North of Dawn

by Nuruddin Farah

  “My mother tends to blame the world, never herself,” says Naciim. “And I am tired of that. When will she take responsibility for her actions, admit that she is wrong?”

  Mugdi, as much as he might share the boy’s feelings, is loath to tread further down this avenue of finger pointing, and decides a change of subject is the wisest course of action.

  “Tell you what, Naciim,” Mugdi says. “Go and watch a bit of TV—and be sure to help yourself to a soft drink, you know where the fridge is—and I will return to my study upstairs and do some more work. We’ll talk about this later. For now, just relax.”

  “Yes, Grandpa,” Naciim says, noticeably lighter in temperament.

  Three hours later, during a pause in the soccer program he is watching, Naciim hears a key turning in the lock and the voices of two women entering the house. He is able to identify Gacalo as one of the speakers, but can’t quite place the other woman, though she sounds vaguely familiar. As the women move into the living room, Naciim now recognizing the other voice as Himmo’s, he feels the urge to announce his presence, as he doesn’t want Gacalo to think of him as an intruder. So he clears his throat loudly enough for the women to hear him without being startled.

  “Hey, look who is here,” Himmo says, shaking the hand Naciim has extended in her direction, then hugging and kissing him on the forehead.

  Gacalo smiles at Himmo’s warm greeting before giving Naciim a tight hug and several kisses of her own. The boy seems grateful for the embrace, gripping her so fiercely that after a moment Gacalo steps back and appraises him, intuiting that something is amiss. She curses under her breath and asks, “Is it your mother?”

  Naciim’s eyes downcast, he nods.

  “What was it this time?”

  He is preparing to answer when Himmo takes him by the elbow, gently shakes him, and says, “A big quarrel or a small one?”

  Seeing the boy hesitate, Mugdi, who has come down from his study after hearing the women’s arrival, kisses his wife hello, hugs Himmo, saying, “It’s been a long time, my dear,” and then answers her question on Naciim’s behalf. “I would say it was a very big quarrel, over whether his mother will allow him to join his classmates in the flag-waving celebrations tomorrow. From what he told me, he bought a couple of flags and she tore them to shreds and inveighed against crosses and alien gods.”

  Gacalo, filled with indignation, says, “The boy wants to have a bit of fun, that’s all. He means no harm to anyone, nor to his faith, nor to the reputation of his community. What’s wrong with his dressing up in his best clothes, joining his classmates, and having a good time?”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Himmo agrees.

  “The woman is mad,” says Gacalo.

  “Exactly. And let’s leave it at that,” says Mugdi, turning toward Himmo and asking, “Tea?”

  As Gacalo excuses herself to go upstairs and change out of her work clothes, Himmo takes the tall chair, waiting for her tea, and Mugdi asks Naciim if he would like tea of his own or another soft drink.

  “Another soft drink, please.”

  Mugdi hands the boy a Coke from the fridge, then sensing his eagerness to leave, says, “You may return to watching your soccer match if you’d like.”

  Putting on the water to boil, Mugdi brings out the teapot, tea cozy, cups and saucers, sugar for Himmo and milk for himself and Gacalo, who has returned in time to hear him say, “For a boy of Naciim’s age, moments of small turmoil such as this feel like a day of reckoning.”

  “And the best comfort he can expect is empathy,” Himmo says, “courtesy of a couple like you and Gacalo, a man and a woman with giant hearts.”

  Gacalo, still visibly annoyed with Waliya, says, “The irony is that Naciim perhaps still harbors the illusion of being the Mahram and therefore the most important member of the household. But he is what he is, a mere child, and his mother is the householder. It is time he acknowledges that this whole Mahram business is just religious fantasy.”

  Something like liquid rage now rises in Mugdi’s entrails, as he relives the terrible memories associated with Waliya’s coming to Oslo—the family members divided, forms filled out, funds wasted, relationships strained, tempers lost, promises made, favors called in. He thinks of Gacalo taking to her bed not so long ago, and the boy turning up, unannounced, seeking a place of refuge. Is it any wonder that they are all beginning to feel burned out?

  Soft footsteps signal Naciim’s return to the kitchen. “I have a few questions about tomorrow,” he says hesitantly. “How and when did all this flag-waving start? Why is it the school-going children who lead the celebrations? How come the adults take a less active role?”

  “The day has several monikers,” Mugdi says. “National Day, Constitution Day, and Liberation Day. It is tradition for each school to celebrate with a children’s parade that passes by the Royal Palace, where the Royal Family greets the celebrants from the balcony. And while children march through the streets in colorful clothes, waving flags, adults don the Norwegian national costume.”

  “When did this holiday start and who started it?”

  Gacalo says, “Was it not 1825?”

  “You can’t think of this day without also thinking of Henrik Wergeland, one of Norway’s greatest poets, who is credited with the idea of a celebratory day primarily for children. To mark his importance, the Russ, the high-school graduating class of the year, call at his statue and place an enormous hat on his head,” Mugdi says. “And he has earned legendary status among Norway’s Jewish community, for his commitment to inclusiveness and the efforts he undertook to accommodate their presence.”

  “But he wasn’t Jewish, was he?” Himmo asks.

  “Nor was he Muslim, even though some of his fellow Norwegians believed he had converted to Islam, because in a letter to his father, Wergeland referred to God as Allah. He was just a man ahead of his time, a champion of multicultural Norway, who is seen today as the father of the Norwegian left.”

  Himmo says, “But there have always been dissenters, groups who oppose celebrating the constitution in the spirit with which Wergeland interpreted it.”

  Gacalo cuts in, saying, “I remember in 1983, Norwegian extremists incited their fellow citizens to rise up in arms against allowing immigrant children to be part of the celebrations. These groups made bomb threats in neo-Nazi propaganda pamphlets sent to the principal of one of the schools. The teachers of the school pleaded with the police to provide protection. But when the police declined to do so, the school authorities demanded that the celebrations continue as planned, without making the racist threats known to the public. The teachers, brave souls, would not back down, despite the threats from the racists. Luckily, everything went ahead without incident, though there were repeated bomb threats the following year too.”

  “What is wrong with these people?” Naciim says. “Why all this hate toward Muslims?”

  Mugdi looks down at his hands, staring at his nails which are in need of trimming, while considering how best to answer the boy’s question. After a few moments, he meets Naciim’s eyes and says, “The right-wing ethnic Norwegians aren’t the only ones who oppose Wergeland’s inclusive, peace-abiding interpretation of the principles of the Norwegian Constitution. You have the mullahs on the Muslim side, whose challenge to the ideals upon which the pillars of freedom stand is just as dangerous as that of the right-wing extremists. A Salafist group that exists on the fringes, like Islam Net—a Sunni Muslim organization whose founder expressed support for the execution of homosexuals and adulterers—is no promoter of peace either, despite their claim. In short, you have native-born right-wing extremists and a handful of radical Islamists who are daggers drawn over ‘ideology’ and therefore make everyone else’s life difficult. And you know what happens when two elephants confront each other and fight?”

  “No. Please tell me,” says Naciim.

  “When elephants
get into a wrestling match, it is the grass that suffers,” says Himmo.

  “I don’t follow you,” says Naciim.

  “In other words, when the native-born extremists get into a no-holds-barred fight with the radical Muslims, the victims will be the innocent folks, who belong to neither group,” says Gacalo. “We must all beware of provocateurs, no matter their allegiances, who are enemies to the nation at large and of peace everywhere.”

  Naciim, thinking over what he has just heard, says, “Wergeland and every peace-loving person here and elsewhere would oppose both groups. Am I right?”

  All three adults answer in unison, “Yes.”

  An hour and a half after dinner, Naciim is given the choice of either returning home with Himmo, who is willing to offer him a bed for the night, and then joining her three children tomorrow at the celebrations, or spending the night at Mugdi and Gacalo’s. The boy chooses to sleep at his grandparents’, provided that they let his mother know where he is.

  Mugdi makes the call to Waliya. When Saafi answers the phone, he asks her to tell her mother that “Naciim is well and is staying with us for the night.”

  Then he hangs up.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The following morning Mugdi and Naciim are in the kitchen and the old man asks, “What would you like for breakfast?”

  Gacalo has already left for work. Despite its being a national holiday, she has to file an urgent budget proposal. She and Mugdi woke early and ate together. Mugdi made her an omelet, and for himself, his favorite morning meal, porridge.

  He is now on his third cup of strong coffee and has just greeted Naciim with a welcoming smile. The boy looks exhausted, having slept little the previous night. When Mugdi awoke around two a.m. and came downstairs to get a glass of a water, he witnessed Naciim tossing and turning and talking to himself in his sleep, shouting someone’s name incoherently. To Mugdi, it sounded as if he were cursing Zubair.

  “What’s there to eat?” Naciim asks.

  Despite his lack of sleep, Naciim is looking forward to the day’s festivities, and to the fact that his best friend Edvart will be at the head of the line, carrying the flag. Mugdi replies, “I can make you porridge.”

  “What did Grandma have?”

  “I made her an omelet.”

  “Can I have an omelet too, please?”

  “Of course,” says the old man.

  Mugdi brings out a skillet and some butter, cracks two eggs, which he beats together in a bowl, adds a drop of water, and then seasons the mix with black pepper and salt. When the butter has melted, he pours the mix into the frying pan and waits until it is fully cooked on all sides and ready to serve. Naciim watches everything with rapt attention, perhaps keen to make his own omelet next time. Mugdi places the omelet before Naciim and asks, “Would you like toasted bread or a slice of untoasted baguette?”

  “A slice of baguette, please.”

  The boy fidgets in his chair, looking slightly ill at ease. Though Mugdi does not inquire as to what is causing him discomfort, he assumes that Naciim is embarrassed to be sitting there doing nothing while an old man cooks his breakfast and serves it to him. In the culture in which the boy was raised, not only is the kitchen considered a woman’s place, but it would be seen as the height of rudeness for a young person to sit idly while a man of Mugdi’s age prepared and served them a meal. Mugdi derives solace from knowing that this type of confusion will soon come to an end for the boy and everything will be fine. Or so he hopes.

  “Is everything OK?” asks Mugdi.

  As suddenly as it appeared, the anxiety leaves Naciim’s face, and he replies with joy, “I can make an omelet from today on, having watched you. But tell me, Grandpa, why do you put two or three drops of water in the beaten egg?”

  “Because that will make it less runny.”

  “My stepdad used to put milk in it instead,” says Naciim. “And I agree, it was a lot runnier than the one you just made.”

  When they have eaten and dressed, Mugdi consults his watch and decides that it is time to leave if they are to join Naciim’s fellow students before the parade starts. “Are you coming too?” asks Naciim.

  “I remember escorting Dhaqaneh from the first years of his schooling until his final years at high school. And it was always fun,” says Mugdi.

  “I had no idea you used to accompany my stepdad in the flag-waving festivities. Had I known of this, I might have told my mother about it.”

  “Do you want to call your mum now?”

  “No. She’ll just quote some religious thing at me, and find some new way to worry. She goes to bed worrying and wakes up worrying.”

  “All the more reason to call her now,” says Mugdi, “to tell her that all is well with you and that so far nothing terrible has happened.”

  “Let me have fun first and then I will call her after the festivities are over,” says Naciim.

  Naciim offers to wash the dishes before they depart but Mugdi will not hear of it. He suggests the boy collect his flags and get ready so they can walk to the train station.

  The first time Naciim took the underground, not long after his arrival in Oslo, he was full of fear and excitement, overawed to imagine that he was, as he put it, “in the belly of the earth, alive right inside its mysterious abyss.” Since then, he has taken it more times than he can remember, though he still gets a thrill each time he descends below ground.

  As he follows Mugdi, now walking on the old man’s right and now on his left, he is determined to keep pace, lest he be left behind. Mugdi is fond of walking fast, and Naciim’s steps are short compared to the old man’s long strides. If it were up to him, Naciim would study his surroundings in detail. He’d happily sit on a bench by the side of the road and watch with care the men, women, and children going this way and that, carrying flags of varying sizes, crowding the streets with delight. His gaze falls on two girls his age, one wearing a short skirt and eating an ice lollipop, the other, a bit older, skimpily clad in a see-through dress and smoking a cigarette. Shocked to see such a young girl puffing away—and even more by the sight of her budding breast, which can be glimpsed through the side of her dress—Naciim decelerates to the point of stopping altogether, his eyes opening wide with awe. He is so focused on the girl that he forgets where he is headed and with whom, until he hears his name and sees Mugdi towering over him, asking, “Are you coming?” Naciim hopes Mugdi cannot tell what has held him captive. Even so, he apologizes and scurries after Mugdi, as the old man resumes his fast walk.

  Soon the sidewalks grow busier, filled with crowds on their way to the nearby schools or to the T-Bane Metro. Mugdi eases his pace so the two of them can walk side by side.

  At the ticket kiosk, Mugdi purchases a ticket for Naciim.

  “What about you? Don’t you need a ticket?”

  “I have a pensioner’s pass.”

  Assuming that Naciim may not know its intricacies, Mugdi begins explaining the history of Oslo’s T-Bane to the boy. “It extends over more than eighty kilometers and the first line started operating in 1898,” he tells the boy, “though the basis for today’s network was constructed in 1928 and then added to, as the city grew and its population increased tenfold.” He brings out a subway map and shows Naciim their present route, pointing out how the different lines are color coded. Then he falls into silence, because it is too noisy for them to hear each other, and looks around at the crowd. Everyone seems friendlier today; even the masses of people pushing into the train are politer than during usual rush hours, standing aside to make room for the younger ones waving flags. Maybe the extremists on either side of the Norwegian divide have chosen to stay away. The passengers remind him of soccer fans making their way toward a stadium where they are confident their team will win. Maybe Team Wergeland is the winning side today.

  As agreed the previous night, they meet up with Himmo and her children in
Groenland, close to where Naciim is linking up with his friend Edvart, and where Himmo’s children will join their school parade. After seeing the children off, Mugdi and Himmo walk alongside the parade for a good quarter hour, liberally commenting on the sights and their fellow attendees.

  At one point, they spot three generations of an African family. Himmo observes their harmonious appearance, the grandparents holding the hands of the youngest, the sisters walking arm in arm, and the husband and wife in loving communion, practically kissing. Then Mugdi overhears a Somali couple by the side of the road making racist remarks about the family. Incensed, Mugdi can’t control himself. Storming over to the couple, he inveighs against their behavior, which white Europeans might use to justify their own discriminatory observations about black people. He adds, “Why don’t you desist from this fascist behavior today of all days?”

  “What business is it of yours to speak to us that way?” the man challenges him. “We can say what we want and you can’t stop us.”

  An argument ensues and Himmo joins in. Mugdi and the man are close to exchanging blows when other Somalis standing nearby intervene, pulling the two apart. As they walk away from the scene, Mugdi says, “We Somalis are xenophobic and chauvinistic. Often I wonder if we have the right to complain when or if others behave unkindly toward us.”

  Himmo agrees and says, “Our self-regard, as a people, makes me sick too. We look down on everybody—white, black, African, Arab, American—and do not defer to anyone’s authority. To use the Somali word for slave, adoon, to describe a fellow African here in Norway, as that couple just did, is to denigrate ourselves as humans.”

  “An ill-educated, cynical lot,” Mugdi says, “these Somalis have nothing to recommend them, whether here in Norway or anywhere else. They have no idea that the age-old certainties which they held at home are no longer valid here.”