Knots

by Nuruddin Farah

  She knocks hard on the gate several times before anyone responds. She says, “It is me,” to Jiijo’s apprehensive “Who is it?”

  Cambara is relieved that Jiijo is on her own.

  When Cambara asks Jiijo where her husband and his fellow qaat-chewing mates are, Jiijo replies that they are out, attending to some important business without saying what this is. Cambara focuses her watchful eyes now on Jiijo in her vigilant attempt to puzzle out if she is telling the truth and now on the plumber to suss out if he knows about Jiijo being Gudcur’s woman. Cambara infers from her cursory, hastily arrived supposition that neither is privy to other’s secrets or identity.

  Then she inquires where the children are, and Jiijo explains that someone has “come for them.” Even though she notes that Jiijo does not elaborate, she does not put her on the spot, quiz her on who has “come for them,” or if she, Jiijo, knows to which refuge the children have been spirited away for their own safety. And why has that “someone” left her to fend for herself alone, in spite of her advanced state of pregnancy? Does it mean that insofar as Gudcur is concerned, she is dispensable? Cambara lets Jiijo’s statement stand without comment or further questioning.

  Then Jiijo asks, “Who is this man?” sizing up the plumber to determine whether he is friend or foe. “And why have you brought him here?”

  Cambara’s answer calms Jiijo’s nerves. She says, “This gentleman is a plumber, and I’ve brought him along so that he will see to it that the plumbing problems in this house are dealt with before you have your baby. I will pay for his labor and all the alterations and expenses, just to make sure your baby is born in a house with clean water and healthy surrounds. He is here today to assess the conditions here and will give me figures and expenses. He will tell me what he needs to do.”

  The two women follow on the heels of the plumber into one room, then another and then another, enabling Cambara to see the entirety of the house for the second time, but more luxuriously and without needing to rush.

  Half an hour later, everyone at Maanta offers Cambara a hand to help her lug her two suitcases to her rooms. It takes the determined effort of six men to cart them up the steps, past the mezzanine, where they pause for rest, and then eventually into her living quarters. The air conditioner on full blast, she takes a very, very long shower, which she enjoys immensely.

  SEVENTEEN

  Cambara draws herself up to her full height after an arduous workout in her rooms, the first serious exercise session since her arrival. When she thinks of it, breathing laboriously and perspiring profusely, she can’t get over the fact that she has not been toning up her body to remain fit, in case she gets into a touch-and-go physical combat and has to karate-kick two or more armed thugs to stave them off—in short, to save her own life. Of late, some of the militiamen, having run out of victims with the wherewithal to pay them large sums of cash, have resorted either to becoming pirates on the high seas or to taking hostages on land and demanding huge ransoms while they keep their prey incommunicado. In such a situation, it is convenient if one is in good trim. She has seen enough of the militiamen to know they are not fighting fit. Even though she is pleased with the way things have gone up to now, she is possessed of understandable worries, many of them to do with her fear that she may not be able to withstand the pressures building up within and without her or may falter and then come apart at the seams at the wrong moment. She believes it prudent to train her mind and, for that matter, tone up her body for the day when she may crack up or when the luck that has sustained her may run out—and then what? She feels that she can be on top of things if, in addition to being strong of body and mind, she manages to impose some order on her activities.

  In her effort to reimpose a healthy routine she sweats herself to exhaustion. Lacking a treadmill and the other sports facilities to which she is accustomed at home, and in view of the fact that she cannot imagine jogging down the dirt roads of the potholed city lest she become a shooting target of some gun-crazy youth, she stretches every muscle until she cannot stand the pain anymore. Moreover, to keep abreast of unfolding events, she has the radio on, anxiously expecting to hear the worst news: that Gudcur has prevailed in his campaign against his warring rivals. So far, all indications are that he will be triumphing over his opponents, who are in retreat, vacating territories they conquered and claiming this to be part of their strategic withdrawal.

  She is in a sweat, preoccupied that she might be implicating an innocent man, the plumber, and inculpating Kiin’s driver and security guards, who have so far shown her nothing but kindness. It worries her that she is getting Kiin, her newfound friend, involved in her dodgy affairs without leveling with her. A fresh panic sets in when, in a calm moment, she figures out what it will mean for all the parties concerned if in a day or two Gudcur triumphs over his competitors, who are also his clansmen and were at one time close allies, fighting hand in hand and living out of one another’s thieving pockets. A decisive victory will no doubt result in raising Gudcur’s self-confidence, thereby increasing his aplomb and, because of it, furthering his chances of conquering more territories and of extending his reign beyond his current domain. For Cambara, this can only spell insurmountable doom.

  A grave shock, as disheartening as it must be debilitating, runs through her body the instant she realizes what Gudcur’s victory implies. To fight off the sense of gloom that is about to engulf her and also to make sure that it doesn’t weigh her down or get her worked up into a state of consternation, Cambara decides that it is best that she give Kiin a version of the events very close in general outline to the truth. Of course, she will do the best she can and, if need be, stretch the mode of telling it the way she knows best, adjusting the narration here and expanding on it there, especially where it is pliable, and naturally trimming it whenever the tale does not yield, because it lacks suppleness within its original material.

  All the same, she perspires heavily, despite the cool air-conditioning in the room. Feeling tired, her sweatshirt sticking to her back, she paces to the extreme ends of the room on tiptoe. She looks at herself in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door; tall. She admires what she sees: a curvaceous body, shapely waist, breasts firm for a woman her age.

  With her adrenaline in overdrive, she is thinking how sad it will make her if, untold because distrusted, Kiin not only does not buy into the version Cambara feeds her but also uncovers that she has misled her. Cambara, meanwhile, pictures herself trying to light-foot her way across a city peopled with misbegotten miscreants at the very time when whatever empathy Kiin has had for Cambara comes to an untrusting end. Where will she go then? From whom will she seek help? Not from Zaak, who will most likely turn his back on her too; nor from Bile and Dajaal, two men she hardly knows. Her only hope is Kiin, with whom she thinks she shares a special empathy, even if this affinity remains undefined. Maybe it is this chemistry that each recognizes in the other. Cambara senses an onrush of unease when she imagines the woebegone scenario in which, having uncovered Cambara’s untruths, Kiin shows her out: out of the hotel, out of her life, all contacts severed. How weak the legs of untruths; how sturdy the legs of truth, how much faster they run than falsehood, which never gains on them. This projection results in her decision to confide in Kiin, to tell her what she is all about, why she is in the country, hiring plumbers, and so on. One woman counting on another, a woman yoked to another, a woman trusting another, a woman choosing to be truthful to another in the service of a higher ideal: of peace, of communal harmony.

  What should she tell the plumber, who is much more likely than anyone else is, including her, to become a potential victim, if Gudcur, in a moment of ire, kills? What explanation should she give Zaak if he asks why, even though she is no longer putting up with him, she continues meddling with his life? He will probably remind her of her changing his wardrobe and his dressing style, her making him wear clothes with a content higher in cotton than polyester. Before parting and divorcing, Zaak will complai
n that she made him exchange his austere living for a high-flying life of staying up till the small hours of the night, of mornings spent lying in, of behaving in a cavalier manner when it came to expenses, seldom worrying as if every day dawned bearing its special gift. If he takes this line with her, then she will remind him that she has ceased to be the woman he used to know from the instant she unloaded him and that in her reinvented self, she cares less about what he wears, more about her own problems.

  Taking the plumber to her family’s property without serious thought to the consequences of her action has made Cambara’s commitment a more perilous concern. There is no running away from it, and there is no turning back either. She soaks up a few motionless seconds as she considers the matter. Meanwhile, she occupies her fidgety hands with an activity that she has been meaning to undertake: She bothers a blackhead, picking at it until she has almost removed it; then plucks at her armpit hair with the concentration of a woman applying eye pencil.

  Someone starts the engine of a car, revving it, and then reverses it out through the gate, the harshness of the gear grating on her nerves. Cambara looks at her watch and, deciding it is time to choose what to wear for the evening, she pulls out the suitcase in which she has put her few changes of clothing. She has no difficulty choosing what to wear: a beautiful sleeveless up-and-down linen dress she received as a gift from her mother, who it bought it from a mainly African shopping mall in Toronto on her last visit before Cambara went away. She admires the dress, feeling it, her hand going against the grain, now along with it, and finally placing the top portion of it on the bed, studying the denkyem, the Ashanti symbol that the tailor sewed into it, the embroidery adding a natural balance and beauty to the material, its color close to her own.

  She remembers the wisdom behind the Ashanti symbol; she remembers her mother telling her about the Ashanti proverb based on the system. According to her mother, the saying implies that even though the crocodile lives in water and has the enviable ability to stay on land too, the fact is it does breathe water; it breathes air. She interprets the symbol as meaning that like the crocodile, which lives in and off the bounty of water and the land surrounding it, she, Cambara, inhabits two contradictory states of mind: She dwells in peace even if the menacing closeness to the attrition that defines Somalia engulfs her. That is to say, she must adapt to the conditions that obtain in the city where she is and confront the situations that abound with uncomplaining hardiness, poised for worse scenarios, including death. She commends herself for reconciling herself to the continuously altering circumstances that are as formidably strenuous as they are dangerous. Ergo, she will put on the dress in deference to her acute sense of adaptability.

  She has hardly had the time to shower when there is a gentle tap on the door. Cambara stays stock still, answering only when the person knocks several more times, every time meeker than before. She asks, “Who is it?”

  “It is me,” says a voice. “Kiin.”

  A spate of questions about where Cambara took Kiin’s driver, bodyguards, and the plumber to whom she has introduced her invade Cambara’s mind. These questions, coming as they do in the form of a deluge, each flowing from a tributary that brims over into an agitated river of self-doubts, fluster her. Praying that all is well with everyone who went in that vehicle with her, and her voice almost breaking, Cambara says, “Just give me a moment, please.”

  “No need to open the door,” says Kiin. “I’ve come to find out how you are doing and to tell you that it is teatime and that I am at the café. So come and join me whenever you are ready.”

  Cambara opens the door, dressed in her linen outfit with the denkyem symbol embroidered into it.

  On letting Kiin enter, Cambara observes, as if for the first time, that her rooms are host to the inevitable mess travelers create, with a bevy of plans they do not follow through on for one reason or another, when there are more suitcases and little in the way of a sense of how best to unpack and when. Strewn around on the floors in both rooms and on the beds therein are books of coffee-table dimensions and other paraphernalia that indicate the current occupant’s abiding passion for masks and theater, including a couple of miniature masks of wood. Kiin takes keen interest in the books, opening an illustrated one designed to help bring such a play to the stage before moving away and focusing first on the masks, which she picks up and fingers, her fervor evident, and then a flimsy book, the size of a pamphlet, titled The Eagle and the Chickens.

  From the expression on her face—open as though with a vista of possibilities—Kiin is apparently enthused about puppet theater and all of Cambara’s material. “I wonder if you will tell me about all of this—if you have plans that I should know about and can help you with, that we, the Women’s Network, can help you with. Perhaps you would consider putting on a play? The network could fund it. Would you? For peace? About peace? For women?”

  “Nothing will give me more pleasure,” Cambara says, “given the opportunity and provided that we succeed in achieving our aims.”

  Kiin does the high five, saying, “That’s great.”

  Chuffed, Cambara says breatlessly, “Thanks.” This is her dream project.

  In the silence, Cambara puckers her forehead, the wrinkles calling Kiin’s attention to the unwashed sweat resulting from Cambara’s strenuous workout a few minutes earlier.

  “So tell me all,” says Kiin in an exhausted afternoon-without-siesta voice. “Where have you been to? And have you achieved your purpose?”

  Cambara replies with sangfroid, never letting on that she has rehearsed her responses to the possible questions that Kiin might put to her at the first opportunity. She tells her everything with the judicious shrewdness of a culprit placing herself at a remove from a misdeed without insisting on the primacy of her innocence.

  “Who is Jiijo to you?”

  Cambara grows restive before asking Kiin, “Do you know Jiijo?”

  Kiin’s reply that she does not know her makes Cambara puzzle over her meaning. Neither speaks for a long time.

  “Your escorts have chatted to her.”

  Not that Cambara is aware that they and Jiijo have exchanged a single word. Perhaps they sneaked in and had a word with her when she was showing the plumber the toilets and the bathrooms upstairs.

  “What has she told them?”

  With the prospect of receiving an answer to her question coming to nought, Cambara realizes that Kiin is probably showing her that she too can hold back as much valuable information as Cambara has withheld from her. Is this a token of the challenging times, when no one trusts another enough to share a bit of news that is essential to both?

  “What about Gudcur?” Kiin asks.

  “What about him?”

  Kiin says, “Tell me why you are interested in the property that he has occupied for a very long time and that he uses as his ‘family’ home. Apart from the fact that it is yours. That goes without saying.”

  Then she trains her inhospitable look on Cambara, into whose eyes she stares, drilling deep into an area no one has ever reached. Kiin’s otherworldly glare puts the fear of the devil into her. This, together with the expectant silence and her restlessness, startles Cambara. When Kiin prods her with more questions, formulating them differently but essentially keeping to the same format, Cambara sits up as if a sharp metal object has pricked her; she wears the pained expression of someone who has no idea what is happening to her.

  Then she tells Kiin everything, beginning with her son’s death, the irreconcilable fissure between her and Wardi. Cambara informs how the rift led her to leave and come to Mogadiscio, in the belief that mourning her loss will make a clement sense only if she involves herself at the same time in repairing her relationship with the country, to whose well-being she has never contributed in any direct way.

  “How do you intend to go about mending the rapport?” Kiin asks.

  Cambara responds that there are two sides to her endeavor, both personal. Even though she hopes that she can
achieve the recovery of her family’s property, which she has planned to do all on her own without involving others directly, the truth is she has dragged others into it.

  “Remind me something, please do,” Kiin requests, and she hitches up her head scarf, tucking back in a lock of hair that has come undone. “How advanced is Jiijo’s pregnancy?”

  “Eight months plus.”

  “Let me get this right,” Kiin goes on. “You say that the children have been sent away for their safety and that she, Jiijo, is alone in the house, as we speak, because Gudcur is engaged in the street-by-street battle to recover the territory he has lost?”

  “So far as I am aware of the situation, yes.”

  She watches, with eagerness, as Kiin turns an idea over in her head, silent. Cambara suspects Kiin of entertaining a daring thought, and wonders if or when her newfound friend might share her conclusions once she has drawn them.

  “What’s on your mind?” Cambara asks.

  Kiin looks away and up at the ceiling, as if the boards might reveal some secret message to her. Then, nodding in the gesture of someone who has finally unraveled a mystery, she pulls out her mobile, punches in a number, and waits for a long time. When the phone is answered, Kiin asks of the person with the shrill voice, “Where are you, Farxia dear, and how busy are you?”

  Kiin has put the phone on a speaker system, allowing Cambara to listen in. She explains, in a whispered aside, that she is talking to Farxia, a medical doctor at a clinic who is closing for the day. Farxia asks Kiin if there is an emergency and if her presence at the hotel is of immediate necessity. In reply, Kiin says that everything is okay with her, with Cambara too. At first, Kiin is hesitant, as if she has changed her mind about sharing whatever it is that has been bothering her and then tries lamely to assure Farxia that “things are all right, actually.”