the time to harvest them came, Masood had gotten none of the dates while the grandfather got 5 sacks and was still owed more from Masood. This led to the grandson secretly despising his grandfather.

An Incident in the Ghobashi Household

In this story, a mother and a daughter are having a conversation in the morning before going off to market to sell grain. The father had gone away to a job and left the household in the hands of the mother. While the daughter is getting ready, the mother thinks of how sneaky she has been. The daughter has been pregnant with an illegitimate child for months, but has been hanging out a towel to dry as if she has been having her period still. The daughter kept it hidden because she didn't want to shame her father. In the end, as the daughter is about to go to the market, the mother stops her and gives her her life savings with which to take a flight away and find a husband (I think)

Minutes of Glory

This is the story of a barmaiden named Beatrice. She compares herself to a bird that wants to soar, but can't. In this, she means that she's looking for the love and affection her "coworkers" seem to get from gentlemen callers at the bars. Seeing as she can't find this, she keeps trveling to more and more bars in the hopes of finding it. One other barmaiden in particular, Nyagũthiĩ, Beatrice seems to hold a certain grudge over more than the others. She had this because of the demeanor Nyagũthiĩ had (being able to look bored and impatient) and still men would flock to her.
Beatrice, bored with her current bar, moved to a town named Ilmorog. Ilmorog was seen as a town of hope for the weary and down-trodden, but when she arrived there, it was not much different from the last place she was. By the time she got there, a substance called Ambi (something to lighten skin pigment) had arrived in Ilmorog. She tried using this to make her dreams come true, but this was not the case. After this phase, she recognizes it as one of her most humiliating periods.
After a while, a new bar opened in Ilmorog and Beatrice saw this as an opportunity. The patrons which came to this bar were, what they call, big shots(i.e. nice cars and big pockets). In any case, Beatrice took a job there as a sweeper and a bedmaker. Eventually, to her dismay, the other girls soon folowed and with them, Nyagũthiĩ.
One Saturday, a man came in which drove a fairly large truck. He would try to join in conversations with the other patrons, but would be ultimately ignored. Then, he would "hire" a room and girl for the night. He would do this every Saturday. Eventually, he started to confide in Beatrice, seeing as the others would have nothing to do with him. This led to him hiring Beatrice for the nights.
One of these nights, she robbed the man. Using this money, she left for Nairobi to buy herself a new dress, stockings and heels. It was then men started to treat her differently, buying her drinks, wanting to dance with her ect. She went back to Ilmorog and flaunted herself in the bar were she was working. The same reaction came from these men, until the man she had robbed came in with police to arrest her for stealing. Everyone in the bar then began to talk about what had happened and Nyagũthiĩ began to cry.

The Green Leaves

This story starts out with a man(Nyagar) in his hut noticing a commotion outside. He grabbed his spear and waited while three men ran by followed by a much larger mob. He proceeded to follow the mob and learned that the three men were cattle thieves. They caught up to the thieves and proceeded to beat them. Two of them escaped and the mob left the last one unconscious on the ground to die. They covered his body with green leaves and went back to their huts to bury him in the morning. Nyagar, after returning to his hut, decides too go back to the body to loot it. When he finds the man's money pouch, he tries to take it off his neck and right as he does this, the man wakes up and stabs Nyagar in the eye. He then covers up Nyagar's body in leaves and runs away. The next morning, thirty men in the village go to the police to tell them what happened. The police come to the village and try to get a single person to admit to killing the thief. When no one steps forward, the police uncover the body only to find Nyagar's body instead. Nyagar's wife and relatives begin to cry and the village mourned his death.

The Gentlemen of the Jungle

This story is of a man who lives in the jungle. During a rainstorm one day, his friend the elephant came to occupy his hut. An argument ensued until the lion came to ask what the commotion was about. When he heard, he commissioned a council to sort out the matter. They found in favor of the elephant and the man constructed a new hut for himself. This new hut was then occupied by a rhino and the same process continued until all the members of the council had huts. Knowing this was just going to continue, the man built a larger hut in the distance. Upon seeing this, all of the animals rushed over there and argued amongst themselves over who would get this hut and the man was happy.

Civil Peace

This is about a man who after a war, considered himself very lucky to come out of it with himself, his wife and three of his four children. He was a poor man, but started to make money by using his bike as a taxi for more wealthy people. He then used this money to start a bar for military officials and people with money. Then, he had turned in "rebel money" and was rewarded with 20 pounds. Everything was going good until one night thieves came to his house demanding 100 pounds. After explaining that all he had was twenty pounds, he handed that over an the thieves left. The next morning, his neighbors came to sympathize with him only to find him and his family hard at work. He said that to him this was nothing because he didn't live off rewards before and he didn't need to now.

The Will of Allah

This is a story of two thieves, one highly religious (Sule) and one who almost seems to be against religion (Dogo), working together. It appears to be an odd combination, but they are only working together because it is convenient. Their backgrounds are explained, how neither of them fear any man, aside from Allah on Sule's side, and how they both distrust each other. They end up breaking into an old shack which contains a large gourd, used as a bank of sorts. Dogo takes the gourd down by a stream and thrusts his hand into it, all while Sule is still exiting the shack, only to feel a sharp pain in his wrist. When asked by Sule if he'd opened it yet, Dogo replies no. Sule then puts his hand in the gourd only to also have a sharp pain in his wrist. When the peer inside of it, they both realize they've been bitten by a cobra and proceed to die there by the stream.

The Apprentice

This story was about a young boy of royal decent who did not want to take the throne. As far as I can tell, this was because he did not want to deal with the problems that would come with it. So, instead of going to school, he decided to become an apprentice for a blacksmith. Eventually his master came to love him like his own son. After a while though, the young boy's work started to resemble that of te master's rival. This upset the master to the point of making the boy leave. To be able to be a smith, the boy needed to complete his apprenticeship, so he asked his old master's rival (turns out, he's the old master's twin brother) to teach him. He gladly accepted. After a year though, he was upset with the boy for using his brother's teachings and eventually kicked the boy out. So, the boy didn't want to take the throne because of the problems it would create only to become engulfed in the problem's of others anyways.

Certain Winds from the South

This is a story about a woman (told completely from he perspective) telling a story about a past experience to her daughter to ease the daughter's sadness caused by the thought of her husband going away for a job to provide for his new-born. It's basically a mother caring for her own child while also helping her to take care of her child.

The False Prophet

This story is about a lazy man named Mahmoud who uses deception to gain respect and money. After becoming bored of being lazy he travels to another land and changes his name to Aidra, which gains respect for himself among the local people. He then collects money for performing prayers and other things and travels from "compound to compound" in order to get free meals (the custom being to feed strangers). Eventually, he finds himself in the middle of the desert next to a sole flourishing tree. He decides to stop and rest under it. Before laying down to sleep he gets a feeling that someone is around him. He checks the tree and his surroundings several times before burying his treasure underneath him while he sleeps. He wakes up, after a dream of being ransacked and shaved, and began to pray. While doing so, he realizes his dream was a reality and his head and face had been shaved clean. He digs for his treasure only to find his hair. After a conversation with voices in his head he runs off into the desert as a crazed man. The only real meaning or moral to this story I could find was, what comes around goes around, meaning, he spent all his time fooling others for his own gain only to have it taken away while he slept.