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by Nuruddin Farah

  Whereas Raasta made progress by great leaps and bounds when it came to the mastery of language, Makka did not. She was fond of repeating a stock phrase: “Aniga, anigoo ah!” This Somali phrase meaning “I myself am!” would be considered sophisticated in any language. But was it what Makka meant to say? Rendering the phrase to Seamus as “Me, myself, I,” Bile couldn’t help wondering whether there was a purpose to the Down’s-syndrome girl. It didn’t take long for Raasta to prove to all concerned that Makka was a genius of sorts. The two girls were friends to peace, to harmony.

  Then one day, three years to the day on which she first appeared mysteriously, Makka began to thread and unthread rosaries. She took to doing this whenever she was awake, busy as someone who had discovered her vocation. Bile found her as many spools of thread as he could. She was very diligent, and was blessed with a concentrated look that defined her. It was charming to watch her, her lower lip distended, a trace of saliva as clear as a raindrop in the recesses of her open mouth, the wrinkles on her forehead thick as homespun cotton. She was in the habit of muttering things to herself, frequently repeating “Aniga, anigoo ah!” He thought of the phrase as a unique feature of Makka’s.

  She had more words now, thanks to the therapy given to her by foreign specialists, Irish volunteer teachers who spent a few months at a time at The Refuge. Makka’s words wove themselves into an embroidered pattern—her ellipses.

  A wonder of affection, Makka gave huge kisses—and liberally. Raasta more than anyone else mined her wealth of emotions from deep down, where only she could tap, willy-nilly. Hugging Makka to herself, their cheeks touching, Raasta would mumble words, and Makka would repeat after her, altering the sequence slightly or changing the pronunciation. Then Makka’s mouth would remain open, and the words would fail her.

  Everyone congregated around them, loving them. The girls helped the others cope with the stormy weather of clan politics. If there was one huge difference between Makka and Raasta, it had to do with memory. Makka was in the moment, and the moment was innocence, pure and simple. She was in no one else’s camp, only in her own. She belonged to no clan and to no one but herself. The Refuge provided her with a family, and she provided The Refuge with her absolute loyalty. By contrast, Raasta had been taught who she was, that is to say, what her clan family was, from the instant she opened her lungs with the cry of life.

  “What was Faahiye’s attitude toward Makka?”

  Bile rose in an instant surge of unease. “Just a minute, please,” he said, and was gone.

  Minutes later, Jeebleh heard a toilet flushing, then footsteps returning.

  IT APPEARED THAT BILE HAD REACHED FOR AND RETURNED WITH A NEW VOICE, retrieved from deep within. He was much calmer. “You see,” he said, “even though Faahiye may have been present physically, it seemed to those of us in daily contact with him that he was not all there.”

  “How was that?” Jeebleh asked.

  “Some of us felt he was on some sort of suicide trip. He behaved recklessly, going to the areas of the city where deadly fighting was raging. He’d take along a camera, like a tourist on a suicide mission.”

  “Did he show anyone the photographs he took?”

  “He wouldn’t even bother to print them!”

  “Didn’t he train as a lawyer?” Jeebleh asked.

  “A lawyer in a lawless land, jobless and unemployable.”

  “Didn’t he commit come of his free time to The Refuge at least? Didn’t he help run it?”

  “We all wished he had,” Bile answered.

  Voltaire had said that good, honest work done in God’s name banished three of the greatest evils—boredom, vice, and poverty. Thinking about Faahiye’s lack of commitment to the jobs at hand made Jeebleh wonder whether he would have been easier to deal with if he had had jobs and worked at them. And would the same have stopped Somalis from going down the inevitable road of self-destruction, self-hate, waste, and famine? Evil and envy gain a solid foothold in the mind of the jobless. His thought led him elsewhere: to sex. Jeebleh imagined that Faahiye was starved of love and sex. He asked Bile as much: “Did sex occupy a prominent place in his mind?”

  You might have thought that the earth had been pulled from under Bile. Jeebleh was regretting his question.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Yeats said that sex is the subtext of every ruined relationship. Or am I misquoting him?”

  “We’ll have to ask Seamus about that.”

  “About Faahiye and sex?”

  “No, about Irish poets and sex!”

  Jeebleh repeated, “Was sex the subtext in Shanta and Faahiye’s embittered relationship?”

  “Put that question to them when you see them.”

  HALF AN HOUR LATER, BILE’S FEATURES HAD ROUGHENED AT THE EDGES, LIKE frozen butter exposed to sudden heat. He said, “I knew very little of what had gone on before I came. But it became obvious that my presence was causing a great upset in the home they had set up for themselves. I admit I was insensitive at first too. Of that I am certain, and I regret it all the time.”

  “What did you do?”

  “We shared a limited space. We were on top of one another, and spent a lot of time together. Shanta and Faahiye quarreled so savagely in the first months of Raasta’s life that I moved out and set up my own place, within easy walking distance. By then Faahiye had tried to force himself on Shanta, soon after the traditional forty-day convalescence period. I didn’t care to know about it, but I got to hear of it because Shanta told me of her own free will. There were subsequent quarrels, in which he became unbearably offensive, at one time suggesting that Shanta was saving herself for the only man she had ever truly loved, namely me. Then they worked out a modus vivendi agreeable to both. He looked after Raasta in the early hours of the day—Shanta doesn’t wake up until noon, she’s that kind of person. And she looked after the girl in the afternoons and at night. This way, I managed to have uninterrupted time with Raasta when it was Shanta’s turn. It was all very complicated. There were so many borders we couldn’t cross, and so many things we couldn’t do. It’s a great relief that Raasta—and later Makka, when she joined us—didn’t collapse into a pair of tearful misfits. I’ve no idea how, but the two girls knew where the paths to doom and despair lay, and they kept well away from them, thank God.”

  Bile was in the vortex of a huge sorrow, but he concentrated his mind wholly on the telling of the story. His features took on the darker hue of fabric soaking overnight in water. Now that he was immersed in his sorrow, Bile’s expression put Jeebleh in mind of the color of southwestern Nigerian adire cloth at its finest.

  “Do you think he’s taken the girls hostage?”

  “I don’t know,” Bile said.

  Jeebleh could see the weight of Bile’s gloom lowering him into further despair. His pupils reduced to a darkness extending inward, into infinity.

  “With help from Caloosha?”

  “I wish I knew,” Bile said.

  Jeebleh watched another cloud of sadness descending on Bile, much like the one before, an acknowledgment of a huge loss. A few seconds later, he sensed a pale reverie spreading itself over his face.

  “The sorrow that’s home to us!” Bile cried.

  Jeebleh wasn’t sure whether Bile was articulating a difficult concept with death in mind, but he was obviously withdrawing into himself, barely aware that Jeebleh was in the room with him.

  “I think I am the cause of the hurt of which Faahiye has never been able to speak, given that he is so correct and proper in his demeanor,” Bile said. “It’s possible, however, that the source of his hurt, which in the end ruined their relationship, was sex, or rather lack of it. Memory is regret! Memory is regret. But what can I say?”

  Jeebleh reached out to touch Bile, pat his knee.

  “If only he had left when he should have, and taken his wife and daughter with him,” Bile said, “things might have been different for all of us. Now sorrow permeates our air, pricks it, and we hurt. Everyon
e hurts. And there’s no hurt like that of an innocent man wrongly accused of a crime he hasn’t committed, no hurt like that of a wife spurned, a love not reciprocated, a matrimonial bed abandoned, children turned into battlefields.”

  Bile held his head between his trembling hands, and Jeebleh was not sure if he heard a faint sobbing. He could hear his friend’s breathing, soft like the patter of a baby’s footsteps. A big hush, then Bile lifted his head. His cheeks were moist. “It was a real shame!” he said.

  “What was?”

  “That Shanta accused Faahiye so unfairly.”

  “Of what? What did she accuse him of?”

  “A crying shame!”

  “This is why he left?”

  But Bile wouldn’t go into more detail, he wouldn’t answer the question. His head shaking, he would only say, “I believe Faahiye is innocent, a man wrongly accused!”

  Jeebleh could think of nothing to respond.

  “Let’s blame it on the civil war,” Bile said remorsefully. “Let’s blame it on our sick minds, on the tantrums that belong in our heads. Let’s blame it on the endemic violence, the cruelty that’s been let loose on the weak. Let’s blame it on our damaged sense of self.”

  “But what did she accuse him of?”

  Still Bile wouldn’t say, and he left the room.

  16.

  “HAVE WE GRIEVED ENOUGH?” JEEBLEH ASKED.

  “I doubt that we have,” Bile replied.

  “Do we know how to grieve? And if we don’t, why not?”

  “I don’t know if it is possible to have a good, clean grief when people have no idea how big a loss they have suffered, and when each individual continues denying his or her own part in the collapse.”

  “Aren’t many Somalis mourning?”

  “We mistake a personal hurt for a communal hurt,” Bile insisted. “I find this misleading, I find it highly unproductive.”

  Jeebleh recalled Bile’s early loss of his own father, allegedly at Caloosha’s hands. Seamus had lost his brother, a sister, and his father to sectarian violence in Ireland. Does a child mourn a loss in the same way an adult does? Is there a time limit, a cutoff point after which grieving becomes ineffective?

  “How have you coped?” Jeebleh asked.

  “I’ve kept myself infernally busy, and I attend to other people’s needs, not mine. I haven’t had the time or the strength to grieve or to deal squarely with the ruin that is all around. Instead I wallow in my sorrows often enough, and feel a more profound despair when I think I might have achieved something more substantial if I had intervened politically, and tried to make peace between the warring sides.”

  “Why haven’t you tried to do that?”

  “I hadn’t realized until seeing you that I jumped in at the deep end on the day I gained my freedom and decided to stay, and when I chose to set up a refuge, look out for Raasta, be close to Shanta, who is forever needy, and not enter what passes for politics hereabouts.”

  “Is there anybody for you to talk to?”

  “It’s too late for me to search out interlocutors worth taking seriously and trusting, too late for me to get involved in peacemaking now.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I would be like an ant that got distracted and went out of the line and is now trying to find its way back into the ranks after a storm has disorganized the line.”

  Bile’s worries were posted on his forehead, visible signs of what weighed on his mind. Jeebleh’s own restless thinking led him to his preoccupations. Unlike Bile, who had stayed away from “what passes for politics hereabouts,” he had taken the plunge into the chaotic energy of the place. Now, as a consequence, he was getting lost in the claims and counterclaims of clan politics.

  A cat entered the room as though it had more rights to be there than Bile, the resident of the apartment, or his guest. To judge from the way Bile stared at the creature, they were strangers to each other; Jeebleh sensed an unspoken hostility. The cat looked at Jeebleh, then at Bile, then blinked at them both, and made itself comfortable as only cats can in a place where they do not belong. It took its feline time, stretching, yawning, looking at them again. It looked at Jeebleh and smiled, then at Bile without smiling, and caressed its whiskers, Jeebleh thought, in the brooding manner of a man pretending to be thinking.

  “Have you met StrongmanSouth?” Jeebleh asked.

  “I’ve never met him, and I have no desire to shake the hand of a murderer,” Bile said. “Nor would I want anyone to misunderstand the purpose of my visit, if I were to visit him, and give it a clannish spin, considering that we belong to the same bloodline, he and I. I’ve chosen to take my distance from him, not least because I want everyone to know that I do not approve of his murderous policies, precisely because The Refuge is in the territory under his nominal control.”

  “Have you considered asking him to give a hand in recovering Raasta and her companion? After all, the abduction took place in the territory under his nominal control.”

  “To what end?”

  “You don’t think he will help?”

  “I am doubtful that he will.”

  “But do you think he knows of the abduction? Might he even be behind it? Or do you feel that he won’t help you in any way, knowing that you are a man of peace and he is not?”

  If one’s life was made up of a million moments of truth, Jeebleh thought, his sending off the clan elders and his subsequent intervention on behalf of the Alsatian were among his momenti della verità, actions that were undeniably significant, leading, as they did, to a sea change in him. It wouldn’t do to dwell on these grave moments of truth.

  At long last Bile spoke, but only to say, “I don’t know.”

  “Why haven’t you been in touch with Caloosha?” Jeebleh asked.

  Bile looked quizzically at Jeebleh: Had he too heard a knock on the door? A moment later, their gazes traced the tapping to a sparrow throwing its weight against the windowpane. The cat looked up expectantly. Bile rose, hesitating over whether to let the bird in or not, and then opened the window to let the sparrow decide. The bird flew in, wheeled around the room, turned, and flew off, safe.

  “I wish not to have any dealings with either Strongman or Caloosha,” was all Bile was prepared to say.

  “A boy murders his brutal stepfather in cold blood,” Jeebleh said. “Does such a boy, who has suffered years of cruelty at the murdered man’s hands, mourn his death? Does the son of the murdered man, a half brother to the killer, mourn the loss of a father he’s never known?”

  When Bile didn’t react, Jeebleh recalled the words of Bile’s mother, couched in regret, referring to her own role in raising Caloosha. “It’s very difficult,” she had said, “to rid yourself of the monster whom you’ve given birth to yourself, fed, raised, and looked after, and then let loose on the world.” She was responding to the clan elders, who were all men, and their tendency to blame women and point to what they called “the lax side of a mother’s nature.” Caloosha had killed his stepfather, yet the clan blamed his mother for it.

  HAGARR, THE MOTHER OF CALOOSHA, BILE, AND SHANTA, MARRIED THREE times. She was a strong-minded woman, and didn’t hesitate to do as she wanted. When the opportunity to go to Italy on scholarship to train as a midwife presented itself soon after the nikaax, her engagement, she went, in opposition of her future husband’s wishes. Later, when he suggested that she give up working, because he could afford to provide for her and their son, Caloosha, she refused to do so. She was one among a handful of Somali women who had finished their secondary education, and could earn their own keep, and she dreaded the thought of relying on a man’s handouts. A woman with foresight, she knew that the day wasn’t far off when her husband would look for and find a younger, prettier woman, one prepared to do a wealthy man’s bidding. And as soon as this happened, Hagarr insisted on a divorce.

  She moved out of his house into that of her elder brother, where she and Caloosha, then a three-year-old, were given a room with a separate entrance
. It wasn’t long before she discovered that sharing space with her sister-in-law was no easy matter. She found accommodation in a rooming house, and hired a series of young maids to look after her son. She didn’t care when society accused her of what some called “dereliction of duty as a mother.” But she was bothered when her husband threatened her with court action.

  Caloosha was a very difficult child to raise. He was impossible to discipline, and he displayed unusual cruelty early on. Already at age three he was adept at throwing knives, the way you throw darts at a dartboard, though he preferred living targets. He lit matches out of mischief, nearly setting the house on fire. Many of the young women Hagarr hired to look after him left within a short time.

  She had her job and made a sufficient income, but Caloosha was too great a challenge for her to raise as a single mother. So she contracted a second marriage, as she believed that the boy needed the sobering hand of a male to bring his wild, satanic cruelties under control. Within a month of the wedding, there was considerable change in Caloosha’s behavior. He was much more restrained in his dealings with the house help, and was calmer, less prone to violence. Hagarr attributed this to her husband’s calming influence. But then she discovered bruises on the boy’s body. Once his eyes were swollen shut for days, his nose bled, and his wrists and back were sore. It turned out that her husband was in the habit of tying Caloosha’s feet together and hanging him upside down. Hagarr came home from work one day and found her son hanging there. She didn’t know what to do, short of threatening her husband to move out. The trouble was, she was close to having their first child, her second. And even though he had been beaten to the point of death, Caloosha seemed to have made peace with his own and his stepfather’s violent natures. He never complained. He took the beatings “as a man.”