Links

by Nuruddin Farah

  Not that Jeebleh and Bile agreed or disagreed on what to do about Caloosha and Af-Laawe, yet their conversation pointed to their incompatibility of purpose, neither able to articulate their differences, and both afraid of confronting the uglier aspects of themselves that this reflected. Jeebleh was wound up, living a minute at a time, as he had after the youth was killed in his hotel room. Bile admitted to not knowing how to right a wrong that had brought misery to their lives; killing X or Y wouldn’t help in a significant way, or solve the country’s problems.

  When Jeebleh asked whether he had heard from the lab technician, Bile would say only that Jeebleh should have tests done when he got back to the United States. Pressed further, he became evasive, and got up, ready to bid a hasty good night. Then he said, “Leave it all to me. I know what to do now.”

  Jeebleh wasn’t certain about Bile’s meaning: Was he alluding to the lab tests, or to Caloosha, Af-Laawe, and the cartel?

  An hour or so later, while Jeebleh was still awake and trying to figure out what was what, or who would do what, Raasta came into the living room. At first, he thought she was sleepwalking, because she rubbed her eyes and mumbled something about wanting to tell him her story. He offered her hot chocolate, then made it for her. She sat in a corner, and after he had brought his double espresso over, she made as if to talk, but she did not. Soon after, Bile, also in sleepwalking stupor, joined them, and Raasta got up and took her hot chocolate with her out of the room without saying anything.

  ALONE, BILE AND JEEBLEH TALKED IN LOW VOICES, NOT WANTING TO DISTURB the others in the apartment.

  Bile was surprisingly garrulous—maybe because of the hour, or because he felt he owed Jeebleh an apology for Raasta’s unexplained departure. “Until the end of my days,” he said. “I will continue to remember the day Raasta was born best!”

  “Why is that?”

  “I knew right away that she was one of a kind,” Bile said, “and I sensed her uniqueness in myself whenever I touched her, and in the others whenever they looked at her. There is something special about the sweetness of memory as I revisit the scene. I think of ants forming a line and having to share a few grains of sugar.”

  Bile explained that for some time after Raasta’s birth, he made a point of gathering as much information as he could from other countries, and learned of other “special” children, born to societies torn apart by internal conflicts. Described in newspapers, magazines, and radio commentaries as “miracles,” these children revealed themselves in measured intervals, and in different areas where internecine wars were the order of the day. They were born to unsuspecting parents in Senegal, Kashmir, Tanzania, Somalia, Bosnia, Colombia, Peru, Palestine, and in the mountainous Kwanziris of Uganda, near that country’s border with Rwanda and Congo.

  Bile looked like a proud parent praising his offspring. Jeebleh listened attentively as Bile described Raasta’s uniqueness and pointed out that, unlike the others, his niece had “secular” beginnings, and nothing to do with the religious fervor.

  Jeebleh asked his friend to name another “miracle” child.

  Bile narrowed his eyes to the size of ants and said, “I can name one such child, sure. A Tanzanian boy, Sherifu, said to have come out of his mother’s womb chanting, ‘There is no other god but Allah.’”

  “Kind of a new messiah?”

  “He’s been described by some Islamic scholars as an angel, and been welcomed with the pomp and ceremony given to a dignitary in a number of African countries, most notably in Senegal, where crowds have gathered to hear him chant the Koran. Three African heads of state have received him, including Gadhafi in Libya, Kabila in Congo, Idriss Deby in Chad. He’s also met the American Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. He’s carried around in a gold-leafed throne by crowds in a frenzy, chanting the names of Allah, and he recites the Koran. Women swoon and collapse, and men fight one another to get nearer to him.”

  “Now, why do we need a Sherifu or a Raasta?”

  “Because people are lost,” Bile said, “and they hope to find their way back to Allah or to peace of mind through an intermediary. In fact, Sherifu has been described as a divine instrument, because he could recite the Koran at the tender age of three. Raasta is seen as a symbol of peace because of what she represents for people down here. Moreover, the fact that Sherifu is proficient in a number of languages, even though he has never been to school—he speaks Arabic, French, and a handful of African languages spoken in countries where he has never been—is seen as miraculous.”

  “What about Raasta?”

  “Like Sherifu,” said Bile, “Raasta is exceptionally versatile and picks up languages very fast. What’s more, she gives shapes to the links between words and their meanings, and then fits them into chains of her own choosing.”

  “Tell me more,” Jeebleh said.

  “I recall the day Seamus asked her how she was doing, and she replied that she felt as frightened as a leaf on a tree, drawing itself in, afraid that someone passing by might cut it off. Another day, after one of her parents’ quarrels, she compared herself to a tooth rotting at the root, with no gum to hold it.”

  Bile told of another occasion, when Raasta, not yet three, explained why she had chosen him as her surrogate parent. She did so, she said, because “Uncle and I are bound together with the clear thread of a spider’s web, visible only with the rays of sunlight in the background.”

  Jeebleh asked, “Compared with Sherifu, who could recite verses as a toddler, what could Raasta do at a similar age?”

  “Raasta, at two, could speak of the things she knew about when she was a mere fetus, and how she was in touch with things through her own baby-faint heartbeat. She developed fast in the womb of her mother’s imagining, she would say, and was fully grown by the time she came into the world.”

  Jeebleh remembered Bile talking at length about the day Raasta was born, and how his arrival had complicated matters for all concerned. “Would you say Raasta is aware of her own special qualities?” he asked.

  “Raasta remembers watching her mother behaving awkwardly, throwing her hands up in despair, remembers hearing her say terrible things about Faahiye, and her parents quarreling fiercely, in private and public. She says that her parents behave as though they have no idea that every birth howls with its own need and is burdened with the histories of its antecedents.”

  Jeebleh wished he could’ve seen the young thing, born with a head of raven-black locks. He thought of how full of stir and gorgeous she was, how calming to hold. He imagined her cry like the cawing of an excited crow. “And she asks rhetorical questions, doesn’t she?” he said.

  “She wants to know if a tree rotten to the core can bear a healthy fruit worth picking.”

  “People have described her as the Protected One. What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know whether she herself is protected,” Bile said. “I’ve never actually seen her in imminent danger. But I’ve never seen her harmed either. I know that people believe that anyone in her proximity is safe from the harms of the civil war.”

  “Hence a miracle child?”

  “She is seen as a symbol of peace, that’s right.”

  30.

  JEEBLEH WOKE AFTER A BRIEF SLEEP TO THE SOFT SOUND OF A CHILD’S FEET pattering back and forth in the room. He was a lot groggier than was good for him, and he fought hard not to make much of his state of exhaustion or confusion. Clumsily rubbing his eyes, and then becoming conscious of the unfinished business of his uncut hair, he willed his expression to change instantly to one of delight at the sight of Raasta standing over him.

  He scrambled out of bed, and then apologized. Perhaps he would have preferred it if she had not come upon him sleeping, or tired. Already dressed and ready to face the day, she was elegant in her composure, waiting. There was something noble in how she held herself, as though ready for an event of extraordinary nature.

  Here was the rub: For one so young, she had a face as ancient as the roots of a baobab, and y
et young-looking, a joy to gaze at and adore. He reckoned she was in her public mood, and it was time he prepared himself for what she had to say. He cleared his throat, took a solid grip of himself in good time, and said, “How are things with the world this morning?”

  “Dajaal wants to talk to you,” she said, and seeing that he looked so bedraggled, she smiled to herself.

  At the mention of Dajaal’s name, several of the latent worries he had lived with for the last few days came out. Had death, which kept a close watch on his movements, paid a visit to someone, and if so, on whom had death called? “Where is he?” he asked.

  Jeebleh caught sight of her as she withdrew into her private world, where she behaved like the child she was. But for these occasional slips, Jeebleh thought Raasta could offer the best tutorials in their art to the most professional of actors. She completely inhabited the role she had been assigned to play. She stood still, like a ballerina awaiting her music. “He said that you should meet him at the clinic,” she replied, “and from there he’ll take you and the builder to the cemetery.”

  He could tell from her delivery that there was a second, more serious part of the message, and he waited, relieved that this time she didn’t appear to be lapsing into a kid’s universe. “Anything you haven’t told me yet?”

  She turned nimbly away from him. Was she about to explode with the intensity of the part of the message she hadn’t yet delivered? His wandering mind took him back to his childhood, and to an Arabian folktale about a man who is about to be murdered: The victim asks his murderer to promise that after his death, he will visit his village, and recite to his orphaned children half a stanza of a poem he has written. The children understand their father’s coded message, and the murderer is apprehended.

  Raasta looked up, his question perhaps resonating in her head, as taunts do. She said, in words carefully and properly enunciated, “Dajaal said to tell you that what needed to be done has been done.”

  Even though Jeebleh understood what the words meant, he didn’t know precisely what had been done to whom. He was in no doubt, however, that Dajaal had packed a lot into the briefest of messages, which was why the two of them would have to meet and talk before he knew with any certainty what had happened. He was sure of one thing, though: The news wasn’t the kind you shared with a child so nervous as to unbuckle her sandals and dig the toes of one foot into the heel of the other. Solicitous, he wondered aloud if Raasta was okay. When she nodded, he said, “You’ve delivered a very important message, and I thank you very much,” in a tone that suggested that he wanted to get on with the rest of the day.

  “Would you like me to take you to the clinic, where Uncle Bile and Uncle Seamus are, and where you are also to meet Dajaal?” she said.

  “I would,” he said, “after a shower. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

  Good as his word, he was quick about his shower, and he managed to shave, and trim the uncut side of his hair. When he emerged from the bathroom, she looked up at him and smiled, but said nothing. She led him to the clinic, without speaking, using shortcuts, her hand forever in his.

  STILL HOLDING HANDS, JEEBLEH AND RAASTA WALKED IN ON BILE IN HIS consultation cubicle. They might have been lovers out on a promenade. And not having bothered to knock on the door, they gave poor Bile a startle when he saw them. Jeebleh wondered why he appeared so disturbed when seen taking pills similar to those he had taken the previous night. What were the tablets for? Were they for his depressions, or other complaints?

  Bile stared at Jeebleh, then at Raasta, but didn’t say anything. His hand went to his mouth, covering it, then eventually to his chest, as though checking whether his heart was where he presumed it to be, and functioning. He was clearly at a loss for words. Sighing and still looking dumbfounded, he sat down, his face pallid, his body drained of life.

  Raasta looked from Bile to Jeebleh, bewildered. But she too could not express her confusion, again because the words failed her. Her face said that she knew something terrible had happened, but she had no idea what. She seemed to sense too that the disquiet, earlier on Jeebleh’s part and now on Bile’s, differed from the uneasiness her parents were in the habit of driving each other into when they argued. This was a much more serious matter, and she had better not make inappropriate remarks, or ask infantile questions.

  Bile beckoned to her to come closer. He held her at arm’s length, as though having a good look at her for the first time in years, then took her into his tight embrace, nearly hurting her. Jeebleh, not one to be left out, joined them in the hug—Raasta weepy, Bile almost ready to speak but still unable, and Jeebleh undecided.

  Jeebleh stepped away from them, his thoughts drifting toward culpability, wondering what it was that had upset Bile. He leaned against a wall, listening sadly to Bile’s softly murmured words to Raasta, who was sniffling. Jeebleh became aware of the presence of a fourth person in the cubicle, a young girl. On impulse, he spoke to the sick child, whose chest was bare; her ribs protruded, her jaw was prominent, and her eyes were marked with unwashed sleep. “What’s your name, young lady?” he said.

  Bile shook his head, moving it back and forth as a worshipful Sufi might. Raasta, no longer weeping, wiped her face dry with the back of her hand. She took notice of the sick child and did what she could to make her happy: she held the bony fingers in her hand, and kissed them one at a time. She continued kissing them until she brought a smile to the child’s lips, and that was heartening to watch.

  Slowly the mood in the cubicle changed, and the space, with its fluorescent tube and humming generator, felt bigger and brighter. To Jeebleh, it was wonderful to see a smile gradually forming on Bile’s lips. The distant look in his friend’s eyes worried him, but there was no mileage in putting too many questions to Bile all at once, because the dark mood might descend again. It was possible that the years spent in isolation had, with this recent upheaval, begun to impose a mental imbalance on Bile, heavy depression descending on him with the cautious approach of an owl in a lighted compound.

  Unable to stand the thought of seeing his friend in such a state, he prepared to leave the cubicle, to go in search of Dajaal or Shanta, hopeful that one of them might know what had caused Bile’s discomfiture. He closed the door as gently as one would the door to a room in which a child is sick, and an image etched itself on his mind: three heads dipped together, like three colts drinking side by side from the same ditch.

  RAASTA TALKED UNCLE BILE THROUGH HIS DELIRIUM GENTLY. SHE KISSED him on the forehead just as it darkened with the pain trespassing there. She spoke to him as a mother might talk to a child unwilling to eat his meal. She had done so before, helped him through the worst panic attacks, helped him live out his hell in the quiet, and emerge from it, with little or no memory of what he had been through; he was capable of taking refuge in amnesia. His eyes were foggy, his mind in a mist of its own making, his thinking dogged by the formidable double-take of someone suffering the effects of guilt. He kept repeating, “Look at what they’ve made me do!”

  AFTER A WHILE, BILE RID HIMSELF OF THE DEMONS, AND HIS HANDS GREW AS steady as a doctor’s again. Raasta was ready to ask him about the sick girl, who tried to get up on her feet but couldn’t stand upright; her knees wobbled, then buckled. Bile asked Raasta if she could guess the girl’s age.

  Before she had time to think, Makka joined them. She held one of the sick girl’s fingers, which she touched to her own lips, and placed her head on the girl’s frail chest in a one-sided cuddle. The sick girl took Raasta’s finger—not Makka’s—and stared up at her, the pupils of her eyes not dark, almost pale.

  Raasta guessed, “Five?”

  “Not five,” Bile said. He sounded his usual self, congenial, convivial. At least his voice was normal, if not his posture; he leaned to one side, like a house about to collapse.

  When Raasta looked at the girl again, she saw her face in a new way, and it was the face of a much older person, with no muscles, wasted. Her loose, wrinkled skin came
away with your fingers if you pulled. And her belly was swollen. Raasta couldn’t recall the word Uncle had used to describe what was the matter with the girl, a big word, which sounded to her like some Italian ice cream, or a Chinese takeout meal. And what eyes she had—very large, the size of healthy onions grown in fertile land, which made you cry a lot if you cut them. The girl’s eyes were the most active part of her body, forever moving, aware, and alert to any changes around her. Except for that of her eyes, every bodily movement exhausted her, it seemed, and made her short of breath.

  Raasta, Bile, and Makka stood in silence, in a circle. Raasta saw tears in the corners of Uncle’s eyes. This undermined her self-confidence: she thought she had dealt with his unease and talked him through it, released him from his troubles. She was used to her mother’s dashing out of rooms, into bathrooms or bedrooms, and crying tearfully. She might have believed Bile was weeping in sympathy with the ailing child, who hadn’t a future in the land of collective sorrow, but she knew that wasn’t true.

  Suddenly the door to the cubicle opened: Seamus was there, not making the disarming entrance he often did, but remaining in the doorway, not moving. Raasta could not tell why he was staring at Uncle Bile, as fiercely as a parent might stare at a child misbehaving in public. Could it be that he was just studying Uncle? He was preparing to say something, but perhaps being polite, waiting for the right moment. His expression overflowed with such sympathy he looked as enticing as a full moon.

  Shanta arrived and walked past Seamus into the cubicle, bringing with her a lot more unease than had been there earlier. The silences grew as long as evening shadows, and a hush unlike any other fell on the room. Raasta, desiring to calm the tension, moved to hug her mother.