North of Dawn

by Nuruddin Farah

  Saafi takes Timiro’s hand in hers and they walk side by side and ride the lift down to the ground floor. Timiro, thinking that she needs to talk a bit with the girl, finds a bench in a small park and they sit. As soon as Timiro feels that Saafi is visibly relaxed, she asks, “What do you think about Qumman?”

  “I like her. I felt I could trust her.”

  “What do you like about her?”

  At first Saafi’s smile hardens into a frown and then she gives herself a moment’s pause to think. Then she says, “She is the kind of woman to whom I can talk about the terrible night in as much detail as I can bring back.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “She has tried to make those memories scare me less than before,” says Saafi.

  Timiro watches the girl to see if there is fear in her eyes or in the rest of her body, but there is nothing of the kind.

  Timiro drops her off at her apartment and makes sure that she is home safe.

  As they part, Saafi shares a confidence. She says, “I’ll show Mum the scarf and the perfume and won’t talk about meeting ‘Auntie’ Qumman.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The house is quieter than it has been in days, now that Timiro has returned to Geneva and Gacalo is back at work. Mugdi spends more time in his study, making up for the hours he lost in helping Gacalo with all matters Waliya and attending to his visiting daughter.

  It is just as well. Alone in his study, he doesn’t need to pretend that all is right with him, or share the devastating dream of the night before. In the dream, Mugdi is hiding in a chest as waves of locusts descend on a farm he owns in the Lower Juba region of Somalia. When the assault is over and he reemerges to assess the damage, a Waliya look-alike appears out of nowhere and says not to worry, even though life as the family lived it will never be the same. Mugdi hasn’t been able to put the dream from his mind all morning, worrying if the prophecy might come to pass.

  Then he observes Gacalo standing in the doorway of his study. Perhaps she has come to remind him that she is on her way out to meet up with Himmo. Gacalo has lately decided she needs someone to cultivate the widow’s trust and act as a mediator, someone who, as Somali idiom has it, might be in a position to “carry fire” between the widow and the rest of the family. Can Himmo play the part? For one thing, Saafi’s father is her blood relative, who, like Waliya, has been unlucky with her marriages. For another, he and Gacalo are close to her and they have faith in her. But will Waliya be willing to listen to Himmo? And will Himmo be prepared to carry the fire between the two parties?

  In their telephone conversation, Gacalo told Himmo that the director of the language school Saafi is supposed to attend has written to say that the girl has not shown up or even registered. It is after hearing this that Himmo offered to intercede, since it became obvious that while all three are meant to attend the language classes for newly arrived asylum seekers, only Naciim has done so every day without fail. Saafi has been irregular in her attendance, now pleading sickness, now finding another excuse not to leave the apartment. Waliya has never even registered.

  Mugdi asks, “You off to meet Himmo then?”

  “Yes. I’ll take the tram to Central Station, where I will meet Himmo at a café there before going together to the widow’s place.”

  “Good to have friends like Himmo.”

  “We don’t have many friends, do we?”

  “Perhaps not, but there are no friends better than the ones we have—Himmo, who is there for us, and Johan and Birgitta, on whom you can depend. You don’t want your life to be full of unnecessary clutter, with friends who are really no more than acquaintances. One stands to gain from deep friendships and the takings are greater that way.”

  Gacalo consults her watch, turns on her heels and says, “I don’t want to be late.”

  “Give my warmest to Himmo,” says Mugdi.

  With Himmo standing alongside her, Gacalo rings the doorbell to the widow’s apartment. If her heartbeat quickens, it is because she has no idea if, in the likely absence of Naciim, who is supposed to be at school, Waliya will open the door to them. She stands back and listens for footsteps approaching, waiting for what feels like ten minutes, when in real time it is even less than three. She presses the bell again, waits another moment, then taps hard on the door thrice, and finally in exasperation takes hold of the handle, turning it. When none of these have produced results, she decides to knock on the door at the same time as she calls out to Waliya by name, evidence of her impatience. “It is I, Gacalo. Open the door. Now please.”

  At last, the door opens—Saafi, in the absence of Naciim, has taken the initiative after peering through the peephole to let them in. It appears the girl has not forgotten Timiro’s tirade when they were not allowed in the last time.

  When Gacalo and Himmo step inside, Saafi, smiling regretfully, explains, “Naciim is not home.” She looks uncomfortable and is aware, no doubt, that she should have opened the door to them sooner. Then she says, “I’ll tell Mum you are here.”

  No hug, no shaking of hands.

  And no sooner has she run off than Waliya, her fingers busy tucking a cowl into place with the help of safety pins, comes into view, appearing a little perturbed.

  Never the one to blink first, Gacalo braces for an unpleasant welcome, remembering the last visit. She recalls Himmo’s advice at the café that perhaps the best way to deal with Waliya was to grow a thick skin and to ignore her behavior, however gruff. After all, as Himmo said, “You and Waliya have a long-term relationship, she is your daughter-in-law, you her mother-in-law, and, what is more, you are bound to each other in this country’s bureaucracy, because you share files.”

  Waliya says, “We did not expect you.”

  “This is Himmo,” says Gacalo. “From what Himmo tells me you are distant cousins several times removed. In addition, Himmo is an aunt to Saafi on her father’s side.”

  Himmo steps into the conversation and mentions the relevant consanguinity, naming the ancestors.

  “Himmo has lived in Oslo for a number of years and she is a registered nurse, much loved at the hospital where she works,” says Gacalo.

  Waliya says, “I had no idea you lived here. I know your name from my former husband, Saafi’s father, and I am delighted to meet you in person.” Then she says after a brief pause, “Where are my manners?” Then she points the two women to their seats. “Please!”

  As the women sit down, Saafi, her smile broad and her features cast in a pleasanter mode, shyly offers them tea.

  Gacalo says, “Thanks. Tea black, no sugar.”

  “Somali tea, one sugar,” says Himmo.

  Waliya says, “Same as Himmo, three sugars.”

  The widow’s fingers are frantically counting her rosary, her lips moving rapidly, maybe praying or perhaps rehearsing her replies before speaking them, Gacalo can’t decide.

  Gacalo says, “Where is the young man?”

  “He is hardworking and at school,” answers Waliya. “He seems to be enjoying it and tells me about the Syrian, Iraqi, and Palestinian refugee families who attend the language course with him.”

  “I am happy to hear that,” says Gacalo. “How many hours does he attend daily?”

  “Four to five hours daily.”

  “When does he leave home?” asks Himmo.

  “He leaves home earlier in the day, became he likes to play soccer with the other boys in the class, many of them Arab,” says Waliya.

  There is joy in her voice—a proud mother. It is clear that she is delighted with the progress Naciim has made.

  She adds, after a pause, “He is a very adventurous boy. However, he is much too forward and that upsets me.”

  “Too forward—how?” asks Himmo.

  Waliya says, “There are these Palestinian twins whom he has befriended and to whose home in the vicinity of the school he has be
en. Only yesterday did he tell me that the twins are Christian and he has been eating their haram food. And they have an older sister. It angers me to hear this.”

  Saafi arrives with the tea and hangs around for a couple of minutes, until a subtle shake of her mother’s head lets the girl know that she is not welcome to listen to the conversation of adults, and so she leaves.

  Gacalo redirects the conversation. “I understand that although the stove in the apartment is working, there is a problem about the water heating system.”

  “Everything is fine with the water heater. We are happy.”

  “I am happy that you are happy,” says Himmo.

  Waliya turns to Himmo. “This is the first time that each of us has a proper bedroom, with beds much larger than any we’ve ever slept in. This is also the first time when we’ve lived without frequent power outages and when we could pray without fear. We’re very grateful to my in-laws, especially Gacalo, for providing us with so many of these comforts.”

  “Have you been out and about?” asks Himmo.

  “Naciim has.”

  “You haven’t been tempted to go out yet, not even for a walk? Surely, it gets lonely in the apartment.”

  “Saafi and I have been to the mosque on the odd Friday to pray,” says Waliya, “and Imams Fanax and Zubair have come together to visit us at the apartment: the first time to pay a courtesy call and to know of our needs and the second time to bless the house with a reading of the Koran. But Saafi and I are not like Naciim. The boy has no worries and knows no fear.”

  Himmo says, “You’d want that in a boy.”

  Waliya asks Himmo, “Do you have children?”

  “Two girls and a boy.”

  “How old are they?”

  “One of my two daughters is older than Saafi, and the boy, who is in the middle, is close to your daughter’s age. My youngest, the second girl, is younger than Naciim,” says Himmo.

  “We should bring them together some time.”

  “Yes. We should and we will.”

  “Where were they born and raised?”

  “All three of them in Europe.”

  “Then they won’t have anything in common.”

  Gacalo thinks that Waliya is hostage to the traumas a longtime resident of a refugee camp in Kenya suffers. Unaddressed, the damage haunts the memory forever.

  Himmo, changing the subject, asks, “How is Saafi doing?”

  “She is at a difficult age, in an awkward space, and she happens to have come to an alien land,” says Waliya.

  Himmo says, “We’ve talked about Naciim’s schooling and how much he enjoys it. Why is Saafi not in school like her brother?”

  “Saafi feels trapped and panics easily.”

  Himmo, as agreed between her and Gacalo, alludes to the benefits Saafi might receive from talking to a psychologist. She says, “Would you approve if we consulted psychologists to help Saafi? A lot of research has been done in Norway on Somali refugee girls who feel trapped in their own bodies, following the horrid experiences they have had back home in war-torn Somalia or in the refugee camps.”

  Waliya cuts her off and says, “Only the Koran can help, no one else can. It is to this end that Imam Fanax of the mosque and I are working on a plan.”

  Gacalo is ill at ease, knowing that she and Timiro have already taken the girl to Qumman. But then she is relieved that Saafi did promise Timiro that she wouldn’t speak of the visit to her mother. When next Gacalo looks at Waliya, she sees that the woman has resumed counting her rosary with more fury than before. When they hear the muezzin announcing the call to afternoon prayer, the sound is so loud Gacalo figures that it has emanated from within the apartment. Saafi remerges, as if in a choreographed move, seemingly eager to say her prayers, her mother leading.

  While Waliya doesn’t bother to ask Gacalo if she will join them, she asks Himmo, “If you are joining us and you need to perform your ablutions, then we will wait for you?”

  Himmo says, “I would very much love to join you, with you leading.”

  With the start of the praying postponed until Himmo has performed her ablutions, Waliya trains a disapproving look in Gacalo’s direction before bringing out a bigger prayer rug now there are three of them. When Himmo returns, she and Saafi stand behind Waliya, who speaks the iqaamah ritual, reciting the phrase, “Prayers are now ready.” Saafi is more intense and very attentive, whereas Waliya seems more relaxed, almost casual.

  When they have concluded their prayer, there is a standoffish, albeit silent, moment between Waliya and Gacalo. To Waliya, it is as though she shares nothing with the woman she is supposed to think of as her mother-in-law.

  To break the tension, Himmo asks Saafi, “How do you fill your day, if you don’t attend school?”

  All eyes trained on her, Saafi becomes self-conscious and stammers slightly when she starts to speak. “I am keen on improving my reading of the Koran.”

  “And your ambition in life?” asks Himmo.

  “It is to become an Islamic scholar one day and to teach the Word of God to other women.”

  Waliya adds, “Saafi is always awake in the early hours, reading and praying, devoting a lot of time and thought to understanding the complexities of the faith and how to interpret it in the proper way.”

  Himmo says, “Such dedication is admirable. I wish my children developed similar dedication to anything. I suppose it shows a certain amount of maturity.”

  Waliya indicates to Saafi that it is time she returned to her room, because she doesn’t want her to be present in the event their talk becomes adult talk. With Saafi gone, Waliya asks Himmo, “What school do your children attend?”

  “They attend state schools near our home.”

  “Do you teach them Arabic and the Koran?”

  “In the early part of the day, they attend the school proper and three times a week in the afternoon they study Arabic and Tajweed at an Islamic center close by.”

  “You describe state schools as ‘proper schools,’ not where they learn the Koran and Arabic Tajweed. Why?”

  Himmo says, “I wish we had such a school, where they could learn to write and read Somali, but there is no educational facility of that kind here in Norway, only in America.”

  “What do they study the rest of the week?”

  “The older girl takes piano lessons.”

  “And the other one?”

  “She plays soccer in the afternoon.”

  “A girl playing soccer with boys?”

  “She is on an all-girl team.”

  “She wears the niqaab, playing soccer?”

  “To be honest, she doesn’t.”

  Nervous about the turn the conversation has taken, Gacalo thinks that the time to leave has come. However, she wishes to put an important question to Waliya, one that she wants answered in Himmo’s presence. Gacalo says, “We’ve talked about the children. We’ve heard you describe Saafi’s panic attacks and the difficulties she has with attending language school regularly. And we know too that you are not interested in seeking a job or even working. Did it ever occur to you that attending the language school is compulsory and that anyone who does not attend it may not be issued with asylum papers?”

  “I am almost thirty and feel too old to learn a new language that shares no roots with Somali or Arabic,” says Waliya. “I find it difficult to contemplate sitting in a classroom at my age and learning a new alphabet.”

  Himmo seems shocked. She says, “I was much older than you are now when I first arrived, with no Norwegian and no profession to speak of. I was a single mum, with two children to raise. Not only did I learn Norwegian, at which I am highly proficient now, but also I trained as a nurse and work at a hospital and earn enough to raise my children, pay for my mortgage, and send money home once every two months to my elderly aunt, who is bedridden.”

&nbs
p; Waliya says nothing. Himmo and Gacalo wait.

  Then Himmo goes on, “You know of course that neither you nor your children will receive state support until after your asylum papers are processed and approved. You don’t need me telling you that until that time, which may take at least a year, Mugdi and Gacalo are obliged by law to pay for all your bills, including the monthly rent of the apartment, and all your other needs. And let me say this, while I can. It was one thing living in a refugee camp in Kenya and receiving remittances amounting to a couple of hundred dollars monthly from Gacalo. But it is altogether a different thing to sit around now doing nothing—not attending school, not working, and just making the occasional visit to the mosque. You were brought here at great risk and expense. You could’ve been stopped from boarding your flight, arrested for carrying forged passports, deported, and all would have been for naught.”

  Himmo, in the pause she takes here, reminds herself that the tickets alone cost nine thousand dollars and counting; and the apartment run will run into thousands of kroners in the first year.

  “You need to put in your share,” she continues. “You don’t want to be a burden on anyone, least of all Gacalo and Mugdi, who have already given so much. I suggest, for starters, that you go to the language school and then find a menial job of whatever nature so you share the financial burden with them.”

  Waliya wears a fresh new seriousness for the first time since Himmo and Gacalo have arrived. She says, “I’ve been talking with Imam Fanax. We’re close to reaching an understanding.”

  “Is he offering you a job?” asks Himmo.

  Waliya says, “I am thinking of starting a nursery for Somali children whose mothers work outside the home. But we are considering making provisional use of this apartment, having the children brought here in the morning and picked up when the mothers are back from work. The parents will be made to pay something close to babysitting expenses, the mosque will make a financial commitment to the project, it being Muslim-inspired, and perhaps the district will give us a grant.”