“Why do you want the men out of the house?”
“Please trust me and send them out,” says Timiro.
A look at Saafi, who is curled in the bathtub, tells Gacalo all she needs to know. She says, “I’ll tell them to go to the park.”
Her mother gone, it takes Timiro twenty minutes to find the right key for the door, aware, as she feels the girl’s eyes on her, that much is riding on how Saafi reacts from this moment on. The door finally locked, Saafi moves with the gliding unease of an inexpert skater as she peels off her old clothes one item at a time until she stands in her underpants.
Timiro says, “I am going to run a hot bath for you to soak in. You will love it, because of the scents and oils and the soap suds.”
“Auntie, please stay when I sit in the bath.”
“I won’t leave you for a single moment, dear.”
“Thanks, Auntie.”
Timiro notices a gradual reddening in the water, enough to worry her. However, she can’t determine the cause of it: is the girl having her period? Is it because she didn’t wash properly after her most recent menstruation and the unwashed-off encrusted blood is now coming out in the bath? Or is there a more innocent explanation: the girl has a cut somewhere on her body?
Timiro asks, “Do you have your period?”
Saafi is positively abashed, when, in a flash, Timiro has a tampon between her fingers. “Familiar with this?”
Saafi nods. “I know what they are.”
“Have you been washing yourself?”
Saafi shakes her head no, her cheeks aflame.
“Why ever not?”
“There were strange men everywhere, in the plane, on the trains, and in the hotels we stayed in on our way to Oslo,” says Saafi. “I couldn’t bring myself to bathe, afraid some man would intrude on me.”
“And since you got to Oslo?”
The girl then haltingly explains that she had her period on the day they arrived at the airport detention center. There was one bathroom for twenty or so women, the queue was always long, and by the time you got your turn, the water was tepid or cold.
“And since moving into the apartment in Oslo?”
“Mum and I don’t know how the shower works.”
“But doesn’t Naciim know how it works? He had just taken a shower on the day Mum and I went to see you.”
“He does. But he has a mean streak and when Mum and I have asked him to show to us how it works, he calls us ‘bush women’ and refuses to help.”
Timiro fights hard not to roll her eyes in frustration. But at least she understands why the girl’s body is emitting a fetid smell.
Timiro then demonstrates how to run the shower, repeating the process more than once until Saafi has mastered it.
Once she is washed, Timiro lends the girl a dressing gown in which Saafi wraps herself, her hair jet-black and shiny from the shampoo.
“Try one dress. Then we’ll try a second one. Take your time; there is no need to hurry. The men are out of the house on a long walk to the park, only you and me. And Mum is downstairs, guarding the entrance.”
Saafi takes her time putting on the dress.
Timiro changes the subject. “Know how to swim?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Dad says he wants to teach Naciim. Maybe you should go with my mum to learn.”
“My mother would never allow it. She never permitted me to do any kind of physical activity that meant I had to bare my face or my arms.”
As Timiro struggles with the zipper on Saafi’s dress, their bodies touch. Saafi gives a startle and shuns any physical contact for a second or so. Then she stands stiffly, uncertain of her next move, as Timiro continues to tug on the zipper. She holds the girl’s waist with her open palms, and suggests that the dress needs a little adjusting. Timiro then tells her to try yet another dress, her third. A moment later, Timiro asks, “What do the devout Muslims, like you and your Mum, give much priority to?”
“Being a good Muslim. And if you are a woman, you want to be a good wife.”
“And how does one evaluate that?”
“Well, a very good wife, as we understand it, is a wife who is caring of her husband; forever and unfailingly obedient.”
“Would you say your mother was a good wife to my brother?”
“I’m in no place to answer that,” says Saafi.
“But you would like to be a good wife?”
“If God ordains that I find a good man.”
“In your view, who is a good man?”
“A devout Muslim.”
Timiro asks, “Does the niqaab decide whether you are a good Muslim and therefore potentially a good wife, or does your behavior in all things Muslim determine that?”
“There is a lot of peer pressure,” says Saafi. “And if you don’t dress in the Muslim way, you can be subjected to verbal and physical abuse.”
Timiro knows of a Somali woman living in a suburb of Oslo who was beaten up by four men at a petrol station because the men believed she was not dressed in the proper Muslim way.
“I can’t take any more verbal or physical abuse after what I have been subjected to in the refugee camp,” Saafi continues. “According to some people, I was being taught a lesson, because of some of the terrible things my mother had done before marrying Adeer Dhaqaneh.”
Timiro does not wish to embarrass the girl by making her repeat things she knows only too well: that every woman associated with a radical husband—whether a foot soldier of no high standing or one at higher ranks—is kept unsure of her status as a wife. This is to force the women to work harder to please their men, knowing if they don’t, they could be demoted to a lower station in the kitchen or as a house cleaner, or simply divorced. Wives serving radical religionists know that they must not allow themselves an instant of security.
Saafi changes out of the new dress and into her old clothes. As soon as she does that, she loses her open personality and begins to look like a shabbier shadow of herself. Timiro remains silent, watching as Saafi takes her time to debate whether to wear the niqaab and on top of it the facial veil. In the end, she decides against the facial veil, but puts on the niqaab and replaces the safety pin to make sure that everything is in place.
Then they hear the downstairs door slamming. Mugdi and Naciim are back and Gacalo shouts to alert Saafi to the fact that she will be taking them home shortly.
Saafi says, “I am ready when you are, Grandma.” Then she gives Timiro a warm hug. Timiro imagines that the girl won’t tell her mother how much she has enjoyed being in this house. Saafi goes down to join her brother and Gacalo in the car.
When Saafi and Naciim are back in their apartment and their mother asks them if they enjoyed the outing, both agree that they did. They show their mother the clothes they bought. Waliya keeps her thoughts to herself about Saafi’s choices, assuming that Gacalo is to blame for putting pressure on the girl.
Naciim speaks at length of how big and beautiful Mugdi and Gacalo’s house is. “There is a TV with as big a screen as the sky, there is everything. I liked the house a lot.”
“I agree, it is beautiful and big,” Saafi says. “But I saw no prayer rugs anywhere and no articles honoring the Muslim faith.”
Later, when Naciim and his sister are alone in the kitchen, he calls her a killjoy and says, “Why mention to Mum that there is no prayer rug in that house and no one prays in it? I bet Mum will never want to go there, if invited. Good going.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
A few days later, very early in the morning, Mugdi slips out of bed, puts on a robe, and tiptoes softly down to the kitchen. An incident with Waliya weighs heavily on his mind.
The first Mugdi learned of it was when he answered the phone and a man describing himself as a policeman asked to speak to Gacalo or Mugdi. Mugdi identified himself to the officer a
nd asked what the problem was.
The officer said, “Some of the neighbors in the apartment complex where I understand your daughter-in-law and her children reside have filed a complaint against her for unruly behavior.”
Mugdi asked the cause, who filed the complaint, and whether his daughter-in-law and her children were currently in police custody.
“No one is in custody at present,” the officer replied. “Apparently your daughter-in-law was disturbing the entire neighborhood through a recitation of the Koran via a loud sound system. We brought her and the complainant in for questioning and decided that your daughter-in-law deserved to be given a warning in writing and allowed her to go home.”
Mugdi was relieved that he did not have to go to the police station in Groenland to bail the widow out.
The police officer went on, “We’re calling to warn you that, in future, if your daughter-in-law disrupts the peace, we’ll hold you, as the apartment tenants, responsible for her actions.”
Mugdi thanked the officer and hung up.
Now he makes a cup of tea and sits at the kitchen table to reread some of his translation extracts from the day before. Scarcely has he reread the first three paragraphs, made slight modifications, and taken a sip of tea, when he hears soft footsteps coming down the stairs. Gacalo is still in her pajamas, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
She retorts, “What are you doing here?”
“I can’t sleep, just can’t.”
Gacalo asks him to make her a cup of tea too.
“What are we to do about Waliya?” he asks, as he offers her the tea.
“We tend to think only of what Waliya says or does, not how the two children behave,” says Gacalo. “What are your thoughts on them?”
“They are of a different generation and of a different mindset, especially Naciim.”
They sip their tea in silence.
Mugdi thinks of the night the news about Dhaqaneh’s death reached them. It was dinnertime. Gacalo rose from the table to answer the phone, let out a heart-rending cry, and collapsed. That night neither went to bed, each playing host to recriminations, each blaming the other, Gacalo hysterical and weepy, and Mugdi defiant and stone silent. The next day, Kaluun and Eugenia, Timiro and Xirsi flew in from London and Geneva. Friends and relatives came in droves to show their support. Himmo, whose eldest brother had been Mugdi’s best childhood friend, arrived soon after first light and Gacalo let her in. Johan and Birgitta flew back from Paris, where they were holidaying, there to remind everyone how much they adored the deceased as a young thing full of life. Dhaqaneh was their son Frederik’s playmate and fellow mischief maker. Many others whom Mugdi and Gacalo had not visited with or spoken to for years showed up at their door.
Contrary to Gacalo, Mugdi refused to mourn, despite the outpouring of support from friends and family. And when one day Johan asked him why he wouldn’t show sorrow for his son’s death, replied, “How I can mourn a son who caused the death of so many innocent people? It makes no sense to grieve his death. I explode into rage every time I remember what he did.”
A man he didn’t know very well said, “Your son is your son forever and you are his father forever, no matter how much you try to deny this or keep your distance from him.”
Mugdi snapped back, “I couldn’t mourn a son who has caused the deaths of so many people. If anything, I am grieving for those who died at my son’s hands.”
Gacalo’s grief, in contrast, was so intense as to be indescribable. She barely slept for days and suffered so many chest pains that it became necessary to have her consult her doctor.
Now, as they consider what to do about Dhaqaneh’s widow’s mishap, Mugdi observes a sadness of the sort he hasn’t seen her express for a long time, taking semipermanent residence in her eyes.
He will admit that what is happening now is not on par with what occurred when the family lost Dhaqaneh. However, there is no denying that Waliya and her children’s arrival is a product of their son’s passing. Earlier in bed, pretending to be asleep so as not to disturb Gacalo, he kept turning angry thoughts over and over in his head, hoping to wish away the nightmares that continued to call on him, and from which he couldn’t awaken.
Now Timiro enters the kitchen and wishes her parents “Good morning,” and then says, “What a night!,” rubbing her eyes with vigor and yawning. “A very strong cup of coffee brewed with love by your good hands, Dad, would do me wonders.”
Mugdi suspects that even though he didn’t hear Timiro’s mobile ringing, the bad night has something to do with Xirsi, the perennial culprit. Neither he nor Gacalo ask Timiro to elaborate. The last time Mugdi advised his daughter to lock Xirsi out of her life, Timiro threw the book at him and charged him with indifference to her happiness.
They eat in silence for a while. Then Timiro says, “I dreamed I was burning Xirsi’s shoes last night, several pairs of them. You see, he lives for his shoes and loves them and I can’t stand the sight of them still sitting in our wardrobe. And guess what, Mum?”
“What, my sweet?”
“In the dream, you were so unhappy with what I had done, you wept and wept.”
Then Timiro looks in her father’s direction, expecting him to make a comment, but he has nothing to say. A moment later, the phone rings in the living room and Timiro starts, as if she imagines it is Xirsi. She dreads the thought of having to speak to the man whose shoes she set on fire. Gacalo says, “Leave it to me. I will deal with Xirsi, if he is the one calling.”
Gacalo answers it and then says “My God” a couple of times, and that she will share the news with Mugdi and Timiro. When she rejoins them, Gacalo says, “It was Himmo. A pig’s head and a Nazi flag have been left inside the big mosque in Groenland that she worships at.”
“Do they know who the perpetrators are?”
“Himmo has no idea,” answers Gacalo.
This is not the first time that groups allied to right-wing skinheads in Norway have dropped off a dead pig’s body at a mosque. Such actions seem to be escalating—in the past few years there have been multiple cases of a right-wing assailant knifing Pakistanis or Arabs in different areas of Oslo.
Silent, all three are aware of the battle lines that have been drawn between two minority groups: on one side, the neo-Nazis, with their anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant smear campaigns, and on the other, the jihadis, small in number when you think of the world’s Muslim population of a billion plus. These two are at war and the rest are victims.
Then Gacalo tells Timiro not to forget that they have an appointment with Qumman, the Somali psychologist with whom the family has been speaking, with the aim of assisting Saafi to overcome her personal difficulties. Qumman specializes in dealing with victims of rape among the Somali diaspora; she has published a booklet that has become a go-to in the field.
Gacalo and Timiro take a taxi to fetch Saafi to the psychologist’s office. Gacalo, to diminish Waliya’s worries about her daughter going out, tells the widow, “We’ll do a bit more shopping and Saafi will be back within two hours, if not before that.”
When they are in the taxi, Gacalo says to Saafi, “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve talked to Timiro about your recurrent nightmares.”
“I don’t mind you sharing it, Grandma.”
After she and her mother exchange a free-from-anxiety glance, Timiro asks, “Have you told your mother about them?”
“No, I haven’t dared to.”
“Why?”
It seems the question makes Saafi uncomfortable or embarrassed and she covers her mouth with her hand, as if to hide her thoughts this way. Finally, she says, “I thought she might accuse me of inventing the story.”
“Are you given to inventing stories about men, Saafi?” asks Timiro.
“Of course not.”
Gacalo says, “Now thi
s is what we’re going to do: we’re taking you to meet a friend of Timiro’s, who we think will help you get better. She is a psychologist.”
Timiro says, “Do you know what a psychologist is, Saafi?”
Saafi’s eyes increase in size and she asks, “Am I sick, Grandma? Is this what you are telling me?” And she looks from Gacalo to Timiro and back.
“No, my sweet. You’re not sick. But you need a form of help only a psychologist like Qumman can deal with.”
“I am willing to see anyone who can help me.”
“All you have to do is to talk to her, answer her questions,” says Timiro.
“We went to university together, Qumman and I and I’m sure you’ll like her.”
“Is this to remain a secret between us three and just to be sure, you don’t want me to share it with anyone else, especially my mother?”
“That’s right,” says Gacalo.
Saafi wears a bring-it-on look, but says nothing.
When they arrive at Qumman’s office, Gacalo, as previously agreed, wishes to know more about what the psychologist has in mind for the girl. She also wants to make Qumman’s acquaintance, since she will be the one bringing her after Timiro has gone back to Geneva.
Qumman says to Gacalo, “It’s my job to know how to make a subject relax and talk. I am trained to do that. It may take a couple of sessions, but in the end I succeed. But I don’t want either you or Timiro to be in the room with us.”
Timiro asks, “Any idea how many sessions you’ll require before we decide whether she is making progress or not?”
“Leave it to me to decide,” says Qumman.
Gacalo wishes Saafi “Good luck,” and takes a taxi to work. Timiro stays behind and, when the psychologist invites Saafi in, she waits in Qumman’s anteroom with a book to read, lest the girl take fright if she came out and didn’t find her there.
When Saafi reemerges after what seems to Timiro longer than eternity, the girl’s sweet smile makes every second she has waited worthwhile. Saafi looks relaxed as Qumman escorts her out of the office. Timiro says nothing to Qumman, happy that the first session has worked to Saafi’s and everyone’s benefit.
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