by J. L. Powers
Amina continued down the street in the direction the woman had pointed, pausing to look at a pile of golden rice spread on a plastic tarp on the street. She made a silent promise that she would return after she had sold Aabbe’s painting and had a few shillings in her pocket. Rice might make all the difference in the world for Hooyo and the baby.
Streets crisscrossed the main thoroughfare, a labyrinth of streets, each one crowded with vendors. It would be easy to get lost. As she passed an alley, someone screamed and a glass bottle fell from one of the windows, shattering on the street below.
An African Union soldier stood on the street corner, holding his gun, a finger on the trigger. He watched Amina out of the corner of his eye as she hurried past. It made her think of Roble. Was he also holding a gun somewhere, finger on the trigger, manning roadblocks for al-Shabaab?
She shook the thought away as she passed the long table piled high with bananas, towards a group of men standing behind tables.
‘I’m looking for somebody who buys paintings,’ she said. ‘Somebody told me you might be able to help me.’
One of the men stepped forward. He was tall and slender. Several tasbih dangled around his neck. The long strings of prayer beads made soft jangling noises whenever he moved. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘My name is Dalmar. I can do business with you.What kind of painting do you have to sell?’
Amina swallowed, her mouth dry. She was nervous and stammered. ‘I—I have a S-Samatar Khalid.’ She unwrapped the painting and held it up so the men could see.
Dalmar leaned forward, inspecting the upper right-hand corner for her father’s signature. That was where he always put it. ‘Yes, I see this is an original.’ He spoke in the voice of one making an official pronouncement.
‘Who are you?’ A man sitting at a table piled high with used clothing spoke then. ‘You are not Samatar Khalid’s usual dealer.’ He was very fat and sweat glistened on his upper lip and even his eyelids. His eyes were half closed, as if he had been sleeping.
Amina hadn’t thought about her status in the market, or the fact that buyers were used to dealing with only one person – Keinan’s father. She raised her head, suddenly proud. They might question who she was but they all knew her father’s work. ‘He’s my father,’ she said.
‘Ah, yes.’ He examined her. It felt like a test. ‘I see the resemblance now,’ he said at last. ‘In face. In spirit. You are definitely your father’s child. Do you paint?’
She wondered if she should deny it because of al-Shabaab, but she saw no guile in his face. ‘Sometimes,’ she said. But she wasn’t about to tell this man about her street art.
‘Good,’ he said.
She waited but the men were silent. ‘So would you like to buy the painting?’ she asked.
Dalmar glanced at the fat man as if waiting for him to respond but the fat man said nothing. ‘Just step over to my shop then and we will have the painting appraised,’ Dalmar said.
The fat man spoke. ‘Samatar Khalids are worth money. I will buy it.’ He named a price. Amina recognised that it was a lot of money – it would last them some time.
‘No,’ Dalmar said. ‘He tells you one thing but you think he has that kind of money underneath his rotting table and his fraying cloth? I will give you double what he has offered.’
The fat man looked towards the ocean as if he had grown bored with the conversation. ‘Take the money now,’ he said, indifferent. ‘If you go with him, my offer disappears.’
Amina clutched the painting, unsure what she should do.
Dalmar waved his hands. ‘Look, look,’ he said. ‘We can all be happy here.You give me the painting. I will go to my shop – see, there? It is just three doors down. You see? You stay here. I will ask my boss what it is worth and then I will come back with more money than this man has offered. If I am wrong, you can give this man the painting and collect what he has offered.’
Amina looked from Dalmar to the fat man. The fat man clucked his tongue disapprovingly and stared off at the sky while Dalmar watched her expectantly. She handed the painting to Dalmar.
‘One minute,’ Dalmar promised. He ran down the street towards the shop he had indicated.
She didn’t even realise she was holding her breath until she saw him turn into the shop he’d mentioned. She let it out. He’d been telling the truth – he would go into that shop. He wouldn’t just disappear with the painting.
Still, she stood on her tiptoes, as though that would help her see him more quickly when he reappeared.
Amina waited for several minutes before she started growing nervous. She looked at the fat man.
He laughed. ‘You should have taken me up on my offer, no?’ he said. ‘Now you have lost your father’s painting and the money you would have got for it. Too bad. It was a good painting.’
Amina walked to the shop where the man had disappeared. Her whole body was tense. The shop was empty except for a boy Amina’s age standing behind the counter, mobile phones displayed beneath the glass.
‘May I help you?’ he asked. ‘You are looking for mobile phones?’ He gestured at the display glass.
‘Where is the man that came in here?’ Amina asked. ‘He was carrying a painting.’
The boy looked at her blankly.
‘He was skinny,’ she said. Skinny, like a hyena, she thought. A hungry look on his face. ‘His name is Dalmar.’
‘No,’ the boy said.
Ayeeyo stared at him. ‘No? No what?’
‘No, I haven’t seen him.’
‘But I saw him come in here,’ Amina said. She was a little louder, a little more insistent, than a girl should be. ‘He walked right inside this door. Into this shop. He had the painting tucked under his arm. I watched him.’
‘I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen him.’ He shrugged, unconcerned. ‘There is no man named Dalmar here. There is no painting.’
She tried to look past him, into the dim room beyond, but he moved to block her view.
‘How can I help you?’ he asked. He didn’t sound as friendly as before. ‘Are you sure you don’t need a mobile phone?’
Amina walked outside and looked at the streets zigzagging away from the shop, the people meandering from shop to stall, looking at items for sale.
She had lost Aabbe’s painting and they had lost the money an honest dealer might have paid for it.
Clouds skidded briskly across the bright blue sky. Amina shuffled around and around, circling faster and faster until she felt dizzy. She held out her arms towards the brilliance of the sun, the glare making the edges of the world go black, her heart aching with the raw grief of loss.
Staggering backwards, she almost fainted, but caught herself against a wall. Her body sagged into the dirt and dust. Though people stared at her curiously as they passed, no-one stopped.
It was true that it was only Aabbe’s painting that had been hijacked, not Aabbe himself. He had been taken long ago now. Yet until this moment, Amina had been able to shove his painful absence to the back of her mind. She didn’t know where the certainty had come from, but she had been confident that he would come home some day – just walk through the door, greeting Hooyo with his warm smile, chucking Amina under the chin as though she were a small girl, grinning at Roble.
Now the painting’s unexpected loss had stolen her fragile hope. She suddenly felt sure that she would never see her father again.
Chapter 9
Ayeeyo told Amina it wasn’t her fault. ‘I should have been there to help,’ she said. ‘Of course, you are too trusting. You have never known anything but kindness.’
It didn’t make Amina feel better, especially since Hooyo was not as understanding. When they returned and told her what had happened, she turned her face to the wall.
Ayeeyo placed a hand on Hooyo’s shoulder and nodded at Amina that she should go.
Amina walked to the kitchen and sat on the floor near the clay pot, the ashes cold underneath. She listened to the sounds from her parents’ bedroom
– Ayeeyo murmuring and Hooyo babbling, a high, panicky tone to her voice. She poked aimlessly at the ashes with a cooking spoon. It occurred to her that ashes could be used to make paint but even that didn’t make her feel better. The itch in her fingertips was gone, replaced by shaky hunger and a lost feeling, something deep inside quietly reminding her that it was all her fault.
Eventually the sounds in the other room subsided and Ayeeyo emerged. ‘She’s asleep,’ she announced, as though that made everything better.
Amina nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
‘I don’t know what we’re going to do,’ Ayeeyo said honestly but without blame.
Amina thought about what they had gone through that day, all in an attempt to get money to buy food and medicine for Hooyo. She knew she couldn’t return to the market. She couldn’t bear that feeling of losing her father all over again. She wanted to hoard his paintings. You couldn’t eat paintings, but as long as she had them, it felt as though Aabbe was still close. The paintings kept him alive.
She must find another path to help her family. But how? Everything felt hopeless and pointless. She directed a desperate prayer towards the sky. Help us. Please help us.
In the days that followed, Amina found that she rarely felt the hunger pains. The reality of having no food to eat and no way to help Aabbe, Roble or Hooyo pressed in from all sides. She scrounged the neighbourhood for free food and brought back a few small avocados, which she stole from a neighbour’s tree. Though they were bland and unripe, the three women ate every bite. She found overripe bananas, the skin black and weeping, in a pile of rubbish. They ate those too.
Sometimes, she climbed the crumbling steps to the second floor and looked out at the city and the sparkling grey-blue of the ocean just beyond. She watched all the activity, the streets busier than she ever remembered seeing them. People came and went from Keinan’s house, but she saw no sign of Keinan. Boys played a ferocious soccer game a few blocks away. A group of soldiers dressed in army fatigues and camouflaged helmets ran quickly down a dirt alley and disappeared into a hole in the ground. One afternoon, she saw what looked like three bodies lying in the middle of the street a few blocks over. By evening, the bodies had been removed.
Aabbe was out there somewhere.
And Roble was out there somewhere.
Who knew what Roble was being forced to do, just to survive? Two other boys she had known had disappeared from the neighbourhood, forced to be soldiers with al-Shabaab factions. One had made it back. Though he had lost an arm in battle and had been left behind, no longer useful as a soldier, he was still fiercely loyal to al-Shabaab. His mother lived in terror that he would report the family for some minor infraction and they would be subject to al-Shabaab’s version of justice – swift, brutal and usually deadly. Amina couldn’t imagine Roble changing that much. She couldn’t imagine him succumbing to their brainwashing. And yet before he and Aabbe were taken, she couldn’t have imagined life without them. And here she was.
Hooyo stayed in bed. She didn’t even get up for prayers. Amina and Ayeeyo prayed alone and drank weak tea to still the hunger pains. After prayers, Amina retreated to Aabbe’s studio for much of the day, instead of going to school or staying inside with her mother and grandmother. She blamed herself for everything, but it was easier to forget this when she was alone.
She sat in Aabbe’s high stool, wondering what he was facing – wherever he was. She already knew the stories about what al-Shabaab did to the people they called infidels – scientists, clerics, artists like Aabbe. She had herself seen a corpse left in the street, headless, missing its arms and legs – al-Shabaab’s handiwork.
She shivered and hoped Aabbe was all right. If anybody would escape, it had to be Aabbe. He was resourceful. And they needed him at home. Surely Allah would protect him.
She stared at his most recent painting, the ocean scene far from shore, the grey-green waves curling up and licking the stone grey sky. How did he do it? How did he make the waves sing and live? Her own drawings felt clunky and amateurish in comparison.
The small studio, its thick walls constructed with mud and sticks, was dark except for the small amount of natural light that fell through the open door and the tiny window. Hadn’t Aabbe felt claustrophobic, sitting in this dusky light, day after day, painting? Why hadn’t he gone outside? In here, he had been cut off from the world, painting only from memory or photographs.
Amina preferred to do her work in places where sunlight flooded through holes in the roof or where whole walls had been knocked over. If she was going to paint or draw at home, she would do it upstairs where the sky was the ceiling. But, of course, she would never use her own house as a canvas – no need to let Ayeeyo and Hooyo know what she was up to.
In any case, even if she felt the urge – which she didn’t, not at the moment – she knew where she belonged. She had to stay here, making sure Hooyo and Ayeeyo were safe. Certainly she shouldn’t be doing something dangerous, something many people considered haram, forbidden. Why had she ever thought she was called to create art? Nothing was more important than taking care of her family.
She had to give up her art.
One afternoon a couple of weeks after they returned from the market, Amina stood up and fainted. Darkness closed around her, the world in front of her receding to a tiny pinprick and then disappearing from sight altogether. She came to on the floor of the studio. Her head throbbed and she could feel a swollen lump on her forehead where she had crashed against the hard-packed dirt.
It was the first time she had fainted from hunger.
She stood up and sat back down immediately when the dizziness returned. She waited until it passed and then stood up again, exiting the studio and heading towards the house.
As she entered, she heard Hooyo wheezing, short, high, fearful intakes of breath, over and over. She raced to her parents’ bedroom. Ayeeyo was already kneeling beside the bed. Hooyo clutched her stomach.
Amina was shocked at how emaciated she looked. The hollow cheeks. Dark shadows under her eyes. A haunted look.
‘What’s wrong, Hooyo?’ Amina asked.
Hooyo groaned.
‘She needs to see a doctor,’ Ayeeyo said.
‘It’s nothing,’ Hooyo gasped. She closed her eyes. ‘I don’t need the doctor.’
Amina waited. Hooyo didn’t open her eyes.
‘She needs more to eat than what you’ve been able to find,’ Ayeeyo said.
Amina went outside. She stood at the gate, watching the world go by. Ants marched past, carrying crumbs. At least they had something to eat.
Turning around and surveying the yard, she noticed the tender green shoots poking through the dirt. Weeds. Nothing but weeds. Were weeds edible?
A beetle crawled through a patch of weeds. Were beetles edible? Even more important, were they halal? Could she, as a devout Muslim, eat them in good conscience?
The thought of eating beetles made her feel nauseous.
But weeds – those were definitely halal. And they couldn’t be that different from spinach or kale or lettuce, could they? Maybe the weeds would save them. Amina grabbed a bucket and began filling it.
She left the beetles alone. There would be time for harvesting bugs later, if and when they were truly starving. She would remember. Surely Allah would forgive them for eating non-halal foods, if it was a question of starving to death.
She took the bucket inside and held it out to her grandmother, an offering. ‘Look, Ayeeyo,’ she said. ‘Do you think Hooyo will eat it?’
‘If she won’t, we will,’ Ayeeyo said.
Ayeeyo’s hands trembled as she placed the green stalks and spines inside a clay pot, with a little bit of water and the last of the salt. She lit a rounded pile of charcoal on the floor and waited until the charcoal was glowing red. Then she placed the clay pot on top of the coals, and they watched as the steam rose along with the odour of the boiled weeds.
If she weren’t so hungry, the dank, swampy smell woul
d have made Amina gag.
After sunset and Maghrib prayers, she took a plate of the greens in to Hooyo. They looked thoroughly unappetising – slick as sweat and slimy. They threatened to slide off the plate.
Hooyo was lying on her side, clutching her belly. Seeing the plate of greens, she moved into a sitting position. She balanced the plate on her lap and took a large bite, gagging slightly as the greens went into her mouth. But she swallowed and then sat there for a moment, as though gaining balance. Spittle gathered in the corners of her mouth.
She ate the whole plate quickly, gobbling, as though afraid the greens would disappear if she didn’t eat them immediately. Or perhaps she was afraid she would lose her courage.
Ayeeyo had gone into the yard and cleared it of remaining weeds. Now she sat beside Amina in the kitchen. While the weeds cooked, they drank weak tea, reusing teabags and sticks of cinnamon and a few remaining grains of sugar. It was little more than water and left Amina’s tastebuds unsatisfied, but somehow, the hot liquid soothed an ache in her stomach that had nothing to do with hunger.
As long as she was thinking about food, she wasn’t thinking about Aabbe or Roble. Or Keinan.
Ayeeyo had just dished up bowls of the slippery boiled weeds when they heard Hooyo retching. Amina jumped up and ran to Hooyo, who was crouched by the side of the bed, sliding an arm around her and holding her head as she threw up the entire plate of weeds.
She wiped Hooyo’s forehead with the edge of her scarf. In the kitchen, dishes clattered as Ayeeyo threw out the only meal they’d cooked in days.
Amina joined Ayeeyo in the kitchen. They stared at the cooking pot in silence.
‘What should we do?’ Amina asked finally.
‘Go,’ Ayeeyo said. ‘Go and ask the neighbours for something to eat. Tell them we cannot pay them now but we will pay later. Nothing is going to change if we just sit here inside the house and do nothing. The only thing that will happen is that we’ll starve to death.’
Amina tied a scarf around her hair. She slipped outside the gate. It wasn’t hunger she felt now. It was shame. How could she possibly tell the neighbours they were starving? How could she beg for food?