Maps

by Nuruddin Farah

  She looked at him in wonderment. “This?” she said, touching it.

  “Don’t hurt it,” he said.

  She gave it to him—slowly but delicately. She handed the egg to him with the same care that she might have offered the world to him. And he received it with absolute reverence, with both hands joined together as if in prayer. Something warned him to be careful and not to drop it. It was warm. He believed life quivered within it as he closed his hands on it, not tightly, but gently. Reluctantly, he entered into a dialogue with himself. Was there no similarity between the egg and his own beginnings? In the corpse of a hen, there lay another potential life—just as he lay in his dead mother—but alive. He was glad the egg was salvaged out of the dead hen.

  Misra was saying: “I thought you wanted me to tell you where ‘Somalia’ is?”

  Askar nodded his head.

  “There,’ she said, pointing with her blood-soiled index finger.

  He repeated the question, “Where?” apparendy because he had been staring at the index finger, which was dripping with blood, and hadn’t taken note of the direction in which she pointed. “Where?”

  Her “There”, this second time, was so suddenly spoken, Askar could Ve sworn “Somalia” was the name of a person, perhaps a friend of hers, somebody who might be invited to partake of the meal she was preparing. “That’s Somalia,” she added. “Easterly.”

  He thought he heard someone’s footsteps coming from the easterly direction—he looked, and there was Karin. She had come with an empty bowl. Today, she was in near rags but charming-looking, and smiling too, and talking and friendly, and had the look of somebody who wanted something. She said, “Give us some of God’s charity and you’ll be blessed forever.”

  Askar said, “The meat is yours, the egg is mine.”

  Karin, puzzled, looked at Misra. “What’s he talking about?”

  “Ask him,’ she said.

  By the time Karin was ready to ask him a question, he was gone.

  Three days later. Another festive occasion. The three of them: Karin, Misra and Askar. Somebody had delivered a large consignment of raw meat, a gift from Uncle Qorrax. Karin was sitting apart and seemed to be having difficulty determining in which direction the wind was blowing. She appeared littler, barely a girl in her teens. This was how she looked to Askar, who saw her go closer to the earth as if she were listening for a secret. He thought of a beetle, which, sensing that an unidentified shadow might strike it dead, waits, and while doing so, curls up, making itself smaller, leaving no part of it exposed other than its wing-cases hard as a turtle’s back—and like a turtle, it is able to remove its head and neck out of danger: that’s it! “What are you doing, Karin?” said Misra.

  “Thinking. Thinking of asking you to divine,” she said.

  “What with?”

  “Meat.”

  She thought for a minute. “I've used meat only once. Water, yes, and blood. It’s difficult to divine with meat. Meat is short-lived, there is something temporary about meat in hot climates.”

  Misra gently stroked the entrails and he could hear the groan of an intestine, the moan of a bladder. She washed the meat. Then she held a handful of it and stared at it for a long time. She fell into, and dwelled in, a state of suspense. Her posture was that of someone praying, her silence concentrated like a treasure. Then she began speaking words belonging to a language group neither Karin nor Askar had ever heard of before and she repeated and repeated the mantras of her invocation. She uttered a shibboleth, or what must have been a test word, and looked happy like somebody who has found a lost friend. She spoke slowly this time. Her voice—ripples (as of water) in the wake of other ripples, each following waves of more ripples falling upon further ripples. And each of her incantatory phrases was shapely like predictions that would come true. Finally, she put the meat back in the bowl.

  And the meat quivered.

  And Askar watched her stare at the fatty portion of the meat, as though she were reading the future in a palm—which she probably was. And the future trembled, red like the season’s flower in bloom, living and yet dead: the meat. And the future-in-the-meat, whatever its colour, whatever its own future, beckoned to Misra’s questioning mind—and her palms, from which she was reading the future, were bloody What did that mean? Karin asked: “Tell us what you've seen, Misra. Please.”

  Misra’s breathing was deep, Askar’s shallow, Karin's, choked.

  “To the traveller,” began Misra, speaking with a voice that was not her own (this reminded Askar of when Karin had assumed an identity different from her own, claiming she was called Abdullahi), and then paused for a while. Then she continued, this time with her eyes closed, “To the traveller, the heat dwells in the distance in the dilute forms of mirages and such-like hopes as may make the fatigued voyager believe in the eternal nature of the state of things.”

  She paused. She breathed in and breathed out. Her brassiere came undone, there was a great deal of motion in her heavy chest. Involuntarily, the thought that each of her breasts was ovally shaped—almost like immense eggs—shocked Askar, bringing him back to a reality of sorts—to the present.

  Karin said, “Now what, in plain language, does that mean?”

  Askar was thinking how, the other day, the air had been thick with falling feathers and how, today, meat was employed to foretell a future fiill of death and blood and journeys.

  Misra said, “He will travel,” this time speaking with her own voice.

  “Who will?”

  “I saw a pearl, as clear as the water of the ocean is blue. Did you ask, who will travel? Askar will travel and will put his feet in the Indian Ocean. And hell be happy as one who’s discovered his beginnings.”

  Karin asked: “And you? Will you, too, travel?”

  “I will join him eventually, but not immediately. He will first be reunited with his maternal uncle. Arrangements are being made. But I see death and distress and disaster in the offing.”

  He asked, “He will travel soon, will he, this rascal, this Askar?” very excited. “Tell us how soon.”

  “Shortly”

  Then, almost simultaneously as he jumped up in glee, he sensed something weird had taken place—he tasted blood in his mouth. He took hold of himself and noted that, for one thing, he hadn’t bitten his tongue; for another, when he examined the floor or palate of his mouth, he didn’t discover any sores or cuts. Now what in heavens did that mean? He remembered it was happening for the second time in his life, the first, when Aw-Adan caned him unfairly, and with unjustified contempt, on his first day at the Koranic School. He might not have admitted it, but he was frightened. In any case, he decided not to tell them about it.

  As more steam rose from the huge pots which were on the fire, and more smoke from the one just built, Askar’s worried look settled on Karin’s chin—the old woman had a faint beard. Some women are known to grow thin hairs on their chins when their bodies enter the age of menopause. Now, who couldVe told him that? he asked himself. From Karin’s chin, his eyes travelled to Misra’s hands, still stained with blood. A future of blood, of death and disasters—and a journey to Mogadiscio for him.

  Well!

  VI

  That night, when sleep came, he moved his bed to the centre of the room he and Misra shared, placing it right under the opening a bomb had made in the roof, so he could keep his eye on the sky; and slept cradled in the warmth of a stick carved in the shape of a rifle—this being a gift from the boy whom the Adenese had raped. And his dream garden was emptied of its greenness—the trees had been disrobed, the branches had gone dry, the leaves had begun to become wiltingly lifeless and what fruits there might have been had dropped to the ground to rot—unpicked, uneaten. From one end of the garden, a fire ate its way, ruthless, tongued, and Askar could hear its crackling noise as each tree, limb, stump, twig or dry leaf was licked dead by its famished rage. The fire was helped by the fast-travelling, angry wind. At times, the wind levelled the ground so the fire
would find the job—already half-done, or almost—easier. The earth was thus pillaged of its water. Dry, it wore a dark coating of charcoal.

  And he?

  He was fixed to the ground—waiting. And he was sure that the fire—which had devoured the wind, emptied the earth of its water, the garden of its greenness—he was certain the tongued flames would finish him. Frightened, he froze. He believed that was the end of him: with a heart already frozen and a body dipped in the red fluidity of fire. The tongued flames stopped at his feet, then, in a moment, like a cobra, gathered into and moved up spirally, climbing his body until the chill disappeared. He felt his body being tickled back into life.

  He looked about—no fire, no wind. Did that mean that the fire which had devoured the earth and the sky had found a home inside him? That he would burn, sooner or later, and nothing would extinguish him?

  And then it rained.

  And the rain cut short his dream.

  For the water poured down from the heavens and a few drops fell into his open mouth. From the way he gulped, from the frightened way he gasped, seeking his breath, etc., one wouldVe thought he was drowning. He sat up, preoccupied. His face was wet, his body was soaked in the ablutionary waters of a heavenly downpour and there seeped into his soul a sense of irrelevance. “ What am I doing here sleeping dreamily when my mother country needs my help? He crawled out of bed, his “rifle” in his tight clutch, and he heard bombs fall. The horizon in the distance was lit by tiny fragments of brightnesses, small and fretful, like fireflies in the thickness of a tropical night’s unmitigated darkness. Placing his “rifle” in his bed, he stood motionless, thinking.

  A little later, he began moving about, quiet as the smoke of gunpowder, and he lit a paraffin lamp. He strode towards Misra’s bed to wake her up. But he stopped. He then saw that his “rifle”, which lay astraddle his own bed, was pointed at Misra’s head—Misra, who lay on her back, asleep in paradisiacal disorder. (Her knees were up, her legs open and her private parts exposed.) He chose to leave her be. And he went out of the room.

  Outside, the night was infernally dark. Not a single star was in the sky The wind was still and nothing stirred. Then he noticed a few women, who emerged out of the now opened doors of sleep. A bomb fell, not very far from where they were standing. This helped unbolt the locked gates of conversation and floods of information came forth. He could gather from the conversation that the “enemy hill” was aflame. Somebody was saying that the Ethiopians had set fire to their houses in an apparent attempt to prevent the Somalis taking their houses, and other belongings, intact. Which was why everybody who was there, save Askar, went towards the fire on the hill with a view to snatching a slice of the fire before it died! He had had his share of fire, he thought, and wished Misra was awake to celebrate the birth of “Somalia” in Kallafo.

  He was very sad. For her.

  INTERLUDE

  Life can only be lived forward and understood backward.

  Kierkegaard

  I

  The joy of travel, you said to yourself, there is nothing like it. The joy of open spaces, that’s divinity itself. And for a few minutes, your mind dwelled on guilt and on loss, yes, your mind spoke to itself of the fact that Misra wasn’t going with you to Mogadiscio. You were in distress and insisted she go with you. You didn’t hear her say it yourself but Uncle Qorrax had told you that Misra had indicated her desire to remain behind. But why? you asked, and you were hysterical, why? “Misra says, and I am quoting her own words,” said Uncle, “that she prefers being here until the white bones of the unburied corpses assume a browner tinge, resembling the earth’s. This is what Misra says, but she promises to come to where the lorry is leaving from.” And you travelled as arranged. Together with a number of men, women and children, you left Kallafo in a lorry travelling to Mogadiscio, one of the first to do so. And Uncle Qorrax asked a man to look after you, a man whom he knew and who happened to be going to Mogadiscio. Not only did he request that the man help you if the need arose, but he entrusted to him a letter in a sealed envelope, addressed to Uncle Hilaal, your maternal uncle. Strange how certain names never come up and when they do, they mean a lot to you. It is true that you had never “heard” of HilaaPs name nor of Salaado, his wife. But then there you are. Life is full of surprises.

  Uncle Qorrax explained to the man to whom he entrusted you, “His maternal uncle’s name is Hilaal Cabdullahi and his wife’s name is Salaado. The address is on the envelope you’re carrying with you. If you encounter problems finding him, please go to the National University and someone will know where he lives, for he teaches there. We’ve never met, he and I, and have never corresponded.” Then Uncle Qorrax did something which made you cast your memory back to the morning when he handed you over formally to Aw-Adan as the latter’s pupil. Now he gave your hand to the man who took you by the wrist. saying, “Come”, as though you were a goat he had paid for. You would have preferred it if he had formally shaken your hand.

  And so, for the first time in your life, you travelled away from where you were conceived and born and where your parents and your umbilical cord and your first teeth were buried. For the first time in your life, you would cross a border that has never been well spoken of among Somalis, for such borders deny the Somali people who live on either side of it, yes, such borders deny these people their very existence as a nation. Uncle Hilaal would say of this that “Somalis went to war in order that the ethnic origin of the people of the Ogaden would match their national identity That’s what gives the Somalis their psychical energy, a type no other African people have, only Somalis. Imagine, Askar. A nation with a split personality, Askar. How tragic! Of course, the economic and political considerations are to be given their due weight and they are important. But it is the psyche of the Somali — his peace of mind and that of the community — these matter a great deal more.” But will you hold a second, please? You don’t have to rush the story and its audience, do you? Why not introduce Uncle Hilaal and Salaado when their appropriate time comes? Now go back to the lorry before it left Kallafo. And where is Misra?

  You could now see Misra lost in a limbo of despair. She was a woman sunk to the bottom of distress, and she wasn’t saying, or capable of saying, anything save your name again and again. You had already begun thinking about Uncle Hilaal and of the future linking you with him, a future as long as the distance on the map between Kallafo and Mogadiscio. You averted your look from Misra because it pained you to see her so unhappy and, in any case, you knew Uncle Qorrax wouldn’t approve of your request that she come with you. So you looked at other people and they were hugging lovingly and exchanging farewell kisses. The young were taking their parents’ or guardians’ hands and were kissing them and some were shaking hands as adults do, while others embraced as friends and equals do, you thought. You heard the promises they made to one another. You could feel a touch of fear in their voices, for the war in the Ogaden was still raging and nobody could know where victory would fall, on whose side victory would fight. They promised to one another that they would write, give one another news frequently. And there were prayers and beggars were given their xaqqas-salaama^ a farewell fee given by every traveller to a man or a woman who would pray for his or her safe journey You watched your uncle pay, on your behalf, your xaqqas-salaama to a man looking not at all like a beggar. Well, you thought, he doesn’t wish me luck. And then you looked in Misra’s direction and were pleased to see Karin was there too. And Karin came to you.

  “How do you feel,’ she asked, “leaving us all?”’

  You had already been helped up and into the lorry and so, because of this and because there was a great deal of commotion and a lot of overflowing emotion, the place was hellishly noisy. You shouted to Karin: “Pve already begun to feel the loss, and it takes a most weird form,’

  She stood aside, letting an anxious man pass who was bidding another farewell. Then she said: “How do you mean?”

  “It is as if I have no inside,” you sa
id to Karin. “I can feel my rib-cage with my fingers, or knock my knuckles against it, and it drums emptily, as if there is nothing inside, nothing whatsoever; it feels as though I have no heart which beats, no lungs which breathe and no head which can think lucidly.”

  She was a dear! She said: “Nonsense.”

  You noticed that Misra was keeping a deliberate distance from you, as though she didn’t want to make any bodily contact with you. Perhaps she thought that once you had touched, it would be difficult to part again. But now that you were returning to Xamar from where your father took his nickname, was she, too, likely to return to hers? Since everybody comes from somewhere, you decided she, too, would go back to where she had hailed from. Who knows, she might ride the horse which had dropped its rider; or meet her father who was of a noble Amhara family; or her mother or one of her half-brothers or half-sisters or cousins. Wars have a way of springing surprises on one, some of which are pleasant and some deadly unpleasant.

  Oh, and the mystery of things! Karin now stepped aside and Misra was giving you something. Taking it, you felt something move and the tin-foil in which Misra had wrapped it glittered in your eyes. But what was it? It was food which was still warm. How did she know you felt empty? You began eating voraciously and you guzzled and guzzled. Uncle Qorrax, who was talking to some friends, was joined by Shahrawello and some of your cousins. They inquired as to who had given you the food that had “bewitched” you? “Why, look at him. You would think there was famine in Mogadiscio,’ It was then that Shahrawello mentioned that a rumour had been spread that Misra had hung above your head, one early dawn, a slaughtered fowl, dripping with blood. You thought, let them say what they like. I hope that when I’ve filled my empty viscera with food prepared by Misra, I’ll be able to express my emotions better.