‘How did Aabbo die?’ she asks Nurto.
‘How does anyone die? He became sick and a few weeks later died in his bed.’
‘And that was when you stopped going to school?’
‘No, we went for a little longer but then Hooyo couldn’t cope anymore.’
An idea came to Kawsar as if a cloud had cleared. ‘Nurto, if you want to go to school, I can help.’
‘Oh no . . .’
‘Or you could have someone come here and teach you. You have too much free time in the day and you should use it.’
‘Me and school are finished. I can read as much as I need to; the only school I would like to attend is beauty school.’
‘What would you learn there? How to put kohl on someone?’
‘You learn everything – make-up, hairdressing, henna-painting, hair removal.’
‘How would that help you?’
Nurto gave her look as if she was blind. ‘I could open my own business!’
‘Are people really willing to pay for someone to put lipstick on their own face.’
‘For weddings and things, of course, you go to an expert.’
‘Times have certainly changed.’
‘They have,’ Nurto replies firmly.
‘And you could make a living doing that?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘So you want to go to this beauty school?’
‘If it was possible . . .’
‘You should sign up then, I will pay the fees.’
‘Wallahi?’
‘Yes.’
Nurto rushes to her feet and kisses Kawsar’s forehead. ‘God brought me to you.’
Kawsar closes her eyes in embarrassment, the kisses making her skin sing.
The moon is full and bright outside, shining like a searchlight over the neighbourhood, the wind rustling through the trees. Kawsar is open-eyed, awoken by her own laughter; the sensations she has in her dreams are so real, but when she tries to remember their substance she can’t. The images have the watery, unreal quality of the old films screened outside by Radio Hargeisa on long-gone summer evenings. They are washed out and rippling, the voices uneven as if spoken by men drowning in air.
The room glitters. A girl similar in height and appearance to Nurto but with the speed of a sand devil has swept through, a cloth in each of her eight hands, leaving not even one mote of dust or stray hair behind. The sheets are laundered properly and piled tidily on the chair, all the dirty cups and glasses collected, the grime that gathered in every crevice has been gouged out, windowsills swept clear of dead flies and mosquitoes, the floor washed with Dertol, the light bulb above polished until the glass gleams. Every surface chimes with forgotten cleanliness. The air in Kawsar’s nostrils is sharp and new, the small space around her expanded tenfold.
Two donkey drivers rush past the window behind her, speaking their secret language to their animals, whips flicking as their charges attempt a gallop but struggle with heavy loads of raw goat and mutton. A buzzing cloud of flies chases after them, as do the curses of the old man from New York who lives half the year in a bungalow next to the hotel.
‘Take your filth somewhere else! Find another street to cut through with that tripe,’ he yells.
‘Whodead! Whodead!’ they reply, spirting the nickname they have given him back in his face.
Nurto gently pushes open the door and pokes her head through, a bright smile radiating from her face. ‘Can I make you a cup of tea? Would you like coffee? I bought fresh beans today, they’re already roasting.’
This is the first time she has offered Kawsar coffee. ‘Yes, but what has come over you?’
‘Everything is going to change, Kawsar, how can I not be excited? I enrolled at beauty school today. Should I bake a cake? It will be nice with coffee.’
‘As you wish.’ Kawsar smiles softly. It will take the poor girl hours to bake a cake on the charcoal stove but it wouldn’t hurt her to try.
‘Are you comfortable? Warm enough?’
Kawsar raises her hand in satisfaction. ‘Did you buy the painkillers this morning?’
Nurto disappears into the kitchen for a moment and then returns with a brown paper bag. ‘Here they are. I bought you two packets so you don’t run out so quickly.’ She places them gently on the bedside table.
‘Good girl.’
‘Do you mind if I go over to the video hall later?’
‘No, what are they showing?’
‘A Hindi film, an old one called Pakeezah. I’ve seen it ten times before.’
‘I know it, the one with the dancing girl who meets a man on the train. I thought it would be too old-fashioned for you.’
‘There isn’t a Hindi film that I haven’t seen, fifties, sixties, seventies, all of them. My father, God rest his soul, worked in the cinema before it closed down and he would let me sit in the projection room with him.’
‘You would make a good actress; your face is never still.’
Nurto smiles. ‘I think I would be a great actress. I just need to get out of here and then I can do whatever I please.’
The clock prods time onwards in the silence, the weight of Nurto’s yearning sagging the mattress when she rises.
A scent tickles Kawsar’s nose and excites a sneeze.
‘Allah!’ Nurto races barefoot to the kitchen as the smell of burnt coffee beans grows stronger.
By four p.m. the curfew is firmly in place and, as if the sun is also under its tyranny, the sky darkens prematurely, menacing clouds hiding the moon and stars that have rushed into position. The blacked-out town seems nothing more than a stage set for the soldiers to swagger about in, the bungalow a cave beyond which there are bears and monsters and mysterious shrieks, and Kawsar and Nurto huddle like children from fear of what the darkness might bring. Nurto returned punctually from the video hall, dragged her mattress near and sits with her back against the bedframe, her hair only a few inches from Kawsar’s fingers, the curls at the nape of her neck fine and red in the paraffin light.
The radio is on at the lowest volume, and the government station speaks of attempts to stop desertification around the Banaadir area, genteel visits by the President to foreign potentates, the tidy, clockwork mechanisms of a state at peace; the rebel channel, Radio NFM, reports the events in a different country, one in which water reservoirs are destroyed, foreign weapons used on unarmed nomads and prisons attacked to release the innocent. It is hard to imagine either place; from her bed all Kawsar can believe is that there is a dark, empty street outside, a few bungalows and a world that has aged, decayed and will soon end.
Kawsar wakes the next morning with a start as the door shakes in its frame, bang bang bang, a pause, then another bang bang bang, Nurto shoots up from her mattress and stands in the middle of the room, dazed, waiting for instruction. The heavy knocks on the door continue.
Trembling a little, Kawsar tightens her head cloth and gestures for Nurto to open it.
Hiding behind the door, Nurto turns all the locks and pulls it open slowly.
Dahabo pushes it fully open and enters.
‘What are you trying to do? Scare us to death? We thought you were the back breakers,’ Kawsar shouts.
‘Well, if you won’t open the door to me, I have to do what I can.’ She strides over to Kawsar and pulls the blankets roughly off her. ‘You’re coming with me. There is a car waiting outside to take us to Mogadishu, from there we will fly to Jeddah.’
Kawsar flings the blankets back over her legs. ‘You must be crazy!’
Dahabo pulls the blankets down again. ‘I have delayed everyone’s departure trying to get an exit visa for you, Kawsar. Don’t make a fool of me.’
Kawsar leaves the blankets at her feet and folds her arms tightly like a little girl being chastised. ‘Who gave you my passport?’
‘Who do you think?’ She nods her head towards Nurto who is hiding in the corner. ‘Believe me when I tell you it is time to leave. If you could get up and walk you would see all th
e soldiers outside, the half-empty market. Bring what we can’t replace later and let’s go.’ She takes Kawsar’s hand and gently tugs her forward.
Kawsar wriggles her fingers out of her grip and folds her arms again. ‘No one is keeping you behind, Dahabo. Go if you want.’ Her heart is racing but her mind feels numb, unable to cogitate at all; her warm bed seems the only safe place to cling to.
‘In the name of God!’ screams Dahabo. ‘When will you change? When will you lose your damned pride and vanity and stubbornness? Am I supposed to beg you to save your own life? When are you going to change? When are you going to change? Look at you! Look at how you’re living! You want to be left behind like this? Because she won’t save you.’
‘I don’t expect her to. Nurto, go and put the kettle on.’
Nurto scuttles to the kitchen.
Dahabo twirls around the room looking for things to pack on Kawsar’s behalf. She opens the wardrobe and throws things out randomly. ‘Where do you keep your photographs? What about your wedding gold?’
A car horn beeps from outside.
‘They are waiting, Kawsar! This isn’t the time to play your games.’
‘Leave it alone, you are making a mess, Dahabo. I’m not going with you. Listen, turn around. Listen to me!’
Dahabo finally turns around and reveals her watery, bloodshot eyes. ‘You are the one deserting me, Kawsar, not the other way around. I will carry you out on my back if you let me.’
‘I know you will, but I don’t want you to.’
‘So you’re just going to die here?’
‘I will live out my life in my own home, Dahabo. There is no tragedy in that.’
Dahabo begins to sob for the first time in front of her – terrible, awkward cries that catch in her throat.
Kawsar unwraps her arms and holds them out.
Dahabo walks unsteadily to her and then wraps her arms around Kawsar’s neck.
‘I am sorry for how I have treated you in the last few weeks. I didn’t want to lose you. Go with your children, Dahabo, and put your feet up and don’t think about anyone else anymore, you deserve every good thing.’
Dahabo’s tears seep through Kawsar’s scarf and onto her skin.
‘Remember when your mother brought you over to my house for the first time and we hid her cloth and her mop and her detergents on the roof and she spent the whole afternoon either looking for them or chasing us. I thought I had met my own spirit in another body.’
‘Stop it, stop it.’ Dahabo pulls away, allergic to outpourings of emotion. ‘So you will not come with me?’
The car horn sounds again, this time longer and more irritably.
‘No.’
Dahabo nods. ‘I accept your decision but I will never stop thinking about you.’
‘And me you.’ Kawsar holds Dahabo’s head and kisses her hard on each cheek and then her forehead. ‘Nabadgelyo, witch.’
‘Nabaddiino, hag.’
The day passes in a blur. Kawsar feels drugged, numb, as if she has just had surgery, an amputation. She can still smell Dahabo’s scent on her clothes, can feel her presence nearby, but she is already on the road, on the one decent tarmac strip that leads to Mogadishu. She doesn’t cry but just stares at the door, wondering if some strange event might bring her back, and in the evening takes enough painkillers to force sleep.
Deep in the night Kawsar opens her eyes. Something isn’t right. The stray dogs are quiet; usually they bay and yowl while tearing apart the rubbish dumped along the roadside. She can’t even hear the rumble of water tankers driving along Airport Road. The soldiers are not banging on any doors.
She looks over at Nurto on her mattress, her legs stretched out over the cement floor, her head hidden under the blankets. Kawsar opens her mouth to call her name and ask that she look out of the window but resists the urge. She will stay awake herself and keep an eye on the window above her bed.
Pressing a hand to the regular bouncing beat in her ribs, she remembers how her father, mother and husband all succumbed to their weak hearts. Farah took his last breath in this very bed, his skin clammy, his mouth agape, his eyes bulging out of their sockets. Deep within the pillow was his sweat, that from his life and from his dying, commingling with hers. Her own organs appear to be at war with her now; her urine when it dribbles out into the bedpan is as dark as tea and the solid waste is sheathed in mucus and blood. Only her heart seems distant from this skirmishing, its beating muted but insistent; it has suffered so many shocks that its exterior has thickened, padding it like gauze from further hurt. When the end comes her heart will be the strongest part of her, trying to drag the rest along like a mule with its load. She wishes she could give it a sugar cube and say, ‘Well done, you have served me well, but it’s time to retire now.’
Drifting between wakefulness and sleep, Kawsar sees herself pulling the bolt of the wooden door leading from her austere kitchen into the walled orchard. The screws in the upper door hinge have worked themselves loose and Kawsar has to lift the door by the handle for it to swing open. She hears a sigh, whether it is her own or the orchard’s she cannot tell. Beyond the kitchen door awaits her Eden: the trees, plants and fruits of her labour, a small patch of earth that she has ruled benevolently. Branches stretch from one end of the crumbling mud wall to the other, creating a net of leaves sifting sunshine and moonlight.
She takes a deep breath and sucks in the scent that exudes from these children of hers: the tamarind, guava, pomegranate, bougainvillea and jasmine that she’s dreamed into life. If her neighbourhood with its old bungalows and wide streets made of fine, gold sand seems unlike anywhere else in Hargeisa, she doubts there is anywhere like her orchard in the world. It is a place in which time moves differently; it whooshes backwards to her youth rather than plods forward to her end. Within these four walls there is nothing to tell her she isn’t a young girl biding time in the fresh air until her laden mother returns to drop the day’s shopping onto the kitchen floor. Here, her joints are supple, her spine straight, her thoughts as clear and wide as the horizon. She will leave arrangements to be buried under this mica-flecked soil, where she’s certain she will still be able to feel the rain on her bones, as warm and slick as blood. Her mind stumbles forward, scouting for the spot for her grave. Somewhere quiet and unobtrusive that won’t spoil the view over the orchard.
She creeps over to the far left corner where the tamarind tree stands like a woman shaking her hair in the breeze, weaver-bird nests dangling from the top branches; it provides both shade and birdsong. Beneath the tree is a scrappy patch of wild grass, dry and yellow, and she tears at it, not wanting something so untidy on her grave. She stretches out between tamarind and back wall and, as if preordained, the length is perfect, like a good shoe with a little room beyond the toes. The earth is busy beneath, seething with insect life, whole cities, whole tribes reproducing, breathing, dying in a timeless panic. What will they think of her when she falls into their world? A heavy, dumb, dark intrusion? Or manna thrown down by anonymous benevolence? More likely there will be no thought, just the desire to get to the eyes, the tongue and the other succulents before something else does. Kawsar’s skin prickles at the idea of tiny mouths sucking and nibbling at her, her ancient remains nursing strange bodies.
‘Let it come. Let it all come,’ she murmurs.
Waking while the sky is pink and still bejewelled, she prays that Dahabo has reached the capital safely and that she is not afraid when she boards the plane to Jeddah. Neither of them has ever flown before and it seems incongruous, ridiculous to fling themselves into the sky at this age. Kawsar lies back on her pillow and notices the bed gently vibrating underneath her; she enjoys the sensation at first, thinking it is a figment of her imagination, but then the shaking becomes more violent, grinding her bones against the bedframe. The walls of the bungalow seem to moan before they too start to shake, clanking the tin roof above and sending the framed textiles to the floor.
‘What’s happening, Nurto? Is it an
earthquake?’
Nurto tries to spring out from her mattress but her legs become entangled in the sheets; she rips the blankets off and throws them to the floor. She is at the front window in seconds.
‘Tanks. The street is full of tanks and soldiers.’
‘Allah, it’s started. They are going to wipe us out.’
The turrets on the tanks adjust into position, whirring like giant cicadas, before clicking into place. Then they hear the first distant gunshots of the war, a feeble ping like that of popcorn jumping off the pan, but followed by screams and wailing.
Nurto ducks her head below the window. ‘They have gone into Maryam’s house.’
Kawsar takes a deep breath, tries to think of something to say to calm Nurto, but her mind is blank. Terror burns her thoughts as they form.
Nurto inches her head back up to the corner of the window. ‘They have dragged her out into the street.’
Kawsar watches her as the minutes drag by: Nurto seems transfixed, perfectly still apart from the fine strands of her hair stirring in the breeze.
A burst of automatic fire clatters out and Nurto turns around and crumples onto the floor, her knees pressed against her chest, her head in her arms. The soldiers shout to each other in a rapid dialect that Kawsar barely understands. They sound confused, overwhelmed by the magnitude of what they are doing. Kawsar picks out a few phrases: ‘When is the PM gun going to arrive?’; ‘Hassan, which house next?’
‘She’s dead. I have to go see if Hooyo and the children are safe.’ Nurto stands up, avoiding Kawsar’s eyes, slowly straightening her bed sheets and folding blankets.
‘Please bring me a jug of water, a cup, painkillers, the leftover canjeero and the radio,’ Kawsar replies, suddenly swept by a wave of calm.
Nurto shoves the table closer to Kawsar’s bed and neatly organises the items on top. She has filled the plastic jug till it is nearly brimming over and balances it delicately as she carries it from the kitchen.
The Orchard of Lost Souls Page 15