She said, “Who is this man, Armadio?”
He answered, departing, for once, from his job-to-do formula, “He is the one British friend Somalis have.”
“How so?” she asked.
“He is the one powerful figure in British politics who has advocated the reunification of all the Somali-speaking territories.”
He stuck Bevin’s portrait on the dung-plastered wall with the help of a couple of thumbtacks someone gave to him. And he spoke no more of jobs to do or places to go to. He fell unwell. He complained of acute pains in the spine, but whether he had been tortured in the Ethiopian prison, he wouldn’t say; nor would he talk of what it was like to be in a dark room year after year, isolated from the rest of humankind, from his Karin and from his children.
One morning, he didn’t get up to say his subx-prayers. “My back” he said. And from that moment on, he lay on his back, on a mattress on the floor. His wife washed him once daily—no, washed is not the right word. What she did was to wet a cloth a little bigger than a face towel in soapy water and run it all over his body, rubbing harder where it was hairier. For ablutionary purposes, it was he who performed it, whispering the right traditions and verses as she dipped the cloth in cleaner water, massaging the proper places himself. He prayed, lying on his back. He didn’t go through the body-motions of sujuuds and rukuucs. To the suggestion that they consult a doctor, cost what it might, his response had been, “I have no more jobs to do.”
Bevin’s portrait was transferred from the dung-plastered wall to a spot in the ceiling directly above his bed. Karin spoon-fed him, holding him by his nape with her left hand and wiping away whatever mess his mouth made with her right. She treated him as she might have treated a child—if she were blessed with a sickly one at her age—with knowing kindness. And when someone asked Armadio why he was still holding on to life, he said, “Unless I know there is a job for me to do, is there any point my going there? In the meantime. I'll wait for a word from Him.”
The word came. His last words, “No mourning for one who has done little for his country, his wife and his children. Promise, Karin. No mourning.”
She noticed there was a stain of blood on his mouth. She was trying to discover the cause, when he breathed his last. She promised, she, the living, promised to the dead, “No mourning”. But she couldn’t find out the cause of the bloodstain on his mouth, and in the end gave it up.
And there was no mourning.
The old man lay, just as he had always lain in the room, on his back, on the floor. The only difference (and you noticed this) was that now he lay in state and would be buried. Also (since you and Misra were allowed to take a look at him before others came), you saw that there were bloodstains on his lips. You were assured that he had died a gentle death and that his soul parted with its user for so many decades—peacefully. As the mourners came from far and near, as the kettles sang a rosary of teas and blessings of the appropriate suras, you asked Misra, why the bloodstain on his mouth? She did not know.
The subject of death enabled you to return to your own beginnings, to the day when Misra found you with a mask of blood for a head—and a stare. You stole in on Armadio’s corpse. Is this what Mother looked like when dead? Perhaps not. Death here was clean, you thought. An angel had prepared him for the moment. You had this thought, not in Karin’s but in your compound, with your shadow falling across the one cast by the tree planted the same day as you were born.
“It wasn’t clean, was it?” you wondered, springing upon Misra a question she wasn’t in the least ready for. “It was blood and pain and struggle all the way to the end for the old man, wasn’t it?”
“On the contrary,” she said.
“And my mother’s death?”
“Come, come with me,” she said, and you obeyed.
And she walked the ground of her memory over again, with you beside her, repeating all she had told you before, word for word, telling you all she knew about your mother’s death.
“My father, what do you know about him?”
“He died for a struggle, he died for a national cause.”
“My father had a job to do, did he?”
“That’s correct.”
“And he died doing it?”
“That’s correct.”
And when night fell and most of the mourners had gone, the two of you were joined by Karin. “Here is a gift from the old man,” said she, giving you the portrait of Ernest Bevin.
You accepted it with a great reverence that befits the memory of the old man you loved, and the British political figure for whom the old man held high admiration. “Do you know who this man is?” said Misra, pointing a finger at the portrait.
You said, “Ernest Bevin was a dream of a man for well-informed Somalis.”
CHAPTER FIVE
I
There was nothing like sharing the robe the woman carrying you was wrapped in, nothing as warm, with the bodies, yours and hers, touching, oozing and sweating together—I naked and she not—and the rubbing together of the bodies producing itchy irritations, scratchy rashes and crotchy eruptions of skin. Then the quiet of the night would crawl in like an insect up one’s back—ticklish and laughter-producing. The darkness of dusk would take over one’s imagined sense of being: this time, like an insect bite so scratchy that you cannot think of anything else. And so, for years, I contemplated the world from the safe throne carved out of Misra’s back, sleeping when I pleased, swinging from her back as a fruit the thorn which is its twin, making water when I had to and getting scolded for it; for years I viewed the world from a height slightly above that of a pigmy’s head.
I seem to have remained a mere extension of Misra’s body for years—you saw me when you set your eyes on her. I was part of the shadow she cast—in a sense, I was her extended self. I was, you might even say, the space surrounding the geography of her body. And she took me wherever she went. As a result of which, I became the invited guest to every meal she was offered, partaking of every generosity she was given. I was the overhearer and eavesdropper of every conversation she had—the first to know if she was in pain or no; the first to notice if she had her period. Which I could tell from the odour her body emitted, from the way she shuffled about, from the constant washing she undertook and from the fact that I would get spanked for the slightest noise and she would shout at me more often. Yes, I was the time Misra kept—she woke when I awoke, clocking the same number of sleeping hours as I had done, feeling unwell when I was taken ill. Now, if I were circumcised, I thought to myself, and I became a man, yes, if… ! What would become of our bodies' relationship? Surely I wouldn’t remain an obvious extension of Misra’s physicality? Surely, I could no longer be her third breast or her third leg? Perhaps she would put me down on the dusty ground to fend for myself, play by myself, and the relationship which the years had forged between our bodies would cease to exist. If seen alone by a neighbour, she wouldn’t be asked to explain where I was. I wouldn’t be the clothes she wore to a wedding party; I wouldn’t be the bringer-about of conversations, of friendships, and because I wasn’t with her, wouldn’t be seen with her, no man would make advances to her using my presence as a safe ploy, saying something like, “Oh, what a good-looking boy”, pinching my cheeks, asking me my name, how old I was and so on and so forth, until he and Misra spoke to each other and exchanged addresses and agreed to meet again—but without me. In other words, I wouldn’t remain the subject of conversations, when she was really the object of someone else’s real interest.
Her body (or should I speak of her bodies: one of knowledge, another of immortality; one I knew and touched and felt, the other for others such as Aw-Adan and Uncle Qorrax) anticipated my body’s needs (because I was a child, I had only one body, with hardly a shadow to speak of, this shadow being the size of a bird’s dropping whenever I looked for and found it) only to satisfy them. If I couldn’t pluck a fruit off a tree, Misra’s hand reached out and got it for me, and when I couldn’t soap the s
mall of my back, her palm was there to scrub it. Likewise, when I couldn’t move my obstinate bowels, it was her applying massaging or kneading techniques which helped me do so.
Then I remembered the first painful separation: when I was sent to the Koranic School run by Aw-Adan. I was very, very unhappy For some inexplicable reason, it felt as if, between my feet and the rest of my body, there existed an unfillable space. It was only much, much later that I rationalized that perhaps this was the unused space (previously Misra’s) which had surrounded me for years but wasn’t there any more. My body had gone numb, my hands disobedient and unable to hold the reed with which I was supposed to trace the alif, ba and ta of God’s words in the flesh of His wisdom. And I was beaten by Aw-Adan, the teacher who ran the Koranic School, beaten until I made a pool of pee in which I sat, something which allowed the other children to make fun of me. Wet and miserable, I returned home to a Misra who didn’t show as much sympathy as I had looked forward to. Nevertheless, she scrubbed me clean, fed me and insisted that I learn to copy the emaciated Aleph which she wrote on my slate; that I leam to do properly the under-weighed Ba and the Ta as well But I couldn’t make the letters take shape—my Ba appeared sagged, my Aleph short and squat and very much unlike what either Aw-Adan or Misra had written; whereas my Ta was inundated with the messiness of the two dots above it, each big as the tears I shed. However, the sounds I made as I chanted were so beautiful, Misra admitted she sensed their charm pierce through her flesh. Each sound came out marvellously pronounced, shapely, smooth, with all the outer roughnesses removed, all the redundancies discarded. And together we moved forward. I repeated the letters after her, trembling with joy, shaking with delight, as I said what had been, to me, the joyful names of God. Deliberately, I would mispronounce a letter so she would correct me. With Misra, God became fun. To me, He was the letters I couldn’t draw, He was Misra’s thigh which I hit playfully as I chanted the alphabets of rejoice. In a week, I knew how to write my name, Misra’s as well as God’s. And when, three months later, I could recite the Faatixa, my uncle was invited to hear me perform. As I recited, each word was hot as a brand impressing upon my listeners the intensity of my feelings.
But I hated Aw-Adan, my Koranic teacher. I hated him more when he caned me, because I thought that each stroke struck a blow, rending a hole in the wall of my being. When with him, when at his school that is, I uttered every sound so it was inlaid with the contemptuous flames meant for him. Which was why I shouted loudest, hoping he would burn in the noises—ablaze with hate. In any case, once I got home, Misra studied my body as I did the slate upon which I had scrawled verses of the Koran, she studied it for sores and cuts as I re-read the suras to her.
One day, when taking the Juzz Camma examination, Aw-Adan interrupted me, and he beat me too. I didn’t see the reason why. I hadn’t done anything wrong and so I said what I always thought of him, speaking in the full presence of a crowd of youngsters who hadn’t known or heard what I had to say. And he caned me again and again. The haemorrhage of hate had run profusely to my head first, and then to the rest of my body: this meant that by the time I regained consciousness, I came to, shouting: “I am going to kill Aw-Adan; I am going to kill Aw-Adan; I am going to kill Aw-Adan.” I had a temperature the following day. Misra and I stayed in bed. Together, we recited Koranic verses; together, we re-created our bond of bodies, hers and mine. Then I repeated with the premeditated sanity of a murderer determined to kill an opponent, “Do you know I am going to kill Aw-Adan?”
After a long pause. “Tell me. Why are you so vindictive?”
“I vindictive?” I asked.
“To avenge, you’re the kind that would drink his enemy’s blood.”
I remembered the pain on her face when the metallic rod was inserted, along with abortifacient herbs and root concoctions, into her vagina; I remembered the agonies he had caused her; I remembered her inability to avenge herself—was I really vindictive? I thought she was unfair to me. I could enumerate for her the terrible things he had done to me and to her.
“To begin with,” I said. “This calendar … !”
She was shaking her head, recalling a previous argument we had had the night before.
“What’s in a calendar?” she said. “Yes, my Askar, my man, what’s in a calendar?”
II
What is in a calendar? What is in a table giving you the days of the week, the months and the year, be it a Year-of-a-Monday, a Year-of-a-Tuesday or one beginning with another day of the week, a year belonging to signs of the zodiac which are based neither on the Gregorian system nor on the Julian but whose calendary makes overt reference to the cyclical and menstrual ordeals of a woman—Misra! She had apparently aborted a child. That was what the metallic rod with the bandaged head appeared to have done—it killed a foetus. And Misra bled a lot. Had she become pregnant because she had miscounted? Here was a calendar that would help her count properly, “provided”, I overheard him say, she put a red circle round the unsafe days with green circles for the good ones.
On the “green” days, the room smelt of musk and other cuudis of such sweetness I recall commenting on how much I hated these perfumes and any who wore them. Whenever I was in a bad mood, she went out herself, out, I think, to meet Aw-Adan or Uncle Qorrax, I couldn’t tell. She tiptoed out of the room once I was deep in sleep. Sometimes, she returned before daybreak.
She woke me on one such day, before dawn. The baaf was ready, the water lukewarm and I was to shower, she said. From her voice I sensed that a decision had been taken about me when I was asleep. Neither did the fact that she was in the same dress as the night before escape my vigilant eyes. She didn’t smell of sweet perfumes and freshly prepared cuuds. She smelt, if anything, of dried sweat, and her skin, when I touched it, was ugly, I thought.
“Where are we going?” I asked, when bathed.
She said, “You just wait.”
And so we did—together. She unburied the live coals she had preserved in the brazier, by pushing to the sides the top layer of the ashes, using the handle of a fan. Then she drove gentle air upon the exposed coals with the strawed end of the same implement. Although I was dying to comment on the suspicions circulating like the fan’s agitated air inside my head, I am afraid I didn’t dare question if Misra didn’t think she had lapsed from virtue—the virtue of being “my mother”; the virtue of my knowing what was to happen to me. But the idea of discussing questions of moral virtues disgusted me.
We had our breakfast in silence. We had difficulty choosing a pair of shorts which wasn’t either too tight for my waist or too short. This gave me the opportunity to make sarcastic remarks about adults who never stopped keeping under lock and key clothes for a growing boy. I said, “Blessed is the intelligence of adults.”
She didn’t open her mouth to say anything. But I was dressed now and it took me quite a while before I was sufficiently aware of anything or anyone outside of me. And she was rummaging among her clothes for something for herself, something decent for her to get out in, “Where are we going?” I said.
“You’ll know in a moment,” she promised.
“But why won’t you tell me?” I demanded.
She was dressed to kill, I thought. I wondered if it was Aw-Adan she had spent the night with, or was she with Uncle Qorrax? But did this matter to me? I heard Misra say, “Let’s go.”
Before long, I knew where we were going: to Uncle Qorrax’s compound. As always, the compound was feverish with activity. Today, it appeared more so than ever. There were at least a dozen camels, many heads of cattle, twenty or so goats and naturally the nomads that owned these. As was expected, there were some of Uncle Qorrax’s children and their chatter, which I thought of as their other selves. Misra and I walked into the compound looking a little frightened by all the noise. She gave me her hand the very moment I offered mine for her to take. Having made contact, we sat in what served as Uncle Qorrax’s anteroom—waiting. Half-shouting, perhaps because I was nervous, I said,
“Do you know if Uncle is in?”
As though to answer my question, I saw the body of a woman push through a curtain to Uncle’s door. And there she was—a woman I hadn’t known he married. I thought of him as a magician, making one of his wives disappear between dusk and dawn, only for another to replace the vanished concubine. I cannot tell how many he married and divorced in the short period I began to take note of these cruel happenings. In fact, many of his children, for purposes of identification, carried not only his name but that of the maternal-bah line to which they belonged. “He’s coming,” the woman said to us and walked past us, out of the ante-room in which we had been.
Tall, handsomely dressed, his shoes elegant and shiningly polished and towering above Misra and myself— Uncle Qorrax. I was frightened of him, afraid I might earn his rage, worried that he might knock my ears deaf and my head insane. Especially now that he was staring angrily at me, I thought. Poor me, what have I done? I must say I was relieved to learn he was mortally offended with Misra. He said, “Where on earth were you returning from early this morning, Misra?”
Unperturbed, she mumbled something, as wives do when their husbands put indiscreet questions to them in public. Perhaps she suggested they postpone their argument until later. Anyway, he didn’t pursue the matter. Addressing me, because he wanted to change the subject to something less personal, he asked me how I was. The lump of fear in my throat allowed little beyond a grumble. It was just as well, I thought, for I might have spoken long-windedly and mentioned that Misra had been with Aw-Adan until daybreak. He said, “Let’s go.”
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