‘But a town is more than a dwelling of a clan,’ she thought to herself. There were far more people than she had imagined. She looked around. She saw huts and houses and buildings unlike the ones she had been accustomed to. The circular huts were miraculously beautiful from outside. A car hooted from nearby: she wondered what it could be and how it could move along all by itself, without anybody pulling or pushing it. ‘It is the magic of the white man,’ someone nearby voluntarily explained to her. She left it at that.
Now they were going below the arched building of Belet Amin, the town of peace, constructed by the Sayyid, the warrior about whom she had heard so much. She stopped to touch the arch herself. It was something very novel to her: she had never seen anything like it. Her grandfather would have rejoiced to see this. Several times, he had tried to give her some hints of town life, but it had been no use; she had not believed a word of what he had said. She was obstinate—or so it seemed.
Now that they had come to the centre of the town, nobody from the group offered to escort her to her cousin’s place. This cousin was thrice removed, but that hardly mattered. His wife needed a maid-servant and naturally she wanted to give a hand. At first she would tell him, just as she had told her fellow-travellers, that she had come to town for a medical check-up. That would sound a legitimate reason to stay with them for a week or so in case her service was not needed.
How would she be able to help? She knew quite well that town life was different from the life she had led. Perhaps she should be more submissive than she had been to others and in that way she might learn much and be of assistance to others.
A young man was singled out from the group to take her to her cousin’s place. He gave her a sign to follow him. She had already been keeping her spare robe and that was all she owned. She tucked the robe underneath her arm. Nobody wished her good luck or anything like that, because they did not have the slightest idea what her intentions were.
The young man slowed down to keep pace with her and to have a close look at her—not exactly at her, but at a part of her. The wind now had started to blow hard and Ebla’s naked ribs showed more. She could feel the breeze fondling her belly; and the young man threw a sideways glance at the naked spot. He went on as before, not showing the slightest desire, at least not externally. Ebla walked vigorously at his side, throbbing. Blessing whom? Scared of whom? And of what? Wishing what? Praying probably to God. She was silent, her hands going to and fro, her robe stretching out to the sides like the wings of a plane. Before they reached her cousin’s house, she saw the young man’s severe eyes. She lowered her eyes coyly and re-tightened the robe, covering her breast.
Ebla and the young man found themselves at the door of her cousin’s house. The young man said that he would go back to the group, and that she should do things for herself. He left her. She did not thank him.
5
She was alone. The man had left her. She knew why the young man had left her: the townspeople never liked anyone who brought them guests from the country. Ebla felt unspeakable agony when she realized that she would have to do everything for herself. For the first time in her life she faced the problem of getting something done with no assistance. This was particularly difficult on her first day in a town, where the devils lived along with the saints, and whores face to face with their relations. ‘But this time I shall have to cope,’ she encouraged herself. ‘It is absolutely necessary.’
She walked on a few steps and into the house. A cow was tied by the leg to the wall; a calf, probably the cow’s, could also be seen elsewhere in the other direction. The cow ate its green grass, and mooed. Ebla felt more at home being near the cow than she would with the townspeople, she guessed. A goat bleated from within a small hut to her right. ‘Oh, marvellous,’ she told herself. ‘I only wish we had a camel around.’ She looked in the direction of the cow and went towards it. The beast could not reach the grass that it had unintentionally pushed away with its tongue. It dug its feet into the ground as it knelt down on its hind legs, then put out its tongue to pull the grass so that it could eat. But instead of coming nearer, the grass went farther away, farther and farther. Ebla walked over and pushed the grass nearer and nearer. The cow at last got hold of a bundle and bit into it, hard and properly.
Ebla gave a happy smile. ‘Good,’ she said to herself. Then the calf bleated. ‘Maybe it’s hungry too,’ she speculated. She looked towards the calf and could not see any grass near it. So, placing her spare robe on the ground, she picked up a handful of grass and headed towards the calf. She placed it just under the nose of the beast, and walked away feeling contented.
All this time, Gheddi had been looking at what she was doing, but could not understand what she was after. He looked at her from behind the window, so that she would not be able to see him, even if she looked. He talked to someone inside the room and then came out.
‘Nabad,’ Ebla heard a man’s voice from behind. She had just placed the grass in front of the calf.
Ebla turned around, her eyes downcast, her heart beating faster and faster. The strange man came nearer, and the nearer he came, the stranger he appeared to her. She wanted to get away before he appropriated her, but she was slow. He looked at her as if he knew her. Her eyes were still lowered, her hands dangling, as helpless as a man drowning. Her feet felt very heavy, as if they could not support the rest of her body.
He repeated ‘Nabad’, which means ‘peace be unto you’.
She looked around. She thought that he had spoken to somebody else, but she could not see anybody else.
She looked at him. He was approximately thirty-five and had a full beard painted with henna, but he was shorter than the men from her dwellings.
All that Ebla wanted to do was go away and disappear—run, run away. And she would have run away had he not stopped her.
‘But just wait,’ he said. She waited. She could hear his foot-steps coming nearer. The order he had given to her resounded in her ears. She was amazed because of the gentleness of his voice.
‘Who do you want to see?’ he asked her.
‘Someone,’ she replied in a low voice, which he could hardly hear.
‘Are you looking for a particular person?’ She glanced at him, not understanding.
‘I mean in this house. Or even in the neighbourhood?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Then who is it?’
‘My cousin.’
‘Your cousin? Here in town?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘What is his name?’ Ebla kept silent.
‘I might know where he lives.’
‘They say he lives here.’
‘In this house?’ She nodded. She wished she had never come to the town.
‘I am the owner of this house.’
‘The name of my cousin is Gheddi,’ she said, not knowing that it was to him that she was speaking.
‘My name is Gheddi.’
Gheddi stood motionless for a while. He could not work out who this girl was. And, anyway, these country people always claimed to be the cousin of someone or other. He immediately remembered a young man who had come to him and said that he was a cousin of his (ten times removed) and before he had known what he was doing, Gheddi gave him a place to sleep and something to eat. The young man stole some clothes and twenty shillings and had never been seen again. But this was a girl. ‘She would not come to steal, would she?’ he asked himself.
‘What is your name?’
‘My name is Ebla.’
‘And what is the name of your father?’ She told him. He pitied her. He knew the situation under which she had grown up, that she was a motherless child, and afterwards had also lost her father.
‘Come on in,’ he said. ‘Don’t stand in the sun. You must be tired.’
She turned around and went to collect her sheet from where she had left it when she went to feed the beasts.
Gheddi led her to the interior of the wattle-mud hut. Inside it was not as spacious
as it looked from outside. There were two beds, on one of which a woman was lying, with her eyes half closed. Also there were a number of nails on the wall which served as hangers, and a few boxes on the dung-floor. She twisted her head and mumbled something to herself, biting her lips.
Ebla stood in the doorway to have a closer look. Gheddi came over to where his wife lay. He placed his hand on the edge of the bed. He had his back turned to Ebla, but she could feel that he communicated with the woman, just by touching her on the shoulders, as if consoling her, telling her not to worry about the pain she was feeling or about the wishes she had had. He now faced Ebla again, and said:
‘Come on in. Why should you stand there like a stranger? Come inside.’ Ebla obeyed.
‘This is my wife,’ he said, pointing at the woman lying on the bed, whose figure was still vague as far as Ebla was concerned. ‘She is pregnant,’ she told herself. Neither of the women said a word. ‘I will be on my way to the shop. In another minute or two I will be gone. You are tired. You can sleep for a while,’ he said to Ebla. To his wife he said, ‘This is Ebla, my cousin. There you are.’
After saying this, he left and the two women were all alone. They could perhaps talk to each other like women, Gheddi must have thought.
6
Gheddi’s wife turned in the bed. Her belly would have prevented her sitting upright had she tried to. Nine months’ pregnancy—she felt pain, especially in the back: the spinal cord seemed to make things worse. Her legs served her no more, her hands seemed to be there only to wipe away the moisture that had been the result of the heat. Some drips of perspiration, sour in taste but queer and good for a pregnant woman like herself, dropped into her mouth, or into her eyes, the latter being absolutely unbearable. The cloth covered down to her knees. The heat was intolerable. Her shoulders were bare. A head-scarf also covered her long hair. Now that she sat up, the cloth went upwards exposing part of her once lovely, but now weak thighs. There was no male in the room and Ebla was no longer a stranger. It did not matter whether her thighs were covered or uncovered.
‘Ebla, is this the first time you have ever come to this town, or did you come before?’ she whispered.
‘This is my first visit,’ Ebla replied.
‘And when will you go back?’ Ebla thought how hard it must be for her to talk. She wanted to say that she had no intention to go back, but she hesitated.
‘I don’t know.’ They both kept silent. In the meanwhile, they heard the mooing of a cow, followed by the bleating of its calf. This was followed by the other cows, which had just come back from the grazing ground outside town.
‘It is not time for these cows to come back. The bastard cowherd doesn’t keep them at the grazing fields, even if there is lots for them to eat,’ Gheddi’s wife complained.
Ebla got up from the place where she had seated herself, and said: ‘I shall go and put the cows in the cots.’
‘Yes, do that,’ said Gheddi’s wife. Ebla, still tired from the tedious trip and still in her once white robe which by now had changed to a brownish colour because of the dust, walked away.
‘And tie them by the legs to the poles in the cot. Otherwise they will go to the calves and the calves will suck them dry.’ Ebla went out convincing herself that the life in a town did not resemble that of the country. She thought in these terms when she headed towards the cows.
She ran to and fro, trying to keep the cows from the calves. Twice she had to curse a calf-less cow. Later, she learnt that it was a rebel cow. It refused to be tied by the leg to the pole and before that it also did not want to be dragged into the cot. Ebla thought that the other cows had every reason to object to being tied to the poles, but this cow had no calf to run to. As is usual, the calf had been killed and eaten only five days after it was born. The cow had given birth for the first time and this was done to teach it that, in case its future calf died, it could be milked with ease.
Cows are beasts, calves are beasts and so are goats. ‘But we are beasts, too,’ she thought. ‘Isn’t my grandfather a beast? If one shows one’s bestiality by what one does then we are only better than these beasts by trying to explain our doings in such a way that we won’t appear ridiculous to our friends.
‘Kill a beast’s calf,’ she continued thinking. ‘And to him it is as painful as it is to human beings. But if this is not brought to an end, one day the strain will make them speak out, blast everybody and reveal their anguish which they have been storing up for so long. Sayyed Mohammed loved one of his beasts, the horse he called Hhin Fineen, more than his sons. He never composed a line of poetry in his sons’ praise, but he composed many poems in praise of his beast. I like the Sayyed, because he loved his beasts. But I dislike him because he murdered many people for no reason.’
Although Ebla hated laying about animals, she had to do so when the cows objected to being tied to the poles. After she had tied up all the cows, she came back to where Gheddi’s wife, Aowralla, lay on the bed. As Ebla came in, she woke up with a smile, showing her teeth. She very cautiously turned herself over in bed; Ebla felt a bit uneasy watching her do this.
‘How are they?’ Aowralla asked Ebla.
‘Fine. All healthy and fat. But there is one nasty cow. He did not want to be tied on to anything and with anything.’
‘I know.’
‘What is his name?’ (In Somali, a cow is spoken of as he and not she or it.)
‘Whose?’ Aowralla asked.
‘The cow’s.’
‘Bafto.’ The name means white, and the cow was white.
‘It is very beautiful, otherwise.’
‘Yes, it is,’ affirmed Aowralla. ‘But we nickname him “Toje”—he is a rebel. Imagine me milking him in this condition.’
‘Do you really do that?’
‘Yes. I did it this morning. He kicked me here.’ She touched her ribs. ‘It aches, it has been aching all day, but I am better now. I feel much better.’
Aowralla turned over on to the other side, thus turning her back on Ebla. Ebla stood with her hands resting on her ribs and her elbows stretched out. Then she staggered to the bed to rest, to lie for a while, to relax, as her cousin had said. The bed was more than kneehigh. She touched it in the middle. She felt that something was moving, bouncing, hitting back, jumping up high into the air. The mattress reacted to her touches, the bed was springy. Ebla turned around.
She straightened herself. Her breasts slightly protruding, her legs quivering with tiredness, her eyes half closed with slumber, her breath increasing, Ebla moved backwards. She touched the cold edge with her buttocks. ‘Good. The whole bed is not jumpy,’ she realized. Her hand preceded her. She closed her eyes again, and felt herself in a wonderland. She lifted her body, and jumped, jumped up on to the middle of the bed: one high jump, then it was all right. This was only followed by little tiny bounces, which she enjoyed. She removed her shoes, flung them down, and then succumbed to drowsiness.
She breathed hard, and found that the bed was comfortable, not as terrible as she had previously imagined. Once she stretched herself on the bed, she knew she would fall asleep. She was drowsy, but, as she was falling asleep, she heard Aowralla calling to her:
‘Ebla.’
‘Yes?’
She was en route for happiness and relaxation and hated someone calling her at that particular moment.
‘Ebla.’
‘Yes, what is it?’ she said, as she sat up in the bed, eyes half closed and voice unclear.
‘Come,’ said Aowralla.
‘All right,’ she replied. She came down and walked up to where Aowralla lay on the other bed. She was bare-footed, and she felt the blisters on her right foot.
‘What is it?’
‘I want water,’ replied Aowralla, caressing the belly with her left hand and putting her right hand underneath her head to serve as a pillow.
Ebla could not hear her clearly, Aowralla had to say it a few times, and it was only when Ebla lowered her head to listen that she understood
what Aowralla wanted.
‘I will get you water,’ she said aloud as if speaking to a deaf person.
‘But where from?’ she asked herself. She went round and round at random and finally found where the clay water-pot was. She drank a glass of water herself, and then brought one to Aowralla.
It was five-thirty in the afternoon.
Ebla walked away with an empty glass in her hand. In fact, she hobbled away, scarcely placing her right foot on the floor. She had blisters on her right foot. She laid the glass on the table and returned to Aowralla who was moaning and groaning.
Aowralla opened her mouth to say something.
After much effort, Aowralla was able to get through to her, ‘Go and milk the cows,’ she said. ‘But don’t milk them dry, except the calf-less one, which yields more milk.’
Ebla ran back and forth trying to find out where the milk containers, the milk receptacles and the string to tie the cows’ legs were. She once had the desire to go to Aowralla and say that she would run back to her grandfather who needed her help just as much, or even more, and to whom she owed her own existence. ‘But she is pregnant,’ she thought.
The cows mooed, the calves bleated, wishing that she would give them grass, as Aowralla used to at this time of the evening, before they were milked. But the grass had not been brought, as their mistress had not got out of bed for the whole day.
‘A hungry beast is far more pitiable than we imagine,’ thought Ebla. ‘But who understands beasts?’ She was actually more in harmony with them, now that they were near to her, and she wished she could help them.
‘But what can I do? I am new here, and I don’t know where exactly one gets grass for the beasts. I have seen the outskirts of the town but, apart from that section, the place is full of buildings. Why do they build houses everywhere? Houses! Mud-houses, stone houses, houses of dung, houses of nothing but sticks. Growing grass around the area would be much more beneficial to everyone. Our lives are not more precious than those of the beasts, and I wonder if we don’t need them more than they need us? What do they get from us? Nothing.’
From a Crooked Rib Page 3