Hiding in Plain Sight

by Nuruddin Farah

  From childhood, Bella had wanted to free herself from her parents’ constraints and blackmailing maneuvers, and she was determined to make her own way in the world, working hard and doing well in whatever profession she chose. At eighteen, Bella apprenticed herself to a photographer friend of her Neapolitan lover. With Fiori prepared to buy her the expensive cameras she required, she was able to set her mind on pursuing her vocation.

  Yet even as she became successful, Bella remained dissatisfied with the companionship on offer. Always a picky eater, who at her heaviest weighed no more than forty-five kilos, she boasted of a waistline so thin that her first boyfriend, the Neapolitan cameraman, told her she looked like a waif who needing a little fattening. This put Bella in mind of a cow being pumped with supplements to make sure it fetched the highest price, and she showed the boyfriend the door—though not before he made a jibe about her incestuous relationship with her brother, whose name she had mentioned at every possible opportunity. She fired back, “And you are nowhere near as good, as lovable, as caring, or even as amusing as he. So be off with you!”

  She continued to be romantically sought after, but no man seemed to suffice. Over time, she discovered, first to her disbelief and then to her amusement, that she was not jealous if a man she was with ogled other women or made passes at them in her presence, reasoning that neither the men nor the women they noticed mattered enough to justify her jealousy or disappointment. By the time Aar married Valerie, Bella had evolved her fantasy. She would have three lovers, she decided: one of them very, very handsome; another (with whom she would have at least one child) who was very, very intelligent; and for the third, she would choose a stud—a well-hung partner with whom she would enjoy sex. Little by little, the fantasy became reality.

  HandsomeBoy was first. Bella met him on one of her first major freelance assignments, which involved shooting photographs of models and animals in Kenya for clothing businesses with Italian connections. HandsomeBoy had moved from his natal hamlet near the Tanzanian border to study sociology at the University of Nairobi. He worked part-time as a model to pay for his education. If asked, he and Bella wouldn’t agree on which of them fell for the other first, each claiming to be the one to do so, such was their immediate attraction.

  Her appreciation for sculpture persisted, and it was at a gallery show that she met Humboldt on a visit to her mother and brother in Toronto. A successful Brazilian sculptor of African descent, Humboldt was based in Rio and traveled the world as Bella did. He became her second lover, and the sex was great. In those days, nothing else mattered much, and neither of them had the desire to enter into a long-term relationship. Since then, they meet as their schedules permit, in hotels in various cities, for a week, for a day.

  Five years into this second relationship, on a day when she was in New York, she attended a lecture by Cisse Drahme, a Malian philosopher of note. He was speaking on “The Wonders of Dogon Astronomy,” and after the lecture, she was invited to join a group at a bar, which led to a dinner for two and then a meeting of the minds that has blossomed for more than ten years. And thus Bella fulfilled her fantasy of three lovers.

  Within reason, any of them would drop what he is doing and go where she chooses to meet up with her. She has keys to their houses or apartments, and she can come and go as she pleases, while none of them even has her exact address. All they know is that she lives in Rome. The arrangement has served Bella very well. She has had to curb neither her love life nor her professional ambitions. But now?

  —

  A journalist for an Italian daily newspaper once asked Bella, “What makes you think that a nervous subject makes a more interesting photo than a calm one?” And Bella replied, “As a child, when I had to get a shot, I feared the jab of the needle, just as I hated the nurse saying not to think about the pain. I mean to wait until the person photographed no longer thinks of what I am doing. That way, I am in charge. And I like being in charge, in total control.”

  The journalist asked, “Do you believe that photography is a matter of power, with the photographer lording it over the subject? Is this what you are trying to say?”

  That was indeed how Bella felt. “I like to think that my subjects are as powerless as a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.”

  “Isn’t that an unhealthy attitude to hold?”

  “I am a woman,” Bella explained, “and a Somali one at that.”

  “How do you mean?” the journalist asked.

  Bella found it difficult to explain, but she tried. She talked about how the colonized Asians, Africans, North American Indians, and Australian aboriginals had been eroticized and trivialized by their colonizers. And just as American photographers produced naked portraits of Native Americans or Africans for the tourist trade, women photographed in the nude were put to similar service. Bella asked, “If that is not power that allows the mighty to lord over the weak, I don’t know what is.”

  But lately, the journalist observed, Bella had been photographing children more and more, especially Somali children. Why was that?

  Bella pointed out that she had never photographed anyone in the nude or eroticized any of her subjects. “Please note,” she said, “that I make sure they look straight into the camera. I let them laugh and gesticulate naturally instead of shaping their bodies into objects of desire.”

  “When does photography become art?” the journalist asked.

  The photographer achieved the status of artist by virtue of his lenses, his choice of paper, his mastery of printing and tone, Bella said. And she spoke of her favorite photographers, many of whom were also painters, and the works she regarded as their masterpieces, such as Stieglitz’s The Terminal and the nude portraits he’d made of his wife, Georgia O’Keeffe. For a time, early on in her career, he’d been the only photographer she idolized. But the more Bella developed her own style, the wider the range of photographers she admired. Still, she remained partial to the photo, which reminded her of a painting. She had always believed that photography owes its existence to painting. “I would like my photographs to think of their favorite painters,” she said.

  The journalist pointed out that Somalis, whether male or female, are physically reserved. “They are undemonstrative. It is as if they have never heard of sexual freedom, with parents shying away from standing even half nude in front of their children. The body, whether female or male, is in chains.”

  Given the opportunity, and unlimited funding, the journalist asks, what photographic project would she be eager to embark on?

  Bella smiled and shook her head. “I wonder if there is any point in answering your question, which I take to be nothing but a sort of a trap.”

  “Let me ask it in a different way,” said the journalist. “Who would you rather be, a Sebastião Salgado or a Robert Mapplethorpe, given the chance?”

  “A Sebastião Salgado any day.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I would start my own series about the end of women’s manual labor,” Bella replied.

  The truth is, Bella did photograph her lovers in the nude before she was intimate with them, but she will never discuss this. She believes this affirms her power over them. As she prepares them to sit for her, she watches them from behind the camera lens, intently waiting and deliberately making them nervous before her finger presses the shutter.

  Nor does she share with her interviewer the shock and then the amusement she experienced when, in a hotel in New York where she was staying, she found a Mapplethorpe book of black male portraits in the nude where a Gideon Bible would normally be. Did she like what she saw? Did she think that what she saw was art? She wasn’t sure. Of course, she wouldn’t deny there was novelty in doing what Mapplethorpe did, and she admired the way he’d made his own niche, in both the market and the art of photography. But she wasn’t so sure that what he was doing was any different from the titillating nude photographs so ma
ny photographers had taken of so many women.

  “Who in your experience is the most difficult subject to photograph?” the journalist had asked.

  “The eye of the camera sees what is in front of it, and it records the moment it captures truthfully,” Bella replied. “However, it may have difficulties in fronting impossible situations. My mother hated being photographed despite knowing that there was nothing more pleasing to me than taking her picture. So I would say she was the most impossible subject to photograph.”

  “And who is the most delightful subject to photograph?” the journalist asked.

  That one was easy. “Aar, my brother, and his children,” Bella had answered.

  4.

  Bella knows that she is procrastinating, but she does not yet feel up to the enormous responsibilities that await her. She tells herself that until she has a better grip on her emotions she shouldn’t make contact with her niece and nephew. The folly of mourning, and thus confusing love with loss, is so natural in us humans that it can leave us physically and mentally unable to perform any of our usual tasks, let alone look after anyone else.

  She pulls her mobile phone out of her shoulder bag to ring Gunilla again. But she has scarcely dialed the long international number when the hotel phone on the bedside table rings, startling her. With her hand shaking and her head spinning with an array of conflicting fantasies—someone is ringing to tell her that Aar is injured but still alive; or it is Gunilla calling to tell her that Valerie has been released and is on a flight bound for Nairobi?—she finally finds the strength and the voice to pick up and say hello.

  The hotel receptionist informs her that she is sending up a fax message that has arrived marked VERY URGENT. And because the woman gives neither the sender’s name nor the country of origin, Bella again allows her mind to go wild, imagining all sorts of far-fetched scenarios. Perhaps the fax brings news that her niece and nephew have been in a car accident on their way from their boarding school on the outskirts of Nairobi. Bella sits down, her lips silently unleashing a salvo of Koranic verses she hasn’t recited since childhood. The next minute her optimism is ascendant, the fax bringing a different kind of news about Aar: that his body was found in perfect condition, proof that he did not suffer much pain or trauma. She stands by the entrance to her room, ready to open the door to the bearer of the message. When she hears the lift doors open and then footsteps approach, she gives in to her eagerness and opens the door. But there is no one in the corridor. So she sits tight and waits, accepting her powerlessness to do anything about anything.

  Bella tells herself that she has lived for years in a cocoon. With no child of her own and no steady partner, she hasn’t had many worries to bother her. Healthy, young, and blessed with good looks, content with the professional niche she has made for herself, she has had few serious worries, at least until Aar’s transfer two years ago to the UN office in Mogadiscio. From that day on, she paid more attention to the news coming out of Somalia. Even so, she was unmoved by much of what she read, even the suicide bombings and the constant deaths from IEDs planted by the terrorists. As long as the casualties were unknown to her personally, the tragedies felt abstract. Until now! As she said to Marcella—was it yesterday or the day before?—“Aar’s death changes everything.” What she meant was this: From now on, when the telephone rings in the middle of the night, she will imagine a car accident, a bombing in a shopping mall or restaurant in which someone dear to her loses their life. And while she will no longer worry herself to death about Aar, she will dread what might happen to her nephew and niece, the same way many a parent she knows has an ear cocked for a phone call when her teenagers are out at a party after midnight.

  Bella is just at the point of wondering if she might have misunderstood the receptionist when she hears a gentle knock on the door. Now she takes her time before answering, searching for a little baksheesh, but she has found only euros when there is a second tapping and then a third. She opens the door and finds herself face-to-face with a handsome young man with big eyes and a fetching smile, in hotel uniform. Extending her right hand to receive the envelope he bears, she sees that it is shaking and stops. But the young man has no eyes for her trembling hand; he is ogling the slight opening where her robe has slipped a little. Suddenly amused, Bella relaxes and, no longer shaking, receives the envelope with both hands and thanks him.

  “Why has it taken you so long to come up?” she asks him. “I’d almost given up.”

  “The receptionist twice sent me to the wrong room,” he replies, shaking his head and smiling. “Maybe she was confused because your name is hyphenated on the fax, but you registered with only a single name.” But he apologizes and she gives him a couple of euros for his troubles before she gently closes the door.

  Her hand is trembling again as she takes a seat, her feet planted on the floor. Bizarrely, she looks left and then right, as if she expects someone else to be with her in the room or as if she were engaged in a conversation. Then she nods her head, as though giving an okay, and tears the envelope open and reads the name of the sender: Helene, in Kampala. But Bella knows no Helene in Kampala. The message is in legalese and brief. Helene introduces herself as an attorney who is writing at the suggestion of Gunilla, who provided her with the name of Bella’s hotel. She continues, “Since the matter I wish to discuss with you is of utmost urgency and its nature delicate and familial, I would appreciate it if you could contact me at your earliest.” Helene provides two office landline numbers and a mobile phone number, each bearing a Kampala area code, and an e-mail address.

  This must be an attorney representing Valerie and Padmini, Bella guesses. The thought that such a person exists relaxes her. She will not walk away from her responsibility to her sister-in-law, she knows, but she also knows that, once free, Valerie will carry on as if nothing has happened, except that she will blame the whole thing on anyone but herself.

  Bella calls one of the landline numbers she has been given. As she waits for someone to answer it, she tells herself that she won’t ever forgive herself if she does nothing to help Valerie, never mind the nature of the trouble the woman is in. And Uganda being Uganda, she thinks that she will be able to find the right officers to bribe. To get matters moving, Bella decides to insist that Helene not disclose to Valerie who is putting up the bail and paying all other expenses incurred.

  Finally, Helene answers. After Bella has introduced herself and then acknowledged receipt of the fax, Helene says, “I’ll tell you enough of what we are up against so you can decide whether you wish to get involved.”

  “I can’t help it, I have to be involved.”

  Bella can hear papers being shuffled and then Helene says, “I must tell you this at the start. We do not represent Valerie as such.”

  “Please explain your meaning.”

  “We represent Padmini, her partner, in a property dispute between her and a Ugandan businessman,” Helene says. “And then this.”

  “‘And then this’? What’s ‘this’?”

  Helene says, “A few days before Padmini and Valerie’s arrest, we had received notice from the courts about a preliminary date when a judge would hear the property dispute.”

  “Are you telling me that this is why they are locked up?” says Bella. “Because the Ugandan has played a dirty hand?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “The Ugandan tycoon hired a private eye to dig deep into the dirt,” Helene says. “He hopes to force Padmini’s hand so that she will flee the country or at least withdraw her case.”

  “How much dirt did the private eye dig up?”

  “The private eye sneaked in on Valerie and Padmini’s privacy and left his hiding place with a rich harvest of sexually explicit photographs.”

  “How careless of them,” Bella says.

  “Their lack of awareness would be quite understandable if it weren’t for the fact
that Padmini comes from here,” Helene says. “She was born here and her family is well known and well respected too.”

  “How do we proceed?”

  “We need to get them out of prison. The yellow press is sniffing around, readying to run off with the story. This will do irreparable damage to their reputations. Somalis, as Valerie told me—as if I needed telling—will bay for her blood if it comes out that she is Aar’s widow. We must do something quick, get them out, and put them on a flight to Nairobi.”

  “Why a flight to Nairobi?”

  “According to Valerie, Nairobi has one of the largest communities of homosexuals, second only to Cape Town in the entire continent, and she says they will feel comfortable there.”

  “How can I help?”

  “Can you come in person to Kampala?”

  “As I said, I do not want her to know that I am her benefactor,” Bella says, this time with great emphasis.

  “We need to move fast,” Helene says.

  “How much will it take to get them out?”

  “A couple of thousand dollars in legal fees, and a couple more to make sure that we grease the right uniformed palms adequately so they will be discreet in their dealings with us and the press,” Helene says.

  “What if I can’t come in person?” Bella reminds herself that she is primarily in Africa not to solve Valerie’s problems but to mother her nephew and niece.

  “You can choose one of two options.”

  “I am listening.”

  “You can wire the funds. Or you can find someone residing in Uganda whom you know personally and whom you trust—a Somali, say, as there are hundreds of thousands of your nationals residing in Kampala, many of them very wealthy, and you arrange with them to settle the bill right away and then pay them later. This will be the quickest way of having them released. The money will be delivered to us in cash and we will act forthwith—very efficient!”