At the mention of Bile’s name, Cambara fidgets self-consciously. She is reassured that neither woman takes notice of her squirm. Maybe as a decoy to put Farxia off, Kiin, in an audible tone of voice as confident as it is welcome, says in the manner of someone anticipating the relevant question that is to come, “Our network delivers them food and all their other needs.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask.”
“Yes?” from Farxia.
Cambara speaks slowly. “In what way can I pay for your consultation as a doctor at the clinic, not to speak of the ambulance that transported Jiijo from the property and the expenses incurred in housing her, feeding her, and mounting an armed security?”
“My dear, you’ll have to talk to Kiin.”
And Kiin cuts in, “Everything in due course.”
“These are huge expenses, and I am willing to settle it right away, in cash, in U.S. dollars, since that is all I have,” Cambara says, feeling foolish as the words pass her tremulous lips.
Kiin and Farxia exchange brief looks, then their eyes focus on Cambara a little too long, neither speaking. It’s obvious they are not going to share their thoughts with her. Kiin says, “We’ll talk about expenses in due course.”
Cambara senses a surge of apprehension rising within her from the lower pit of her stomach at the thought of how much she is costing these women, how much her meddling in the affairs of others must be affecting their lives.
It is in keeping with the Cambara who is given to complicating matters at the very moment when everything is running smoothly that she ask, “Can I visit Jiijo and her baby?”
“Why do you want to do that?” Farxia challenges.
If Cambara cannot bring herself to give flesh to the thought that crosses her mind, it is because she is aware that saying she might benefit from a touchy-feely reunion with Jiijo and her baby won’t do. If she has not shared her introspection with anyone, it is because Farxia has stared hostilely away, thus reducing Cambara to bashful silence.
Again, Kiin rescues Cambara from embarrassment. She says, “Even though it may not be advisable to call on Jiijo and her baby at their hideout, I’ll tell you where you can go without fear or worry.”
“Where?”
“Your family property.”
Cambara feels that before she admits to knowing of it, the good tidings—that at least she can go to her family property without fear or worry, thanks to Kiin and her friends in the network—will have wrought a keen sense of self-fulfillment.
“Anyone holding the fort?” she asks.
“Dajaal, his nephew, and their men.”
Cambara thinks that as much as she owes Kiin fealty, the fact is that she is also grateful to other well-wishers, including Bile, who has probably encouraged Dajaal to get involved, help in the recovery of her family property. Who knows, Bile may have been instrumental in making Seamus commit himself to giving her a hand. For her part, Cambara will have been responsible for everything that is detrimental to the well-being of the community: endangering Kiin, Farxia, and all these other women; exposing Dajaal, Qasiir, his nephew, and their sidekicks to possible peril. She prays only that nothing terrible will happen to all these good people.
Cambara asks Farxia, “How is Bile, do you know?”
“He has been heavy of heart, ever since Raasta departed,” Farxia says. “Lonely in his melancholy, he falls deeper and frequently into a sense of depression, refusing to come to terms with how things are.”
Cambara sinks into a slouch, exhausted, silent.
TWENTY-THREE
Cambara wakes up early the following morning to a noise already familiar to her from a dream just before dawn, a dream in which the clamor of several people eating is the predominant din. Now, after rising from another brief nap, she can hear the clamor of knives and forks clashing, the raucous cacophony of crockery, and, in the background, the clanging plates against saucers and other tableware being washed and stacked together in a chaotic manner.
In her dream, Cambara has prepared a special dinner: prawn cocktails; a fish platter composed of freshwater cockles, eaten with lemon and chili sauce; calamari fried in butter and smothered in garlic and herbs; and a dish of lemon sole with rice and veggies. There are three other people: Wardi, who occupies one head of the table, which is big enough to seat twenty; Dalmar, who sits very close to her, their bodies touching; and Arda, who is at the other head of the table. There is not much in the way of conversation, and what there is does not flow at all, with Dalmar and Arda trying to keep it going, if only because they cannot stand the weighty silence. Wardi delights in making poisonous remarks meant not so much to annoy her as to insult all three of them. His look in Cambara’s direction has in it only contempt; that in Arda’s, a mere challenge; that in Dalmar’s, a mix of betrayal and disparagement. Clearly annoyed, she can’t wait for this travesty of a family dinner to end. All the while, she shows Wardi her clenched fist, vowing to hit him as soon as Arda is gone, Dalmar is asleep in his room, and the two of them are alone.
Not only does Cambara refuse to put a good face on the matter and engage her mother or son in pointless talk, but she also does not touch her favorite food, the first time she remembers doing so. In contrast, Wardi is garrulously jittery, brazenly telling an improper joke about half a dozen Italians from a hick town in Sicily who, sharing a house in the suburbs of Milan, hire the services of a whore. Arda appeals to his sense of decorum, but Wardi does not heed her pleas, and just as he is about to launch into telling yet another gag, Arda says, the tone of her voice firm and uncouth, “That’s enough. No more of this in the presence of Dalmar.”
Wardi turns on his mother-in-law and makes as if he will challenge her. No sooner has he uttered the first syllable of a long word than his lips move soundlessly like that of a fish biting bait, his eyes dilate to the point of popping out of their sockets, his jaw drops, and he foams at the mouth. Apparently, Wardi is having a seizure, the fit of an epileptic. He ceases breathing altogether and his muscles stiffen, hard as the back of the chair he is sitting on. Arda looks from him to Cambara, who just nods. Whereupon, with a huge, knowing smile brightening his face, Dalmar makes the V sign. Then he says to Cambara, “You know, Mummy, I love you, love you, no matter what.”
“I love you too, my sweet darling.”
It is when Dalmar gets up to hug his mother, pulling her toward him, and then his grandmother, snuffling loudly preparatory to a crying fit, which is theatrical to the point of having been rehearsed, that Wardi falls off his chair. No one moves; no one speaks for a long time, the silence contagiously spreading so that even Dalmar hasn’t the boldness to break it. The first to stir, Dalmar changes his position with the quietness of someone aware of other presences to which he defers.
Dalmar says, “What do we do now?”
Cambara takes his hand, as if consoling him.
Arda asks Cambara, “How do you explain?”
“Allergy.”
Cambara takes large mouthfuls of her food for the first time and encourages her son and her mother to resume eating theirs.
“No idea he was allergic to fish,” from Arda.
Cambara does not accord him even a single look in his direction now that he lies on the floor, rigor mortis ruling—she hates him so. “He’s died not knowing that he is allergic to fish, the fool.”
“How did you come to know of it?” Arda asks.
“I’ve my ways of knowing.”
The dogged sense of remorse makes Dalmar so restless that he rises from his chair and crouches by Wardi, checking his pulse and reporting, “No beating. Mummy, he’s gone cold. And look at his body: bloodless yellow. What do we do with him?”
“Dalmar is right. What do we do now?” Arda asks.
Cambara, her held-in grin making her lips seem smaller and her whole face stiff, pulls out her mobile phone and dials a number. To the woman at the other end, she says, “Susannah, do come and pick up your Wardi. He is on the floor, having a fit of the fatal kind, and
we do not know what to do.”
The voice says, “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Cambara says to Arda and Dalmar, “There. Done.”
Dalmar walks over to where Wardi’s corpse lies coiled on the floor, and he kicks him, not once but two, three times in quick succession. Furious at him, Cambara gives him a dressing down, saying, “You must treat his dead body with respect. He is your father.”
He retorts, “But he used to hit me. Remember?”
Cambara gets a telling-off from Arda, who says, “It’s your fault. Everything. Dalmar’s ill-mannered behavior. Wardi’s ill will toward us all.”
The doorbell rings. As she gets up, steadies herself, and goes toward the door, she announces, “It’s Susannah come to pick up her darling dead.”
The door opens, the sun in her eyes. Susannah not there, she turns to say something to Dalmar and Arda, neither of whom is there.
Cambara blinks the dream away.
She wakes up in her room at Hotel Maanta in Mogadiscio in an apparent sweat over what she has done: killed in hate, out of revenge. Disturbed, she takes a deep breath, looks about the room, and, dropping into a state of bleary-eyed conundrum, wonders if a dream such as the one she has just had will have redeemed her from her desire to commit murder.
Half an hour later, her commitment to creating a family to replace the dysfunctional one she did away with in the dream strengthens with the sudden coming into view of Gacal and SilkHair, who are deep in amicable discussion. She watches them from her vantage point in the café, where she is consuming her first order of breakfast: two slices of mango and a pot of coffee. With her free hand, she is leafing through the text of her play, of which she intends to give a copy later to Gacal. She doesn’t know enough about SilkHair, who hasn’t yet told her his story. There is time, time to hear from Raxma, who is at her investigative best, probing, digging. No need to rush. All the same, she reckons that SilkHair is not much of a reader; possibly, he has never been to a school in the proper sense of the term. “We’ll see,” she says to herself aloud.
As she looks shortsightedly at them, almost missing a heartbeat, her breathing labored, she sits up, too eager to welcome them. She stops short of calling out to them by name and waits, half rising from her seat, with her coffee mug held up and close to her chin but tilted a little forward, nearly tipping. She thinks of SilkHair and Gacal as forming the nub of her alternative family, with which she might yet succeed in replacing the one that died with Dalmar. Tears of emotion flood her eyes at the memory of the wonderful times spent in loving, raising, teaching, mothering Dalmar. In her current reassessment, she will admit that she learned from her Dalmar as much as she taught him. More to the present point, she is getting to know a lot about herself, because of her dealings with Gacal and SilkHair, who are assisting her in her effort to reassess her self-worth as a grieving mother.
Cambara’s spirits soar on the winds of optimism, gliding with a sense of elation at imagining how she might ultimately accomplish one of her main aims: to repair several of the wrongs to which the societies of men have subjected women through the ages—in her case, Wardi—thanks to the intervention of the Women’s Network, with Kiin at its head, decidedly steering it to actionable success. She doubts if her goodwill and inner strength could stir compunction in the heart of a Wardi as she might in those of the Dajaals, Seamuses, and Biles of this world. These strike her as having stopped fibbing or faffing about and have started to fine-tune their act. Is it because they are reconstructed men, able to express their humanness in a way that is beneficial to all? Not Wardi; no humanness in him, none whatsoever.
The first to see her, SilkHair gives a nudge to Gacal and, pointing at Cambara with the barely visible movement of his head, comes toward her with the rough-hewn attitude of someone not given to restraining his impulses. Gacal, for his part, is content to remain where he is and to wave in salutation. Cambara asks herself if he is waiting to be invited or if he is upset, because he felt affronted by the manner in which she booted him out of her room yesterday evening. There is nothing standoffish about Gacal’s staying behind, she concludes, from where she is, she can sense the tremor of a smile forming.
Meanwhile, she turns her attention to SilkHair, who is lobbing his body forward with the speed of a tennis player eager to get on with the game. He is at her side before she has settled on what to say to him. But what is she to do, what is she to say? Open her arms for a quick hug? Ask him what he has done with his time since their last encounter? He steps back, his Adam’s apple busy making swallowing noises and his gaze focusing on her breakfast, so she invites him to order something to eat. With SilkHair seated and helping himself to one of her mangoes, she summons Gacal to join them. Gacal inserts himself in the space left untaken between her and SilkHair and leans forward as if he might receive a peck. Cambara gives his thigh a gentle pat and then pushes her remaining slice of mango toward him. He behaves as a well-bred boy of his age who has just eaten and who is not worried about his next meal.
He says, “Thanks. We’ve had breakfast.”
His cheeks mango-stained and his chin dripping with the mature yellow juice of the fruit, SilkHair eventually gives in to his gluttony. He pulls the remaining slice toward him without Cambara saying that he might and pounces on it with equal enthusiasm.
She says to Gacal, “What did you have?”
Gacal replies, “Porridge.”
“What was it like?”
“Filling,” he says.
“How has it been then, your first night?”
Gacal and SilkHair talk in tandem, their choice of words pointing her to their different dispositions, Gacal pronouncing it as “passable,” in contrast to SilkHair, who describes his experience thus: “So far it has been wonderful.” Cambara thinks that it is too early in the day to arrive at a conclusion about their character, but she stores these observations in her memory for future consideration.
She snaps her fingers, and the waiter takes his time coming, his unwillingness, perhaps to serve the two boys, discernible in his body language. He smiles at her, bowing his head slightly. But when he turns his face to speak to them, his expression assumes a hostility that has not been there before; his eyes harden; his choice of idiom rough and ready.
Obviously offended, Gacal looks from the waiter to Cambara, if only to indicate that, to his credit, he is sharing his frustrations with her in submissive silence, not rising to it. Not that SilkHair is unaware of what is happening, but he hurries to empty his face of an expression that might allow anyone to interpret it in any way before placing his order of breakfast: a large glass of orange juice, liver, and pancake. He is the kind of boy—“another mouth to feed”—who has known what it is like to kill for his meals. Gacal wants “Nothing for the moment,” and he might as well have added the phrase “from that waiter.”
“What did you do last night?” she asks them.
SilkHair puts his index finger close to his lips in the attitude of someone embarrassed to speak about something; he also avoids making eye contact with her. Cambara cannot help assuming that the boys went somewhere or did something of which SilkHair is not proud in the light of day. When she tries to decode its meaning, that is not the impression she gets from training her gaze on Gacal. Gacal is defiant, in that he stares back at her as though he is daring her to turn her attention to him.
“Did you go somewhere last night?”
“We went to see a movie,” Gacal says.
“What sort of movie? Where?”
Gacal explains that they went to a building that once belonged to the defunct state, namely the former Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where there is a hall with two ends, each with a video screen. SilkHair saw a Hindi movie dubbed into Somali at one end, then a Korean kung fu film whose soundtrack had also been rendered into Somali, never mind that it was done very badly, hastily, and cheaply too. He goes on, “Myself, I watched a different sort of movie in the end of the hall.”
“And you e
njoyed it?”
“Very much.”
“What was it called, the film you saw?”
“I don’t recall the name.”
“What was it about?”
SilkHair strikes her as someone easier in his mind as soon as the waiter put his breakfast in front of him. He tucks into it promptly, she thinks, not because he is hungry, but in great part because he is not accustomed to having this kind of food. Unlike Gacal, he does not cut a bashful figure in her presence. Which leads her to conclude that Gacal knows more than he is letting on.
“I am waiting,” she eggs Gacal on.
Gacal decoys her curiosity, baiting and turning it subtly away from the question for which he has not provided an answer to his disgust and disapproval of the slurping, smacking, and loud munching noises SilkHair has the habit of making whenever he takes a mouthful, but she won’t fall for it.
She says, “Tell me what you saw. I’m waiting.”
Gacal says nothing, eyes evasive.
In between two mouthfuls, each as noisy as ever, SilkHair volunteers with dash, saying, “Since he won’t tell, I will. He watched a sex film.”
Cambara stares at SilkHair with disapproval, as if she might charge him with stealing the thunder that is Gacal’s by right. As an actor, Cambara is a sucker for someone with a penchant for pace when developing or telling a story. Gacal has it to perfection; she has enjoyed listening to him, watching him perform. She always hated it when, in the process of narrating a tale, Wardi interposed himself into her telling of it, in effect killing it.
She asks Gacal, “Did you enjoy it?”
“I did.”
Silent, Cambara’s face tightens, as she asks herself what her reaction might have been if her son Dalmar had sneaked away after dark, seen a blue film, and told her without batting an eye that he had enjoyed it. No matter, she thinks. She knows what Wardi would have done. He would have beaten him to a pulp and then would have blamed what he often called her permissiveness, which, in his view, is no way to raise a Somali child in North America. Will Gacal’s penchant for blue films, developed perhaps since getting here, judging by his cool attitude, eventually affect their own relationship? Too difficult to predict; she will have to wait and see.
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