Knots

by Nuruddin Farah

  There is impishness lighting Gacal’s eyes. Full of mischief, he turns to Cambara and for effect elongates his vowels. “See you laaaater, Aligaaator,” he says.

  She is about to tell him off, at least remind him to behave, when Nuura drags him away, pulling him by the hand. Just before they disappear around a wall and then into the corridor, she follows them for a bit, then watches them, in silence, unable to decide whether to go after them and call him back or to let him be and wait for another opportunity. She settles on pleading with them and says, “Wait, wait, let me tell you what I think,” but they slink off speedily, and one of the girls closes the door from inside.

  Turning, alone in the corridor, the two girls gone with Gacal in tow, Cambara finds herself overwhelmed by a sense of desperation, whereon she replays her first and so far only potential contretemps with Kiin, who was hesitant to allow Gacal to join them for lunch at her house and then watch Pinocchio with her daughters. It was in connection with this that Cambara had a judicious rethink, almost calling off her original idea that Gacal come with her or that he watch the film with her daughters. Now she attributes her earlier disquiet to the fact that she didn’t follow through with the suggestion that she take him back to the hotel for his lunch, not necessarily at the restaurant but maybe at the kitchen, like the other employees. After all, Sumaya, too eager and too quick, made a grab for the videocassette, snatching it away from him, and ran off with it, the others pursuing her as excited children often do. Maybe she was too slow in finding the appropriate words in which to divulge her revised agenda, which apparently presented itself as a new trajectory, by far wiser and less harmful to all concerned. Meanwhile, Sumaya, fast moving in her eagerness to watch the film, is off, half running, the others chasing and paying no heed to Cambara’s repeated appeals to wait and listen, as her only chance to present her new plan slips away.

  She wonders if Gacal is a Lucignolo, similar in outlook and behavior to the character in Pinocchio—Lucignolo in the original Italian, Lampwick in the English translation—who is a Bad Bad Boy. She reminds herself that the book is about the misadventures of a handful of boys, some of whom are Good Bad Boys and some just too bad to be put back on the straight and narrow. Lucignolo is such a boy—bad, very bad. By her reckoning, Pinocchio, even though he is gullible, is at heart a Good Bad Boy. A pity she had not heard Gacal’s story or anything much about his beginnings, who his parents were and why he is where he is at present. If one is to assume that Gacal resembles Pinocchio in terms of personality and makeup more than SilkHair does, primarily because he strikes her as having had a middle-class background, then perhaps SilkHair, also unknown to her, is more like Lucignolo, given his current situation. It would be fun not only to get to know them better but also eventually to get them together. Of the two boys, which of them will be Lucifer, for that is presumably from where the name Lucignolo is derived, and which the star pupil, no longer a puppet whose strings are in the hands of someone who controls their actions.

  Cambara’s immediate worry is of a different nature, though. It is about whether, left alone with the girls, Gacal may become a possible source of misbegotten schemes and likely to lead Sumaya and Nuura, who, insofar as it is conceivable to imagine, have up to now led highly protected lives, down a garden path. It is about whether she has compromised her prospective friendship with Kiin in such a way as to put it at some risk, endangering its potential growth to great heights. Maybe Kiin is more conscious of what is involved. This is understandable, given the circumstances.

  Cambara recalls reading Pinocchio in the original as a child and enjoying it, even then getting a great deal out of it. More recently, she has had the opportunity to reacquaint herself with it, this time reading it in English to and/or with Dalmar. The book struck her then as a precursor of much of the literature about a hick from the sticks coming to the city and being duped by a slick con man. In her recent rereading and viewing of the Disney video, the thought occurred to her that Pinocchio is perhaps about small boys—the majority of them parentless and innocent—hoodwinked into joining armed militias as fighters and made to commit crimes in the name of ideals they do not fully comprehend or support. Boys having fun, even when killing.

  As she walks back into the living room, rueful that she has not gone with her first instinct and dreading to think what Sumaya and Nuura, seeing the video in the company of Gacal, will make of it, she is of two minds whether to join them, if only to mediate a more enlightened interpretation to help them understand the story from her own perspective. In the end, however, she decides to wait for Kiin and see what her friend says.

  Kiin breezes in, as fast as a whirlwind that has just sprung up and is rising. Cambara observes Kiin pausing, her right foot ahead of her left, her body tense and bent at the knees; she has the elegant poise of an athlete on her marks, a runner listening for “Ready,” then “Steady,” “Go,” and then finally the shot before sprinting off. Maybe she is going to take off her shoes first and then her various layers of clothing? For Kiin is wearing a khimaar, which covers her face, head, and hair, and a shukka, a button-down overcoat, neither of which Cambara remembers seeing her wearing on the previous occasions when the two of them have met. Cambara thinks that neither the face veil nor the shukka reflects Kiin’s character or her own idea of an athlete poised to take part in an athletic meet. What reason could there be for Kiin wearing these?

  It is then that Kiin removes her khimaar and her shukka in a flash, as if on impulse, peeling off one, then the other, consciously ridding herself of an encumberance keeping her from accessing a more intimate aspect of her self. Maybe Kiin wants to believe that she is returning to the person she has been for much of her life: a Muslim woman and a Somali one at that. After all, her own kind have not been given, until recently, to the habit of putting on khimaar and shukka. Perhaps Kiin needs to deliver up the mode of dressing just to be comfortable outside; that’s all. Meanwhile, Cambara cannot help staring, following Kiin with her eyes, silently gawking, as if provoked into doing so. She ogles, enraptured. And Kiin, as if to make a point, is all there, standing tall and imposing in a see-through dress, no bra, her underclothing visible in all its bright patterns, the expanding girth of her abundance in a display of sorts, challenging Cambara to check her out. A simpler explanation is worth considering: that Kiin has come home after a hard day at work and is chilling out at home in a light skirt with a designer bodice. Nothing is wrong with that. Now she turns to Kiin, who is asking her a question.

  “How have things been?”

  “You have a beautiful home here,” Cambara says.

  “The accursed veils,” Kiin mumbles in fury, as she gathers them from the couch, where she threw them earlier, and then folding them neatly and putting them out of her way as she decides whether to sit or remain standing. Cambara can hear Kiin uttering obscenities, concluding, “How annoying,” and she looks at the pile as if for the last time. “How cumbersome these veils are!”

  Cambara empathizes with her friend’s sentiment, remembering how she has resorted to putting on the veil not only because it would draw away the unwanted attention of the armed youths but also because the idea of camouflaging oneself has its built-in attraction. She can’t remember where she has read or heard that Islam makes sex so exciting: all the veiling, all the hiding, all the seeking and searching for a momentary peek of that which is concealed; the gaze of the covered woman coy; her behavior come-hither coquettish. That you are discouraged from meeting a woman alone in a room unless she is your spouse or your sister—these things, while some people may think of them as impediments, reify the idea of sex, turning it into something hard to get and therefore worth pursuing. Cambara is about to put a question to Kiin when her friend speaks.

  “You’ve met my daughters, haven’t you?” Kiin asks. She holds her body upright, her hand busy removing the fluffs and then smoothing the front of her overcoat with fastidious care. She adds after a very thoughtful pause. “Tell me, what are your first impres
sions?”

  “We’ve had the pleasure of talking only to Sumaya, the younger one having shown no interest in chatting with us at all,” Cambara explains. Then she goes on, “Children, I find, have their own way of relating to adults; there is no running away from that. You ask what my impression is. I would say that Sumaya is very much her own girl.”

  “Can you imagine Sumaya in a veil, though?”

  She looks from Kiin to the ceiling, and before deciding what to say and whether to react to a query of a rhetorical nature, Cambara wonders how much of Kiin there is in the way Sumaya behaves. Better still, if one takes Kiin’s just-ended performance as one’s measure, then surely one might ascribe her daughter’s earlier deportment to playacting, a preteen girl emulating her mother and having nothing to do with sexual charge. But because there is little for Cambara to go on, she opts to remain silent on the subject, suspecting that she might hurt the feelings of her new friend and host. Cambara finds it difficult to imagine Somali women in veils and has forebodings about it as much as she dreads the idea of a little girl being infibulated.

  Then she sees Gacal and so does Kiin.

  “Hello, what’re you doing here?” Cambara asks.

  “I am here,” Gacal says cheekily.

  Kiin says, with a touch of surprise in her voice, “Where have you just come from, young fellow?” She is friendly but firm, insisting that he give an immediate response. When he doesn’t, she goes on, “I am asking what a charming and happy-looking fellow is doing in the family part of our house? I hope you have an explanation,” she says, her sweeping gaze taking in Cambara, at whom she closes her right eye briefly, as if in a signal.

  Neither Cambara nor Gacal knows how to interpret the wink. Is it accidental, or is she doing it in jest? Alternatively, is she communicating something that is eluding both? Moreover, Gacal is discomfited; he fidgets, eyes shifty, mouth opening and closing, like a baby feeding. Not speaking, he allows the smirk to spread, then takes his time before attempting to do something about removing it. Cambara, assuming that Kiin, in all likelihood, has forgotten that she has spoken of the boy whom she will bring to lunch, makes as if she will intervene.

  Kiin says, “He can speak for himself. He has a tongue, and a sharp one, I bet.”

  Gacal says nothing, does nothing.

  “What’s your answer?

  “What’s the question?”

  “Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been here and there.”

  “Where is here and where is there?” Kiin is crotchety, the surfeit of her ill humor overflowing.

  Neither Cambara nor Gacal moves; they listen.

  Kiin continues, “Myself, I have had the displeasure to put on a khimaar and a shukka today to appease a posse of men in saintly robes: my father-in-law and his cronies, who deigned to command me to present myself before them. Do you know the topic of our discussion? The custody of my two daughters. In other words, am I fit enough to mother them in the way tradition demands? I wore the khimaar and the shukka not because I like doing so but because I hadn’t the guts to displease them. Who are they to question my ability to raise my daughters? You might as well ask. And if I am found to be unfit, then they will award the custody of my children to their stepmother, my estranged husband’s older sister, a barren woman. Now, why am I telling you this? I am doing so because I want you to get used to doing things from which you may not derive the slightest pleasure but which will help you get some purchase on what you most need: a place you call home, food to eat, a school, clothes, and someone’s affections. We are charitable to you now, but to remain in our good graces, you have to work at it, on occasion doing things that bore you, that annoy you.”

  Kiin, looking as though drained of energy, speaking; Cambara, a little clouded in the eyes, listening for the silences between the unsaid words. Gacal doesn’t appear affected one way or the other. Attentive like a theater enthusiast watching a play, he keeps his eyes focused on Kiin, his ears intently pricked.

  Kiin asks him, “How old are you?”

  “I am old,” he replies.

  “How old is old?”

  “I am as old as you want me to be.”

  Cambara steps in and explains who Gacal is. “Remember, he is the boy I said I would bring to have lunch and, if possible, watch Pinocchio with Sumaya and Nuura,” she says. Then she turns to him, “Why have you come away from watching the movie?”

  “Because I’ve seen it endless times,” he says.

  “Where?”

  “In our house.”

  Cambara takes note of this fact, reminding herself that Gacal is piling up mystery upon mystery. Kiin asks, “When?”

  “A lifetime ago,” replies Gacal.

  Kiin appears troubled and tired-looking, with a prominent “I can’t be bothered” expression. It strikes Cambara that she is a woman uncertain of what she wants to see, what she wants to hear, or what subject to discuss. As for Gacal, Cambara interprets his countenance as being crowded with contradictory messages. It puts her in mind of a weed-infested rose bed. Where do you start? Where do you end?

  Cambara decides to end the conversation, which is going nowhere, if only to allow Kiin and her enough time to have lunch and talk. She says to Kiin, “Please, can we have him fed? I am sure he won’t mind eating in the kitchen.”

  Kiin rings a bell, and she and Cambara wait.

  Gacal bows a gentle bow, expectantly silent.

  A very long silence follows, into which a young woman—maybe house help to judge from the shabbiness of her clothes—appears, and an eerie quiet takes hold. All eyes turn to the new arrival, Kiin and Cambara watching her steady shuffle as she makes slow progress, chameleonlike.

  Something about the house help irritates Kiin, who sounds irked. “If you are here about our lunch, then get a move on and hurry. Take away this young fellow and have him fed. In the kitchen. My friend and I will eat in the veranda. Bring everything on trays. Remember to bring us cloth napkins. No paper napkins, please. I do not like paper napkins, and I hate those who serve them to my guests or me. As I’ve said, get a move on. Hurry. I have a guest to entertain and an evening party to organize too at the restaurant. So get a move on. Be quick.”

  The house help coaxes a quickening of pace from the potential that must have always been there, tapping into it. Likewise Gacal, who, enlivened, bestirs himself and stands up with the speed of somebody a black ant has stung on his posterior. He scampers hurriedly after the young girl, presumably to the kitchen.

  Kiin leading and Cambara following, they walk down a corridor, past the room where Sumaya and Nuura are watching Pinocchio. The loud volume puts her in mind of cheap motels where long-term-residence clients play video all day to kill time. The spacious veranda, which is handsomely prepared in all aspects, opens onto the garden in the back, its walls grown with ivy, the couches in colorful Baidoa material.

  The drinks come in less time than it has taken Kiin and Cambara to exchange a glance and a few words. Served by no other than Gacal, who is now wearing an apron, the chilled lassi tastes divine to Cambara. A few minutes later, their lunches are on trays, and the cloth napkins folded the way they do at fancy restaurants.

  Having a long, drawn-out lunch is of the essence when you want to relax, and since the idea is for them to talk, undisturbed, Kiin speaking and Cambara mostly listening, while Sumaya and Nuura watch Pinocchio and Gacal eats in the kitchen, probably all on his own. Cambara and Kiin are perhaps looking forward to having their siesta in their respective rooms later. Kiin is the kind of friend, Cambara thinks, who has more time for others than for her own worries. Until now she has never even alluded to what must be bothering her—the likelihood of losing custody of her two daughters.

  At first, what Kiin is saying about who has said what to whom does not make sense, but she perseveres, listening. Cambara knows two of the names that occur in their conversation, and Raxma’s figures among them. Apparently, Arda, Cambara’s mother, rang Raxma, in some understandable
panic, to request that she kindly find out from Kiin what Cambara’s story is and please to phone her back with the news as soon as possible. From what Kiin has gleaned, Zaak telephoned Arda to alert her to the fact that he has not set eyes on her, or spoken to anyone who has, or received a note or message from her daughter for a few days now, and that she may have been kidnapped or come to some harm, but he cannot be sure. The upshot of Zaak’s rant is this: things being what they are in Mogadiscio—what with people thought to be rich being taken hostage and their families in Europe and America made to pay a huge ransom—he wants no one to blame him if she is hurt.

  “What have you told Raxma?” asks Cambara.

  Smarting, Cambara is disturbed by Kiin’s long silence, which brings out her worst apprehensions, her sorrow obvious, her heart sinking, her anger, not at Zaak but at herself, rising, and her whole body trembling.

  Kiin replies, “I haven’t told her anything.”

  “Why not?” she asks.

  Cambara’s fingers hold the fork as if menacingly in midair, like a fencer dueling with her internal demons, not with her challenger.

  “Because I want you to talk to her yourself.”

  Her gaze remote, Cambara looks away at the sky, her eyes settling on the clouds that have blocked the sun. No matter, her biliousness swirls upward and pours into the back of her throat. She tastes the brine of a memory gone sour.

  “You can call both Raxma and your mother from here,” Kiin says. “It will be the right time to call when we are done with our lunch.”

  The image of her mother pacing back and forth in the living room of her apartment, fulminating against the foolishness of both her charges, her bad leg catching up with her good one, her body wrapped in the Day-Glo of her rage, her eyes as full of stir as fireflies in the darkness of the moment. Revenge resulting from rage is on her mind, not the anodyne desire to make amends and to let peace prevail, and meanwhile for the lunch to continue as if nothing consequential has occurred. The truth is, however, a phone call is in order, but how can she explain everything that has taken place up to now? What aspects of the story so far must she suppress? And emphasize?