“We thought we would meet your flight tomorrow.”
“My mistake. I must have confused the dates when I wrote to you,” says Bella. And then she says, “Please let me talk to the children.”
Salif takes the phone first. “This is terrible, Auntie,” he says in Somali. “I can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it. It is so unfair, so unfair.”
Bella commiserates with him. “I am here now, my sweet.”
There is a pause, and then Bella hears a sound she cannot identify, followed by an expletive from Salif. It sounds as if Dahaba has suddenly snatched the phone away from him. Without missing a beat, Dahaba asks Bella, “Where were you when you heard it?”
Bella tells her how she found out about it in the airport, from the newspaper, and Dahaba says, “How terrible. It’s so unfair.” They weep together, and then they speak again at the same time, exchanging languages and words of commiseration.
Finally, James comes on the line. Bella thanks him and his wife for looking after her niece and nephew and asks how they can arrange for her to come and take the children home to Aar’s house. They offer to pick her up at the hotel and then bring her and the children to Aar’s house, but she insists on going there herself in a taxi. James promises to e-mail her directions to their house the moment they get home and rings off.
It takes Bella a minute to bring herself to unfold the fax from Valerie even though she is aware that there is no way of avoiding coming face-to-face with her. She feels a flush of rage at the thought of having to behave not only civilly but also solicitously toward a woman who, unless she has changed, is not likely to show an ounce of kindness back. Even though it has been years since the two have met, Bella has not till this day forgotten the initial shock and anger she felt when she first learned of Valerie’s sudden disappearance from Aar’s and the children’s lives without an explanation. Because of this, she is determined not to allow Valerie to take advantage of her, especially now that Aar is no longer in the picture. Still, Bella must steel herself for the worst, knowing how exploitative and naturally abusive Valerie can be. A blighter of a woman, Valerie does not know what is off-limits and what is acceptable. Valerie’s loyalty is only to herself, never to any other person.
Bella thinks, what a pretty kettle of fish, cursing the day her brother met and then married this woman; she can’t bring herself to open and read the message, annoyed that she has to do so. The cheek of the woman! Does the fact that she cannot keep her irritation in check mean that Valerie has her completely in her power, Bella wonders. Hurdo, she recalls, would have had no such doubts. She would describe Valerie as some peanut-brained la-de-da with no self-regard. As much as she loved her son, rather than see him as a gentle spirit and saint the way Bella did, Hurdo thought him a weakling and a pathological procrastinator who lacked the balls to square up to Valerie. Hurdo’s words seem prescient now. “Imagine what a nightmare their lives, and everyone’s, would become if something were to happen to him,” she said, adding, “One day, he will regret his indecision.” Now, it seems, such a day has come.
Finally, Bella reads Valerie’s message. It fans the flames of her anger, recalling their previous associations as well as their unspoken acrimonies—unspoken because she had no wish to upset Aar. Even so, Bella knows she must accede to some of her sister-in-law’s demands, including meeting up with her and allowing her to see Salif and Dahaba. She sends a text message to Valerie instead of calling her on the number she has provided, maybe because she doesn’t wish to hear the woman’s voice, which is bound to irritate her no end.
Valerie replies almost instantly, as if she had been waiting for a return message. She informs Bella that she will be in Nairobi tomorrow and looks forward to linking up with her there. She doesn’t mention Padmini, and Bella wonders if Valerie will bring her too. Anyhow, Bella resolves that, escorted or unaccompanied, Valerie will be received with the welcome due a sister-in-law.
Bella is exhausted from all her inner tensions, some to do with Valerie’s arrival, with Padmini and other untellable troubles in tow and others to do with her anxiety over the challenges awaiting her with Salif and Dahaba. Because she is too exhausted to spend more time and thought on Valerie and her doings, Bella concentrates on what needs to be done. And in a moment, she has the clarity of mind to call down to the reception desk and book a limousine to take her to the Kariukis’ house first thing tomorrow morning.
Then she draws the curtains, darkening the room to such an extent that it feels as though it were night. She then prepares to take a well-deserved sleep. At first, she tosses and turns for a long time, apparently too tired, too jet-lagged to achieve her aim. However, when she perseveres in her desire to give to her body what her body needs most— a restorative sleep—Bella ultimately succeeds into dropping into the deepest of slumbers, from which she is awakened by a nightmare.
In the dream, Bella finds herself standing on a cliff, engaged in a heated argument with a woman who is unknown to her. The two exchange unkind words, and then a falling sensation from the cliff’s great height causes Bella to wake up, and she screams in fright.
5.
After her long sleep, albeit one interrupted by the bad dream that was terrifying in the extreme, Bella feels restored enough to plan the day ahead. She gets out of the bed naked and opens the curtains wide to let the morning in. Instantly, she senses there is something open-ended about the African dawn, as if each day were a new offering, each hour a mystery unfolding. She takes a brief moment to watch as a couple of sparrows come to her side of the window, chirping, singing to her, welcoming her, her first dawn in Nairobi, a city that has the potential of becoming one of her favorite cities, except when she thinks worriedly about its violent nature. But that is not what she is thinking about now, the mayhem that is synonymous with this city, the bombings, and the reckless killings. Rather she is thinking about all the things that need doing—and there are legions of them, so many she would lose count were she to list them. Then with a frightening inevitability, she remembers why she is here: Aar’s death in Mogadiscio and her nephew and niece who need looking after. And the ache in her heart, rapidly increasing, dampens her spirits and she moves away from the window, turning her back on the morning and on the birds whose chatter she no longer hears.
Her change of mood leads her to the bathroom, where, in hope of regaining a firmer foothold in the slippery realities that are claiming her attention, she takes a hot shower. The stream of water jets out, hitting her body from all sides as she soaps herself, as she shampoos her hair, as she watches the brownness of her dirt fleeing fast down into the waiting drain under her feet, and this helps her remain a little aloof for the briefest time possible.
Toweled, she emerges from the bathroom and runs a comb through her dripping wet hair, then uses the hotel dryer. She oils her body with moisturizing ointments and then changes into a custom-made power suit her favorite tailor in Rome, a half-Somali living in that city, designed for her. Bella is pleased with the suit, delighted she could afford to pay for it, as it is out of her league. She brought it along to wear on a day such as this.
Finally, she packs a medium-size bag, into which she puts her most expensive cameras, her cash, her passport, and her computer, from which she has downloaded the attachment to Mr. Kariuki’s e-mail giving her the directions to their home and then copied it by hand since she has no printer in her room. But she doesn’t go down to the lobby immediately, because she is caught in midthought, which unsettles her; she is thinking about where she and Valerie will meet when her sister-in-law arrives in Nairobi tomorrow, something for which she must prepare well in advance. And Bella comes to an instant decision: It would be better if she kept her hotel room for one more day. That way, instead of inviting Valerie (and Padmini, if indeed she is coming) to Aar’s home, where she and the children will have been installed, she will have a neutral place to receive her. After all, you can never tell with Valerie.
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br /> Before leaving the room, Bella makes certain to secure all the locks on the hard cases and put the DO NOT DISTURB sign back on her door. And when a woman at the reception desk calls to inform her that her limousine is here, she realizes that she does not have ample time to eat breakfast and settles in her mind for a takeaway coffee in a styrofoam cup and some fruit, which she thinks will be sufficient, as she can’t bear the thought of eating anything; she is antsy, her heart beating needlessly faster, as she thinks of all the possible skirmishes that lie ahead. She walks into the breakfast hall and helps herself to the coffee and grabs a banana and an apple and, smiling, waves away the attention of one of the waiters, who is eager to know if he can assist.
At the reception desk, she identifies herself to the concierge, alerting him that she will be ready to join the driver of the limousine soon. Then she cashes more euros, and with the key to her room safely in her bag, she goes out to meet the limousine. The driver turns out to be a very pleasant elderly man from Eldoret. Bella insists that he tell her the route he plans to take to get to the Kariukis’ home before she gets into the vehicle. She compares the options he gives to the directions Mr. Kariuki has sent her, and when she is satisfied that he knows the route, she climbs into the back and settles in for the ride, anticipating the meeting with Salif and Dahaba with equal parts of joy and dread.
—
Traveling through the city in the back of the limousine, Bella feels almost in her element again. In recent years, her most obvious link to the African continent has been her brother and his children. Yet she is often happiest here. She feels connected to the soul of the continent, even though she knows that, almost to a man or a woman, any African would say that she is not of them. Playing the music of Baaba Maal, Cesária Évora, Toumani Diabaté, or Miriam Makeba calms her nerves and transports her to a world beyond memory, where sadness cannot reach her.
She is most conflicted when it comes to Somalia, her natal country, where bloodthirsty “nativists” claiming ancestral ownership of the land on which the city of Mogadiscio was sited ten thousand years ago have made the city ungovernable. According to what Aar told her when they spoke on the phone or met, the city had lost its charm under the repeated incursions of the clan-based militiamen recruited from communities in south-central Somalia. Then Ethiopia took it, at the behest of the U.S. And then came Shabaab.
It is the emphasis on what passes for clan, ethnic, or religious identity that makes her lose hope for the place. Just because she is a bit light-skinned and has a father from elsewhere is not reason enough to deny her the Somali identity to which she has legal and natal rights. That kind of nativist backward thinking reminds her of the American “birthers” who question Obama’s right to be the president of the United States. For that matter, it reminds her of how some Zambians challenged Kenneth Kaunda’s right to be the country’s first president even after he’d been in power for twenty-six years because he’d been born, they claimed, a kilometer over the border with Malawi.
She hopes that her luck will hold and that she will not find Salif and Dahaba in worse shape than she has been. At the very thought, her eyes fill with tears again, her chest heaving. She pulls out a towelette, the type airlines supply their passengers with before serving meals. She doesn’t want Salif and Dahaba to see her disconsolate. Or at least she doesn’t want to be the one to lead off the wailing.
And then she finds it startling to be staring into the vehicle’s side mirror. Mirrors have always had an immediate impact on her thinking, and seeing her face so unexpectedly reflected in it does not only surprise her but also imposes on her mind a humbling rationale: that she is alive and Aar is not. In an instant, her face, unbidden, runs with buckets of tears making their way down to her cheeks and staining her power suit. And her hand reaches up toward her eyes that are too unhandsome to behold. But when her wandering gaze encounters the driver’s worried look in the rear mirror, a shiver having its origin deep in the seismic tremor that has occurred within her produces a brief muscle spasm. Several seconds go by before the shaking slackens and she is able to wipe away the wetness from her cheeks.
By then, she senses the car slowing down and she assumes that they have arrived at their destination. The driver, discreet as ever, does not delve into the matter in any manner or depth. Nor does he say, “We are here,” even after he has stopped at a manned boom gate, where a uniformed security guard approaches her side and asks her to fill in a form and wait. Bella pulls herself together and does as instructed and gives the clipboard back to the man, who goes into a cubicle and then emerges to tell the driver, “The principal’s house is the biggest bungalow to the left. You can’t miss it.”
A few minutes later, they stop in front of a large bungalow. Bella gathers her thoughts in silence and then tells the driver to wait here, as he will take her and two other people back to Nairobi. But before stepping out of the vehicle, she is suffused with a mixture of anxiety and foreboding, and in a momentary fit of delirium, she wonders if she has the mental strength and physical stamina to maintain her self-control and make sure she won’t lose hold of her emotions and burst into tears the moment she sets eyes on Salif and Dahaba. Eventually, a woman Bella presumes to be Catherine Kariuki opens the door and waits. Bella, unsteady on her feet, somehow makes it out of the car and moves toward the woman holding the door, and her arms open to embrace her.
—
In spite of herself, however, Bella is sniveling again the instant Catherine says, “Bella, sincere condolences for your loss and ours,” and wraps her massive body around her. Then both women let loose a torrent of damnations aimed at Aar’s murderers, at which point the mention of his name brings forth a salvo of blessings. They stand like that, two grown women, one in flat shoes and a flowery summer frock, the other in a power suit and beautifully designed Italian shoes, each repeatedly pleading with the other to please stop crying, please, neither obliging until soft steps descending the stairs behind them make them go silent.
But it is not the children; it is the dog in playful but silent pursuit of the cat. Then the dog starts to bark and Catherine shushes her, saying, “Quiet, you silly thing. It is Bella.” She fetches a toy for the cat to play with, and the two women pause in their grieving, as if attempting to recast their roles in the tragedy they are reliving. The dog disappears and then reappears, holding a leash in its teeth: She wants to go for a walk. Catherine pays no attention but the dog, as if seriously offended, barks fiercely. The cat then turns its back on the goings-on and strides into the inner part of the house. Bella waits, as if expecting that the cat might come back with something in its mouth too, maybe its bowl, to indicate its owner has forgotten to put food in it. Or maybe it will return with a dead mouse, not so much to feed its hunger but to receive a pat on the head. Meanwhile, Catherine holds the dog by the ears, pulling the leash free of its jaws and hanging it on a hook with the promise of a walk in a minute or so. Catherine says to Bella, “As you can see, I have my work cut out for me.”
Bella is not unhappy that they are talking about ordinary matters. She is glad for anything that will occupy her mind and make her forget her pain. She says, smiling, “Now dogs insist on their rights? Dogs?”
“Normally, my husband takes her out first thing, but he had a family emergency in his village and he drove off as soon as we got back,” Catherine says. “He hopes to be back in time to see you.”
“I hope it’s nothing serious,” Bella says.
“Emergencies are a daily routine in our country,” Catherine says, shaking her head. Bella knows what she’s alluding to. In a place where violence is endemic, sudden death, car accidents, family feuds over land and other matters, witchcraft killings, and other deadly rituals are not uncommon.
Catherine says, “Do you mind if I leave you in the house with Salif and Dahaba while I take this dog for a walk?”
“Where are they?” asks Bella.
“Up in their
rooms, both of them,” Catherine says, “probably surfing the Net and catching up on text messaging with their friends.”
“Are they already up?”
“I know Dahaba is. She came down when she heard James getting ready to leave. She thought it might be you. She and I had breakfast together.”
“And Salif?”
“He said he wanted to wait and eat with you. He acts tough sometimes, but he’s actually very sensitive. Deep down, he has a big soft center—you’ll see.”
“Just like his father,” says Bella.
“Eggs and bacon and tomato ketchup, those are his morning essentials, he can’t live without them. But perhaps he’s gone back to sleep.”
“Good for young people to sleep; that’s how they grow so big these days.”
And just as Catherine gets hold of the dog’s neck to put the leash on her, Dahaba hurtles down the stairs in a precipitous headlong rush and throws herself into Bella’s arms, her head finding familiar comfort in the curve of her aunt’s neck. A tremor as quietly invasive as it is sudden runs through Bella’s body and transmits itself to Dahaba, and suddenly she is crying out in pain. As if she can’t bear the sight, Catherine slips out the door with the dog in tow; her presence now is redundant.
“I know, darling, I do know, I do,” Bella whispers.
“Why should it happen to us?”
Bella thinks, why indeed? But she doesn’t say this aloud.
Dahaba clings to Bella until at last she is calm enough for Bella to release her. But when she looks up into her aunt’s eyes, a fresh sorrow touches off a new round of weeping. Bella kisses her niece on the cheeks. Dahaba says, “We don’t have another parent.”
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