From a Crooked Rib

by Nuruddin Farah

  The elder of the two Sheikhs beckoned to her to take the seat to their left and wished her ‘Nabad’—maybe on behalf of his partner as well, as he looked in his direction immediately after uttering the greeting. Ebla mumbled back hers, fixing her gaze upon Asha.

  The elder one said, ‘How are you this morning?’ sounding as if he had seen her yesterday.

  ‘Better,’ replied Ebla.

  ‘I hope you will feel much better in another five minutes or so, after I have been through with you.’

  He lifted a wooden slate he had brought with him, glancing first at his friend, whom he was perhaps consulting, and then at Ebla, perhaps to see her reaction. The younger Sheikh silently handed him the ink-pot, and the elder one carried it away, gripping it from the bottom, and placed it on the middle of his palm. He then asked Ebla if she knew where they could get a razor blade.

  ‘What for?’ she said in a frightened voice, for she thought they were going to operate on her.

  ‘Not to cut you with,’ the Sheikh said humorously, ‘but for some other purpose.’

  ‘As it is, I have enough cuts on my body,’ Ebla continued, forgetting that the Sheikh had said that he would not cut her with it. She remembered yesterday’s barbarous operation of circumcision and the day they operated upon her; she remembered also the day she lost her virginity, the pain she underwent, and how she had bled under Awill’s manhandling.

  Before Ebla could stand up, Asha reappeared on the scene.

  ‘Wait. Don’t go. Asha will get us one,’ said the Sheikh, and told her what to bring him.

  ‘Yes. I will get it.’

  Asha soon returned with the blade, then the elder Sheikh started sharpening the yellow reed with it. He hummed a religious song to himself as he cut the edge. The waste showered upon the straw-mat. He lifted the wooden slate, dipping the reed pen in the ink-pot, and wrote some Arabic inscriptions, which Ebla supposed to be the Koran. He filled the slate, then he spoke to Asha again and asked for a glass of water and an empty vessel.

  Asha brought the glass, then the Sheikh raised the slate, its sharp end resting on the mouth of the vessel, and he poured the water down from the top of the slate and washed the ink blot-tings into the vessel. When he had done this, he stopped for a while and said, ‘May the Lord bless us, Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ mumbled Asha and the other Sheikh.

  ‘Amen,’ repeated Ebla after them.

  ‘Now then, drink this,’ said the Sheikh.

  With thanks Ebla accepted the vessel, full of the polluted water, darkened with ink which was made out of coal and glue.

  She emptied the glass in no time. ‘Good,’ said the Sheikh. ‘You will be all right from now on,’ he assured her. ‘Any time there is any trouble, do come and tell me. Asha knows the family whom I stay with. Now I will go,’ he announced.

  ‘No. No. Stay for lunch.’

  ‘I can’t. I must go and deliver my lecture to my students. They will be waiting for me in the mosque.’

  ‘Excuse us for bothering you,’ Asha said.

  The Sheikhs got up and walked away, Asha accompanying them to the gate. Ebla remained seated and looked in their direction: she could see Asha touching the Sheikh by the shoulder, then she unclasped her palm, thus giving him some money, but Ebla did not know how much.

  Asha came back and told Ebla to go and take a rest. ‘I will wake you up for lunch,’ Asha added.

  ‘How much did you pay him?’

  ‘Not much. Don’t worry. Go to sleep. It will help you.’

  Once she was in bed again, Ebla felt like vomiting and her stomach turned over in such a way that she felt dizzy. She felt nauseated, groaned and closed her eyes. Because she felt hot also, she got out of bed to close the door and undo her dress. Her breasts were full, and she felt strange as she touched them. She let her hand go over them, and, as she did so, she saw the skin around the nipples looked darker in colour. She imagined that she was pregnant.

  ‘But whose baby is it? Not Tiffo’s, oh my God!’

  Suddenly she wanted to urinate, but, finding that the only toilet in the building was engaged, she walked over to Asha’s room. Asha met her on the way.

  ‘What happened? I thought you were in bed. Why didn’t you go and take a rest?’

  ‘I am waiting for the toilet.’

  ‘Stomach trouble?’

  ‘No. Only urine, but do you have lemons?’

  ‘No. But I can get them for you.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Ebla.

  ‘You feel something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Ebla.

  ‘Not pregnancy or something?’

  ‘No. Not that I know.’

  ‘The toilet is free now. Go, run before it is occupied by somebody else.’

  Ebla obeyed and ran into the toilet. She came out pale and panicky. Asha had gone down town by then. Ebla picked up a piece of coal and brushed her teeth with it, like a toothbrush. She swallowed some liquefied coal unintentionally, and felt quite herself again. She then picked up a square piece of clay and chewed at it. All these were signs of pregnancy and she knew this perfectly well.

  But she just wanted to know whose baby it was she had in her womb. Whose? ‘Awill will come home very shortly. Tiffo might come and claim me as his wife any time. I am a man’s property for sale.’

  Ebla pulled herself together and walked to her room. She took the mirror, held it in front of her and looked into it. She saw someone who did not look like herself, someone who had become pale and had a blank face, with many contours and round cheeks. It was someone unlike herself. She chuckled at her image. ‘Thank goodness we don’t look like our images,’ she comforted herself. ‘And if I did, would anyone look at me, let alone marry me?

  ‘A man or a woman—who cheats who?’ she asked herself. ‘Maybe I should put these questions to other people. And, since this image is not myself, why don’t I use it? I will do the talking.

  ‘Man?’ she spoke in a female voice.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied with a masculine voice.

  ‘Do you cheat women?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do they cheat you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What must you do about them?’

  ‘Cheat them.’

  ‘Who is more important, you or a woman?’

  ‘There are no two opinions about that.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I am the one who is active in bringing about anything, in bed and out of bed.’

  ‘Do you think you could live happily without women in the world?’

  ‘Yes, quite happily.’

  ‘The interview with you is over,’ she said in a whisper.

  Then she laughed into the mirror. Man not a cheat? Awill not a cheat? Tiffo not a cheat? A woman is unimportant?

  She laughed into the mirror again, slobbering upon it, smudging the surface with saliva. Cleaning it with her robe, she could vaguely see the figure behind it. ‘Woman?’ she asked in a grunting male voice, ‘Are you a cheat?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because men cheat me.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I take my revenge upon them.’

  ‘Yes, but why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I am innocent. I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know what I do sometimes. I do things, just do them without really getting myself involved. I put my faith in my man, but once I lose it, then it is hard to regain it. It is jealousy and insecurity that causes most misunderstandings. What do you men do about these things?’

  ‘Continue doing things secretly until I am discovered or caught red-handed. What would you do?’

  ‘Appeal to them. They are beasts and are stronger than we are. Therefore we must cut the ground from under them and cheat by appealing to them, smile at them and speak nicely to them.’

  By moving the mirror a little bit to the left, she saw Asha’s image. She threw the m
irror down and silently stared at Asha, with hungry eyes.

  Without saying anything, Asha walked away.

  29

  It was about lunch-time. Ebla was in bed half asleep and half awake, half hungry and half thirsty, but unwilling to stir out of bed. She felt sour in the tongue and bitter in the belly—a sign of pregnancy, she reminded herself. But there was no reason to get shirty about it, for this was a woman’s role, and one has to play one’s role. ‘Why should I grumble if I am giving life to another person—a baby, my own baby? Why? There can be no good harvest without hard labour, thus bodily torture is my hard labour. This bodily torture is what I inherited from my mother. She was a woman too.’

  Ebla remembered one day when she was still in the country. She went down to the next hut in the dwelling, to get some wood for her fire. She and the daughter of the family started talking. While they were talking, the younger brother and sister of that girl rushed in and asked where their mother was.

  ‘What is it you want from mother?’ their elder sister had asked them.

  ‘The Idd festival is approaching. I want my mother to buy me some clothes,’ said the boy.

  ‘You see, sister, this is a boy and he doesn’t want to listen. I told him that I am a girl and he is a boy. Girls should ask their mothers, boys their fathers. So tell him to go and talk to father.’ After making a great deal of noise, it was agreed that they should wait for their parents. It was this incident involving these children who were no more than infants, that had reminded Ebla of her sex. Until now, it had not dawned upon her that what the children had said had any sense in it.

  Ebla now sat up in bed, waiting for a call from Asha to say that lunch had been prepared. ‘What would I do without Asha?’ thought Ebla. ‘I scold her when I want things, I call her names, but without her, I would now be a forsaken woman. Maybe I would even end up by becoming a prostitute. I don’t know how to thank her, I just don’t know how. Maybe she understands that I am grateful; I hope that she understands, for without her, I would be doomed.’

  Instead of shouting to Ebla, Asha came to her.

  ‘How are you?’ she asked Ebla.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Still feeling something in the stomach?’

  ‘Yes. But relatively small.’

  ‘Have you missed the flow?’

  Ebla jerked her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she added.

  ‘Well come. We shall have lunch.’

  But before she was fully dressed Tiffo suddenly appeared at the door. Asha was bending down to tighten her shoes and did not see him until he came in.

  ‘What do you want?’ said Ebla, pulling her dress to cover her naked thighs and ribs.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Tiffo and grinned.

  ‘Then why did you come?’ blurted out Asha. ‘If you don’t want anything why did you come?’

  ‘Can’t I come when I feel like it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Asha.

  ‘No,’ said Ebla.

  Then Ebla and Tiffo looked at each other, both smiling sheepishly.

  ‘Well, then I came because I wanted to come. That is all.’

  ‘We were just going to have lunch,’ Asha said.

  ‘Is that an invitation to join you?’

  ‘No,’ said Asha. ‘You fool. No invitations for you.’

  ‘You know I came to talk to Ebla, not to you,’ Tiffo said. ‘So why don’t you keep out of it?’

  ‘She is not going to keep out of it,’ said Ebla. ‘She is responsible for me here.’

  ‘She is your advocate, is she?’ asked Tiffo, half in Somali and half in Italian. Ebla looked blank, for she did not understand what ‘advocate’ meant.

  ‘I am her advocate,’ said Asha.

  ‘Is she?’ asked Tiffo, looking towards Ebla. Ebla gave him a glance and then looked in Asha’s direction.

  ‘Yes,’ she said in a low voice, ‘but do you mind going out while I dress. I will call when I am ready.’

  ‘Well, then maybe I should get myself an advocate.’

  ‘Didn’t you divorce Ebla?’ asked Asha, as soon as they stood outside.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then what do you want?’

  ‘I just want to get something straightened out before events get beyond our control and before we start regretting the day we were born. I am sure that biting one’s lip doesn’t solve any problem.’

  ‘Now we can go back, Ebla is dressed,’ said Asha. ‘But what do you want to straighten out?’ she went on, as they re-entered the room.

  ‘Maybe I should think it over and come back when I have reached a conclusion or some sort of understanding with myself.’

  ‘But what is it that you want to straighten out?’ repeated Asha, giving him a sheepish and altogether unexpected smile. ‘We can help you get things straightened out.’

  ‘You see, my wife has heard about my marriage to Ebla. As soon as she came to Mogadiscio yesterday, she started looking for Ebla. She came to me only after she had been unable to locate her. My wife is a vicious woman and said that she will kill Ebla when she meets her.’

  ‘Why? Why should she even want to kill her? It is awful that she said such a thing, but does she think that she can get away with it? They will cut her into pieces. But why does she want to do it?’ said Asha.

  ‘Because Ebla married me. That is why she wants to kill her.’

  ‘But that is not Ebla’s fault,’ retorted Asha.

  ‘Neither is it mine. And I know that it is not my wife’s at all. But she and her relations have done this killing many many times and they have never been caught—they have always got away with it. I don’t know how they do it, but they bribe the police officers and the judges. I realize that it is unjust to do that to Ebla, since it was I who married her. She was only a partner—not a party to it. I hope you see that difference,’ said Tiffo.

  ‘Have you told your wife that you divorced Ebla a long time ago?’ Asha questioned him.

  ‘Yes. I have told her, but she doesn’t seem to believe it.’

  ‘Then what does she want?’

  ‘She said she wants to see the woman who shared me with her. Just to see her, she said. But I know that she will do some other thing.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Beat her up.’

  ‘But she cannot beat her in our presence, can she?’

  ‘Yes,’ said a voice from behind Asha.

  Ebla saw four women standing side by side, all ungaitered and ready to fight. The one who had spoken was hefty, dark and impressive. When she smiled a gold tooth showed in her lower front teeth. Ebla was terrified. She then looked at the others, who all looked alike, short, dark and handsome. Probably because of the tension she didn’t notice Asha.

  ‘What do you want, Ardo?’ appealed Tiffo to the one who spoke, who was his wife.

  ‘I said I wanted to see the woman, didn’t I?’ she lashed back at him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then let me see.’

  ‘But now that you’ve seen her, why don’t you go away?’

  ‘I am not ready to go away,’ she said sneeringly through her teeth.

  Ebla stood up, prepared herself for a fight, tightening her dress round her belly. She did this, thinking that nobody was watching her. But one of the women had seen her, and whispered something into Ardo’s ears. Ebla guessed what it was. ‘So what,’ she thought.

  ‘But go back to your house, Ardo,’ said Tiffo appealingly. ‘Please go,’ he said.

  ‘If you don’t stand aside, I am going to beat you with this shoe,’ said Ardo, taking off a shoe and moving towards him.

  Tiffo shrank back, like a rat which had just seen a cat. He touched his belly and adjusted his belt, then said:

  ‘But go now.’

  Ebla thought, ‘What a husband! Supposing all women were like her, what a world this would be?’

  ‘No. I won’t.’

  ‘I will call the police.’

  Ebla sneered inwardly, ‘Better call all your kith and kin as wel
l!’

  ‘Call the police and have me arrested. You will have to bring me food when I am in prison, but now, if you don’t keep quiet, I will beat you with this shoe.’

  This time she moved forward, stretched her arm and was about to hit him, when Asha said, ‘No, don’t do that in our presence. You look between your legs, and be careful.’

  Ardo looked, and when she saw Asha stopped.

  ‘Asha, are you here? I only meant to beat him and then come and tell you afterwards. Did you know that he was the husband of this woman?’ she said pointing her finger at Ebla contemptuously.

  ‘But he no longer is. Now that I have told you, will you go out of my house? We know each other. You remember everything, our fights and friendships. I don’t want you coming in to use my house; if you want to beat your husband go and do it outside my house. But Ebla is under my responsibility, and you can’t touch her with your little finger. Let us be peaceful with each other.’

  ‘I will go. I will go quickly,’ Ardo said, as she threw her shoe on the floor, put it on and beckoned to the others to follow her.

  ‘You and I will settle our dispute when you come home,’ she said to Tiffo. The female invaders left, and so did Tiffo, leaving Ebla and Asha alone.

  ‘Did you know Ardo before?’

  ‘Yes. We knew each other in Baidoa. We grew up together. We had lots of fights. She doesn’t look as old as I do, does she?’

  ‘No,’ replied Ebla.

  ‘She is older than I, but I beat her many times when we were still young and unmarried. She knows she cannot afford to have troubles with me. Those women always go together and beat their four husbands together. It is a crime doing that.’

  ‘Are all of them married?’

  ‘Yes—only officially married. But you see they marry and divorce their men when they like, just the way they want.’

  ‘But that is contrary to our religion.’

  ‘They don’t care about religion, they are such crooks. Poor fellows, their husbands. One of them is an extremely nice fellow. I have known him since childhood. He is married to the youngest. They beat him when they don’t want him to talk about his unhappy marriage. They beat him inside the bars, on the main streets and in his house. He has had a tough time. I met him the other day and I told him to divorce her (or them, for they are always together) and I would protect him from being beaten. But they are not too bad, otherwise, it is just their men-troubles and men really ought to be beaten.’