Knots

by Nuruddin Farah

  She feels reassured when, her hand in the pocket of her caftan, she finds the Swiss knife and key, which she plans to use to let herself and the men with her in if Zaak is not there. She will empty her rooms of all her belongings. She may not bother to leave a note for him. But what if he has changed the locks on the gate, the front door, or those to her rooms? Cambara doubts that he will have gotten round to doing that, knowing how lethargic his qaat-chewing, go-slow temperament is, forever insouciantly unmotivated.

  She feels disheartened as the truck hurtles northward, the light of the day weakening, the heat of the sun diminishing, the head of security chatting away with the driver, and the armed youths on the roof becoming rowdier. The door in her mind opens, letting in a streak of anger: and she remembers her fight with Wardi. She thinks that there are two kinds of anger: the kind that will endure, outliving one, a rage that presses in on her brain, choking her—the way she would describe her anger at Wardi. The other type of anger—the one that she feels now that she is on her way to Zaak’s place—is deep and likely to be short-lived. It is not a murderous rage but a mere disappointment. She thinks that while she has to allow the two angers to run along side by side for part of the way, she must make sure that they do not ever run into each other and are not mistaken for each other. If need be, they can be made to complement one another on occasion, but at no point should she permit these rages to mix seamlessly into a cocktail, for that would be much too explosive, and she could end up a victim of her own making.

  As is to be expected, she will run out of luck one day, but she has no idea when. In the event, she can only pray that it will be without detriment to Kiin or any other person who has given her a hand in achieving her aims. Not that she minds facing the consequences of her actions herself, but she would feel terrible if something were to happen to any of her well-wishers. But why does she reckon that her fortune will desert her, especially now that everything is starting to fall into place and some of her plans are bearing fruit? Does she imagine that calling on Zaak will not only earn her his displeasure but will also chase away the luck that is smiling on her? It is as if visiting Zaak will start her on an ill-starred legion of contagions that will set her back immeasurably and lead eventually to disaster.

  Cambara pulls herself out of the trance, because the truck has slowed down to a near halt and the head of security is turning to ask her in a voice that is a little uncertain if they should follow the second or the third fork in the road to their right. It is no easy matter for Cambara to tell him what to do, at first appearing as if she has no inkling where she might be or who the man talking to her is. Then she gathers her wits, looks out of the window, and recognizes where they are. Then, in two shakes, she takes over and tells the driver where to go. The truck moves, and she sits up, her hand going to her hair, smoothing it.

  She wishes she could take a quick look in the rearview mirror, given that she did not bring one herself. No woman, after all, wants her former companion to see her not looking her best. She curses her gutlessness, and tells herself, “That’s enough!”

  Zaak comes to the gate in a state of semiundress to answer it, the klaxon that the driver has sounded a touch too often having, in all probability, driven him to the edge. He is barefoot, his jaws active, his lips traced with the green spit of someone chewing mouthful after mouthful of qaat for the best part of a day. Unseeing, he moves about on tiptoe. He is in a pair of threadbare pants, donned in haste and crookedly and which, in consequence, cannot accommodate his paunch’s overspill. As he comes into view, she envies the unembarrassed ugliness of him, she, who earlier kept smoothing her hair with her hands, because she didn’t want to see a single hair out of place. She takes a moment to study the expressions of everyone else: shocked, some snickering, others exchanging looks. When he gets his bead on the armed youths alighting from the roof of the truck, he panics, ceasing all movement and striking an awkward pose in the attitude of a frightened man who does not know whether to raise his hands in surrender or fall on his knees and beg for mercy.

  “Zaak, it is me, Cambara,” she shouts repeatedly above the din that has risen, like dust, between the two of them.

  When he recognizes her at last, he looks first at the armed youths, the driver, and the head of security; studies their faces, scrutinizing their bodily gestures for signs of danger; and, finding nothing to worry him, turns on Cambara and fixes her with a stare imbued not so much with anger as with sarcasm. From the way he is swaying to the sides, she is unsure if he is drunk. His heavy tongue, his muck green complexion, his speech pattern, and the elongation of his vowels confirm that he is inebriated.

  He says, “I am tickled to see you arrive here in the unenviable company of armed witnesses. Why have you found it necessary to do so? You could have come on your own. Or are you a hostage and expecting me to pay a ransom for your release, in which case I haven’t the cash.”

  She makes light of his remarks—the words of a drunk—and pretends that his verbal rebuff does not hurt her. Smiling, she braves out of the car, takes a decisive step toward him, and stretches her hand to him as a token of their amity. But he snubs her offer to shake hands and stands apart with his arm akimbo. He is now all there, solidly unafraid, his feet firmly where he wants them.

  “I’ve come to retrieve my stuff,” she says, almost choking on her anger.

  “Have I ever stopped you from taking away your stuff? Why have you needed to come in a borrowed truck with an armed escort?”

  “A friend has lent me the truck.”

  “Why have you needed to come armed?” he asks.

  “What’s the point? You don’t understand.”

  “I know a pea-brained idea when I hear one,” he says and blocks her way with his bulkiness, unspeaking and sizing her up as one dueler might appraise another.

  Remembering her fight with Wardi, where the story of her coming has it origins, she says, “You put a finger anywhere on my body and you will regret it.”

  Then she turns to the head of security and tells him that he and three other unarmed youths should follow her; she will go ahead. Meanwhile, the driver is to park the vehicle in the shade of the tree and the armed youths are to stay with him, guarding the truck.

  She walks too close to Zack for comfort, and as she prepares to go past him into the house, with the security man and the youths trailing her, she halts, because she hears his labored breathing and cannot help assuming that his is a faltering heart and that he may be on his way out. Perhaps he is not worth her rage, nor the energy she is expending on him.

  Amid the confusion resulting from her inability to decide whether to defy him and go in or to talk to him and make amends there is the noise of another truck bearing down on the gate, followed by the sound of tires on the gravel driveway scattering pebbles and raising a storm of sand. The first to recognize Cambara, SilkHair alights from the second truck and is down on the ground, running in her direction and calling her “Auntie, Auntie,” auntie being a form of deference the young bestow on an older woman. Then all the youths in Zaak’s employ take turns, forming a line to pay their admiring respect to her. The last to shake her hand is the driver, and he says to her, “We’ve missed you. I hope you are well wherever you are.”

  Then everyone, save Zaak, lends a hand to load the truck with her stuff. With the world around him active and in continuous motion, he does what he knows best: he caters to a huge huff and is clearly subdued, his arms around his paunch, his eyes following the comings and the goings of those hauling suitcases or helping to make sure there is space for everything. The youths that serve as armed security on his truck lean their guns against the tree, close to where Zaak’s truck is parked, whereas the ones who have come with Cambara pile their weapons up front in the cabin of the truck. Meanwhile, the two lots of youths celebrate their camaraderie by swapping humorous repartee. For her part, Cambara is circumspect in her exchanges with all of them, surreptitiously mindful that an inconsequential put-down from one youth to a
nother can spark off a firefight.

  When Cambara is all packed and ready to go, Zaak shows unmatched eagerness to make amends to her before the truck leaves; but she can’t be bothered. She says “Let’s go” to the driver, then calls to Zaak’s youths, among whom she distributes wads of local currency as baksheesh, and heads in the direction of the truck. Someone is keeping a door open, hand extended ready to help if need be.

  Then she turns round to have a quiet word with SilkHair, who is standing close by. She hugs him to herself and then looks into his eyes, their noses almost touching. Her voice low so no one can hear it, she asks, “What about you, SilkHair?”

  “What about me?” he says.

  “Would you like to come with me, in the truck?”

  When, to her delightful surprise, SilkHair announces publicly that he would like to try his luck with her, she is at a loss for words, even though this is what she has been wanting all along. She hugs him and, taking hold of his thin wrist, urges him to get into the truck ahead of her, which he does.

  She says to Zaak, “I’ll see you around.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  They arrive back at the hotel without incident in the gathering dusk, and Kiin, of whom she is even fonder, based on what Raxma told her earlier, is among the small crowd that throngs the truck, many giving a hand at Kiin’s insistence. Every time Cambara tries to lift something, Kiin or someone else discourages her from doing so. “Leave these to us,” the head of security says. “We are born to perform this sort of task, not you. Just relax.” In the end, she stands back, watching as the youths, under his supervision, bring out the heavier of the cases and then the lighter one, then carrying them unsteadily up the steps. One or the other of the youths queries, “What are in these; they are so bulky.”

  SilkHair is beside himself with excitement, like a puppy that is in the company of its kind and wants to play. He quips to no one in particular, “She is too clever to be carrying stones.”

  Gacal, for his part, is drawn to SilkHair the minute he lays his eyes on him; maybe because, in addition to being his only peer, he is more or less of the same height and of a similar build, and he is wearing clothes comparable in style and cut to his. Or maybe because he recognizes some of the boyish traits that are in evidence: a young boy out of place and trying hard to fit in with the grown-ups. SilkHair seems more on the level of the other youths though, in that, from the way he moves about, he feels as if he has already been admitted into the gun-carrying coterie. Observing him, Cambara is worried and wonders if SilkHair is more likely to feel the strong pull toward the armed militiamen, who are his kindred spirits, than he is to become close to Gacal as a playmate and companion. She knows that her work is cut out for her. She looks ahead to the exciting times and to the intimations of botheration as well as joy that are of a piece with being a parent, in her case a surrogate one. Early on in the exercise, Cambara assigns to the two of them the responsibility of remaining in the rooms and keeping count of things.

  When the off-loading has concluded and she is sufficiently relaxed to look around, she is mildly shocked to discover that Gacal has remained in the rooms, as if he has more right than SilkHair to be guarding her property, and has sent SilkHair out to inform her that, in Gacal’s words, the unloading is complete and she can now return to her rooms to take over. And just as she heads for her rooms, SilkHair, instead of joining her, goes in the opposite direction, to where the armed sentries are gathered, their weapons leaning in a pile of disorder, exchanging crude repartee of the kind that might make a lady cringe. Cambara looks back over her shoulder, because curiosity stops her dead in her tracks. She is not at all surprised that the boy is in his element, participating in the ribald humor, and that he is one of a kind when in the company of the armed youths, not in hers or Gacal’s. Maybe she ought to have a rethink; maybe she ought not to try to impose her will on him.

  Crestfallen, she leaves SilkHair to his choice for the moment and walks up the flight of stairs toward her rooms, deep in thought and eager to be reunited with Gacal. Finding the door shut, she calls out Gacal’s name as she gives it a judicious push, gentle at first and then a little firmer in her determination to open it. She tries to turn the handle but to no avail. After several unsuccessful attempts at pushing it open and unsure of what is happening or rather of what Gacal is up to, desperation begins to set in. What can he be doing, locking the room from inside? She can’t be certain in what state she has left the suitcases containing her cash or if he has had all the time in the world to help himself to everything: her passport, her notes, her sketch pads? Why is he not answering? She dreads what Arda will say when she learns how naive Cambara has been to trust a boy with no known history. Serves you right, she will say. The seeds of her suspicion are beginning to multiply to such an extent that she is about to take the drastic action of summoning Kiin and having the door broken, when her ears pick out the sound of room keys in the pockets of her caftan and she retrieves them in haste and uses them.

  She lets herself in quietly. She tiptoes in, her despair mounting by the second. Topmost in her mind is his future as she has imagined it, a boy set to rights, given a life with a future. When he is not in the first room, and there is no sound from the inner room, which serves as her bedroom, she wonders if she will be staring the first signs of misfortune in the eye, if her luck is running out at last, if all that she has constructed with so much help from so many people will have come to nought. She is not sure how she might control her rage if she catches him fiddling, thieving. Wild with impatience, she moves forward speedily into her private sanctum, the refuge where she does her thinking, her writing, and sketching, only to come upon Gacal asleep, a pile of heavy books substituting for a pillow. He is lying on his back, his feet resting on a suitcase, his face partially hidden from view, his hands held together close to his chin and as though in namaste greeting and suggesting someone in worship. To his right flank but on the floor, a thin book titled Fly, Eagle, Fly lies open on page seven. Delighted to presume that he has been leafing through the text on which she is planning to base her play, she is, however, disturbed that he has read it, if that is what he has done, without her express permission.

  Exhausted, she collapses on the bed a foot away.

  A few minutes later, Kiin joins Cambara in her rooms, admittedly to find out not only how Cambara is coping with the fresh inrush of baggage but also how cramped or how accommodating the rooms look. Getting into the front room, she has had to watch her step, with suitcases everywhere, some open and their contents spread outside of them in piles, others pushed into the corner and heaped any which way on top of one another. Before proceeding any farther, Kiin can’t help assuming that Cambara is either searching for a specific item of clothing, which she has not found yet, or reorganizing her paraphernalia, what with the notepads, markers, makeup kits, eye pencils, and bottles of coloring stuff that Kiin cannot identify, into heaps before repacking them or is simply airing them.

  Kiin holds the door handle as if she is prepared to pull it shut. On second thought, she stops where she is and says, “Since you are in the middle of sorting things out and I do not want to distract you, maybe I will come and see you another time. Then we’ll talk.”

  Cambara, in a rush to welcome her, if only, among other things, to have Kiin enlighten her about her plans, misses her footing, almost falling over. She pauses to catch her breath and, as she speaks, stumbles over her words. “All this can wait. Please come in.” She pushes two of the suitcases that tripped her out of the way, creating more space for Kiin to enter.

  Kiin now proceeds into the front room with ease, but when she is invited into Cambara’s inner sanctum and sees a young figure sleeping, she halts in much the same way as she might had she come upon a couple kissing. Cambara urges her to enter, explaining, “He fell asleep, poor thing!” Kiin does so hesitantly, with the care of someone not wanting to disturb; her knees might buckle, she is so cautious. Then she takes the chair that Cambara indicates, tu
rns around, and speaks slowly. She asks, “First things first. How was it with Zaak?” Sprawled on Kiin’s features is a smile charged with warmth as well as concern. In the meantime, her eyes, curious, anxious, search for signs of worry in Cambara’s. She is curious about the boy sleeping on the door. Who he is to Cambara, who has just committed herself to looking after another boy nicknamed SilkHair? And she wonders whether he can hear their conversation. Cambara registers the antsy expression on Kiin’s face, even if she can’t identify its source.

  “Glad you’re rid of Zaak?”

  “Zaak and his hick mentality,” responds Cambara.

  “What are you saying?”

  “It is the look of defeat in his eyes all the time we were there,” Cambara explains. “The fellow was disagreeably in his drawers, chewing qaat, his look distant, lethargic, his hands on his hips.” Then she changes tack, and, as though usurping Kiin’s part in the dialog, she takes the plunge and offers what she thinks of as an appropriate way to define a generation of Somali men, lines more appropriate coming from Kiin’s mouth than from hers. Even so, Cambara says, “Zaak is a top-of-the-range loser, typical among the men to whom we’ve entrusted the fate of this nation for far too long. Brainless, the lot of them.”

  “From what I hear you’ve handled him superbly.”