Hiding in Plain Sight

by Nuruddin Farah

  “Her expectations are unreasonable.”

  However much Gunilla pretends to be following the UN rules and acting neutral, Bella is aware that love and the memory of her affection toward Aar will sway her mind. She will exploit the play in the rope. “Valerie rang me at Padmini’s insistence, she assured me, to see Aar’s last will.”

  “What was your answer?”

  “It is out of the question.”

  Bella is determined not to prod.

  Gunilla goes through moments of nervy dithering. “Then a man claiming to be her lawyer rang me just before you came, wishing to know if this office had a copy of Aar’s will on file and if his wife and the mother of his children could see it. I replied that I would get back to him about it after I had the chance to look into the matter further. Meanwhile, I consulted a Kenyan who is well informed about who is who in the legal fraternity and who happens to be a good friend of Aar’s. I gave him the name of the lawyer representing Valerie. Apparently, said lawyer is Ugandan, with his chambers in Kampala, not here.”

  Bella says, “They are married out of community of property and the two of them have not lived together or shared a conjugal bed for a number of years. Does she have any legal legs to stand on?”

  “Chances are she won’t file.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Gunilla narrows the blue hardness of her eyes into slits because the sun is in them. “Aar was of the impression that Valerie doesn’t have the patience to pursue any matter, especially a legal matter, to its conclusion. According to him, she would never do anything of the sort.”

  “There is always a first time.”

  “Aar used to say to me that Valerie would start on a project with great enthusiasm but wouldn’t follow it to its end. Even having the children was such a project, embarked on with passion but abandoned in the end. This has been her downfall: the inability to stay the course; the refusal to pay up when a bill is presented to her unless Padmini steps in to help. Now tell me,” she says, “how have Salif and Dahaba responded to her presence?”

  “They are hostile to both Valerie and Padmini.”

  “And how does that sit with you?”

  “I want no friction if I can have it my way.”

  Gunilla again opens one of the files, which she studies for a couple of minutes. She nods in silence in the manner of someone who has finally gained an understanding of a complicated matter. She says, “Please sign these forms using your name as it appears on your birth certificate and your passport.”

  Bella signs the forms without reading them. Gunilla has earned her trust.

  “As the children’s mother, what are her chances of convincing a judge to grant her custody now that she is back in the same country as they are and since she is the only living biological parent and they are under the age of majority—are there any good legs she can stand on?”

  “The law is not favorable to her side.”

  “Besides, Valerie has a way of spreading vitriol the same way one spreads butter on one’s toast,” says Bella, and she tells Gunilla about Valerie’s trying to convince Salif that his father had wanted to be cremated.

  “But that is absurd. She hasn’t seen the will.”

  The telephone on Gunilla’s desk squeals. She picks it up gingerly, as if it might burn her fingers, and holds it away from her ear, speaking rather disinterestedly into the mouthpiece. “Yes, who is it?”

  A moment after the speaker on the other end of the line identifies herself, Gunilla indicates to Bella that she wishes to take the call and makes as if she is leaving her office. Bella motions to her, waving, and mouthing the words, “I’ll step out for a moment,” then does so.

  She tiptoes out of Gunilla’s office and then takes the opportunity to call Salif and Dahaba, who don’t answer. Then, remembering how the young are more fond of text messages, she sends one to Salif, who responds instantly with three comforting words, “All well here.” Even though she is tempted to ask where “here” is, Bella restrains herself from doing so.

  She hears her name being called and sees Gunilla waving to her from the doorway of her office. “Please pardon the interruption and let’s resume our conversation where we left off.”

  Bella says, “I would rather not know what Valerie said.”

  Gunilla agrees. “Fair enough. I won’t tell you.”

  They sit opposite each other. Gunilla spreads the relevant papers on a low table and asks Bella to bring out her documents. Gunilla purposefully states what they are as if their conversation were being recorded. Gunilla reads the list aloud: an original copy of the will and statement. She receives the stapled document consisting of three pages and studies it with care, comparing it for the second or third time to the notarized and witnessed copy she has on file.

  Gunilla rises to her feet, opens a cupboard, and brings out a folder with the name AAR on its cover. The documents in this folder have been brought from Mogadiscio and they include several personal papers found in his apartment and office.

  “And here is Aar’s passport,” says Gunilla.

  Bella receives it, her hand shaking.

  “Please open it and check,” says Gunilla.

  Bella does as told.

  Gunilla then rummages in her briefcase and brings out a one-page document—Aar’s death certificate issued by the UN office in Mogadiscio. Again, Bella scrutinizes the document, saying nothing.

  “Please come with me,” Gunilla says to Bella.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To photocopy every single piece of paper, including the notarized and witnessed documents, which, I understand, are also with Aar’s attorneys in England.”

  Gunilla leads the way after locking her office.

  “Why are you making photocopies?”

  “The originals will be stored here as reference.”

  When they are back in her office, Gunilla replaces the documents in their correct folders and puts all of these into a drawer, which she locks with a key. Then she returns Bella’s originals, her passport, and the copy of the will she had come with, saying, “Please keep them in a safe place in case somebody wants to see them.”

  Gunilla then warns Bella to prepare mentally for a great shock. She says, “I am now going to hand over to you Aar’s personal effects that were found in the taxi, including the shoulder bag he was intending to bring along to Nairobi, as well as his personal computer. You are a strong woman, and you will understand if I don’t preface this ordeal further. I see you have come prepared for it,” she adds, noting Bella’s carryall.

  It is Bella’s turn to break down at the sight of Aar’s favorite pair of jeans, his jogging shoes, his sunglasses, his Yankees cap, his T-shirts. Then Gunilla hands over a small plastic-covered shoulder bag, which she says contains Aar’s Mac computer and his two mobile phones, which Bella knows are one for Somalia and one for Nairobi.

  Bella says, “Do you know whether anyone has his passwords?”

  “Ask Salif. He never gave them to me,” says Gunilla.

  But Bella knows there is no need to involve Salif for now. Unless Aar has changed his practices, she believes that, as with his suitcase, he will have come up with a password based on her name or nickname or birth date. She will try these when she is back home.

  “And here is something else,” Gunilla says.

  Knowing Aar, Bella is not at all surprised that he has entrusted the passwords to his Kenyan bank account to Gunilla. She has all the passwords to his euro accounts. Aar was in the habit of trusting people—and it is not out of character for him to have trusted Gunilla to wire funds to him in Mogadiscio, as credit cards did not work there. He needed an active account in Nairobi, where the children lived. Every now and then, he would telephone to wire transfer large sums from an account he held in Switzerland from the time he worked there or from another account in Vienna.
He led a messy life, one that was trusting, loyal, and orderly in its own way. Bella once asked him how he could trust his accounts and all his secrets to others. And he responded, “Because secrets are not everlasting and you can trust most people with your money as they will take it upon themselves to honor the faith you’ve put in them.”

  Bella can’t think of what to say. When there is time and the opportunity presents itself, she will ask Salif to tell her what he knows about these things. Salif acts more grown-up than most youths his age; his father trained him that way. He is self-confident, and his self-regard is of a high quality.

  Gunilla says, “I would very much love to see Salif and Dahaba. No rush, though. There is all the time in the world.”

  “It’d be inappropriate to do so now.”

  Gunilla agrees. “We’ll arrange to meet in due time.”

  “Once the legal matters have been settled.”

  Gunilla says, “Very wise. Just like Aar.”

  “Take care. We’ll be in touch,” Bella says.

  “We will indeed.”

  12.

  Bella is exhausted when she returns home. She has an atrocious pain in the lower reaches of her pelvis, which, for want of a better explanation, she ascribes to her terrible posture as she drove back to Aar’s house from Gigiri, pitched forward as if that would somehow make her go faster. She parks the car and, stepping out, places one hand on her back, pressing it hard, and the other on her midriff, squeezing it. It doesn’t help. This, she guesses, is the price she pays for not taking good care of herself and not adequately resting for the past few days. She also ascribes some of it to the overwhelming grief over her loss, and the worry, and the exhaustion from all this travel, and the dislocation, and the determination not to display any signs of the stress to Valerie and Padmini. Finally, she blames all the driving around she has had to do looking for a camera store and then negotiating the price down, which in the end was not worth all the bother.

  There is no denying too that her unceasing thoughts about the children and their continued presence in her mind and life have contributed to her general anxiety. Good as they have been with her, she senses a chasm in her knowledge about them. They have not yet truly tried her patience, but in time, she knows, they will. The gap between what she knows about them and the things she has yet to know reminds her of something Aar said to her about Somalis and their relationship to their language. Somali remained an oral language for a long time, acquiring a written form using Roman script only toward the end of 1972. Aar argued that those who had known the language only in its spoken form felt a great disconnect between the tongue they spoke and the one they were beginning to learn to write. Bella perceives such a lack in what she knows about the children, but she can’t quite identify what she is missing. She also has few close friends here to provide her and the children with additional support and someone to fall back on. It would be a different story in Rome, where she has a host of old friends. Still, meeting Gunilla, whom she not only likes but also finds impressively competent, has cheered her. The woman knows her way around Nairobi, knows how things work here. She is sure to cultivate Gunilla’s friendship, in whom she sees a link with Aar, someone both of them loved.

  Bella brings in the bags of groceries she has bought but leaves the carryall containing Aar’s personal effects in the trunk of the car when she parks. Before bringing them in, she wants to know what the state of affairs is here.

  She remembers she has no key and rings the bell at the same time as she knocks hard with her knuckles on the solid wooden door. But there is no answer. A worried second later, she thinks she should have called from the shopping mall to alert them when to expect her. Then her instinct leads her to lean heavily on the door and turn the handle in an instant of optimism. And the door opens. Now all sorts of worries invade her mind: Have they forgotten to lock it in the first place? Have burglars broken the door or somehow found their way in? And given that there is no one downstairs, she allows other fears to prey on her thinking until she hears the soft whirring of the fan of a computer coming from upstairs and then an instant later a faint human humming, most likely Dahaba singing along with one of her favorite tunes.

  Laden with the shopping, she closes the door gently, not wanting to frighten Dahaba. In the kitchen, her gaze falls on a heap of dishes, saucepans, and utensils piled up in the sink, still waiting to be washed. Evidently neither Valerie nor Padmini helped clean up the breakfast mess before leaving—unless they are still upstairs with Dahaba or Salif. Bella’s mind now retrieves a memory pertinent to the occasion: Aar saying he had three children to look after.

  She opens the fridge, in which there are half-eaten packets of sweets and a couple of cans of half-drunk soft drinks. Another empty can is abandoned on the windowsill. She puts away the groceries, pours herself a glass of water, and sits at the kitchen table, which is equally messy. After a couple of sips, she gets up and empties the fridge of the abandoned items, wipes the surface of the kitchen table, and discards the empty can. Then she sits back down, feeling instantly less exhausted. She calls out to Salif and Dahaba, and when they welcome her back, she suggests they come down and help her prepare a light midday meal.

  As Bella seasons the chicken she has brought, Dahaba is the first to speak as she shows off a silver bracelet her mum bought for her. “Isn’t this the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever seen, made, of all places, in Mogadiscio?”

  “Made in Mogadiscio?” questions Bella.

  Dahaba assures her that the Indian jeweler who sold it to them swore it was handmade in Tangaani, an arts-and-crafts place in Mogadiscio. Excited, Dahaba jumps around in joy.

  Bella corrects the place name. “Shangaani in Mogadiscio.”

  Because Salif remains silent, Bella asks, “And you?”

  He sounds dismissive of the whole exercise, and then, when least expected, he says, “Same boring stuff, as always. You are unhappy, you are bored, Mum buys you a present. You see, I didn’t want to ask her, or either of them for that matter, questions about their life, but I hoped they would bring me into their life, what it is like to be where they are, what makes the two of them tick. What do you get? Presents. A new iPhone, if you want.”

  Bella can’t think of what to say so she doesn’t even try to reason with him, maybe because he has a point, his point, the point of a teenager who meets his mum and who wants to be no longer thought of as a child.

  “And he was rude to Mum,” Dahaba says.

  Bella asks, “Rude? Why rude? How rude?”

  “She gave him cash,” Dahaba says, “since Salif wouldn’t accept a present from her. And he threw the money back at her, in full view of everyone.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “We left and took a taxi home.”

  Bella feels powerless to do anything about what happened and she is at a loss for words. And of course, she understands that Salif was hurt and had the right to feel that way. She senses the best thing to do is to leave things the way they are and revisit them another time. And with no one speaking, Bella deliberately lets the subdued manner dominate, convinced that something of monumental significance has occurred during her absence.

  Dahaba says, “It was just terrible.”

  Salif, surprising Bella, comes to the rescue. He goes over to where Dahaba is standing and he hugs her to him and he says, “Nothing to worry about. I told her she is welcome to visit whenever she pleases, didn’t I?”

  “That was sweet of you,” says Dahaba.

  “See. Nothing to worry about.”

  A phrase from Samuel Beckett, “a stain on silence,” springs to Bella’s mind as she thinks how best to move on.

  Salif again comes to the rescue. He is adept at changing the thrust of a conversation, helping to veer it away from controversy. He says, “Let’s help put the groceries in the fridge and then let’s prepare a light lunch.”

  W
hile he puts the shopping in the fridge, Bella, happy to do so, chops onions and puts them to brown in a frying pan then begins slicing mushrooms. Something tells her that there is something else brewing—and that Salif is not the culprit, the author of whatever devilry they’re not telling her about. He is staring at his fingernails, grinning in triumphant mischief, and Dahaba, nervous and dying to say something or revisit a scene, bites hers to the quick. Salif and Dahaba are looking away from each other in a bid to avoid eye contact. Bella will give them a few minutes, and if neither tells her something, only then will she ask. She pretends that everything is okay and stirs the mushrooms and onions, then adds spinach to the pan. She turns the chicken over, poking it with a fork. She washes the salad thoroughly, making sure there is no sand in it.

  To keep Salif busy, Bella asks him to please make the dressing and, to this end, hands him half a lemon, some mustard, balsamic vinegar, and oil. He gets down to business, enlisting Dahaba to crush some garlic and find the pepper grinder. They all fall silent, but Dahaba can’t seem to relax; she seems to need to say more about last night. “How dare they do it here, in our house?” she bursts out.

  Bella says to Dahaba, “What is it? Tell me.”

  But Dahaba won’t speak, it seems, until she receives the go-ahead from Salif. Bella plays the waiting game. Finally Salif gives his sister the signal, subtly indicating that she can go for it.

  “I came upon them doing it,” Dahaba says.

  Bella acts as if she doesn’t follow.

  Unbidden, Dahaba continues, “The door ajar, their noise breathy, you know, and their bodies shapeless. Does that make sense to you?”

  “Why did you come downstairs last night?” asks Bella.

  “I was hungry,” Dahaba says.

  “Did you find something you could eat?”

  “I couldn’t bear the thought of eating anything after seeing them.”

  “You are not making sense.”

  “I was no longer hungry; I was angry and returned to my room.”